- The Project Gutenberg EBook of Ulysses, by James Joyce
- This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
- almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
- re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
- with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
- Title: Ulysses
- Author: James Joyce
- Release Date: August 1, 2008 [EBook #4300]
- Last Updated: December 27, 2019
- Language: English
- Character set encoding: UTF-8
- *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ULYSSES ***
- Produced by Col Choat, and David Widger.
- [Illustration]
- Ulysses
- by James Joyce
- Contents
- — I —
- [ 1 ]
- [ 2 ]
- [ 3 ]
- — II —
- [ 4 ]
- [ 5 ]
- [ 6 ]
- [ 7 ]
- [ 8 ]
- [ 9 ]
- [ 10 ]
- [ 11 ]
- [ 12 ]
- [ 13 ]
- [ 14 ]
- [ 15 ]
- — III —
- [ 16 ]
- [ 17 ]
- [ 18 ]
- — I —
- [ 1 ]
- Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of
- lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. A yellow
- dressinggown, ungirdled, was sustained gently behind him on the mild
- morning air. He held the bowl aloft and intoned:
- —_Introibo ad altare Dei_.
- Halted, he peered down the dark winding stairs and called out coarsely:
- —Come up, Kinch! Come up, you fearful jesuit!
- Solemnly he came forward and mounted the round gunrest. He faced about
- and blessed gravely thrice the tower, the surrounding land and the
- awaking mountains. Then, catching sight of Stephen Dedalus, he bent
- towards him and made rapid crosses in the air, gurgling in his throat
- and shaking his head. Stephen Dedalus, displeased and sleepy, leaned
- his arms on the top of the staircase and looked coldly at the shaking
- gurgling face that blessed him, equine in its length, and at the light
- untonsured hair, grained and hued like pale oak.
- Buck Mulligan peeped an instant under the mirror and then covered the
- bowl smartly.
- —Back to barracks! he said sternly.
- He added in a preacher’s tone:
- —For this, O dearly beloved, is the genuine Christine: body and soul
- and blood and ouns. Slow music, please. Shut your eyes, gents. One
- moment. A little trouble about those white corpuscles. Silence, all.
- He peered sideways up and gave a long slow whistle of call, then paused
- awhile in rapt attention, his even white teeth glistening here and
- there with gold points. Chrysostomos. Two strong shrill whistles
- answered through the calm.
- —Thanks, old chap, he cried briskly. That will do nicely. Switch off
- the current, will you?
- He skipped off the gunrest and looked gravely at his watcher, gathering
- about his legs the loose folds of his gown. The plump shadowed face and
- sullen oval jowl recalled a prelate, patron of arts in the middle ages.
- A pleasant smile broke quietly over his lips.
- —The mockery of it! he said gaily. Your absurd name, an ancient Greek!
- He pointed his finger in friendly jest and went over to the parapet,
- laughing to himself. Stephen Dedalus stepped up, followed him wearily
- halfway and sat down on the edge of the gunrest, watching him still as
- he propped his mirror on the parapet, dipped the brush in the bowl and
- lathered cheeks and neck.
- Buck Mulligan’s gay voice went on.
- —My name is absurd too: Malachi Mulligan, two dactyls. But it has a
- Hellenic ring, hasn’t it? Tripping and sunny like the buck himself. We
- must go to Athens. Will you come if I can get the aunt to fork out
- twenty quid?
- He laid the brush aside and, laughing with delight, cried:
- —Will he come? The jejune jesuit!
- Ceasing, he began to shave with care.
- —Tell me, Mulligan, Stephen said quietly.
- —Yes, my love?
- —How long is Haines going to stay in this tower?
- Buck Mulligan showed a shaven cheek over his right shoulder.
- —God, isn’t he dreadful? he said frankly. A ponderous Saxon. He thinks
- you’re not a gentleman. God, these bloody English! Bursting with money
- and indigestion. Because he comes from Oxford. You know, Dedalus, you
- have the real Oxford manner. He can’t make you out. O, my name for you
- is the best: Kinch, the knife-blade.
- He shaved warily over his chin.
- —He was raving all night about a black panther, Stephen said. Where is
- his guncase?
- —A woful lunatic! Mulligan said. Were you in a funk?
- —I was, Stephen said with energy and growing fear. Out here in the dark
- with a man I don’t know raving and moaning to himself about shooting a
- black panther. You saved men from drowning. I’m not a hero, however. If
- he stays on here I am off.
- Buck Mulligan frowned at the lather on his razorblade. He hopped down
- from his perch and began to search his trouser pockets hastily.
- —Scutter! he cried thickly.
- He came over to the gunrest and, thrusting a hand into Stephen’s upper
- pocket, said:
- —Lend us a loan of your noserag to wipe my razor.
- Stephen suffered him to pull out and hold up on show by its corner a
- dirty crumpled handkerchief. Buck Mulligan wiped the razorblade neatly.
- Then, gazing over the handkerchief, he said:
- —The bard’s noserag! A new art colour for our Irish poets: snotgreen.
- You can almost taste it, can’t you?
- He mounted to the parapet again and gazed out over Dublin bay, his fair
- oakpale hair stirring slightly.
- —God! he said quietly. Isn’t the sea what Algy calls it: a great sweet
- mother? The snotgreen sea. The scrotumtightening sea. _Epi oinopa
- ponton_. Ah, Dedalus, the Greeks! I must teach you. You must read them
- in the original. _Thalatta! Thalatta!_ She is our great sweet mother.
- Come and look.
- Stephen stood up and went over to the parapet. Leaning on it he looked
- down on the water and on the mailboat clearing the harbourmouth of
- Kingstown.
- —Our mighty mother! Buck Mulligan said.
- He turned abruptly his grey searching eyes from the sea to Stephen’s
- face.
- —The aunt thinks you killed your mother, he said. That’s why she won’t
- let me have anything to do with you.
- —Someone killed her, Stephen said gloomily.
- —You could have knelt down, damn it, Kinch, when your dying mother
- asked you, Buck Mulligan said. I’m hyperborean as much as you. But to
- think of your mother begging you with her last breath to kneel down and
- pray for her. And you refused. There is something sinister in you....
- He broke off and lathered again lightly his farther cheek. A tolerant
- smile curled his lips.
- —But a lovely mummer! he murmured to himself. Kinch, the loveliest
- mummer of them all!
- He shaved evenly and with care, in silence, seriously.
- Stephen, an elbow rested on the jagged granite, leaned his palm against
- his brow and gazed at the fraying edge of his shiny black coat-sleeve.
- Pain, that was not yet the pain of love, fretted his heart. Silently,
- in a dream she had come to him after her death, her wasted body within
- its loose brown graveclothes giving off an odour of wax and rosewood,
- her breath, that had bent upon him, mute, reproachful, a faint odour of
- wetted ashes. Across the threadbare cuffedge he saw the sea hailed as a
- great sweet mother by the wellfed voice beside him. The ring of bay and
- skyline held a dull green mass of liquid. A bowl of white china had
- stood beside her deathbed holding the green sluggish bile which she had
- torn up from her rotting liver by fits of loud groaning vomiting.
- Buck Mulligan wiped again his razorblade.
- —Ah, poor dogsbody! he said in a kind voice. I must give you a shirt
- and a few noserags. How are the secondhand breeks?
- —They fit well enough, Stephen answered.
- Buck Mulligan attacked the hollow beneath his underlip.
- —The mockery of it, he said contentedly. Secondleg they should be. God
- knows what poxy bowsy left them off. I have a lovely pair with a hair
- stripe, grey. You’ll look spiffing in them. I’m not joking, Kinch. You
- look damn well when you’re dressed.
- —Thanks, Stephen said. I can’t wear them if they are grey.
- —He can’t wear them, Buck Mulligan told his face in the mirror.
- Etiquette is etiquette. He kills his mother but he can’t wear grey
- trousers.
- He folded his razor neatly and with stroking palps of fingers felt the
- smooth skin.
- Stephen turned his gaze from the sea and to the plump face with its
- smokeblue mobile eyes.
- —That fellow I was with in the Ship last night, said Buck Mulligan,
- says you have g. p. i. He’s up in Dottyville with Connolly Norman.
- General paralysis of the insane!
- He swept the mirror a half circle in the air to flash the tidings
- abroad in sunlight now radiant on the sea. His curling shaven lips
- laughed and the edges of his white glittering teeth. Laughter seized
- all his strong wellknit trunk.
- —Look at yourself, he said, you dreadful bard!
- Stephen bent forward and peered at the mirror held out to him, cleft by
- a crooked crack. Hair on end. As he and others see me. Who chose this
- face for me? This dogsbody to rid of vermin. It asks me too.
- —I pinched it out of the skivvy’s room, Buck Mulligan said. It does her
- all right. The aunt always keeps plainlooking servants for Malachi.
- Lead him not into temptation. And her name is Ursula.
- Laughing again, he brought the mirror away from Stephen’s peering eyes.
- —The rage of Caliban at not seeing his face in a mirror, he said. If
- Wilde were only alive to see you!
- Drawing back and pointing, Stephen said with bitterness:
- —It is a symbol of Irish art. The cracked lookingglass of a servant.
- Buck Mulligan suddenly linked his arm in Stephen’s and walked with him
- round the tower, his razor and mirror clacking in the pocket where he
- had thrust them.
- —It’s not fair to tease you like that, Kinch, is it? he said kindly.
- God knows you have more spirit than any of them.
- Parried again. He fears the lancet of my art as I fear that of his. The
- cold steel pen.
- —Cracked lookingglass of a servant! Tell that to the oxy chap
- downstairs and touch him for a guinea. He’s stinking with money and
- thinks you’re not a gentleman. His old fellow made his tin by selling
- jalap to Zulus or some bloody swindle or other. God, Kinch, if you and
- I could only work together we might do something for the island.
- Hellenise it.
- Cranly’s arm. His arm.
- —And to think of your having to beg from these swine. I’m the only one
- that knows what you are. Why don’t you trust me more? What have you up
- your nose against me? Is it Haines? If he makes any noise here I’ll
- bring down Seymour and we’ll give him a ragging worse than they gave
- Clive Kempthorpe.
- Young shouts of moneyed voices in Clive Kempthorpe’s rooms. Palefaces:
- they hold their ribs with laughter, one clasping another. O, I shall
- expire! Break the news to her gently, Aubrey! I shall die! With slit
- ribbons of his shirt whipping the air he hops and hobbles round the
- table, with trousers down at heels, chased by Ades of Magdalen with the
- tailor’s shears. A scared calf’s face gilded with marmalade. I don’t
- want to be debagged! Don’t you play the giddy ox with me!
- Shouts from the open window startling evening in the quadrangle. A deaf
- gardener, aproned, masked with Matthew Arnold’s face, pushes his mower
- on the sombre lawn watching narrowly the dancing motes of grasshalms.
- To ourselves... new paganism... omphalos.
- —Let him stay, Stephen said. There’s nothing wrong with him except at
- night.
- —Then what is it? Buck Mulligan asked impatiently. Cough it up. I’m
- quite frank with you. What have you against me now?
- They halted, looking towards the blunt cape of Bray Head that lay on
- the water like the snout of a sleeping whale. Stephen freed his arm
- quietly.
- —Do you wish me to tell you? he asked.
- —Yes, what is it? Buck Mulligan answered. I don’t remember anything.
- He looked in Stephen’s face as he spoke. A light wind passed his brow,
- fanning softly his fair uncombed hair and stirring silver points of
- anxiety in his eyes.
- Stephen, depressed by his own voice, said:
- —Do you remember the first day I went to your house after my mother’s
- death?
- Buck Mulligan frowned quickly and said:
- —What? Where? I can’t remember anything. I remember only ideas and
- sensations. Why? What happened in the name of God?
- —You were making tea, Stephen said, and went across the landing to get
- more hot water. Your mother and some visitor came out of the
- drawingroom. She asked you who was in your room.
- —Yes? Buck Mulligan said. What did I say? I forget.
- —You said, Stephen answered, _O, it’s only Dedalus whose mother is
- beastly dead._
- A flush which made him seem younger and more engaging rose to Buck
- Mulligan’s cheek.
- —Did I say that? he asked. Well? What harm is that?
- He shook his constraint from him nervously.
- —And what is death, he asked, your mother’s or yours or my own? You saw
- only your mother die. I see them pop off every day in the Mater and
- Richmond and cut up into tripes in the dissectingroom. It’s a beastly
- thing and nothing else. It simply doesn’t matter. You wouldn’t kneel
- down to pray for your mother on her deathbed when she asked you. Why?
- Because you have the cursed jesuit strain in you, only it’s injected
- the wrong way. To me it’s all a mockery and beastly. Her cerebral lobes
- are not functioning. She calls the doctor sir Peter Teazle and picks
- buttercups off the quilt. Humour her till it’s over. You crossed her
- last wish in death and yet you sulk with me because I don’t whinge like
- some hired mute from Lalouette’s. Absurd! I suppose I did say it. I
- didn’t mean to offend the memory of your mother.
- He had spoken himself into boldness. Stephen, shielding the gaping
- wounds which the words had left in his heart, said very coldly:
- —I am not thinking of the offence to my mother.
- —Of what then? Buck Mulligan asked.
- —Of the offence to me, Stephen answered.
- Buck Mulligan swung round on his heel.
- —O, an impossible person! he exclaimed.
- He walked off quickly round the parapet. Stephen stood at his post,
- gazing over the calm sea towards the headland. Sea and headland now
- grew dim. Pulses were beating in his eyes, veiling their sight, and he
- felt the fever of his cheeks.
- A voice within the tower called loudly:
- —Are you up there, Mulligan?
- —I’m coming, Buck Mulligan answered.
- He turned towards Stephen and said:
- —Look at the sea. What does it care about offences? Chuck Loyola,
- Kinch, and come on down. The Sassenach wants his morning rashers.
- His head halted again for a moment at the top of the staircase, level
- with the roof:
- —Don’t mope over it all day, he said. I’m inconsequent. Give up the
- moody brooding.
- His head vanished but the drone of his descending voice boomed out of
- the stairhead:
- And no more turn aside and brood
- Upon love’s bitter mystery
- For Fergus rules the brazen cars.
- Woodshadows floated silently by through the morning peace from the
- stairhead seaward where he gazed. Inshore and farther out the mirror of
- water whitened, spurned by lightshod hurrying feet. White breast of the
- dim sea. The twining stresses, two by two. A hand plucking the
- harpstrings, merging their twining chords. Wavewhite wedded words
- shimmering on the dim tide.
- A cloud began to cover the sun slowly, wholly, shadowing the bay in
- deeper green. It lay beneath him, a bowl of bitter waters. Fergus’
- song: I sang it alone in the house, holding down the long dark chords.
- Her door was open: she wanted to hear my music. Silent with awe and
- pity I went to her bedside. She was crying in her wretched bed. For
- those words, Stephen: love’s bitter mystery.
- Where now?
- Her secrets: old featherfans, tasselled dancecards, powdered with musk,
- a gaud of amber beads in her locked drawer. A birdcage hung in the
- sunny window of her house when she was a girl. She heard old Royce sing
- in the pantomime of Turko the Terrible and laughed with others when he
- sang:
- I am the boy
- That can enjoy
- Invisibility.
- Phantasmal mirth, folded away: muskperfumed.
- And no more turn aside and brood.
- Folded away in the memory of nature with her toys. Memories beset his
- brooding brain. Her glass of water from the kitchen tap when she had
- approached the sacrament. A cored apple, filled with brown sugar,
- roasting for her at the hob on a dark autumn evening. Her shapely
- fingernails reddened by the blood of squashed lice from the children’s
- shirts.
- In a dream, silently, she had come to him, her wasted body within its
- loose graveclothes giving off an odour of wax and rosewood, her breath,
- bent over him with mute secret words, a faint odour of wetted ashes.
- Her glazing eyes, staring out of death, to shake and bend my soul. On
- me alone. The ghostcandle to light her agony. Ghostly light on the
- tortured face. Her hoarse loud breath rattling in horror, while all
- prayed on their knees. Her eyes on me to strike me down. _Liliata
- rutilantium te confessorum turma circumdet: iubilantium te virginum
- chorus excipiat._
- Ghoul! Chewer of corpses!
- No, mother! Let me be and let me live.
- —Kinch ahoy!
- Buck Mulligan’s voice sang from within the tower. It came nearer up the
- staircase, calling again. Stephen, still trembling at his soul’s cry,
- heard warm running sunlight and in the air behind him friendly words.
- —Dedalus, come down, like a good mosey. Breakfast is ready. Haines is
- apologising for waking us last night. It’s all right.
- —I’m coming, Stephen said, turning.
- —Do, for Jesus’ sake, Buck Mulligan said. For my sake and for all our
- sakes.
- His head disappeared and reappeared.
- —I told him your symbol of Irish art. He says it’s very clever. Touch
- him for a quid, will you? A guinea, I mean.
- —I get paid this morning, Stephen said.
- —The school kip? Buck Mulligan said. How much? Four quid? Lend us one.
- —If you want it, Stephen said.
- —Four shining sovereigns, Buck Mulligan cried with delight. We’ll have
- a glorious drunk to astonish the druidy druids. Four omnipotent
- sovereigns.
- He flung up his hands and tramped down the stone stairs, singing out of
- tune with a Cockney accent:
- O, won’t we have a merry time,
- Drinking whisky, beer and wine!
- On coronation,
- Coronation day!
- O, won’t we have a merry time
- On coronation day!
- Warm sunshine merrying over the sea. The nickel shavingbowl shone,
- forgotten, on the parapet. Why should I bring it down? Or leave it
- there all day, forgotten friendship?
- He went over to it, held it in his hands awhile, feeling its coolness,
- smelling the clammy slaver of the lather in which the brush was stuck.
- So I carried the boat of incense then at Clongowes. I am another now
- and yet the same. A servant too. A server of a servant.
- In the gloomy domed livingroom of the tower Buck Mulligan’s gowned form
- moved briskly to and fro about the hearth, hiding and revealing its
- yellow glow. Two shafts of soft daylight fell across the flagged floor
- from the high barbacans: and at the meeting of their rays a cloud of
- coalsmoke and fumes of fried grease floated, turning.
- —We’ll be choked, Buck Mulligan said. Haines, open that door, will you?
- Stephen laid the shavingbowl on the locker. A tall figure rose from the
- hammock where it had been sitting, went to the doorway and pulled open
- the inner doors.
- —Have you the key? a voice asked.
- —Dedalus has it, Buck Mulligan said. Janey Mack, I’m choked!
- He howled, without looking up from the fire:
- —Kinch!
- —It’s in the lock, Stephen said, coming forward.
- The key scraped round harshly twice and, when the heavy door had been
- set ajar, welcome light and bright air entered. Haines stood at the
- doorway, looking out. Stephen haled his upended valise to the table and
- sat down to wait. Buck Mulligan tossed the fry on to the dish beside
- him. Then he carried the dish and a large teapot over to the table, set
- them down heavily and sighed with relief.
- —I’m melting, he said, as the candle remarked when... But, hush! Not a
- word more on that subject! Kinch, wake up! Bread, butter, honey.
- Haines, come in. The grub is ready. Bless us, O Lord, and these thy
- gifts. Where’s the sugar? O, jay, there’s no milk.
- Stephen fetched the loaf and the pot of honey and the buttercooler from
- the locker. Buck Mulligan sat down in a sudden pet.
- —What sort of a kip is this? he said. I told her to come after eight.
- —We can drink it black, Stephen said thirstily. There’s a lemon in the
- locker.
- —O, damn you and your Paris fads! Buck Mulligan said. I want Sandycove
- milk.
- Haines came in from the doorway and said quietly:
- —That woman is coming up with the milk.
- —The blessings of God on you! Buck Mulligan cried, jumping up from his
- chair. Sit down. Pour out the tea there. The sugar is in the bag. Here,
- I can’t go fumbling at the damned eggs.
- He hacked through the fry on the dish and slapped it out on three
- plates, saying:
- —_In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti._
- Haines sat down to pour out the tea.
- —I’m giving you two lumps each, he said. But, I say, Mulligan, you do
- make strong tea, don’t you?
- Buck Mulligan, hewing thick slices from the loaf, said in an old
- woman’s wheedling voice:
- —When I makes tea I makes tea, as old mother Grogan said. And when I
- makes water I makes water.
- —By Jove, it is tea, Haines said.
- Buck Mulligan went on hewing and wheedling:
- —_So I do, Mrs Cahill,_ says she. _Begob, ma’am,_ says Mrs Cahill, _God
- send you don’t make them in the one pot._
- He lunged towards his messmates in turn a thick slice of bread, impaled
- on his knife.
- —That’s folk, he said very earnestly, for your book, Haines. Five lines
- of text and ten pages of notes about the folk and the fishgods of
- Dundrum. Printed by the weird sisters in the year of the big wind.
- He turned to Stephen and asked in a fine puzzled voice, lifting his
- brows:
- —Can you recall, brother, is mother Grogan’s tea and water pot spoken
- of in the Mabinogion or is it in the Upanishads?
- —I doubt it, said Stephen gravely.
- —Do you now? Buck Mulligan said in the same tone. Your reasons, pray?
- —I fancy, Stephen said as he ate, it did not exist in or out of the
- Mabinogion. Mother Grogan was, one imagines, a kinswoman of Mary Ann.
- Buck Mulligan’s face smiled with delight.
- —Charming! he said in a finical sweet voice, showing his white teeth
- and blinking his eyes pleasantly. Do you think she was? Quite charming!
- Then, suddenly overclouding all his features, he growled in a hoarsened
- rasping voice as he hewed again vigorously at the loaf:
- _—For old Mary Ann
- She doesn’t care a damn.
- But, hising up her petticoats..._
- He crammed his mouth with fry and munched and droned.
- The doorway was darkened by an entering form.
- —The milk, sir!
- —Come in, ma’am, Mulligan said. Kinch, get the jug.
- An old woman came forward and stood by Stephen’s elbow.
- —That’s a lovely morning, sir, she said. Glory be to God.
- —To whom? Mulligan said, glancing at her. Ah, to be sure!
- Stephen reached back and took the milkjug from the locker.
- —The islanders, Mulligan said to Haines casually, speak frequently of
- the collector of prepuces.
- —How much, sir? asked the old woman.
- —A quart, Stephen said.
- He watched her pour into the measure and thence into the jug rich white
- milk, not hers. Old shrunken paps. She poured again a measureful and a
- tilly. Old and secret she had entered from a morning world, maybe a
- messenger. She praised the goodness of the milk, pouring it out.
- Crouching by a patient cow at daybreak in the lush field, a witch on
- her toadstool, her wrinkled fingers quick at the squirting dugs. They
- lowed about her whom they knew, dewsilky cattle. Silk of the kine and
- poor old woman, names given her in old times. A wandering crone, lowly
- form of an immortal serving her conqueror and her gay betrayer, their
- common cuckquean, a messenger from the secret morning. To serve or to
- upbraid, whether he could not tell: but scorned to beg her favour.
- —It is indeed, ma’am, Buck Mulligan said, pouring milk into their cups.
- —Taste it, sir, she said.
- He drank at her bidding.
- —If we could live on good food like that, he said to her somewhat
- loudly, we wouldn’t have the country full of rotten teeth and rotten
- guts. Living in a bogswamp, eating cheap food and the streets paved
- with dust, horsedung and consumptives’ spits.
- —Are you a medical student, sir? the old woman asked.
- —I am, ma’am, Buck Mulligan answered.
- —Look at that now, she said.
- Stephen listened in scornful silence. She bows her old head to a voice
- that speaks to her loudly, her bonesetter, her medicineman: me she
- slights. To the voice that will shrive and oil for the grave all there
- is of her but her woman’s unclean loins, of man’s flesh made not in
- God’s likeness, the serpent’s prey. And to the loud voice that now bids
- her be silent with wondering unsteady eyes.
- —Do you understand what he says? Stephen asked her.
- —Is it French you are talking, sir? the old woman said to Haines.
- Haines spoke to her again a longer speech, confidently.
- —Irish, Buck Mulligan said. Is there Gaelic on you?
- —I thought it was Irish, she said, by the sound of it. Are you from the
- west, sir?
- —I am an Englishman, Haines answered.
- —He’s English, Buck Mulligan said, and he thinks we ought to speak
- Irish in Ireland.
- —Sure we ought to, the old woman said, and I’m ashamed I don’t speak
- the language myself. I’m told it’s a grand language by them that knows.
- —Grand is no name for it, said Buck Mulligan. Wonderful entirely. Fill
- us out some more tea, Kinch. Would you like a cup, ma’am?
- —No, thank you, sir, the old woman said, slipping the ring of the
- milkcan on her forearm and about to go.
- Haines said to her:
- —Have you your bill? We had better pay her, Mulligan, hadn’t we?
- Stephen filled again the three cups.
- —Bill, sir? she said, halting. Well, it’s seven mornings a pint at
- twopence is seven twos is a shilling and twopence over and these three
- mornings a quart at fourpence is three quarts is a shilling. That’s a
- shilling and one and two is two and two, sir.
- Buck Mulligan sighed and, having filled his mouth with a crust thickly
- buttered on both sides, stretched forth his legs and began to search
- his trouser pockets.
- —Pay up and look pleasant, Haines said to him, smiling.
- Stephen filled a third cup, a spoonful of tea colouring faintly the
- thick rich milk. Buck Mulligan brought up a florin, twisted it round in
- his fingers and cried:
- —A miracle!
- He passed it along the table towards the old woman, saying:
- —Ask nothing more of me, sweet. All I can give you I give.
- Stephen laid the coin in her uneager hand.
- —We’ll owe twopence, he said.
- —Time enough, sir, she said, taking the coin. Time enough. Good
- morning, sir.
- She curtseyed and went out, followed by Buck Mulligan’s tender chant:
- _—Heart of my heart, were it more,
- More would be laid at your feet._
- He turned to Stephen and said:
- —Seriously, Dedalus. I’m stony. Hurry out to your school kip and bring
- us back some money. Today the bards must drink and junket. Ireland
- expects that every man this day will do his duty.
- —That reminds me, Haines said, rising, that I have to visit your
- national library today.
- —Our swim first, Buck Mulligan said.
- He turned to Stephen and asked blandly:
- —Is this the day for your monthly wash, Kinch?
- Then he said to Haines:
- —The unclean bard makes a point of washing once a month.
- —All Ireland is washed by the gulfstream, Stephen said as he let honey
- trickle over a slice of the loaf.
- Haines from the corner where he was knotting easily a scarf about the
- loose collar of his tennis shirt spoke:
- —I intend to make a collection of your sayings if you will let me.
- Speaking to me. They wash and tub and scrub. Agenbite of inwit.
- Conscience. Yet here’s a spot.
- —That one about the cracked lookingglass of a servant being the symbol
- of Irish art is deuced good.
- Buck Mulligan kicked Stephen’s foot under the table and said with
- warmth of tone:
- —Wait till you hear him on Hamlet, Haines.
- —Well, I mean it, Haines said, still speaking to Stephen. I was just
- thinking of it when that poor old creature came in.
- —Would I make any money by it? Stephen asked.
- Haines laughed and, as he took his soft grey hat from the holdfast of
- the hammock, said:
- —I don’t know, I’m sure.
- He strolled out to the doorway. Buck Mulligan bent across to Stephen
- and said with coarse vigour:
- —You put your hoof in it now. What did you say that for?
- —Well? Stephen said. The problem is to get money. From whom? From the
- milkwoman or from him. It’s a toss up, I think.
- —I blow him out about you, Buck Mulligan said, and then you come along
- with your lousy leer and your gloomy jesuit jibes.
- —I see little hope, Stephen said, from her or from him.
- Buck Mulligan sighed tragically and laid his hand on Stephen’s arm.
- —From me, Kinch, he said.
- In a suddenly changed tone he added:
- —To tell you the God’s truth I think you’re right. Damn all else they
- are good for. Why don’t you play them as I do? To hell with them all.
- Let us get out of the kip.
- He stood up, gravely ungirdled and disrobed himself of his gown, saying
- resignedly:
- —Mulligan is stripped of his garments.
- He emptied his pockets on to the table.
- —There’s your snotrag, he said.
- And putting on his stiff collar and rebellious tie he spoke to them,
- chiding them, and to his dangling watchchain. His hands plunged and
- rummaged in his trunk while he called for a clean handkerchief. God,
- we’ll simply have to dress the character. I want puce gloves and green
- boots. Contradiction. Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I
- contradict myself. Mercurial Malachi. A limp black missile flew out of
- his talking hands.
- —And there’s your Latin quarter hat, he said.
- Stephen picked it up and put it on. Haines called to them from the
- doorway:
- —Are you coming, you fellows?
- —I’m ready, Buck Mulligan answered, going towards the door. Come out,
- Kinch. You have eaten all we left, I suppose. Resigned he passed out
- with grave words and gait, saying, wellnigh with sorrow:
- —And going forth he met Butterly.
- Stephen, taking his ashplant from its leaningplace, followed them out
- and, as they went down the ladder, pulled to the slow iron door and
- locked it. He put the huge key in his inner pocket.
- At the foot of the ladder Buck Mulligan asked:
- —Did you bring the key?
- —I have it, Stephen said, preceding them.
- He walked on. Behind him he heard Buck Mulligan club with his heavy
- bathtowel the leader shoots of ferns or grasses.
- —Down, sir! How dare you, sir!
- Haines asked:
- —Do you pay rent for this tower?
- —Twelve quid, Buck Mulligan said.
- —To the secretary of state for war, Stephen added over his shoulder.
- They halted while Haines surveyed the tower and said at last:
- —Rather bleak in wintertime, I should say. Martello you call it?
- —Billy Pitt had them built, Buck Mulligan said, when the French were on
- the sea. But ours is the _omphalos_.
- —What is your idea of Hamlet? Haines asked Stephen.
- —No, no, Buck Mulligan shouted in pain. I’m not equal to Thomas Aquinas
- and the fiftyfive reasons he has made out to prop it up. Wait till I
- have a few pints in me first.
- He turned to Stephen, saying, as he pulled down neatly the peaks of his
- primrose waistcoat:
- —You couldn’t manage it under three pints, Kinch, could you?
- —It has waited so long, Stephen said listlessly, it can wait longer.
- —You pique my curiosity, Haines said amiably. Is it some paradox?
- —Pooh! Buck Mulligan said. We have grown out of Wilde and paradoxes.
- It’s quite simple. He proves by algebra that Hamlet’s grandson is
- Shakespeare’s grandfather and that he himself is the ghost of his own
- father.
- —What? Haines said, beginning to point at Stephen. He himself?
- Buck Mulligan slung his towel stolewise round his neck and, bending in
- loose laughter, said to Stephen’s ear:
- —O, shade of Kinch the elder! Japhet in search of a father!
- —We’re always tired in the morning, Stephen said to Haines. And it is
- rather long to tell.
- Buck Mulligan, walking forward again, raised his hands.
- —The sacred pint alone can unbind the tongue of Dedalus, he said.
- —I mean to say, Haines explained to Stephen as they followed, this
- tower and these cliffs here remind me somehow of Elsinore. _That
- beetles o’er his base into the sea,_ isn’t it?
- Buck Mulligan turned suddenly for an instant towards Stephen but did
- not speak. In the bright silent instant Stephen saw his own image in
- cheap dusty mourning between their gay attires.
- —It’s a wonderful tale, Haines said, bringing them to halt again.
- Eyes, pale as the sea the wind had freshened, paler, firm and prudent.
- The seas’ ruler, he gazed southward over the bay, empty save for the
- smokeplume of the mailboat vague on the bright skyline and a sail
- tacking by the Muglins.
- —I read a theological interpretation of it somewhere, he said bemused.
- The Father and the Son idea. The Son striving to be atoned with the
- Father.
- Buck Mulligan at once put on a blithe broadly smiling face. He looked
- at them, his wellshaped mouth open happily, his eyes, from which he had
- suddenly withdrawn all shrewd sense, blinking with mad gaiety. He moved
- a doll’s head to and fro, the brims of his Panama hat quivering, and
- began to chant in a quiet happy foolish voice:
- _—I’m the queerest young fellow that ever you heard.
- My mother’s a jew, my father’s a bird.
- With Joseph the joiner I cannot agree.
- So here’s to disciples and Calvary._
- He held up a forefinger of warning.
- _—If anyone thinks that I amn’t divine
- He’ll get no free drinks when I’m making the wine
- But have to drink water and wish it were plain
- That I make when the wine becomes water again._
- He tugged swiftly at Stephen’s ashplant in farewell and, running
- forward to a brow of the cliff, fluttered his hands at his sides like
- fins or wings of one about to rise in the air, and chanted:
- _—Goodbye, now, goodbye! Write down all I said
- And tell Tom, Dick and Harry I rose from the dead.
- What’s bred in the bone cannot fail me to fly
- And Olivet’s breezy... Goodbye, now, goodbye!_
- He capered before them down towards the fortyfoot hole, fluttering his
- winglike hands, leaping nimbly, Mercury’s hat quivering in the fresh
- wind that bore back to them his brief birdsweet cries.
- Haines, who had been laughing guardedly, walked on beside Stephen and
- said:
- —We oughtn’t to laugh, I suppose. He’s rather blasphemous. I’m not a
- believer myself, that is to say. Still his gaiety takes the harm out of
- it somehow, doesn’t it? What did he call it? Joseph the Joiner?
- —The ballad of joking Jesus, Stephen answered.
- —O, Haines said, you have heard it before?
- —Three times a day, after meals, Stephen said drily.
- —You’re not a believer, are you? Haines asked. I mean, a believer in
- the narrow sense of the word. Creation from nothing and miracles and a
- personal God.
- —There’s only one sense of the word, it seems to me, Stephen said.
- Haines stopped to take out a smooth silver case in which twinkled a
- green stone. He sprang it open with his thumb and offered it.
- —Thank you, Stephen said, taking a cigarette.
- Haines helped himself and snapped the case to. He put it back in his
- sidepocket and took from his waistcoatpocket a nickel tinderbox, sprang
- it open too, and, having lit his cigarette, held the flaming spunk
- towards Stephen in the shell of his hands.
- —Yes, of course, he said, as they went on again. Either you believe or
- you don’t, isn’t it? Personally I couldn’t stomach that idea of a
- personal God. You don’t stand for that, I suppose?
- —You behold in me, Stephen said with grim displeasure, a horrible
- example of free thought.
- He walked on, waiting to be spoken to, trailing his ashplant by his
- side. Its ferrule followed lightly on the path, squealing at his heels.
- My familiar, after me, calling, Steeeeeeeeeeeephen! A wavering line
- along the path. They will walk on it tonight, coming here in the dark.
- He wants that key. It is mine. I paid the rent. Now I eat his salt
- bread. Give him the key too. All. He will ask for it. That was in his
- eyes.
- —After all, Haines began...
- Stephen turned and saw that the cold gaze which had measured him was
- not all unkind.
- —After all, I should think you are able to free yourself. You are your
- own master, it seems to me.
- —I am a servant of two masters, Stephen said, an English and an
- Italian.
- —Italian? Haines said.
- A crazy queen, old and jealous. Kneel down before me.
- —And a third, Stephen said, there is who wants me for odd jobs.
- —Italian? Haines said again. What do you mean?
- —The imperial British state, Stephen answered, his colour rising, and
- the holy Roman catholic and apostolic church.
- Haines detached from his underlip some fibres of tobacco before he
- spoke.
- —I can quite understand that, he said calmly. An Irishman must think
- like that, I daresay. We feel in England that we have treated you
- rather unfairly. It seems history is to blame.
- The proud potent titles clanged over Stephen’s memory the triumph of
- their brazen bells: _et unam sanctam catholicam et apostolicam
- ecclesiam:_ the slow growth and change of rite and dogma like his own
- rare thoughts, a chemistry of stars. Symbol of the apostles in the mass
- for pope Marcellus, the voices blended, singing alone loud in
- affirmation: and behind their chant the vigilant angel of the church
- militant disarmed and menaced her heresiarchs. A horde of heresies
- fleeing with mitres awry: Photius and the brood of mockers of whom
- Mulligan was one, and Arius, warring his life long upon the
- consubstantiality of the Son with the Father, and Valentine, spurning
- Christ’s terrene body, and the subtle African heresiarch Sabellius who
- held that the Father was Himself His own Son. Words Mulligan had spoken
- a moment since in mockery to the stranger. Idle mockery. The void
- awaits surely all them that weave the wind: a menace, a disarming and a
- worsting from those embattled angels of the church, Michael’s host, who
- defend her ever in the hour of conflict with their lances and their
- shields.
- Hear, hear! Prolonged applause. _Zut! Nom de Dieu!_
- —Of course I’m a Britisher, Haines’s voice said, and I feel as one. I
- don’t want to see my country fall into the hands of German jews either.
- That’s our national problem, I’m afraid, just now.
- Two men stood at the verge of the cliff, watching: businessman,
- boatman.
- —She’s making for Bullock harbour.
- The boatman nodded towards the north of the bay with some disdain.
- —There’s five fathoms out there, he said. It’ll be swept up that way
- when the tide comes in about one. It’s nine days today.
- The man that was drowned. A sail veering about the blank bay waiting
- for a swollen bundle to bob up, roll over to the sun a puffy face,
- saltwhite. Here I am.
- They followed the winding path down to the creek. Buck Mulligan stood
- on a stone, in shirtsleeves, his unclipped tie rippling over his
- shoulder. A young man clinging to a spur of rock near him, moved slowly
- frogwise his green legs in the deep jelly of the water.
- —Is the brother with you, Malachi?
- —Down in Westmeath. With the Bannons.
- —Still there? I got a card from Bannon. Says he found a sweet young
- thing down there. Photo girl he calls her.
- —Snapshot, eh? Brief exposure.
- Buck Mulligan sat down to unlace his boots. An elderly man shot up near
- the spur of rock a blowing red face. He scrambled up by the stones,
- water glistening on his pate and on its garland of grey hair, water
- rilling over his chest and paunch and spilling jets out of his black
- sagging loincloth.
- Buck Mulligan made way for him to scramble past and, glancing at Haines
- and Stephen, crossed himself piously with his thumbnail at brow and
- lips and breastbone.
- —Seymour’s back in town, the young man said, grasping again his spur of
- rock. Chucked medicine and going in for the army.
- —Ah, go to God! Buck Mulligan said.
- —Going over next week to stew. You know that red Carlisle girl, Lily?
- —Yes.
- —Spooning with him last night on the pier. The father is rotto with
- money.
- —Is she up the pole?
- —Better ask Seymour that.
- —Seymour a bleeding officer! Buck Mulligan said.
- He nodded to himself as he drew off his trousers and stood up, saying
- tritely:
- —Redheaded women buck like goats.
- He broke off in alarm, feeling his side under his flapping shirt.
- —My twelfth rib is gone, he cried. I’m the _Übermensch._ Toothless
- Kinch and I, the supermen.
- He struggled out of his shirt and flung it behind him to where his
- clothes lay.
- —Are you going in here, Malachi?
- —Yes. Make room in the bed.
- The young man shoved himself backward through the water and reached the
- middle of the creek in two long clean strokes. Haines sat down on a
- stone, smoking.
- —Are you not coming in? Buck Mulligan asked.
- —Later on, Haines said. Not on my breakfast.
- Stephen turned away.
- —I’m going, Mulligan, he said.
- —Give us that key, Kinch, Buck Mulligan said, to keep my chemise flat.
- Stephen handed him the key. Buck Mulligan laid it across his heaped
- clothes.
- —And twopence, he said, for a pint. Throw it there.
- Stephen threw two pennies on the soft heap. Dressing, undressing. Buck
- Mulligan erect, with joined hands before him, said solemnly:
- —He who stealeth from the poor lendeth to the Lord. Thus spake
- Zarathustra.
- His plump body plunged.
- —We’ll see you again, Haines said, turning as Stephen walked up the
- path and smiling at wild Irish.
- Horn of a bull, hoof of a horse, smile of a Saxon.
- —The Ship, Buck Mulligan cried. Half twelve.
- —Good, Stephen said.
- He walked along the upwardcurving path.
- Liliata rutilantium.
- Turma circumdet.
- Iubilantium te virginum.
- The priest’s grey nimbus in a niche where he dressed discreetly. I will
- not sleep here tonight. Home also I cannot go.
- A voice, sweettoned and sustained, called to him from the sea. Turning
- the curve he waved his hand. It called again. A sleek brown head, a
- seal’s, far out on the water, round.
- Usurper.
- [ 2 ]
- —You, Cochrane, what city sent for him?
- —Tarentum, sir.
- —Very good. Well?
- —There was a battle, sir.
- —Very good. Where?
- The boy’s blank face asked the blank window.
- Fabled by the daughters of memory. And yet it was in some way if not as
- memory fabled it. A phrase, then, of impatience, thud of Blake’s wings
- of excess. I hear the ruin of all space, shattered glass and toppling
- masonry, and time one livid final flame. What’s left us then?
- —I forget the place, sir. 279 B. C.
- —Asculum, Stephen said, glancing at the name and date in the
- gorescarred book.
- —Yes, sir. And he said: _Another victory like that and we are done
- for._
- That phrase the world had remembered. A dull ease of the mind. From a
- hill above a corpsestrewn plain a general speaking to his officers,
- leaned upon his spear. Any general to any officers. They lend ear.
- —You, Armstrong, Stephen said. What was the end of Pyrrhus?
- —End of Pyrrhus, sir?
- —I know, sir. Ask me, sir, Comyn said.
- —Wait. You, Armstrong. Do you know anything about Pyrrhus?
- A bag of figrolls lay snugly in Armstrong’s satchel. He curled them
- between his palms at whiles and swallowed them softly. Crumbs adhered
- to the tissue of his lips. A sweetened boy’s breath. Welloff people,
- proud that their eldest son was in the navy. Vico Road, Dalkey.
- —Pyrrhus, sir? Pyrrhus, a pier.
- All laughed. Mirthless high malicious laughter. Armstrong looked round
- at his classmates, silly glee in profile. In a moment they will laugh
- more loudly, aware of my lack of rule and of the fees their papas pay.
- —Tell me now, Stephen said, poking the boy’s shoulder with the book,
- what is a pier.
- —A pier, sir, Armstrong said. A thing out in the water. A kind of a
- bridge. Kingstown pier, sir.
- Some laughed again: mirthless but with meaning. Two in the back bench
- whispered. Yes. They knew: had never learned nor ever been innocent.
- All. With envy he watched their faces: Edith, Ethel, Gerty, Lily. Their
- likes: their breaths, too, sweetened with tea and jam, their bracelets
- tittering in the struggle.
- —Kingstown pier, Stephen said. Yes, a disappointed bridge.
- The words troubled their gaze.
- —How, sir? Comyn asked. A bridge is across a river.
- For Haines’s chapbook. No-one here to hear. Tonight deftly amid wild
- drink and talk, to pierce the polished mail of his mind. What then? A
- jester at the court of his master, indulged and disesteemed, winning a
- clement master’s praise. Why had they chosen all that part? Not wholly
- for the smooth caress. For them too history was a tale like any other
- too often heard, their land a pawnshop.
- Had Pyrrhus not fallen by a beldam’s hand in Argos or Julius Caesar not
- been knifed to death. They are not to be thought away. Time has branded
- them and fettered they are lodged in the room of the infinite
- possibilities they have ousted. But can those have been possible seeing
- that they never were? Or was that only possible which came to pass?
- Weave, weaver of the wind.
- —Tell us a story, sir.
- —O, do, sir. A ghoststory.
- —Where do you begin in this? Stephen asked, opening another book.
- —_Weep no more,_ Comyn said.
- —Go on then, Talbot.
- —And the story, sir?
- —After, Stephen said. Go on, Talbot.
- A swarthy boy opened a book and propped it nimbly under the breastwork
- of his satchel. He recited jerks of verse with odd glances at the text:
- _—Weep no more, woful shepherds, weep no more
- For Lycidas, your sorrow, is not dead,
- Sunk though he be beneath the watery floor..._
- It must be a movement then, an actuality of the possible as possible.
- Aristotle’s phrase formed itself within the gabbled verses and floated
- out into the studious silence of the library of Saint Genevieve where
- he had read, sheltered from the sin of Paris, night by night. By his
- elbow a delicate Siamese conned a handbook of strategy. Fed and feeding
- brains about me: under glowlamps, impaled, with faintly beating
- feelers: and in my mind’s darkness a sloth of the underworld,
- reluctant, shy of brightness, shifting her dragon scaly folds. Thought
- is the thought of thought. Tranquil brightness. The soul is in a manner
- all that is: the soul is the form of forms. Tranquility sudden, vast,
- candescent: form of forms.
- Talbot repeated:
- _—Through the dear might of Him that walked the waves,
- Through the dear might..._
- —Turn over, Stephen said quietly. I don’t see anything.
- —What, sir? Talbot asked simply, bending forward.
- His hand turned the page over. He leaned back and went on again, having
- just remembered. Of him that walked the waves. Here also over these
- craven hearts his shadow lies and on the scoffer’s heart and lips and
- on mine. It lies upon their eager faces who offered him a coin of the
- tribute. To Caesar what is Caesar’s, to God what is God’s. A long look
- from dark eyes, a riddling sentence to be woven and woven on the
- church’s looms. Ay.
- Riddle me, riddle me, randy ro.
- My father gave me seeds to sow.
- Talbot slid his closed book into his satchel.
- —Have I heard all? Stephen asked.
- —Yes, sir. Hockey at ten, sir.
- —Half day, sir. Thursday.
- —Who can answer a riddle? Stephen asked.
- They bundled their books away, pencils clacking, pages rustling.
- Crowding together they strapped and buckled their satchels, all
- gabbling gaily:
- —A riddle, sir? Ask me, sir.
- —O, ask me, sir.
- —A hard one, sir.
- —This is the riddle, Stephen said:
- The cock crew,
- The sky was blue:
- The bells in heaven
- Were striking eleven.
- ’Tis time for this poor soul
- To go to heaven.
- What is that?
- —What, sir?
- —Again, sir. We didn’t hear.
- Their eyes grew bigger as the lines were repeated. After a silence
- Cochrane said:
- —What is it, sir? We give it up.
- Stephen, his throat itching, answered:
- —The fox burying his grandmother under a hollybush.
- He stood up and gave a shout of nervous laughter to which their cries
- echoed dismay.
- A stick struck the door and a voice in the corridor called:
- —Hockey!
- They broke asunder, sidling out of their benches, leaping them. Quickly
- they were gone and from the lumberroom came the rattle of sticks and
- clamour of their boots and tongues.
- Sargent who alone had lingered came forward slowly, showing an open
- copybook. His tangled hair and scraggy neck gave witness of unreadiness
- and through his misty glasses weak eyes looked up pleading. On his
- cheek, dull and bloodless, a soft stain of ink lay, dateshaped, recent
- and damp as a snail’s bed.
- He held out his copybook. The word _Sums_ was written on the headline.
- Beneath were sloping figures and at the foot a crooked signature with
- blind loops and a blot. Cyril Sargent: his name and seal.
- —Mr Deasy told me to write them out all again, he said, and show them
- to you, sir.
- Stephen touched the edges of the book. Futility.
- —Do you understand how to do them now? he asked.
- —Numbers eleven to fifteen, Sargent answered. Mr Deasy said I was to
- copy them off the board, sir.
- —Can you do them yourself? Stephen asked.
- —No, sir.
- Ugly and futile: lean neck and tangled hair and a stain of ink, a
- snail’s bed. Yet someone had loved him, borne him in her arms and in
- her heart. But for her the race of the world would have trampled him
- underfoot, a squashed boneless snail. She had loved his weak watery
- blood drained from her own. Was that then real? The only true thing in
- life? His mother’s prostrate body the fiery Columbanus in holy zeal
- bestrode. She was no more: the trembling skeleton of a twig burnt in
- the fire, an odour of rosewood and wetted ashes. She had saved him from
- being trampled underfoot and had gone, scarcely having been. A poor
- soul gone to heaven: and on a heath beneath winking stars a fox, red
- reek of rapine in his fur, with merciless bright eyes scraped in the
- earth, listened, scraped up the earth, listened, scraped and scraped.
- Sitting at his side Stephen solved out the problem. He proves by
- algebra that Shakespeare’s ghost is Hamlet’s grandfather. Sargent
- peered askance through his slanted glasses. Hockeysticks rattled in the
- lumberroom: the hollow knock of a ball and calls from the field.
- Across the page the symbols moved in grave morrice, in the mummery of
- their letters, wearing quaint caps of squares and cubes. Give hands,
- traverse, bow to partner: so: imps of fancy of the Moors. Gone too from
- the world, Averroes and Moses Maimonides, dark men in mien and
- movement, flashing in their mocking mirrors the obscure soul of the
- world, a darkness shining in brightness which brightness could not
- comprehend.
- —Do you understand now? Can you work the second for yourself?
- —Yes, sir.
- In long shaky strokes Sargent copied the data. Waiting always for a
- word of help his hand moved faithfully the unsteady symbols, a faint
- hue of shame flickering behind his dull skin. _Amor matris:_ subjective
- and objective genitive. With her weak blood and wheysour milk she had
- fed him and hid from sight of others his swaddling bands.
- Like him was I, these sloping shoulders, this gracelessness. My
- childhood bends beside me. Too far for me to lay a hand there once or
- lightly. Mine is far and his secret as our eyes. Secrets, silent, stony
- sit in the dark palaces of both our hearts: secrets weary of their
- tyranny: tyrants, willing to be dethroned.
- The sum was done.
- —It is very simple, Stephen said as he stood up.
- —Yes, sir. Thanks, Sargent answered.
- He dried the page with a sheet of thin blottingpaper and carried his
- copybook back to his bench.
- —You had better get your stick and go out to the others, Stephen said
- as he followed towards the door the boy’s graceless form.
- —Yes, sir.
- In the corridor his name was heard, called from the playfield.
- —Sargent!
- —Run on, Stephen said. Mr Deasy is calling you.
- He stood in the porch and watched the laggard hurry towards the scrappy
- field where sharp voices were in strife. They were sorted in teams and
- Mr Deasy came away stepping over wisps of grass with gaitered feet.
- When he had reached the schoolhouse voices again contending called to
- him. He turned his angry white moustache.
- —What is it now? he cried continually without listening.
- —Cochrane and Halliday are on the same side, sir, Stephen said.
- —Will you wait in my study for a moment, Mr Deasy said, till I restore
- order here.
- And as he stepped fussily back across the field his old man’s voice
- cried sternly:
- —What is the matter? What is it now?
- Their sharp voices cried about him on all sides: their many forms
- closed round him, the garish sunshine bleaching the honey of his
- illdyed head.
- Stale smoky air hung in the study with the smell of drab abraded
- leather of its chairs. As on the first day he bargained with me here.
- As it was in the beginning, is now. On the sideboard the tray of Stuart
- coins, base treasure of a bog: and ever shall be. And snug in their
- spooncase of purple plush, faded, the twelve apostles having preached
- to all the gentiles: world without end.
- A hasty step over the stone porch and in the corridor. Blowing out his
- rare moustache Mr Deasy halted at the table.
- —First, our little financial settlement, he said.
- He brought out of his coat a pocketbook bound by a leather thong. It
- slapped open and he took from it two notes, one of joined halves, and
- laid them carefully on the table.
- —Two, he said, strapping and stowing his pocketbook away.
- And now his strongroom for the gold. Stephen’s embarrassed hand moved
- over the shells heaped in the cold stone mortar: whelks and money
- cowries and leopard shells: and this, whorled as an emir’s turban, and
- this, the scallop of saint James. An old pilgrim’s hoard, dead
- treasure, hollow shells.
- A sovereign fell, bright and new, on the soft pile of the tablecloth.
- —Three, Mr Deasy said, turning his little savingsbox about in his hand.
- These are handy things to have. See. This is for sovereigns. This is
- for shillings. Sixpences, halfcrowns. And here crowns. See.
- He shot from it two crowns and two shillings.
- —Three twelve, he said. I think you’ll find that’s right.
- —Thank you, sir, Stephen said, gathering the money together with shy
- haste and putting it all in a pocket of his trousers.
- —No thanks at all, Mr Deasy said. You have earned it.
- Stephen’s hand, free again, went back to the hollow shells. Symbols too
- of beauty and of power. A lump in my pocket: symbols soiled by greed
- and misery.
- —Don’t carry it like that, Mr Deasy said. You’ll pull it out somewhere
- and lose it. You just buy one of these machines. You’ll find them very
- handy.
- Answer something.
- —Mine would be often empty, Stephen said.
- The same room and hour, the same wisdom: and I the same. Three times
- now. Three nooses round me here. Well? I can break them in this instant
- if I will.
- —Because you don’t save, Mr Deasy said, pointing his finger. You don’t
- know yet what money is. Money is power. When you have lived as long as
- I have. I know, I know. If youth but knew. But what does Shakespeare
- say? _Put but money in thy purse._
- —Iago, Stephen murmured.
- He lifted his gaze from the idle shells to the old man’s stare.
- —He knew what money was, Mr Deasy said. He made money. A poet, yes, but
- an Englishman too. Do you know what is the pride of the English? Do you
- know what is the proudest word you will ever hear from an Englishman’s
- mouth?
- The seas’ ruler. His seacold eyes looked on the empty bay: it seems
- history is to blame: on me and on my words, unhating.
- —That on his empire, Stephen said, the sun never sets.
- —Ba! Mr Deasy cried. That’s not English. A French Celt said that. He
- tapped his savingsbox against his thumbnail.
- —I will tell you, he said solemnly, what is his proudest boast. _I paid
- my way._
- Good man, good man.
- _—I paid my way. I never borrowed a shilling in my life._ Can you feel
- that? _I owe nothing._ Can you?
- Mulligan, nine pounds, three pairs of socks, one pair brogues, ties.
- Curran, ten guineas. McCann, one guinea. Fred Ryan, two shillings.
- Temple, two lunches. Russell, one guinea, Cousins, ten shillings, Bob
- Reynolds, half a guinea, Koehler, three guineas, Mrs MacKernan, five
- weeks’ board. The lump I have is useless.
- —For the moment, no, Stephen answered.
- Mr Deasy laughed with rich delight, putting back his savingsbox.
- —I knew you couldn’t, he said joyously. But one day you must feel it.
- We are a generous people but we must also be just.
- —I fear those big words, Stephen said, which make us so unhappy.
- Mr Deasy stared sternly for some moments over the mantelpiece at the
- shapely bulk of a man in tartan fillibegs: Albert Edward, prince of
- Wales.
- —You think me an old fogey and an old tory, his thoughtful voice said.
- I saw three generations since O’Connell’s time. I remember the famine
- in ’46. Do you know that the orange lodges agitated for repeal of the
- union twenty years before O’Connell did or before the prelates of your
- communion denounced him as a demagogue? You fenians forget some things.
- Glorious, pious and immortal memory. The lodge of Diamond in Armagh the
- splendid behung with corpses of papishes. Hoarse, masked and armed, the
- planters’ covenant. The black north and true blue bible. Croppies lie
- down.
- Stephen sketched a brief gesture.
- —I have rebel blood in me too, Mr Deasy said. On the spindle side. But
- I am descended from sir John Blackwood who voted for the union. We are
- all Irish, all kings’ sons.
- —Alas, Stephen said.
- —_Per vias rectas_, Mr Deasy said firmly, was his motto. He voted for
- it and put on his topboots to ride to Dublin from the Ards of Down to
- do so.
- Lal the ral the ra
- The rocky road to Dublin.
- A gruff squire on horseback with shiny topboots. Soft day, sir John!
- Soft day, your honour!... Day!... Day!... Two topboots jog dangling on
- to Dublin. Lal the ral the ra. Lal the ral the raddy.
- —That reminds me, Mr Deasy said. You can do me a favour, Mr Dedalus,
- with some of your literary friends. I have a letter here for the press.
- Sit down a moment. I have just to copy the end.
- He went to the desk near the window, pulled in his chair twice and read
- off some words from the sheet on the drum of his typewriter.
- —Sit down. Excuse me, he said over his shoulder, _the dictates of
- common sense._ Just a moment.
- He peered from under his shaggy brows at the manuscript by his elbow
- and, muttering, began to prod the stiff buttons of the keyboard slowly,
- sometimes blowing as he screwed up the drum to erase an error.
- Stephen seated himself noiselessly before the princely presence. Framed
- around the walls images of vanished horses stood in homage, their meek
- heads poised in air: lord Hastings’ _Repulse_, the duke of
- Westminster’s _Shotover_, the duke of Beaufort’s _Ceylon_, _prix de
- Paris_, 1866. Elfin riders sat them, watchful of a sign. He saw their
- speeds, backing king’s colours, and shouted with the shouts of vanished
- crowds.
- —Full stop, Mr Deasy bade his keys. _But prompt ventilation of this
- allimportant question..._
- Where Cranly led me to get rich quick, hunting his winners among the
- mudsplashed brakes, amid the bawls of bookies on their pitches and reek
- of the canteen, over the motley slush. Even money _Fair Rebel._ Ten to
- one the field. Dicers and thimbleriggers we hurried by after the hoofs,
- the vying caps and jackets and past the meatfaced woman, a butcher’s
- dame, nuzzling thirstily her clove of orange.
- Shouts rang shrill from the boys’ playfield and a whirring whistle.
- Again: a goal. I am among them, among their battling bodies in a
- medley, the joust of life. You mean that knockkneed mother’s darling
- who seems to be slightly crawsick? Jousts. Time shocked rebounds, shock
- by shock. Jousts, slush and uproar of battles, the frozen deathspew of
- the slain, a shout of spearspikes baited with men’s bloodied guts.
- —Now then, Mr Deasy said, rising.
- He came to the table, pinning together his sheets. Stephen stood up.
- —I have put the matter into a nutshell, Mr Deasy said. It’s about the
- foot and mouth disease. Just look through it. There can be no two
- opinions on the matter.
- May I trespass on your valuable space. That doctrine of _laissez faire_
- which so often in our history. Our cattle trade. The way of all our old
- industries. Liverpool ring which jockeyed the Galway harbour scheme.
- European conflagration. Grain supplies through the narrow waters of the
- channel. The pluterperfect imperturbability of the department of
- agriculture. Pardoned a classical allusion. Cassandra. By a woman who
- was no better than she should be. To come to the point at issue.
- —I don’t mince words, do I? Mr Deasy asked as Stephen read on.
- Foot and mouth disease. Known as Koch’s preparation. Serum and virus.
- Percentage of salted horses. Rinderpest. Emperor’s horses at Mürzsteg,
- lower Austria. Veterinary surgeons. Mr Henry Blackwood Price. Courteous
- offer a fair trial. Dictates of common sense. Allimportant question. In
- every sense of the word take the bull by the horns. Thanking you for
- the hospitality of your columns.
- —I want that to be printed and read, Mr Deasy said. You will see at the
- next outbreak they will put an embargo on Irish cattle. And it can be
- cured. It is cured. My cousin, Blackwood Price, writes to me it is
- regularly treated and cured in Austria by cattledoctors there. They
- offer to come over here. I am trying to work up influence with the
- department. Now I’m going to try publicity. I am surrounded by
- difficulties, by... intrigues by... backstairs influence by...
- He raised his forefinger and beat the air oldly before his voice spoke.
- —Mark my words, Mr Dedalus, he said. England is in the hands of the
- jews. In all the highest places: her finance, her press. And they are
- the signs of a nation’s decay. Wherever they gather they eat up the
- nation’s vital strength. I have seen it coming these years. As sure as
- we are standing here the jew merchants are already at their work of
- destruction. Old England is dying.
- He stepped swiftly off, his eyes coming to blue life as they passed a
- broad sunbeam. He faced about and back again.
- —Dying, he said again, if not dead by now.
- The harlot’s cry from street to street
- Shall weave old England’s windingsheet.
- His eyes open wide in vision stared sternly across the sunbeam in which
- he halted.
- —A merchant, Stephen said, is one who buys cheap and sells dear, jew or
- gentile, is he not?
- —They sinned against the light, Mr Deasy said gravely. And you can see
- the darkness in their eyes. And that is why they are wanderers on the
- earth to this day.
- On the steps of the Paris stock exchange the goldskinned men quoting
- prices on their gemmed fingers. Gabble of geese. They swarmed loud,
- uncouth about the temple, their heads thickplotting under maladroit
- silk hats. Not theirs: these clothes, this speech, these gestures.
- Their full slow eyes belied the words, the gestures eager and
- unoffending, but knew the rancours massed about them and knew their
- zeal was vain. Vain patience to heap and hoard. Time surely would
- scatter all. A hoard heaped by the roadside: plundered and passing on.
- Their eyes knew their years of wandering and, patient, knew the
- dishonours of their flesh.
- —Who has not? Stephen said.
- —What do you mean? Mr Deasy asked.
- He came forward a pace and stood by the table. His underjaw fell
- sideways open uncertainly. Is this old wisdom? He waits to hear from
- me.
- —History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.
- From the playfield the boys raised a shout. A whirring whistle: goal.
- What if that nightmare gave you a back kick?
- —The ways of the Creator are not our ways, Mr Deasy said. All human
- history moves towards one great goal, the manifestation of God.
- Stephen jerked his thumb towards the window, saying:
- —That is God.
- Hooray! Ay! Whrrwhee!
- —What? Mr Deasy asked.
- —A shout in the street, Stephen answered, shrugging his shoulders.
- Mr Deasy looked down and held for awhile the wings of his nose tweaked
- between his fingers. Looking up again he set them free.
- —I am happier than you are, he said. We have committed many errors and
- many sins. A woman brought sin into the world. For a woman who was no
- better than she should be, Helen, the runaway wife of Menelaus, ten
- years the Greeks made war on Troy. A faithless wife first brought the
- strangers to our shore here, MacMurrough’s wife and her leman,
- O’Rourke, prince of Breffni. A woman too brought Parnell low. Many
- errors, many failures but not the one sin. I am a struggler now at the
- end of my days. But I will fight for the right till the end.
- For Ulster will fight
- And Ulster will be right.
- Stephen raised the sheets in his hand.
- —Well, sir, he began.
- —I foresee, Mr Deasy said, that you will not remain here very long at
- this work. You were not born to be a teacher, I think. Perhaps I am
- wrong.
- —A learner rather, Stephen said.
- And here what will you learn more?
- Mr Deasy shook his head.
- —Who knows? he said. To learn one must be humble. But life is the great
- teacher.
- Stephen rustled the sheets again.
- —As regards these, he began.
- —Yes, Mr Deasy said. You have two copies there. If you can have them
- published at once.
- _ Telegraph. Irish Homestead._
- —I will try, Stephen said, and let you know tomorrow. I know two
- editors slightly.
- —That will do, Mr Deasy said briskly. I wrote last night to Mr Field,
- M.P. There is a meeting of the cattletraders’ association today at the
- City Arms hotel. I asked him to lay my letter before the meeting. You
- see if you can get it into your two papers. What are they?
- _—The Evening Telegraph..._
- —That will do, Mr Deasy said. There is no time to lose. Now I have to
- answer that letter from my cousin.
- —Good morning, sir, Stephen said, putting the sheets in his pocket.
- Thank you.
- —Not at all, Mr Deasy said as he searched the papers on his desk. I
- like to break a lance with you, old as I am.
- —Good morning, sir, Stephen said again, bowing to his bent back.
- He went out by the open porch and down the gravel path under the trees,
- hearing the cries of voices and crack of sticks from the playfield. The
- lions couchant on the pillars as he passed out through the gate:
- toothless terrors. Still I will help him in his fight. Mulligan will
- dub me a new name: the bullockbefriending bard.
- —Mr Dedalus!
- Running after me. No more letters, I hope.
- —Just one moment.
- —Yes, sir, Stephen said, turning back at the gate.
- Mr Deasy halted, breathing hard and swallowing his breath.
- —I just wanted to say, he said. Ireland, they say, has the honour of
- being the only country which never persecuted the jews. Do you know
- that? No. And do you know why?
- He frowned sternly on the bright air.
- —Why, sir? Stephen asked, beginning to smile.
- —Because she never let them in, Mr Deasy said solemnly.
- A coughball of laughter leaped from his throat dragging after it a
- rattling chain of phlegm. He turned back quickly, coughing, laughing,
- his lifted arms waving to the air.
- —She never let them in, he cried again through his laughter as he
- stamped on gaitered feet over the gravel of the path. That’s why.
- On his wise shoulders through the checkerwork of leaves the sun flung
- spangles, dancing coins.
- [ 3 ]
- Ineluctable modality of the visible: at least that if no more, thought
- through my eyes. Signatures of all things I am here to read, seaspawn
- and seawrack, the nearing tide, that rusty boot. Snotgreen, bluesilver,
- rust: coloured signs. Limits of the diaphane. But he adds: in bodies.
- Then he was aware of them bodies before of them coloured. How? By
- knocking his sconce against them, sure. Go easy. Bald he was and a
- millionaire, _maestro di color che sanno_. Limit of the diaphane in.
- Why in? Diaphane, adiaphane. If you can put your five fingers through
- it it is a gate, if not a door. Shut your eyes and see.
- Stephen closed his eyes to hear his boots crush crackling wrack and
- shells. You are walking through it howsomever. I am, a stride at a
- time. A very short space of time through very short times of space.
- Five, six: the _nacheinander_. Exactly: and that is the ineluctable
- modality of the audible. Open your eyes. No. Jesus! If I fell over a
- cliff that beetles o’er his base, fell through the _nebeneinander_
- ineluctably! I am getting on nicely in the dark. My ash sword hangs at
- my side. Tap with it: they do. My two feet in his boots are at the ends
- of his legs, _nebeneinander_. Sounds solid: made by the mallet of _Los
- Demiurgos_. Am I walking into eternity along Sandymount strand? Crush,
- crack, crick, crick. Wild sea money. Dominie Deasy kens them a’.
- Won’t you come to Sandymount,
- Madeline the mare?
- Rhythm begins, you see. I hear. A catalectic tetrameter of iambs
- marching. No, agallop: _deline the mare_.
- Open your eyes now. I will. One moment. Has all vanished since? If I
- open and am for ever in the black adiaphane. _Basta!_ I will see if I
- can see.
- See now. There all the time without you: and ever shall be, world
- without end.
- They came down the steps from Leahy’s terrace prudently,
- _Frauenzimmer_: and down the shelving shore flabbily, their splayed
- feet sinking in the silted sand. Like me, like Algy, coming down to our
- mighty mother. Number one swung lourdily her midwife’s bag, the other’s
- gamp poked in the beach. From the liberties, out for the day. Mrs
- Florence MacCabe, relict of the late Patk MacCabe, deeply lamented, of
- Bride Street. One of her sisterhood lugged me squealing into life.
- Creation from nothing. What has she in the bag? A misbirth with a
- trailing navelcord, hushed in ruddy wool. The cords of all link back,
- strandentwining cable of all flesh. That is why mystic monks. Will you
- be as gods? Gaze in your _omphalos_. Hello. Kinch here. Put me on to
- Edenville. Aleph, alpha: nought, nought, one.
- Spouse and helpmate of Adam Kadmon: Heva, naked Eve. She had no navel.
- Gaze. Belly without blemish, bulging big, a buckler of taut vellum, no,
- whiteheaped corn, orient and immortal, standing from everlasting to
- everlasting. Womb of sin.
- Wombed in sin darkness I was too, made not begotten. By them, the man
- with my voice and my eyes and a ghostwoman with ashes on her breath.
- They clasped and sundered, did the coupler’s will. From before the ages
- He willed me and now may not will me away or ever. A _lex eterna_ stays
- about Him. Is that then the divine substance wherein Father and Son are
- consubstantial? Where is poor dear Arius to try conclusions? Warring
- his life long upon the contransmagnificandjewbangtantiality. Illstarred
- heresiarch! In a Greek watercloset he breathed his last: _euthanasia_.
- With beaded mitre and with crozier, stalled upon his throne, widower of
- a widowed see, with upstiffed _omophorion_, with clotted hinderparts.
- Airs romped round him, nipping and eager airs. They are coming, waves.
- The whitemaned seahorses, champing, brightwindbridled, the steeds of
- Mananaan.
- I mustn’t forget his letter for the press. And after? The Ship, half
- twelve. By the way go easy with that money like a good young imbecile.
- Yes, I must.
- His pace slackened. Here. Am I going to aunt Sara’s or not? My
- consubstantial father’s voice. Did you see anything of your artist
- brother Stephen lately? No? Sure he’s not down in Strasburg terrace
- with his aunt Sally? Couldn’t he fly a bit higher than that, eh? And
- and and and tell us, Stephen, how is uncle Si? O, weeping God, the
- things I married into! De boys up in de hayloft. The drunken little
- costdrawer and his brother, the cornet player. Highly respectable
- gondoliers! And skeweyed Walter sirring his father, no less! Sir. Yes,
- sir. No, sir. Jesus wept: and no wonder, by Christ!
- I pull the wheezy bell of their shuttered cottage: and wait. They take
- me for a dun, peer out from a coign of vantage.
- —It’s Stephen, sir.
- —Let him in. Let Stephen in.
- A bolt drawn back and Walter welcomes me.
- —We thought you were someone else.
- In his broad bed nuncle Richie, pillowed and blanketed, extends over
- the hillock of his knees a sturdy forearm. Cleanchested. He has washed
- the upper moiety.
- —Morrow, nephew.
- He lays aside the lapboard whereon he drafts his bills of costs for the
- eyes of master Goff and master Shapland Tandy, filing consents and
- common searches and a writ of _Duces Tecum_. A bogoak frame over his
- bald head: Wilde’s _Requiescat_. The drone of his misleading whistle
- brings Walter back.
- —Yes, sir?
- —Malt for Richie and Stephen, tell mother. Where is she?
- —Bathing Crissie, sir.
- Papa’s little bedpal. Lump of love.
- —No, uncle Richie...
- —Call me Richie. Damn your lithia water. It lowers. Whusky!
- —Uncle Richie, really...
- —Sit down or by the law Harry I’ll knock you down.
- Walter squints vainly for a chair.
- —He has nothing to sit down on, sir.
- —He has nowhere to put it, you mug. Bring in our chippendale chair.
- Would you like a bite of something? None of your damned lawdeedaw airs
- here. The rich of a rasher fried with a herring? Sure? So much the
- better. We have nothing in the house but backache pills.
- _All’erta!_
- He drones bars of Ferrando’s _aria di sortita_. The grandest number,
- Stephen, in the whole opera. Listen.
- His tuneful whistle sounds again, finely shaded, with rushes of the
- air, his fists bigdrumming on his padded knees.
- This wind is sweeter.
- Houses of decay, mine, his and all. You told the Clongowes gentry you
- had an uncle a judge and an uncle a general in the army. Come out of
- them, Stephen. Beauty is not there. Nor in the stagnant bay of Marsh’s
- library where you read the fading prophecies of Joachim Abbas. For
- whom? The hundredheaded rabble of the cathedral close. A hater of his
- kind ran from them to the wood of madness, his mane foaming in the
- moon, his eyeballs stars. Houyhnhnm, horsenostrilled. The oval equine
- faces, Temple, Buck Mulligan, Foxy Campbell, Lanternjaws. Abbas father,
- furious dean, what offence laid fire to their brains? Paff! _Descende,
- calve, ut ne nimium decalveris_. A garland of grey hair on his
- comminated head see him me clambering down to the footpace
- (_descende!_), clutching a monstrance, basiliskeyed. Get down,
- baldpoll! A choir gives back menace and echo, assisting about the
- altar’s horns, the snorted Latin of jackpriests moving burly in their
- albs, tonsured and oiled and gelded, fat with the fat of kidneys of
- wheat.
- And at the same instant perhaps a priest round the corner is elevating
- it. Dringdring! And two streets off another locking it into a pyx.
- Dringadring! And in a ladychapel another taking housel all to his own
- cheek. Dringdring! Down, up, forward, back. Dan Occam thought of that,
- invincible doctor. A misty English morning the imp hypostasis tickled
- his brain. Bringing his host down and kneeling he heard twine with his
- second bell the first bell in the transept (he is lifting his) and,
- rising, heard (now I am lifting) their two bells (he is kneeling) twang
- in diphthong.
- Cousin Stephen, you will never be a saint. Isle of saints. You were
- awfully holy, weren’t you? You prayed to the Blessed Virgin that you
- might not have a red nose. You prayed to the devil in Serpentine avenue
- that the fubsy widow in front might lift her clothes still more from
- the wet street. _O si, certo!_ Sell your soul for that, do, dyed rags
- pinned round a squaw. More tell me, more still! On the top of the Howth
- tram alone crying to the rain: _Naked women! Naked women!_ What about
- that, eh?
- What about what? What else were they invented for?
- Reading two pages apiece of seven books every night, eh? I was young.
- You bowed to yourself in the mirror, stepping forward to applause
- earnestly, striking face. Hurray for the Goddamned idiot! Hray! No-one
- saw: tell no-one. Books you were going to write with letters for
- titles. Have you read his F? O yes, but I prefer Q. Yes, but W is
- wonderful. O yes, W. Remember your epiphanies written on green oval
- leaves, deeply deep, copies to be sent if you died to all the great
- libraries of the world, including Alexandria? Someone was to read them
- there after a few thousand years, a mahamanvantara. Pico della
- Mirandola like. Ay, very like a whale. When one reads these strange
- pages of one long gone one feels that one is at one with one who
- once...
- The grainy sand had gone from under his feet. His boots trod again a
- damp crackling mast, razorshells, squeaking pebbles, that on the
- unnumbered pebbles beats, wood sieved by the shipworm, lost Armada.
- Unwholesome sandflats waited to suck his treading soles, breathing
- upward sewage breath, a pocket of seaweed smouldered in seafire under a
- midden of man’s ashes. He coasted them, walking warily. A porterbottle
- stood up, stogged to its waist, in the cakey sand dough. A sentinel:
- isle of dreadful thirst. Broken hoops on the shore; at the land a maze
- of dark cunning nets; farther away chalkscrawled backdoors and on the
- higher beach a dryingline with two crucified shirts. Ringsend: wigwams
- of brown steersmen and master mariners. Human shells.
- He halted. I have passed the way to aunt Sara’s. Am I not going there?
- Seems not. No-one about. He turned northeast and crossed the firmer
- sand towards the Pigeonhouse.
- _—Qui vous a mis dans cette fichue position?_
- _—C’est le pigeon, Joseph._
- Patrice, home on furlough, lapped warm milk with me in the bar
- MacMahon. Son of the wild goose, Kevin Egan of Paris. My father’s a
- bird, he lapped the sweet _lait chaud_ with pink young tongue, plump
- bunny’s face. Lap, _lapin._ He hopes to win in the _gros lots_. About
- the nature of women he read in Michelet. But he must send me _La Vie de
- Jésus_ by M. Léo Taxil. Lent it to his friend.
- _—C’est tordant, vous savez. Moi, je suis socialiste. Je ne crois pas
- en l’existence de Dieu. Faut pas le dire à mon père._
- _—Il croit?_
- _—Mon père, oui._
- _Schluss_. He laps.
- My Latin quarter hat. God, we simply must dress the character. I want
- puce gloves. You were a student, weren’t you? Of what in the other
- devil’s name? Paysayenn. P. C. N., you know: _physiques, chimiques et
- naturelles_. Aha. Eating your groatsworth of _mou en civet_, fleshpots
- of Egypt, elbowed by belching cabmen. Just say in the most natural
- tone: when I was in Paris; _boul’ Mich’_, I used to. Yes, used to carry
- punched tickets to prove an alibi if they arrested you for murder
- somewhere. Justice. On the night of the seventeenth of February 1904
- the prisoner was seen by two witnesses. Other fellow did it: other me.
- Hat, tie, overcoat, nose. _Lui, c’est moi_. You seem to have enjoyed
- yourself.
- Proudly walking. Whom were you trying to walk like? Forget: a
- dispossessed. With mother’s money order, eight shillings, the banging
- door of the post office slammed in your face by the usher. Hunger
- toothache. _Encore deux minutes_. Look clock. Must get. _Fermé_. Hired
- dog! Shoot him to bloody bits with a bang shotgun, bits man spattered
- walls all brass buttons. Bits all khrrrrklak in place clack back. Not
- hurt? O, that’s all right. Shake hands. See what I meant, see? O,
- that’s all right. Shake a shake. O, that’s all only all right.
- You were going to do wonders, what? Missionary to Europe after fiery
- Columbanus. Fiacre and Scotus on their creepystools in heaven spilt
- from their pintpots, loudlatinlaughing: _Euge! Euge!_ Pretending to
- speak broken English as you dragged your valise, porter threepence,
- across the slimy pier at Newhaven. _Comment?_ Rich booty you brought
- back; _Le Tutu_, five tattered numbers of _Pantalon Blanc et Culotte
- Rouge_; a blue French telegram, curiosity to show:
- —Mother dying come home father.
- The aunt thinks you killed your mother. That’s why she won’t.
- Then here’s a health to Mulligan’s aunt
- And I’ll tell you the reason why.
- She always kept things decent in
- The Hannigan famileye.
- His feet marched in sudden proud rhythm over the sand furrows, along by
- the boulders of the south wall. He stared at them proudly, piled stone
- mammoth skulls. Gold light on sea, on sand, on boulders. The sun is
- there, the slender trees, the lemon houses.
- Paris rawly waking, crude sunlight on her lemon streets. Moist pith of
- farls of bread, the froggreen wormwood, her matin incense, court the
- air. Belluomo rises from the bed of his wife’s lover’s wife, the
- kerchiefed housewife is astir, a saucer of acetic acid in her hand. In
- Rodot’s Yvonne and Madeleine newmake their tumbled beauties, shattering
- with gold teeth _chaussons_ of pastry, their mouths yellowed with the
- _pus_ of _flan bréton_. Faces of Paris men go by, their wellpleased
- pleasers, curled conquistadores.
- Noon slumbers. Kevin Egan rolls gunpowder cigarettes through fingers
- smeared with printer’s ink, sipping his green fairy as Patrice his
- white. About us gobblers fork spiced beans down their gullets. _Un demi
- sétier!_ A jet of coffee steam from the burnished caldron. She serves
- me at his beck. _Il est irlandais. Hollandais? Non fromage. Deux
- irlandais, nous, Irlande, vous savez ah, oui!_ She thought you wanted a
- cheese _hollandais_. Your postprandial, do you know that word?
- Postprandial. There was a fellow I knew once in Barcelona, queer
- fellow, used to call it his postprandial. Well: _slainte!_ Around the
- slabbed tables the tangle of wined breaths and grumbling gorges. His
- breath hangs over our saucestained plates, the green fairy’s fang
- thrusting between his lips. Of Ireland, the Dalcassians, of hopes,
- conspiracies, of Arthur Griffith now, A E, pimander, good shepherd of
- men. To yoke me as his yokefellow, our crimes our common cause. You’re
- your father’s son. I know the voice. His fustian shirt,
- sanguineflowered, trembles its Spanish tassels at his secrets. M.
- Drumont, famous journalist, Drumont, know what he called queen
- Victoria? Old hag with the yellow teeth. _Vieille ogresse_ with the
- _dents jaunes_. Maud Gonne, beautiful woman, _La Patrie_, M. Millevoye,
- Félix Faure, know how he died? Licentious men. The froeken, _bonne à
- tout faire_, who rubs male nakedness in the bath at Upsala. _Moi
- faire_, she said, _Tous les messieurs_. Not this _Monsieur_, I said.
- Most licentious custom. Bath a most private thing. I wouldn’t let my
- brother, not even my own brother, most lascivious thing. Green eyes, I
- see you. Fang, I feel. Lascivious people.
- The blue fuse burns deadly between hands and burns clear. Loose
- tobaccoshreds catch fire: a flame and acrid smoke light our corner. Raw
- facebones under his peep of day boy’s hat. How the head centre got
- away, authentic version. Got up as a young bride, man, veil,
- orangeblossoms, drove out the road to Malahide. Did, faith. Of lost
- leaders, the betrayed, wild escapes. Disguises, clutched at, gone, not
- here.
- Spurned lover. I was a strapping young gossoon at that time, I tell
- you. I’ll show you my likeness one day. I was, faith. Lover, for her
- love he prowled with colonel Richard Burke, tanist of his sept, under
- the walls of Clerkenwell and, crouching, saw a flame of vengeance hurl
- them upward in the fog. Shattered glass and toppling masonry. In gay
- Paree he hides, Egan of Paris, unsought by any save by me. Making his
- day’s stations, the dingy printingcase, his three taverns, the
- Montmartre lair he sleeps short night in, rue de la Goutte-d’Or,
- damascened with flyblown faces of the gone. Loveless, landless,
- wifeless. She is quite nicey comfy without her outcast man, madame in
- rue Gît-le-Cœur, canary and two buck lodgers. Peachy cheeks, a zebra
- skirt, frisky as a young thing’s. Spurned and undespairing. Tell Pat
- you saw me, won’t you? I wanted to get poor Pat a job one time. _Mon
- fils_, soldier of France. I taught him to sing _The boys of Kilkenny
- are stout roaring blades_. Know that old lay? I taught Patrice that.
- Old Kilkenny: saint Canice, Strongbow’s castle on the Nore. Goes like
- this. _O, O_. He takes me, Napper Tandy, by the hand.
- O, O the boys of
- Kilkenny...
- Weak wasting hand on mine. They have forgotten Kevin Egan, not he them.
- Remembering thee, O Sion.
- He had come nearer the edge of the sea and wet sand slapped his boots.
- The new air greeted him, harping in wild nerves, wind of wild air of
- seeds of brightness. Here, I am not walking out to the Kish lightship,
- am I? He stood suddenly, his feet beginning to sink slowly in the
- quaking soil. Turn back.
- Turning, he scanned the shore south, his feet sinking again slowly in
- new sockets. The cold domed room of the tower waits. Through the
- barbacans the shafts of light are moving ever, slowly ever as my feet
- are sinking, creeping duskward over the dial floor. Blue dusk,
- nightfall, deep blue night. In the darkness of the dome they wait,
- their pushedback chairs, my obelisk valise, around a board of abandoned
- platters. Who to clear it? He has the key. I will not sleep there when
- this night comes. A shut door of a silent tower, entombing their blind
- bodies, the panthersahib and his pointer. Call: no answer. He lifted
- his feet up from the suck and turned back by the mole of boulders. Take
- all, keep all. My soul walks with me, form of forms. So in the moon’s
- midwatches I pace the path above the rocks, in sable silvered, hearing
- Elsinore’s tempting flood.
- The flood is following me. I can watch it flow past from here. Get back
- then by the Poolbeg road to the strand there. He climbed over the sedge
- and eely oarweeds and sat on a stool of rock, resting his ashplant in a
- grike.
- A bloated carcass of a dog lay lolled on bladderwrack. Before him the
- gunwale of a boat, sunk in sand. _Un coche ensablé_ Louis Veuillot
- called Gautier’s prose. These heavy sands are language tide and wind
- have silted here. And these, the stoneheaps of dead builders, a warren
- of weasel rats. Hide gold there. Try it. You have some. Sands and
- stones. Heavy of the past. Sir Lout’s toys. Mind you don’t get one bang
- on the ear. I’m the bloody well gigant rolls all them bloody well
- boulders, bones for my steppingstones. Feefawfum. I zmellz de bloodz
- odz an Iridzman.
- A point, live dog, grew into sight running across the sweep of sand.
- Lord, is he going to attack me? Respect his liberty. You will not be
- master of others or their slave. I have my stick. Sit tight. From
- farther away, walking shoreward across from the crested tide, figures,
- two. The two maries. They have tucked it safe mong the bulrushes.
- Peekaboo. I see you. No, the dog. He is running back to them. Who?
- Galleys of the Lochlanns ran here to beach, in quest of prey, their
- bloodbeaked prows riding low on a molten pewter surf. Dane vikings,
- torcs of tomahawks aglitter on their breasts when Malachi wore the
- collar of gold. A school of turlehide whales stranded in hot noon,
- spouting, hobbling in the shallows. Then from the starving cagework
- city a horde of jerkined dwarfs, my people, with flayers’ knives,
- running, scaling, hacking in green blubbery whalemeat. Famine, plague
- and slaughters. Their blood is in me, their lusts my waves. I moved
- among them on the frozen Liffey, that I, a changeling, among the
- spluttering resin fires. I spoke to no-one: none to me.
- The dog’s bark ran towards him, stopped, ran back. Dog of my enemy. I
- just simply stood pale, silent, bayed about. _Terribilia meditans_. A
- primrose doublet, fortune’s knave, smiled on my fear. For that are you
- pining, the bark of their applause? Pretenders: live their lives. The
- Bruce’s brother, Thomas Fitzgerald, silken knight, Perkin Warbeck,
- York’s false scion, in breeches of silk of whiterose ivory, wonder of a
- day, and Lambert Simnel, with a tail of nans and sutlers, a scullion
- crowned. All kings’ sons. Paradise of pretenders then and now. He saved
- men from drowning and you shake at a cur’s yelping. But the courtiers
- who mocked Guido in Or san Michele were in their own house. House of...
- We don’t want any of your medieval abstrusiosities. Would you do what
- he did? A boat would be near, a lifebuoy. _Natürlich_, put there for
- you. Would you or would you not? The man that was drowned nine days ago
- off Maiden’s rock. They are waiting for him now. The truth, spit it
- out. I would want to. I would try. I am not a strong swimmer. Water
- cold soft. When I put my face into it in the basin at Clongowes. Can’t
- see! Who’s behind me? Out quickly, quickly! Do you see the tide flowing
- quickly in on all sides, sheeting the lows of sand quickly,
- shellcocoacoloured? If I had land under my feet. I want his life still
- to be his, mine to be mine. A drowning man. His human eyes scream to me
- out of horror of his death. I... With him together down... I could not
- save her. Waters: bitter death: lost.
- A woman and a man. I see her skirties. Pinned up, I bet.
- Their dog ambled about a bank of dwindling sand, trotting, sniffing on
- all sides. Looking for something lost in a past life. Suddenly he made
- off like a bounding hare, ears flung back, chasing the shadow of a
- lowskimming gull. The man’s shrieked whistle struck his limp ears. He
- turned, bounded back, came nearer, trotted on twinkling shanks. On a
- field tenney a buck, trippant, proper, unattired. At the lacefringe of
- the tide he halted with stiff forehoofs, seawardpointed ears. His snout
- lifted barked at the wavenoise, herds of seamorse. They serpented
- towards his feet, curling, unfurling many crests, every ninth,
- breaking, plashing, from far, from farther out, waves and waves.
- Cocklepickers. They waded a little way in the water and, stooping,
- soused their bags and, lifting them again, waded out. The dog yelped
- running to them, reared up and pawed them, dropping on all fours, again
- reared up at them with mute bearish fawning. Unheeded he kept by them
- as they came towards the drier sand, a rag of wolf’s tongue redpanting
- from his jaws. His speckled body ambled ahead of them and then loped
- off at a calf’s gallop. The carcass lay on his path. He stopped,
- sniffed, stalked round it, brother, nosing closer, went round it,
- sniffling rapidly like a dog all over the dead dog’s bedraggled fell.
- Dogskull, dogsniff, eyes on the ground, moves to one great goal. Ah,
- poor dogsbody! Here lies poor dogsbody’s body.
- —Tatters! Out of that, you mongrel!
- The cry brought him skulking back to his master and a blunt bootless
- kick sent him unscathed across a spit of sand, crouched in flight. He
- slunk back in a curve. Doesn’t see me. Along by the edge of the mole he
- lolloped, dawdled, smelt a rock and from under a cocked hindleg pissed
- against it. He trotted forward and, lifting again his hindleg, pissed
- quick short at an unsmelt rock. The simple pleasures of the poor. His
- hindpaws then scattered the sand: then his forepaws dabbled and delved.
- Something he buried there, his grandmother. He rooted in the sand,
- dabbling, delving and stopped to listen to the air, scraped up the sand
- again with a fury of his claws, soon ceasing, a pard, a panther, got in
- spousebreach, vulturing the dead.
- After he woke me last night same dream or was it? Wait. Open hallway.
- Street of harlots. Remember. Haroun al Raschid. I am almosting it. That
- man led me, spoke. I was not afraid. The melon he had he held against
- my face. Smiled: creamfruit smell. That was the rule, said. In. Come.
- Red carpet spread. You will see who.
- Shouldering their bags they trudged, the red Egyptians. His blued feet
- out of turnedup trousers slapped the clammy sand, a dull brick muffler
- strangling his unshaven neck. With woman steps she followed: the
- ruffian and his strolling mort. Spoils slung at her back. Loose sand
- and shellgrit crusted her bare feet. About her windraw face hair
- trailed. Behind her lord, his helpmate, bing awast to Romeville. When
- night hides her body’s flaws calling under her brown shawl from an
- archway where dogs have mired. Her fancyman is treating two Royal
- Dublins in O’Loughlin’s of Blackpitts. Buss her, wap in rogues’ rum
- lingo, for, O, my dimber wapping dell! A shefiend’s whiteness under her
- rancid rags. Fumbally’s lane that night: the tanyard smells.
- White thy fambles, red thy gan
- And thy quarrons dainty is.
- Couch a hogshead with me then.
- In the darkmans clip and kiss.
- Morose delectation Aquinas tunbelly calls this, _frate porcospino_.
- Unfallen Adam rode and not rutted. Call away let him: _thy quarrons
- dainty is_. Language no whit worse than his. Monkwords, marybeads
- jabber on their girdles: roguewords, tough nuggets patter in their
- pockets.
- Passing now.
- A side eye at my Hamlet hat. If I were suddenly naked here as I sit? I
- am not. Across the sands of all the world, followed by the sun’s
- flaming sword, to the west, trekking to evening lands. She trudges,
- schlepps, trains, drags, trascines her load. A tide westering,
- moondrawn, in her wake. Tides, myriadislanded, within her, blood not
- mine, _oinopa ponton_, a winedark sea. Behold the handmaid of the moon.
- In sleep the wet sign calls her hour, bids her rise. Bridebed,
- childbed, bed of death, ghostcandled. _Omnis caro ad te veniet_. He
- comes, pale vampire, through storm his eyes, his bat sails bloodying
- the sea, mouth to her mouth’s kiss.
- Here. Put a pin in that chap, will you? My tablets. Mouth to her kiss.
- No. Must be two of em. Glue em well. Mouth to her mouth’s kiss.
- His lips lipped and mouthed fleshless lips of air: mouth to her moomb.
- Oomb, allwombing tomb. His mouth moulded issuing breath, unspeeched:
- ooeeehah: roar of cataractic planets, globed, blazing, roaring
- wayawayawayawayaway. Paper. The banknotes, blast them. Old Deasy’s
- letter. Here. Thanking you for the hospitality tear the blank end off.
- Turning his back to the sun he bent over far to a table of rock and
- scribbled words. That’s twice I forgot to take slips from the library
- counter.
- His shadow lay over the rocks as he bent, ending. Why not endless till
- the farthest star? Darkly they are there behind this light, darkness
- shining in the brightness, delta of Cassiopeia, worlds. Me sits there
- with his augur’s rod of ash, in borrowed sandals, by day beside a livid
- sea, unbeheld, in violet night walking beneath a reign of uncouth
- stars. I throw this ended shadow from me, manshape ineluctable, call it
- back. Endless, would it be mine, form of my form? Who watches me here?
- Who ever anywhere will read these written words? Signs on a white
- field. Somewhere to someone in your flutiest voice. The good bishop of
- Cloyne took the veil of the temple out of his shovel hat: veil of space
- with coloured emblems hatched on its field. Hold hard. Coloured on a
- flat: yes, that’s right. Flat I see, then think distance, near, far,
- flat I see, east, back. Ah, see now! Falls back suddenly, frozen in
- stereoscope. Click does the trick. You find my words dark. Darkness is
- in our souls do you not think? Flutier. Our souls, shamewounded by our
- sins, cling to us yet more, a woman to her lover clinging, the more the
- more.
- She trusts me, her hand gentle, the longlashed eyes. Now where the blue
- hell am I bringing her beyond the veil? Into the ineluctable modality
- of the ineluctable visuality. She, she, she. What she? The virgin at
- Hodges Figgis’ window on Monday looking in for one of the alphabet
- books you were going to write. Keen glance you gave her. Wrist through
- the braided jesse of her sunshade. She lives in Leeson park with a
- grief and kickshaws, a lady of letters. Talk that to someone else,
- Stevie: a pickmeup. Bet she wears those curse of God stays suspenders
- and yellow stockings, darned with lumpy wool. Talk about apple
- dumplings, _piuttosto_. Where are your wits?
- Touch me. Soft eyes. Soft soft soft hand. I am lonely here. O, touch me
- soon, now. What is that word known to all men? I am quiet here alone.
- Sad too. Touch, touch me.
- He lay back at full stretch over the sharp rocks, cramming the
- scribbled note and pencil into a pocket, his hat tilted down on his
- eyes. That is Kevin Egan’s movement I made, nodding for his nap,
- sabbath sleep. _Et vidit Deus. Et erant valde bona_. Alo! _Bonjour_.
- Welcome as the flowers in May. Under its leaf he watched through
- peacocktwittering lashes the southing sun. I am caught in this burning
- scene. Pan’s hour, the faunal noon. Among gumheavy serpentplants,
- milkoozing fruits, where on the tawny waters leaves lie wide. Pain is
- far.
- And no more turn aside and brood.
- His gaze brooded on his broadtoed boots, a buck’s castoffs,
- _nebeneinander_. He counted the creases of rucked leather wherein
- another’s foot had nested warm. The foot that beat the ground in
- tripudium, foot I dislove. But you were delighted when Esther Osvalt’s
- shoe went on you: girl I knew in Paris. _Tiens, quel petit pied!_
- Staunch friend, a brother soul: Wilde’s love that dare not speak its
- name. His arm: Cranly’s arm. He now will leave me. And the blame? As I
- am. As I am. All or not at all.
- In long lassoes from the Cock lake the water flowed full, covering
- greengoldenly lagoons of sand, rising, flowing. My ashplant will float
- away. I shall wait. No, they will pass on, passing, chafing against the
- low rocks, swirling, passing. Better get this job over quick. Listen: a
- fourworded wavespeech: seesoo, hrss, rsseeiss, ooos. Vehement breath of
- waters amid seasnakes, rearing horses, rocks. In cups of rocks it
- slops: flop, slop, slap: bounded in barrels. And, spent, its speech
- ceases. It flows purling, widely flowing, floating foampool, flower
- unfurling.
- Under the upswelling tide he saw the writhing weeds lift languidly and
- sway reluctant arms, hising up their petticoats, in whispering water
- swaying and upturning coy silver fronds. Day by day: night by night:
- lifted, flooded and let fall. Lord, they are weary; and, whispered to,
- they sigh. Saint Ambrose heard it, sigh of leaves and waves, waiting,
- awaiting the fullness of their times, _diebus ac noctibus iniurias
- patiens ingemiscit_. To no end gathered; vainly then released,
- forthflowing, wending back: loom of the moon. Weary too in sight of
- lovers, lascivious men, a naked woman shining in her courts, she draws
- a toil of waters.
- Five fathoms out there. Full fathom five thy father lies. At one, he
- said. Found drowned. High water at Dublin bar. Driving before it a
- loose drift of rubble, fanshoals of fishes, silly shells. A corpse
- rising saltwhite from the undertow, bobbing a pace a pace a porpoise
- landward. There he is. Hook it quick. Pull. Sunk though he be beneath
- the watery floor. We have him. Easy now.
- Bag of corpsegas sopping in foul brine. A quiver of minnows, fat of a
- spongy titbit, flash through the slits of his buttoned trouserfly. God
- becomes man becomes fish becomes barnacle goose becomes featherbed
- mountain. Dead breaths I living breathe, tread dead dust, devour a
- urinous offal from all dead. Hauled stark over the gunwale he breathes
- upward the stench of his green grave, his leprous nosehole snoring to
- the sun.
- A seachange this, brown eyes saltblue. Seadeath, mildest of all deaths
- known to man. Old Father Ocean. _Prix de Paris_: beware of imitations.
- Just you give it a fair trial. We enjoyed ourselves immensely.
- Come. I thirst. Clouding over. No black clouds anywhere, are there?
- Thunderstorm. Allbright he falls, proud lightning of the intellect,
- _Lucifer, dico, qui nescit occasum_. No. My cockle hat and staff and
- hismy sandal shoon. Where? To evening lands. Evening will find itself.
- He took the hilt of his ashplant, lunging with it softly, dallying
- still. Yes, evening will find itself in me, without me. All days make
- their end. By the way next when is it Tuesday will be the longest day.
- Of all the glad new year, mother, the rum tum tiddledy tum. Lawn
- Tennyson, gentleman poet. _Già_. For the old hag with the yellow teeth.
- And Monsieur Drumont, gentleman journalist. _Già_. My teeth are very
- bad. Why, I wonder. Feel. That one is going too. Shells. Ought I go to
- a dentist, I wonder, with that money? That one. This. Toothless Kinch,
- the superman. Why is that, I wonder, or does it mean something perhaps?
- My handkerchief. He threw it. I remember. Did I not take it up?
- His hand groped vainly in his pockets. No, I didn’t. Better buy one.
- He laid the dry snot picked from his nostril on a ledge of rock,
- carefully. For the rest let look who will.
- Behind. Perhaps there is someone.
- He turned his face over a shoulder, rere regardant. Moving through the
- air high spars of a threemaster, her sails brailed up on the
- crosstrees, homing, upstream, silently moving, a silent ship.
- — II —
- [ 4 ]
- Mr Leopold Bloom ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls.
- He liked thick giblet soup, nutty gizzards, a stuffed roast heart,
- liverslices fried with crustcrumbs, fried hencods’ roes. Most of all he
- liked grilled mutton kidneys which gave to his palate a fine tang of
- faintly scented urine.
- Kidneys were in his mind as he moved about the kitchen softly, righting
- her breakfast things on the humpy tray. Gelid light and air were in the
- kitchen but out of doors gentle summer morning everywhere. Made him
- feel a bit peckish.
- The coals were reddening.
- Another slice of bread and butter: three, four: right. She didn’t like
- her plate full. Right. He turned from the tray, lifted the kettle off
- the hob and set it sideways on the fire. It sat there, dull and squat,
- its spout stuck out. Cup of tea soon. Good. Mouth dry. The cat walked
- stiffly round a leg of the table with tail on high.
- —Mkgnao!
- —O, there you are, Mr Bloom said, turning from the fire.
- The cat mewed in answer and stalked again stiffly round a leg of the
- table, mewing. Just how she stalks over my writingtable. Prr. Scratch
- my head. Prr.
- Mr Bloom watched curiously, kindly the lithe black form. Clean to see:
- the gloss of her sleek hide, the white button under the butt of her
- tail, the green flashing eyes. He bent down to her, his hands on his
- knees.
- —Milk for the pussens, he said.
- —Mrkgnao! the cat cried.
- They call them stupid. They understand what we say better than we
- understand them. She understands all she wants to. Vindictive too.
- Cruel. Her nature. Curious mice never squeal. Seem to like it. Wonder
- what I look like to her. Height of a tower? No, she can jump me.
- —Afraid of the chickens she is, he said mockingly. Afraid of the
- chookchooks. I never saw such a stupid pussens as the pussens.
- —Mrkrgnao! the cat said loudly.
- She blinked up out of her avid shameclosing eyes, mewing plaintively
- and long, showing him her milkwhite teeth. He watched the dark eyeslits
- narrowing with greed till her eyes were green stones. Then he went to
- the dresser, took the jug Hanlon’s milkman had just filled for him,
- poured warmbubbled milk on a saucer and set it slowly on the floor.
- —Gurrhr! she cried, running to lap.
- He watched the bristles shining wirily in the weak light as she tipped
- three times and licked lightly. Wonder is it true if you clip them they
- can’t mouse after. Why? They shine in the dark, perhaps, the tips. Or
- kind of feelers in the dark, perhaps.
- He listened to her licking lap. Ham and eggs, no. No good eggs with
- this drouth. Want pure fresh water. Thursday: not a good day either for
- a mutton kidney at Buckley’s. Fried with butter, a shake of pepper.
- Better a pork kidney at Dlugacz’s. While the kettle is boiling. She
- lapped slower, then licking the saucer clean. Why are their tongues so
- rough? To lap better, all porous holes. Nothing she can eat? He glanced
- round him. No.
- On quietly creaky boots he went up the staircase to the hall, paused by
- the bedroom door. She might like something tasty. Thin bread and butter
- she likes in the morning. Still perhaps: once in a way.
- He said softly in the bare hall:
- —I’m going round the corner. Be back in a minute.
- And when he had heard his voice say it he added:
- —You don’t want anything for breakfast?
- A sleepy soft grunt answered:
- —Mn.
- No. She didn’t want anything. He heard then a warm heavy sigh, softer,
- as she turned over and the loose brass quoits of the bedstead jingled.
- Must get those settled really. Pity. All the way from Gibraltar.
- Forgotten any little Spanish she knew. Wonder what her father gave for
- it. Old style. Ah yes! of course. Bought it at the governor’s auction.
- Got a short knock. Hard as nails at a bargain, old Tweedy. Yes, sir. At
- Plevna that was. I rose from the ranks, sir, and I’m proud of it. Still
- he had brains enough to make that corner in stamps. Now that was
- farseeing.
- His hand took his hat from the peg over his initialled heavy overcoat
- and his lost property office secondhand waterproof. Stamps: stickyback
- pictures. Daresay lots of officers are in the swim too. Course they do.
- The sweated legend in the crown of his hat told him mutely: Plasto’s
- high grade ha. He peeped quickly inside the leather headband. White
- slip of paper. Quite safe.
- On the doorstep he felt in his hip pocket for the latchkey. Not there.
- In the trousers I left off. Must get it. Potato I have. Creaky
- wardrobe. No use disturbing her. She turned over sleepily that time. He
- pulled the halldoor to after him very quietly, more, till the footleaf
- dropped gently over the threshold, a limp lid. Looked shut. All right
- till I come back anyhow.
- He crossed to the bright side, avoiding the loose cellarflap of number
- seventyfive. The sun was nearing the steeple of George’s church. Be a
- warm day I fancy. Specially in these black clothes feel it more. Black
- conducts, reflects, (refracts is it?), the heat. But I couldn’t go in
- that light suit. Make a picnic of it. His eyelids sank quietly often as
- he walked in happy warmth. Boland’s breadvan delivering with trays our
- daily but she prefers yesterday’s loaves turnovers crisp crowns hot.
- Makes you feel young. Somewhere in the east: early morning: set off at
- dawn. Travel round in front of the sun, steal a day’s march on him.
- Keep it up for ever never grow a day older technically. Walk along a
- strand, strange land, come to a city gate, sentry there, old ranker
- too, old Tweedy’s big moustaches, leaning on a long kind of a spear.
- Wander through awned streets. Turbaned faces going by. Dark caves of
- carpet shops, big man, Turko the terrible, seated crosslegged, smoking
- a coiled pipe. Cries of sellers in the streets. Drink water scented
- with fennel, sherbet. Dander along all day. Might meet a robber or two.
- Well, meet him. Getting on to sundown. The shadows of the mosques among
- the pillars: priest with a scroll rolled up. A shiver of the trees,
- signal, the evening wind. I pass on. Fading gold sky. A mother watches
- me from her doorway. She calls her children home in their dark
- language. High wall: beyond strings twanged. Night sky, moon, violet,
- colour of Molly’s new garters. Strings. Listen. A girl playing one of
- those instruments what do you call them: dulcimers. I pass.
- Probably not a bit like it really. Kind of stuff you read: in the track
- of the sun. Sunburst on the titlepage. He smiled, pleasing himself.
- What Arthur Griffith said about the headpiece over the _Freeman_
- leader: a homerule sun rising up in the northwest from the laneway
- behind the bank of Ireland. He prolonged his pleased smile. Ikey touch
- that: homerule sun rising up in the northwest.
- He approached Larry O’Rourke’s. From the cellar grating floated up the
- flabby gush of porter. Through the open doorway the bar squirted out
- whiffs of ginger, teadust, biscuitmush. Good house, however: just the
- end of the city traffic. For instance M’Auley’s down there: n. g. as
- position. Of course if they ran a tramline along the North Circular
- from the cattlemarket to the quays value would go up like a shot.
- Baldhead over the blind. Cute old codger. No use canvassing him for an
- ad. Still he knows his own business best. There he is, sure enough, my
- bold Larry, leaning against the sugarbin in his shirtsleeves watching
- the aproned curate swab up with mop and bucket. Simon Dedalus takes him
- off to a tee with his eyes screwed up. Do you know what I’m going to
- tell you? What’s that, Mr O’Rourke? Do you know what? The Russians,
- they’d only be an eight o’clock breakfast for the Japanese.
- Stop and say a word: about the funeral perhaps. Sad thing about poor
- Dignam, Mr O’Rourke.
- Turning into Dorset street he said freshly in greeting through the
- doorway:
- —Good day, Mr O’Rourke.
- —Good day to you.
- —Lovely weather, sir.
- —’Tis all that.
- Where do they get the money? Coming up redheaded curates from the
- county Leitrim, rinsing empties and old man in the cellar. Then, lo and
- behold, they blossom out as Adam Findlaters or Dan Tallons. Then think
- of the competition. General thirst. Good puzzle would be cross Dublin
- without passing a pub. Save it they can’t. Off the drunks perhaps. Put
- down three and carry five. What is that, a bob here and there, dribs
- and drabs. On the wholesale orders perhaps. Doing a double shuffle with
- the town travellers. Square it you with the boss and we’ll split the
- job, see?
- How much would that tot to off the porter in the month? Say ten barrels
- of stuff. Say he got ten per cent off. O more. Fifteen. He passed Saint
- Joseph’s National school. Brats’ clamour. Windows open. Fresh air helps
- memory. Or a lilt. Ahbeesee defeegee kelomen opeecue rustyouvee
- doubleyou. Boys are they? Yes. Inishturk. Inishark. Inishboffin. At
- their joggerfry. Mine. Slieve Bloom.
- He halted before Dlugacz’s window, staring at the hanks of sausages,
- polonies, black and white. Fifteen multiplied by. The figures whitened
- in his mind, unsolved: displeased, he let them fade. The shiny links,
- packed with forcemeat, fed his gaze and he breathed in tranquilly the
- lukewarm breath of cooked spicy pigs’ blood.
- A kidney oozed bloodgouts on the willowpatterned dish: the last. He
- stood by the nextdoor girl at the counter. Would she buy it too,
- calling the items from a slip in her hand? Chapped: washingsoda. And a
- pound and a half of Denny’s sausages. His eyes rested on her vigorous
- hips. Woods his name is. Wonder what he does. Wife is oldish. New
- blood. No followers allowed. Strong pair of arms. Whacking a carpet on
- the clothesline. She does whack it, by George. The way her crooked
- skirt swings at each whack.
- The ferreteyed porkbutcher folded the sausages he had snipped off with
- blotchy fingers, sausagepink. Sound meat there: like a stallfed heifer.
- He took a page up from the pile of cut sheets: the model farm at
- Kinnereth on the lakeshore of Tiberias. Can become ideal winter
- sanatorium. Moses Montefiore. I thought he was. Farmhouse, wall round
- it, blurred cattle cropping. He held the page from him: interesting:
- read it nearer, the title, the blurred cropping cattle, the page
- rustling. A young white heifer. Those mornings in the cattlemarket, the
- beasts lowing in their pens, branded sheep, flop and fall of dung, the
- breeders in hobnailed boots trudging through the litter, slapping a
- palm on a ripemeated hindquarter, there’s a prime one, unpeeled
- switches in their hands. He held the page aslant patiently, bending his
- senses and his will, his soft subject gaze at rest. The crooked skirt
- swinging, whack by whack by whack.
- The porkbutcher snapped two sheets from the pile, wrapped up her prime
- sausages and made a red grimace.
- —Now, my miss, he said.
- She tendered a coin, smiling boldly, holding her thick wrist out.
- —Thank you, my miss. And one shilling threepence change. For you,
- please?
- Mr Bloom pointed quickly. To catch up and walk behind her if she went
- slowly, behind her moving hams. Pleasant to see first thing in the
- morning. Hurry up, damn it. Make hay while the sun shines. She stood
- outside the shop in sunlight and sauntered lazily to the right. He
- sighed down his nose: they never understand. Sodachapped hands. Crusted
- toenails too. Brown scapulars in tatters, defending her both ways. The
- sting of disregard glowed to weak pleasure within his breast. For
- another: a constable off duty cuddling her in Eccles’ Lane. They like
- them sizeable. Prime sausage. O please, Mr Policeman, I’m lost in the
- wood.
- —Threepence, please.
- His hand accepted the moist tender gland and slid it into a sidepocket.
- Then it fetched up three coins from his trousers’ pocket and laid them
- on the rubber prickles. They lay, were read quickly and quickly slid,
- disc by disc, into the till.
- —Thank you, sir. Another time.
- A speck of eager fire from foxeyes thanked him. He withdrew his gaze
- after an instant. No: better not: another time.
- —Good morning, he said, moving away.
- —Good morning, sir.
- No sign. Gone. What matter?
- He walked back along Dorset street, reading gravely. Agendath Netaim:
- planters’ company. To purchase waste sandy tracts from Turkish
- government and plant with eucalyptus trees. Excellent for shade, fuel
- and construction. Orangegroves and immense melonfields north of Jaffa.
- You pay eighty marks and they plant a dunam of land for you with
- olives, oranges, almonds or citrons. Olives cheaper: oranges need
- artificial irrigation. Every year you get a sending of the crop. Your
- name entered for life as owner in the book of the union. Can pay ten
- down and the balance in yearly instalments. Bleibtreustrasse 34,
- Berlin, W. 15.
- Nothing doing. Still an idea behind it.
- He looked at the cattle, blurred in silver heat. Silverpowdered
- olivetrees. Quiet long days: pruning, ripening. Olives are packed in
- jars, eh? I have a few left from Andrews. Molly spitting them out.
- Knows the taste of them now. Oranges in tissue paper packed in crates.
- Citrons too. Wonder is poor Citron still in Saint Kevin’s parade. And
- Mastiansky with the old cither. Pleasant evenings we had then. Molly in
- Citron’s basketchair. Nice to hold, cool waxen fruit, hold in the hand,
- lift it to the nostrils and smell the perfume. Like that, heavy, sweet,
- wild perfume. Always the same, year after year. They fetched high
- prices too, Moisel told me. Arbutus place: Pleasants street: pleasant
- old times. Must be without a flaw, he said. Coming all that way: Spain,
- Gibraltar, Mediterranean, the Levant. Crates lined up on the quayside
- at Jaffa, chap ticking them off in a book, navvies handling them
- barefoot in soiled dungarees. There’s whatdoyoucallhim out of. How do
- you? Doesn’t see. Chap you know just to salute bit of a bore. His back
- is like that Norwegian captain’s. Wonder if I’ll meet him today.
- Watering cart. To provoke the rain. On earth as it is in heaven.
- A cloud began to cover the sun slowly, wholly. Grey. Far.
- No, not like that. A barren land, bare waste. Vulcanic lake, the dead
- sea: no fish, weedless, sunk deep in the earth. No wind could lift
- those waves, grey metal, poisonous foggy waters. Brimstone they called
- it raining down: the cities of the plain: Sodom, Gomorrah, Edom. All
- dead names. A dead sea in a dead land, grey and old. Old now. It bore
- the oldest, the first race. A bent hag crossed from Cassidy’s,
- clutching a naggin bottle by the neck. The oldest people. Wandered far
- away over all the earth, captivity to captivity, multiplying, dying,
- being born everywhere. It lay there now. Now it could bear no more.
- Dead: an old woman’s: the grey sunken cunt of the world.
- Desolation.
- Grey horror seared his flesh. Folding the page into his pocket he
- turned into Eccles street, hurrying homeward. Cold oils slid along his
- veins, chilling his blood: age crusting him with a salt cloak. Well, I
- am here now. Yes, I am here now. Morning mouth bad images. Got up wrong
- side of the bed. Must begin again those Sandow’s exercises. On the
- hands down. Blotchy brown brick houses. Number eighty still unlet. Why
- is that? Valuation is only twentyeight. Towers, Battersby, North,
- MacArthur: parlour windows plastered with bills. Plasters on a sore
- eye. To smell the gentle smoke of tea, fume of the pan, sizzling
- butter. Be near her ample bedwarmed flesh. Yes, yes.
- Quick warm sunlight came running from Berkeley road, swiftly, in slim
- sandals, along the brightening footpath. Runs, she runs to meet me, a
- girl with gold hair on the wind.
- Two letters and a card lay on the hallfloor. He stooped and gathered
- them. Mrs Marion Bloom. His quickened heart slowed at once. Bold hand.
- Mrs Marion.
- —Poldy!
- Entering the bedroom he halfclosed his eyes and walked through warm
- yellow twilight towards her tousled head.
- —Who are the letters for?
- He looked at them. Mullingar. Milly.
- —A letter for me from Milly, he said carefully, and a card to you. And
- a letter for you.
- He laid her card and letter on the twill bedspread near the curve of
- her knees.
- —Do you want the blind up?
- Letting the blind up by gentle tugs halfway his backward eye saw her
- glance at the letter and tuck it under her pillow.
- —That do? he asked, turning.
- She was reading the card, propped on her elbow.
- —She got the things, she said.
- He waited till she had laid the card aside and curled herself back
- slowly with a snug sigh.
- —Hurry up with that tea, she said. I’m parched.
- —The kettle is boiling, he said.
- But he delayed to clear the chair: her striped petticoat, tossed soiled
- linen: and lifted all in an armful on to the foot of the bed.
- As he went down the kitchen stairs she called:
- —Poldy!
- —What?
- —Scald the teapot.
- On the boil sure enough: a plume of steam from the spout. He scalded
- and rinsed out the teapot and put in four full spoons of tea, tilting
- the kettle then to let the water flow in. Having set it to draw he took
- off the kettle, crushed the pan flat on the live coals and watched the
- lump of butter slide and melt. While he unwrapped the kidney the cat
- mewed hungrily against him. Give her too much meat she won’t mouse. Say
- they won’t eat pork. Kosher. Here. He let the bloodsmeared paper fall
- to her and dropped the kidney amid the sizzling butter sauce. Pepper.
- He sprinkled it through his fingers ringwise from the chipped eggcup.
- Then he slit open his letter, glancing down the page and over. Thanks:
- new tam: Mr Coghlan: lough Owel picnic: young student: Blazes Boylan’s
- seaside girls.
- The tea was drawn. He filled his own moustachecup, sham crown Derby,
- smiling. Silly Milly’s birthday gift. Only five she was then. No, wait:
- four. I gave her the amberoid necklace she broke. Putting pieces of
- folded brown paper in the letterbox for her. He smiled, pouring.
- O, Milly Bloom, you are my darling.
- You are my lookingglass from night to morning.
- I’d rather have you without a farthing
- Than Katey Keogh with her ass and garden.
- Poor old professor Goodwin. Dreadful old case. Still he was a courteous
- old chap. Oldfashioned way he used to bow Molly off the platform. And
- the little mirror in his silk hat. The night Milly brought it into the
- parlour. O, look what I found in professor Goodwin’s hat! All we
- laughed. Sex breaking out even then. Pert little piece she was.
- He prodded a fork into the kidney and slapped it over: then fitted the
- teapot on the tray. Its hump bumped as he took it up. Everything on it?
- Bread and butter, four, sugar, spoon, her cream. Yes. He carried it
- upstairs, his thumb hooked in the teapot handle.
- Nudging the door open with his knee he carried the tray in and set it
- on the chair by the bedhead.
- —What a time you were! she said.
- She set the brasses jingling as she raised herself briskly, an elbow on
- the pillow. He looked calmly down on her bulk and between her large
- soft bubs, sloping within her nightdress like a shegoat’s udder. The
- warmth of her couched body rose on the air, mingling with the fragrance
- of the tea she poured.
- A strip of torn envelope peeped from under the dimpled pillow. In the
- act of going he stayed to straighten the bedspread.
- —Who was the letter from? he asked.
- Bold hand. Marion.
- —O, Boylan, she said. He’s bringing the programme.
- —What are you singing?
- —_Là ci darem_ with J. C. Doyle, she said, and _Love’s Old Sweet Song_.
- Her full lips, drinking, smiled. Rather stale smell that incense leaves
- next day. Like foul flowerwater.
- —Would you like the window open a little?
- She doubled a slice of bread into her mouth, asking:
- —What time is the funeral?
- —Eleven, I think, he answered. I didn’t see the paper.
- Following the pointing of her finger he took up a leg of her soiled
- drawers from the bed. No? Then, a twisted grey garter looped round a
- stocking: rumpled, shiny sole.
- —No: that book.
- Other stocking. Her petticoat.
- —It must have fell down, she said.
- He felt here and there. _Voglio e non vorrei_. Wonder if she pronounces
- that right: _voglio_. Not in the bed. Must have slid down. He stooped
- and lifted the valance. The book, fallen, sprawled against the bulge of
- the orangekeyed chamberpot.
- —Show here, she said. I put a mark in it. There’s a word I wanted to
- ask you.
- She swallowed a draught of tea from her cup held by nothandle and,
- having wiped her fingertips smartly on the blanket, began to search the
- text with the hairpin till she reached the word.
- —Met him what? he asked.
- —Here, she said. What does that mean?
- He leaned downward and read near her polished thumbnail.
- —Metempsychosis?
- —Yes. Who’s he when he’s at home?
- —Metempsychosis, he said, frowning. It’s Greek: from the Greek. That
- means the transmigration of souls.
- —O, rocks! she said. Tell us in plain words.
- He smiled, glancing askance at her mocking eyes. The same young eyes.
- The first night after the charades. Dolphin’s Barn. He turned over the
- smudged pages. _Ruby: the Pride of the Ring_. Hello. Illustration.
- Fierce Italian with carriagewhip. Must be Ruby pride of the on the
- floor naked. Sheet kindly lent. _The monster Maffei desisted and flung
- his victim from him with an oath_. Cruelty behind it all. Doped
- animals. Trapeze at Hengler’s. Had to look the other way. Mob gaping.
- Break your neck and we’ll break our sides. Families of them. Bone them
- young so they metamspychosis. That we live after death. Our souls. That
- a man’s soul after he dies. Dignam’s soul...
- —Did you finish it? he asked.
- —Yes, she said. There’s nothing smutty in it. Is she in love with the
- first fellow all the time?
- —Never read it. Do you want another?
- —Yes. Get another of Paul de Kock’s. Nice name he has.
- She poured more tea into her cup, watching it flow sideways.
- Must get that Capel street library book renewed or they’ll write to
- Kearney, my guarantor. Reincarnation: that’s the word.
- —Some people believe, he said, that we go on living in another body
- after death, that we lived before. They call it reincarnation. That we
- all lived before on the earth thousands of years ago or some other
- planet. They say we have forgotten it. Some say they remember their
- past lives.
- The sluggish cream wound curdling spirals through her tea. Better
- remind her of the word: metempsychosis. An example would be better. An
- example?
- The _Bath of the Nymph_ over the bed. Given away with the Easter number
- of _Photo Bits_: Splendid masterpiece in art colours. Tea before you
- put milk in. Not unlike her with her hair down: slimmer. Three and six
- I gave for the frame. She said it would look nice over the bed. Naked
- nymphs: Greece: and for instance all the people that lived then.
- He turned the pages back.
- —Metempsychosis, he said, is what the ancient Greeks called it. They
- used to believe you could be changed into an animal or a tree, for
- instance. What they called nymphs, for example.
- Her spoon ceased to stir up the sugar. She gazed straight before her,
- inhaling through her arched nostrils.
- —There’s a smell of burn, she said. Did you leave anything on the fire?
- —The kidney! he cried suddenly.
- He fitted the book roughly into his inner pocket and, stubbing his toes
- against the broken commode, hurried out towards the smell, stepping
- hastily down the stairs with a flurried stork’s legs. Pungent smoke
- shot up in an angry jet from a side of the pan. By prodding a prong of
- the fork under the kidney he detached it and turned it turtle on its
- back. Only a little burnt. He tossed it off the pan on to a plate and
- let the scanty brown gravy trickle over it.
- Cup of tea now. He sat down, cut and buttered a slice of the loaf. He
- shore away the burnt flesh and flung it to the cat. Then he put a
- forkful into his mouth, chewing with discernment the toothsome pliant
- meat. Done to a turn. A mouthful of tea. Then he cut away dies of
- bread, sopped one in the gravy and put it in his mouth. What was that
- about some young student and a picnic? He creased out the letter at his
- side, reading it slowly as he chewed, sopping another die of bread in
- the gravy and raising it to his mouth.
- Dearest Papli
- Thanks ever so much for the lovely birthday present. It suits me
- splendid. Everyone says I am quite the belle in my new tam. I got
- mummy’s lovely box of creams and am writing. They are lovely. I am
- getting on swimming in the photo business now. Mr Coghlan took one of
- me and Mrs. Will send when developed. We did great biz yesterday. Fair
- day and all the beef to the heels were in. We are going to lough Owel
- on Monday with a few friends to make a scrap picnic. Give my love to
- mummy and to yourself a big kiss and thanks. I hear them at the piano
- downstairs. There is to be a concert in the Greville Arms on Saturday.
- There is a young student comes here some evenings named Bannon his
- cousins or something are big swells and he sings Boylan’s (I was on the
- pop of writing Blazes Boylan’s) song about those seaside girls. Tell
- him silly Milly sends my best respects. I must now close with fondest
- love
- Your fond daughter
- Milly
- P. S. Excuse bad writing am in hurry. Byby.
- M.
- Fifteen yesterday. Curious, fifteenth of the month too. Her first
- birthday away from home. Separation. Remember the summer morning she
- was born, running to knock up Mrs Thornton in Denzille street. Jolly
- old woman. Lot of babies she must have helped into the world. She knew
- from the first poor little Rudy wouldn’t live. Well, God is good, sir.
- She knew at once. He would be eleven now if he had lived.
- His vacant face stared pityingly at the postscript. Excuse bad writing.
- Hurry. Piano downstairs. Coming out of her shell. Row with her in the
- XL Café about the bracelet. Wouldn’t eat her cakes or speak or look.
- Saucebox. He sopped other dies of bread in the gravy and ate piece
- after piece of kidney. Twelve and six a week. Not much. Still, she
- might do worse. Music hall stage. Young student. He drank a draught of
- cooler tea to wash down his meal. Then he read the letter again: twice.
- O, well: she knows how to mind herself. But if not? No, nothing has
- happened. Of course it might. Wait in any case till it does. A wild
- piece of goods. Her slim legs running up the staircase. Destiny.
- Ripening now. Vain: very.
- He smiled with troubled affection at the kitchen window. Day I caught
- her in the street pinching her cheeks to make them red. Anemic a
- little. Was given milk too long. On the _Erin’s King_ that day round
- the Kish. Damned old tub pitching about. Not a bit funky. Her pale blue
- scarf loose in the wind with her hair.
- All dimpled cheeks and curls,
- Your head it simply swirls.
- Seaside girls. Torn envelope. Hands stuck in his trousers’ pockets,
- jarvey off for the day, singing. Friend of the family. Swurls, he says.
- Pier with lamps, summer evening, band.
- Those girls, those girls,
- Those lovely seaside girls.
- Milly too. Young kisses: the first. Far away now past. Mrs Marion.
- Reading, lying back now, counting the strands of her hair, smiling,
- braiding.
- A soft qualm, regret, flowed down his backbone, increasing. Will
- happen, yes. Prevent. Useless: can’t move. Girl’s sweet light lips.
- Will happen too. He felt the flowing qualm spread over him. Useless to
- move now. Lips kissed, kissing, kissed. Full gluey woman’s lips.
- Better where she is down there: away. Occupy her. Wanted a dog to pass
- the time. Might take a trip down there. August bank holiday, only two
- and six return. Six weeks off, however. Might work a press pass. Or
- through M’Coy.
- The cat, having cleaned all her fur, returned to the meatstained paper,
- nosed at it and stalked to the door. She looked back at him, mewing.
- Wants to go out. Wait before a door sometime it will open. Let her
- wait. Has the fidgets. Electric. Thunder in the air. Was washing at her
- ear with her back to the fire too.
- He felt heavy, full: then a gentle loosening of his bowels. He stood
- up, undoing the waistband of his trousers. The cat mewed to him.
- —Miaow! he said in answer. Wait till I’m ready.
- Heaviness: hot day coming. Too much trouble to fag up the stairs to the
- landing.
- A paper. He liked to read at stool. Hope no ape comes knocking just as
- I’m.
- In the tabledrawer he found an old number of _Titbits_. He folded it
- under his armpit, went to the door and opened it. The cat went up in
- soft bounds. Ah, wanted to go upstairs, curl up in a ball on the bed.
- Listening, he heard her voice:
- —Come, come, pussy. Come.
- He went out through the backdoor into the garden: stood to listen
- towards the next garden. No sound. Perhaps hanging clothes out to dry.
- The maid was in the garden. Fine morning.
- He bent down to regard a lean file of spearmint growing by the wall.
- Make a summerhouse here. Scarlet runners. Virginia creepers. Want to
- manure the whole place over, scabby soil. A coat of liver of sulphur.
- All soil like that without dung. Household slops. Loam, what is this
- that is? The hens in the next garden: their droppings are very good top
- dressing. Best of all though are the cattle, especially when they are
- fed on those oilcakes. Mulch of dung. Best thing to clean ladies’ kid
- gloves. Dirty cleans. Ashes too. Reclaim the whole place. Grow peas in
- that corner there. Lettuce. Always have fresh greens then. Still
- gardens have their drawbacks. That bee or bluebottle here Whitmonday.
- He walked on. Where is my hat, by the way? Must have put it back on the
- peg. Or hanging up on the floor. Funny I don’t remember that. Hallstand
- too full. Four umbrellas, her raincloak. Picking up the letters.
- Drago’s shopbell ringing. Queer I was just thinking that moment. Brown
- brillantined hair over his collar. Just had a wash and brushup. Wonder
- have I time for a bath this morning. Tara street. Chap in the paybox
- there got away James Stephens, they say. O’Brien.
- Deep voice that fellow Dlugacz has. Agendath what is it? Now, my miss.
- Enthusiast.
- He kicked open the crazy door of the jakes. Better be careful not to
- get these trousers dirty for the funeral. He went in, bowing his head
- under the low lintel. Leaving the door ajar, amid the stench of mouldy
- limewash and stale cobwebs he undid his braces. Before sitting down he
- peered through a chink up at the nextdoor windows. The king was in his
- countinghouse. Nobody.
- Asquat on the cuckstool he folded out his paper, turning its pages over
- on his bared knees. Something new and easy. No great hurry. Keep it a
- bit. Our prize titbit: _Matcham’s Masterstroke_. Written by Mr Philip
- Beaufoy, Playgoers’ Club, London. Payment at the rate of one guinea a
- column has been made to the writer. Three and a half. Three pounds
- three. Three pounds, thirteen and six.
- Quietly he read, restraining himself, the first column and, yielding
- but resisting, began the second. Midway, his last resistance yielding,
- he allowed his bowels to ease themselves quietly as he read, reading
- still patiently that slight constipation of yesterday quite gone. Hope
- it’s not too big bring on piles again. No, just right. So. Ah! Costive.
- One tabloid of cascara sagrada. Life might be so. It did not move or
- touch him but it was something quick and neat. Print anything now.
- Silly season. He read on, seated calm above his own rising smell. Neat
- certainly. _Matcham often thinks of the masterstroke by which he won
- the laughing witch who now_. Begins and ends morally. _Hand in hand_.
- Smart. He glanced back through what he had read and, while feeling his
- water flow quietly, he envied kindly Mr Beaufoy who had written it and
- received payment of three pounds, thirteen and six.
- Might manage a sketch. By Mr and Mrs L. M. Bloom. Invent a story for
- some proverb. Which? Time I used to try jotting down on my cuff what
- she said dressing. Dislike dressing together. Nicked myself shaving.
- Biting her nether lip, hooking the placket of her skirt. Timing her.
- 9.15. Did Roberts pay you yet? 9.20. What had Gretta Conroy on? 9.23.
- What possessed me to buy this comb? 9.24. I’m swelled after that
- cabbage. A speck of dust on the patent leather of her boot.
- Rubbing smartly in turn each welt against her stockinged calf. Morning
- after the bazaar dance when May’s band played Ponchielli’s dance of the
- hours. Explain that: morning hours, noon, then evening coming on, then
- night hours. Washing her teeth. That was the first night. Her head
- dancing. Her fansticks clicking. Is that Boylan well off? He has money.
- Why? I noticed he had a good rich smell off his breath dancing. No use
- humming then. Allude to it. Strange kind of music that last night. The
- mirror was in shadow. She rubbed her handglass briskly on her woollen
- vest against her full wagging bub. Peering into it. Lines in her eyes.
- It wouldn’t pan out somehow.
- Evening hours, girls in grey gauze. Night hours then: black with
- daggers and eyemasks. Poetical idea: pink, then golden, then grey, then
- black. Still, true to life also. Day: then the night.
- He tore away half the prize story sharply and wiped himself with it.
- Then he girded up his trousers, braced and buttoned himself. He pulled
- back the jerky shaky door of the jakes and came forth from the gloom
- into the air.
- In the bright light, lightened and cooled in limb, he eyed carefully
- his black trousers: the ends, the knees, the houghs of the knees. What
- time is the funeral? Better find out in the paper.
- A creak and a dark whirr in the air high up. The bells of George’s
- church. They tolled the hour: loud dark iron.
- Heigho! Heigho!
- Heigho! Heigho!
- Heigho! Heigho!
- Quarter to. There again: the overtone following through the air. A
- third.
- Poor Dignam!
- [ 5 ]
- By lorries along sir John Rogerson’s quay Mr Bloom walked soberly, past
- Windmill lane, Leask’s the linseed crusher, the postal telegraph
- office. Could have given that address too. And past the sailors’ home.
- He turned from the morning noises of the quayside and walked through
- Lime street. By Brady’s cottages a boy for the skins lolled, his bucket
- of offal linked, smoking a chewed fagbutt. A smaller girl with scars of
- eczema on her forehead eyed him, listlessly holding her battered
- caskhoop. Tell him if he smokes he won’t grow. O let him! His life
- isn’t such a bed of roses. Waiting outside pubs to bring da home. Come
- home to ma, da. Slack hour: won’t be many there. He crossed Townsend
- street, passed the frowning face of Bethel. El, yes: house of: Aleph,
- Beth. And past Nichols’ the undertaker. At eleven it is. Time enough.
- Daresay Corny Kelleher bagged the job for O’Neill’s. Singing with his
- eyes shut. Corny. Met her once in the park. In the dark. What a lark.
- Police tout. Her name and address she then told with my tooraloom
- tooraloom tay. O, surely he bagged it. Bury him cheap in a
- whatyoumaycall. With my tooraloom, tooraloom, tooraloom, tooraloom.
- In Westland row he halted before the window of the Belfast and Oriental
- Tea Company and read the legends of leadpapered packets: choice blend,
- finest quality, family tea. Rather warm. Tea. Must get some from Tom
- Kernan. Couldn’t ask him at a funeral, though. While his eyes still
- read blandly he took off his hat quietly inhaling his hairoil and sent
- his right hand with slow grace over his brow and hair. Very warm
- morning. Under their dropped lids his eyes found the tiny bow of the
- leather headband inside his high grade ha. Just there. His right hand
- came down into the bowl of his hat. His fingers found quickly a card
- behind the headband and transferred it to his waistcoat pocket.
- So warm. His right hand once more more slowly went over his brow and
- hair. Then he put on his hat again, relieved: and read again: choice
- blend, made of the finest Ceylon brands. The far east. Lovely spot it
- must be: the garden of the world, big lazy leaves to float about on,
- cactuses, flowery meads, snaky lianas they call them. Wonder is it like
- that. Those Cinghalese lobbing about in the sun in _dolce far niente_,
- not doing a hand’s turn all day. Sleep six months out of twelve. Too
- hot to quarrel. Influence of the climate. Lethargy. Flowers of
- idleness. The air feeds most. Azotes. Hothouse in Botanic gardens.
- Sensitive plants. Waterlilies. Petals too tired to. Sleeping sickness
- in the air. Walk on roseleaves. Imagine trying to eat tripe and
- cowheel. Where was the chap I saw in that picture somewhere? Ah yes, in
- the dead sea floating on his back, reading a book with a parasol open.
- Couldn’t sink if you tried: so thick with salt. Because the weight of
- the water, no, the weight of the body in the water is equal to the
- weight of the what? Or is it the volume is equal to the weight? It’s a
- law something like that. Vance in High school cracking his
- fingerjoints, teaching. The college curriculum. Cracking curriculum.
- What is weight really when you say the weight? Thirtytwo feet per
- second per second. Law of falling bodies: per second per second. They
- all fall to the ground. The earth. It’s the force of gravity of the
- earth is the weight.
- He turned away and sauntered across the road. How did she walk with her
- sausages? Like that something. As he walked he took the folded
- _Freeman_ from his sidepocket, unfolded it, rolled it lengthwise in a
- baton and tapped it at each sauntering step against his trouserleg.
- Careless air: just drop in to see. Per second per second. Per second
- for every second it means. From the curbstone he darted a keen glance
- through the door of the postoffice. Too late box. Post here. No-one.
- In.
- He handed the card through the brass grill.
- —Are there any letters for me? he asked.
- While the postmistress searched a pigeonhole he gazed at the recruiting
- poster with soldiers of all arms on parade: and held the tip of his
- baton against his nostrils, smelling freshprinted rag paper. No answer
- probably. Went too far last time.
- The postmistress handed him back through the grill his card with a
- letter. He thanked her and glanced rapidly at the typed envelope.
- Henry Flower Esq,
- c/o P. O. Westland Row,
- City.
- Answered anyhow. He slipped card and letter into his sidepocket,
- reviewing again the soldiers on parade. Where’s old Tweedy’s regiment?
- Castoff soldier. There: bearskin cap and hackle plume. No, he’s a
- grenadier. Pointed cuffs. There he is: royal Dublin fusiliers.
- Redcoats. Too showy. That must be why the women go after them. Uniform.
- Easier to enlist and drill. Maud Gonne’s letter about taking them off
- O’Connell street at night: disgrace to our Irish capital. Griffith’s
- paper is on the same tack now: an army rotten with venereal disease:
- overseas or halfseasover empire. Half baked they look: hypnotised like.
- Eyes front. Mark time. Table: able. Bed: ed. The King’s own. Never see
- him dressed up as a fireman or a bobby. A mason, yes.
- He strolled out of the postoffice and turned to the right. Talk: as if
- that would mend matters. His hand went into his pocket and a forefinger
- felt its way under the flap of the envelope, ripping it open in jerks.
- Women will pay a lot of heed, I don’t think. His fingers drew forth the
- letter the letter and crumpled the envelope in his pocket. Something
- pinned on: photo perhaps. Hair? No.
- M’Coy. Get rid of him quickly. Take me out of my way. Hate company when
- you.
- —Hello, Bloom. Where are you off to?
- —Hello, M’Coy. Nowhere in particular.
- —How’s the body?
- —Fine. How are you?
- —Just keeping alive, M’Coy said.
- His eyes on the black tie and clothes he asked with low respect:
- —Is there any... no trouble I hope? I see you’re...
- —O, no, Mr Bloom said. Poor Dignam, you know. The funeral is today.
- —To be sure, poor fellow. So it is. What time?
- A photo it isn’t. A badge maybe.
- —E...eleven, Mr Bloom answered.
- —I must try to get out there, M’Coy said. Eleven, is it? I only heard
- it last night. Who was telling me? Holohan. You know Hoppy?
- —I know.
- Mr Bloom gazed across the road at the outsider drawn up before the door
- of the Grosvenor. The porter hoisted the valise up on the well. She
- stood still, waiting, while the man, husband, brother, like her,
- searched his pockets for change. Stylish kind of coat with that roll
- collar, warm for a day like this, looks like blanketcloth. Careless
- stand of her with her hands in those patch pockets. Like that haughty
- creature at the polo match. Women all for caste till you touch the
- spot. Handsome is and handsome does. Reserved about to yield. The
- honourable Mrs and Brutus is an honourable man. Possess her once take
- the starch out of her.
- —I was with Bob Doran, he’s on one of his periodical bends, and what do
- you call him Bantam Lyons. Just down there in Conway’s we were.
- Doran Lyons in Conway’s. She raised a gloved hand to her hair. In came
- Hoppy. Having a wet. Drawing back his head and gazing far from beneath
- his vailed eyelids he saw the bright fawn skin shine in the glare, the
- braided drums. Clearly I can see today. Moisture about gives long sight
- perhaps. Talking of one thing or another. Lady’s hand. Which side will
- she get up?
- —And he said: _Sad thing about our poor friend Paddy! What Paddy?_ I
- said. _Poor little Paddy Dignam_, he said.
- Off to the country: Broadstone probably. High brown boots with laces
- dangling. Wellturned foot. What is he foostering over that change for?
- Sees me looking. Eye out for other fellow always. Good fallback. Two
- strings to her bow.
- —_Why?_ I said. _What’s wrong with him?_ I said.
- Proud: rich: silk stockings.
- —Yes, Mr Bloom said.
- He moved a little to the side of M’Coy’s talking head. Getting up in a
- minute.
- —_What’s wrong with him_? He said. _He’s dead_, he said. And, faith, he
- filled up. _Is it Paddy Dignam_? I said. I couldn’t believe it when I
- heard it. I was with him no later than Friday last or Thursday was it
- in the Arch. _Yes,_ he said. _He’s gone. He died on Monday, poor
- fellow_.
- Watch! Watch! Silk flash rich stockings white. Watch!
- A heavy tramcar honking its gong slewed between.
- Lost it. Curse your noisy pugnose. Feels locked out of it. Paradise and
- the peri. Always happening like that. The very moment. Girl in Eustace
- street hallway Monday was it settling her garter. Her friend covering
- the display of. _Esprit de corps_. Well, what are you gaping at?
- —Yes, yes, Mr Bloom said after a dull sigh. Another gone.
- —One of the best, M’Coy said.
- The tram passed. They drove off towards the Loop Line bridge, her rich
- gloved hand on the steel grip. Flicker, flicker: the laceflare of her
- hat in the sun: flicker, flick.
- —Wife well, I suppose? M’Coy’s changed voice said.
- —O, yes, Mr Bloom said. Tiptop, thanks.
- He unrolled the newspaper baton idly and read idly:
- What is home without
- Plumtree’s Potted Meat?
- Incomplete.
- With it an abode of bliss.
- —My missus has just got an engagement. At least it’s not settled yet.
- Valise tack again. By the way no harm. I’m off that, thanks.
- Mr Bloom turned his largelidded eyes with unhasty friendliness.
- —My wife too, he said. She’s going to sing at a swagger affair in the
- Ulster Hall, Belfast, on the twentyfifth.
- —That so? M’Coy said. Glad to hear that, old man. Who’s getting it up?
- Mrs Marion Bloom. Not up yet. Queen was in her bedroom eating bread
- and. No book. Blackened court cards laid along her thigh by sevens.
- Dark lady and fair man. Letter. Cat furry black ball. Torn strip of
- envelope.
- Love’s
- Old
- Sweet
- Song
- Comes lo-ove’s old...
- —It’s a kind of a tour, don’t you see, Mr Bloom said thoughtfully.
- _Sweeeet song_. There’s a committee formed. Part shares and part
- profits.
- M’Coy nodded, picking at his moustache stubble.
- —O, well, he said. That’s good news.
- He moved to go.
- —Well, glad to see you looking fit, he said. Meet you knocking around.
- —Yes, Mr Bloom said.
- —Tell you what, M’Coy said. You might put down my name at the funeral,
- will you? I’d like to go but I mightn’t be able, you see. There’s a
- drowning case at Sandycove may turn up and then the coroner and myself
- would have to go down if the body is found. You just shove in my name
- if I’m not there, will you?
- —I’ll do that, Mr Bloom said, moving to get off. That’ll be all right.
- —Right, M’Coy said brightly. Thanks, old man. I’d go if I possibly
- could. Well, tolloll. Just C. P. M’Coy will do.
- —That will be done, Mr Bloom answered firmly.
- Didn’t catch me napping that wheeze. The quick touch. Soft mark. I’d
- like my job. Valise I have a particular fancy for. Leather. Capped
- corners, rivetted edges, double action lever lock. Bob Cowley lent him
- his for the Wicklow regatta concert last year and never heard tidings
- of it from that good day to this.
- Mr Bloom, strolling towards Brunswick street, smiled. My missus has
- just got an. Reedy freckled soprano. Cheeseparing nose. Nice enough in
- its way: for a little ballad. No guts in it. You and me, don’t you
- know: in the same boat. Softsoaping. Give you the needle that would.
- Can’t he hear the difference? Think he’s that way inclined a bit.
- Against my grain somehow. Thought that Belfast would fetch him. I hope
- that smallpox up there doesn’t get worse. Suppose she wouldn’t let
- herself be vaccinated again. Your wife and my wife.
- Wonder is he pimping after me?
- Mr Bloom stood at the corner, his eyes wandering over the multicoloured
- hoardings. Cantrell and Cochrane’s Ginger Ale (Aromatic). Clery’s
- Summer Sale. No, he’s going on straight. Hello. _Leah_ tonight. Mrs
- Bandmann Palmer. Like to see her again in that. _Hamlet_ she played
- last night. Male impersonator. Perhaps he was a woman. Why Ophelia
- committed suicide. Poor papa! How he used to talk of Kate Bateman in
- that. Outside the Adelphi in London waited all the afternoon to get in.
- Year before I was born that was: sixtyfive. And Ristori in Vienna. What
- is this the right name is? By Mosenthal it is. Rachel, is it? No. The
- scene he was always talking about where the old blind Abraham
- recognises the voice and puts his fingers on his face.
- Nathan’s voice! His son’s voice! I hear the voice of Nathan who left
- his father to die of grief and misery in my arms, who left the house of
- his father and left the God of his father.
- Every word is so deep, Leopold.
- Poor papa! Poor man! I’m glad I didn’t go into the room to look at his
- face. That day! O, dear! O, dear! Ffoo! Well, perhaps it was best for
- him.
- Mr Bloom went round the corner and passed the drooping nags of the
- hazard. No use thinking of it any more. Nosebag time. Wish I hadn’t met
- that M’Coy fellow.
- He came nearer and heard a crunching of gilded oats, the gently
- champing teeth. Their full buck eyes regarded him as he went by, amid
- the sweet oaten reek of horsepiss. Their Eldorado. Poor jugginses! Damn
- all they know or care about anything with their long noses stuck in
- nosebags. Too full for words. Still they get their feed all right and
- their doss. Gelded too: a stump of black guttapercha wagging limp
- between their haunches. Might be happy all the same that way. Good poor
- brutes they look. Still their neigh can be very irritating.
- He drew the letter from his pocket and folded it into the newspaper he
- carried. Might just walk into her here. The lane is safer.
- He passed the cabman’s shelter. Curious the life of drifting cabbies.
- All weathers, all places, time or setdown, no will of their own.
- _Voglio e non_. Like to give them an odd cigarette. Sociable. Shout a
- few flying syllables as they pass. He hummed:
- Là ci darem la mano
- La la lala la la.
- He turned into Cumberland street and, going on some paces, halted in
- the lee of the station wall. No-one. Meade’s timberyard. Piled balks.
- Ruins and tenements. With careful tread he passed over a hopscotch
- court with its forgotten pickeystone. Not a sinner. Near the timberyard
- a squatted child at marbles, alone, shooting the taw with a cunnythumb.
- A wise tabby, a blinking sphinx, watched from her warm sill. Pity to
- disturb them. Mohammed cut a piece out of his mantle not to wake her.
- Open it. And once I played marbles when I went to that old dame’s
- school. She liked mignonette. Mrs Ellis’s. And Mr? He opened the letter
- within the newspaper.
- A flower. I think it’s a. A yellow flower with flattened petals. Not
- annoyed then? What does she say?
- Dear Henry
- I got your last letter to me and thank you very much for it. I am sorry
- you did not like my last letter. Why did you enclose the stamps? I am
- awfully angry with you. I do wish I could punish you for that. I called
- you naughty boy because I do not like that other world. Please tell me
- what is the real meaning of that word? Are you not happy in your home
- you poor little naughty boy? I do wish I could do something for you.
- Please tell me what you think of poor me. I often think of the
- beautiful name you have. Dear Henry, when will we meet? I think of you
- so often you have no idea. I have never felt myself so much drawn to a
- man as you. I feel so bad about. Please write me a long letter and tell
- me more. Remember if you do not I will punish you. So now you know what
- I will do to you, you naughty boy, if you do not wrote. O how I long to
- meet you. Henry dear, do not deny my request before my patience are
- exhausted. Then I will tell you all. Goodbye now, naughty darling, I
- have such a bad headache. today. and write _by return_ to your longing
- Martha
- P. S. Do tell me what kind of perfume does your wife use. I want to
- know.
- He tore the flower gravely from its pinhold smelt its almost no smell
- and placed it in his heart pocket. Language of flowers. They like it
- because no-one can hear. Or a poison bouquet to strike him down. Then
- walking slowly forward he read the letter again, murmuring here and
- there a word. Angry tulips with you darling manflower punish your
- cactus if you don’t please poor forgetmenot how I long violets to dear
- roses when we soon anemone meet all naughty nightstalk wife Martha’s
- perfume. Having read it all he took it from the newspaper and put it
- back in his sidepocket.
- Weak joy opened his lips. Changed since the first letter. Wonder did
- she wrote it herself. Doing the indignant: a girl of good family like
- me, respectable character. Could meet one Sunday after the rosary.
- Thank you: not having any. Usual love scrimmage. Then running round
- corners. Bad as a row with Molly. Cigar has a cooling effect. Narcotic.
- Go further next time. Naughty boy: punish: afraid of words, of course.
- Brutal, why not? Try it anyhow. A bit at a time.
- Fingering still the letter in his pocket he drew the pin out of it.
- Common pin, eh? He threw it on the road. Out of her clothes somewhere:
- pinned together. Queer the number of pins they always have. No roses
- without thorns.
- Flat Dublin voices bawled in his head. Those two sluts that night in
- the Coombe, linked together in the rain.
- O, Mairy lost the pin of her drawers.
- She didn’t know what to do
- To keep it up,
- To keep it up.
- It? Them. Such a bad headache. Has her roses probably. Or sitting all
- day typing. Eyefocus bad for stomach nerves. What perfume does your
- wife use. Now could you make out a thing like that?
- To keep it up.
- Martha, Mary. I saw that picture somewhere I forget now old master or
- faked for money. He is sitting in their house, talking. Mysterious.
- Also the two sluts in the Coombe would listen.
- To keep it up.
- Nice kind of evening feeling. No more wandering about. Just loll there:
- quiet dusk: let everything rip. Forget. Tell about places you have
- been, strange customs. The other one, jar on her head, was getting the
- supper: fruit, olives, lovely cool water out of a well, stonecold like
- the hole in the wall at Ashtown. Must carry a paper goblet next time I
- go to the trottingmatches. She listens with big dark soft eyes. Tell
- her: more and more: all. Then a sigh: silence. Long long long rest.
- Going under the railway arch he took out the envelope, tore it swiftly
- in shreds and scattered them towards the road. The shreds fluttered
- away, sank in the dank air: a white flutter, then all sank.
- Henry Flower. You could tear up a cheque for a hundred pounds in the
- same way. Simple bit of paper. Lord Iveagh once cashed a sevenfigure
- cheque for a million in the bank of Ireland. Shows you the money to be
- made out of porter. Still the other brother lord Ardilaun has to change
- his shirt four times a day, they say. Skin breeds lice or vermin. A
- million pounds, wait a moment. Twopence a pint, fourpence a quart,
- eightpence a gallon of porter, no, one and fourpence a gallon of
- porter. One and four into twenty: fifteen about. Yes, exactly. Fifteen
- millions of barrels of porter.
- What am I saying barrels? Gallons. About a million barrels all the
- same.
- An incoming train clanked heavily above his head, coach after coach.
- Barrels bumped in his head: dull porter slopped and churned inside. The
- bungholes sprang open and a huge dull flood leaked out, flowing
- together, winding through mudflats all over the level land, a lazy
- pooling swirl of liquor bearing along wideleaved flowers of its froth.
- He had reached the open backdoor of All Hallows. Stepping into the
- porch he doffed his hat, took the card from his pocket and tucked it
- again behind the leather headband. Damn it. I might have tried to work
- M’Coy for a pass to Mullingar.
- Same notice on the door. Sermon by the very reverend John Conmee S. J.
- on saint Peter Claver S. J. and the African Mission. Prayers for the
- conversion of Gladstone they had too when he was almost unconscious.
- The protestants are the same. Convert Dr William J. Walsh D.D. to the
- true religion. Save China’s millions. Wonder how they explain it to the
- heathen Chinee. Prefer an ounce of opium. Celestials. Rank heresy for
- them. Buddha their god lying on his side in the museum. Taking it easy
- with hand under his cheek. Josssticks burning. Not like Ecce Homo.
- Crown of thorns and cross. Clever idea Saint Patrick the shamrock.
- Chopsticks? Conmee: Martin Cunningham knows him: distinguishedlooking.
- Sorry I didn’t work him about getting Molly into the choir instead of
- that Father Farley who looked a fool but wasn’t. They’re taught that.
- He’s not going out in bluey specs with the sweat rolling off him to
- baptise blacks, is he? The glasses would take their fancy, flashing.
- Like to see them sitting round in a ring with blub lips, entranced,
- listening. Still life. Lap it up like milk, I suppose.
- The cold smell of sacred stone called him. He trod the worn steps,
- pushed the swingdoor and entered softly by the rere.
- Something going on: some sodality. Pity so empty. Nice discreet place
- to be next some girl. Who is my neighbour? Jammed by the hour to slow
- music. That woman at midnight mass. Seventh heaven. Women knelt in the
- benches with crimson halters round their necks, heads bowed. A batch
- knelt at the altarrails. The priest went along by them, murmuring,
- holding the thing in his hands. He stopped at each, took out a
- communion, shook a drop or two (are they in water?) off it and put it
- neatly into her mouth. Her hat and head sank. Then the next one. Her
- hat sank at once. Then the next one: a small old woman. The priest bent
- down to put it into her mouth, murmuring all the time. Latin. The next
- one. Shut your eyes and open your mouth. What? _Corpus:_ body. Corpse.
- Good idea the Latin. Stupefies them first. Hospice for the dying. They
- don’t seem to chew it: only swallow it down. Rum idea: eating bits of a
- corpse. Why the cannibals cotton to it.
- He stood aside watching their blind masks pass down the aisle, one by
- one, and seek their places. He approached a bench and seated himself in
- its corner, nursing his hat and newspaper. These pots we have to wear.
- We ought to have hats modelled on our heads. They were about him here
- and there, with heads still bowed in their crimson halters, waiting for
- it to melt in their stomachs. Something like those mazzoth: it’s that
- sort of bread: unleavened shewbread. Look at them. Now I bet it makes
- them feel happy. Lollipop. It does. Yes, bread of angels it’s called.
- There’s a big idea behind it, kind of kingdom of God is within you
- feel. First communicants. Hokypoky penny a lump. Then feel all like one
- family party, same in the theatre, all in the same swim. They do. I’m
- sure of that. Not so lonely. In our confraternity. Then come out a bit
- spreeish. Let off steam. Thing is if you really believe in it. Lourdes
- cure, waters of oblivion, and the Knock apparition, statues bleeding.
- Old fellow asleep near that confessionbox. Hence those snores. Blind
- faith. Safe in the arms of kingdom come. Lulls all pain. Wake this time
- next year.
- He saw the priest stow the communion cup away, well in, and kneel an
- instant before it, showing a large grey bootsole from under the lace
- affair he had on. Suppose he lost the pin of his. He wouldn’t know what
- to do to. Bald spot behind. Letters on his back: I.N.R.I? No: I.H.S.
- Molly told me one time I asked her. I have sinned: or no: I have
- suffered, it is. And the other one? Iron nails ran in.
- Meet one Sunday after the rosary. Do not deny my request. Turn up with
- a veil and black bag. Dusk and the light behind her. She might be here
- with a ribbon round her neck and do the other thing all the same on the
- sly. Their character. That fellow that turned queen’s evidence on the
- invincibles he used to receive the, Carey was his name, the communion
- every morning. This very church. Peter Carey, yes. No, Peter Claver I
- am thinking of. Denis Carey. And just imagine that. Wife and six
- children at home. And plotting that murder all the time. Those
- crawthumpers, now that’s a good name for them, there’s always something
- shiftylooking about them. They’re not straight men of business either.
- O, no, she’s not here: the flower: no, no. By the way, did I tear up
- that envelope? Yes: under the bridge.
- The priest was rinsing out the chalice: then he tossed off the dregs
- smartly. Wine. Makes it more aristocratic than for example if he drank
- what they are used to Guinness’s porter or some temperance beverage
- Wheatley’s Dublin hop bitters or Cantrell and Cochrane’s ginger ale
- (aromatic). Doesn’t give them any of it: shew wine: only the other.
- Cold comfort. Pious fraud but quite right: otherwise they’d have one
- old booser worse than another coming along, cadging for a drink. Queer
- the whole atmosphere of the. Quite right. Perfectly right that is.
- Mr Bloom looked back towards the choir. Not going to be any music.
- Pity. Who has the organ here I wonder? Old Glynn he knew how to make
- that instrument talk, the _vibrato_: fifty pounds a year they say he
- had in Gardiner street. Molly was in fine voice that day, the _Stabat
- Mater_ of Rossini. Father Bernard Vaughan’s sermon first. Christ or
- Pilate? Christ, but don’t keep us all night over it. Music they wanted.
- Footdrill stopped. Could hear a pin drop. I told her to pitch her voice
- against that corner. I could feel the thrill in the air, the full, the
- people looking up:
- _Quis est homo._
- Some of that old sacred music splendid. Mercadante: seven last words.
- Mozart’s twelfth mass: _Gloria_ in that. Those old popes keen on music,
- on art and statues and pictures of all kinds. Palestrina for example
- too. They had a gay old time while it lasted. Healthy too, chanting,
- regular hours, then brew liqueurs. Benedictine. Green Chartreuse.
- Still, having eunuchs in their choir that was coming it a bit thick.
- What kind of voice is it? Must be curious to hear after their own
- strong basses. Connoisseurs. Suppose they wouldn’t feel anything after.
- Kind of a placid. No worry. Fall into flesh, don’t they? Gluttons,
- tall, long legs. Who knows? Eunuch. One way out of it.
- He saw the priest bend down and kiss the altar and then face about and
- bless all the people. All crossed themselves and stood up. Mr Bloom
- glanced about him and then stood up, looking over the risen hats. Stand
- up at the gospel of course. Then all settled down on their knees again
- and he sat back quietly in his bench. The priest came down from the
- altar, holding the thing out from him, and he and the massboy answered
- each other in Latin. Then the priest knelt down and began to read off a
- card:
- —O God, our refuge and our strength...
- Mr Bloom put his face forward to catch the words. English. Throw them
- the bone. I remember slightly. How long since your last mass? Glorious
- and immaculate virgin. Joseph, her spouse. Peter and Paul. More
- interesting if you understood what it was all about. Wonderful
- organisation certainly, goes like clockwork. Confession. Everyone wants
- to. Then I will tell you all. Penance. Punish me, please. Great weapon
- in their hands. More than doctor or solicitor. Woman dying to. And I
- schschschschschsch. And did you chachachachacha? And why did you? Look
- down at her ring to find an excuse. Whispering gallery walls have ears.
- Husband learn to his surprise. God’s little joke. Then out she comes.
- Repentance skindeep. Lovely shame. Pray at an altar. Hail Mary and Holy
- Mary. Flowers, incense, candles melting. Hide her blushes. Salvation
- army blatant imitation. Reformed prostitute will address the meeting.
- How I found the Lord. Squareheaded chaps those must be in Rome: they
- work the whole show. And don’t they rake in the money too? Bequests
- also: to the P.P. for the time being in his absolute discretion. Masses
- for the repose of my soul to be said publicly with open doors.
- Monasteries and convents. The priest in that Fermanagh will case in the
- witnessbox. No browbeating him. He had his answer pat for everything.
- Liberty and exaltation of our holy mother the church. The doctors of
- the church: they mapped out the whole theology of it.
- The priest prayed:
- —Blessed Michael, archangel, defend us in the hour of conflict. Be our
- safeguard against the wickedness and snares of the devil (may God
- restrain him, we humbly pray!): and do thou, O prince of the heavenly
- host, by the power of God thrust Satan down to hell and with him those
- other wicked spirits who wander through the world for the ruin of
- souls.
- The priest and the massboy stood up and walked off. All over. The women
- remained behind: thanksgiving.
- Better be shoving along. Brother Buzz. Come around with the plate
- perhaps. Pay your Easter duty.
- He stood up. Hello. Were those two buttons of my waistcoat open all the
- time? Women enjoy it. Never tell you. But we. Excuse, miss, there’s a
- (whh!) just a (whh!) fluff. Or their skirt behind, placket unhooked.
- Glimpses of the moon. Annoyed if you don’t. Why didn’t you tell me
- before. Still like you better untidy. Good job it wasn’t farther south.
- He passed, discreetly buttoning, down the aisle and out through the
- main door into the light. He stood a moment unseeing by the cold black
- marble bowl while before him and behind two worshippers dipped furtive
- hands in the low tide of holy water. Trams: a car of Prescott’s
- dyeworks: a widow in her weeds. Notice because I’m in mourning myself.
- He covered himself. How goes the time? Quarter past. Time enough yet.
- Better get that lotion made up. Where is this? Ah yes, the last time.
- Sweny’s in Lincoln place. Chemists rarely move. Their green and gold
- beaconjars too heavy to stir. Hamilton Long’s, founded in the year of
- the flood. Huguenot churchyard near there. Visit some day.
- He walked southward along Westland row. But the recipe is in the other
- trousers. O, and I forgot that latchkey too. Bore this funeral affair.
- O well, poor fellow, it’s not his fault. When was it I got it made up
- last? Wait. I changed a sovereign I remember. First of the month it
- must have been or the second. O, he can look it up in the prescriptions
- book.
- The chemist turned back page after page. Sandy shrivelled smell he
- seems to have. Shrunken skull. And old. Quest for the philosopher’s
- stone. The alchemists. Drugs age you after mental excitement. Lethargy
- then. Why? Reaction. A lifetime in a night. Gradually changes your
- character. Living all the day among herbs, ointments, disinfectants.
- All his alabaster lilypots. Mortar and pestle. Aq. Dist. Fol. Laur. Te
- Virid. Smell almost cure you like the dentist’s doorbell. Doctor Whack.
- He ought to physic himself a bit. Electuary or emulsion. The first
- fellow that picked an herb to cure himself had a bit of pluck. Simples.
- Want to be careful. Enough stuff here to chloroform you. Test: turns
- blue litmus paper red. Chloroform. Overdose of laudanum. Sleeping
- draughts. Lovephiltres. Paragoric poppysyrup bad for cough. Clogs the
- pores or the phlegm. Poisons the only cures. Remedy where you least
- expect it. Clever of nature.
- —About a fortnight ago, sir?
- —Yes, Mr Bloom said.
- He waited by the counter, inhaling slowly the keen reek of drugs, the
- dusty dry smell of sponges and loofahs. Lot of time taken up telling
- your aches and pains.
- —Sweet almond oil and tincture of benzoin, Mr Bloom said, and then
- orangeflower water...
- It certainly did make her skin so delicate white like wax.
- —And white wax also, he said.
- Brings out the darkness of her eyes. Looking at me, the sheet up to her
- eyes, Spanish, smelling herself, when I was fixing the links in my
- cuffs. Those homely recipes are often the best: strawberries for the
- teeth: nettles and rainwater: oatmeal they say steeped in buttermilk.
- Skinfood. One of the old queen’s sons, duke of Albany was it? had only
- one skin. Leopold, yes. Three we have. Warts, bunions and pimples to
- make it worse. But you want a perfume too. What perfume does your?
- _Peau d’Espagne_. That orangeflower water is so fresh. Nice smell these
- soaps have. Pure curd soap. Time to get a bath round the corner.
- Hammam. Turkish. Massage. Dirt gets rolled up in your navel. Nicer if a
- nice girl did it. Also I think I. Yes I. Do it in the bath. Curious
- longing I. Water to water. Combine business with pleasure. Pity no time
- for massage. Feel fresh then all the day. Funeral be rather glum.
- —Yes, sir, the chemist said. That was two and nine. Have you brought a
- bottle?
- —No, Mr Bloom said. Make it up, please. I’ll call later in the day and
- I’ll take one of these soaps. How much are they?
- —Fourpence, sir.
- Mr Bloom raised a cake to his nostrils. Sweet lemony wax.
- —I’ll take this one, he said. That makes three and a penny.
- —Yes, sir, the chemist said. You can pay all together, sir, when you
- come back.
- —Good, Mr Bloom said.
- He strolled out of the shop, the newspaper baton under his armpit, the
- coolwrappered soap in his left hand.
- At his armpit Bantam Lyons’ voice and hand said:
- —Hello, Bloom. What’s the best news? Is that today’s? Show us a minute.
- Shaved off his moustache again, by Jove! Long cold upper lip. To look
- younger. He does look balmy. Younger than I am.
- Bantam Lyons’s yellow blacknailed fingers unrolled the baton. Wants a
- wash too. Take off the rough dirt. Good morning, have you used Pears’
- soap? Dandruff on his shoulders. Scalp wants oiling.
- —I want to see about that French horse that’s running today, Bantam
- Lyons said. Where the bugger is it?
- He rustled the pleated pages, jerking his chin on his high collar.
- Barber’s itch. Tight collar he’ll lose his hair. Better leave him the
- paper and get shut of him.
- —You can keep it, Mr Bloom said.
- —Ascot. Gold cup. Wait, Bantam Lyons muttered. Half a mo. Maximum the
- second.
- —I was just going to throw it away, Mr Bloom said.
- Bantam Lyons raised his eyes suddenly and leered weakly.
- —What’s that? his sharp voice said.
- —I say you can keep it, Mr Bloom answered. I was going to throw it away
- that moment.
- Bantam Lyons doubted an instant, leering: then thrust the outspread
- sheets back on Mr Bloom’s arms.
- —I’ll risk it, he said. Here, thanks.
- He sped off towards Conway’s corner. God speed scut.
- Mr Bloom folded the sheets again to a neat square and lodged the soap
- in it, smiling. Silly lips of that chap. Betting. Regular hotbed of it
- lately. Messenger boys stealing to put on sixpence. Raffle for large
- tender turkey. Your Christmas dinner for threepence. Jack Fleming
- embezzling to gamble then smuggled off to America. Keeps a hotel now.
- They never come back. Fleshpots of Egypt.
- He walked cheerfully towards the mosque of the baths. Remind you of a
- mosque, redbaked bricks, the minarets. College sports today I see. He
- eyed the horseshoe poster over the gate of college park: cyclist
- doubled up like a cod in a pot. Damn bad ad. Now if they had made it
- round like a wheel. Then the spokes: sports, sports, sports: and the
- hub big: college. Something to catch the eye.
- There’s Hornblower standing at the porter’s lodge. Keep him on hands:
- might take a turn in there on the nod. How do you do, Mr Hornblower?
- How do you do, sir?
- Heavenly weather really. If life was always like that. Cricket weather.
- Sit around under sunshades. Over after over. Out. They can’t play it
- here. Duck for six wickets. Still Captain Culler broke a window in the
- Kildare street club with a slog to square leg. Donnybrook fair more in
- their line. And the skulls we were acracking when M’Carthy took the
- floor. Heatwave. Won’t last. Always passing, the stream of life, which
- in the stream of life we trace is dearer than them all.
- Enjoy a bath now: clean trough of water, cool enamel, the gentle tepid
- stream. This is my body.
- He foresaw his pale body reclined in it at full, naked, in a womb of
- warmth, oiled by scented melting soap, softly laved. He saw his trunk
- and limbs riprippled over and sustained, buoyed lightly upward,
- lemonyellow: his navel, bud of flesh: and saw the dark tangled curls of
- his bush floating, floating hair of the stream around the limp father
- of thousands, a languid floating flower.
- [ 6 ]
- Martin Cunningham, first, poked his silkhatted head into the creaking
- carriage and, entering deftly, seated himself. Mr Power stepped in
- after him, curving his height with care.
- —Come on, Simon.
- —After you, Mr Bloom said.
- Mr Dedalus covered himself quickly and got in, saying:
- —Yes, yes.
- —Are we all here now? Martin Cunningham asked. Come along, Bloom.
- Mr Bloom entered and sat in the vacant place. He pulled the door to
- after him and slammed it twice till it shut tight. He passed an arm
- through the armstrap and looked seriously from the open carriagewindow
- at the lowered blinds of the avenue. One dragged aside: an old woman
- peeping. Nose whiteflattened against the pane. Thanking her stars she
- was passed over. Extraordinary the interest they take in a corpse. Glad
- to see us go we give them such trouble coming. Job seems to suit them.
- Huggermugger in corners. Slop about in slipperslappers for fear he’d
- wake. Then getting it ready. Laying it out. Molly and Mrs Fleming
- making the bed. Pull it more to your side. Our windingsheet. Never know
- who will touch you dead. Wash and shampoo. I believe they clip the
- nails and the hair. Keep a bit in an envelope. Grows all the same
- after. Unclean job.
- All waited. Nothing was said. Stowing in the wreaths probably. I am
- sitting on something hard. Ah, that soap: in my hip pocket. Better
- shift it out of that. Wait for an opportunity.
- All waited. Then wheels were heard from in front, turning: then nearer:
- then horses’ hoofs. A jolt. Their carriage began to move, creaking and
- swaying. Other hoofs and creaking wheels started behind. The blinds of
- the avenue passed and number nine with its craped knocker, door ajar.
- At walking pace.
- They waited still, their knees jogging, till they had turned and were
- passing along the tramtracks. Tritonville road. Quicker. The wheels
- rattled rolling over the cobbled causeway and the crazy glasses shook
- rattling in the doorframes.
- —What way is he taking us? Mr Power asked through both windows.
- —Irishtown, Martin Cunningham said. Ringsend. Brunswick street.
- Mr Dedalus nodded, looking out.
- —That’s a fine old custom, he said. I am glad to see it has not died
- out.
- All watched awhile through their windows caps and hats lifted by
- passers. Respect. The carriage swerved from the tramtrack to the
- smoother road past Watery lane. Mr Bloom at gaze saw a lithe young man,
- clad in mourning, a wide hat.
- —There’s a friend of yours gone by, Dedalus, he said.
- —Who is that?
- —Your son and heir.
- —Where is he? Mr Dedalus said, stretching over across.
- The carriage, passing the open drains and mounds of rippedup roadway
- before the tenement houses, lurched round the corner and, swerving back
- to the tramtrack, rolled on noisily with chattering wheels. Mr Dedalus
- fell back, saying:
- —Was that Mulligan cad with him? His _fidus Achates_!
- —No, Mr Bloom said. He was alone.
- —Down with his aunt Sally, I suppose, Mr Dedalus said, the Goulding
- faction, the drunken little costdrawer and Crissie, papa’s little lump
- of dung, the wise child that knows her own father.
- Mr Bloom smiled joylessly on Ringsend road. Wallace Bros: the
- bottleworks: Dodder bridge.
- Richie Goulding and the legal bag. Goulding, Collis and Ward he calls
- the firm. His jokes are getting a bit damp. Great card he was. Waltzing
- in Stamer street with Ignatius Gallaher on a Sunday morning, the
- landlady’s two hats pinned on his head. Out on the rampage all night.
- Beginning to tell on him now: that backache of his, I fear. Wife
- ironing his back. Thinks he’ll cure it with pills. All breadcrumbs they
- are. About six hundred per cent profit.
- —He’s in with a lowdown crowd, Mr Dedalus snarled. That Mulligan is a
- contaminated bloody doubledyed ruffian by all accounts. His name stinks
- all over Dublin. But with the help of God and His blessed mother I’ll
- make it my business to write a letter one of those days to his mother
- or his aunt or whatever she is that will open her eye as wide as a
- gate. I’ll tickle his catastrophe, believe you me.
- He cried above the clatter of the wheels:
- —I won’t have her bastard of a nephew ruin my son. A counterjumper’s
- son. Selling tapes in my cousin, Peter Paul M’Swiney’s. Not likely.
- He ceased. Mr Bloom glanced from his angry moustache to Mr Power’s mild
- face and Martin Cunningham’s eyes and beard, gravely shaking. Noisy
- selfwilled man. Full of his son. He is right. Something to hand on. If
- little Rudy had lived. See him grow up. Hear his voice in the house.
- Walking beside Molly in an Eton suit. My son. Me in his eyes. Strange
- feeling it would be. From me. Just a chance. Must have been that
- morning in Raymond terrace she was at the window watching the two dogs
- at it by the wall of the cease to do evil. And the sergeant grinning
- up. She had that cream gown on with the rip she never stitched. Give us
- a touch, Poldy. God, I’m dying for it. How life begins.
- Got big then. Had to refuse the Greystones concert. My son inside her.
- I could have helped him on in life. I could. Make him independent.
- Learn German too.
- —Are we late? Mr Power asked.
- —Ten minutes, Martin Cunningham said, looking at his watch.
- Molly. Milly. Same thing watered down. Her tomboy oaths. O jumping
- Jupiter! Ye gods and little fishes! Still, she’s a dear girl. Soon be a
- woman. Mullingar. Dearest Papli. Young student. Yes, yes: a woman too.
- Life, life.
- The carriage heeled over and back, their four trunks swaying.
- —Corny might have given us a more commodious yoke, Mr Power said.
- —He might, Mr Dedalus said, if he hadn’t that squint troubling him. Do
- you follow me?
- He closed his left eye. Martin Cunningham began to brush away
- crustcrumbs from under his thighs.
- —What is this, he said, in the name of God? Crumbs?
- —Someone seems to have been making a picnic party here lately, Mr Power
- said.
- All raised their thighs and eyed with disfavour the mildewed buttonless
- leather of the seats. Mr Dedalus, twisting his nose, frowned downward
- and said:
- —Unless I’m greatly mistaken. What do you think, Martin?
- —It struck me too, Martin Cunningham said.
- Mr Bloom set his thigh down. Glad I took that bath. Feel my feet quite
- clean. But I wish Mrs Fleming had darned these socks better.
- Mr Dedalus sighed resignedly.
- —After all, he said, it’s the most natural thing in the world.
- —Did Tom Kernan turn up? Martin Cunningham asked, twirling the peak of
- his beard gently.
- —Yes, Mr Bloom answered. He’s behind with Ned Lambert and Hynes.
- —And Corny Kelleher himself? Mr Power asked.
- —At the cemetery, Martin Cunningham said.
- —I met M’Coy this morning, Mr Bloom said. He said he’d try to come.
- The carriage halted short.
- —What’s wrong?
- —We’re stopped.
- —Where are we?
- Mr Bloom put his head out of the window.
- —The grand canal, he said.
- Gasworks. Whooping cough they say it cures. Good job Milly never got
- it. Poor children! Doubles them up black and blue in convulsions. Shame
- really. Got off lightly with illnesses compared. Only measles. Flaxseed
- tea. Scarlatina, influenza epidemics. Canvassing for death. Don’t miss
- this chance. Dogs’ home over there. Poor old Athos! Be good to Athos,
- Leopold, is my last wish. Thy will be done. We obey them in the grave.
- A dying scrawl. He took it to heart, pined away. Quiet brute. Old men’s
- dogs usually are.
- A raindrop spat on his hat. He drew back and saw an instant of shower
- spray dots over the grey flags. Apart. Curious. Like through a
- colander. I thought it would. My boots were creaking I remember now.
- —The weather is changing, he said quietly.
- —A pity it did not keep up fine, Martin Cunningham said.
- —Wanted for the country, Mr Power said. There’s the sun again coming
- out.
- Mr Dedalus, peering through his glasses towards the veiled sun, hurled
- a mute curse at the sky.
- —It’s as uncertain as a child’s bottom, he said.
- —We’re off again.
- The carriage turned again its stiff wheels and their trunks swayed
- gently. Martin Cunningham twirled more quickly the peak of his beard.
- —Tom Kernan was immense last night, he said. And Paddy Leonard taking
- him off to his face.
- —O, draw him out, Martin, Mr Power said eagerly. Wait till you hear
- him, Simon, on Ben Dollard’s singing of _The Croppy Boy_.
- —Immense, Martin Cunningham said pompously. _His singing of that simple
- ballad, Martin, is the most trenchant rendering I ever heard in the
- whole course of my experience._
- —Trenchant, Mr Power said laughing. He’s dead nuts on that. And the
- retrospective arrangement.
- —Did you read Dan Dawson’s speech? Martin Cunningham asked.
- —I did not then, Mr Dedalus said. Where is it?
- —In the paper this morning.
- Mr Bloom took the paper from his inside pocket. That book I must change
- for her.
- —No, no, Mr Dedalus said quickly. Later on please.
- Mr Bloom’s glance travelled down the edge of the paper, scanning the
- deaths: Callan, Coleman, Dignam, Fawcett, Lowry, Naumann, Peake, what
- Peake is that? is it the chap was in Crosbie and Alleyne’s? no, Sexton,
- Urbright. Inked characters fast fading on the frayed breaking paper.
- Thanks to the Little Flower. Sadly missed. To the inexpressible grief
- of his. Aged 88 after a long and tedious illness. Month’s mind:
- Quinlan. On whose soul Sweet Jesus have mercy.
- It is now a month since dear Henry fled
- To his home up above in the sky
- While his family weeps and mourns his loss
- Hoping some day to meet him on high.
- I tore up the envelope? Yes. Where did I put her letter after I read it
- in the bath? He patted his waistcoatpocket. There all right. Dear Henry
- fled. Before my patience are exhausted.
- National school. Meade’s yard. The hazard. Only two there now. Nodding.
- Full as a tick. Too much bone in their skulls. The other trotting round
- with a fare. An hour ago I was passing there. The jarvies raised their
- hats.
- A pointsman’s back straightened itself upright suddenly against a
- tramway standard by Mr Bloom’s window. Couldn’t they invent something
- automatic so that the wheel itself much handier? Well but that fellow
- would lose his job then? Well but then another fellow would get a job
- making the new invention?
- Antient concert rooms. Nothing on there. A man in a buff suit with a
- crape armlet. Not much grief there. Quarter mourning. People in law
- perhaps.
- They went past the bleak pulpit of saint Mark’s, under the railway
- bridge, past the Queen’s theatre: in silence. Hoardings: Eugene
- Stratton, Mrs Bandmann Palmer. Could I go to see _Leah_ tonight, I
- wonder. I said I. Or the _Lily of Killarney_? Elster Grimes Opera
- Company. Big powerful change. Wet bright bills for next week. _Fun on
- the Bristol_. Martin Cunningham could work a pass for the Gaiety. Have
- to stand a drink or two. As broad as it’s long.
- He’s coming in the afternoon. Her songs.
- Plasto’s. Sir Philip Crampton’s memorial fountain bust. Who was he?
- —How do you do? Martin Cunningham said, raising his palm to his brow in
- salute.
- —He doesn’t see us, Mr Power said. Yes, he does. How do you do?
- —Who? Mr Dedalus asked.
- —Blazes Boylan, Mr Power said. There he is airing his quiff.
- Just that moment I was thinking.
- Mr Dedalus bent across to salute. From the door of the Red Bank the
- white disc of a straw hat flashed reply: spruce figure: passed.
- Mr Bloom reviewed the nails of his left hand, then those of his right
- hand. The nails, yes. Is there anything more in him that they she sees?
- Fascination. Worst man in Dublin. That keeps him alive. They sometimes
- feel what a person is. Instinct. But a type like that. My nails. I am
- just looking at them: well pared. And after: thinking alone. Body
- getting a bit softy. I would notice that: from remembering. What causes
- that? I suppose the skin can’t contract quickly enough when the flesh
- falls off. But the shape is there. The shape is there still. Shoulders.
- Hips. Plump. Night of the dance dressing. Shift stuck between the
- cheeks behind.
- He clasped his hands between his knees and, satisfied, sent his vacant
- glance over their faces.
- Mr Power asked:
- —How is the concert tour getting on, Bloom?
- —O, very well, Mr Bloom said. I hear great accounts of it. It’s a good
- idea, you see...
- —Are you going yourself?
- —Well no, Mr Bloom said. In point of fact I have to go down to the
- county Clare on some private business. You see the idea is to tour the
- chief towns. What you lose on one you can make up on the other.
- —Quite so, Martin Cunningham said. Mary Anderson is up there now.
- Have you good artists?
- —Louis Werner is touring her, Mr Bloom said. O yes, we’ll have all
- topnobbers. J. C. Doyle and John MacCormack I hope and. The best, in
- fact.
- —And _Madame_, Mr Power said smiling. Last but not least.
- Mr Bloom unclasped his hands in a gesture of soft politeness and
- clasped them. Smith O’Brien. Someone has laid a bunch of flowers there.
- Woman. Must be his deathday. For many happy returns. The carriage
- wheeling by Farrell’s statue united noiselessly their unresisting
- knees.
- Oot: a dullgarbed old man from the curbstone tendered his wares, his
- mouth opening: oot.
- —Four bootlaces for a penny.
- Wonder why he was struck off the rolls. Had his office in Hume street.
- Same house as Molly’s namesake, Tweedy, crown solicitor for Waterford.
- Has that silk hat ever since. Relics of old decency. Mourning too.
- Terrible comedown, poor wretch! Kicked about like snuff at a wake.
- O’Callaghan on his last legs.
- And _Madame_. Twenty past eleven. Up. Mrs Fleming is in to clean. Doing
- her hair, humming: _voglio e non vorrei_. No: _vorrei e non_. Looking
- at the tips of her hairs to see if they are split. _Mi trema un poco
- il_. Beautiful on that _tre_ her voice is: weeping tone. A thrush. A
- throstle. There is a word throstle that expresses that.
- His eyes passed lightly over Mr Power’s goodlooking face. Greyish over
- the ears. _Madame_: smiling. I smiled back. A smile goes a long way.
- Only politeness perhaps. Nice fellow. Who knows is that true about the
- woman he keeps? Not pleasant for the wife. Yet they say, who was it
- told me, there is no carnal. You would imagine that would get played
- out pretty quick. Yes, it was Crofton met him one evening bringing her
- a pound of rumpsteak. What is this she was? Barmaid in Jury’s. Or the
- Moira, was it?
- They passed under the hugecloaked Liberator’s form.
- Martin Cunningham nudged Mr Power.
- —Of the tribe of Reuben, he said.
- A tall blackbearded figure, bent on a stick, stumping round the corner
- of Elvery’s Elephant house, showed them a curved hand open on his
- spine.
- —In all his pristine beauty, Mr Power said.
- Mr Dedalus looked after the stumping figure and said mildly:
- —The devil break the hasp of your back!
- Mr Power, collapsing in laughter, shaded his face from the window as
- the carriage passed Gray’s statue.
- —We have all been there, Martin Cunningham said broadly.
- His eyes met Mr Bloom’s eyes. He caressed his beard, adding:
- —Well, nearly all of us.
- Mr Bloom began to speak with sudden eagerness to his companions’ faces.
- —That’s an awfully good one that’s going the rounds about Reuben J and
- the son.
- —About the boatman? Mr Power asked.
- —Yes. Isn’t it awfully good?
- —What is that? Mr Dedalus asked. I didn’t hear it.
- —There was a girl in the case, Mr Bloom began, and he determined to
- send him to the Isle of Man out of harm’s way but when they were
- both.....
- —What? Mr Dedalus asked. That confirmed bloody hobbledehoy is it?
- —Yes, Mr Bloom said. They were both on the way to the boat and he tried
- to drown.....
- —Drown Barabbas! Mr Dedalus cried. I wish to Christ he did!
- Mr Power sent a long laugh down his shaded nostrils.
- —No, Mr Bloom said, the son himself.....
- Martin Cunningham thwarted his speech rudely:
- —Reuben J and the son were piking it down the quay next the river on
- their way to the Isle of Man boat and the young chiseller suddenly got
- loose and over the wall with him into the Liffey.
- —For God’s sake! Mr Dedalus exclaimed in fright. Is he dead?
- —Dead! Martin Cunningham cried. Not he! A boatman got a pole and fished
- him out by the slack of the breeches and he was landed up to the father
- on the quay more dead than alive. Half the town was there.
- —Yes, Mr Bloom said. But the funny part is.....
- —And Reuben J, Martin Cunningham said, gave the boatman a florin for
- saving his son’s life.
- A stifled sigh came from under Mr Power’s hand.
- —O, he did, Martin Cunningham affirmed. Like a hero. A silver florin.
- —Isn’t it awfully good? Mr Bloom said eagerly.
- —One and eightpence too much, Mr Dedalus said drily.
- Mr Power’s choked laugh burst quietly in the carriage.
- Nelson’s pillar.
- —Eight plums a penny! Eight for a penny!
- —We had better look a little serious, Martin Cunningham said.
- Mr Dedalus sighed.
- —Ah then indeed, he said, poor little Paddy wouldn’t grudge us a laugh.
- Many a good one he told himself.
- —The Lord forgive me! Mr Power said, wiping his wet eyes with his
- fingers. Poor Paddy! I little thought a week ago when I saw him last
- and he was in his usual health that I’d be driving after him like this.
- He’s gone from us.
- —As decent a little man as ever wore a hat, Mr Dedalus said. He went
- very suddenly.
- —Breakdown, Martin Cunningham said. Heart.
- He tapped his chest sadly.
- Blazing face: redhot. Too much John Barleycorn. Cure for a red nose.
- Drink like the devil till it turns adelite. A lot of money he spent
- colouring it.
- Mr Power gazed at the passing houses with rueful apprehension.
- —He had a sudden death, poor fellow, he said.
- —The best death, Mr Bloom said.
- Their wide open eyes looked at him.
- —No suffering, he said. A moment and all is over. Like dying in sleep.
- No-one spoke.
- Dead side of the street this. Dull business by day, land agents,
- temperance hotel, Falconer’s railway guide, civil service college,
- Gill’s, catholic club, the industrious blind. Why? Some reason. Sun or
- wind. At night too. Chummies and slaveys. Under the patronage of the
- late Father Mathew. Foundation stone for Parnell. Breakdown. Heart.
- White horses with white frontlet plumes came round the Rotunda corner,
- galloping. A tiny coffin flashed by. In a hurry to bury. A mourning
- coach. Unmarried. Black for the married. Piebald for bachelors. Dun for
- a nun.
- —Sad, Martin Cunningham said. A child.
- A dwarf’s face, mauve and wrinkled like little Rudy’s was. Dwarf’s
- body, weak as putty, in a whitelined deal box. Burial friendly society
- pays. Penny a week for a sod of turf. Our. Little. Beggar. Baby. Meant
- nothing. Mistake of nature. If it’s healthy it’s from the mother. If
- not from the man. Better luck next time.
- —Poor little thing, Mr Dedalus said. It’s well out of it.
- The carriage climbed more slowly the hill of Rutland square. Rattle his
- bones. Over the stones. Only a pauper. Nobody owns.
- —In the midst of life, Martin Cunningham said.
- —But the worst of all, Mr Power said, is the man who takes his own
- life.
- Martin Cunningham drew out his watch briskly, coughed and put it back.
- —The greatest disgrace to have in the family, Mr Power added.
- —Temporary insanity, of course, Martin Cunningham said decisively. We
- must take a charitable view of it.
- —They say a man who does it is a coward, Mr Dedalus said.
- —It is not for us to judge, Martin Cunningham said.
- Mr Bloom, about to speak, closed his lips again. Martin Cunningham’s
- large eyes. Looking away now. Sympathetic human man he is. Intelligent.
- Like Shakespeare’s face. Always a good word to say. They have no mercy
- on that here or infanticide. Refuse christian burial. They used to
- drive a stake of wood through his heart in the grave. As if it wasn’t
- broken already. Yet sometimes they repent too late. Found in the
- riverbed clutching rushes. He looked at me. And that awful drunkard of
- a wife of his. Setting up house for her time after time and then
- pawning the furniture on him every Saturday almost. Leading him the
- life of the damned. Wear the heart out of a stone, that. Monday
- morning. Start afresh. Shoulder to the wheel. Lord, she must have
- looked a sight that night Dedalus told me he was in there. Drunk about
- the place and capering with Martin’s umbrella.
- And they call me the jewel of Asia,
- Of Asia,
- The geisha.
- He looked away from me. He knows. Rattle his bones.
- That afternoon of the inquest. The redlabelled bottle on the table. The
- room in the hotel with hunting pictures. Stuffy it was. Sunlight
- through the slats of the Venetian blind. The coroner’s sunlit ears, big
- and hairy. Boots giving evidence. Thought he was asleep first. Then saw
- like yellow streaks on his face. Had slipped down to the foot of the
- bed. Verdict: overdose. Death by misadventure. The letter. For my son
- Leopold.
- No more pain. Wake no more. Nobody owns.
- The carriage rattled swiftly along Blessington street. Over the stones.
- —We are going the pace, I think, Martin Cunningham said.
- —God grant he doesn’t upset us on the road, Mr Power said.
- —I hope not, Martin Cunningham said. That will be a great race tomorrow
- in Germany. The Gordon Bennett.
- —Yes, by Jove, Mr Dedalus said. That will be worth seeing, faith.
- As they turned into Berkeley street a streetorgan near the Basin sent
- over and after them a rollicking rattling song of the halls. Has
- anybody here seen Kelly? Kay ee double ell wy. Dead March from _Saul._
- He’s as bad as old Antonio. He left me on my ownio. Pirouette! The
- _Mater Misericordiae_. Eccles street. My house down there. Big place.
- Ward for incurables there. Very encouraging. Our Lady’s Hospice for the
- dying. Deadhouse handy underneath. Where old Mrs Riordan died. They
- look terrible the women. Her feeding cup and rubbing her mouth with the
- spoon. Then the screen round her bed for her to die. Nice young student
- that was dressed that bite the bee gave me. He’s gone over to the
- lying-in hospital they told me. From one extreme to the other.
- The carriage galloped round a corner: stopped.
- —What’s wrong now?
- A divided drove of branded cattle passed the windows, lowing, slouching
- by on padded hoofs, whisking their tails slowly on their clotted bony
- croups. Outside them and through them ran raddled sheep bleating their
- fear.
- —Emigrants, Mr Power said.
- —Huuuh! the drover’s voice cried, his switch sounding on their flanks.
- Huuuh! out of that!
- Thursday, of course. Tomorrow is killing day. Springers. Cuffe sold
- them about twentyseven quid each. For Liverpool probably. Roastbeef for
- old England. They buy up all the juicy ones. And then the fifth quarter
- lost: all that raw stuff, hide, hair, horns. Comes to a big thing in a
- year. Dead meat trade. Byproducts of the slaughterhouses for tanneries,
- soap, margarine. Wonder if that dodge works now getting dicky meat off
- the train at Clonsilla.
- The carriage moved on through the drove.
- —I can’t make out why the corporation doesn’t run a tramline from the
- parkgate to the quays, Mr Bloom said. All those animals could be taken
- in trucks down to the boats.
- —Instead of blocking up the thoroughfare, Martin Cunningham said. Quite
- right. They ought to.
- —Yes, Mr Bloom said, and another thing I often thought, is to have
- municipal funeral trams like they have in Milan, you know. Run the line
- out to the cemetery gates and have special trams, hearse and carriage
- and all. Don’t you see what I mean?
- —O, that be damned for a story, Mr Dedalus said. Pullman car and saloon
- diningroom.
- —A poor lookout for Corny, Mr Power added.
- —Why? Mr Bloom asked, turning to Mr Dedalus. Wouldn’t it be more decent
- than galloping two abreast?
- —Well, there’s something in that, Mr Dedalus granted.
- —And, Martin Cunningham said, we wouldn’t have scenes like that when
- the hearse capsized round Dunphy’s and upset the coffin on to the road.
- —That was terrible, Mr Power’s shocked face said, and the corpse fell
- about the road. Terrible!
- —First round Dunphy’s, Mr Dedalus said, nodding. Gordon Bennett cup.
- —Praises be to God! Martin Cunningham said piously.
- Bom! Upset. A coffin bumped out on to the road. Burst open. Paddy
- Dignam shot out and rolling over stiff in the dust in a brown habit too
- large for him. Red face: grey now. Mouth fallen open. Asking what’s up
- now. Quite right to close it. Looks horrid open. Then the insides
- decompose quickly. Much better to close up all the orifices. Yes, also.
- With wax. The sphincter loose. Seal up all.
- —Dunphy’s, Mr Power announced as the carriage turned right.
- Dunphy’s corner. Mourning coaches drawn up, drowning their grief. A
- pause by the wayside. Tiptop position for a pub. Expect we’ll pull up
- here on the way back to drink his health. Pass round the consolation.
- Elixir of life.
- But suppose now it did happen. Would he bleed if a nail say cut him in
- the knocking about? He would and he wouldn’t, I suppose. Depends on
- where. The circulation stops. Still some might ooze out of an artery.
- It would be better to bury them in red: a dark red.
- In silence they drove along Phibsborough road. An empty hearse trotted
- by, coming from the cemetery: looks relieved.
- Crossguns bridge: the royal canal.
- Water rushed roaring through the sluices. A man stood on his dropping
- barge, between clamps of turf. On the towpath by the lock a
- slacktethered horse. Aboard of the _Bugabu._
- Their eyes watched him. On the slow weedy waterway he had floated on
- his raft coastward over Ireland drawn by a haulage rope past beds of
- reeds, over slime, mudchoked bottles, carrion dogs. Athlone, Mullingar,
- Moyvalley, I could make a walking tour to see Milly by the canal. Or
- cycle down. Hire some old crock, safety. Wren had one the other day at
- the auction but a lady’s. Developing waterways. James M’Cann’s hobby to
- row me o’er the ferry. Cheaper transit. By easy stages. Houseboats.
- Camping out. Also hearses. To heaven by water. Perhaps I will without
- writing. Come as a surprise, Leixlip, Clonsilla. Dropping down lock by
- lock to Dublin. With turf from the midland bogs. Salute. He lifted his
- brown straw hat, saluting Paddy Dignam.
- They drove on past Brian Boroimhe house. Near it now.
- —I wonder how is our friend Fogarty getting on, Mr Power said.
- —Better ask Tom Kernan, Mr Dedalus said.
- —How is that? Martin Cunningham said. Left him weeping, I suppose?
- —Though lost to sight, Mr Dedalus said, to memory dear.
- The carriage steered left for Finglas road.
- The stonecutter’s yard on the right. Last lap. Crowded on the spit of
- land silent shapes appeared, white, sorrowful, holding out calm hands,
- knelt in grief, pointing. Fragments of shapes, hewn. In white silence:
- appealing. The best obtainable. Thos. H. Dennany, monumental builder
- and sculptor.
- Passed.
- On the curbstone before Jimmy Geary, the sexton’s, an old tramp sat,
- grumbling, emptying the dirt and stones out of his huge dustbrown
- yawning boot. After life’s journey.
- Gloomy gardens then went by: one by one: gloomy houses.
- Mr Power pointed.
- —That is where Childs was murdered, he said. The last house.
- —So it is, Mr Dedalus said. A gruesome case. Seymour Bushe got him off.
- Murdered his brother. Or so they said.
- —The crown had no evidence, Mr Power said.
- —Only circumstantial, Martin Cunningham added. That’s the maxim of the
- law. Better for ninetynine guilty to escape than for one innocent
- person to be wrongfully condemned.
- They looked. Murderer’s ground. It passed darkly. Shuttered,
- tenantless, unweeded garden. Whole place gone to hell. Wrongfully
- condemned. Murder. The murderer’s image in the eye of the murdered.
- They love reading about it. Man’s head found in a garden. Her clothing
- consisted of. How she met her death. Recent outrage. The weapon used.
- Murderer is still at large. Clues. A shoelace. The body to be exhumed.
- Murder will out.
- Cramped in this carriage. She mightn’t like me to come that way without
- letting her know. Must be careful about women. Catch them once with
- their pants down. Never forgive you after. Fifteen.
- The high railings of Prospect rippled past their gaze. Dark poplars,
- rare white forms. Forms more frequent, white shapes thronged amid the
- trees, white forms and fragments streaming by mutely, sustaining vain
- gestures on the air.
- The felly harshed against the curbstone: stopped. Martin Cunningham put
- out his arm and, wrenching back the handle, shoved the door open with
- his knee. He stepped out. Mr Power and Mr Dedalus followed.
- Change that soap now. Mr Bloom’s hand unbuttoned his hip pocket swiftly
- and transferred the paperstuck soap to his inner handkerchief pocket.
- He stepped out of the carriage, replacing the newspaper his other hand
- still held.
- Paltry funeral: coach and three carriages. It’s all the same.
- Pallbearers, gold reins, requiem mass, firing a volley. Pomp of death.
- Beyond the hind carriage a hawker stood by his barrow of cakes and
- fruit. Simnel cakes those are, stuck together: cakes for the dead.
- Dogbiscuits. Who ate them? Mourners coming out.
- He followed his companions. Mr Kernan and Ned Lambert followed, Hynes
- walking after them. Corny Kelleher stood by the opened hearse and took
- out the two wreaths. He handed one to the boy.
- Where is that child’s funeral disappeared to?
- A team of horses passed from Finglas with toiling plodding tread,
- dragging through the funereal silence a creaking waggon on which lay a
- granite block. The waggoner marching at their head saluted.
- Coffin now. Got here before us, dead as he is. Horse looking round at
- it with his plume skeowways. Dull eye: collar tight on his neck,
- pressing on a bloodvessel or something. Do they know what they cart out
- here every day? Must be twenty or thirty funerals every day. Then Mount
- Jerome for the protestants. Funerals all over the world everywhere
- every minute. Shovelling them under by the cartload doublequick.
- Thousands every hour. Too many in the world.
- Mourners came out through the gates: woman and a girl. Leanjawed harpy,
- hard woman at a bargain, her bonnet awry. Girl’s face stained with dirt
- and tears, holding the woman’s arm, looking up at her for a sign to
- cry. Fish’s face, bloodless and livid.
- The mutes shouldered the coffin and bore it in through the gates. So
- much dead weight. Felt heavier myself stepping out of that bath. First
- the stiff: then the friends of the stiff. Corny Kelleher and the boy
- followed with their wreaths. Who is that beside them? Ah, the
- brother-in-law.
- All walked after.
- Martin Cunningham whispered:
- —I was in mortal agony with you talking of suicide before Bloom.
- —What? Mr Power whispered. How so?
- —His father poisoned himself, Martin Cunningham whispered. Had the
- Queen’s hotel in Ennis. You heard him say he was going to Clare.
- Anniversary.
- —O God! Mr Power whispered. First I heard of it. Poisoned himself?
- He glanced behind him to where a face with dark thinking eyes followed
- towards the cardinal’s mausoleum. Speaking.
- —Was he insured? Mr Bloom asked.
- —I believe so, Mr Kernan answered. But the policy was heavily
- mortgaged. Martin is trying to get the youngster into Artane.
- —How many children did he leave?
- —Five. Ned Lambert says he’ll try to get one of the girls into Todd’s.
- —A sad case, Mr Bloom said gently. Five young children.
- —A great blow to the poor wife, Mr Kernan added.
- —Indeed yes, Mr Bloom agreed.
- Has the laugh at him now.
- He looked down at the boots he had blacked and polished. She had
- outlived him. Lost her husband. More dead for her than for me. One must
- outlive the other. Wise men say. There are more women than men in the
- world. Condole with her. Your terrible loss. I hope you’ll soon follow
- him. For Hindu widows only. She would marry another. Him? No. Yet who
- knows after. Widowhood not the thing since the old queen died. Drawn on
- a guncarriage. Victoria and Albert. Frogmore memorial mourning. But in
- the end she put a few violets in her bonnet. Vain in her heart of
- hearts. All for a shadow. Consort not even a king. Her son was the
- substance. Something new to hope for not like the past she wanted back,
- waiting. It never comes. One must go first: alone, under the ground:
- and lie no more in her warm bed.
- —How are you, Simon? Ned Lambert said softly, clasping hands. Haven’t
- seen you for a month of Sundays.
- —Never better. How are all in Cork’s own town?
- —I was down there for the Cork park races on Easter Monday, Ned Lambert
- said. Same old six and eightpence. Stopped with Dick Tivy.
- —And how is Dick, the solid man?
- —Nothing between himself and heaven, Ned Lambert answered.
- —By the holy Paul! Mr Dedalus said in subdued wonder. Dick Tivy bald?
- —Martin is going to get up a whip for the youngsters, Ned Lambert said,
- pointing ahead. A few bob a skull. Just to keep them going till the
- insurance is cleared up.
- —Yes, yes, Mr Dedalus said dubiously. Is that the eldest boy in front?
- —Yes, Ned Lambert said, with the wife’s brother. John Henry Menton is
- behind. He put down his name for a quid.
- —I’ll engage he did, Mr Dedalus said. I often told poor Paddy he ought
- to mind that job. John Henry is not the worst in the world.
- —How did he lose it? Ned Lambert asked. Liquor, what?
- —Many a good man’s fault, Mr Dedalus said with a sigh.
- They halted about the door of the mortuary chapel. Mr Bloom stood
- behind the boy with the wreath looking down at his sleekcombed hair and
- at the slender furrowed neck inside his brandnew collar. Poor boy! Was
- he there when the father? Both unconscious. Lighten up at the last
- moment and recognise for the last time. All he might have done. I owe
- three shillings to O’Grady. Would he understand? The mutes bore the
- coffin into the chapel. Which end is his head?
- After a moment he followed the others in, blinking in the screened
- light. The coffin lay on its bier before the chancel, four tall yellow
- candles at its corners. Always in front of us. Corny Kelleher, laying a
- wreath at each fore corner, beckoned to the boy to kneel. The mourners
- knelt here and there in prayingdesks. Mr Bloom stood behind near the
- font and, when all had knelt, dropped carefully his unfolded newspaper
- from his pocket and knelt his right knee upon it. He fitted his black
- hat gently on his left knee and, holding its brim, bent over piously.
- A server bearing a brass bucket with something in it came out through a
- door. The whitesmocked priest came after him, tidying his stole with
- one hand, balancing with the other a little book against his toad’s
- belly. Who’ll read the book? I, said the rook.
- They halted by the bier and the priest began to read out of his book
- with a fluent croak.
- Father Coffey. I knew his name was like a coffin. _Dominenamine._ Bully
- about the muzzle he looks. Bosses the show. Muscular christian. Woe
- betide anyone that looks crooked at him: priest. Thou art Peter. Burst
- sideways like a sheep in clover Dedalus says he will. With a belly on
- him like a poisoned pup. Most amusing expressions that man finds. Hhhn:
- burst sideways.
- _—Non intres in judicium cum servo tuo, Domine._
- Makes them feel more important to be prayed over in Latin. Requiem
- mass. Crape weepers. Blackedged notepaper. Your name on the altarlist.
- Chilly place this. Want to feed well, sitting in there all the morning
- in the gloom kicking his heels waiting for the next please. Eyes of a
- toad too. What swells him up that way? Molly gets swelled after
- cabbage. Air of the place maybe. Looks full up of bad gas. Must be an
- infernal lot of bad gas round the place. Butchers, for instance: they
- get like raw beefsteaks. Who was telling me? Mervyn Browne. Down in the
- vaults of saint Werburgh’s lovely old organ hundred and fifty they have
- to bore a hole in the coffins sometimes to let out the bad gas and burn
- it. Out it rushes: blue. One whiff of that and you’re a goner.
- My kneecap is hurting me. Ow. That’s better.
- The priest took a stick with a knob at the end of it out of the boy’s
- bucket and shook it over the coffin. Then he walked to the other end
- and shook it again. Then he came back and put it back in the bucket. As
- you were before you rested. It’s all written down: he has to do it.
- _—Et ne nos inducas in tentationem._
- The server piped the answers in the treble. I often thought it would be
- better to have boy servants. Up to fifteen or so. After that, of course
- ...
- Holy water that was, I expect. Shaking sleep out of it. He must be fed
- up with that job, shaking that thing over all the corpses they trot up.
- What harm if he could see what he was shaking it over. Every mortal day
- a fresh batch: middleaged men, old women, children, women dead in
- childbirth, men with beards, baldheaded businessmen, consumptive girls
- with little sparrows’ breasts. All the year round he prayed the same
- thing over them all and shook water on top of them: sleep. On Dignam
- now.
- _—In paradisum._
- Said he was going to paradise or is in paradise. Says that over
- everybody. Tiresome kind of a job. But he has to say something.
- The priest closed his book and went off, followed by the server. Corny
- Kelleher opened the sidedoors and the gravediggers came in, hoisted the
- coffin again, carried it out and shoved it on their cart. Corny
- Kelleher gave one wreath to the boy and one to the brother-in-law. All
- followed them out of the sidedoors into the mild grey air. Mr Bloom
- came last folding his paper again into his pocket. He gazed gravely at
- the ground till the coffincart wheeled off to the left. The metal
- wheels ground the gravel with a sharp grating cry and the pack of blunt
- boots followed the trundled barrow along a lane of sepulchres.
- The ree the ra the ree the ra the roo. Lord, I mustn’t lilt here.
- —The O’Connell circle, Mr Dedalus said about him.
- Mr Power’s soft eyes went up to the apex of the lofty cone.
- —He’s at rest, he said, in the middle of his people, old Dan O’. But
- his heart is buried in Rome. How many broken hearts are buried here,
- Simon!
- —Her grave is over there, Jack, Mr Dedalus said. I’ll soon be stretched
- beside her. Let Him take me whenever He likes.
- Breaking down, he began to weep to himself quietly, stumbling a little
- in his walk. Mr Power took his arm.
- —She’s better where she is, he said kindly.
- —I suppose so, Mr Dedalus said with a weak gasp. I suppose she is in
- heaven if there is a heaven.
- Corny Kelleher stepped aside from his rank and allowed the mourners to
- plod by.
- —Sad occasions, Mr Kernan began politely.
- Mr Bloom closed his eyes and sadly twice bowed his head.
- —The others are putting on their hats, Mr Kernan said. I suppose we can
- do so too. We are the last. This cemetery is a treacherous place.
- They covered their heads.
- —The reverend gentleman read the service too quickly, don’t you think?
- Mr Kernan said with reproof.
- Mr Bloom nodded gravely looking in the quick bloodshot eyes. Secret
- eyes, secretsearching. Mason, I think: not sure. Beside him again. We
- are the last. In the same boat. Hope he’ll say something else.
- Mr Kernan added:
- —The service of the Irish church used in Mount Jerome is simpler, more
- impressive I must say.
- Mr Bloom gave prudent assent. The language of course was another thing.
- Mr Kernan said with solemnity:
- —_I am the resurrection and the life_. That touches a man’s inmost
- heart.
- —It does, Mr Bloom said.
- Your heart perhaps but what price the fellow in the six feet by two
- with his toes to the daisies? No touching that. Seat of the affections.
- Broken heart. A pump after all, pumping thousands of gallons of blood
- every day. One fine day it gets bunged up: and there you are. Lots of
- them lying around here: lungs, hearts, livers. Old rusty pumps: damn
- the thing else. The resurrection and the life. Once you are dead you
- are dead. That last day idea. Knocking them all up out of their graves.
- Come forth, Lazarus! And he came fifth and lost the job. Get up! Last
- day! Then every fellow mousing around for his liver and his lights and
- the rest of his traps. Find damn all of himself that morning.
- Pennyweight of powder in a skull. Twelve grammes one pennyweight. Troy
- measure.
- Corny Kelleher fell into step at their side.
- —Everything went off A1, he said. What?
- He looked on them from his drawling eye. Policeman’s shoulders. With
- your tooraloom tooraloom.
- —As it should be, Mr Kernan said.
- —What? Eh? Corny Kelleher said.
- Mr Kernan assured him.
- —Who is that chap behind with Tom Kernan? John Henry Menton asked. I
- know his face.
- Ned Lambert glanced back.
- —Bloom, he said, Madame Marion Tweedy that was, is, I mean, the
- soprano. She’s his wife.
- —O, to be sure, John Henry Menton said. I haven’t seen her for some
- time. She was a finelooking woman. I danced with her, wait, fifteen
- seventeen golden years ago, at Mat Dillon’s in Roundtown. And a good
- armful she was.
- He looked behind through the others.
- —What is he? he asked. What does he do? Wasn’t he in the stationery
- line? I fell foul of him one evening, I remember, at bowls.
- Ned Lambert smiled.
- —Yes, he was, he said, in Wisdom Hely’s. A traveller for blottingpaper.
- —In God’s name, John Henry Menton said, what did she marry a coon like
- that for? She had plenty of game in her then.
- —Has still, Ned Lambert said. He does some canvassing for ads.
- John Henry Menton’s large eyes stared ahead.
- The barrow turned into a side lane. A portly man, ambushed among the
- grasses, raised his hat in homage. The gravediggers touched their caps.
- —John O’Connell, Mr Power said pleased. He never forgets a friend.
- Mr O’Connell shook all their hands in silence. Mr Dedalus said:
- —I am come to pay you another visit.
- —My dear Simon, the caretaker answered in a low voice. I don’t want
- your custom at all.
- Saluting Ned Lambert and John Henry Menton he walked on at Martin
- Cunningham’s side puzzling two long keys at his back.
- —Did you hear that one, he asked them, about Mulcahy from the Coombe?
- —I did not, Martin Cunningham said.
- They bent their silk hats in concert and Hynes inclined his ear. The
- caretaker hung his thumbs in the loops of his gold watchchain and spoke
- in a discreet tone to their vacant smiles.
- —They tell the story, he said, that two drunks came out here one foggy
- evening to look for the grave of a friend of theirs. They asked for
- Mulcahy from the Coombe and were told where he was buried. After
- traipsing about in the fog they found the grave sure enough. One of the
- drunks spelt out the name: Terence Mulcahy. The other drunk was
- blinking up at a statue of Our Saviour the widow had got put up.
- The caretaker blinked up at one of the sepulchres they passed. He
- resumed:
- —And, after blinking up at the sacred figure, _Not a bloody bit like
- the man_, says he. _That’s not Mulcahy_, says he, _whoever done it_.
- Rewarded by smiles he fell back and spoke with Corny Kelleher,
- accepting the dockets given him, turning them over and scanning them as
- he walked.
- —That’s all done with a purpose, Martin Cunningham explained to Hynes.
- —I know, Hynes said. I know that.
- —To cheer a fellow up, Martin Cunningham said. It’s pure
- goodheartedness: damn the thing else.
- Mr Bloom admired the caretaker’s prosperous bulk. All want to be on
- good terms with him. Decent fellow, John O’Connell, real good sort.
- Keys: like Keyes’s ad: no fear of anyone getting out. No passout
- checks. _Habeas corpus_. I must see about that ad after the funeral.
- Did I write Ballsbridge on the envelope I took to cover when she
- disturbed me writing to Martha? Hope it’s not chucked in the dead
- letter office. Be the better of a shave. Grey sprouting beard. That’s
- the first sign when the hairs come out grey. And temper getting cross.
- Silver threads among the grey. Fancy being his wife. Wonder he had the
- gumption to propose to any girl. Come out and live in the graveyard.
- Dangle that before her. It might thrill her first. Courting death.
- Shades of night hovering here with all the dead stretched about. The
- shadows of the tombs when churchyards yawn and Daniel O’Connell must be
- a descendant I suppose who is this used to say he was a queer breedy
- man great catholic all the same like a big giant in the dark. Will o’
- the wisp. Gas of graves. Want to keep her mind off it to conceive at
- all. Women especially are so touchy. Tell her a ghost story in bed to
- make her sleep. Have you ever seen a ghost? Well, I have. It was a
- pitchdark night. The clock was on the stroke of twelve. Still they’d
- kiss all right if properly keyed up. Whores in Turkish graveyards.
- Learn anything if taken young. You might pick up a young widow here.
- Men like that. Love among the tombstones. Romeo. Spice of pleasure. In
- the midst of death we are in life. Both ends meet. Tantalising for the
- poor dead. Smell of grilled beefsteaks to the starving. Gnawing their
- vitals. Desire to grig people. Molly wanting to do it at the window.
- Eight children he has anyway.
- He has seen a fair share go under in his time, lying around him field
- after field. Holy fields. More room if they buried them standing.
- Sitting or kneeling you couldn’t. Standing? His head might come up some
- day above ground in a landslip with his hand pointing. All honeycombed
- the ground must be: oblong cells. And very neat he keeps it too: trim
- grass and edgings. His garden Major Gamble calls Mount Jerome. Well, so
- it is. Ought to be flowers of sleep. Chinese cemeteries with giant
- poppies growing produce the best opium Mastiansky told me. The Botanic
- Gardens are just over there. It’s the blood sinking in the earth gives
- new life. Same idea those jews they said killed the christian boy.
- Every man his price. Well preserved fat corpse, gentleman, epicure,
- invaluable for fruit garden. A bargain. By carcass of William
- Wilkinson, auditor and accountant, lately deceased, three pounds
- thirteen and six. With thanks.
- I daresay the soil would be quite fat with corpsemanure, bones, flesh,
- nails. Charnelhouses. Dreadful. Turning green and pink decomposing. Rot
- quick in damp earth. The lean old ones tougher. Then a kind of a
- tallowy kind of a cheesy. Then begin to get black, black treacle oozing
- out of them. Then dried up. Deathmoths. Of course the cells or whatever
- they are go on living. Changing about. Live for ever practically.
- Nothing to feed on feed on themselves.
- But they must breed a devil of a lot of maggots. Soil must be simply
- swirling with them. Your head it simply swurls. Those pretty little
- seaside gurls. He looks cheerful enough over it. Gives him a sense of
- power seeing all the others go under first. Wonder how he looks at
- life. Cracking his jokes too: warms the cockles of his heart. The one
- about the bulletin. Spurgeon went to heaven 4 a.m. this morning. 11
- p.m. (closing time). Not arrived yet. Peter. The dead themselves the
- men anyhow would like to hear an odd joke or the women to know what’s
- in fashion. A juicy pear or ladies’ punch, hot, strong and sweet. Keep
- out the damp. You must laugh sometimes so better do it that way.
- Gravediggers in _Hamlet_. Shows the profound knowledge of the human
- heart. Daren’t joke about the dead for two years at least. _De mortuis
- nil nisi prius_. Go out of mourning first. Hard to imagine his funeral.
- Seems a sort of a joke. Read your own obituary notice they say you live
- longer. Gives you second wind. New lease of life.
- —How many have you for tomorrow? the caretaker asked.
- —Two, Corny Kelleher said. Half ten and eleven.
- The caretaker put the papers in his pocket. The barrow had ceased to
- trundle. The mourners split and moved to each side of the hole,
- stepping with care round the graves. The gravediggers bore the coffin
- and set its nose on the brink, looping the bands round it.
- Burying him. We come to bury Cæsar. His ides of March or June. He
- doesn’t know who is here nor care. Now who is that lankylooking galoot
- over there in the macintosh? Now who is he I’d like to know? Now I’d
- give a trifle to know who he is. Always someone turns up you never
- dreamt of. A fellow could live on his lonesome all his life. Yes, he
- could. Still he’d have to get someone to sod him after he died though
- he could dig his own grave. We all do. Only man buries. No, ants too.
- First thing strikes anybody. Bury the dead. Say Robinson Crusoe was
- true to life. Well then Friday buried him. Every Friday buries a
- Thursday if you come to look at it.
- O, poor Robinson Crusoe!
- How could you possibly do so?
- Poor Dignam! His last lie on the earth in his box. When you think of
- them all it does seem a waste of wood. All gnawed through. They could
- invent a handsome bier with a kind of panel sliding, let it down that
- way. Ay but they might object to be buried out of another fellow’s.
- They’re so particular. Lay me in my native earth. Bit of clay from the
- holy land. Only a mother and deadborn child ever buried in the one
- coffin. I see what it means. I see. To protect him as long as possible
- even in the earth. The Irishman’s house is his coffin. Embalming in
- catacombs, mummies the same idea.
- Mr Bloom stood far back, his hat in his hand, counting the bared heads.
- Twelve. I’m thirteen. No. The chap in the macintosh is thirteen.
- Death’s number. Where the deuce did he pop out of? He wasn’t in the
- chapel, that I’ll swear. Silly superstition that about thirteen.
- Nice soft tweed Ned Lambert has in that suit. Tinge of purple. I had
- one like that when we lived in Lombard street west. Dressy fellow he
- was once. Used to change three suits in the day. Must get that grey
- suit of mine turned by Mesias. Hello. It’s dyed. His wife I forgot he’s
- not married or his landlady ought to have picked out those threads for
- him.
- The coffin dived out of sight, eased down by the men straddled on the
- gravetrestles. They struggled up and out: and all uncovered. Twenty.
- Pause.
- If we were all suddenly somebody else.
- Far away a donkey brayed. Rain. No such ass. Never see a dead one, they
- say. Shame of death. They hide. Also poor papa went away.
- Gentle sweet air blew round the bared heads in a whisper. Whisper. The
- boy by the gravehead held his wreath with both hands staring quietly in
- the black open space. Mr Bloom moved behind the portly kindly
- caretaker. Wellcut frockcoat. Weighing them up perhaps to see which
- will go next. Well, it is a long rest. Feel no more. It’s the moment
- you feel. Must be damned unpleasant. Can’t believe it at first. Mistake
- must be: someone else. Try the house opposite. Wait, I wanted to. I
- haven’t yet. Then darkened deathchamber. Light they want. Whispering
- around you. Would you like to see a priest? Then rambling and
- wandering. Delirium all you hid all your life. The death struggle. His
- sleep is not natural. Press his lower eyelid. Watching is his nose
- pointed is his jaw sinking are the soles of his feet yellow. Pull the
- pillow away and finish it off on the floor since he’s doomed. Devil in
- that picture of sinner’s death showing him a woman. Dying to embrace
- her in his shirt. Last act of _Lucia. Shall I nevermore behold thee_?
- Bam! He expires. Gone at last. People talk about you a bit: forget you.
- Don’t forget to pray for him. Remember him in your prayers. Even
- Parnell. Ivy day dying out. Then they follow: dropping into a hole, one
- after the other.
- We are praying now for the repose of his soul. Hoping you’re well and
- not in hell. Nice change of air. Out of the fryingpan of life into the
- fire of purgatory.
- Does he ever think of the hole waiting for himself? They say you do
- when you shiver in the sun. Someone walking over it. Callboy’s warning.
- Near you. Mine over there towards Finglas, the plot I bought. Mamma,
- poor mamma, and little Rudy.
- The gravediggers took up their spades and flung heavy clods of clay in
- on the coffin. Mr Bloom turned away his face. And if he was alive all
- the time? Whew! By jingo, that would be awful! No, no: he is dead, of
- course. Of course he is dead. Monday he died. They ought to have some
- law to pierce the heart and make sure or an electric clock or a
- telephone in the coffin and some kind of a canvas airhole. Flag of
- distress. Three days. Rather long to keep them in summer. Just as well
- to get shut of them as soon as you are sure there’s no.
- The clay fell softer. Begin to be forgotten. Out of sight, out of mind.
- The caretaker moved away a few paces and put on his hat. Had enough of
- it. The mourners took heart of grace, one by one, covering themselves
- without show. Mr Bloom put on his hat and saw the portly figure make
- its way deftly through the maze of graves. Quietly, sure of his ground,
- he traversed the dismal fields.
- Hynes jotting down something in his notebook. Ah, the names. But he
- knows them all. No: coming to me.
- —I am just taking the names, Hynes said below his breath. What is your
- christian name? I’m not sure.
- —L, Mr Bloom said. Leopold. And you might put down M’Coy’s name too. He
- asked me to.
- —Charley, Hynes said writing. I know. He was on the _Freeman_ once.
- So he was before he got the job in the morgue under Louis Byrne. Good
- idea a postmortem for doctors. Find out what they imagine they know. He
- died of a Tuesday. Got the run. Levanted with the cash of a few ads.
- Charley, you’re my darling. That was why he asked me to. O well, does
- no harm. I saw to that, M’Coy. Thanks, old chap: much obliged. Leave
- him under an obligation: costs nothing.
- —And tell us, Hynes said, do you know that fellow in the, fellow was
- over there in the...
- He looked around.
- —Macintosh. Yes, I saw him, Mr Bloom said. Where is he now?
- —M’Intosh, Hynes said scribbling. I don’t know who he is. Is that his
- name?
- He moved away, looking about him.
- —No, Mr Bloom began, turning and stopping. I say, Hynes!
- Didn’t hear. What? Where has he disappeared to? Not a sign. Well of all
- the. Has anybody here seen? Kay ee double ell. Become invisible. Good
- Lord, what became of him?
- A seventh gravedigger came beside Mr Bloom to take up an idle spade.
- —O, excuse me!
- He stepped aside nimbly.
- Clay, brown, damp, began to be seen in the hole. It rose. Nearly over.
- A mound of damp clods rose more, rose, and the gravediggers rested
- their spades. All uncovered again for a few instants. The boy propped
- his wreath against a corner: the brother-in-law his on a lump. The
- gravediggers put on their caps and carried their earthy spades towards
- the barrow. Then knocked the blades lightly on the turf: clean. One
- bent to pluck from the haft a long tuft of grass. One, leaving his
- mates, walked slowly on with shouldered weapon, its blade blueglancing.
- Silently at the gravehead another coiled the coffinband. His navelcord.
- The brother-in-law, turning away, placed something in his free hand.
- Thanks in silence. Sorry, sir: trouble. Headshake. I know that. For
- yourselves just.
- The mourners moved away slowly without aim, by devious paths, staying
- at whiles to read a name on a tomb.
- —Let us go round by the chief’s grave, Hynes said. We have time.
- —Let us, Mr Power said.
- They turned to the right, following their slow thoughts. With awe Mr
- Power’s blank voice spoke:
- —Some say he is not in that grave at all. That the coffin was filled
- with stones. That one day he will come again.
- Hynes shook his head.
- —Parnell will never come again, he said. He’s there, all that was
- mortal of him. Peace to his ashes.
- Mr Bloom walked unheeded along his grove by saddened angels, crosses,
- broken pillars, family vaults, stone hopes praying with upcast eyes,
- old Ireland’s hearts and hands. More sensible to spend the money on
- some charity for the living. Pray for the repose of the soul of. Does
- anybody really? Plant him and have done with him. Like down a
- coalshoot. Then lump them together to save time. All souls’ day.
- Twentyseventh I’ll be at his grave. Ten shillings for the gardener. He
- keeps it free of weeds. Old man himself. Bent down double with his
- shears clipping. Near death’s door. Who passed away. Who departed this
- life. As if they did it of their own accord. Got the shove, all of
- them. Who kicked the bucket. More interesting if they told you what
- they were. So and So, wheelwright. I travelled for cork lino. I paid
- five shillings in the pound. Or a woman’s with her saucepan. I cooked
- good Irish stew. Eulogy in a country churchyard it ought to be that
- poem of whose is it Wordsworth or Thomas Campbell. Entered into rest
- the protestants put it. Old Dr Murren’s. The great physician called him
- home. Well it’s God’s acre for them. Nice country residence. Newly
- plastered and painted. Ideal spot to have a quiet smoke and read the
- _Church Times._ Marriage ads they never try to beautify. Rusty wreaths
- hung on knobs, garlands of bronzefoil. Better value that for the money.
- Still, the flowers are more poetical. The other gets rather tiresome,
- never withering. Expresses nothing. Immortelles.
- A bird sat tamely perched on a poplar branch. Like stuffed. Like the
- wedding present alderman Hooper gave us. Hoo! Not a budge out of him.
- Knows there are no catapults to let fly at him. Dead animal even
- sadder. Silly-Milly burying the little dead bird in the kitchen
- matchbox, a daisychain and bits of broken chainies on the grave.
- The Sacred Heart that is: showing it. Heart on his sleeve. Ought to be
- sideways and red it should be painted like a real heart. Ireland was
- dedicated to it or whatever that. Seems anything but pleased. Why this
- infliction? Would birds come then and peck like the boy with the basket
- of fruit but he said no because they ought to have been afraid of the
- boy. Apollo that was.
- How many! All these here once walked round Dublin. Faithful departed.
- As you are now so once were we.
- Besides how could you remember everybody? Eyes, walk, voice. Well, the
- voice, yes: gramophone. Have a gramophone in every grave or keep it in
- the house. After dinner on a Sunday. Put on poor old greatgrandfather.
- Kraahraark! Hellohellohello amawfullyglad kraark awfullygladaseeagain
- hellohello amawf krpthsth. Remind you of the voice like the photograph
- reminds you of the face. Otherwise you couldn’t remember the face after
- fifteen years, say. For instance who? For instance some fellow that
- died when I was in Wisdom Hely’s.
- Rtststr! A rattle of pebbles. Wait. Stop!
- He looked down intently into a stone crypt. Some animal. Wait. There he
- goes.
- An obese grey rat toddled along the side of the crypt, moving the
- pebbles. An old stager: greatgrandfather: he knows the ropes. The grey
- alive crushed itself in under the plinth, wriggled itself in under it.
- Good hidingplace for treasure.
- Who lives there? Are laid the remains of Robert Emery. Robert Emmet was
- buried here by torchlight, wasn’t he? Making his rounds.
- Tail gone now.
- One of those chaps would make short work of a fellow. Pick the bones
- clean no matter who it was. Ordinary meat for them. A corpse is meat
- gone bad. Well and what’s cheese? Corpse of milk. I read in that
- _Voyages in China_ that the Chinese say a white man smells like a
- corpse. Cremation better. Priests dead against it. Devilling for the
- other firm. Wholesale burners and Dutch oven dealers. Time of the
- plague. Quicklime feverpits to eat them. Lethal chamber. Ashes to
- ashes. Or bury at sea. Where is that Parsee tower of silence? Eaten by
- birds. Earth, fire, water. Drowning they say is the pleasantest. See
- your whole life in a flash. But being brought back to life no. Can’t
- bury in the air however. Out of a flying machine. Wonder does the news
- go about whenever a fresh one is let down. Underground communication.
- We learned that from them. Wouldn’t be surprised. Regular square feed
- for them. Flies come before he’s well dead. Got wind of Dignam. They
- wouldn’t care about the smell of it. Saltwhite crumbling mush of
- corpse: smell, taste like raw white turnips.
- The gates glimmered in front: still open. Back to the world again.
- Enough of this place. Brings you a bit nearer every time. Last time I
- was here was Mrs Sinico’s funeral. Poor papa too. The love that kills.
- And even scraping up the earth at night with a lantern like that case I
- read of to get at fresh buried females or even putrefied with running
- gravesores. Give you the creeps after a bit. I will appear to you after
- death. You will see my ghost after death. My ghost will haunt you after
- death. There is another world after death named hell. I do not like
- that other world she wrote. No more do I. Plenty to see and hear and
- feel yet. Feel live warm beings near you. Let them sleep in their
- maggoty beds. They are not going to get me this innings. Warm beds:
- warm fullblooded life.
- Martin Cunningham emerged from a sidepath, talking gravely.
- Solicitor, I think. I know his face. Menton, John Henry, solicitor,
- commissioner for oaths and affidavits. Dignam used to be in his office.
- Mat Dillon’s long ago. Jolly Mat. Convivial evenings. Cold fowl,
- cigars, the Tantalus glasses. Heart of gold really. Yes, Menton. Got
- his rag out that evening on the bowlinggreen because I sailed inside
- him. Pure fluke of mine: the bias. Why he took such a rooted dislike to
- me. Hate at first sight. Molly and Floey Dillon linked under the
- lilactree, laughing. Fellow always like that, mortified if women are
- by.
- Got a dinge in the side of his hat. Carriage probably.
- —Excuse me, sir, Mr Bloom said beside them.
- They stopped.
- —Your hat is a little crushed, Mr Bloom said pointing.
- John Henry Menton stared at him for an instant without moving.
- —There, Martin Cunningham helped, pointing also.
- John Henry Menton took off his hat, bulged out the dinge and smoothed
- the nap with care on his coatsleeve. He clapped the hat on his head
- again.
- —It’s all right now, Martin Cunningham said.
- John Henry Menton jerked his head down in acknowledgment.
- —Thank you, he said shortly.
- They walked on towards the gates. Mr Bloom, chapfallen, drew behind a
- few paces so as not to overhear. Martin laying down the law. Martin
- could wind a sappyhead like that round his little finger, without his
- seeing it.
- Oyster eyes. Never mind. Be sorry after perhaps when it dawns on him.
- Get the pull over him that way.
- Thank you. How grand we are this morning!
- [ 7 ]
- IN THE HEART OF THE HIBERNIAN METROPOLIS
- Before Nelson’s pillar trams slowed, shunted, changed trolley, started
- for Blackrock, Kingstown and Dalkey, Clonskea, Rathgar and Terenure,
- Palmerston Park and upper Rathmines, Sandymount Green, Rathmines,
- Ringsend and Sandymount Tower, Harold’s Cross. The hoarse Dublin United
- Tramway Company’s timekeeper bawled them off:
- —Rathgar and Terenure!
- —Come on, Sandymount Green!
- Right and left parallel clanging ringing a doubledecker and a
- singledeck moved from their railheads, swerved to the down line, glided
- parallel.
- —Start, Palmerston Park!
- THE WEARER OF THE CROWN
- Under the porch of the general post office shoeblacks called and
- polished. Parked in North Prince’s street His Majesty’s vermilion
- mailcars, bearing on their sides the royal initials, E. R., received
- loudly flung sacks of letters, postcards, lettercards, parcels, insured
- and paid, for local, provincial, British and overseas delivery.
- GENTLEMEN OF THE PRESS
- Grossbooted draymen rolled barrels dullthudding out of Prince’s stores
- and bumped them up on the brewery float. On the brewery float bumped
- dullthudding barrels rolled by grossbooted draymen out of Prince’s
- stores.
- —There it is, Red Murray said. Alexander Keyes.
- —Just cut it out, will you? Mr Bloom said, and I’ll take it round to
- the _Telegraph_ office.
- The door of Ruttledge’s office creaked again. Davy Stephens, minute in
- a large capecoat, a small felt hat crowning his ringlets, passed out
- with a roll of papers under his cape, a king’s courier.
- Red Murray’s long shears sliced out the advertisement from the
- newspaper in four clean strokes. Scissors and paste.
- —I’ll go through the printingworks, Mr Bloom said, taking the cut
- square.
- —Of course, if he wants a par, Red Murray said earnestly, a pen behind
- his ear, we can do him one.
- —Right, Mr Bloom said with a nod. I’ll rub that in.
- We.
- WILLIAM BRAYDEN, ESQUIRE, OF OAKLANDS, SANDYMOUNT
- Red Murray touched Mr Bloom’s arm with the shears and whispered:
- —Brayden.
- Mr Bloom turned and saw the liveried porter raise his lettered cap as a
- stately figure entered between the newsboards of the _Weekly Freeman
- and National Press_ and the _Freeman’s Journal and National Press_.
- Dullthudding Guinness’s barrels. It passed statelily up the staircase,
- steered by an umbrella, a solemn beardframed face. The broadcloth back
- ascended each step: back. All his brains are in the nape of his neck,
- Simon Dedalus says. Welts of flesh behind on him. Fat folds of neck,
- fat, neck, fat, neck.
- —Don’t you think his face is like Our Saviour? Red Murray whispered.
- The door of Ruttledge’s office whispered: ee: cree. They always build
- one door opposite another for the wind to. Way in. Way out.
- Our Saviour: beardframed oval face: talking in the dusk. Mary, Martha.
- Steered by an umbrella sword to the footlights: Mario the tenor.
- —Or like Mario, Mr Bloom said.
- —Yes, Red Murray agreed. But Mario was said to be the picture of Our
- Saviour.
- Jesusmario with rougy cheeks, doublet and spindle legs. Hand on his
- heart. In _Martha._
- Co-ome thou lost one,
- Co-ome thou dear one!
- THE CROZIER AND THE PEN
- —His grace phoned down twice this morning, Red Murray said gravely.
- They watched the knees, legs, boots vanish. Neck.
- A telegram boy stepped in nimbly, threw an envelope on the counter and
- stepped off posthaste with a word:
- _—Freeman!_
- Mr Bloom said slowly:
- —Well, he is one of our saviours also.
- A meek smile accompanied him as he lifted the counterflap, as he passed
- in through a sidedoor and along the warm dark stairs and passage, along
- the now reverberating boards. But will he save the circulation?
- Thumping. Thumping.
- He pushed in the glass swingdoor and entered, stepping over strewn
- packing paper. Through a lane of clanking drums he made his way towards
- Nannetti’s reading closet.
- WITH UNFEIGNED REGRET IT IS WE ANNOUNCE THE DISSOLUTION OF A MOST
- RESPECTED DUBLIN BURGESS
- Hynes here too: account of the funeral probably. Thumping. Thump. This
- morning the remains of the late Mr Patrick Dignam. Machines. Smash a
- man to atoms if they got him caught. Rule the world today. His
- machineries are pegging away too. Like these, got out of hand:
- fermenting. Working away, tearing away. And that old grey rat tearing
- to get in.
- HOW A GREAT DAILY ORGAN IS TURNED OUT
- Mr Bloom halted behind the foreman’s spare body, admiring a glossy
- crown.
- Strange he never saw his real country. Ireland my country. Member for
- College green. He boomed that workaday worker tack for all it was
- worth. It’s the ads and side features sell a weekly, not the stale news
- in the official gazette. Queen Anne is dead. Published by authority in
- the year one thousand and. Demesne situate in the townland of
- Rosenallis, barony of Tinnahinch. To all whom it may concern schedule
- pursuant to statute showing return of number of mules and jennets
- exported from Ballina. Nature notes. Cartoons. Phil Blake’s weekly Pat
- and Bull story. Uncle Toby’s page for tiny tots. Country bumpkin’s
- queries. Dear Mr Editor, what is a good cure for flatulence? I’d like
- that part. Learn a lot teaching others. The personal note. M. A. P.
- Mainly all pictures. Shapely bathers on golden strand. World’s biggest
- balloon. Double marriage of sisters celebrated. Two bridegrooms
- laughing heartily at each other. Cuprani too, printer. More Irish than
- the Irish.
- The machines clanked in threefour time. Thump, thump, thump. Now if he
- got paralysed there and no-one knew how to stop them they’d clank on
- and on the same, print it over and over and up and back. Monkeydoodle
- the whole thing. Want a cool head.
- —Well, get it into the evening edition, councillor, Hynes said.
- Soon be calling him my lord mayor. Long John is backing him, they say.
- The foreman, without answering, scribbled press on a corner of the
- sheet and made a sign to a typesetter. He handed the sheet silently
- over the dirty glass screen.
- —Right: thanks, Hynes said moving off.
- Mr Bloom stood in his way.
- —If you want to draw the cashier is just going to lunch, he said,
- pointing backward with his thumb.
- —Did you? Hynes asked.
- —Mm, Mr Bloom said. Look sharp and you’ll catch him.
- —Thanks, old man, Hynes said. I’ll tap him too.
- He hurried on eagerly towards the _Freeman’s Journal_.
- Three bob I lent him in Meagher’s. Three weeks. Third hint.
- WE SEE THE CANVASSER AT WORK
- Mr Bloom laid his cutting on Mr Nannetti’s desk.
- —Excuse me, councillor, he said. This ad, you see. Keyes, you remember?
- Mr Nannetti considered the cutting awhile and nodded.
- —He wants it in for July, Mr Bloom said.
- The foreman moved his pencil towards it.
- —But wait, Mr Bloom said. He wants it changed. Keyes, you see. He wants
- two keys at the top.
- Hell of a racket they make. He doesn’t hear it. Nannan. Iron nerves.
- Maybe he understands what I.
- The foreman turned round to hear patiently and, lifting an elbow, began
- to scratch slowly in the armpit of his alpaca jacket.
- —Like that, Mr Bloom said, crossing his forefingers at the top.
- Let him take that in first.
- Mr Bloom, glancing sideways up from the cross he had made, saw the
- foreman’s sallow face, think he has a touch of jaundice, and beyond the
- obedient reels feeding in huge webs of paper. Clank it. Clank it. Miles
- of it unreeled. What becomes of it after? O, wrap up meat, parcels:
- various uses, thousand and one things.
- Slipping his words deftly into the pauses of the clanking he drew
- swiftly on the scarred woodwork.
- HOUSE OF KEY(E)S
- —Like that, see. Two crossed keys here. A circle. Then here the name.
- Alexander Keyes, tea, wine and spirit merchant. So on.
- Better not teach him his own business.
- —You know yourself, councillor, just what he wants. Then round the top
- in leaded: the house of keys. You see? Do you think that’s a good idea?
- The foreman moved his scratching hand to his lower ribs and scratched
- there quietly.
- —The idea, Mr Bloom said, is the house of keys. You know, councillor,
- the Manx parliament. Innuendo of home rule. Tourists, you know, from
- the isle of Man. Catches the eye, you see. Can you do that?
- I could ask him perhaps about how to pronounce that _voglio._ But then
- if he didn’t know only make it awkward for him. Better not.
- —We can do that, the foreman said. Have you the design?
- —I can get it, Mr Bloom said. It was in a Kilkenny paper. He has a
- house there too. I’ll just run out and ask him. Well, you can do that
- and just a little par calling attention. You know the usual. Highclass
- licensed premises. Longfelt want. So on.
- The foreman thought for an instant.
- —We can do that, he said. Let him give us a three months’ renewal.
- A typesetter brought him a limp galleypage. He began to check it
- silently. Mr Bloom stood by, hearing the loud throbs of cranks,
- watching the silent typesetters at their cases.
- ORTHOGRAPHICAL
- Want to be sure of his spelling. Proof fever. Martin Cunningham forgot
- to give us his spellingbee conundrum this morning. It is amusing to
- view the unpar one ar alleled embarra two ars is it? double ess ment of
- a harassed pedlar while gauging au the symmetry with a y of a peeled
- pear under a cemetery wall. Silly, isn’t it? Cemetery put in of course
- on account of the symmetry.
- I should have said when he clapped on his topper. Thank you. I ought to
- have said something about an old hat or something. No. I could have
- said. Looks as good as new now. See his phiz then.
- Sllt. The nethermost deck of the first machine jogged forward its
- flyboard with sllt the first batch of quirefolded papers. Sllt. Almost
- human the way it sllt to call attention. Doing its level best to speak.
- That door too sllt creaking, asking to be shut. Everything speaks in
- its own way. Sllt.
- NOTED CHURCHMAN AN OCCASIONAL CONTRIBUTOR
- The foreman handed back the galleypage suddenly, saying:
- —Wait. Where’s the archbishop’s letter? It’s to be repeated in the
- _Telegraph._ Where’s what’s his name?
- He looked about him round his loud unanswering machines.
- —Monks, sir? a voice asked from the castingbox.
- —Ay. Where’s Monks?
- —Monks!
- Mr Bloom took up his cutting. Time to get out.
- —Then I’ll get the design, Mr Nannetti, he said, and you’ll give it a
- good place I know.
- —Monks!
- —Yes, sir.
- Three months’ renewal. Want to get some wind off my chest first. Try it
- anyhow. Rub in August: good idea: horseshow month. Ballsbridge.
- Tourists over for the show.
- A DAYFATHER
- He walked on through the caseroom passing an old man, bowed,
- spectacled, aproned. Old Monks, the dayfather. Queer lot of stuff he
- must have put through his hands in his time: obituary notices, pubs’
- ads, speeches, divorce suits, found drowned. Nearing the end of his
- tether now. Sober serious man with a bit in the savingsbank I’d say.
- Wife a good cook and washer. Daughter working the machine in the
- parlour. Plain Jane, no damn nonsense.
- AND IT WAS THE FEAST OF THE PASSOVER
- He stayed in his walk to watch a typesetter neatly distributing type.
- Reads it backwards first. Quickly he does it. Must require some
- practice that. mangiD kcirtaP. Poor papa with his hagadah book, reading
- backwards with his finger to me. Pessach. Next year in Jerusalem. Dear,
- O dear! All that long business about that brought us out of the land of
- Egypt and into the house of bondage _alleluia. Shema Israel Adonai
- Elohenu_. No, that’s the other. Then the twelve brothers, Jacob’s sons.
- And then the lamb and the cat and the dog and the stick and the water
- and the butcher. And then the angel of death kills the butcher and he
- kills the ox and the dog kills the cat. Sounds a bit silly till you
- come to look into it well. Justice it means but it’s everybody eating
- everyone else. That’s what life is after all. How quickly he does that
- job. Practice makes perfect. Seems to see with his fingers.
- Mr Bloom passed on out of the clanking noises through the gallery on to
- the landing. Now am I going to tram it out all the way and then catch
- him out perhaps. Better phone him up first. Number? Yes. Same as
- Citron’s house. Twentyeight. Twentyeight double four.
- ONLY ONCE MORE THAT SOAP
- He went down the house staircase. Who the deuce scrawled all over those
- walls with matches? Looks as if they did it for a bet. Heavy greasy
- smell there always is in those works. Lukewarm glue in Thom’s next door
- when I was there.
- He took out his handkerchief to dab his nose. Citronlemon? Ah, the soap
- I put there. Lose it out of that pocket. Putting back his handkerchief
- he took out the soap and stowed it away, buttoned, into the hip pocket
- of his trousers.
- What perfume does your wife use? I could go home still: tram: something
- I forgot. Just to see: before: dressing. No. Here. No.
- A sudden screech of laughter came from the _Evening Telegraph_ office.
- Know who that is. What’s up? Pop in a minute to phone. Ned Lambert it
- is.
- He entered softly.
- ERIN, GREEN GEM OF THE SILVER SEA
- —The ghost walks, professor MacHugh murmured softly, biscuitfully to
- the dusty windowpane.
- Mr Dedalus, staring from the empty fireplace at Ned Lambert’s quizzing
- face, asked of it sourly:
- —Agonising Christ, wouldn’t it give you a heartburn on your arse?
- Ned Lambert, seated on the table, read on:
- —_Or again, note the meanderings of some purling rill as it babbles on
- its way, tho’ quarrelling with the stony obstacles, to the tumbling
- waters of Neptune’s blue domain, ’mid mossy banks, fanned by gentlest
- zephyrs, played on by the glorious sunlight or ’neath the shadows cast
- o’er its pensive bosom by the overarching leafage of the giants of the
- forest_. What about that, Simon? he asked over the fringe of his
- newspaper. How’s that for high?
- —Changing his drink, Mr Dedalus said.
- Ned Lambert, laughing, struck the newspaper on his knees, repeating:
- —_The pensive bosom and the overarsing leafage_. O boys! O boys!
- —And Xenophon looked upon Marathon, Mr Dedalus said, looking again on
- the fireplace and to the window, and Marathon looked on the sea.
- —That will do, professor MacHugh cried from the window. I don’t want to
- hear any more of the stuff.
- He ate off the crescent of water biscuit he had been nibbling and,
- hungered, made ready to nibble the biscuit in his other hand.
- High falutin stuff. Bladderbags. Ned Lambert is taking a day off I see.
- Rather upsets a man’s day, a funeral does. He has influence they say.
- Old Chatterton, the vicechancellor, is his granduncle or his
- greatgranduncle. Close on ninety they say. Subleader for his death
- written this long time perhaps. Living to spite them. Might go first
- himself. Johnny, make room for your uncle. The right honourable Hedges
- Eyre Chatterton. Daresay he writes him an odd shaky cheque or two on
- gale days. Windfall when he kicks out. Alleluia.
- —Just another spasm, Ned Lambert said.
- —What is it? Mr Bloom asked.
- —A recently discovered fragment of Cicero, professor MacHugh answered
- with pomp of tone. _Our lovely land_.
- SHORT BUT TO THE POINT
- —Whose land? Mr Bloom said simply.
- —Most pertinent question, the professor said between his chews. With an
- accent on the whose.
- —Dan Dawson’s land Mr Dedalus said.
- —Is it his speech last night? Mr Bloom asked.
- Ned Lambert nodded.
- —But listen to this, he said.
- The doorknob hit Mr Bloom in the small of the back as the door was
- pushed in.
- —Excuse me, J. J. O’Molloy said, entering.
- Mr Bloom moved nimbly aside.
- —I beg yours, he said.
- —Good day, Jack.
- —Come in. Come in.
- —Good day.
- —How are you, Dedalus?
- —Well. And yourself?
- J. J. O’Molloy shook his head.
- SAD
- Cleverest fellow at the junior bar he used to be. Decline, poor chap.
- That hectic flush spells finis for a man. Touch and go with him. What’s
- in the wind, I wonder. Money worry.
- —_Or again if we but climb the serried mountain peaks._
- —You’re looking extra.
- —Is the editor to be seen? J. J. O’Molloy asked, looking towards the
- inner door.
- —Very much so, professor MacHugh said. To be seen and heard. He’s in
- his sanctum with Lenehan.
- J. J. O’Molloy strolled to the sloping desk and began to turn back the
- pink pages of the file.
- Practice dwindling. A mighthavebeen. Losing heart. Gambling. Debts of
- honour. Reaping the whirlwind. Used to get good retainers from D. and
- T. Fitzgerald. Their wigs to show the grey matter. Brains on their
- sleeve like the statue in Glasnevin. Believe he does some literary work
- for the _Express_ with Gabriel Conroy. Wellread fellow. Myles Crawford
- began on the _Independent._ Funny the way those newspaper men veer
- about when they get wind of a new opening. Weathercocks. Hot and cold
- in the same breath. Wouldn’t know which to believe. One story good till
- you hear the next. Go for one another baldheaded in the papers and then
- all blows over. Hail fellow well met the next moment.
- —Ah, listen to this for God’ sake, Ned Lambert pleaded. _Or again if we
- but climb the serried mountain peaks..._
- —Bombast! the professor broke in testily. Enough of the inflated
- windbag!
- —_Peaks_, Ned Lambert went on, _towering high on high, to bathe our
- souls, as it were..._
- —Bathe his lips, Mr Dedalus said. Blessed and eternal God! Yes? Is he
- taking anything for it?
- _—As ’twere, in the peerless panorama of Ireland’s portfolio,
- unmatched, despite their wellpraised prototypes in other vaunted prize
- regions, for very beauty, of bosky grove and undulating plain and
- luscious pastureland of vernal green, steeped in the transcendent
- translucent glow of our mild mysterious Irish twilight..._
- HIS NATIVE DORIC
- —The moon, professor MacHugh said. He forgot Hamlet.
- _—That mantles the vista far and wide and wait till the glowing orb of
- the moon shine forth to irradiate her silver effulgence..._
- —O! Mr Dedalus cried, giving vent to a hopeless groan. Shite and
- onions! That’ll do, Ned. Life is too short.
- He took off his silk hat and, blowing out impatiently his bushy
- moustache, welshcombed his hair with raking fingers.
- Ned Lambert tossed the newspaper aside, chuckling with delight. An
- instant after a hoarse bark of laughter burst over professor MacHugh’s
- unshaven blackspectacled face.
- —Doughy Daw! he cried.
- WHAT WETHERUP SAID
- All very fine to jeer at it now in cold print but it goes down like hot
- cake that stuff. He was in the bakery line too, wasn’t he? Why they
- call him Doughy Daw. Feathered his nest well anyhow. Daughter engaged
- to that chap in the inland revenue office with the motor. Hooked that
- nicely. Entertainments. Open house. Big blowout. Wetherup always said
- that. Get a grip of them by the stomach.
- The inner door was opened violently and a scarlet beaked face, crested
- by a comb of feathery hair, thrust itself in. The bold blue eyes stared
- about them and the harsh voice asked:
- —What is it?
- —And here comes the sham squire himself! professor MacHugh said
- grandly.
- —Getonouthat, you bloody old pedagogue! the editor said in recognition.
- —Come, Ned, Mr Dedalus said, putting on his hat. I must get a drink
- after that.
- —Drink! the editor cried. No drinks served before mass.
- —Quite right too, Mr Dedalus said, going out. Come on, Ned.
- Ned Lambert sidled down from the table. The editor’s blue eyes roved
- towards Mr Bloom’s face, shadowed by a smile.
- —Will you join us, Myles? Ned Lambert asked.
- MEMORABLE BATTLES RECALLED
- —North Cork militia! the editor cried, striding to the mantelpiece. We
- won every time! North Cork and Spanish officers!
- —Where was that, Myles? Ned Lambert asked with a reflective glance at
- his toecaps.
- —In Ohio! the editor shouted.
- —So it was, begad, Ned Lambert agreed.
- Passing out he whispered to J. J. O’Molloy:
- —Incipient jigs. Sad case.
- —Ohio! the editor crowed in high treble from his uplifted scarlet face.
- My Ohio!
- —A perfect cretic! the professor said. Long, short and long.
- O, HARP EOLIAN!
- He took a reel of dental floss from his waistcoat pocket and, breaking
- off a piece, twanged it smartly between two and two of his resonant
- unwashed teeth.
- —Bingbang, bangbang.
- Mr Bloom, seeing the coast clear, made for the inner door.
- —Just a moment, Mr Crawford, he said. I just want to phone about an ad.
- He went in.
- —What about that leader this evening? professor MacHugh asked, coming
- to the editor and laying a firm hand on his shoulder.
- —That’ll be all right, Myles Crawford said more calmly. Never you fret.
- Hello, Jack. That’s all right.
- —Good day, Myles, J. J. O’Molloy said, letting the pages he held slip
- limply back on the file. Is that Canada swindle case on today?
- The telephone whirred inside.
- —Twentyeight... No, twenty... Double four... Yes.
- SPOT THE WINNER
- Lenehan came out of the inner office with _Sport_’s tissues.
- —Who wants a dead cert for the Gold cup? he asked. Sceptre with O.
- Madden up.
- He tossed the tissues on to the table.
- Screams of newsboys barefoot in the hall rushed near and the door was
- flung open.
- —Hush, Lenehan said. I hear feetstoops.
- Professor MacHugh strode across the room and seized the cringing urchin
- by the collar as the others scampered out of the hall and down the
- steps. The tissues rustled up in the draught, floated softly in the air
- blue scrawls and under the table came to earth.
- —It wasn’t me, sir. It was the big fellow shoved me, sir.
- —Throw him out and shut the door, the editor said. There’s a hurricane
- blowing.
- Lenehan began to paw the tissues up from the floor, grunting as he
- stooped twice.
- —Waiting for the racing special, sir, the newsboy said. It was Pat
- Farrell shoved me, sir.
- He pointed to two faces peering in round the doorframe.
- —Him, sir.
- —Out of this with you, professor MacHugh said gruffly.
- He hustled the boy out and banged the door to.
- J. J. O’Molloy turned the files crackingly over, murmuring, seeking:
- —Continued on page six, column four.
- —Yes, _Evening Telegraph_ here, Mr Bloom phoned from the inner office.
- Is the boss...? Yes, _Telegraph_... To where? Aha! Which auction
- rooms?... Aha! I see... Right. I’ll catch him.
- A COLLISION ENSUES
- The bell whirred again as he rang off. He came in quickly and bumped
- against Lenehan who was struggling up with the second tissue.
- —_Pardon, monsieur_, Lenehan said, clutching him for an instant and
- making a grimace.
- —My fault, Mr Bloom said, suffering his grip. Are you hurt? I’m in a
- hurry.
- —Knee, Lenehan said.
- He made a comic face and whined, rubbing his knee:
- —The accumulation of the _anno Domini_.
- —Sorry, Mr Bloom said.
- He went to the door and, holding it ajar, paused. J. J. O’Molloy
- slapped the heavy pages over. The noise of two shrill voices, a
- mouthorgan, echoed in the bare hallway from the newsboys squatted on
- the doorsteps:
- We are the boys of Wexford
- Who fought with heart and hand.
- EXIT BLOOM
- —I’m just running round to Bachelor’s walk, Mr Bloom said, about this
- ad of Keyes’s. Want to fix it up. They tell me he’s round there in
- Dillon’s.
- He looked indecisively for a moment at their faces. The editor who,
- leaning against the mantelshelf, had propped his head on his hand,
- suddenly stretched forth an arm amply.
- —Begone! he said. The world is before you.
- —Back in no time, Mr Bloom said, hurrying out.
- J. J. O’Molloy took the tissues from Lenehan’s hand and read them,
- blowing them apart gently, without comment.
- —He’ll get that advertisement, the professor said, staring through his
- blackrimmed spectacles over the crossblind. Look at the young scamps
- after him.
- —Show. Where? Lenehan cried, running to the window.
- A STREET CORTÈGE
- Both smiled over the crossblind at the file of capering newsboys in Mr
- Bloom’s wake, the last zigzagging white on the breeze a mocking kite, a
- tail of white bowknots.
- —Look at the young guttersnipe behind him hue and cry, Lenehan said,
- and you’ll kick. O, my rib risible! Taking off his flat spaugs and the
- walk. Small nines. Steal upon larks.
- He began to mazurka in swift caricature across the floor on sliding
- feet past the fireplace to J. J. O’Molloy who placed the tissues in his
- receiving hands.
- —What’s that? Myles Crawford said with a start. Where are the other two
- gone?
- —Who? the professor said, turning. They’re gone round to the Oval for a
- drink. Paddy Hooper is there with Jack Hall. Came over last night.
- —Come on then, Myles Crawford said. Where’s my hat?
- He walked jerkily into the office behind, parting the vent of his
- jacket, jingling his keys in his back pocket. They jingled then in the
- air and against the wood as he locked his desk drawer.
- —He’s pretty well on, professor MacHugh said in a low voice.
- —Seems to be, J. J. O’Molloy said, taking out a cigarettecase in
- murmuring meditation, but it is not always as it seems. Who has the
- most matches?
- THE CALUMET OF PEACE
- He offered a cigarette to the professor and took one himself. Lenehan
- promptly struck a match for them and lit their cigarettes in turn. J.
- J. O’Molloy opened his case again and offered it.
- —_Thanky vous_, Lenehan said, helping himself.
- The editor came from the inner office, a straw hat awry on his brow. He
- declaimed in song, pointing sternly at professor MacHugh:
- ’Twas rank and fame that tempted thee,
- ’Twas empire charmed thy heart.
- The professor grinned, locking his long lips.
- —Eh? You bloody old Roman empire? Myles Crawford said.
- He took a cigarette from the open case. Lenehan, lighting it for him
- with quick grace, said:
- —Silence for my brandnew riddle!
- —_Imperium romanum_, J. J. O’Molloy said gently. It sounds nobler than
- British or Brixton. The word reminds one somehow of fat in the fire.
- Myles Crawford blew his first puff violently towards the ceiling.
- —That’s it, he said. We are the fat. You and I are the fat in the fire.
- We haven’t got the chance of a snowball in hell.
- THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
- —Wait a moment, professor MacHugh said, raising two quiet claws. We
- mustn’t be led away by words, by sounds of words. We think of Rome,
- imperial, imperious, imperative.
- He extended elocutionary arms from frayed stained shirtcuffs, pausing:
- —What was their civilisation? Vast, I allow: but vile. Cloacae: sewers.
- The Jews in the wilderness and on the mountaintop said: _It is meet to
- be here. Let us build an altar to Jehovah_. The Roman, like the
- Englishman who follows in his footsteps, brought to every new shore on
- which he set his foot (on our shore he never set it) only his cloacal
- obsession. He gazed about him in his toga and he said: _It is meet to
- be here. Let us construct a watercloset._
- —Which they accordingly did do, Lenehan said. Our old ancient
- ancestors, as we read in the first chapter of Guinness’s, were partial
- to the running stream.
- —They were nature’s gentlemen, J. J. O’Molloy murmured. But we have
- also Roman law.
- —And Pontius Pilate is its prophet, professor MacHugh responded.
- —Do you know that story about chief baron Palles? J. J. O’Molloy asked.
- It was at the royal university dinner. Everything was going swimmingly
- ...
- —First my riddle, Lenehan said. Are you ready?
- Mr O’Madden Burke, tall in copious grey of Donegal tweed, came in from
- the hallway. Stephen Dedalus, behind him, uncovered as he entered.
- —_Entrez, mes enfants!_ Lenehan cried.
- —I escort a suppliant, Mr O’Madden Burke said melodiously. Youth led by
- Experience visits Notoriety.
- —How do you do? the editor said, holding out a hand. Come in. Your
- governor is just gone.
- ???
- Lenehan said to all:
- —Silence! What opera resembles a railwayline? Reflect, ponder,
- excogitate, reply.
- Stephen handed over the typed sheets, pointing to the title and
- signature.
- —Who? the editor asked.
- Bit torn off.
- —Mr Garrett Deasy, Stephen said.
- —That old pelters, the editor said. Who tore it? Was he short taken?
- On swift sail flaming
- From storm and south
- He comes, pale vampire,
- Mouth to my mouth.
- —Good day, Stephen, the professor said, coming to peer over their
- shoulders. Foot and mouth? Are you turned...?
- Bullockbefriending bard.
- SHINDY IN WELLKNOWN RESTAURANT
- —Good day, sir, Stephen answered blushing. The letter is not mine. Mr
- Garrett Deasy asked me to...
- —O, I know him, Myles Crawford said, and I knew his wife too. The
- bloodiest old tartar God ever made. By Jesus, she had the foot and
- mouth disease and no mistake! The night she threw the soup in the
- waiter’s face in the Star and Garter. Oho!
- A woman brought sin into the world. For Helen, the runaway wife of
- Menelaus, ten years the Greeks. O’Rourke, prince of Breffni.
- —Is he a widower? Stephen asked.
- —Ay, a grass one, Myles Crawford said, his eye running down the
- typescript. Emperor’s horses. Habsburg. An Irishman saved his life on
- the ramparts of Vienna. Don’t you forget! Maximilian Karl O’Donnell,
- graf von Tirconnell in Ireland. Sent his heir over to make the king an
- Austrian fieldmarshal now. Going to be trouble there one day. Wild
- geese. O yes, every time. Don’t you forget that!
- —The moot point is did he forget it, J. J. O’Molloy said quietly,
- turning a horseshoe paperweight. Saving princes is a thank you job.
- Professor MacHugh turned on him.
- —And if not? he said.
- —I’ll tell you how it was, Myles Crawford began. A Hungarian it was one
- day...
- LOST CAUSES NOBLE MARQUESS MENTIONED
- —We were always loyal to lost causes, the professor said. Success for
- us is the death of the intellect and of the imagination. We were never
- loyal to the successful. We serve them. I teach the blatant Latin
- language. I speak the tongue of a race the acme of whose mentality is
- the maxim: time is money. Material domination. _Dominus!_ Lord! Where
- is the spirituality? Lord Jesus? Lord Salisbury? A sofa in a westend
- club. But the Greek!
- KYRIE ELEISON!
- A smile of light brightened his darkrimmed eyes, lengthened his long
- lips.
- —The Greek! he said again. _Kyrios!_ Shining word! The vowels the
- Semite and the Saxon know not. _Kyrie!_ The radiance of the intellect.
- I ought to profess Greek, the language of the mind. _Kyrie eleison!_
- The closetmaker and the cloacamaker will never be lords of our spirit.
- We are liege subjects of the catholic chivalry of Europe that foundered
- at Trafalgar and of the empire of the spirit, not an _imperium,_ that
- went under with the Athenian fleets at Aegospotami. Yes, yes. They went
- under. Pyrrhus, misled by an oracle, made a last attempt to retrieve
- the fortunes of Greece. Loyal to a lost cause.
- He strode away from them towards the window.
- —They went forth to battle, Mr O’Madden Burke said greyly, but they
- always fell.
- —Boohoo! Lenehan wept with a little noise. Owing to a brick received in
- the latter half of the _matinée_. Poor, poor, poor Pyrrhus!
- He whispered then near Stephen’s ear:
- LENEHAN’S LIMERICK
- —_There’s a ponderous pundit MacHugh
- Who wears goggles of ebony hue.
- As he mostly sees double
- To wear them why trouble?
- I can’t see the Joe Miller. Can you?_
- In mourning for Sallust, Mulligan says. Whose mother is beastly dead.
- Myles Crawford crammed the sheets into a sidepocket.
- —That’ll be all right, he said. I’ll read the rest after. That’ll be
- all right.
- Lenehan extended his hands in protest.
- —But my riddle! he said. What opera is like a railwayline?
- —Opera? Mr O’Madden Burke’s sphinx face reriddled.
- Lenehan announced gladly:
- —_The Rose of Castile_. See the wheeze? Rows of cast steel. Gee!
- He poked Mr O’Madden Burke mildly in the spleen. Mr O’Madden Burke fell
- back with grace on his umbrella, feigning a gasp.
- —Help! he sighed. I feel a strong weakness.
- Lenehan, rising to tiptoe, fanned his face rapidly with the rustling
- tissues.
- The professor, returning by way of the files, swept his hand across
- Stephen’s and Mr O’Madden Burke’s loose ties.
- —Paris, past and present, he said. You look like communards.
- —Like fellows who had blown up the Bastile, J. J. O’Molloy said in
- quiet mockery. Or was it you shot the lord lieutenant of Finland
- between you? You look as though you had done the deed. General
- Bobrikoff.
- OMNIUM GATHERUM
- —We were only thinking about it, Stephen said.
- —All the talents, Myles Crawford said. Law, the classics...
- —The turf, Lenehan put in.
- —Literature, the press.
- —If Bloom were here, the professor said. The gentle art of
- advertisement.
- —And Madam Bloom, Mr O’Madden Burke added. The vocal muse. Dublin’s
- prime favourite.
- Lenehan gave a loud cough.
- —Ahem! he said very softly. O, for a fresh of breath air! I caught a
- cold in the park. The gate was open.
- “YOU CAN DO IT!”
- The editor laid a nervous hand on Stephen’s shoulder.
- —I want you to write something for me, he said. Something with a bite
- in it. You can do it. I see it in your face. _In the lexicon of
- youth_...
- See it in your face. See it in your eye. Lazy idle little schemer.
- —Foot and mouth disease! the editor cried in scornful invective. Great
- nationalist meeting in Borris-in-Ossory. All balls! Bulldosing the
- public! Give them something with a bite in it. Put us all into it, damn
- its soul. Father, Son and Holy Ghost and Jakes M’Carthy.
- —We can all supply mental pabulum, Mr O’Madden Burke said.
- Stephen raised his eyes to the bold unheeding stare.
- —He wants you for the pressgang, J. J. O’Molloy said.
- THE GREAT GALLAHER
- —You can do it, Myles Crawford repeated, clenching his hand in
- emphasis. Wait a minute. We’ll paralyse Europe as Ignatius Gallaher
- used to say when he was on the shaughraun, doing billiardmarking in the
- Clarence. Gallaher, that was a pressman for you. That was a pen. You
- know how he made his mark? I’ll tell you. That was the smartest piece
- of journalism ever known. That was in eightyone, sixth of May, time of
- the invincibles, murder in the Phoenix park, before you were born, I
- suppose. I’ll show you.
- He pushed past them to the files.
- —Look at here, he said turning. The _New York World_ cabled for a
- special. Remember that time?
- Professor MacHugh nodded.
- —_New York World_, the editor said, excitedly pushing back his straw
- hat. Where it took place. Tim Kelly, or Kavanagh I mean. Joe Brady and
- the rest of them. Where Skin-the-Goat drove the car. Whole route, see?
- —Skin-the-Goat, Mr O’Madden Burke said. Fitzharris. He has that
- cabman’s shelter, they say, down there at Butt bridge. Holohan told me.
- You know Holohan?
- —Hop and carry one, is it? Myles Crawford said.
- —And poor Gumley is down there too, so he told me, minding stones for
- the corporation. A night watchman.
- Stephen turned in surprise.
- —Gumley? he said. You don’t say so? A friend of my father’s, is it?
- —Never mind Gumley, Myles Crawford cried angrily. Let Gumley mind the
- stones, see they don’t run away. Look at here. What did Ignatius
- Gallaher do? I’ll tell you. Inspiration of genius. Cabled right away.
- Have you _Weekly Freeman_ of 17 March? Right. Have you got that?
- He flung back pages of the files and stuck his finger on a point.
- —Take page four, advertisement for Bransome’s coffee, let us say. Have
- you got that? Right.
- The telephone whirred.
- A DISTANT VOICE
- —I’ll answer it, the professor said, going.
- —B is parkgate. Good.
- His finger leaped and struck point after point, vibrating.
- —T is viceregal lodge. C is where murder took place. K is Knockmaroon
- gate.
- The loose flesh of his neck shook like a cock’s wattles. An illstarched
- dicky jutted up and with a rude gesture he thrust it back into his
- waistcoat.
- —Hello? _Evening Telegraph_ here... Hello?... Who’s there?... Yes...
- Yes... Yes.
- —F to P is the route Skin-the-Goat drove the car for an alibi,
- Inchicore, Roundtown, Windy Arbour, Palmerston Park, Ranelagh. F.A.B.P.
- Got that? X is Davy’s publichouse in upper Leeson street.
- The professor came to the inner door.
- —Bloom is at the telephone, he said.
- —Tell him go to hell, the editor said promptly. X is Davy’s
- publichouse, see?
- CLEVER, VERY
- —Clever, Lenehan said. Very.
- —Gave it to them on a hot plate, Myles Crawford said, the whole bloody
- history.
- Nightmare from which you will never awake.
- —I saw it, the editor said proudly. I was present. Dick Adams, the
- besthearted bloody Corkman the Lord ever put the breath of life in, and
- myself.
- Lenehan bowed to a shape of air, announcing:
- —Madam, I’m Adam. And Able was I ere I saw Elba.
- —History! Myles Crawford cried. The Old Woman of Prince’s street was
- there first. There was weeping and gnashing of teeth over that. Out of
- an advertisement. Gregor Grey made the design for it. That gave him the
- leg up. Then Paddy Hooper worked Tay Pay who took him on to the _Star._
- Now he’s got in with Blumenfeld. That’s press. That’s talent. Pyatt! He
- was all their daddies!
- —The father of scare journalism, Lenehan confirmed, and the
- brother-in-law of Chris Callinan.
- —Hello?... Are you there?... Yes, he’s here still. Come across
- yourself.
- —Where do you find a pressman like that now, eh? the editor cried.
- He flung the pages down.
- —Clamn dever, Lenehan said to Mr O’Madden Burke.
- —Very smart, Mr O’Madden Burke said.
- Professor MacHugh came from the inner office.
- —Talking about the invincibles, he said, did you see that some hawkers
- were up before the recorder...
- —O yes, J. J. O’Molloy said eagerly. Lady Dudley was walking home
- through the park to see all the trees that were blown down by that
- cyclone last year and thought she’d buy a view of Dublin. And it turned
- out to be a commemoration postcard of Joe Brady or Number One or
- Skin-the-Goat. Right outside the viceregal lodge, imagine!
- —They’re only in the hook and eye department, Myles Crawford said.
- Psha! Press and the bar! Where have you a man now at the bar like those
- fellows, like Whiteside, like Isaac Butt, like silvertongued O’Hagan.
- Eh? Ah, bloody nonsense. Psha! Only in the halfpenny place.
- His mouth continued to twitch unspeaking in nervous curls of disdain.
- Would anyone wish that mouth for her kiss? How do you know? Why did you
- write it then?
- RHYMES AND REASONS
- Mouth, south. Is the mouth south someway? Or the south a mouth? Must be
- some. South, pout, out, shout, drouth. Rhymes: two men dressed the
- same, looking the same, two by two.
- ........................ la tua pace
- .................. che parlar ti piace
- Mentre che il vento, come fa, si tace.
- He saw them three by three, approaching girls, in green, in rose, in
- russet, entwining, _per l’aer perso_, in mauve, in purple, _quella
- pacifica oriafiamma_, gold of oriflamme, _di rimirar fè più ardenti._
- But I old men, penitent, leadenfooted, underdarkneath the night: mouth
- south: tomb womb.
- —Speak up for yourself, Mr O’Madden Burke said.
- SUFFICIENT FOR THE DAY...
- J. J. O’Molloy, smiling palely, took up the gage.
- —My dear Myles, he said, flinging his cigarette aside, you put a false
- construction on my words. I hold no brief, as at present advised, for
- the third profession _qua_ profession but your Cork legs are running
- away with you. Why not bring in Henry Grattan and Flood and Demosthenes
- and Edmund Burke? Ignatius Gallaher we all know and his Chapelizod
- boss, Harmsworth of the farthing press, and his American cousin of the
- Bowery guttersheet not to mention _Paddy Kelly’s Budget_, _Pue’s
- Occurrences_ and our watchful friend _The Skibbereen Eagle_. Why bring
- in a master of forensic eloquence like Whiteside? Sufficient for the
- day is the newspaper thereof.
- LINKS WITH BYGONE DAYS OF YORE
- —Grattan and Flood wrote for this very paper, the editor cried in his
- face. Irish volunteers. Where are you now? Established 1763. Dr Lucas.
- Who have you now like John Philpot Curran? Psha!
- —Well, J. J. O’Molloy said, Bushe K.C., for example.
- —Bushe? the editor said. Well, yes: Bushe, yes. He has a strain of it
- in his blood. Kendal Bushe or I mean Seymour Bushe.
- —He would have been on the bench long ago, the professor said, only for
- .... But no matter.
- J. J. O’Molloy turned to Stephen and said quietly and slowly:
- —One of the most polished periods I think I ever listened to in my life
- fell from the lips of Seymour Bushe. It was in that case of fratricide,
- the Childs murder case. Bushe defended him.
- _And in the porches of mine ear did pour._
- By the way how did he find that out? He died in his sleep. Or the other
- story, beast with two backs?
- —What was that? the professor asked.
- ITALIA, MAGISTRA ARTIUM
- —He spoke on the law of evidence, J. J. O’Molloy said, of Roman justice
- as contrasted with the earlier Mosaic code, the _lex talionis_. And he
- cited the Moses of Michelangelo in the vatican.
- —Ha.
- —A few wellchosen words, Lenehan prefaced. Silence!
- Pause. J. J. O’Molloy took out his cigarettecase.
- False lull. Something quite ordinary.
- Messenger took out his matchbox thoughtfully and lit his cigar.
- I have often thought since on looking back over that strange time that
- it was that small act, trivial in itself, that striking of that match,
- that determined the whole aftercourse of both our lives.
- A POLISHED PERIOD
- J. J. O’Molloy resumed, moulding his words:
- —He said of it: _that stony effigy in frozen music, horned and
- terrible, of the human form divine, that eternal symbol of wisdom and
- of prophecy which, if aught that the imagination or the hand of
- sculptor has wrought in marble of soultransfigured and of
- soultransfiguring deserves to live, deserves to live._
- His slim hand with a wave graced echo and fall.
- —Fine! Myles Crawford said at once.
- —The divine afflatus, Mr O’Madden Burke said.
- —You like it? J. J. O’Molloy asked Stephen.
- Stephen, his blood wooed by grace of language and gesture, blushed. He
- took a cigarette from the case. J. J. O’Molloy offered his case to
- Myles Crawford. Lenehan lit their cigarettes as before and took his
- trophy, saying:
- —Muchibus thankibus.
- A MAN OF HIGH MORALE
- —Professor Magennis was speaking to me about you, J. J. O’Molloy said
- to Stephen. What do you think really of that hermetic crowd, the opal
- hush poets: A. E. the mastermystic? That Blavatsky woman started it.
- She was a nice old bag of tricks. A. E. has been telling some yankee
- interviewer that you came to him in the small hours of the morning to
- ask him about planes of consciousness. Magennis thinks you must have
- been pulling A. E.’s leg. He is a man of the very highest morale,
- Magennis.
- Speaking about me. What did he say? What did he say? What did he say
- about me? Don’t ask.
- —No, thanks, professor MacHugh said, waving the cigarettecase aside.
- Wait a moment. Let me say one thing. The finest display of oratory I
- ever heard was a speech made by John F Taylor at the college historical
- society. Mr Justice Fitzgibbon, the present lord justice of appeal, had
- spoken and the paper under debate was an essay (new for those days),
- advocating the revival of the Irish tongue.
- He turned towards Myles Crawford and said:
- —You know Gerald Fitzgibbon. Then you can imagine the style of his
- discourse.
- —He is sitting with Tim Healy, J. J. O’Molloy said, rumour has it, on
- the Trinity college estates commission.
- —He is sitting with a sweet thing, Myles Crawford said, in a child’s
- frock. Go on. Well?
- —It was the speech, mark you, the professor said, of a finished orator,
- full of courteous haughtiness and pouring in chastened diction I will
- not say the vials of his wrath but pouring the proud man’s contumely
- upon the new movement. It was then a new movement. We were weak,
- therefore worthless.
- He closed his long thin lips an instant but, eager to be on, raised an
- outspanned hand to his spectacles and, with trembling thumb and
- ringfinger touching lightly the black rims, steadied them to a new
- focus.
- IMPROMPTU
- In ferial tone he addressed J. J. O’Molloy:
- —Taylor had come there, you must know, from a sickbed. That he had
- prepared his speech I do not believe for there was not even one
- shorthandwriter in the hall. His dark lean face had a growth of shaggy
- beard round it. He wore a loose white silk neckcloth and altogether he
- looked (though he was not) a dying man.
- His gaze turned at once but slowly from J. J. O’Molloy’s towards
- Stephen’s face and then bent at once to the ground, seeking. His
- unglazed linen collar appeared behind his bent head, soiled by his
- withering hair. Still seeking, he said:
- —When Fitzgibbon’s speech had ended John F Taylor rose to reply.
- Briefly, as well as I can bring them to mind, his words were these.
- He raised his head firmly. His eyes bethought themselves once more.
- Witless shellfish swam in the gross lenses to and fro, seeking outlet.
- He began:
- _—Mr Chairman, ladies and gentlemen: Great was my admiration in
- listening to the remarks addressed to the youth of Ireland a moment
- since by my learned friend. It seemed to me that I had been transported
- into a country far away from this country, into an age remote from this
- age, that I stood in ancient Egypt and that I was listening to the
- speech of some highpriest of that land addressed to the youthful
- Moses._
- His listeners held their cigarettes poised to hear, their smokes
- ascending in frail stalks that flowered with his speech. _And let our
- crooked smokes._ Noble words coming. Look out. Could you try your hand
- at it yourself?
- _—And it seemed to me that I heard the voice of that Egyptian
- highpriest raised in a tone of like haughtiness and like pride. I heard
- his words and their meaning was revealed to me._
- FROM THE FATHERS
- It was revealed to me that those things are good which yet are
- corrupted which neither if they were supremely good nor unless they
- were good could be corrupted. Ah, curse you! That’s saint Augustine.
- _—Why will you jews not accept our culture, our religion and our
- language? You are a tribe of nomad herdsmen: we are a mighty people.
- You have no cities nor no wealth: our cities are hives of humanity and
- our galleys, trireme and quadrireme, laden with all manner merchandise
- furrow the waters of the known globe. You have but emerged from
- primitive conditions: we have a literature, a priesthood, an agelong
- history and a polity._
- Nile.
- Child, man, effigy.
- By the Nilebank the babemaries kneel, cradle of bulrushes: a man supple
- in combat: stonehorned, stonebearded, heart of stone.
- _—You pray to a local and obscure idol: our temples, majestic and
- mysterious, are the abodes of Isis and Osiris, of Horus and Ammon Ra.
- Yours serfdom, awe and humbleness: ours thunder and the seas. Israel is
- weak and few are her children: Egypt is an host and terrible are her
- arms. Vagrants and daylabourers are you called: the world trembles at
- our name._
- A dumb belch of hunger cleft his speech. He lifted his voice above it
- boldly:
- _—But, ladies and gentlemen, had the youthful Moses listened to and
- accepted that view of life, had he bowed his head and bowed his will
- and bowed his spirit before that arrogant admonition he would never
- have brought the chosen people out of their house of bondage, nor
- followed the pillar of the cloud by day. He would never have spoken
- with the Eternal amid lightnings on Sinai’s mountaintop nor ever have
- come down with the light of inspiration shining in his countenance and
- bearing in his arms the tables of the law, graven in the language of
- the outlaw._
- He ceased and looked at them, enjoying a silence.
- OMINOUS—FOR HIM!
- J. J. O’Molloy said not without regret:
- —And yet he died without having entered the land of promise.
- —A—sudden—at—the—moment—though—from—lingering—illness—often—previously—
- expectorated—demise, Lenehan added. And with a great future behind him.
- The troop of bare feet was heard rushing along the hallway and
- pattering up the staircase.
- —That is oratory, the professor said uncontradicted.
- Gone with the wind. Hosts at Mullaghmast and Tara of the kings. Miles
- of ears of porches. The tribune’s words, howled and scattered to the
- four winds. A people sheltered within his voice. Dead noise. Akasic
- records of all that ever anywhere wherever was. Love and laud him: me
- no more.
- I have money.
- —Gentlemen, Stephen said. As the next motion on the agenda paper may I
- suggest that the house do now adjourn?
- —You take my breath away. It is not perchance a French compliment? Mr
- O’Madden Burke asked. ’Tis the hour, methinks, when the winejug,
- metaphorically speaking, is most grateful in Ye ancient hostelry.
- —That it be and hereby is resolutely resolved. All that are in favour
- say ay, Lenehan announced. The contrary no. I declare it carried. To
- which particular boosing shed...? My casting vote is: Mooney’s!
- He led the way, admonishing:
- —We will sternly refuse to partake of strong waters, will we not? Yes,
- we will not. By no manner of means.
- Mr O’Madden Burke, following close, said with an ally’s lunge of his
- umbrella:
- —Lay on, Macduff!
- —Chip of the old block! the editor cried, clapping Stephen on the
- shoulder. Let us go. Where are those blasted keys?
- He fumbled in his pocket pulling out the crushed typesheets.
- —Foot and mouth. I know. That’ll be all right. That’ll go in. Where are
- they? That’s all right.
- He thrust the sheets back and went into the inner office.
- LET US HOPE
- J. J. O’Molloy, about to follow him in, said quietly to Stephen:
- —I hope you will live to see it published. Myles, one moment.
- He went into the inner office, closing the door behind him.
- —Come along, Stephen, the professor said. That is fine, isn’t it? It
- has the prophetic vision. _Fuit Ilium!_ The sack of windy Troy.
- Kingdoms of this world. The masters of the Mediterranean are fellaheen
- today.
- The first newsboy came pattering down the stairs at their heels and
- rushed out into the street, yelling:
- —Racing special!
- Dublin. I have much, much to learn.
- They turned to the left along Abbey street.
- —I have a vision too, Stephen said.
- —Yes? the professor said, skipping to get into step. Crawford will
- follow.
- Another newsboy shot past them, yelling as he ran:
- —Racing special!
- DEAR DIRTY DUBLIN
- Dubliners.
- —Two Dublin vestals, Stephen said, elderly and pious, have lived fifty
- and fiftythree years in Fumbally’s lane.
- —Where is that? the professor asked.
- —Off Blackpitts, Stephen said.
- Damp night reeking of hungry dough. Against the wall. Face glistering
- tallow under her fustian shawl. Frantic hearts. Akasic records.
- Quicker, darlint!
- On now. Dare it. Let there be life.
- —They want to see the views of Dublin from the top of Nelson’s pillar.
- They save up three and tenpence in a red tin letterbox moneybox. They
- shake out the threepenny bits and sixpences and coax out the pennies
- with the blade of a knife. Two and three in silver and one and seven in
- coppers. They put on their bonnets and best clothes and take their
- umbrellas for fear it may come on to rain.
- —Wise virgins, professor MacHugh said.
- LIFE ON THE RAW
- —They buy one and fourpenceworth of brawn and four slices of panloaf at
- the north city diningrooms in Marlborough street from Miss Kate
- Collins, proprietress... They purchase four and twenty ripe plums from
- a girl at the foot of Nelson’s pillar to take off the thirst of the
- brawn. They give two threepenny bits to the gentleman at the turnstile
- and begin to waddle slowly up the winding staircase, grunting,
- encouraging each other, afraid of the dark, panting, one asking the
- other have you the brawn, praising God and the Blessed Virgin,
- threatening to come down, peeping at the airslits. Glory be to God.
- They had no idea it was that high.
- Their names are Anne Kearns and Florence MacCabe. Anne Kearns has the
- lumbago for which she rubs on Lourdes water, given her by a lady who
- got a bottleful from a passionist father. Florence MacCabe takes a
- crubeen and a bottle of double X for supper every Saturday.
- —Antithesis, the professor said nodding twice. Vestal virgins. I can
- see them. What’s keeping our friend?
- He turned.
- A bevy of scampering newsboys rushed down the steps, scattering in all
- directions, yelling, their white papers fluttering. Hard after them
- Myles Crawford appeared on the steps, his hat aureoling his scarlet
- face, talking with J. J. O’Molloy.
- —Come along, the professor cried, waving his arm.
- He set off again to walk by Stephen’s side.
- RETURN OF BLOOM
- —Yes, he said. I see them.
- Mr Bloom, breathless, caught in a whirl of wild newsboys near the
- offices of the _Irish Catholic_ and _Dublin Penny Journal_, called:
- —Mr Crawford! A moment!
- —_Telegraph_! Racing special!
- —What is it? Myles Crawford said, falling back a pace.
- A newsboy cried in Mr Bloom’s face:
- —Terrible tragedy in Rathmines! A child bit by a bellows!
- INTERVIEW WITH THE EDITOR
- —Just this ad, Mr Bloom said, pushing through towards the steps,
- puffing, and taking the cutting from his pocket. I spoke with Mr Keyes
- just now. He’ll give a renewal for two months, he says. After he’ll
- see. But he wants a par to call attention in the _Telegraph_ too, the
- Saturday pink. And he wants it copied if it’s not too late I told
- councillor Nannetti from the _Kilkenny People_. I can have access to it
- in the national library. House of keys, don’t you see? His name is
- Keyes. It’s a play on the name. But he practically promised he’d give
- the renewal. But he wants just a little puff. What will I tell him, Mr
- Crawford?
- K.M.A.
- —Will you tell him he can kiss my arse? Myles Crawford said throwing
- out his arm for emphasis. Tell him that straight from the stable.
- A bit nervy. Look out for squalls. All off for a drink. Arm in arm.
- Lenehan’s yachting cap on the cadge beyond. Usual blarney. Wonder is
- that young Dedalus the moving spirit. Has a good pair of boots on him
- today. Last time I saw him he had his heels on view. Been walking in
- muck somewhere. Careless chap. What was he doing in Irishtown?
- —Well, Mr Bloom said, his eyes returning, if I can get the design I
- suppose it’s worth a short par. He’d give the ad, I think. I’ll tell
- him...
- K.M.R.I.A.
- —He can kiss my royal Irish arse, Myles Crawford cried loudly over his
- shoulder. Any time he likes, tell him.
- While Mr Bloom stood weighing the point and about to smile he strode on
- jerkily.
- RAISING THE WIND
- —_Nulla bona_, Jack, he said, raising his hand to his chin. I’m up to
- here. I’ve been through the hoop myself. I was looking for a fellow to
- back a bill for me no later than last week. Sorry, Jack. You must take
- the will for the deed. With a heart and a half if I could raise the
- wind anyhow.
- J. J. O’Molloy pulled a long face and walked on silently. They caught
- up on the others and walked abreast.
- —When they have eaten the brawn and the bread and wiped their twenty
- fingers in the paper the bread was wrapped in they go nearer to the
- railings.
- —Something for you, the professor explained to Myles Crawford. Two old
- Dublin women on the top of Nelson’s pillar.
- SOME COLUMN!—THAT’S WHAT WADDLER ONE SAID
- —That’s new, Myles Crawford said. That’s copy. Out for the waxies’
- Dargle. Two old trickies, what?
- —But they are afraid the pillar will fall, Stephen went on. They see
- the roofs and argue about where the different churches are: Rathmines’
- blue dome, Adam and Eve’s, saint Laurence O’Toole’s. But it makes them
- giddy to look so they pull up their skirts...
- THOSE SLIGHTLY RAMBUNCTIOUS FEMALES
- —Easy all, Myles Crawford said. No poetic licence. We’re in the
- archdiocese here.
- —And settle down on their striped petticoats, peering up at the statue
- of the onehandled adulterer.
- —Onehandled adulterer! the professor cried. I like that. I see the
- idea. I see what you mean.
- DAMES DONATE DUBLIN’S CITS SPEEDPILLS VELOCITOUS AEROLITHS, BELIEF
- —It gives them a crick in their necks, Stephen said, and they are too
- tired to look up or down or to speak. They put the bag of plums between
- them and eat the plums out of it, one after another, wiping off with
- their handkerchiefs the plumjuice that dribbles out of their mouths and
- spitting the plumstones slowly out between the railings.
- He gave a sudden loud young laugh as a close. Lenehan and Mr O’Madden
- Burke, hearing, turned, beckoned and led on across towards Mooney’s.
- —Finished? Myles Crawford said. So long as they do no worse.
- SOPHIST WALLOPS HAUGHTY HELEN SQUARE ON PROBOSCIS. SPARTANS GNASH
- MOLARS. ITHACANS VOW PEN IS CHAMP.
- —You remind me of Antisthenes, the professor said, a disciple of
- Gorgias, the sophist. It is said of him that none could tell if he were
- bitterer against others or against himself. He was the son of a noble
- and a bondwoman. And he wrote a book in which he took away the palm of
- beauty from Argive Helen and handed it to poor Penelope.
- Poor Penelope. Penelope Rich.
- They made ready to cross O’Connell street.
- HELLO THERE, CENTRAL!
- At various points along the eight lines tramcars with motionless
- trolleys stood in their tracks, bound for or from Rathmines,
- Rathfarnham, Blackrock, Kingstown and Dalkey, Sandymount Green,
- Ringsend and Sandymount Tower, Donnybrook, Palmerston Park and Upper
- Rathmines, all still, becalmed in short circuit. Hackney cars, cabs,
- delivery waggons, mailvans, private broughams, aerated mineral water
- floats with rattling crates of bottles, rattled, rolled, horsedrawn,
- rapidly.
- WHAT?—AND LIKEWISE—WHERE?
- —But what do you call it? Myles Crawford asked. Where did they get the
- plums?
- VIRGILIAN, SAYS PEDAGOGUE. SOPHOMORE PLUMPS FOR OLD MAN MOSES.
- —Call it, wait, the professor said, opening his long lips wide to
- reflect. Call it, let me see. Call it: _deus nobis hæc otia fecit._
- —No, Stephen said. I call it _A Pisgah Sight of Palestine_ or _The
- Parable of The Plums._
- —I see, the professor said.
- He laughed richly.
- —I see, he said again with new pleasure. Moses and the promised land.
- We gave him that idea, he added to J. J. O’Molloy.
- HORATIO IS CYNOSURE THIS FAIR JUNE DAY
- J. J. O’Molloy sent a weary sidelong glance towards the statue and held
- his peace.
- —I see, the professor said.
- He halted on sir John Gray’s pavement island and peered aloft at Nelson
- through the meshes of his wry smile.
- DIMINISHED DIGITS PROVE TOO TITILLATING FOR FRISKY FRUMPS. ANNE
- WIMBLES, FLO WANGLES—YET CAN YOU BLAME THEM?
- —Onehandled adulterer, he said smiling grimly. That tickles me, I must
- say.
- —Tickled the old ones too, Myles Crawford said, if the God Almighty’s
- truth was known.
- [ 8 ]
- Pineapple rock, lemon platt, butter scotch. A sugarsticky girl
- shovelling scoopfuls of creams for a christian brother. Some school
- treat. Bad for their tummies. Lozenge and comfit manufacturer to His
- Majesty the King. God. Save. Our. Sitting on his throne sucking red
- jujubes white.
- A sombre Y. M. C. A. young man, watchful among the warm sweet fumes of
- Graham Lemon’s, placed a throwaway in a hand of Mr Bloom.
- Heart to heart talks.
- Bloo... Me? No.
- Blood of the Lamb.
- His slow feet walked him riverward, reading. Are you saved? All are
- washed in the blood of the lamb. God wants blood victim. Birth, hymen,
- martyr, war, foundation of a building, sacrifice, kidney burntoffering,
- druids’ altars. Elijah is coming. Dr John Alexander Dowie restorer of
- the church in Zion is coming.
- Is coming! Is coming!! Is coming!!!
- All heartily welcome.
- Paying game. Torry and Alexander last year. Polygamy. His wife will put
- the stopper on that. Where was that ad some Birmingham firm the
- luminous crucifix. Our Saviour. Wake up in the dead of night and see
- him on the wall, hanging. Pepper’s ghost idea. Iron Nails Ran In.
- Phosphorus it must be done with. If you leave a bit of codfish for
- instance. I could see the bluey silver over it. Night I went down to
- the pantry in the kitchen. Don’t like all the smells in it waiting to
- rush out. What was it she wanted? The Malaga raisins. Thinking of
- Spain. Before Rudy was born. The phosphorescence, that bluey greeny.
- Very good for the brain.
- From Butler’s monument house corner he glanced along Bachelor’s walk.
- Dedalus’ daughter there still outside Dillon’s auctionrooms. Must be
- selling off some old furniture. Knew her eyes at once from the father.
- Lobbing about waiting for him. Home always breaks up when the mother
- goes. Fifteen children he had. Birth every year almost. That’s in their
- theology or the priest won’t give the poor woman the confession, the
- absolution. Increase and multiply. Did you ever hear such an idea? Eat
- you out of house and home. No families themselves to feed. Living on
- the fat of the land. Their butteries and larders. I’d like to see them
- do the black fast Yom Kippur. Crossbuns. One meal and a collation for
- fear he’d collapse on the altar. A housekeeper of one of those fellows
- if you could pick it out of her. Never pick it out of her. Like getting
- £. s. d. out of him. Does himself well. No guests. All for number one.
- Watching his water. Bring your own bread and butter. His reverence:
- mum’s the word.
- Good Lord, that poor child’s dress is in flitters. Underfed she looks
- too. Potatoes and marge, marge and potatoes. It’s after they feel it.
- Proof of the pudding. Undermines the constitution.
- As he set foot on O’Connell bridge a puffball of smoke plumed up from
- the parapet. Brewery barge with export stout. England. Sea air sours
- it, I heard. Be interesting some day get a pass through Hancock to see
- the brewery. Regular world in itself. Vats of porter wonderful. Rats
- get in too. Drink themselves bloated as big as a collie floating. Dead
- drunk on the porter. Drink till they puke again like christians.
- Imagine drinking that! Rats: vats. Well, of course, if we knew all the
- things.
- Looking down he saw flapping strongly, wheeling between the gaunt
- quaywalls, gulls. Rough weather outside. If I threw myself down? Reuben
- J’s son must have swallowed a good bellyful of that sewage. One and
- eightpence too much. Hhhhm. It’s the droll way he comes out with the
- things. Knows how to tell a story too.
- They wheeled lower. Looking for grub. Wait.
- He threw down among them a crumpled paper ball. Elijah thirtytwo feet
- per sec is com. Not a bit. The ball bobbed unheeded on the wake of
- swells, floated under by the bridgepiers. Not such damn fools. Also the
- day I threw that stale cake out of the Erin’s King picked it up in the
- wake fifty yards astern. Live by their wits. They wheeled, flapping.
- The hungry famished gull
- Flaps o’er the waters dull.
- That is how poets write, the similar sounds. But then Shakespeare has
- no rhymes: blank verse. The flow of the language it is. The thoughts.
- Solemn.
- Hamlet, I am thy father’s spirit
- Doomed for a certain time to walk the earth.
- —Two apples a penny! Two for a penny!
- His gaze passed over the glazed apples serried on her stand.
- Australians they must be this time of year. Shiny peels: polishes them
- up with a rag or a handkerchief.
- Wait. Those poor birds.
- He halted again and bought from the old applewoman two Banbury cakes
- for a penny and broke the brittle paste and threw its fragments down
- into the Liffey. See that? The gulls swooped silently, two, then all
- from their heights, pouncing on prey. Gone. Every morsel.
- Aware of their greed and cunning he shook the powdery crumb from his
- hands. They never expected that. Manna. Live on fish, fishy flesh they
- have, all seabirds, gulls, seagoose. Swans from Anna Liffey swim down
- here sometimes to preen themselves. No accounting for tastes. Wonder
- what kind is swanmeat. Robinson Crusoe had to live on them.
- They wheeled flapping weakly. I’m not going to throw any more. Penny
- quite enough. Lot of thanks I get. Not even a caw. They spread foot and
- mouth disease too. If you cram a turkey say on chestnutmeal it tastes
- like that. Eat pig like pig. But then why is it that saltwater fish are
- not salty? How is that?
- His eyes sought answer from the river and saw a rowboat rock at anchor
- on the treacly swells lazily its plastered board.
- Kino’s
- 11/—
- Trousers
- Good idea that. Wonder if he pays rent to the corporation. How can you
- own water really? It’s always flowing in a stream, never the same,
- which in the stream of life we trace. Because life is a stream. All
- kinds of places are good for ads. That quack doctor for the clap used
- to be stuck up in all the greenhouses. Never see it now. Strictly
- confidential. Dr Hy Franks. Didn’t cost him a red like Maginni the
- dancing master self advertisement. Got fellows to stick them up or
- stick them up himself for that matter on the q. t. running in to loosen
- a button. Flybynight. Just the place too. POST NO BILLS. POST 110
- PILLS. Some chap with a dose burning him.
- If he...?
- O!
- Eh?
- No... No.
- No, no. I don’t believe it. He wouldn’t surely?
- No, no.
- Mr Bloom moved forward, raising his troubled eyes. Think no more about
- that. After one. Timeball on the ballastoffice is down. Dunsink time.
- Fascinating little book that is of sir Robert Ball’s. Parallax. I never
- exactly understood. There’s a priest. Could ask him. Par it’s Greek:
- parallel, parallax. Met him pike hoses she called it till I told her
- about the transmigration. O rocks!
- Mr Bloom smiled O rocks at two windows of the ballastoffice. She’s
- right after all. Only big words for ordinary things on account of the
- sound. She’s not exactly witty. Can be rude too. Blurt out what I was
- thinking. Still, I don’t know. She used to say Ben Dollard had a base
- barreltone voice. He has legs like barrels and you’d think he was
- singing into a barrel. Now, isn’t that wit. They used to call him big
- Ben. Not half as witty as calling him base barreltone. Appetite like an
- albatross. Get outside of a baron of beef. Powerful man he was at
- stowing away number one Bass. Barrel of Bass. See? It all works out.
- A procession of whitesmocked sandwichmen marched slowly towards him
- along the gutter, scarlet sashes across their boards. Bargains. Like
- that priest they are this morning: we have sinned: we have suffered. He
- read the scarlet letters on their five tall white hats: H. E. L. Y. S.
- Wisdom Hely’s. Y lagging behind drew a chunk of bread from under his
- foreboard, crammed it into his mouth and munched as he walked. Our
- staple food. Three bob a day, walking along the gutters, street after
- street. Just keep skin and bone together, bread and skilly. They are
- not Boyl: no, M’Glade’s men. Doesn’t bring in any business either. I
- suggested to him about a transparent showcart with two smart girls
- sitting inside writing letters, copybooks, envelopes, blottingpaper. I
- bet that would have caught on. Smart girls writing something catch the
- eye at once. Everyone dying to know what she’s writing. Get twenty of
- them round you if you stare at nothing. Have a finger in the pie. Women
- too. Curiosity. Pillar of salt. Wouldn’t have it of course because he
- didn’t think of it himself first. Or the inkbottle I suggested with a
- false stain of black celluloid. His ideas for ads like Plumtree’s
- potted under the obituaries, cold meat department. You can’t lick ’em.
- What? Our envelopes. Hello, Jones, where are you going? Can’t stop,
- Robinson, I am hastening to purchase the only reliable inkeraser
- _Kansell,_ sold by Hely’s Ltd, 85 Dame street. Well out of that ruck I
- am. Devil of a job it was collecting accounts of those convents.
- Tranquilla convent. That was a nice nun there, really sweet face.
- Wimple suited her small head. Sister? Sister? I am sure she was crossed
- in love by her eyes. Very hard to bargain with that sort of a woman. I
- disturbed her at her devotions that morning. But glad to communicate
- with the outside world. Our great day, she said. Feast of Our Lady of
- Mount Carmel. Sweet name too: caramel. She knew I, I think she knew by
- the way she. If she had married she would have changed. I suppose they
- really were short of money. Fried everything in the best butter all the
- same. No lard for them. My heart’s broke eating dripping. They like
- buttering themselves in and out. Molly tasting it, her veil up. Sister?
- Pat Claffey, the pawnbroker’s daughter. It was a nun they say invented
- barbed wire.
- He crossed Westmoreland street when apostrophe S had plodded by. Rover
- cycleshop. Those races are on today. How long ago is that? Year Phil
- Gilligan died. We were in Lombard street west. Wait: was in Thom’s. Got
- the job in Wisdom Hely’s year we married. Six years. Ten years ago:
- ninetyfour he died yes that’s right the big fire at Arnott’s. Val
- Dillon was lord mayor. The Glencree dinner. Alderman Robert O’Reilly
- emptying the port into his soup before the flag fell. Bobbob lapping it
- for the inner alderman. Couldn’t hear what the band played. For what we
- have already received may the Lord make us. Milly was a kiddy then.
- Molly had that elephantgrey dress with the braided frogs. Mantailored
- with selfcovered buttons. She didn’t like it because I sprained my
- ankle first day she wore choir picnic at the Sugarloaf. As if that. Old
- Goodwin’s tall hat done up with some sticky stuff. Flies’ picnic too.
- Never put a dress on her back like it. Fitted her like a glove,
- shoulders and hips. Just beginning to plump it out well. Rabbitpie we
- had that day. People looking after her.
- Happy. Happier then. Snug little room that was with the red wallpaper.
- Dockrell’s, one and ninepence a dozen. Milly’s tubbing night. American
- soap I bought: elderflower. Cosy smell of her bathwater. Funny she
- looked soaped all over. Shapely too. Now photography. Poor papa’s
- daguerreotype atelier he told me of. Hereditary taste.
- He walked along the curbstone.
- Stream of life. What was the name of that priestylooking chap was
- always squinting in when he passed? Weak eyes, woman. Stopped in
- Citron’s saint Kevin’s parade. Pen something. Pendennis? My memory is
- getting. Pen ...? Of course it’s years ago. Noise of the trams
- probably. Well, if he couldn’t remember the dayfather’s name that he
- sees every day.
- Bartell d’Arcy was the tenor, just coming out then. Seeing her home
- after practice. Conceited fellow with his waxedup moustache. Gave her
- that song _Winds that blow from the south_.
- Windy night that was I went to fetch her there was that lodge meeting
- on about those lottery tickets after Goodwin’s concert in the
- supperroom or oakroom of the Mansion house. He and I behind. Sheet of
- her music blew out of my hand against the High school railings. Lucky
- it didn’t. Thing like that spoils the effect of a night for her.
- Professor Goodwin linking her in front. Shaky on his pins, poor old
- sot. His farewell concerts. Positively last appearance on any stage.
- May be for months and may be for never. Remember her laughing at the
- wind, her blizzard collar up. Corner of Harcourt road remember that
- gust. Brrfoo! Blew up all her skirts and her boa nearly smothered old
- Goodwin. She did get flushed in the wind. Remember when we got home
- raking up the fire and frying up those pieces of lap of mutton for her
- supper with the Chutney sauce she liked. And the mulled rum. Could see
- her in the bedroom from the hearth unclamping the busk of her stays:
- white.
- Swish and soft flop her stays made on the bed. Always warm from her.
- Always liked to let her self out. Sitting there after till near two
- taking out her hairpins. Milly tucked up in beddyhouse. Happy. Happy.
- That was the night...
- —O, Mr Bloom, how do you do?
- —O, how do you do, Mrs Breen?
- —No use complaining. How is Molly those times? Haven’t seen her for
- ages.
- —In the pink, Mr Bloom said gaily. Milly has a position down in
- Mullingar, you know.
- —Go away! Isn’t that grand for her?
- —Yes. In a photographer’s there. Getting on like a house on fire. How
- are all your charges?
- —All on the baker’s list, Mrs Breen said.
- How many has she? No other in sight.
- —You’re in black, I see. You have no...
- —No, Mr Bloom said. I have just come from a funeral.
- Going to crop up all day, I foresee. Who’s dead, when and what did he
- die of? Turn up like a bad penny.
- —O, dear me, Mrs Breen said. I hope it wasn’t any near relation.
- May as well get her sympathy.
- —Dignam, Mr Bloom said. An old friend of mine. He died quite suddenly,
- poor fellow. Heart trouble, I believe. Funeral was this morning.
- Your funeral’s tomorrow
- While you’re coming through the rye.
- Diddlediddle dumdum
- Diddlediddle...
- —Sad to lose the old friends, Mrs Breen’s womaneyes said melancholily.
- Now that’s quite enough about that. Just: quietly: husband.
- —And your lord and master?
- Mrs Breen turned up her two large eyes. Hasn’t lost them anyhow.
- —O, don’t be talking! she said. He’s a caution to rattlesnakes. He’s in
- there now with his lawbooks finding out the law of libel. He has me
- heartscalded. Wait till I show you.
- Hot mockturtle vapour and steam of newbaked jampuffs rolypoly poured
- out from Harrison’s. The heavy noonreek tickled the top of Mr Bloom’s
- gullet. Want to make good pastry, butter, best flour, Demerara sugar,
- or they’d taste it with the hot tea. Or is it from her? A barefoot arab
- stood over the grating, breathing in the fumes. Deaden the gnaw of
- hunger that way. Pleasure or pain is it? Penny dinner. Knife and fork
- chained to the table.
- Opening her handbag, chipped leather. Hatpin: ought to have a guard on
- those things. Stick it in a chap’s eye in the tram. Rummaging. Open.
- Money. Please take one. Devils if they lose sixpence. Raise Cain.
- Husband barging. Where’s the ten shillings I gave you on Monday? Are
- you feeding your little brother’s family? Soiled handkerchief:
- medicinebottle. Pastille that was fell. What is she?...
- —There must be a new moon out, she said. He’s always bad then. Do you
- know what he did last night?
- Her hand ceased to rummage. Her eyes fixed themselves on him, wide in
- alarm, yet smiling.
- —What? Mr Bloom asked.
- Let her speak. Look straight in her eyes. I believe you. Trust me.
- —Woke me up in the night, she said. Dream he had, a nightmare.
- Indiges.
- —Said the ace of spades was walking up the stairs.
- —The ace of spades! Mr Bloom said.
- She took a folded postcard from her handbag.
- —Read that, she said. He got it this morning.
- —What is it? Mr Bloom asked, taking the card. U. P.?
- —U. p: up, she said. Someone taking a rise out of him. It’s a great
- shame for them whoever he is.
- —Indeed it is, Mr Bloom said.
- She took back the card, sighing.
- —And now he’s going round to Mr Menton’s office. He’s going to take an
- action for ten thousand pounds, he says.
- She folded the card into her untidy bag and snapped the catch.
- Same blue serge dress she had two years ago, the nap bleaching. Seen
- its best days. Wispish hair over her ears. And that dowdy toque: three
- old grapes to take the harm out of it. Shabby genteel. She used to be a
- tasty dresser. Lines round her mouth. Only a year or so older than
- Molly.
- See the eye that woman gave her, passing. Cruel. The unfair sex.
- He looked still at her, holding back behind his look his discontent.
- Pungent mockturtle oxtail mulligatawny. I’m hungry too. Flakes of
- pastry on the gusset of her dress: daub of sugary flour stuck to her
- cheek. Rhubarb tart with liberal fillings, rich fruit interior. Josie
- Powell that was. In Luke Doyle’s long ago. Dolphin’s Barn, the
- charades. U. p: up.
- Change the subject.
- —Do you ever see anything of Mrs Beaufoy? Mr Bloom asked.
- —Mina Purefoy? she said.
- Philip Beaufoy I was thinking. Playgoers’ Club. Matcham often thinks of
- the masterstroke. Did I pull the chain? Yes. The last act.
- —Yes.
- —I just called to ask on the way in is she over it. She’s in the
- lying-in hospital in Holles street. Dr Horne got her in. She’s three
- days bad now.
- —O, Mr Bloom said. I’m sorry to hear that.
- —Yes, Mrs Breen said. And a houseful of kids at home. It’s a very stiff
- birth, the nurse told me.
- —O, Mr Bloom said.
- His heavy pitying gaze absorbed her news. His tongue clacked in
- compassion. Dth! Dth!
- —I’m sorry to hear that, he said. Poor thing! Three days! That’s
- terrible for her.
- Mrs Breen nodded.
- —She was taken bad on the Tuesday...
- Mr Bloom touched her funnybone gently, warning her:
- —Mind! Let this man pass.
- A bony form strode along the curbstone from the river staring with a
- rapt gaze into the sunlight through a heavystringed glass. Tight as a
- skullpiece a tiny hat gripped his head. From his arm a folded dustcoat,
- a stick and an umbrella dangled to his stride.
- —Watch him, Mr Bloom said. He always walks outside the lampposts.
- Watch!
- —Who is he if it’s a fair question? Mrs Breen asked. Is he dotty?
- —His name is Cashel Boyle O’Connor Fitzmaurice Tisdall Farrell, Mr
- Bloom said smiling. Watch!
- —He has enough of them, she said. Denis will be like that one of these
- days.
- She broke off suddenly.
- —There he is, she said. I must go after him. Goodbye. Remember me to
- Molly, won’t you?
- —I will, Mr Bloom said.
- He watched her dodge through passers towards the shopfronts. Denis
- Breen in skimpy frockcoat and blue canvas shoes shuffled out of
- Harrison’s hugging two heavy tomes to his ribs. Blown in from the bay.
- Like old times. He suffered her to overtake him without surprise and
- thrust his dull grey beard towards her, his loose jaw wagging as he
- spoke earnestly.
- Meshuggah. Off his chump.
- Mr Bloom walked on again easily, seeing ahead of him in sunlight the
- tight skullpiece, the dangling stickumbrelladustcoat. Going the two
- days. Watch him! Out he goes again. One way of getting on in the world.
- And that other old mosey lunatic in those duds. Hard time she must have
- with him.
- U. p: up. I’ll take my oath that’s Alf Bergan or Richie Goulding. Wrote
- it for a lark in the Scotch house I bet anything. Round to Menton’s
- office. His oyster eyes staring at the postcard. Be a feast for the
- gods.
- He passed the _Irish Times_. There might be other answers lying there.
- Like to answer them all. Good system for criminals. Code. At their
- lunch now. Clerk with the glasses there doesn’t know me. O, leave them
- there to simmer. Enough bother wading through fortyfour of them.
- Wanted, smart lady typist to aid gentleman in literary work. I called
- you naughty darling because I do not like that other world. Please tell
- me what is the meaning. Please tell me what perfume does your wife.
- Tell me who made the world. The way they spring those questions on you.
- And the other one Lizzie Twigg. My literary efforts have had the good
- fortune to meet with the approval of the eminent poet A. E. (Mr Geo.
- Russell). No time to do her hair drinking sloppy tea with a book of
- poetry.
- Best paper by long chalks for a small ad. Got the provinces now. Cook
- and general, exc. cuisine, housemaid kept. Wanted live man for spirit
- counter. Resp. girl (R.C.) wishes to hear of post in fruit or pork
- shop. James Carlisle made that. Six and a half per cent dividend. Made
- a big deal on Coates’s shares. Ca’ canny. Cunning old Scotch hunks. All
- the toady news. Our gracious and popular vicereine. Bought the _Irish
- Field_ now. Lady Mountcashel has quite recovered after her confinement
- and rode out with the Ward Union staghounds at the enlargement
- yesterday at Rathoath. Uneatable fox. Pothunters too. Fear injects
- juices make it tender enough for them. Riding astride. Sit her horse
- like a man. Weightcarrying huntress. No sidesaddle or pillion for her,
- not for Joe. First to the meet and in at the death. Strong as a brood
- mare some of those horsey women. Swagger around livery stables. Toss
- off a glass of brandy neat while you’d say knife. That one at the
- Grosvenor this morning. Up with her on the car: wishswish. Stonewall or
- fivebarred gate put her mount to it. Think that pugnosed driver did it
- out of spite. Who is this she was like? O yes! Mrs Miriam Dandrade that
- sold me her old wraps and black underclothes in the Shelbourne hotel.
- Divorced Spanish American. Didn’t take a feather out of her my handling
- them. As if I was her clotheshorse. Saw her in the viceregal party when
- Stubbs the park ranger got me in with Whelan of the _Express._
- Scavenging what the quality left. High tea. Mayonnaise I poured on the
- plums thinking it was custard. Her ears ought to have tingled for a few
- weeks after. Want to be a bull for her. Born courtesan. No nursery work
- for her, thanks.
- Poor Mrs Purefoy! Methodist husband. Method in his madness. Saffron bun
- and milk and soda lunch in the educational dairy. Y. M. C. A. Eating
- with a stopwatch, thirtytwo chews to the minute. And still his
- muttonchop whiskers grew. Supposed to be well connected. Theodore’s
- cousin in Dublin Castle. One tony relative in every family. Hardy
- annuals he presents her with. Saw him out at the Three Jolly Topers
- marching along bareheaded and his eldest boy carrying one in a
- marketnet. The squallers. Poor thing! Then having to give the breast
- year after year all hours of the night. Selfish those t.t’s are. Dog in
- the manger. Only one lump of sugar in my tea, if you please.
- He stood at Fleet street crossing. Luncheon interval. A sixpenny at
- Rowe’s? Must look up that ad in the national library. An eightpenny in
- the Burton. Better. On my way.
- He walked on past Bolton’s Westmoreland house. Tea. Tea. Tea. I forgot
- to tap Tom Kernan.
- Sss. Dth, dth, dth! Three days imagine groaning on a bed with a
- vinegared handkerchief round her forehead, her belly swollen out. Phew!
- Dreadful simply! Child’s head too big: forceps. Doubled up inside her
- trying to butt its way out blindly, groping for the way out. Kill me
- that would. Lucky Molly got over hers lightly. They ought to invent
- something to stop that. Life with hard labour. Twilight sleep idea:
- queen Victoria was given that. Nine she had. A good layer. Old woman
- that lived in a shoe she had so many children. Suppose he was
- consumptive. Time someone thought about it instead of gassing about the
- what was it the pensive bosom of the silver effulgence. Flapdoodle to
- feed fools on. They could easily have big establishments whole thing
- quite painless out of all the taxes give every child born five quid at
- compound interest up to twentyone five per cent is a hundred shillings
- and five tiresome pounds multiply by twenty decimal system encourage
- people to put by money save hundred and ten and a bit twentyone years
- want to work it out on paper come to a tidy sum more than you think.
- Not stillborn of course. They are not even registered. Trouble for
- nothing.
- Funny sight two of them together, their bellies out. Molly and Mrs
- Moisel. Mothers’ meeting. Phthisis retires for the time being, then
- returns. How flat they look all of a sudden after. Peaceful eyes.
- Weight off their mind. Old Mrs Thornton was a jolly old soul. All my
- babies, she said. The spoon of pap in her mouth before she fed them. O,
- that’s nyumnyum. Got her hand crushed by old Tom Wall’s son. His first
- bow to the public. Head like a prize pumpkin. Snuffy Dr Murren. People
- knocking them up at all hours. For God’ sake, doctor. Wife in her
- throes. Then keep them waiting months for their fee. To attendance on
- your wife. No gratitude in people. Humane doctors, most of them.
- Before the huge high door of the Irish house of parliament a flock of
- pigeons flew. Their little frolic after meals. Who will we do it on? I
- pick the fellow in black. Here goes. Here’s good luck. Must be
- thrilling from the air. Apjohn, myself and Owen Goldberg up in the
- trees near Goose green playing the monkeys. Mackerel they called me.
- A squad of constables debouched from College street, marching in Indian
- file. Goosestep. Foodheated faces, sweating helmets, patting their
- truncheons. After their feed with a good load of fat soup under their
- belts. Policeman’s lot is oft a happy one. They split up in groups and
- scattered, saluting, towards their beats. Let out to graze. Best moment
- to attack one in pudding time. A punch in his dinner. A squad of
- others, marching irregularly, rounded Trinity railings making for the
- station. Bound for their troughs. Prepare to receive cavalry. Prepare
- to receive soup.
- He crossed under Tommy Moore’s roguish finger. They did right to put
- him up over a urinal: meeting of the waters. Ought to be places for
- women. Running into cakeshops. Settle my hat straight. _There is not in
- this wide world a vallee_. Great song of Julia Morkan’s. Kept her voice
- up to the very last. Pupil of Michael Balfe’s, wasn’t she?
- He gazed after the last broad tunic. Nasty customers to tackle. Jack
- Power could a tale unfold: father a G man. If a fellow gave them
- trouble being lagged they let him have it hot and heavy in the
- bridewell. Can’t blame them after all with the job they have especially
- the young hornies. That horsepoliceman the day Joe Chamberlain was
- given his degree in Trinity he got a run for his money. My word he did!
- His horse’s hoofs clattering after us down Abbey street. Lucky I had
- the presence of mind to dive into Manning’s or I was souped. He did
- come a wallop, by George. Must have cracked his skull on the
- cobblestones. I oughtn’t to have got myself swept along with those
- medicals. And the Trinity jibs in their mortarboards. Looking for
- trouble. Still I got to know that young Dixon who dressed that sting
- for me in the Mater and now he’s in Holles street where Mrs Purefoy.
- Wheels within wheels. Police whistle in my ears still. All skedaddled.
- Why he fixed on me. Give me in charge. Right here it began.
- —Up the Boers!
- —Three cheers for De Wet!
- —We’ll hang Joe Chamberlain on a sourapple tree.
- Silly billies: mob of young cubs yelling their guts out. Vinegar hill.
- The Butter exchange band. Few years’ time half of them magistrates and
- civil servants. War comes on: into the army helterskelter: same fellows
- used to. Whether on the scaffold high.
- Never know who you’re talking to. Corny Kelleher he has Harvey Duff in
- his eye. Like that Peter or Denis or James Carey that blew the gaff on
- the invincibles. Member of the corporation too. Egging raw youths on to
- get in the know all the time drawing secret service pay from the
- castle. Drop him like a hot potato. Why those plainclothes men are
- always courting slaveys. Easily twig a man used to uniform.
- Squarepushing up against a backdoor. Maul her a bit. Then the next
- thing on the menu. And who is the gentleman does be visiting there? Was
- the young master saying anything? Peeping Tom through the keyhole.
- Decoy duck. Hotblooded young student fooling round her fat arms
- ironing.
- —Are those yours, Mary?
- —I don’t wear such things... Stop or I’ll tell the missus on you. Out
- half the night.
- —There are great times coming, Mary. Wait till you see.
- —Ah, gelong with your great times coming.
- Barmaids too. Tobaccoshopgirls.
- James Stephens’ idea was the best. He knew them. Circles of ten so that
- a fellow couldn’t round on more than his own ring. Sinn Fein. Back out
- you get the knife. Hidden hand. Stay in. The firing squad. Turnkey’s
- daughter got him out of Richmond, off from Lusk. Putting up in the
- Buckingham Palace hotel under their very noses. Garibaldi.
- You must have a certain fascination: Parnell. Arthur Griffith is a
- squareheaded fellow but he has no go in him for the mob. Or gas about
- our lovely land. Gammon and spinach. Dublin Bakery Company’s tearoom.
- Debating societies. That republicanism is the best form of government.
- That the language question should take precedence of the economic
- question. Have your daughters inveigling them to your house. Stuff them
- up with meat and drink. Michaelmas goose. Here’s a good lump of thyme
- seasoning under the apron for you. Have another quart of goosegrease
- before it gets too cold. Halffed enthusiasts. Penny roll and a walk
- with the band. No grace for the carver. The thought that the other chap
- pays best sauce in the world. Make themselves thoroughly at home. Show
- us over those apricots, meaning peaches. The not far distant day.
- Homerule sun rising up in the northwest.
- His smile faded as he walked, a heavy cloud hiding the sun slowly,
- shadowing Trinity’s surly front. Trams passed one another, ingoing,
- outgoing, clanging. Useless words. Things go on same, day after day:
- squads of police marching out, back: trams in, out. Those two loonies
- mooching about. Dignam carted off. Mina Purefoy swollen belly on a bed
- groaning to have a child tugged out of her. One born every second
- somewhere. Other dying every second. Since I fed the birds five
- minutes. Three hundred kicked the bucket. Other three hundred born,
- washing the blood off, all are washed in the blood of the lamb, bawling
- maaaaaa.
- Cityful passing away, other cityful coming, passing away too: other
- coming on, passing on. Houses, lines of houses, streets, miles of
- pavements, piledup bricks, stones. Changing hands. This owner, that.
- Landlord never dies they say. Other steps into his shoes when he gets
- his notice to quit. They buy the place up with gold and still they have
- all the gold. Swindle in it somewhere. Piled up in cities, worn away
- age after age. Pyramids in sand. Built on bread and onions. Slaves
- Chinese wall. Babylon. Big stones left. Round towers. Rest rubble,
- sprawling suburbs, jerrybuilt. Kerwan’s mushroom houses built of
- breeze. Shelter, for the night.
- No-one is anything.
- This is the very worst hour of the day. Vitality. Dull, gloomy: hate
- this hour. Feel as if I had been eaten and spewed.
- Provost’s house. The reverend Dr Salmon: tinned salmon. Well tinned in
- there. Like a mortuary chapel. Wouldn’t live in it if they paid me.
- Hope they have liver and bacon today. Nature abhors a vacuum.
- The sun freed itself slowly and lit glints of light among the
- silverware opposite in Walter Sexton’s window by which John Howard
- Parnell passed, unseeing.
- There he is: the brother. Image of him. Haunting face. Now that’s a
- coincidence. Course hundreds of times you think of a person and don’t
- meet him. Like a man walking in his sleep. No-one knows him. Must be a
- corporation meeting today. They say he never put on the city marshal’s
- uniform since he got the job. Charley Kavanagh used to come out on his
- high horse, cocked hat, puffed, powdered and shaved. Look at the
- woebegone walk of him. Eaten a bad egg. Poached eyes on ghost. I have a
- pain. Great man’s brother: his brother’s brother. He’d look nice on the
- city charger. Drop into the D.B.C. probably for his coffee, play chess
- there. His brother used men as pawns. Let them all go to pot. Afraid to
- pass a remark on him. Freeze them up with that eye of his. That’s the
- fascination: the name. All a bit touched. Mad Fanny and his other
- sister Mrs Dickinson driving about with scarlet harness. Bolt upright
- like surgeon M’Ardle. Still David Sheehy beat him for south Meath.
- Apply for the Chiltern Hundreds and retire into public life. The
- patriot’s banquet. Eating orangepeels in the park. Simon Dedalus said
- when they put him in parliament that Parnell would come back from the
- grave and lead him out of the house of commons by the arm.
- —Of the twoheaded octopus, one of whose heads is the head upon which
- the ends of the world have forgotten to come while the other speaks
- with a Scotch accent. The tentacles...
- They passed from behind Mr Bloom along the curbstone. Beard and
- bicycle. Young woman.
- And there he is too. Now that’s really a coincidence: second time.
- Coming events cast their shadows before. With the approval of the
- eminent poet, Mr Geo. Russell. That might be Lizzie Twigg with him. A.
- E.: what does that mean? Initials perhaps. Albert Edward, Arthur
- Edmund, Alphonsus Eb Ed El Esquire. What was he saying? The ends of the
- world with a Scotch accent. Tentacles: octopus. Something occult:
- symbolism. Holding forth. She’s taking it all in. Not saying a word. To
- aid gentleman in literary work.
- His eyes followed the high figure in homespun, beard and bicycle, a
- listening woman at his side. Coming from the vegetarian. Only
- weggebobbles and fruit. Don’t eat a beefsteak. If you do the eyes of
- that cow will pursue you through all eternity. They say it’s healthier.
- Windandwatery though. Tried it. Keep you on the run all day. Bad as a
- bloater. Dreams all night. Why do they call that thing they gave me
- nutsteak? Nutarians. Fruitarians. To give you the idea you are eating
- rumpsteak. Absurd. Salty too. They cook in soda. Keep you sitting by
- the tap all night.
- Her stockings are loose over her ankles. I detest that: so tasteless.
- Those literary etherial people they are all. Dreamy, cloudy,
- symbolistic. Esthetes they are. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was that
- kind of food you see produces the like waves of the brain the poetical.
- For example one of those policemen sweating Irish stew into their
- shirts you couldn’t squeeze a line of poetry out of him. Don’t know
- what poetry is even. Must be in a certain mood.
- The dreamy cloudy gull
- Waves o’er the waters dull.
- He crossed at Nassau street corner and stood before the window of
- Yeates and Son, pricing the fieldglasses. Or will I drop into old
- Harris’s and have a chat with young Sinclair? Wellmannered fellow.
- Probably at his lunch. Must get those old glasses of mine set right.
- Goerz lenses six guineas. Germans making their way everywhere. Sell on
- easy terms to capture trade. Undercutting. Might chance on a pair in
- the railway lost property office. Astonishing the things people leave
- behind them in trains and cloakrooms. What do they be thinking about?
- Women too. Incredible. Last year travelling to Ennis had to pick up
- that farmer’s daughter’s bag and hand it to her at Limerick junction.
- Unclaimed money too. There’s a little watch up there on the roof of the
- bank to test those glasses by.
- His lids came down on the lower rims of his irides. Can’t see it. If
- you imagine it’s there you can almost see it. Can’t see it.
- He faced about and, standing between the awnings, held out his right
- hand at arm’s length towards the sun. Wanted to try that often. Yes:
- completely. The tip of his little finger blotted out the sun’s disk.
- Must be the focus where the rays cross. If I had black glasses.
- Interesting. There was a lot of talk about those sunspots when we were
- in Lombard street west. Looking up from the back garden. Terrific
- explosions they are. There will be a total eclipse this year: autumn
- some time.
- Now that I come to think of it that ball falls at Greenwich time. It’s
- the clock is worked by an electric wire from Dunsink. Must go out there
- some first Saturday of the month. If I could get an introduction to
- professor Joly or learn up something about his family. That would do
- to: man always feels complimented. Flattery where least expected.
- Nobleman proud to be descended from some king’s mistress. His
- foremother. Lay it on with a trowel. Cap in hand goes through the land.
- Not go in and blurt out what you know you’re not to: what’s parallax?
- Show this gentleman the door.
- Ah.
- His hand fell to his side again.
- Never know anything about it. Waste of time. Gasballs spinning about,
- crossing each other, passing. Same old dingdong always. Gas: then
- solid: then world: then cold: then dead shell drifting around, frozen
- rock, like that pineapple rock. The moon. Must be a new moon out, she
- said. I believe there is.
- He went on by la maison Claire.
- Wait. The full moon was the night we were Sunday fortnight exactly
- there is a new moon. Walking down by the Tolka. Not bad for a Fairview
- moon. She was humming. The young May moon she’s beaming, love. He other
- side of her. Elbow, arm. He. Glowworm’s la-amp is gleaming, love.
- Touch. Fingers. Asking. Answer. Yes.
- Stop. Stop. If it was it was. Must.
- Mr Bloom, quickbreathing, slowlier walking passed Adam court.
- With a keep quiet relief his eyes took note this is the street here
- middle of the day of Bob Doran’s bottle shoulders. On his annual bend,
- M’Coy said. They drink in order to say or do something or _cherchez la
- femme_. Up in the Coombe with chummies and streetwalkers and then the
- rest of the year sober as a judge.
- Yes. Thought so. Sloping into the Empire. Gone. Plain soda would do him
- good. Where Pat Kinsella had his Harp theatre before Whitbred ran the
- Queen’s. Broth of a boy. Dion Boucicault business with his harvestmoon
- face in a poky bonnet. Three Purty Maids from School. How time flies,
- eh? Showing long red pantaloons under his skirts. Drinkers, drinking,
- laughed spluttering, their drink against their breath. More power, Pat.
- Coarse red: fun for drunkards: guffaw and smoke. Take off that white
- hat. His parboiled eyes. Where is he now? Beggar somewhere. The harp
- that once did starve us all.
- I was happier then. Or was that I? Or am I now I? Twentyeight I was.
- She twentythree. When we left Lombard street west something changed.
- Could never like it again after Rudy. Can’t bring back time. Like
- holding water in your hand. Would you go back to then? Just beginning
- then. Would you? Are you not happy in your home you poor little naughty
- boy? Wants to sew on buttons for me. I must answer. Write it in the
- library.
- Grafton street gay with housed awnings lured his senses. Muslin prints,
- silkdames and dowagers, jingle of harnesses, hoofthuds lowringing in
- the baking causeway. Thick feet that woman has in the white stockings.
- Hope the rain mucks them up on her. Countrybred chawbacon. All the beef
- to the heels were in. Always gives a woman clumsy feet. Molly looks out
- of plumb.
- He passed, dallying, the windows of Brown Thomas, silk mercers.
- Cascades of ribbons. Flimsy China silks. A tilted urn poured from its
- mouth a flood of bloodhued poplin: lustrous blood. The huguenots
- brought that here. _La causa è santa!_ Tara tara. Great chorus that.
- Taree tara. Must be washed in rainwater. Meyerbeer. Tara: bom bom bom.
- Pincushions. I’m a long time threatening to buy one. Sticking them all
- over the place. Needles in window curtains.
- He bared slightly his left forearm. Scrape: nearly gone. Not today
- anyhow. Must go back for that lotion. For her birthday perhaps.
- Junejulyaugseptember eighth. Nearly three months off. Then she mightn’t
- like it. Women won’t pick up pins. Say it cuts lo.
- Gleaming silks, petticoats on slim brass rails, rays of flat silk
- stockings.
- Useless to go back. Had to be. Tell me all.
- High voices. Sunwarm silk. Jingling harnesses. All for a woman, home
- and houses, silkwebs, silver, rich fruits spicy from Jaffa. Agendath
- Netaim. Wealth of the world.
- A warm human plumpness settled down on his brain. His brain yielded.
- Perfume of embraces all him assailed. With hungered flesh obscurely, he
- mutely craved to adore.
- Duke street. Here we are. Must eat. The Burton. Feel better then.
- He turned Combridge’s corner, still pursued. Jingling, hoofthuds.
- Perfumed bodies, warm, full. All kissed, yielded: in deep summer
- fields, tangled pressed grass, in trickling hallways of tenements,
- along sofas, creaking beds.
- —Jack, love!
- —Darling!
- —Kiss me, Reggy!
- —My boy!
- —Love!
- His heart astir he pushed in the door of the Burton restaurant. Stink
- gripped his trembling breath: pungent meatjuice, slush of greens. See
- the animals feed.
- Men, men, men.
- Perched on high stools by the bar, hats shoved back, at the tables
- calling for more bread no charge, swilling, wolfing gobfuls of sloppy
- food, their eyes bulging, wiping wetted moustaches. A pallid suetfaced
- young man polished his tumbler knife fork and spoon with his napkin.
- New set of microbes. A man with an infant’s saucestained napkin tucked
- round him shovelled gurgling soup down his gullet. A man spitting back
- on his plate: halfmasticated gristle: gums: no teeth to chewchewchew
- it. Chump chop from the grill. Bolting to get it over. Sad booser’s
- eyes. Bitten off more than he can chew. Am I like that? See ourselves
- as others see us. Hungry man is an angry man. Working tooth and jaw.
- Don’t! O! A bone! That last pagan king of Ireland Cormac in the
- schoolpoem choked himself at Sletty southward of the Boyne. Wonder what
- he was eating. Something galoptious. Saint Patrick converted him to
- Christianity. Couldn’t swallow it all however.
- —Roast beef and cabbage.
- —One stew.
- Smells of men. Spat-on sawdust, sweetish warmish cigarettesmoke, reek
- of plug, spilt beer, men’s beery piss, the stale of ferment.
- His gorge rose.
- Couldn’t eat a morsel here. Fellow sharpening knife and fork to eat all
- before him, old chap picking his tootles. Slight spasm, full, chewing
- the cud. Before and after. Grace after meals. Look on this picture then
- on that. Scoffing up stewgravy with sopping sippets of bread. Lick it
- off the plate, man! Get out of this.
- He gazed round the stooled and tabled eaters, tightening the wings of
- his nose.
- —Two stouts here.
- —One corned and cabbage.
- That fellow ramming a knifeful of cabbage down as if his life depended
- on it. Good stroke. Give me the fidgets to look. Safer to eat from his
- three hands. Tear it limb from limb. Second nature to him. Born with a
- silver knife in his mouth. That’s witty, I think. Or no. Silver means
- born rich. Born with a knife. But then the allusion is lost.
- An illgirt server gathered sticky clattering plates. Rock, the head
- bailiff, standing at the bar blew the foamy crown from his tankard.
- Well up: it splashed yellow near his boot. A diner, knife and fork
- upright, elbows on table, ready for a second helping stared towards the
- foodlift across his stained square of newspaper. Other chap telling him
- something with his mouth full. Sympathetic listener. Table talk. I
- munched hum un thu Unchster Bunk un Munchday. Ha? Did you, faith?
- Mr Bloom raised two fingers doubtfully to his lips. His eyes said:
- —Not here. Don’t see him.
- Out. I hate dirty eaters.
- He backed towards the door. Get a light snack in Davy Byrne’s. Stopgap.
- Keep me going. Had a good breakfast.
- —Roast and mashed here.
- —Pint of stout.
- Every fellow for his own, tooth and nail. Gulp. Grub. Gulp. Gobstuff.
- He came out into clearer air and turned back towards Grafton street.
- Eat or be eaten. Kill! Kill!
- Suppose that communal kitchen years to come perhaps. All trotting down
- with porringers and tommycans to be filled. Devour contents in the
- street. John Howard Parnell example the provost of Trinity every
- mother’s son don’t talk of your provosts and provost of Trinity women
- and children cabmen priests parsons fieldmarshals archbishops. From
- Ailesbury road, Clyde road, artisans’ dwellings, north Dublin union,
- lord mayor in his gingerbread coach, old queen in a bathchair. My
- plate’s empty. After you with our incorporated drinkingcup. Like sir
- Philip Crampton’s fountain. Rub off the microbes with your
- handkerchief. Next chap rubs on a new batch with his. Father O’Flynn
- would make hares of them all. Have rows all the same. All for number
- one. Children fighting for the scrapings of the pot. Want a souppot as
- big as the Phoenix park. Harpooning flitches and hindquarters out of
- it. Hate people all round you. City Arms hotel _table d’hôte_ she
- called it. Soup, joint and sweet. Never know whose thoughts you’re
- chewing. Then who’d wash up all the plates and forks? Might be all
- feeding on tabloids that time. Teeth getting worse and worse.
- After all there’s a lot in that vegetarian fine flavour of things from
- the earth garlic of course it stinks after Italian organgrinders crisp
- of onions mushrooms truffles. Pain to the animal too. Pluck and draw
- fowl. Wretched brutes there at the cattlemarket waiting for the poleaxe
- to split their skulls open. Moo. Poor trembling calves. Meh. Staggering
- bob. Bubble and squeak. Butchers’ buckets wobbly lights. Give us that
- brisket off the hook. Plup. Rawhead and bloody bones. Flayed glasseyed
- sheep hung from their haunches, sheepsnouts bloodypapered snivelling
- nosejam on sawdust. Top and lashers going out. Don’t maul them pieces,
- young one.
- Hot fresh blood they prescribe for decline. Blood always needed.
- Insidious. Lick it up smokinghot, thick sugary. Famished ghosts.
- Ah, I’m hungry.
- He entered Davy Byrne’s. Moral pub. He doesn’t chat. Stands a drink now
- and then. But in leapyear once in four. Cashed a cheque for me once.
- What will I take now? He drew his watch. Let me see now. Shandygaff?
- —Hello, Bloom, Nosey Flynn said from his nook.
- —Hello, Flynn.
- —How’s things?
- —Tiptop... Let me see. I’ll take a glass of burgundy and... let me see.
- Sardines on the shelves. Almost taste them by looking. Sandwich? Ham
- and his descendants musterred and bred there. Potted meats. What is
- home without Plumtree’s potted meat? Incomplete. What a stupid ad!
- Under the obituary notices they stuck it. All up a plumtree. Dignam’s
- potted meat. Cannibals would with lemon and rice. White missionary too
- salty. Like pickled pork. Expect the chief consumes the parts of
- honour. Ought to be tough from exercise. His wives in a row to watch
- the effect. _There was a right royal old nigger. Who ate or something
- the somethings of the reverend Mr MacTrigger_. With it an abode of
- bliss. Lord knows what concoction. Cauls mouldy tripes windpipes faked
- and minced up. Puzzle find the meat. Kosher. No meat and milk together.
- Hygiene that was what they call now. Yom Kippur fast spring cleaning of
- inside. Peace and war depend on some fellow’s digestion. Religions.
- Christmas turkeys and geese. Slaughter of innocents. Eat drink and be
- merry. Then casual wards full after. Heads bandaged. Cheese digests all
- but itself. Mity cheese.
- —Have you a cheese sandwich?
- —Yes, sir.
- Like a few olives too if they had them. Italian I prefer. Good glass of
- burgundy take away that. Lubricate. A nice salad, cool as a cucumber,
- Tom Kernan can dress. Puts gusto into it. Pure olive oil. Milly served
- me that cutlet with a sprig of parsley. Take one Spanish onion. God
- made food, the devil the cooks. Devilled crab.
- —Wife well?
- —Quite well, thanks... A cheese sandwich, then. Gorgonzola, have you?
- —Yes, sir.
- Nosey Flynn sipped his grog.
- —Doing any singing those times?
- Look at his mouth. Could whistle in his own ear. Flap ears to match.
- Music. Knows as much about it as my coachman. Still better tell him.
- Does no harm. Free ad.
- —She’s engaged for a big tour end of this month. You may have heard
- perhaps.
- —No. O, that’s the style. Who’s getting it up?
- The curate served.
- —How much is that?
- —Seven d., sir... Thank you, sir.
- Mr Bloom cut his sandwich into slender strips. _Mr MacTrigger_. Easier
- than the dreamy creamy stuff. _His five hundred wives. Had the time of
- their lives._
- —Mustard, sir?
- —Thank you.
- He studded under each lifted strip yellow blobs. _Their lives_. I have
- it. _It grew bigger and bigger and bigger_.
- —Getting it up? he said. Well, it’s like a company idea, you see. Part
- shares and part profits.
- —Ay, now I remember, Nosey Flynn said, putting his hand in his pocket
- to scratch his groin. Who is this was telling me? Isn’t Blazes Boylan
- mixed up in it?
- A warm shock of air heat of mustard hanched on Mr Bloom’s heart. He
- raised his eyes and met the stare of a bilious clock. Two. Pub clock
- five minutes fast. Time going on. Hands moving. Two. Not yet.
- His midriff yearned then upward, sank within him, yearned more longly,
- longingly.
- Wine.
- He smellsipped the cordial juice and, bidding his throat strongly to
- speed it, set his wineglass delicately down.
- —Yes, he said. He’s the organiser in point of fact.
- No fear: no brains.
- Nosey Flynn snuffled and scratched. Flea having a good square meal.
- —He had a good slice of luck, Jack Mooney was telling me, over that
- boxingmatch Myler Keogh won again that soldier in the Portobello
- barracks. By God, he had the little kipper down in the county Carlow he
- was telling me...
- Hope that dewdrop doesn’t come down into his glass. No, snuffled it up.
- —For near a month, man, before it came off. Sucking duck eggs by God
- till further orders. Keep him off the boose, see? O, by God, Blazes is
- a hairy chap.
- Davy Byrne came forward from the hindbar in tuckstitched shirtsleeves,
- cleaning his lips with two wipes of his napkin. Herring’s blush. Whose
- smile upon each feature plays with such and such replete. Too much fat
- on the parsnips.
- —And here’s himself and pepper on him, Nosey Flynn said. Can you give
- us a good one for the Gold cup?
- —I’m off that, Mr Flynn, Davy Byrne answered. I never put anything on a
- horse.
- —You’re right there, Nosey Flynn said.
- Mr Bloom ate his strips of sandwich, fresh clean bread, with relish of
- disgust pungent mustard, the feety savour of green cheese. Sips of his
- wine soothed his palate. Not logwood that. Tastes fuller this weather
- with the chill off.
- Nice quiet bar. Nice piece of wood in that counter. Nicely planed. Like
- the way it curves there.
- —I wouldn’t do anything at all in that line, Davy Byrne said. It ruined
- many a man, the same horses.
- Vintners’ sweepstake. Licensed for the sale of beer, wine and spirits
- for consumption on the premises. Heads I win tails you lose.
- —True for you, Nosey Flynn said. Unless you’re in the know. There’s no
- straight sport going now. Lenehan gets some good ones. He’s giving
- Sceptre today. Zinfandel’s the favourite, Lord Howard de Walden’s, won
- at Epsom. Morny Cannon is riding him. I could have got seven to one
- against Saint Amant a fortnight before.
- —That so? Davy Byrne said...
- He went towards the window and, taking up the pettycash book, scanned
- its pages.
- —I could, faith, Nosey Flynn said, snuffling. That was a rare bit of
- horseflesh. Saint Frusquin was her sire. She won in a thunderstorm,
- Rothschild’s filly, with wadding in her ears. Blue jacket and yellow
- cap. Bad luck to big Ben Dollard and his John O’Gaunt. He put me off
- it. Ay.
- He drank resignedly from his tumbler, running his fingers down the
- flutes.
- —Ay, he said, sighing.
- Mr Bloom, champing, standing, looked upon his sigh. Nosey numbskull.
- Will I tell him that horse Lenehan? He knows already. Better let him
- forget. Go and lose more. Fool and his money. Dewdrop coming down
- again. Cold nose he’d have kissing a woman. Still they might like.
- Prickly beards they like. Dogs’ cold noses. Old Mrs Riordan with the
- rumbling stomach’s Skye terrier in the City Arms hotel. Molly fondling
- him in her lap. O, the big doggybowwowsywowsy!
- Wine soaked and softened rolled pith of bread mustard a moment mawkish
- cheese. Nice wine it is. Taste it better because I’m not thirsty. Bath
- of course does that. Just a bite or two. Then about six o’clock I can.
- Six. Six. Time will be gone then. She...
- Mild fire of wine kindled his veins. I wanted that badly. Felt so off
- colour. His eyes unhungrily saw shelves of tins: sardines, gaudy
- lobsters’ claws. All the odd things people pick up for food. Out of
- shells, periwinkles with a pin, off trees, snails out of the ground the
- French eat, out of the sea with bait on a hook. Silly fish learn
- nothing in a thousand years. If you didn’t know risky putting anything
- into your mouth. Poisonous berries. Johnny Magories. Roundness you
- think good. Gaudy colour warns you off. One fellow told another and so
- on. Try it on the dog first. Led on by the smell or the look. Tempting
- fruit. Ice cones. Cream. Instinct. Orangegroves for instance. Need
- artificial irrigation. Bleibtreustrasse. Yes but what about oysters.
- Unsightly like a clot of phlegm. Filthy shells. Devil to open them too.
- Who found them out? Garbage, sewage they feed on. Fizz and Red bank
- oysters. Effect on the sexual. Aphrodis. He was in the Red Bank this
- morning. Was he oysters old fish at table perhaps he young flesh in bed
- no June has no ar no oysters. But there are people like things high.
- Tainted game. Jugged hare. First catch your hare. Chinese eating eggs
- fifty years old, blue and green again. Dinner of thirty courses. Each
- dish harmless might mix inside. Idea for a poison mystery. That
- archduke Leopold was it no yes or was it Otto one of those Habsburgs?
- Or who was it used to eat the scruff off his own head? Cheapest lunch
- in town. Of course aristocrats, then the others copy to be in the
- fashion. Milly too rock oil and flour. Raw pastry I like myself. Half
- the catch of oysters they throw back in the sea to keep up the price.
- Cheap no-one would buy. Caviare. Do the grand. Hock in green glasses.
- Swell blowout. Lady this. Powdered bosom pearls. The _élite. Crème de
- la crème_. They want special dishes to pretend they’re. Hermit with a
- platter of pulse keep down the stings of the flesh. Know me come eat
- with me. Royal sturgeon high sheriff, Coffey, the butcher, right to
- venisons of the forest from his ex. Send him back the half of a cow.
- Spread I saw down in the Master of the Rolls’ kitchen area. Whitehatted
- _chef_ like a rabbi. Combustible duck. Curly cabbage _à la duchesse de
- Parme_. Just as well to write it on the bill of fare so you can know
- what you’ve eaten. Too many drugs spoil the broth. I know it myself.
- Dosing it with Edwards’ desiccated soup. Geese stuffed silly for them.
- Lobsters boiled alive. Do ptake some ptarmigan. Wouldn’t mind being a
- waiter in a swell hotel. Tips, evening dress, halfnaked ladies. May I
- tempt you to a little more filleted lemon sole, miss Dubedat? Yes, do
- bedad. And she did bedad. Huguenot name I expect that. A miss Dubedat
- lived in Killiney, I remember. _Du de la_ is French. Still it’s the
- same fish perhaps old Micky Hanlon of Moore street ripped the guts out
- of making money hand over fist finger in fishes’ gills can’t write his
- name on a cheque think he was painting the landscape with his mouth
- twisted. Moooikill A Aitcha Ha ignorant as a kish of brogues, worth
- fifty thousand pounds.
- Stuck on the pane two flies buzzed, stuck.
- Glowing wine on his palate lingered swallowed. Crushing in the
- winepress grapes of Burgundy. Sun’s heat it is. Seems to a secret touch
- telling me memory. Touched his sense moistened remembered. Hidden under
- wild ferns on Howth below us bay sleeping: sky. No sound. The sky. The
- bay purple by the Lion’s head. Green by Drumleck. Yellowgreen towards
- Sutton. Fields of undersea, the lines faint brown in grass, buried
- cities. Pillowed on my coat she had her hair, earwigs in the heather
- scrub my hand under her nape, you’ll toss me all. O wonder! Coolsoft
- with ointments her hand touched me, caressed: her eyes upon me did not
- turn away. Ravished over her I lay, full lips full open, kissed her
- mouth. Yum. Softly she gave me in my mouth the seedcake warm and
- chewed. Mawkish pulp her mouth had mumbled sweetsour of her spittle.
- Joy: I ate it: joy. Young life, her lips that gave me pouting. Soft
- warm sticky gumjelly lips. Flowers her eyes were, take me, willing
- eyes. Pebbles fell. She lay still. A goat. No-one. High on Ben Howth
- rhododendrons a nannygoat walking surefooted, dropping currants.
- Screened under ferns she laughed warmfolded. Wildly I lay on her,
- kissed her: eyes, her lips, her stretched neck beating, woman’s breasts
- full in her blouse of nun’s veiling, fat nipples upright. Hot I tongued
- her. She kissed me. I was kissed. All yielding she tossed my hair.
- Kissed, she kissed me.
- Me. And me now.
- Stuck, the flies buzzed.
- His downcast eyes followed the silent veining of the oaken slab.
- Beauty: it curves: curves are beauty. Shapely goddesses, Venus, Juno:
- curves the world admires. Can see them library museum standing in the
- round hall, naked goddesses. Aids to digestion. They don’t care what
- man looks. All to see. Never speaking. I mean to say to fellows like
- Flynn. Suppose she did Pygmalion and Galatea what would she say first?
- Mortal! Put you in your proper place. Quaffing nectar at mess with gods
- golden dishes, all ambrosial. Not like a tanner lunch we have, boiled
- mutton, carrots and turnips, bottle of Allsop. Nectar imagine it
- drinking electricity: gods’ food. Lovely forms of women sculped
- Junonian. Immortal lovely. And we stuffing food in one hole and out
- behind: food, chyle, blood, dung, earth, food: have to feed it like
- stoking an engine. They have no. Never looked. I’ll look today. Keeper
- won’t see. Bend down let something fall see if she.
- Dribbling a quiet message from his bladder came to go to do not to do
- there to do. A man and ready he drained his glass to the lees and
- walked, to men too they gave themselves, manly conscious, lay with men
- lovers, a youth enjoyed her, to the yard.
- When the sound of his boots had ceased Davy Byrne said from his book:
- —What is this he is? Isn’t he in the insurance line?
- —He’s out of that long ago, Nosey Flynn said. He does canvassing for
- the _Freeman._
- —I know him well to see, Davy Byrne said. Is he in trouble?
- —Trouble? Nosey Flynn said. Not that I heard of. Why?
- —I noticed he was in mourning.
- —Was he? Nosey Flynn said. So he was, faith. I asked him how was all at
- home. You’re right, by God. So he was.
- —I never broach the subject, Davy Byrne said humanely, if I see a
- gentleman is in trouble that way. It only brings it up fresh in their
- minds.
- —It’s not the wife anyhow, Nosey Flynn said. I met him the day before
- yesterday and he coming out of that Irish farm dairy John Wyse Nolan’s
- wife has in Henry street with a jar of cream in his hand taking it home
- to his better half. She’s well nourished, I tell you. Plovers on toast.
- —And is he doing for the _Freeman?_ Davy Byrne said.
- Nosey Flynn pursed his lips.
- —He doesn’t buy cream on the ads he picks up. You can make bacon of
- that.
- —How so? Davy Byrne asked, coming from his book.
- Nosey Flynn made swift passes in the air with juggling fingers. He
- winked.
- —He’s in the craft, he said.
- —Do you tell me so? Davy Byrne said.
- —Very much so, Nosey Flynn said. Ancient free and accepted order. He’s
- an excellent brother. Light, life and love, by God. They give him a leg
- up. I was told that by a—well, I won’t say who.
- —Is that a fact?
- —O, it’s a fine order, Nosey Flynn said. They stick to you when you’re
- down. I know a fellow was trying to get into it. But they’re as close
- as damn it. By God they did right to keep the women out of it.
- Davy Byrne smiledyawnednodded all in one:
- —Iiiiiichaaaaaaach!
- —There was one woman, Nosey Flynn said, hid herself in a clock to find
- out what they do be doing. But be damned but they smelt her out and
- swore her in on the spot a master mason. That was one of the saint
- Legers of Doneraile.
- Davy Byrne, sated after his yawn, said with tearwashed eyes:
- —And is that a fact? Decent quiet man he is. I often saw him in here
- and I never once saw him—you know, over the line.
- —God Almighty couldn’t make him drunk, Nosey Flynn said firmly. Slips
- off when the fun gets too hot. Didn’t you see him look at his watch?
- Ah, you weren’t there. If you ask him to have a drink first thing he
- does he outs with the watch to see what he ought to imbibe. Declare to
- God he does.
- —There are some like that, Davy Byrne said. He’s a safe man, I’d say.
- —He’s not too bad, Nosey Flynn said, snuffling it up. He’s been known
- to put his hand down too to help a fellow. Give the devil his due. O,
- Bloom has his good points. But there’s one thing he’ll never do.
- His hand scrawled a dry pen signature beside his grog.
- —I know, Davy Byrne said.
- —Nothing in black and white, Nosey Flynn said.
- Paddy Leonard and Bantam Lyons came in. Tom Rochford followed frowning,
- a plaining hand on his claret waistcoat.
- —Day, Mr Byrne.
- —Day, gentlemen.
- They paused at the counter.
- —Who’s standing? Paddy Leonard asked.
- —I’m sitting anyhow, Nosey Flynn answered.
- —Well, what’ll it be? Paddy Leonard asked.
- —I’ll take a stone ginger, Bantam Lyons said.
- —How much? Paddy Leonard cried. Since when, for God’ sake? What’s
- yours, Tom?
- —How is the main drainage? Nosey Flynn asked, sipping.
- For answer Tom Rochford pressed his hand to his breastbone and
- hiccupped.
- —Would I trouble you for a glass of fresh water, Mr Byrne? he said.
- —Certainly, sir.
- Paddy Leonard eyed his alemates.
- —Lord love a duck, he said. Look at what I’m standing drinks to! Cold
- water and gingerpop! Two fellows that would suck whisky off a sore leg.
- He has some bloody horse up his sleeve for the Gold cup. A dead snip.
- —Zinfandel is it? Nosey Flynn asked.
- Tom Rochford spilt powder from a twisted paper into the water set
- before him.
- —That cursed dyspepsia, he said before drinking.
- —Breadsoda is very good, Davy Byrne said.
- Tom Rochford nodded and drank.
- —Is it Zinfandel?
- —Say nothing! Bantam Lyons winked. I’m going to plunge five bob on my
- own.
- —Tell us if you’re worth your salt and be damned to you, Paddy Leonard
- said. Who gave it to you?
- Mr Bloom on his way out raised three fingers in greeting.
- —So long! Nosey Flynn said.
- The others turned.
- —That’s the man now that gave it to me, Bantam Lyons whispered.
- —Prrwht! Paddy Leonard said with scorn. Mr Byrne, sir, we’ll take two
- of your small Jamesons after that and a...
- —Stone ginger, Davy Byrne added civilly.
- —Ay, Paddy Leonard said. A suckingbottle for the baby.
- Mr Bloom walked towards Dawson street, his tongue brushing his teeth
- smooth. Something green it would have to be: spinach, say. Then with
- those Röntgen rays searchlight you could.
- At Duke lane a ravenous terrier choked up a sick knuckly cud on the
- cobblestones and lapped it with new zest. Surfeit. Returned with thanks
- having fully digested the contents. First sweet then savoury. Mr Bloom
- coasted warily. Ruminants. His second course. Their upper jaw they
- move. Wonder if Tom Rochford will do anything with that invention of
- his? Wasting time explaining it to Flynn’s mouth. Lean people long
- mouths. Ought to be a hall or a place where inventors could go in and
- invent free. Course then you’d have all the cranks pestering.
- He hummed, prolonging in solemn echo the closes of the bars:
- Don Giovanni, a cenar teco
- M’invitasti.
- Feel better. Burgundy. Good pick me up. Who distilled first? Some chap
- in the blues. Dutch courage. That _Kilkenny People_ in the national
- library now I must.
- Bare clean closestools waiting in the window of William Miller,
- plumber, turned back his thoughts. They could: and watch it all the way
- down, swallow a pin sometimes come out of the ribs years after, tour
- round the body changing biliary duct spleen squirting liver gastric
- juice coils of intestines like pipes. But the poor buffer would have to
- stand all the time with his insides entrails on show. Science.
- —_A cenar teco._
- What does that _teco_ mean? Tonight perhaps.
- Don Giovanni, thou hast me invited
- To come to supper tonight,
- The rum the rumdum.
- Doesn’t go properly.
- Keyes: two months if I get Nannetti to. That’ll be two pounds ten about
- two pounds eight. Three Hynes owes me. Two eleven. Prescott’s dyeworks
- van over there. If I get Billy Prescott’s ad: two fifteen. Five guineas
- about. On the pig’s back.
- Could buy one of those silk petticoats for Molly, colour of her new
- garters.
- Today. Today. Not think.
- Tour the south then. What about English wateringplaces? Brighton,
- Margate. Piers by moonlight. Her voice floating out. Those lovely
- seaside girls. Against John Long’s a drowsing loafer lounged in heavy
- thought, gnawing a crusted knuckle. Handy man wants job. Small wages.
- Will eat anything.
- Mr Bloom turned at Gray’s confectioner’s window of unbought tarts and
- passed the reverend Thomas Connellan’s bookstore. _Why I left the
- church of Rome? Birds’ Nest._ Women run him. They say they used to give
- pauper children soup to change to protestants in the time of the potato
- blight. Society over the way papa went to for the conversion of poor
- jews. Same bait. Why we left the church of Rome.
- A blind stripling stood tapping the curbstone with his slender cane. No
- tram in sight. Wants to cross.
- —Do you want to cross? Mr Bloom asked.
- The blind stripling did not answer. His wallface frowned weakly. He
- moved his head uncertainly.
- —You’re in Dawson street, Mr Bloom said. Molesworth street is opposite.
- Do you want to cross? There’s nothing in the way.
- The cane moved out trembling to the left. Mr Bloom’s eye followed its
- line and saw again the dyeworks’ van drawn up before Drago’s. Where I
- saw his brillantined hair just when I was. Horse drooping. Driver in
- John Long’s. Slaking his drouth.
- —There’s a van there, Mr Bloom said, but it’s not moving. I’ll see you
- across. Do you want to go to Molesworth street?
- —Yes, the stripling answered. South Frederick street.
- —Come, Mr Bloom said.
- He touched the thin elbow gently: then took the limp seeing hand to
- guide it forward.
- Say something to him. Better not do the condescending. They mistrust
- what you tell them. Pass a common remark.
- —The rain kept off.
- No answer.
- Stains on his coat. Slobbers his food, I suppose. Tastes all different
- for him. Have to be spoonfed first. Like a child’s hand, his hand. Like
- Milly’s was. Sensitive. Sizing me up I daresay from my hand. Wonder if
- he has a name. Van. Keep his cane clear of the horse’s legs: tired
- drudge get his doze. That’s right. Clear. Behind a bull: in front of a
- horse.
- —Thanks, sir.
- Knows I’m a man. Voice.
- —Right now? First turn to the left.
- The blind stripling tapped the curbstone and went on his way, drawing
- his cane back, feeling again.
- Mr Bloom walked behind the eyeless feet, a flatcut suit of herringbone
- tweed. Poor young fellow! How on earth did he know that van was there?
- Must have felt it. See things in their forehead perhaps: kind of sense
- of volume. Weight or size of it, something blacker than the dark.
- Wonder would he feel it if something was removed. Feel a gap. Queer
- idea of Dublin he must have, tapping his way round by the stones. Could
- he walk in a beeline if he hadn’t that cane? Bloodless pious face like
- a fellow going in to be a priest.
- Penrose! That was that chap’s name.
- Look at all the things they can learn to do. Read with their fingers.
- Tune pianos. Or we are surprised they have any brains. Why we think a
- deformed person or a hunchback clever if he says something we might
- say. Of course the other senses are more. Embroider. Plait baskets.
- People ought to help. Workbasket I could buy for Molly’s birthday.
- Hates sewing. Might take an objection. Dark men they call them.
- Sense of smell must be stronger too. Smells on all sides, bunched
- together. Each street different smell. Each person too. Then the
- spring, the summer: smells. Tastes? They say you can’t taste wines with
- your eyes shut or a cold in the head. Also smoke in the dark they say
- get no pleasure.
- And with a woman, for instance. More shameless not seeing. That girl
- passing the Stewart institution, head in the air. Look at me. I have
- them all on. Must be strange not to see her. Kind of a form in his
- mind’s eye. The voice, temperatures: when he touches her with his
- fingers must almost see the lines, the curves. His hands on her hair,
- for instance. Say it was black, for instance. Good. We call it black.
- Then passing over her white skin. Different feel perhaps. Feeling of
- white.
- Postoffice. Must answer. Fag today. Send her a postal order two
- shillings, half a crown. Accept my little present. Stationer’s just
- here too. Wait. Think over it.
- With a gentle finger he felt ever so slowly the hair combed back above
- his ears. Again. Fibres of fine fine straw. Then gently his finger felt
- the skin of his right cheek. Downy hair there too. Not smooth enough.
- The belly is the smoothest. No-one about. There he goes into Frederick
- street. Perhaps to Levenston’s dancing academy piano. Might be settling
- my braces.
- Walking by Doran’s publichouse he slid his hand between his waistcoat
- and trousers and, pulling aside his shirt gently, felt a slack fold of
- his belly. But I know it’s whitey yellow. Want to try in the dark to
- see.
- He withdrew his hand and pulled his dress to.
- Poor fellow! Quite a boy. Terrible. Really terrible. What dreams would
- he have, not seeing? Life a dream for him. Where is the justice being
- born that way? All those women and children excursion beanfeast burned
- and drowned in New York. Holocaust. Karma they call that transmigration
- for sins you did in a past life the reincarnation met him pike hoses.
- Dear, dear, dear. Pity, of course: but somehow you can’t cotton on to
- them someway.
- Sir Frederick Falkiner going into the freemasons’ hall. Solemn as Troy.
- After his good lunch in Earlsfort terrace. Old legal cronies cracking a
- magnum. Tales of the bench and assizes and annals of the bluecoat
- school. I sentenced him to ten years. I suppose he’d turn up his nose
- at that stuff I drank. Vintage wine for them, the year marked on a
- dusty bottle. Has his own ideas of justice in the recorder’s court.
- Wellmeaning old man. Police chargesheets crammed with cases get their
- percentage manufacturing crime. Sends them to the rightabout. The devil
- on moneylenders. Gave Reuben J a great strawcalling. Now he’s really
- what they call a dirty jew. Power those judges have. Crusty old topers
- in wigs. Bear with a sore paw. And may the Lord have mercy on your
- soul.
- Hello, placard. Mirus bazaar. His Excellency the lord lieutenant.
- Sixteenth. Today it is. In aid of funds for Mercer’s hospital. _The
- Messiah_ was first given for that. Yes. Handel. What about going out
- there: Ballsbridge. Drop in on Keyes. No use sticking to him like a
- leech. Wear out my welcome. Sure to know someone on the gate.
- Mr Bloom came to Kildare street. First I must. Library.
- Straw hat in sunlight. Tan shoes. Turnedup trousers. It is. It is.
- His heart quopped softly. To the right. Museum. Goddesses. He swerved
- to the right.
- Is it? Almost certain. Won’t look. Wine in my face. Why did I? Too
- heady. Yes, it is. The walk. Not see. Get on.
- Making for the museum gate with long windy steps he lifted his eyes.
- Handsome building. Sir Thomas Deane designed. Not following me?
- Didn’t see me perhaps. Light in his eyes.
- The flutter of his breath came forth in short sighs. Quick. Cold
- statues: quiet there. Safe in a minute.
- No. Didn’t see me. After two. Just at the gate.
- My heart!
- His eyes beating looked steadfastly at cream curves of stone. Sir
- Thomas Deane was the Greek architecture.
- Look for something I.
- His hasty hand went quick into a pocket, took out, read unfolded
- Agendath Netaim. Where did I?
- Busy looking.
- He thrust back quick Agendath.
- Afternoon she said.
- I am looking for that. Yes, that. Try all pockets. Handker. _Freeman._
- Where did I? Ah, yes. Trousers. Potato. Purse. Where?
- Hurry. Walk quietly. Moment more. My heart.
- His hand looking for the where did I put found in his hip pocket soap
- lotion have to call tepid paper stuck. Ah soap there I yes. Gate.
- Safe!
- [ 9 ]
- Urbane, to comfort them, the quaker librarian purred:
- —And we have, have we not, those priceless pages of _Wilhelm Meister_.
- A great poet on a great brother poet. A hesitating soul taking arms
- against a sea of troubles, torn by conflicting doubts, as one sees in
- real life.
- He came a step a sinkapace forward on neatsleather creaking and a step
- backward a sinkapace on the solemn floor.
- A noiseless attendant setting open the door but slightly made him a
- noiseless beck.
- —Directly, said he, creaking to go, albeit lingering. The beautiful
- ineffectual dreamer who comes to grief against hard facts. One always
- feels that Goethe’s judgments are so true. True in the larger analysis.
- Twicreakingly analysis he corantoed off. Bald, most zealous by the door
- he gave his large ear all to the attendant’s words: heard them: and was
- gone.
- Two left.
- —Monsieur de la Palice, Stephen sneered, was alive fifteen minutes
- before his death.
- —Have you found those six brave medicals, John Eglinton asked with
- elder’s gall, to write _Paradise Lost_ at your dictation? _The Sorrows
- of Satan_ he calls it.
- Smile. Smile Cranly’s smile.
- First he tickled her
- Then he patted her
- Then he passed the female catheter
- For he was a medical
- Jolly old medi...
- —I feel you would need one more for _Hamlet._ Seven is dear to the
- mystic mind. The shining seven W.B. calls them.
- Glittereyed his rufous skull close to his greencapped desklamp sought
- the face bearded amid darkgreener shadow, an ollav, holyeyed. He
- laughed low: a sizar’s laugh of Trinity: unanswered.
- Orchestral Satan, weeping many a rood
- Tears such as angels weep.
- Ed egli avea del cul fatto trombetta.
- He holds my follies hostage.
- Cranly’s eleven true Wicklowmen to free their sireland. Gaptoothed
- Kathleen, her four beautiful green fields, the stranger in her house.
- And one more to hail him: _ave, rabbi_: the Tinahely twelve. In the
- shadow of the glen he cooees for them. My soul’s youth I gave him,
- night by night. God speed. Good hunting.
- Mulligan has my telegram.
- Folly. Persist.
- —Our young Irish bards, John Eglinton censured, have yet to create a
- figure which the world will set beside Saxon Shakespeare’s Hamlet
- though I admire him, as old Ben did, on this side idolatry.
- —All these questions are purely academic, Russell oracled out of his
- shadow. I mean, whether Hamlet is Shakespeare or James I or Essex.
- Clergymen’s discussions of the historicity of Jesus. Art has to reveal
- to us ideas, formless spiritual essences. The supreme question about a
- work of art is out of how deep a life does it spring. The painting of
- Gustave Moreau is the painting of ideas. The deepest poetry of Shelley,
- the words of Hamlet bring our minds into contact with the eternal
- wisdom, Plato’s world of ideas. All the rest is the speculation of
- schoolboys for schoolboys.
- A. E. has been telling some yankee interviewer. Wall, tarnation strike
- me!
- —The schoolmen were schoolboys first, Stephen said superpolitely.
- Aristotle was once Plato’s schoolboy.
- —And has remained so, one should hope, John Eglinton sedately said. One
- can see him, a model schoolboy with his diploma under his arm.
- He laughed again at the now smiling bearded face.
- Formless spiritual. Father, Word and Holy Breath. Allfather, the
- heavenly man. Hiesos Kristos, magician of the beautiful, the Logos who
- suffers in us at every moment. This verily is that. I am the fire upon
- the altar. I am the sacrificial butter.
- Dunlop, Judge, the noblest Roman of them all, A.E., Arval, the Name
- Ineffable, in heaven hight: K.H., their master, whose identity is no
- secret to adepts. Brothers of the great white lodge always watching to
- see if they can help. The Christ with the bridesister, moisture of
- light, born of an ensouled virgin, repentant sophia, departed to the
- plane of buddhi. The life esoteric is not for ordinary person. O.P.
- must work off bad karma first. Mrs Cooper Oakley once glimpsed our very
- illustrious sister H.P.B.’s elemental.
- O, fie! Out on’t! _Pfuiteufel!_ You naughtn’t to look, missus, so you
- naughtn’t when a lady’s ashowing of her elemental.
- Mr Best entered, tall, young, mild, light. He bore in his hand with
- grace a notebook, new, large, clean, bright.
- —That model schoolboy, Stephen said, would find Hamlet’s musings about
- the afterlife of his princely soul, the improbable, insignificant and
- undramatic monologue, as shallow as Plato’s.
- John Eglinton, frowning, said, waxing wroth:
- —Upon my word it makes my blood boil to hear anyone compare Aristotle
- with Plato.
- —Which of the two, Stephen asked, would have banished me from his
- commonwealth?
- Unsheathe your dagger definitions. Horseness is the whatness of
- allhorse. Streams of tendency and eons they worship. God: noise in the
- street: very peripatetic. Space: what you damn well have to see.
- Through spaces smaller than red globules of man’s blood they
- creepycrawl after Blake’s buttocks into eternity of which this
- vegetable world is but a shadow. Hold to the now, the here, through
- which all future plunges to the past.
- Mr Best came forward, amiable, towards his colleague.
- —Haines is gone, he said.
- —Is he?
- —I was showing him Jubainville’s book. He’s quite enthusiastic, don’t
- you know, about Hyde’s _Lovesongs of Connacht._ I couldn’t bring him in
- to hear the discussion. He’s gone to Gill’s to buy it.
- Bound thee forth, my booklet, quick
- To greet the callous public.
- Writ, I ween, ’twas not my wish
- In lean unlovely English.
- —The peatsmoke is going to his head, John Eglinton opined.
- We feel in England. Penitent thief. Gone. I smoked his baccy. Green
- twinkling stone. An emerald set in the ring of the sea.
- —People do not know how dangerous lovesongs can be, the auric egg of
- Russell warned occultly. The movements which work revolutions in the
- world are born out of the dreams and visions in a peasant’s heart on
- the hillside. For them the earth is not an exploitable ground but the
- living mother. The rarefied air of the academy and the arena produce
- the sixshilling novel, the musichall song. France produces the finest
- flower of corruption in Mallarmé but the desirable life is revealed
- only to the poor of heart, the life of Homer’s Phæacians.
- From these words Mr Best turned an unoffending face to Stephen.
- —Mallarmé, don’t you know, he said, has written those wonderful prose
- poems Stephen MacKenna used to read to me in Paris. The one about
- _Hamlet._ He says: _il se promène, lisant au livre de lui-même_, don’t
- you know, _reading the book of himself_. He describes _Hamlet_ given in
- a French town, don’t you know, a provincial town. They advertised it.
- His free hand graciously wrote tiny signs in air.
- _Hamlet
- ou
- Le Distrait
- Pièce de Shakespeare_
- He repeated to John Eglinton’s newgathered frown:
- —_Pièce de Shakespeare_, don’t you know. It’s so French. The French
- point of view. _Hamlet ou_...
- —The absentminded beggar, Stephen ended.
- John Eglinton laughed.
- —Yes, I suppose it would be, he said. Excellent people, no doubt, but
- distressingly shortsighted in some matters.
- Sumptuous and stagnant exaggeration of murder.
- —A deathsman of the soul Robert Greene called him, Stephen said. Not
- for nothing was he a butcher’s son, wielding the sledded poleaxe and
- spitting in his palms. Nine lives are taken off for his father’s one.
- Our Father who art in purgatory. Khaki Hamlets don’t hesitate to shoot.
- The bloodboltered shambles in act five is a forecast of the
- concentration camp sung by Mr Swinburne.
- Cranly, I his mute orderly, following battles from afar.
- Whelps and dams of murderous foes whom none
- But we had spared...
- Between the Saxon smile and yankee yawp. The devil and the deep sea.
- —He will have it that _Hamlet_ is a ghoststory, John Eglinton said for
- Mr Best’s behoof. Like the fat boy in Pickwick he wants to make our
- flesh creep.
- List! List! O List!
- My flesh hears him: creeping, hears.
- If thou didst ever...
- —What is a ghost? Stephen said with tingling energy. One who has faded
- into impalpability through death, through absence, through change of
- manners. Elizabethan London lay as far from Stratford as corrupt Paris
- lies from virgin Dublin. Who is the ghost from _limbo patrum_,
- returning to the world that has forgotten him? Who is King Hamlet?
- John Eglinton shifted his spare body, leaning back to judge.
- Lifted.
- —It is this hour of a day in mid June, Stephen said, begging with a
- swift glance their hearing. The flag is up on the playhouse by the
- bankside. The bear Sackerson growls in the pit near it, Paris garden.
- Canvasclimbers who sailed with Drake chew their sausages among the
- groundlings.
- Local colour. Work in all you know. Make them accomplices.
- —Shakespeare has left the huguenot’s house in Silver street and walks
- by the swanmews along the riverbank. But he does not stay to feed the
- pen chivying her game of cygnets towards the rushes. The swan of Avon
- has other thoughts.
- Composition of place. Ignatius Loyola, make haste to help me!
- —The play begins. A player comes on under the shadow, made up in the
- castoff mail of a court buck, a wellset man with a bass voice. It is
- the ghost, the king, a king and no king, and the player is Shakespeare
- who has studied _Hamlet_ all the years of his life which were not
- vanity in order to play the part of the spectre. He speaks the words to
- Burbage, the young player who stands before him beyond the rack of
- cerecloth, calling him by a name:
- Hamlet, I am thy father’s spirit,
- bidding him list. To a son he speaks, the son of his soul, the prince,
- young Hamlet and to the son of his body, Hamnet Shakespeare, who has
- died in Stratford that his namesake may live for ever.
- Is it possible that that player Shakespeare, a ghost by absence, and in
- the vesture of buried Denmark, a ghost by death, speaking his own words
- to his own son’s name (had Hamnet Shakespeare lived he would have been
- prince Hamlet’s twin), is it possible, I want to know, or probable that
- he did not draw or foresee the logical conclusion of those premises:
- you are the dispossessed son: I am the murdered father: your mother is
- the guilty queen, Ann Shakespeare, born Hathaway?
- —But this prying into the family life of a great man, Russell began
- impatiently.
- Art thou there, truepenny?
- —Interesting only to the parish clerk. I mean, we have the plays. I
- mean when we read the poetry of _King Lear_ what is it to us how the
- poet lived? As for living our servants can do that for us, Villiers de
- l’Isle has said. Peeping and prying into greenroom gossip of the day,
- the poet’s drinking, the poet’s debts. We have _King Lear_: and it is
- immortal.
- Mr Best’s face, appealed to, agreed.
- Flow over them with your waves and with your waters,
- Mananaan, Mananaan MacLir...
- How now, sirrah, that pound he lent you when you were hungry?
- Marry, I wanted it.
- Take thou this noble.
- Go to! You spent most of it in Georgina Johnson’s bed, clergyman’s
- daughter. Agenbite of inwit.
- Do you intend to pay it back?
- O, yes.
- When? Now?
- Well... No.
- When, then?
- I paid my way. I paid my way.
- Steady on. He’s from beyant Boyne water. The northeast corner. You owe
- it.
- Wait. Five months. Molecules all change. I am other I now. Other I got
- pound.
- Buzz. Buzz.
- But I, entelechy, form of forms, am I by memory because under
- everchanging forms.
- I that sinned and prayed and fasted.
- A child Conmee saved from pandies.
- I, I and I. I.
- A.E.I.O.U.
- —Do you mean to fly in the face of the tradition of three centuries?
- John Eglinton’s carping voice asked. Her ghost at least has been laid
- for ever. She died, for literature at least, before she was born.
- —She died, Stephen retorted, sixtyseven years after she was born. She
- saw him into and out of the world. She took his first embraces. She
- bore his children and she laid pennies on his eyes to keep his eyelids
- closed when he lay on his deathbed.
- Mother’s deathbed. Candle. The sheeted mirror. Who brought me into this
- world lies there, bronzelidded, under few cheap flowers. _Liliata
- rutilantium._
- I wept alone.
- John Eglinton looked in the tangled glowworm of his lamp.
- —The world believes that Shakespeare made a mistake, he said, and got
- out of it as quickly and as best he could.
- —Bosh! Stephen said rudely. A man of genius makes no mistakes. His
- errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.
- Portals of discovery opened to let in the quaker librarian,
- softcreakfooted, bald, eared and assiduous.
- —A shrew, John Eglinton said shrewdly, is not a useful portal of
- discovery, one should imagine. What useful discovery did Socrates learn
- from Xanthippe?
- —Dialectic, Stephen answered: and from his mother how to bring thoughts
- into the world. What he learnt from his other wife Myrto (_absit
- nomen!_), Socratididion’s Epipsychidion, no man, not a woman, will ever
- know. But neither the midwife’s lore nor the caudlelectures saved him
- from the archons of Sinn Fein and their naggin of hemlock.
- —But Ann Hathaway? Mr Best’s quiet voice said forgetfully. Yes, we seem
- to be forgetting her as Shakespeare himself forgot her.
- His look went from brooder’s beard to carper’s skull, to remind, to
- chide them not unkindly, then to the baldpink lollard costard,
- guiltless though maligned.
- —He had a good groatsworth of wit, Stephen said, and no truant memory.
- He carried a memory in his wallet as he trudged to Romeville whistling
- _The girl I left behind me._ If the earthquake did not time it we
- should know where to place poor Wat, sitting in his form, the cry of
- hounds, the studded bridle and her blue windows. That memory, _Venus
- and Adonis_, lay in the bedchamber of every light-of-love in London. Is
- Katharine the shrew illfavoured? Hortensio calls her young and
- beautiful. Do you think the writer of _Antony and Cleopatra_, a
- passionate pilgrim, had his eyes in the back of his head that he chose
- the ugliest doxy in all Warwickshire to lie withal? Good: he left her
- and gained the world of men. But his boywomen are the women of a boy.
- Their life, thought, speech are lent them by males. He chose badly? He
- was chosen, it seems to me. If others have their will Ann hath a way.
- By cock, she was to blame. She put the comether on him, sweet and
- twentysix. The greyeyed goddess who bends over the boy Adonis, stooping
- to conquer, as prologue to the swelling act, is a boldfaced Stratford
- wench who tumbles in a cornfield a lover younger than herself.
- And my turn? When?
- Come!
- —Ryefield, Mr Best said brightly, gladly, raising his new book, gladly,
- brightly.
- He murmured then with blond delight for all:
- Between the acres of the rye
- These pretty countryfolk would lie.
- Paris: the wellpleased pleaser.
- A tall figure in bearded homespun rose from shadow and unveiled its
- cooperative watch.
- —I am afraid I am due at the _Homestead._
- Whither away? Exploitable ground.
- —Are you going? John Eglinton’s active eyebrows asked. Shall we see you
- at Moore’s tonight? Piper is coming.
- —Piper! Mr Best piped. Is Piper back?
- Peter Piper pecked a peck of pick of peck of pickled pepper.
- —I don’t know if I can. Thursday. We have our meeting. If I can get
- away in time.
- Yogibogeybox in Dawson chambers. _Isis Unveiled._ Their Pali book we
- tried to pawn. Crosslegged under an umbrel umbershoot he thrones an
- Aztec logos, functioning on astral levels, their oversoul, mahamahatma.
- The faithful hermetists await the light, ripe for chelaship,
- ringroundabout him. Louis H. Victory. T. Caulfield Irwin. Lotus ladies
- tend them i’the eyes, their pineal glands aglow. Filled with his god,
- he thrones, Buddh under plantain. Gulfer of souls, engulfer. Hesouls,
- shesouls, shoals of souls. Engulfed with wailing creecries, whirled,
- whirling, they bewail.
- In quintessential triviality
- For years in this fleshcase a shesoul dwelt.
- —They say we are to have a literary surprise, the quaker librarian
- said, friendly and earnest. Mr Russell, rumour has it, is gathering
- together a sheaf of our younger poets’ verses. We are all looking
- forward anxiously.
- Anxiously he glanced in the cone of lamplight where three faces,
- lighted, shone.
- See this. Remember.
- Stephen looked down on a wide headless caubeen, hung on his
- ashplanthandle over his knee. My casque and sword. Touch lightly with
- two index fingers. Aristotle’s experiment. One or two? Necessity is
- that in virtue of which it is impossible that one can be otherwise.
- Argal, one hat is one hat.
- Listen.
- Young Colum and Starkey. George Roberts is doing the commercial part.
- Longworth will give it a good puff in the _Express._ O, will he? I
- liked Colum’s _Drover._ Yes, I think he has that queer thing genius. Do
- you think he has genius really? Yeats admired his line: _As in wild
- earth a Grecian vase_. Did he? I hope you’ll be able to come tonight.
- Malachi Mulligan is coming too. Moore asked him to bring Haines. Did
- you hear Miss Mitchell’s joke about Moore and Martyn? That Moore is
- Martyn’s wild oats? Awfully clever, isn’t it? They remind one of Don
- Quixote and Sancho Panza. Our national epic has yet to be written, Dr
- Sigerson says. Moore is the man for it. A knight of the rueful
- countenance here in Dublin. With a saffron kilt? O’Neill Russell? O,
- yes, he must speak the grand old tongue. And his Dulcinea? James
- Stephens is doing some clever sketches. We are becoming important, it
- seems.
- Cordelia. _Cordoglio._ Lir’s loneliest daughter.
- Nookshotten. Now your best French polish.
- —Thank you very much, Mr Russell, Stephen said, rising. If you will be
- so kind as to give the letter to Mr Norman...
- —O, yes. If he considers it important it will go in. We have so much
- correspondence.
- —I understand, Stephen said. Thanks.
- God ild you. The pigs’ paper. Bullockbefriending.
- Synge has promised me an article for _Dana_ too. Are we going to be
- read? I feel we are. The Gaelic league wants something in Irish. I hope
- you will come round tonight. Bring Starkey.
- Stephen sat down.
- The quaker librarian came from the leavetakers. Blushing, his mask
- said:
- —Mr Dedalus, your views are most illuminating.
- He creaked to and fro, tiptoing up nearer heaven by the altitude of a
- chopine, and, covered by the noise of outgoing, said low:
- —Is it your view, then, that she was not faithful to the poet?
- Alarmed face asks me. Why did he come? Courtesy or an inward light?
- —Where there is a reconciliation, Stephen said, there must have been
- first a sundering.
- —Yes.
- Christfox in leather trews, hiding, a runaway in blighted treeforks,
- from hue and cry. Knowing no vixen, walking lonely in the chase. Women
- he won to him, tender people, a whore of Babylon, ladies of justices,
- bully tapsters’ wives. Fox and geese. And in New Place a slack
- dishonoured body that once was comely, once as sweet, as fresh as
- cinnamon, now her leaves falling, all, bare, frighted of the narrow
- grave and unforgiven.
- —Yes. So you think...
- The door closed behind the outgoer.
- Rest suddenly possessed the discreet vaulted cell, rest of warm and
- brooding air.
- A vestal’s lamp.
- Here he ponders things that were not: what Cæsar would have lived to do
- had he believed the soothsayer: what might have been: possibilities of
- the possible as possible: things not known: what name Achilles bore
- when he lived among women.
- Coffined thoughts around me, in mummycases, embalmed in spice of words.
- Thoth, god of libraries, a birdgod, moonycrowned. And I heard the voice
- of that Egyptian highpriest. _In painted chambers loaded with
- tilebooks._
- They are still. Once quick in the brains of men. Still: but an itch of
- death is in them, to tell me in my ear a maudlin tale, urge me to wreak
- their will.
- —Certainly, John Eglinton mused, of all great men he is the most
- enigmatic. We know nothing but that he lived and suffered. Not even so
- much. Others abide our question. A shadow hangs over all the rest.
- —But _Hamlet_ is so personal, isn’t it? Mr Best pleaded. I mean, a kind
- of private paper, don’t you know, of his private life. I mean, I don’t
- care a button, don’t you know, who is killed or who is guilty...
- He rested an innocent book on the edge of the desk, smiling his
- defiance. His private papers in the original. _Ta an bad ar an tir.
- Taim in mo shagart_. Put beurla on it, littlejohn.
- Quoth littlejohn Eglinton:
- —I was prepared for paradoxes from what Malachi Mulligan told us but I
- may as well warn you that if you want to shake my belief that
- Shakespeare is Hamlet you have a stern task before you.
- Bear with me.
- Stephen withstood the bane of miscreant eyes glinting stern under
- wrinkled brows. A basilisk. _E quando vede l’uomo l’attosca_. Messer
- Brunetto, I thank thee for the word.
- —As we, or mother Dana, weave and unweave our bodies, Stephen said,
- from day to day, their molecules shuttled to and fro, so does the
- artist weave and unweave his image. And as the mole on my right breast
- is where it was when I was born, though all my body has been woven of
- new stuff time after time, so through the ghost of the unquiet father
- the image of the unliving son looks forth. In the intense instant of
- imagination, when the mind, Shelley says, is a fading coal, that which
- I was is that which I am and that which in possibility I may come to
- be. So in the future, the sister of the past, I may see myself as I sit
- here now but by reflection from that which then I shall be.
- Drummond of Hawthornden helped you at that stile.
- —Yes, Mr Best said youngly. I feel Hamlet quite young. The bitterness
- might be from the father but the passages with Ophelia are surely from
- the son.
- Has the wrong sow by the lug. He is in my father. I am in his son.
- —That mole is the last to go, Stephen said, laughing.
- John Eglinton made a nothing pleasing mow.
- —If that were the birthmark of genius, he said, genius would be a drug
- in the market. The plays of Shakespeare’s later years which Renan
- admired so much breathe another spirit.
- —The spirit of reconciliation, the quaker librarian breathed.
- —There can be no reconciliation, Stephen said, if there has not been a
- sundering.
- Said that.
- —If you want to know what are the events which cast their shadow over
- the hell of time of _King Lear, Othello, Hamlet, Troilus and Cressida,_
- look to see when and how the shadow lifts. What softens the heart of a
- man, shipwrecked in storms dire, Tried, like another Ulysses, Pericles,
- prince of Tyre?
- Head, redconecapped, buffeted, brineblinded.
- —A child, a girl, placed in his arms, Marina.
- —The leaning of sophists towards the bypaths of apocrypha is a constant
- quantity, John Eglinton detected. The highroads are dreary but they
- lead to the town.
- Good Bacon: gone musty. Shakespeare Bacon’s wild oats. Cypherjugglers
- going the highroads. Seekers on the great quest. What town, good
- masters? Mummed in names: A. E., eon: Magee, John Eglinton. East of the
- sun, west of the moon: _Tir na n-og_. Booted the twain and staved.
- How many miles to Dublin?
- Three score and ten, sir.
- Will we be there by candlelight?
- —Mr Brandes accepts it, Stephen said, as the first play of the closing
- period.
- —Does he? What does Mr Sidney Lee, or Mr Simon Lazarus as some aver his
- name is, say of it?
- —Marina, Stephen said, a child of storm, Miranda, a wonder, Perdita,
- that which was lost. What was lost is given back to him: his daughter’s
- child. _My dearest wife_, Pericles says, _was like this maid._ Will any
- man love the daughter if he has not loved the mother?
- —The art of being a grandfather, Mr Best gan murmur. _L’art d’être
- grand_...
- —Will he not see reborn in her, with the memory of his own youth added,
- another image?
- Do you know what you are talking about? Love, yes. Word known to all
- men. _Amor vero aliquid alicui bonum vult unde et ea quae concupiscimus
- ..._
- —His own image to a man with that queer thing genius is the standard of
- all experience, material and moral. Such an appeal will touch him. The
- images of other males of his blood will repel him. He will see in them
- grotesque attempts of nature to foretell or to repeat himself.
- The benign forehead of the quaker librarian enkindled rosily with hope.
- —I hope Mr Dedalus will work out his theory for the enlightenment of
- the public. And we ought to mention another Irish commentator, Mr
- George Bernard Shaw. Nor should we forget Mr Frank Harris. His articles
- on Shakespeare in the _Saturday Review_ were surely brilliant. Oddly
- enough he too draws for us an unhappy relation with the dark lady of
- the sonnets. The favoured rival is William Herbert, earl of Pembroke. I
- own that if the poet must be rejected such a rejection would seem more
- in harmony with—what shall I say?—our notions of what ought not to have
- been.
- Felicitously he ceased and held a meek head among them, auk’s egg,
- prize of their fray.
- He thous and thees her with grave husbandwords. Dost love, Miriam? Dost
- love thy man?
- —That may be too, Stephen said. There’s a saying of Goethe’s which Mr
- Magee likes to quote. Beware of what you wish for in youth because you
- will get it in middle life. Why does he send to one who is a
- _buonaroba,_ a bay where all men ride, a maid of honour with a
- scandalous girlhood, a lordling to woo for him? He was himself a lord
- of language and had made himself a coistrel gentleman and he had
- written _Romeo and Juliet_. Why? Belief in himself has been untimely
- killed. He was overborne in a cornfield first (ryefield, I should say)
- and he will never be a victor in his own eyes after nor play
- victoriously the game of laugh and lie down. Assumed dongiovannism will
- not save him. No later undoing will undo the first undoing. The tusk of
- the boar has wounded him there where love lies ableeding. If the shrew
- is worsted yet there remains to her woman’s invisible weapon. There is,
- I feel in the words, some goad of the flesh driving him into a new
- passion, a darker shadow of the first, darkening even his own
- understanding of himself. A like fate awaits him and the two rages
- commingle in a whirlpool.
- They list. And in the porches of their ears I pour.
- —The soul has been before stricken mortally, a poison poured in the
- porch of a sleeping ear. But those who are done to death in sleep
- cannot know the manner of their quell unless their Creator endow their
- souls with that knowledge in the life to come. The poisoning and the
- beast with two backs that urged it King Hamlet’s ghost could not know
- of were he not endowed with knowledge by his creator. That is why the
- speech (his lean unlovely English) is always turned elsewhere,
- backward. Ravisher and ravished, what he would but would not, go with
- him from Lucrece’s bluecircled ivory globes to Imogen’s breast, bare,
- with its mole cinquespotted. He goes back, weary of the creation he has
- piled up to hide him from himself, an old dog licking an old sore. But,
- because loss is his gain, he passes on towards eternity in undiminished
- personality, untaught by the wisdom he has written or by the laws he
- has revealed. His beaver is up. He is a ghost, a shadow now, the wind
- by Elsinore’s rocks or what you will, the sea’s voice, a voice heard
- only in the heart of him who is the substance of his shadow, the son
- consubstantial with the father.
- —Amen! was responded from the doorway.
- Hast thou found me, O mine enemy?
- _Entr’acte_.
- A ribald face, sullen as a dean’s, Buck Mulligan came forward, then
- blithe in motley, towards the greeting of their smiles. My telegram.
- —You were speaking of the gaseous vertebrate, if I mistake not? he
- asked of Stephen.
- Primrosevested he greeted gaily with his doffed Panama as with a
- bauble.
- They make him welcome. _Was Du verlachst wirst Du noch dienen._
- Brood of mockers: Photius, pseudomalachi, Johann Most.
- He Who Himself begot middler the Holy Ghost and Himself sent Himself,
- Agenbuyer, between Himself and others, Who, put upon by His fiends,
- stripped and whipped, was nailed like bat to barndoor, starved on
- crosstree, Who let Him bury, stood up, harrowed hell, fared into heaven
- and there these nineteen hundred years sitteth on the right hand of His
- Own Self but yet shall come in the latter day to doom the quick and
- dead when all the quick shall be dead already.
- [Illustration]
- He lifts his hands. Veils fall. O, flowers! Bells with bells with bells
- aquiring.
- —Yes, indeed, the quaker librarian said. A most instructive discussion.
- Mr Mulligan, I’ll be bound, has his theory too of the play and of
- Shakespeare. All sides of life should be represented.
- He smiled on all sides equally.
- Buck Mulligan thought, puzzled:
- —Shakespeare? he said. I seem to know the name.
- A flying sunny smile rayed in his loose features.
- —To be sure, he said, remembering brightly. The chap that writes like
- Synge.
- Mr Best turned to him.
- —Haines missed you, he said. Did you meet him? He’ll see you after at
- the D. B. C. He’s gone to Gill’s to buy Hyde’s _Lovesongs of Connacht_.
- —I came through the museum, Buck Mulligan said. Was he here?
- —The bard’s fellowcountrymen, John Eglinton answered, are rather tired
- perhaps of our brilliancies of theorising. I hear that an actress
- played Hamlet for the fourhundredandeighth time last night in Dublin.
- Vining held that the prince was a woman. Has no-one made him out to be
- an Irishman? Judge Barton, I believe, is searching for some clues. He
- swears (His Highness not His Lordship) by saint Patrick.
- —The most brilliant of all is that story of Wilde’s, Mr Best said,
- lifting his brilliant notebook. That _Portrait of Mr W. H._ where he
- proves that the sonnets were written by a Willie Hughes, a man all
- hues.
- —For Willie Hughes, is it not? the quaker librarian asked.
- Or Hughie Wills? Mr William Himself. W. H.: who am I?
- —I mean, for Willie Hughes, Mr Best said, amending his gloss easily. Of
- course it’s all paradox, don’t you know, Hughes and hews and hues, the
- colour, but it’s so typical the way he works it out. It’s the very
- essence of Wilde, don’t you know. The light touch.
- His glance touched their faces lightly as he smiled, a blond ephebe.
- Tame essence of Wilde.
- You’re darned witty. Three drams of usquebaugh you drank with Dan
- Deasy’s ducats.
- How much did I spend? O, a few shillings.
- For a plump of pressmen. Humour wet and dry.
- Wit. You would give your five wits for youth’s proud livery he pranks
- in. Lineaments of gratified desire.
- There be many mo. Take her for me. In pairing time. Jove, a cool
- ruttime send them. Yea, turtledove her.
- Eve. Naked wheatbellied sin. A snake coils her, fang in’s kiss.
- —Do you think it is only a paradox? the quaker librarian was asking.
- The mocker is never taken seriously when he is most serious.
- They talked seriously of mocker’s seriousness.
- Buck Mulligan’s again heavy face eyed Stephen awhile. Then, his head
- wagging, he came near, drew a folded telegram from his pocket. His
- mobile lips read, smiling with new delight.
- —Telegram! he said. Wonderful inspiration! Telegram! A papal bull!
- He sat on a corner of the unlit desk, reading aloud joyfully:
- —_The sentimentalist is he who would enjoy without incurring the
- immense debtorship for a thing done._ Signed: Dedalus. Where did you
- launch it from? The kips? No. College Green. Have you drunk the four
- quid? The aunt is going to call on your unsubstantial father. Telegram!
- Malachi Mulligan, The Ship, lower Abbey street. O, you peerless mummer!
- O, you priestified Kinchite!
- Joyfully he thrust message and envelope into a pocket but keened in a
- querulous brogue:
- —It’s what I’m telling you, mister honey, it’s queer and sick we were,
- Haines and myself, the time himself brought it in. ’Twas murmur we did
- for a gallus potion would rouse a friar, I’m thinking, and he limp with
- leching. And we one hour and two hours and three hours in Connery’s
- sitting civil waiting for pints apiece.
- He wailed:
- —And we to be there, mavrone, and you to be unbeknownst sending us your
- conglomerations the way we to have our tongues out a yard long like the
- drouthy clerics do be fainting for a pussful.
- Stephen laughed.
- Quickly, warningfully Buck Mulligan bent down.
- —The tramper Synge is looking for you, he said, to murder you. He heard
- you pissed on his halldoor in Glasthule. He’s out in pampooties to
- murder you.
- —Me! Stephen exclaimed. That was your contribution to literature.
- Buck Mulligan gleefully bent back, laughing to the dark eavesdropping
- ceiling.
- —Murder you! he laughed.
- Harsh gargoyle face that warred against me over our mess of hash of
- lights in rue Saint-André-des-Arts. In words of words for words,
- palabras. Oisin with Patrick. Faunman he met in Clamart woods,
- brandishing a winebottle. _C’est vendredi saint!_ Murthering Irish. His
- image, wandering, he met. I mine. I met a fool i’the forest.
- —Mr Lyster, an attendant said from the door ajar.
- —... in which everyone can find his own. So Mr Justice Madden in his
- _Diary of Master William Silence_ has found the hunting terms... Yes?
- What is it?
- —There’s a gentleman here, sir, the attendant said, coming forward and
- offering a card. From the _Freeman._ He wants to see the files of the
- _Kilkenny People_ for last year.
- —Certainly, certainly, certainly. Is the gentleman?...
- He took the eager card, glanced, not saw, laid down unglanced, looked,
- asked, creaked, asked:
- —Is he?... O, there!
- Brisk in a galliard he was off, out. In the daylit corridor he talked
- with voluble pains of zeal, in duty bound, most fair, most kind, most
- honest broadbrim.
- —This gentleman? _Freeman’s Journal? Kilkenny People?_ To be sure. Good
- day, sir. _Kilkenny_... We have certainly...
- A patient silhouette waited, listening.
- —All the leading provincial... _Northern Whig, Cork Examiner,
- Enniscorthy Guardian,_ 1903... Will you please?... Evans, conduct this
- gentleman... If you just follow the atten... Or, please allow me...
- This way... Please, sir...
- Voluble, dutiful, he led the way to all the provincial papers, a bowing
- dark figure following his hasty heels.
- The door closed.
- —The sheeny! Buck Mulligan cried.
- He jumped up and snatched the card.
- —What’s his name? Ikey Moses? Bloom.
- He rattled on:
- —Jehovah, collector of prepuces, is no more. I found him over in the
- museum where I went to hail the foamborn Aphrodite. The Greek mouth
- that has never been twisted in prayer. Every day we must do homage to
- her. _Life of life, thy lips enkindle._
- Suddenly he turned to Stephen:
- —He knows you. He knows your old fellow. O, I fear me, he is Greeker
- than the Greeks. His pale Galilean eyes were upon her mesial groove.
- Venus Kallipyge. O, the thunder of those loins! _The god pursuing the
- maiden hid_.
- —We want to hear more, John Eglinton decided with Mr Best’s approval.
- We begin to be interested in Mrs S. Till now we had thought of her, if
- at all, as a patient Griselda, a Penelope stayathome.
- —Antisthenes, pupil of Gorgias, Stephen said, took the palm of beauty
- from Kyrios Menelaus’ brooddam, Argive Helen, the wooden mare of Troy
- in whom a score of heroes slept, and handed it to poor Penelope. Twenty
- years he lived in London and, during part of that time, he drew a
- salary equal to that of the lord chancellor of Ireland. His life was
- rich. His art, more than the art of feudalism as Walt Whitman called
- it, is the art of surfeit. Hot herringpies, green mugs of sack,
- honeysauces, sugar of roses, marchpane, gooseberried pigeons,
- ringocandies. Sir Walter Raleigh, when they arrested him, had half a
- million francs on his back including a pair of fancy stays. The
- gombeenwoman Eliza Tudor had underlinen enough to vie with her of
- Sheba. Twenty years he dallied there between conjugial love and its
- chaste delights and scortatory love and its foul pleasures. You know
- Manningham’s story of the burgher’s wife who bade Dick Burbage to her
- bed after she had seen him in _Richard III_ and how Shakespeare,
- overhearing, without more ado about nothing, took the cow by the horns
- and, when Burbage came knocking at the gate, answered from the capon’s
- blankets: _William the conqueror came before Richard III_. And the gay
- lakin, mistress Fitton, mount and cry O, and his dainty birdsnies, lady
- Penelope Rich, a clean quality woman is suited for a player, and the
- punks of the bankside, a penny a time.
- Cours la Reine. _Encore vingt sous. Nous ferons de petites
- cochonneries. Minette? Tu veux?_
- —The height of fine society. And sir William Davenant of Oxford’s
- mother with her cup of canary for any cockcanary.
- Buck Mulligan, his pious eyes upturned, prayed:
- —Blessed Margaret Mary Anycock!
- —And Harry of six wives’ daughter. And other lady friends from
- neighbour seats as Lawn Tennyson, gentleman poet, sings. But all those
- twenty years what do you suppose poor Penelope in Stratford was doing
- behind the diamond panes?
- Do and do. Thing done. In a rosery of Fetter lane of Gerard, herbalist,
- he walks, greyedauburn. An azured harebell like her veins. Lids of
- Juno’s eyes, violets. He walks. One life is all. One body. Do. But do.
- Afar, in a reek of lust and squalor, hands are laid on whiteness.
- Buck Mulligan rapped John Eglinton’s desk sharply.
- —Whom do you suspect? he challenged.
- —Say that he is the spurned lover in the sonnets. Once spurned twice
- spurned. But the court wanton spurned him for a lord, his dearmylove.
- Love that dare not speak its name.
- —As an Englishman, you mean, John sturdy Eglinton put in, he loved a
- lord.
- Old wall where sudden lizards flash. At Charenton I watched them.
- —It seems so, Stephen said, when he wants to do for him, and for all
- other and singular uneared wombs, the holy office an ostler does for
- the stallion. Maybe, like Socrates, he had a midwife to mother as he
- had a shrew to wife. But she, the giglot wanton, did not break a
- bedvow. Two deeds are rank in that ghost’s mind: a broken vow and the
- dullbrained yokel on whom her favour has declined, deceased husband’s
- brother. Sweet Ann, I take it, was hot in the blood. Once a wooer,
- twice a wooer.
- Stephen turned boldly in his chair.
- —The burden of proof is with you not with me, he said frowning. If you
- deny that in the fifth scene of _Hamlet_ he has branded her with infamy
- tell me why there is no mention of her during the thirtyfour years
- between the day she married him and the day she buried him. All those
- women saw their men down and under: Mary, her goodman John, Ann, her
- poor dear Willun, when he went and died on her, raging that he was the
- first to go, Joan, her four brothers, Judith, her husband and all her
- sons, Susan, her husband too, while Susan’s daughter, Elizabeth, to use
- granddaddy’s words, wed her second, having killed her first.
- O, yes, mention there is. In the years when he was living richly in
- royal London to pay a debt she had to borrow forty shillings from her
- father’s shepherd. Explain you then. Explain the swansong too wherein
- he has commended her to posterity.
- He faced their silence.
- To whom thus Eglinton: You mean the will.
- But that has been explained, I believe, by jurists.
- She was entitled to her widow’s dower
- At common law. His legal knowledge was great
- Our judges tell us.
- Him Satan fleers,
- Mocker:
- And therefore he left out her name
- From the first draft but he did not leave out
- The presents for his granddaughter, for his daughters,
- For his sister, for his old cronies in Stratford
- And in London. And therefore when he was urged,
- As I believe, to name her
- He left her his
- Secondbest
- Bed.
- _Punkt._
- Leftherhis
- Secondbest
- Leftherhis
- Bestabed
- Secabest
- Leftabed.
- Woa!
- —Pretty countryfolk had few chattels then, John Eglinton observed, as
- they have still if our peasant plays are true to type.
- —He was a rich country gentleman, Stephen said, with a coat of arms and
- landed estate at Stratford and a house in Ireland yard, a capitalist
- shareholder, a bill promoter, a tithefarmer. Why did he not leave her
- his best bed if he wished her to snore away the rest of her nights in
- peace?
- —It is clear that there were two beds, a best and a secondbest, Mr
- Secondbest Best said finely.
- —_Separatio a mensa et a thalamo_, bettered Buck Mulligan and was
- smiled on.
- —Antiquity mentions famous beds, Second Eglinton puckered, bedsmiling.
- Let me think.
- —Antiquity mentions that Stagyrite schoolurchin and bald heathen sage,
- Stephen said, who when dying in exile frees and endows his slaves, pays
- tribute to his elders, wills to be laid in earth near the bones of his
- dead wife and bids his friends be kind to an old mistress (don’t forget
- Nell Gwynn Herpyllis) and let her live in his villa.
- —Do you mean he died so? Mr Best asked with slight concern. I mean...
- —He died dead drunk, Buck Mulligan capped. A quart of ale is a dish for
- a king. O, I must tell you what Dowden said!
- —What? asked Besteglinton.
- William Shakespeare and company, limited. The people’s William. For
- terms apply: E. Dowden, Highfield house...
- —Lovely! Buck Mulligan suspired amorously. I asked him what he thought
- of the charge of pederasty brought against the bard. He lifted his
- hands and said: _All we can say is that life ran very high in those
- days._ Lovely!
- Catamite.
- —The sense of beauty leads us astray, said beautifulinsadness Best to
- ugling Eglinton.
- Steadfast John replied severe:
- —The doctor can tell us what those words mean. You cannot eat your cake
- and have it.
- Sayest thou so? Will they wrest from us, from me, the palm of beauty?
- —And the sense of property, Stephen said. He drew Shylock out of his
- own long pocket. The son of a maltjobber and moneylender he was himself
- a cornjobber and moneylender, with ten tods of corn hoarded in the
- famine riots. His borrowers are no doubt those divers of worship
- mentioned by Chettle Falstaff who reported his uprightness of dealing.
- He sued a fellowplayer for the price of a few bags of malt and exacted
- his pound of flesh in interest for every money lent. How else could
- Aubrey’s ostler and callboy get rich quick? All events brought grist to
- his mill. Shylock chimes with the jewbaiting that followed the hanging
- and quartering of the queen’s leech Lopez, his jew’s heart being
- plucked forth while the sheeny was yet alive: _Hamlet_ and _Macbeth_
- with the coming to the throne of a Scotch philosophaster with a turn
- for witchroasting. The lost armada is his jeer in _Love’s Labour Lost_.
- His pageants, the histories, sail fullbellied on a tide of Mafeking
- enthusiasm. Warwickshire jesuits are tried and we have a porter’s
- theory of equivocation. The _Sea Venture_ comes home from Bermudas and
- the play Renan admired is written with Patsy Caliban, our American
- cousin. The sugared sonnets follow Sidney’s. As for fay Elizabeth,
- otherwise carrotty Bess, the gross virgin who inspired _The Merry Wives
- of Windsor_, let some meinherr from Almany grope his life long for
- deephid meanings in the depths of the buckbasket.
- I think you’re getting on very nicely. Just mix up a mixture of
- theolologicophilolological. _Mingo, minxi, mictum, mingere._
- —Prove that he was a jew, John Eglinton dared, expectantly. Your dean
- of studies holds he was a holy Roman.
- _Sufflaminandus sum._
- —He was made in Germany, Stephen replied, as the champion French
- polisher of Italian scandals.
- —A myriadminded man, Mr Best reminded. Coleridge called him
- myriadminded.
- _Amplius. In societate humana hoc est maxime necessarium ut sit
- amicitia inter multos._
- —Saint Thomas, Stephen began...
- —_Ora pro nobis_, Monk Mulligan groaned, sinking to a chair.
- There he keened a wailing rune.
- —_Pogue mahone! Acushla machree!_ It’s destroyed we are from this day!
- It’s destroyed we are surely!
- All smiled their smiles.
- —Saint Thomas, Stephen smiling said, whose gorbellied works I enjoy
- reading in the original, writing of incest from a standpoint different
- from that of the new Viennese school Mr Magee spoke of, likens it in
- his wise and curious way to an avarice of the emotions. He means that
- the love so given to one near in blood is covetously withheld from some
- stranger who, it may be, hungers for it. Jews, whom christians tax with
- avarice, are of all races the most given to intermarriage. Accusations
- are made in anger. The christian laws which built up the hoards of the
- jews (for whom, as for the lollards, storm was shelter) bound their
- affections too with hoops of steel. Whether these be sins or virtues
- old Nobodaddy will tell us at doomsday leet. But a man who holds so
- tightly to what he calls his rights over what he calls his debts will
- hold tightly also to what he calls his rights over her whom he calls
- his wife. No sir smile neighbour shall covet his ox or his wife or his
- manservant or his maidservant or his jackass.
- —Or his jennyass, Buck Mulligan antiphoned.
- —Gentle Will is being roughly handled, gentle Mr Best said gently.
- —Which will? gagged sweetly Buck Mulligan. We are getting mixed.
- —The will to live, John Eglinton philosophised, for poor Ann, Will’s
- widow, is the will to die.
- _—Requiescat!_ Stephen prayed.
- What of all the will to do?
- It has vanished long ago...
- —She lies laid out in stark stiffness in that secondbest bed, the
- mobled queen, even though you prove that a bed in those days was as
- rare as a motorcar is now and that its carvings were the wonder of
- seven parishes. In old age she takes up with gospellers (one stayed
- with her at New Place and drank a quart of sack the town council paid
- for but in which bed he slept it skills not to ask) and heard she had a
- soul. She read or had read to her his chapbooks preferring them to the
- _Merry Wives_ and, loosing her nightly waters on the jordan, she
- thought over _Hooks and Eyes for Believers’ Breeches_ and _The most
- Spiritual Snuffbox to Make the Most Devout Souls Sneeze_. Venus has
- twisted her lips in prayer. Agenbite of inwit: remorse of conscience.
- It is an age of exhausted whoredom groping for its god.
- —History shows that to be true, _inquit Eglintonus Chronolologos_. The
- ages succeed one another. But we have it on high authority that a man’s
- worst enemies shall be those of his own house and family. I feel that
- Russell is right. What do we care for his wife or father? I should say
- that only family poets have family lives. Falstaff was not a family
- man. I feel that the fat knight is his supreme creation.
- Lean, he lay back. Shy, deny thy kindred, the unco guid. Shy, supping
- with the godless, he sneaks the cup. A sire in Ultonian Antrim bade it
- him. Visits him here on quarter days. Mr Magee, sir, there’s a
- gentleman to see you. Me? Says he’s your father, sir. Give me my
- Wordsworth. Enter Magee Mor Matthew, a rugged rough rugheaded kern, in
- strossers with a buttoned codpiece, his nether stocks bemired with
- clauber of ten forests, a wand of wilding in his hand.
- Your own? He knows your old fellow. The widower.
- Hurrying to her squalid deathlair from gay Paris on the quayside I
- touched his hand. The voice, new warmth, speaking. Dr Bob Kenny is
- attending her. The eyes that wish me well. But do not know me.
- —A father, Stephen said, battling against hopelessness, is a necessary
- evil. He wrote the play in the months that followed his father’s death.
- If you hold that he, a greying man with two marriageable daughters,
- with thirtyfive years of life, _nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita_,
- with fifty of experience, is the beardless undergraduate from
- Wittenberg then you must hold that his seventyyear old mother is the
- lustful queen. No. The corpse of John Shakespeare does not walk the
- night. From hour to hour it rots and rots. He rests, disarmed of
- fatherhood, having devised that mystical estate upon his son.
- Boccaccio’s Calandrino was the first and last man who felt himself with
- child. Fatherhood, in the sense of conscious begetting, is unknown to
- man. It is a mystical estate, an apostolic succession, from only
- begetter to only begotten. On that mystery and not on the madonna which
- the cunning Italian intellect flung to the mob of Europe the church is
- founded and founded irremovably because founded, like the world, macro
- and microcosm, upon the void. Upon incertitude, upon unlikelihood.
- _Amor matris_, subjective and objective genitive, may be the only true
- thing in life. Paternity may be a legal fiction. Who is the father of
- any son that any son should love him or he any son?
- What the hell are you driving at?
- I know. Shut up. Blast you. I have reasons.
- _Amplius. Adhuc. Iterum. Postea._
- Are you condemned to do this?
- —They are sundered by a bodily shame so steadfast that the criminal
- annals of the world, stained with all other incests and bestialities,
- hardly record its breach. Sons with mothers, sires with daughters,
- lesbic sisters, loves that dare not speak their name, nephews with
- grandmothers, jailbirds with keyholes, queens with prize bulls. The son
- unborn mars beauty: born, he brings pain, divides affection, increases
- care. He is a new male: his growth is his father’s decline, his youth
- his father’s envy, his friend his father’s enemy.
- In rue Monsieur-le-Prince I thought it.
- —What links them in nature? An instant of blind rut.
- Am I a father? If I were?
- Shrunken uncertain hand.
- —Sabellius, the African, subtlest heresiarch of all the beasts of the
- field, held that the Father was Himself His Own Son. The bulldog of
- Aquin, with whom no word shall be impossible, refutes him. Well: if the
- father who has not a son be not a father can the son who has not a
- father be a son? When Rutlandbaconsouthamptonshakespeare or another
- poet of the same name in the comedy of errors wrote _Hamlet_ he was not
- the father of his own son merely but, being no more a son, he was and
- felt himself the father of all his race, the father of his own
- grandfather, the father of his unborn grandson who, by the same token,
- never was born, for nature, as Mr Magee understands her, abhors
- perfection.
- Eglintoneyes, quick with pleasure, looked up shybrightly. Gladly
- glancing, a merry puritan, through the twisted eglantine.
- Flatter. Rarely. But flatter.
- —Himself his own father, Sonmulligan told himself. Wait. I am big with
- child. I have an unborn child in my brain. Pallas Athena! A play! The
- play’s the thing! Let me parturiate!
- He clasped his paunchbrow with both birthaiding hands.
- —As for his family, Stephen said, his mother’s name lives in the forest
- of Arden. Her death brought from him the scene with Volumnia in
- _Coriolanus._ His boyson’s death is the deathscene of young Arthur in
- _King John._ Hamlet, the black prince, is Hamnet Shakespeare. Who the
- girls in _The Tempest_, in _Pericles,_ in _Winter’s Tale_ are we know.
- Who Cleopatra, fleshpot of Egypt, and Cressid and Venus are we may
- guess. But there is another member of his family who is recorded.
- —The plot thickens, John Eglinton said.
- The quaker librarian, quaking, tiptoed in, quake, his mask, quake, with
- haste, quake, quack.
- Door closed. Cell. Day.
- They list. Three. They.
- I you he they.
- Come, mess.
- STEPHEN: He had three brothers, Gilbert, Edmund, Richard. Gilbert in
- his old age told some cavaliers he got a pass for nowt from Maister
- Gatherer one time mass he did and he seen his brud Maister Wull the
- playwriter up in Lunnon in a wrastling play wud a man on’s back. The
- playhouse sausage filled Gilbert’s soul. He is nowhere: but an Edmund
- and a Richard are recorded in the works of sweet William.
- MAGEEGLINJOHN: Names! What’s in a name?
- BEST: That is my name, Richard, don’t you know. I hope you are going to
- say a good word for Richard, don’t you know, for my sake. _(Laughter)_
- BUCKMULLIGAN: (_Piano, diminuendo_)
- Then outspoke medical Dick
- To his comrade medical Davy...
- STEPHEN: In his trinity of black Wills, the villain shakebags, Iago,
- Richard Crookback, Edmund in _King Lear_, two bear the wicked uncles’
- names. Nay, that last play was written or being written while his
- brother Edmund lay dying in Southwark.
- BEST: I hope Edmund is going to catch it. I don’t want Richard, my name
- ...
- _(Laughter)_
- QUAKERLYSTER: (_A tempo_) But he that filches from me my good name...
- STEPHEN: _(Stringendo)_ He has hidden his own name, a fair name,
- William, in the plays, a super here, a clown there, as a painter of old
- Italy set his face in a dark corner of his canvas. He has revealed it
- in the sonnets where there is Will in overplus. Like John o’Gaunt his
- name is dear to him, as dear as the coat and crest he toadied for, on a
- bend sable a spear or steeled argent, honorificabilitudinitatibus,
- dearer than his glory of greatest shakescene in the country. What’s in
- a name? That is what we ask ourselves in childhood when we write the
- name that we are told is ours. A star, a daystar, a firedrake, rose at
- his birth. It shone by day in the heavens alone, brighter than Venus in
- the night, and by night it shone over delta in Cassiopeia, the
- recumbent constellation which is the signature of his initial among the
- stars. His eyes watched it, lowlying on the horizon, eastward of the
- bear, as he walked by the slumberous summer fields at midnight
- returning from Shottery and from her arms.
- Both satisfied. I too.
- Don’t tell them he was nine years old when it was quenched.
- And from her arms.
- Wait to be wooed and won. Ay, meacock. Who will woo you?
- Read the skies. _Autontimorumenos. Bous Stephanoumenos._ Where’s your
- configuration? Stephen, Stephen, cut the bread even. S. D: _sua donna.
- Già: di lui. Gelindo risolve di non amare S. D._
- —What is that, Mr Dedalus? the quaker librarian asked. Was it a
- celestial phenomenon?
- —A star by night, Stephen said. A pillar of the cloud by day.
- What more’s to speak?
- Stephen looked on his hat, his stick, his boots.
- _Stephanos,_ my crown. My sword. His boots are spoiling the shape of my
- feet. Buy a pair. Holes in my socks. Handkerchief too.
- —You make good use of the name, John Eglinton allowed. Your own name is
- strange enough. I suppose it explains your fantastical humour.
- Me, Magee and Mulligan.
- Fabulous artificer. The hawklike man. You flew. Whereto?
- Newhaven-Dieppe, steerage passenger. Paris and back. Lapwing. Icarus.
- _Pater, ait._ Seabedabbled, fallen, weltering. Lapwing you are. Lapwing
- be.
- Mr Best eagerquietly lifted his book to say:
- —That’s very interesting because that brother motive, don’t you know,
- we find also in the old Irish myths. Just what you say. The three
- brothers Shakespeare. In Grimm too, don’t you know, the fairytales. The
- third brother that always marries the sleeping beauty and wins the best
- prize.
- Best of Best brothers. Good, better, best.
- The quaker librarian springhalted near.
- —I should like to know, he said, which brother you... I understand you
- to suggest there was misconduct with one of the brothers... But perhaps
- I am anticipating?
- He caught himself in the act: looked at all: refrained.
- An attendant from the doorway called:
- —Mr Lyster! Father Dineen wants...
- —O, Father Dineen! Directly.
- Swiftly rectly creaking rectly rectly he was rectly gone.
- John Eglinton touched the foil.
- —Come, he said. Let us hear what you have to say of Richard and Edmund.
- You kept them for the last, didn’t you?
- —In asking you to remember those two noble kinsmen nuncle Richie and
- nuncle Edmund, Stephen answered, I feel I am asking too much perhaps. A
- brother is as easily forgotten as an umbrella.
- Lapwing.
- Where is your brother? Apothecaries’ hall. My whetstone. Him, then
- Cranly, Mulligan: now these. Speech, speech. But act. Act speech. They
- mock to try you. Act. Be acted on.
- Lapwing.
- I am tired of my voice, the voice of Esau. My kingdom for a drink.
- On.
- —You will say those names were already in the chronicles from which he
- took the stuff of his plays. Why did he take them rather than others?
- Richard, a whoreson crookback, misbegotten, makes love to a widowed Ann
- (what’s in a name?), woos and wins her, a whoreson merry widow. Richard
- the conqueror, third brother, came after William the conquered. The
- other four acts of that play hang limply from that first. Of all his
- kings Richard is the only king unshielded by Shakespeare’s reverence,
- the angel of the world. Why is the underplot of _King Lear_ in which
- Edmund figures lifted out of Sidney’s _Arcadia_ and spatchcocked on to
- a Celtic legend older than history?
- —That was Will’s way, John Eglinton defended. We should not now combine
- a Norse saga with an excerpt from a novel by George Meredith. _Que
- voulez-vous?_ Moore would say. He puts Bohemia on the seacoast and
- makes Ulysses quote Aristotle.
- —Why? Stephen answered himself. Because the theme of the false or the
- usurping or the adulterous brother or all three in one is to
- Shakespeare, what the poor are not, always with him. The note of
- banishment, banishment from the heart, banishment from home, sounds
- uninterruptedly from _The Two Gentlemen of Verona_ onward till Prospero
- breaks his staff, buries it certain fathoms in the earth and drowns his
- book. It doubles itself in the middle of his life, reflects itself in
- another, repeats itself, protasis, epitasis, catastasis, catastrophe.
- It repeats itself again when he is near the grave, when his married
- daughter Susan, chip of the old block, is accused of adultery. But it
- was the original sin that darkened his understanding, weakened his will
- and left in him a strong inclination to evil. The words are those of my
- lords bishops of Maynooth. An original sin and, like original sin,
- committed by another in whose sin he too has sinned. It is between the
- lines of his last written words, it is petrified on his tombstone under
- which her four bones are not to be laid. Age has not withered it.
- Beauty and peace have not done it away. It is in infinite variety
- everywhere in the world he has created, in _Much Ado about Nothing_,
- twice in _As you like It_, in _The Tempest_, in _Hamlet,_ in _Measure
- for Measure_—and in all the other plays which I have not read.
- He laughed to free his mind from his mind’s bondage.
- Judge Eglinton summed up.
- —The truth is midway, he affirmed. He is the ghost and the prince. He
- is all in all.
- —He is, Stephen said. The boy of act one is the mature man of act five.
- All in all. In _Cymbeline,_ in _Othello_ he is bawd and cuckold. He
- acts and is acted on. Lover of an ideal or a perversion, like José he
- kills the real Carmen. His unremitting intellect is the hornmad Iago
- ceaselessly willing that the moor in him shall suffer.
- —Cuckoo! Cuckoo! Cuck Mulligan clucked lewdly. O word of fear!
- Dark dome received, reverbed.
- —And what a character is Iago! undaunted John Eglinton exclaimed. When
- all is said Dumas _fils_ (or is it Dumas _père?)_ is right. After God
- Shakespeare has created most.
- —Man delights him not nor woman neither, Stephen said. He returns after
- a life of absence to that spot of earth where he was born, where he has
- always been, man and boy, a silent witness and there, his journey of
- life ended, he plants his mulberrytree in the earth. Then dies. The
- motion is ended. Gravediggers bury Hamlet _père_ and Hamlet _fils._ A
- king and a prince at last in death, with incidental music. And, what
- though murdered and betrayed, bewept by all frail tender hearts for,
- Dane or Dubliner, sorrow for the dead is the only husband from whom
- they refuse to be divorced. If you like the epilogue look long on it:
- prosperous Prospero, the good man rewarded, Lizzie, grandpa’s lump of
- love, and nuncle Richie, the bad man taken off by poetic justice to the
- place where the bad niggers go. Strong curtain. He found in the world
- without as actual what was in his world within as possible. Maeterlinck
- says: _If Socrates leave his house today he will find the sage seated
- on his doorstep. If Judas go forth tonight it is to Judas his steps
- will tend._ Every life is many days, day after day. We walk through
- ourselves, meeting robbers, ghosts, giants, old men, young men, wives,
- widows, brothers-in-love, but always meeting ourselves. The playwright
- who wrote the folio of this world and wrote it badly (He gave us light
- first and the sun two days later), the lord of things as they are whom
- the most Roman of catholics call _dio boia_, hangman god, is doubtless
- all in all in all of us, ostler and butcher, and would be bawd and
- cuckold too but that in the economy of heaven, foretold by Hamlet,
- there are no more marriages, glorified man, an androgynous angel, being
- a wife unto himself.
- _—Eureka!_ Buck Mulligan cried. _Eureka!_
- Suddenly happied he jumped up and reached in a stride John Eglinton’s
- desk.
- —May I? he said. The Lord has spoken to Malachi.
- He began to scribble on a slip of paper.
- Take some slips from the counter going out.
- —Those who are married, Mr Best, douce herald, said, all save one,
- shall live. The rest shall keep as they are.
- He laughed, unmarried, at Eglinton Johannes, of arts a bachelor.
- Unwed, unfancied, ware of wiles, they fingerponder nightly each his
- variorum edition of _The Taming of the Shrew._
- —You are a delusion, said roundly John Eglinton to Stephen. You have
- brought us all this way to show us a French triangle. Do you believe
- your own theory?
- —No, Stephen said promptly.
- —Are you going to write it? Mr Best asked. You ought to make it a
- dialogue, don’t you know, like the Platonic dialogues Wilde wrote.
- John Eclecticon doubly smiled.
- —Well, in that case, he said, I don’t see why you should expect payment
- for it since you don’t believe it yourself. Dowden believes there is
- some mystery in _Hamlet_ but will say no more. Herr Bleibtreu, the man
- Piper met in Berlin, who is working up that Rutland theory, believes
- that the secret is hidden in the Stratford monument. He is going to
- visit the present duke, Piper says, and prove to him that his ancestor
- wrote the plays. It will come as a surprise to his grace. But he
- believes his theory.
- I believe, O Lord, help my unbelief. That is, help me to believe or
- help me to unbelieve? Who helps to believe? _Egomen._ Who to unbelieve?
- Other chap.
- —You are the only contributor to _Dana_ who asks for pieces of silver.
- Then I don’t know about the next number. Fred Ryan wants space for an
- article on economics.
- Fraidrine. Two pieces of silver he lent me. Tide you over. Economics.
- —For a guinea, Stephen said, you can publish this interview.
- Buck Mulligan stood up from his laughing scribbling, laughing: and then
- gravely said, honeying malice:
- —I called upon the bard Kinch at his summer residence in upper
- Mecklenburgh street and found him deep in the study of the _Summa
- contra Gentiles_ in the company of two gonorrheal ladies, Fresh Nelly
- and Rosalie, the coalquay whore.
- He broke away.
- —Come, Kinch. Come, wandering Ængus of the birds.
- Come, Kinch. You have eaten all we left. Ay. I will serve you your orts
- and offals.
- Stephen rose.
- Life is many days. This will end.
- —We shall see you tonight, John Eglinton said. _Notre ami_ Moore says
- Malachi Mulligan must be there.
- Buck Mulligan flaunted his slip and panama.
- —Monsieur Moore, he said, lecturer on French letters to the youth of
- Ireland. I’ll be there. Come, Kinch, the bards must drink. Can you walk
- straight?
- Laughing, he...
- Swill till eleven. Irish nights entertainment.
- Lubber...
- Stephen followed a lubber...
- One day in the national library we had a discussion. Shakes. After. His
- lub back: I followed. I gall his kibe.
- Stephen, greeting, then all amort, followed a lubber jester, a
- wellkempt head, newbarbered, out of the vaulted cell into a shattering
- daylight of no thought.
- What have I learned? Of them? Of me?
- Walk like Haines now.
- The constant readers’ room. In the readers’ book Cashel Boyle O’Connor
- Fitzmaurice Tisdall Farrell parafes his polysyllables. Item: was Hamlet
- mad? The quaker’s pate godlily with a priesteen in booktalk.
- —O please do, sir... I shall be most pleased...
- Amused Buck Mulligan mused in pleasant murmur with himself,
- selfnodding:
- —A pleased bottom.
- The turnstile.
- Is that?... Blueribboned hat... Idly writing... What? Looked?...
- The curving balustrade: smoothsliding Mincius.
- Puck Mulligan, panamahelmeted, went step by step, iambing, trolling:
- John Eglinton, my jo, John,
- Why won’t you wed a wife?
- He spluttered to the air:
- —O, the chinless Chinaman! Chin Chon Eg Lin Ton. We went over to their
- playbox, Haines and I, the plumbers’ hall. Our players are creating a
- new art for Europe like the Greeks or M. Maeterlinck. Abbey Theatre! I
- smell the pubic sweat of monks.
- He spat blank.
- Forgot: any more than he forgot the whipping lousy Lucy gave him. And
- left the _femme de trente ans._ And why no other children born? And his
- first child a girl?
- Afterwit. Go back.
- The dour recluse still there (he has his cake) and the douce youngling,
- minion of pleasure, Phedo’s toyable fair hair.
- Eh... I just eh... wanted... I forgot... he...
- —Longworth and M’Curdy Atkinson were there...
- Puck Mulligan footed featly, trilling:
- I hardly hear the purlieu cry
- Or a Tommy talk as I pass one by
- Before my thoughts begin to run
- On F. M’Curdy Atkinson,
- The same that had the wooden leg
- And that filibustering filibeg
- That never dared to slake his drouth,
- Magee that had the chinless mouth.
- Being afraid to marry on earth
- They masturbated for all they were worth.
- Jest on. Know thyself.
- Halted, below me, a quizzer looks at me. I halt.
- —Mournful mummer, Buck Mulligan moaned. Synge has left off wearing
- black to be like nature. Only crows, priests and English coal are
- black.
- A laugh tripped over his lips.
- —Longworth is awfully sick, he said, after what you wrote about that
- old hake Gregory. O you inquisitional drunken jewjesuit! She gets you a
- job on the paper and then you go and slate her drivel to Jaysus.
- Couldn’t you do the Yeats touch?
- He went on and down, mopping, chanting with waving graceful arms:
- —The most beautiful book that has come out of our country in my time.
- One thinks of Homer.
- He stopped at the stairfoot.
- —I have conceived a play for the mummers, he said solemnly.
- The pillared Moorish hall, shadows entwined. Gone the nine men’s
- morrice with caps of indices.
- In sweetly varying voices Buck Mulligan read his tablet:
- _Everyman His Own Wife
- or
- A Honeymoon in the Hand
- (a national immorality in three orgasms)
- by
- Ballocky Mulligan._
- He turned a happy patch’s smirk to Stephen, saying:
- —The disguise, I fear, is thin. But listen.
- He read, _marcato:_
- —Characters:
- TOBY TOSTOFF (a ruined Pole)
- CRAB (a bushranger)
- MEDICAL DICK )
- and ) (two birds with one stone)
- MEDICAL DAVY )
- MOTHER GROGAN (a watercarrier)
- FRESH NELLY
- and
- ROSALIE (the coalquay whore).
- He laughed, lolling a to and fro head, walking on, followed by Stephen:
- and mirthfully he told the shadows, souls of men:
- —O, the night in the Camden hall when the daughters of Erin had to lift
- their skirts to step over you as you lay in your mulberrycoloured,
- multicoloured, multitudinous vomit!
- —The most innocent son of Erin, Stephen said, for whom they ever lifted
- them.
- About to pass through the doorway, feeling one behind, he stood aside.
- Part. The moment is now. Where then? If Socrates leave his house today,
- if Judas go forth tonight. Why? That lies in space which I in time must
- come to, ineluctably.
- My will: his will that fronts me. Seas between.
- A man passed out between them, bowing, greeting.
- —Good day again, Buck Mulligan said.
- The portico.
- Here I watched the birds for augury. Ængus of the birds. They go, they
- come. Last night I flew. Easily flew. Men wondered. Street of harlots
- after. A creamfruit melon he held to me. In. You will see.
- —The wandering jew, Buck Mulligan whispered with clown’s awe. Did you
- see his eye? He looked upon you to lust after you. I fear thee, ancient
- mariner. O, Kinch, thou art in peril. Get thee a breechpad.
- Manner of Oxenford.
- Day. Wheelbarrow sun over arch of bridge.
- A dark back went before them, step of a pard, down, out by the gateway,
- under portcullis barbs.
- They followed.
- Offend me still. Speak on.
- Kind air defined the coigns of houses in Kildare street. No birds.
- Frail from the housetops two plumes of smoke ascended, pluming, and in
- a flaw of softness softly were blown.
- Cease to strive. Peace of the druid priests of Cymbeline: hierophantic:
- from wide earth an altar.
- Laud we the gods
- And let our crooked smokes climb to their nostrils
- From our bless’d altars.
- [ 10 ]
- The superior, the very reverend John Conmee S. J. reset his smooth
- watch in his interior pocket as he came down the presbytery steps. Five
- to three. Just nice time to walk to Artane. What was that boy’s name
- again? Dignam. Yes. _Vere dignum et iustum est._ Brother Swan was the
- person to see. Mr Cunningham’s letter. Yes. Oblige him, if possible.
- Good practical catholic: useful at mission time.
- A onelegged sailor, swinging himself onward by lazy jerks of his
- crutches, growled some notes. He jerked short before the convent of the
- sisters of charity and held out a peaked cap for alms towards the very
- reverend John Conmee S. J. Father Conmee blessed him in the sun for his
- purse held, he knew, one silver crown.
- Father Conmee crossed to Mountjoy square. He thought, but not for long,
- of soldiers and sailors, whose legs had been shot off by cannonballs,
- ending their days in some pauper ward, and of cardinal Wolsey’s words:
- _If I had served my God as I have served my king He would not have
- abandoned me in my old days._ He walked by the treeshade of
- sunnywinking leaves: and towards him came the wife of Mr David Sheehy
- M.P.
- —Very well, indeed, father. And you, father?
- Father Conmee was wonderfully well indeed. He would go to Buxton
- probably for the waters. And her boys, were they getting on well at
- Belvedere? Was that so? Father Conmee was very glad indeed to hear
- that. And Mr Sheehy himself? Still in London. The house was still
- sitting, to be sure it was. Beautiful weather it was, delightful
- indeed. Yes, it was very probable that Father Bernard Vaughan would
- come again to preach. O, yes: a very great success. A wonderful man
- really.
- Father Conmee was very glad to see the wife of Mr David Sheehy M.P.
- Iooking so well and he begged to be remembered to Mr David Sheehy M.P.
- Yes, he would certainly call.
- —Good afternoon, Mrs Sheehy.
- Father Conmee doffed his silk hat and smiled, as he took leave, at the
- jet beads of her mantilla inkshining in the sun. And smiled yet again,
- in going. He had cleaned his teeth, he knew, with arecanut paste.
- Father Conmee walked and, walking, smiled for he thought on Father
- Bernard Vaughan’s droll eyes and cockney voice.
- —Pilate! Wy don’t you old back that owlin mob?
- A zealous man, however. Really he was. And really did great good in his
- way. Beyond a doubt. He loved Ireland, he said, and he loved the Irish.
- Of good family too would one think it? Welsh, were they not?
- O, lest he forget. That letter to father provincial.
- Father Conmee stopped three little schoolboys at the corner of Mountjoy
- square. Yes: they were from Belvedere. The little house. Aha. And were
- they good boys at school? O. That was very good now. And what was his
- name? Jack Sohan. And his name? Ger. Gallaher. And the other little
- man? His name was Brunny Lynam. O, that was a very nice name to have.
- Father Conmee gave a letter from his breast to Master Brunny Lynam and
- pointed to the red pillarbox at the corner of Fitzgibbon street.
- —But mind you don’t post yourself into the box, little man, he said.
- The boys sixeyed Father Conmee and laughed:
- —O, sir.
- —Well, let me see if you can post a letter, Father Conmee said.
- Master Brunny Lynam ran across the road and put Father Conmee’s letter
- to father provincial into the mouth of the bright red letterbox. Father
- Conmee smiled and nodded and smiled and walked along Mountjoy square
- east.
- Mr Denis J Maginni, professor of dancing &c, in silk hat, slate
- frockcoat with silk facings, white kerchief tie, tight lavender
- trousers, canary gloves and pointed patent boots, walking with grave
- deportment most respectfully took the curbstone as he passed lady
- Maxwell at the corner of Dignam’s court.
- Was that not Mrs M’Guinness?
- Mrs M’Guinness, stately, silverhaired, bowed to Father Conmee from the
- farther footpath along which she sailed. And Father Conmee smiled and
- saluted. How did she do?
- A fine carriage she had. Like Mary, queen of Scots, something. And to
- think that she was a pawnbroker! Well, now! Such a... what should he
- say?... such a queenly mien.
- Father Conmee walked down Great Charles street and glanced at the
- shutup free church on his left. The reverend T. R. Greene B.A. will
- (D.V.) speak. The incumbent they called him. He felt it incumbent on
- him to say a few words. But one should be charitable. Invincible
- ignorance. They acted according to their lights.
- Father Conmee turned the corner and walked along the North Circular
- road. It was a wonder that there was not a tramline in such an
- important thoroughfare. Surely, there ought to be.
- A band of satchelled schoolboys crossed from Richmond street. All
- raised untidy caps. Father Conmee greeted them more than once benignly.
- Christian brother boys.
- Father Conmee smelt incense on his right hand as he walked. Saint
- Joseph’s church, Portland row. For aged and virtuous females. Father
- Conmee raised his hat to the Blessed Sacrament. Virtuous: but
- occasionally they were also badtempered.
- Near Aldborough house Father Conmee thought of that spendthrift
- nobleman. And now it was an office or something.
- Father Conmee began to walk along the North Strand road and was saluted
- by Mr William Gallagher who stood in the doorway of his shop. Father
- Conmee saluted Mr William Gallagher and perceived the odours that came
- from baconflitches and ample cools of butter. He passed Grogan’s the
- Tobacconist against which newsboards leaned and told of a dreadful
- catastrophe in New York. In America those things were continually
- happening. Unfortunate people to die like that, unprepared. Still, an
- act of perfect contrition.
- Father Conmee went by Daniel Bergin’s publichouse against the window of
- which two unlabouring men lounged. They saluted him and were saluted.
- Father Conmee passed H. J. O’Neill’s funeral establishment where Corny
- Kelleher totted figures in the daybook while he chewed a blade of hay.
- A constable on his beat saluted Father Conmee and Father Conmee saluted
- the constable. In Youkstetter’s, the porkbutcher’s, Father Conmee
- observed pig’s puddings, white and black and red, lie neatly curled in
- tubes.
- Moored under the trees of Charleville Mall Father Conmee saw a
- turfbarge, a towhorse with pendent head, a bargeman with a hat of dirty
- straw seated amidships, smoking and staring at a branch of poplar above
- him. It was idyllic: and Father Conmee reflected on the providence of
- the Creator who had made turf to be in bogs whence men might dig it out
- and bring it to town and hamlet to make fires in the houses of poor
- people.
- On Newcomen bridge the very reverend John Conmee S. J. of saint Francis
- Xavier’s church, upper Gardiner street, stepped on to an outward bound
- tram.
- Off an inward bound tram stepped the reverend Nicholas Dudley C. C. of
- saint Agatha’s church, north William street, on to Newcomen bridge.
- At Newcomen bridge Father Conmee stepped into an outward bound tram for
- he disliked to traverse on foot the dingy way past Mud Island.
- Father Conmee sat in a corner of the tramcar, a blue ticket tucked with
- care in the eye of one plump kid glove, while four shillings, a
- sixpence and five pennies chuted from his other plump glovepalm into
- his purse. Passing the ivy church he reflected that the ticket
- inspector usually made his visit when one had carelessly thrown away
- the ticket. The solemnity of the occupants of the car seemed to Father
- Conmee excessive for a journey so short and cheap. Father Conmee liked
- cheerful decorum.
- It was a peaceful day. The gentleman with the glasses opposite Father
- Conmee had finished explaining and looked down. His wife, Father Conmee
- supposed. A tiny yawn opened the mouth of the wife of the gentleman
- with the glasses. She raised her small gloved fist, yawned ever so
- gently, tiptapping her small gloved fist on her opening mouth and
- smiled tinily, sweetly.
- Father Conmee perceived her perfume in the car. He perceived also that
- the awkward man at the other side of her was sitting on the edge of the
- seat.
- Father Conmee at the altarrails placed the host with difficulty in the
- mouth of the awkward old man who had the shaky head.
- At Annesley bridge the tram halted and, when it was about to go, an old
- woman rose suddenly from her place to alight. The conductor pulled the
- bellstrap to stay the car for her. She passed out with her basket and a
- marketnet: and Father Conmee saw the conductor help her and net and
- basket down: and Father Conmee thought that, as she had nearly passed
- the end of the penny fare, she was one of those good souls who had
- always to be told twice _bless you, my child,_ that they have been
- absolved, _pray for me._ But they had so many worries in life, so many
- cares, poor creatures.
- From the hoardings Mr Eugene Stratton grimaced with thick niggerlips at
- Father Conmee.
- Father Conmee thought of the souls of black and brown and yellow men
- and of his sermon on saint Peter Claver S. J. and the African mission
- and of the propagation of the faith and of the millions of black and
- brown and yellow souls that had not received the baptism of water when
- their last hour came like a thief in the night. That book by the
- Belgian jesuit, _Le Nombre des Élus,_ seemed to Father Conmee a
- reasonable plea. Those were millions of human souls created by God in
- His Own likeness to whom the faith had not (D.V.) been brought. But
- they were God’s souls, created by God. It seemed to Father Conmee a
- pity that they should all be lost, a waste, if one might say.
- At the Howth road stop Father Conmee alighted, was saluted by the
- conductor and saluted in his turn.
- The Malahide road was quiet. It pleased Father Conmee, road and name.
- The joybells were ringing in gay Malahide. Lord Talbot de Malahide,
- immediate hereditary lord admiral of Malahide and the seas adjoining.
- Then came the call to arms and she was maid, wife and widow in one day.
- Those were old worldish days, loyal times in joyous townlands, old
- times in the barony.
- Father Conmee, walking, thought of his little book _Old Times in the
- Barony_ and of the book that might be written about jesuit houses and
- of Mary Rochfort, daughter of lord Molesworth, first countess of
- Belvedere.
- A listless lady, no more young, walked alone the shore of lough Ennel,
- Mary, first countess of Belvedere, listlessly walking in the evening,
- not startled when an otter plunged. Who could know the truth? Not the
- jealous lord Belvedere and not her confessor if she had not committed
- adultery fully, _eiaculatio seminis inter vas naturale mulieris,_ with
- her husband’s brother? She would half confess if she had not all sinned
- as women did. Only God knew and she and he, her husband’s brother.
- Father Conmee thought of that tyrannous incontinence, needed however
- for man’s race on earth, and of the ways of God which were not our
- ways.
- Don John Conmee walked and moved in times of yore. He was humane and
- honoured there. He bore in mind secrets confessed and he smiled at
- smiling noble faces in a beeswaxed drawingroom, ceiled with full fruit
- clusters. And the hands of a bride and of a bridegroom, noble to noble,
- were impalmed by Don John Conmee.
- It was a charming day.
- The lychgate of a field showed Father Conmee breadths of cabbages,
- curtseying to him with ample underleaves. The sky showed him a flock of
- small white clouds going slowly down the wind. _Moutonner,_ the French
- said. A just and homely word.
- Father Conmee, reading his office, watched a flock of muttoning clouds
- over Rathcoffey. His thinsocked ankles were tickled by the stubble of
- Clongowes field. He walked there, reading in the evening, and heard the
- cries of the boys’ lines at their play, young cries in the quiet
- evening. He was their rector: his reign was mild.
- Father Conmee drew off his gloves and took his rededged breviary out.
- An ivory bookmark told him the page.
- Nones. He should have read that before lunch. But lady Maxwell had
- come.
- Father Conmee read in secret _Pater_ and _Ave_ and crossed his breast.
- _Deus in adiutorium._
- He walked calmly and read mutely the nones, walking and reading till he
- came to _Res_ in _Beati immaculati: Principium verborum tuorum veritas:
- in eternum omnia iudicia iustitiæ tuæ._
- A flushed young man came from a gap of a hedge and after him came a
- young woman with wild nodding daisies in her hand. The young man raised
- his cap abruptly: the young woman abruptly bent and with slow care
- detached from her light skirt a clinging twig.
- Father Conmee blessed both gravely and turned a thin page of his
- breviary. _Sin: Principes persecuti sunt me gratis: et a verbis tuis
- formidavit cor meum._
- * * *
- Corny Kelleher closed his long daybook and glanced with his drooping
- eye at a pine coffinlid sentried in a corner. He pulled himself erect,
- went to it and, spinning it on its axle, viewed its shape and brass
- furnishings. Chewing his blade of hay he laid the coffinlid by and came
- to the doorway. There he tilted his hatbrim to give shade to his eyes
- and leaned against the doorcase, looking idly out.
- Father John Conmee stepped into the Dollymount tram on Newcomen bridge.
- Corny Kelleher locked his largefooted boots and gazed, his hat
- downtilted, chewing his blade of hay.
- Constable 57C, on his beat, stood to pass the time of day.
- —That’s a fine day, Mr Kelleher.
- —Ay, Corny Kelleher said.
- —It’s very close, the constable said.
- Corny Kelleher sped a silent jet of hayjuice arching from his mouth
- while a generous white arm from a window in Eccles street flung forth a
- coin.
- —What’s the best news? he asked.
- —I seen that particular party last evening, the constable said with
- bated breath.
- * * *
- A onelegged sailor crutched himself round MacConnell’s corner, skirting
- Rabaiotti’s icecream car, and jerked himself up Eccles street. Towards
- Larry O’Rourke, in shirtsleeves in his doorway, he growled unamiably:
- —_For England_...
- He swung himself violently forward past Katey and Boody Dedalus, halted
- and growled:
- —_home and beauty._
- J. J. O’Molloy’s white careworn face was told that Mr Lambert was in
- the warehouse with a visitor.
- A stout lady stopped, took a copper coin from her purse and dropped it
- into the cap held out to her. The sailor grumbled thanks, glanced
- sourly at the unheeding windows, sank his head and swung himself
- forward four strides.
- He halted and growled angrily:
- —_For England_...
- Two barefoot urchins, sucking long liquorice laces, halted near him,
- gaping at his stump with their yellowslobbered mouths.
- He swung himself forward in vigorous jerks, halted, lifted his head
- towards a window and bayed deeply:
- —_home and beauty._
- The gay sweet chirping whistling within went on a bar or two, ceased.
- The blind of the window was drawn aside. A card _Unfurnished
- Apartments_ slipped from the sash and fell. A plump bare generous arm
- shone, was seen, held forth from a white petticoatbodice and taut
- shiftstraps. A woman’s hand flung forth a coin over the area railings.
- It fell on the path.
- One of the urchins ran to it, picked it up and dropped it into the
- minstrel’s cap, saying:
- —There, sir.
- * * *
- Katey and Boody Dedalus shoved in the door of the closesteaming
- kitchen.
- —Did you put in the books? Boody asked.
- Maggy at the range rammed down a greyish mass beneath bubbling suds
- twice with her potstick and wiped her brow.
- —They wouldn’t give anything on them, she said.
- Father Conmee walked through Clongowes fields, his thinsocked ankles
- tickled by stubble.
- —Where did you try? Boody asked.
- —M’Guinness’s.
- Boody stamped her foot and threw her satchel on the table.
- —Bad cess to her big face! she cried.
- Katey went to the range and peered with squinting eyes.
- —What’s in the pot? she asked.
- —Shirts, Maggy said.
- Boody cried angrily:
- —Crickey, is there nothing for us to eat?
- Katey, lifting the kettlelid in a pad of her stained skirt, asked:
- —And what’s in this?
- A heavy fume gushed in answer.
- —Peasoup, Maggy said.
- —Where did you get it? Katey asked.
- —Sister Mary Patrick, Maggy said.
- The lacquey rang his bell.
- —Barang!
- Boody sat down at the table and said hungrily:
- —Give us it here.
- Maggy poured yellow thick soup from the kettle into a bowl. Katey,
- sitting opposite Boody, said quietly, as her fingertip lifted to her
- mouth random crumbs:
- —A good job we have that much. Where’s Dilly?
- —Gone to meet father, Maggy said.
- Boody, breaking big chunks of bread into the yellow soup, added:
- —Our father who art not in heaven.
- Maggy, pouring yellow soup in Katey’s bowl, exclaimed:
- —Boody! For shame!
- A skiff, a crumpled throwaway, Elijah is coming, rode lightly down the
- Liffey, under Loopline bridge, shooting the rapids where water chafed
- around the bridgepiers, sailing eastward past hulls and anchorchains,
- between the Customhouse old dock and George’s quay.
- * * *
- The blond girl in Thornton’s bedded the wicker basket with rustling
- fibre. Blazes Boylan handed her the bottle swathed in pink tissue paper
- and a small jar.
- —Put these in first, will you? he said.
- —Yes, sir, the blond girl said. And the fruit on top.
- —That’ll do, game ball, Blazes Boylan said.
- She bestowed fat pears neatly, head by tail, and among them ripe
- shamefaced peaches.
- Blazes Boylan walked here and there in new tan shoes about the
- fruitsmelling shop, lifting fruits, young juicy crinkled and plump red
- tomatoes, sniffing smells.
- H. E. L. Y.’S filed before him, tallwhitehatted, past Tangier lane,
- plodding towards their goal.
- He turned suddenly from a chip of strawberries, drew a gold watch from
- his fob and held it at its chain’s length.
- —Can you send them by tram? Now?
- A darkbacked figure under Merchants’ arch scanned books on the hawker’s
- cart.
- —Certainly, sir. Is it in the city?
- —O, yes, Blazes Boylan said. Ten minutes.
- The blond girl handed him a docket and pencil.
- —Will you write the address, sir?
- Blazes Boylan at the counter wrote and pushed the docket to her.
- —Send it at once, will you? he said. It’s for an invalid.
- —Yes, sir. I will, sir.
- Blazes Boylan rattled merry money in his trousers’ pocket.
- —What’s the damage? he asked.
- The blond girl’s slim fingers reckoned the fruits.
- Blazes Boylan looked into the cut of her blouse. A young pullet. He
- took a red carnation from the tall stemglass.
- —This for me? he asked gallantly.
- The blond girl glanced sideways at him, got up regardless, with his tie
- a bit crooked, blushing.
- —Yes, sir, she said.
- Bending archly she reckoned again fat pears and blushing peaches.
- Blazes Boylan looked in her blouse with more favour, the stalk of the
- red flower between his smiling teeth.
- —May I say a word to your telephone, missy? he asked roguishly.
- * * *
- _—Ma!_ Almidano Artifoni said.
- He gazed over Stephen’s shoulder at Goldsmith’s knobby poll.
- Two carfuls of tourists passed slowly, their women sitting fore,
- gripping the handrests. Palefaces. Men’s arms frankly round their
- stunted forms. They looked from Trinity to the blind columned porch of
- the bank of Ireland where pigeons roocoocooed.
- —_Anch’io ho avuto di queste idee_, Almidano Artifoni said, _quand’ ero
- giovine come Lei. Eppoi mi sono convinto che il mondo è una bestia. È
- peccato. Perchè la sua voce... sarebbe un cespite di rendita, via.
- Invece, Lei si sacrifica._
- —_Sacrifizio incruento,_ Stephen said smiling, swaying his ashplant in
- slow swingswong from its midpoint, lightly.
- _—Speriamo,_ the round mustachioed face said pleasantly. _Ma, dia retta
- a me. Ci rifletta_.
- By the stern stone hand of Grattan, bidding halt, an Inchicore tram
- unloaded straggling Highland soldiers of a band.
- —_Ci rifletterò,_ Stephen said, glancing down the solid trouserleg.
- —_Ma, sul serio, eh?_ Almidano Artifoni said.
- His heavy hand took Stephen’s firmly. Human eyes. They gazed curiously
- an instant and turned quickly towards a Dalkey tram.
- _—Eccolo,_ Almidano Artifoni said in friendly haste. _Venga a trovarmi
- e ci pensi. Addio, caro._
- —_Arrivederla, maestro,_ Stephen said, raising his hat when his hand
- was freed. _E grazie._
- —_Di che?_ Almidano Artifoni said. _Scusi, eh? Tante belle cose!_
- Almidano Artifoni, holding up a baton of rolled music as a signal,
- trotted on stout trousers after the Dalkey tram. In vain he trotted,
- signalling in vain among the rout of barekneed gillies smuggling
- implements of music through Trinity gates.
- * * *
- Miss Dunne hid the Capel street library copy of _The Woman in White_
- far back in her drawer and rolled a sheet of gaudy notepaper into her
- typewriter.
- Too much mystery business in it. Is he in love with that one, Marion?
- Change it and get another by Mary Cecil Haye.
- The disk shot down the groove, wobbled a while, ceased and ogled them:
- six.
- Miss Dunne clicked on the keyboard:
- —16 June 1904.
- Five tallwhitehatted sandwichmen between Monypeny’s corner and the slab
- where Wolfe Tone’s statue was not, eeled themselves turning H. E. L.
- Y.’S and plodded back as they had come.
- Then she stared at the large poster of Marie Kendall, charming
- soubrette, and, listlessly lolling, scribbled on the jotter sixteens
- and capital esses. Mustard hair and dauby cheeks. She’s not
- nicelooking, is she? The way she’s holding up her bit of a skirt.
- Wonder will that fellow be at the band tonight. If I could get that
- dressmaker to make a concertina skirt like Susy Nagle’s. They kick out
- grand. Shannon and all the boatclub swells never took his eyes off her.
- Hope to goodness he won’t keep me here till seven.
- The telephone rang rudely by her ear.
- —Hello. Yes, sir. No, sir. Yes, sir. I’ll ring them up after five. Only
- those two, sir, for Belfast and Liverpool. All right, sir. Then I can
- go after six if you’re not back. A quarter after. Yes, sir. Twentyseven
- and six. I’ll tell him. Yes: one, seven, six.
- She scribbled three figures on an envelope.
- —Mr Boylan! Hello! That gentleman from _Sport_ was in looking for you.
- Mr Lenehan, yes. He said he’ll be in the Ormond at four. No, sir. Yes,
- sir. I’ll ring them up after five.
- * * *
- Two pink faces turned in the flare of the tiny torch.
- —Who’s that? Ned Lambert asked. Is that Crotty?
- —Ringabella and Crosshaven, a voice replied groping for foothold.
- —Hello, Jack, is that yourself? Ned Lambert said, raising in salute his
- pliant lath among the flickering arches. Come on. Mind your steps
- there.
- The vesta in the clergyman’s uplifted hand consumed itself in a long
- soft flame and was let fall. At their feet its red speck died: and
- mouldy air closed round them.
- —How interesting! a refined accent said in the gloom.
- —Yes, sir, Ned Lambert said heartily. We are standing in the historic
- council chamber of saint Mary’s abbey where silken Thomas proclaimed
- himself a rebel in 1534. This is the most historic spot in all Dublin.
- O’Madden Burke is going to write something about it one of these days.
- The old bank of Ireland was over the way till the time of the union and
- the original jews’ temple was here too before they built their
- synagogue over in Adelaide road. You were never here before, Jack, were
- you?
- —No, Ned.
- —He rode down through Dame walk, the refined accent said, if my memory
- serves me. The mansion of the Kildares was in Thomas court.
- —That’s right, Ned Lambert said. That’s quite right, sir.
- —If you will be so kind then, the clergyman said, the next time to
- allow me perhaps...
- —Certainly, Ned Lambert said. Bring the camera whenever you like. I’ll
- get those bags cleared away from the windows. You can take it from here
- or from here.
- In the still faint light he moved about, tapping with his lath the
- piled seedbags and points of vantage on the floor.
- From a long face a beard and gaze hung on a chessboard.
- —I’m deeply obliged, Mr Lambert, the clergyman said. I won’t trespass
- on your valuable time...
- —You’re welcome, sir, Ned Lambert said. Drop in whenever you like. Next
- week, say. Can you see?
- —Yes, yes. Good afternoon, Mr Lambert. Very pleased to have met you.
- —Pleasure is mine, sir, Ned Lambert answered.
- He followed his guest to the outlet and then whirled his lath away
- among the pillars. With J. J. O’Molloy he came forth slowly into Mary’s
- abbey where draymen were loading floats with sacks of carob and palmnut
- meal, O’Connor, Wexford.
- He stood to read the card in his hand.
- —The reverend Hugh C. Love, Rathcoffey. Present address: Saint
- Michael’s, Sallins. Nice young chap he is. He’s writing a book about
- the Fitzgeralds he told me. He’s well up in history, faith.
- The young woman with slow care detached from her light skirt a clinging
- twig.
- —I thought you were at a new gunpowder plot, J. J. O’Molloy said.
- Ned Lambert cracked his fingers in the air.
- —God! he cried. I forgot to tell him that one about the earl of Kildare
- after he set fire to Cashel cathedral. You know that one? _I’m bloody
- sorry I did it,_ says he, _but I declare to God I thought the
- archbishop was inside._ He mightn’t like it, though. What? God, I’ll
- tell him anyhow. That was the great earl, the Fitzgerald Mor. Hot
- members they were all of them, the Geraldines.
- The horses he passed started nervously under their slack harness. He
- slapped a piebald haunch quivering near him and cried:
- —Woa, sonny!
- He turned to J. J. O’Molloy and asked:
- —Well, Jack. What is it? What’s the trouble? Wait awhile. Hold hard.
- With gaping mouth and head far back he stood still and, after an
- instant, sneezed loudly.
- —Chow! he said. Blast you!
- —The dust from those sacks, J. J. O’Molloy said politely.
- —No, Ned Lambert gasped, I caught a... cold night before... blast your
- soul... night before last... and there was a hell of a lot of
- draught...
- He held his handkerchief ready for the coming...
- —I was... Glasnevin this morning... poor little... what do you call
- him... Chow!... Mother of Moses!
- * * *
- Tom Rochford took the top disk from the pile he clasped against his
- claret waistcoat.
- —See? he said. Say it’s turn six. In here, see. Turn Now On.
- He slid it into the left slot for them. It shot down the groove,
- wobbled a while, ceased, ogling them: six.
- Lawyers of the past, haughty, pleading, beheld pass from the
- consolidated taxing office to Nisi Prius court Richie Goulding carrying
- the costbag of Goulding, Collis and Ward and heard rustling from the
- admiralty division of king’s bench to the court of appeal an elderly
- female with false teeth smiling incredulously and a black silk skirt of
- great amplitude.
- —See? he said. See now the last one I put in is over here: Turns Over.
- The impact. Leverage, see?
- He showed them the rising column of disks on the right.
- —Smart idea, Nosey Flynn said, snuffling. So a fellow coming in late
- can see what turn is on and what turns are over.
- —See? Tom Rochford said.
- He slid in a disk for himself: and watched it shoot, wobble, ogle,
- stop: four. Turn Now On.
- —I’ll see him now in the Ormond, Lenehan said, and sound him. One good
- turn deserves another.
- —Do, Tom Rochford said. Tell him I’m Boylan with impatience.
- —Goodnight, M’Coy said abruptly. When you two begin...
- Nosey Flynn stooped towards the lever, snuffling at it.
- —But how does it work here, Tommy? he asked.
- —Tooraloo, Lenehan said. See you later.
- He followed M’Coy out across the tiny square of Crampton court.
- —He’s a hero, he said simply.
- —I know, M’Coy said. The drain, you mean.
- —Drain? Lenehan said. It was down a manhole.
- They passed Dan Lowry’s musichall where Marie Kendall, charming
- soubrette, smiled on them from a poster a dauby smile.
- Going down the path of Sycamore street beside the Empire musichall
- Lenehan showed M’Coy how the whole thing was. One of those manholes
- like a bloody gaspipe and there was the poor devil stuck down in it,
- half choked with sewer gas. Down went Tom Rochford anyhow, booky’s vest
- and all, with the rope round him. And be damned but he got the rope
- round the poor devil and the two were hauled up.
- —The act of a hero, he said.
- At the Dolphin they halted to allow the ambulance car to gallop past
- them for Jervis street.
- —This way, he said, walking to the right. I want to pop into Lynam’s to
- see Sceptre’s starting price. What’s the time by your gold watch and
- chain?
- M’Coy peered into Marcus Tertius Moses’ sombre office, then at
- O’Neill’s clock.
- —After three, he said. Who’s riding her?
- —O. Madden, Lenehan said. And a game filly she is.
- While he waited in Temple bar M’Coy dodged a banana peel with gentle
- pushes of his toe from the path to the gutter. Fellow might damn easy
- get a nasty fall there coming along tight in the dark.
- The gates of the drive opened wide to give egress to the viceregal
- cavalcade.
- —Even money, Lenehan said returning. I knocked against Bantam Lyons in
- there going to back a bloody horse someone gave him that hasn’t an
- earthly. Through here.
- They went up the steps and under Merchants’ arch. A darkbacked figure
- scanned books on the hawker’s cart.
- —There he is, Lenehan said.
- —Wonder what he’s buying, M’Coy said, glancing behind.
- —_Leopoldo or the Bloom is on the Rye,_ Lenehan said.
- —He’s dead nuts on sales, M’Coy said. I was with him one day and he
- bought a book from an old one in Liffey street for two bob. There were
- fine plates in it worth double the money, the stars and the moon and
- comets with long tails. Astronomy it was about.
- Lenehan laughed.
- —I’ll tell you a damn good one about comets’ tails, he said. Come over
- in the sun.
- They crossed to the metal bridge and went along Wellington quay by the
- riverwall.
- Master Patrick Aloysius Dignam came out of Mangan’s, late Fehrenbach’s,
- carrying a pound and a half of porksteaks.
- —There was a long spread out at Glencree reformatory, Lenehan said
- eagerly. The annual dinner, you know. Boiled shirt affair. The lord
- mayor was there, Val Dillon it was, and sir Charles Cameron and Dan
- Dawson spoke and there was music. Bartell d’Arcy sang and Benjamin
- Dollard...
- —I know, M’Coy broke in. My missus sang there once.
- —Did she? Lenehan said.
- A card _Unfurnished Apartments_ reappeared on the windowsash of number
- 7 Eccles street.
- He checked his tale a moment but broke out in a wheezy laugh.
- —But wait till I tell you, he said. Delahunt of Camden street had the
- catering and yours truly was chief bottlewasher. Bloom and the wife
- were there. Lashings of stuff we put up: port wine and sherry and
- curacoa to which we did ample justice. Fast and furious it was. After
- liquids came solids. Cold joints galore and mince pies...
- —I know, M’Coy said. The year the missus was there...
- Lenehan linked his arm warmly.
- —But wait till I tell you, he said. We had a midnight lunch too after
- all the jollification and when we sallied forth it was blue o’clock the
- morning after the night before. Coming home it was a gorgeous winter’s
- night on the Featherbed Mountain. Bloom and Chris Callinan were on one
- side of the car and I was with the wife on the other. We started
- singing glees and duets: _Lo, the early beam of morning_. She was well
- primed with a good load of Delahunt’s port under her bellyband. Every
- jolt the bloody car gave I had her bumping up against me. Hell’s
- delights! She has a fine pair, God bless her. Like that.
- He held his caved hands a cubit from him, frowning:
- —I was tucking the rug under her and settling her boa all the time.
- Know what I mean?
- His hands moulded ample curves of air. He shut his eyes tight in
- delight, his body shrinking, and blew a sweet chirp from his lips.
- —The lad stood to attention anyhow, he said with a sigh. She’s a gamey
- mare and no mistake. Bloom was pointing out all the stars and the
- comets in the heavens to Chris Callinan and the jarvey: the great bear
- and Hercules and the dragon, and the whole jingbang lot. But, by God, I
- was lost, so to speak, in the milky way. He knows them all, faith. At
- last she spotted a weeny weeshy one miles away. _And what star is that,
- Poldy?_ says she. By God, she had Bloom cornered. _That one, is it?_
- says Chris Callinan, _sure that’s only what you might call a pinprick._
- By God, he wasn’t far wide of the mark.
- Lenehan stopped and leaned on the riverwall, panting with soft
- laughter.
- —I’m weak, he gasped.
- M’Coy’s white face smiled about it at instants and grew grave. Lenehan
- walked on again. He lifted his yachtingcap and scratched his hindhead
- rapidly. He glanced sideways in the sunlight at M’Coy.
- —He’s a cultured allroundman, Bloom is, he said seriously. He’s not one
- of your common or garden... you know... There’s a touch of the artist
- about old Bloom.
- * * *
- Mr Bloom turned over idly pages of _The Awful Disclosures of Maria
- Monk_, then of Aristotle’s _Masterpiece._ Crooked botched print.
- Plates: infants cuddled in a ball in bloodred wombs like livers of
- slaughtered cows. Lots of them like that at this moment all over the
- world. All butting with their skulls to get out of it. Child born every
- minute somewhere. Mrs Purefoy.
- He laid both books aside and glanced at the third: _Tales of the
- Ghetto_ by Leopold von Sacher Masoch.
- —That I had, he said, pushing it by.
- The shopman let two volumes fall on the counter.
- —Them are two good ones, he said.
- Onions of his breath came across the counter out of his ruined mouth.
- He bent to make a bundle of the other books, hugged them against his
- unbuttoned waistcoat and bore them off behind the dingy curtain.
- On O’Connell bridge many persons observed the grave deportment and gay
- apparel of Mr Denis J Maginni, professor of dancing &c.
- Mr Bloom, alone, looked at the titles. _Fair Tyrants_ by James
- Lovebirch. Know the kind that is. Had it? Yes.
- He opened it. Thought so.
- A woman’s voice behind the dingy curtain. Listen: the man.
- No: she wouldn’t like that much. Got her it once.
- He read the other title: _Sweets of Sin_. More in her line. Let us see.
- He read where his finger opened.
- _—All the dollarbills her husband gave her were spent in the stores on
- wondrous gowns and costliest frillies. For him! For Raoul!_
- Yes. This. Here. Try.
- —_Her mouth glued on his in a luscious voluptuous kiss while his hands
- felt for the opulent curves inside her déshabillé._
- Yes. Take this. The end.
- —You are late, he spoke hoarsely, eying her with a suspicious glare.
- The beautiful woman threw off her sabletrimmed wrap, displaying her
- queenly shoulders and heaving embonpoint. An imperceptible smile played
- round her perfect lips as she turned to him calmly.
- Mr Bloom read again: _The beautiful woman._
- Warmth showered gently over him, cowing his flesh. Flesh yielded amply
- amid rumpled clothes: whites of eyes swooning up. His nostrils arched
- themselves for prey. Melting breast ointments (_for him! For Raoul!_).
- Armpits’ oniony sweat. Fishgluey slime (_her heaving embonpoint!_).
- Feel! Press! Crished! Sulphur dung of lions!
- Young! Young!
- An elderly female, no more young, left the building of the courts of
- chancery, king’s bench, exchequer and common pleas, having heard in the
- lord chancellor’s court the case in lunacy of Potterton, in the
- admiralty division the summons, exparte motion, of the owners of the
- Lady Cairns versus the owners of the barque Mona, in the court of
- appeal reservation of judgment in the case of Harvey versus the Ocean
- Accident and Guarantee Corporation.
- Phlegmy coughs shook the air of the bookshop, bulging out the dingy
- curtains. The shopman’s uncombed grey head came out and his unshaven
- reddened face, coughing. He raked his throat rudely, puked phlegm on
- the floor. He put his boot on what he had spat, wiping his sole along
- it, and bent, showing a rawskinned crown, scantily haired.
- Mr Bloom beheld it.
- Mastering his troubled breath, he said:
- —I’ll take this one.
- The shopman lifted eyes bleared with old rheum.
- —_Sweets of Sin,_ he said, tapping on it. That’s a good one.
- * * *
- The lacquey by the door of Dillon’s auctionrooms shook his handbell
- twice again and viewed himself in the chalked mirror of the cabinet.
- Dilly Dedalus, loitering by the curbstone, heard the beats of the bell,
- the cries of the auctioneer within. Four and nine. Those lovely
- curtains. Five shillings. Cosy curtains. Selling new at two guineas.
- Any advance on five shillings? Going for five shillings.
- The lacquey lifted his handbell and shook it:
- —Barang!
- Bang of the lastlap bell spurred the halfmile wheelmen to their sprint.
- J. A. Jackson, W. E. Wylie, A. Munro and H. T. Gahan, their stretched
- necks wagging, negotiated the curve by the College library.
- Mr Dedalus, tugging a long moustache, came round from Williams’s row.
- He halted near his daughter.
- —It’s time for you, she said.
- —Stand up straight for the love of the lord Jesus, Mr Dedalus said. Are
- you trying to imitate your uncle John, the cornetplayer, head upon
- shoulder? Melancholy God!
- Dilly shrugged her shoulders. Mr Dedalus placed his hands on them and
- held them back.
- —Stand up straight, girl, he said. You’ll get curvature of the spine.
- Do you know what you look like?
- He let his head sink suddenly down and forward, hunching his shoulders
- and dropping his underjaw.
- —Give it up, father, Dilly said. All the people are looking at you.
- Mr Dedalus drew himself upright and tugged again at his moustache.
- —Did you get any money? Dilly asked.
- —Where would I get money? Mr Dedalus said. There is no-one in Dublin
- would lend me fourpence.
- —You got some, Dilly said, looking in his eyes.
- —How do you know that? Mr Dedalus asked, his tongue in his cheek.
- Mr Kernan, pleased with the order he had booked, walked boldly along
- James’s street.
- —I know you did, Dilly answered. Were you in the Scotch house now?
- —I was not, then, Mr Dedalus said, smiling. Was it the little nuns
- taught you to be so saucy? Here.
- He handed her a shilling.
- —See if you can do anything with that, he said.
- —I suppose you got five, Dilly said. Give me more than that.
- —Wait awhile, Mr Dedalus said threateningly. You’re like the rest of
- them, are you? An insolent pack of little bitches since your poor
- mother died. But wait awhile. You’ll all get a short shrift and a long
- day from me. Low blackguardism! I’m going to get rid of you. Wouldn’t
- care if I was stretched out stiff. He’s dead. The man upstairs is dead.
- He left her and walked on. Dilly followed quickly and pulled his coat.
- —Well, what is it? he said, stopping.
- The lacquey rang his bell behind their backs.
- —Barang!
- —Curse your bloody blatant soul, Mr Dedalus cried, turning on him.
- The lacquey, aware of comment, shook the lolling clapper of his bell
- but feebly:
- —Bang!
- Mr Dedalus stared at him.
- —Watch him, he said. It’s instructive. I wonder will he allow us to
- talk.
- —You got more than that, father, Dilly said.
- —I’m going to show you a little trick, Mr Dedalus said. I’ll leave you
- all where Jesus left the jews. Look, there’s all I have. I got two
- shillings from Jack Power and I spent twopence for a shave for the
- funeral.
- He drew forth a handful of copper coins, nervously.
- —Can’t you look for some money somewhere? Dilly said.
- Mr Dedalus thought and nodded.
- —I will, he said gravely. I looked all along the gutter in O’Connell
- street. I’ll try this one now.
- —You’re very funny, Dilly said, grinning.
- —Here, Mr Dedalus said, handing her two pennies. Get a glass of milk
- for yourself and a bun or a something. I’ll be home shortly.
- He put the other coins in his pocket and started to walk on.
- The viceregal cavalcade passed, greeted by obsequious policemen, out of
- Parkgate.
- —I’m sure you have another shilling, Dilly said.
- The lacquey banged loudly.
- Mr Dedalus amid the din walked off, murmuring to himself with a pursing
- mincing mouth gently:
- —The little nuns! Nice little things! O, sure they wouldn’t do
- anything! O, sure they wouldn’t really! Is it little sister Monica!
- * * *
- From the sundial towards James’s gate walked Mr Kernan, pleased with
- the order he had booked for Pulbrook Robertson, boldly along James’s
- street, past Shackleton’s offices. Got round him all right. How do you
- do, Mr Crimmins? First rate, sir. I was afraid you might be up in your
- other establishment in Pimlico. How are things going? Just keeping
- alive. Lovely weather we’re having. Yes, indeed. Good for the country.
- Those farmers are always grumbling. I’ll just take a thimbleful of your
- best gin, Mr Crimmins. A small gin, sir. Yes, sir. Terrible affair that
- _General Slocum_ explosion. Terrible, terrible! A thousand casualties.
- And heartrending scenes. Men trampling down women and children. Most
- brutal thing. What do they say was the cause? Spontaneous combustion.
- Most scandalous revelation. Not a single lifeboat would float and the
- firehose all burst. What I can’t understand is how the inspectors ever
- allowed a boat like that... Now, you’re talking straight, Mr Crimmins.
- You know why? Palm oil. Is that a fact? Without a doubt. Well now, look
- at that. And America they say is the land of the free. I thought we
- were bad here.
- I smiled at him. _America,_ I said quietly, just like that. _What is
- it? The sweepings of every country including our own. Isn’t that true?_
- That’s a fact.
- Graft, my dear sir. Well, of course, where there’s money going there’s
- always someone to pick it up.
- Saw him looking at my frockcoat. Dress does it. Nothing like a dressy
- appearance. Bowls them over.
- —Hello, Simon, Father Cowley said. How are things?
- —Hello, Bob, old man, Mr Dedalus answered, stopping.
- Mr Kernan halted and preened himself before the sloping mirror of Peter
- Kennedy, hairdresser. Stylish coat, beyond a doubt. Scott of Dawson
- street. Well worth the half sovereign I gave Neary for it. Never built
- under three guineas. Fits me down to the ground. Some Kildare street
- club toff had it probably. John Mulligan, the manager of the Hibernian
- bank, gave me a very sharp eye yesterday on Carlisle bridge as if he
- remembered me.
- Aham! Must dress the character for those fellows. Knight of the road.
- Gentleman. And now, Mr Crimmins, may we have the honour of your custom
- again, sir. The cup that cheers but not inebriates, as the old saying
- has it.
- North wall and sir John Rogerson’s quay, with hulls and anchorchains,
- sailing westward, sailed by a skiff, a crumpled throwaway, rocked on
- the ferrywash, Elijah is coming.
- Mr Kernan glanced in farewell at his image. High colour, of course.
- Grizzled moustache. Returned Indian officer. Bravely he bore his stumpy
- body forward on spatted feet, squaring his shoulders. Is that Ned
- Lambert’s brother over the way, Sam? What? Yes. He’s as like it as damn
- it. No. The windscreen of that motorcar in the sun there. Just a flash
- like that. Damn like him.
- Aham! Hot spirit of juniper juice warmed his vitals and his breath.
- Good drop of gin, that was. His frocktails winked in bright sunshine to
- his fat strut.
- Down there Emmet was hanged, drawn and quartered. Greasy black rope.
- Dogs licking the blood off the street when the lord lieutenant’s wife
- drove by in her noddy.
- Bad times those were. Well, well. Over and done with. Great topers too.
- Fourbottle men.
- Let me see. Is he buried in saint Michan’s? Or no, there was a midnight
- burial in Glasnevin. Corpse brought in through a secret door in the
- wall. Dignam is there now. Went out in a puff. Well, well. Better turn
- down here. Make a detour.
- Mr Kernan turned and walked down the slope of Watling street by the
- corner of Guinness’s visitors’ waitingroom. Outside the Dublin
- Distillers Company’s stores an outside car without fare or jarvey
- stood, the reins knotted to the wheel. Damn dangerous thing. Some
- Tipperary bosthoon endangering the lives of the citizens. Runaway
- horse.
- Denis Breen with his tomes, weary of having waited an hour in John
- Henry Menton’s office, led his wife over O’Connell bridge, bound for
- the office of Messrs Collis and Ward.
- Mr Kernan approached Island street.
- Times of the troubles. Must ask Ned Lambert to lend me those
- reminiscences of sir Jonah Barrington. When you look back on it all now
- in a kind of retrospective arrangement. Gaming at Daly’s. No
- cardsharping then. One of those fellows got his hand nailed to the
- table by a dagger. Somewhere here lord Edward Fitzgerald escaped from
- major Sirr. Stables behind Moira house.
- Damn good gin that was.
- Fine dashing young nobleman. Good stock, of course. That ruffian, that
- sham squire, with his violet gloves gave him away. Course they were on
- the wrong side. They rose in dark and evil days. Fine poem that is:
- Ingram. They were gentlemen. Ben Dollard does sing that ballad
- touchingly. Masterly rendition.
- _At the siege of Ross did my father fall._
- A cavalcade in easy trot along Pembroke quay passed, outriders leaping,
- leaping in their, in their saddles. Frockcoats. Cream sunshades.
- Mr Kernan hurried forward, blowing pursily.
- His Excellency! Too bad! Just missed that by a hair. Damn it! What a
- pity!
- * * *
- Stephen Dedalus watched through the webbed window the lapidary’s
- fingers prove a timedulled chain. Dust webbed the window and the
- showtrays. Dust darkened the toiling fingers with their vulture nails.
- Dust slept on dull coils of bronze and silver, lozenges of cinnabar, on
- rubies, leprous and winedark stones.
- Born all in the dark wormy earth, cold specks of fire, evil, lights
- shining in the darkness. Where fallen archangels flung the stars of
- their brows. Muddy swinesnouts, hands, root and root, gripe and wrest
- them.
- She dances in a foul gloom where gum bums with garlic. A sailorman,
- rustbearded, sips from a beaker rum and eyes her. A long and seafed
- silent rut. She dances, capers, wagging her sowish haunches and her
- hips, on her gross belly flapping a ruby egg.
- Old Russell with a smeared shammy rag burnished again his gem, turned
- it and held it at the point of his Moses’ beard. Grandfather ape
- gloating on a stolen hoard.
- And you who wrest old images from the burial earth? The brainsick words
- of sophists: Antisthenes. A lore of drugs. Orient and immortal wheat
- standing from everlasting to everlasting.
- Two old women fresh from their whiff of the briny trudged through
- Irishtown along London bridge road, one with a sanded tired umbrella,
- one with a midwife’s bag in which eleven cockles rolled.
- The whirr of flapping leathern bands and hum of dynamos from the
- powerhouse urged Stephen to be on. Beingless beings. Stop! Throb always
- without you and the throb always within. Your heart you sing of. I
- between them. Where? Between two roaring worlds where they swirl, I.
- Shatter them, one and both. But stun myself too in the blow. Shatter me
- you who can. Bawd and butcher were the words. I say! Not yet awhile. A
- look around.
- Yes, quite true. Very large and wonderful and keeps famous time. You
- say right, sir. A Monday morning, ’twas so, indeed.
- Stephen went down Bedford row, the handle of the ash clacking against
- his shoulderblade. In Clohissey’s window a faded 1860 print of Heenan
- boxing Sayers held his eye. Staring backers with square hats stood
- round the roped prizering. The heavyweights in tight loincloths
- proposed gently each to other his bulbous fists. And they are
- throbbing: heroes’ hearts.
- He turned and halted by the slanted bookcart.
- —Twopence each, the huckster said. Four for sixpence.
- Tattered pages. _The Irish Beekeeper. Life and Miracles of the Curé of
- Ars. Pocket Guide to Killarney._
- I might find here one of my pawned schoolprizes. _Stephano Dedalo,
- alumno optimo, palmam ferenti._
- Father Conmee, having read his little hours, walked through the hamlet
- of Donnycarney, murmuring vespers.
- Binding too good probably. What is this? Eighth and ninth book of
- Moses. Secret of all secrets. Seal of King David. Thumbed pages: read
- and read. Who has passed here before me? How to soften chapped hands.
- Recipe for white wine vinegar. How to win a woman’s love. For me this.
- Say the following talisman three times with hands folded:
- —_Se el yilo nebrakada femininum! Amor me solo! Sanktus! Amen._
- Who wrote this? Charms and invocations of the most blessed abbot Peter
- Salanka to all true believers divulged. As good as any other abbot’s
- charms, as mumbling Joachim’s. Down, baldynoddle, or we’ll wool your
- wool.
- —What are you doing here, Stephen?
- Dilly’s high shoulders and shabby dress.
- Shut the book quick. Don’t let see.
- —What are you doing? Stephen said.
- A Stuart face of nonesuch Charles, lank locks falling at its sides. It
- glowed as she crouched feeding the fire with broken boots. I told her
- of Paris. Late lieabed under a quilt of old overcoats, fingering a
- pinchbeck bracelet, Dan Kelly’s token. _Nebrakada femininum._
- —What have you there? Stephen asked.
- —I bought it from the other cart for a penny, Dilly said, laughing
- nervously. Is it any good?
- My eyes they say she has. Do others see me so? Quick, far and daring.
- Shadow of my mind.
- He took the coverless book from her hand. Chardenal’s French primer.
- —What did you buy that for? he asked. To learn French?
- She nodded, reddening and closing tight her lips.
- Show no surprise. Quite natural.
- —Here, Stephen said. It’s all right. Mind Maggy doesn’t pawn it on you.
- I suppose all my books are gone.
- —Some, Dilly said. We had to.
- She is drowning. Agenbite. Save her. Agenbite. All against us. She will
- drown me with her, eyes and hair. Lank coils of seaweed hair around me,
- my heart, my soul. Salt green death.
- We.
- Agenbite of inwit. Inwit’s agenbite.
- Misery! Misery!
- * * *
- —Hello, Simon, Father Cowley said. How are things?
- —Hello, Bob, old man, Mr Dedalus answered, stopping.
- They clasped hands loudly outside Reddy and Daughter’s. Father Cowley
- brushed his moustache often downward with a scooping hand.
- —What’s the best news? Mr Dedalus said.
- —Why then not much, Father Cowley said. I’m barricaded up, Simon, with
- two men prowling around the house trying to effect an entrance.
- —Jolly, Mr Dedalus said. Who is it?
- —O, Father Cowley said. A certain gombeen man of our acquaintance.
- —With a broken back, is it? Mr Dedalus asked.
- —The same, Simon, Father Cowley answered. Reuben of that ilk. I’m just
- waiting for Ben Dollard. He’s going to say a word to long John to get
- him to take those two men off. All I want is a little time.
- He looked with vague hope up and down the quay, a big apple bulging in
- his neck.
- —I know, Mr Dedalus said, nodding. Poor old bockedy Ben! He’s always
- doing a good turn for someone. Hold hard!
- He put on his glasses and gazed towards the metal bridge an instant.
- —There he is, by God, he said, arse and pockets.
- Ben Dollard’s loose blue cutaway and square hat above large slops
- crossed the quay in full gait from the metal bridge. He came towards
- them at an amble, scratching actively behind his coattails.
- As he came near Mr Dedalus greeted:
- —Hold that fellow with the bad trousers.
- —Hold him now, Ben Dollard said.
- Mr Dedalus eyed with cold wandering scorn various points of Ben
- Dollard’s figure. Then, turning to Father Cowley with a nod, he
- muttered sneeringly:
- —That’s a pretty garment, isn’t it, for a summer’s day?
- —Why, God eternally curse your soul, Ben Dollard growled furiously, I
- threw out more clothes in my time than you ever saw.
- He stood beside them beaming, on them first and on his roomy clothes
- from points of which Mr Dedalus flicked fluff, saying:
- —They were made for a man in his health, Ben, anyhow.
- —Bad luck to the jewman that made them, Ben Dollard said. Thanks be to
- God he’s not paid yet.
- —And how is that _basso profondo_, Benjamin? Father Cowley asked.
- Cashel Boyle O’Connor Fitzmaurice Tisdall Farrell, murmuring,
- glassyeyed, strode past the Kildare street club.
- Ben Dollard frowned and, making suddenly a chanter’s mouth, gave forth
- a deep note.
- —Aw! he said.
- —That’s the style, Mr Dedalus said, nodding to its drone.
- —What about that? Ben Dollard said. Not too dusty? What?
- He turned to both.
- —That’ll do, Father Cowley said, nodding also.
- The reverend Hugh C. Love walked from the old chapterhouse of saint
- Mary’s abbey past James and Charles Kennedy’s, rectifiers, attended by
- Geraldines tall and personable, towards the Tholsel beyond the ford of
- hurdles.
- Ben Dollard with a heavy list towards the shopfronts led them forward,
- his joyful fingers in the air.
- —Come along with me to the subsheriff’s office, he said. I want to show
- you the new beauty Rock has for a bailiff. He’s a cross between
- Lobengula and Lynchehaun. He’s well worth seeing, mind you. Come along.
- I saw John Henry Menton casually in the Bodega just now and it will
- cost me a fall if I don’t... Wait awhile... We’re on the right lay,
- Bob, believe you me.
- —For a few days tell him, Father Cowley said anxiously.
- Ben Dollard halted and stared, his loud orifice open, a dangling button
- of his coat wagging brightbacked from its thread as he wiped away the
- heavy shraums that clogged his eyes to hear aright.
- —What few days? he boomed. Hasn’t your landlord distrained for rent?
- —He has, Father Cowley said.
- —Then our friend’s writ is not worth the paper it’s printed on, Ben
- Dollard said. The landlord has the prior claim. I gave him all the
- particulars. 29 Windsor avenue. Love is the name?
- —That’s right, Father Cowley said. The reverend Mr Love. He’s a
- minister in the country somewhere. But are you sure of that?
- —You can tell Barabbas from me, Ben Dollard said, that he can put that
- writ where Jacko put the nuts.
- He led Father Cowley boldly forward, linked to his bulk.
- —Filberts I believe they were, Mr Dedalus said, as he dropped his
- glasses on his coatfront, following them.
- * * *
- —The youngster will be all right, Martin Cunningham said, as they
- passed out of the Castleyard gate.
- The policeman touched his forehead.
- —God bless you, Martin Cunningham said, cheerily.
- He signed to the waiting jarvey who chucked at the reins and set on
- towards Lord Edward street.
- Bronze by gold, Miss Kennedy’s head by Miss Douce’s head, appeared
- above the crossblind of the Ormond hotel.
- —Yes, Martin Cunningham said, fingering his beard. I wrote to Father
- Conmee and laid the whole case before him.
- —You could try our friend, Mr Power suggested backward.
- —Boyd? Martin Cunningham said shortly. Touch me not.
- John Wyse Nolan, lagging behind, reading the list, came after them
- quickly down Cork hill.
- On the steps of the City hall Councillor Nannetti, descending, hailed
- Alderman Cowley and Councillor Abraham Lyon ascending.
- The castle car wheeled empty into upper Exchange street.
- —Look here, Martin, John Wyse Nolan said, overtaking them at the _Mail_
- office. I see Bloom put his name down for five shillings.
- —Quite right, Martin Cunningham said, taking the list. And put down the
- five shillings too.
- —Without a second word either, Mr Power said.
- —Strange but true, Martin Cunningham added.
- John Wyse Nolan opened wide eyes.
- —I’ll say there is much kindness in the jew, he quoted, elegantly.
- They went down Parliament street.
- —There’s Jimmy Henry, Mr Power said, just heading for Kavanagh’s.
- —Righto, Martin Cunningham said. Here goes.
- Outside _la Maison Claire_ Blazes Boylan waylaid Jack Mooney’s
- brother-in-law, humpy, tight, making for the liberties.
- John Wyse Nolan fell back with Mr Power, while Martin Cunningham took
- the elbow of a dapper little man in a shower of hail suit, who walked
- uncertainly, with hasty steps past Micky Anderson’s watches.
- —The assistant town clerk’s corns are giving him some trouble, John
- Wyse Nolan told Mr Power.
- They followed round the corner towards James Kavanagh’s winerooms. The
- empty castle car fronted them at rest in Essex gate. Martin Cunningham,
- speaking always, showed often the list at which Jimmy Henry did not
- glance.
- —And long John Fanning is here too, John Wyse Nolan said, as large as
- life.
- The tall form of long John Fanning filled the doorway where he stood.
- —Good day, Mr Subsheriff, Martin Cunningham said, as all halted and
- greeted.
- Long John Fanning made no way for them. He removed his large Henry Clay
- decisively and his large fierce eyes scowled intelligently over all
- their faces.
- —Are the conscript fathers pursuing their peaceful deliberations? he
- said with rich acrid utterance to the assistant town clerk.
- Hell open to christians they were having, Jimmy Henry said pettishly,
- about their damned Irish language. Where was the marshal, he wanted to
- know, to keep order in the council chamber. And old Barlow the
- macebearer laid up with asthma, no mace on the table, nothing in order,
- no quorum even, and Hutchinson, the lord mayor, in Llandudno and little
- Lorcan Sherlock doing _locum tenens_ for him. Damned Irish language,
- language of our forefathers.
- Long John Fanning blew a plume of smoke from his lips.
- Martin Cunningham spoke by turns, twirling the peak of his beard, to
- the assistant town clerk and the subsheriff, while John Wyse Nolan held
- his peace.
- —What Dignam was that? long John Fanning asked.
- Jimmy Henry made a grimace and lifted his left foot.
- —O, my corns! he said plaintively. Come upstairs for goodness’ sake
- till I sit down somewhere. Uff! Ooo! Mind!
- Testily he made room for himself beside long John Fanning’s flank and
- passed in and up the stairs.
- —Come on up, Martin Cunningham said to the subsheriff. I don’t think
- you knew him or perhaps you did, though.
- With John Wyse Nolan Mr Power followed them in.
- —Decent little soul he was, Mr Power said to the stalwart back of long
- John Fanning ascending towards long John Fanning in the mirror.
- —Rather lowsized. Dignam of Menton’s office that was, Martin Cunningham
- said.
- Long John Fanning could not remember him.
- Clatter of horsehoofs sounded from the air.
- —What’s that? Martin Cunningham said.
- All turned where they stood. John Wyse Nolan came down again. From the
- cool shadow of the doorway he saw the horses pass Parliament street,
- harness and glossy pasterns in sunlight shimmering. Gaily they went
- past before his cool unfriendly eyes, not quickly. In saddles of the
- leaders, leaping leaders, rode outriders.
- —What was it? Martin Cunningham asked, as they went on up the
- staircase.
- —The lord lieutenantgeneral and general governor of Ireland, John Wyse
- Nolan answered from the stairfoot.
- * * *
- As they trod across the thick carpet Buck Mulligan whispered behind his
- Panama to Haines:
- —Parnell’s brother. There in the corner.
- They chose a small table near the window, opposite a longfaced man
- whose beard and gaze hung intently down on a chessboard.
- —Is that he? Haines asked, twisting round in his seat.
- —Yes, Mulligan said. That’s John Howard, his brother, our city marshal.
- John Howard Parnell translated a white bishop quietly and his grey claw
- went up again to his forehead whereat it rested. An instant after,
- under its screen, his eyes looked quickly, ghostbright, at his foe and
- fell once more upon a working corner.
- —I’ll take a _mélange,_ Haines said to the waitress.
- —Two _mélanges,_ Buck Mulligan said. And bring us some scones and
- butter and some cakes as well.
- When she had gone he said, laughing:
- —We call it D.B.C. because they have damn bad cakes. O, but you missed
- Dedalus on _Hamlet._
- Haines opened his newbought book.
- —I’m sorry, he said. Shakespeare is the happy huntingground of all
- minds that have lost their balance.
- The onelegged sailor growled at the area of 14 Nelson street:
- —_England expects_...
- Buck Mulligan’s primrose waistcoat shook gaily to his laughter.
- —You should see him, he said, when his body loses its balance.
- Wandering Ængus I call him.
- —I am sure he has an _idée fixe,_ Haines said, pinching his chin
- thoughtfully with thumb and forefinger. Now I am speculating what it
- would be likely to be. Such persons always have.
- Buck Mulligan bent across the table gravely.
- —They drove his wits astray, he said, by visions of hell. He will never
- capture the Attic note. The note of Swinburne, of all poets, the white
- death and the ruddy birth. That is his tragedy. He can never be a poet.
- The joy of creation...
- —Eternal punishment, Haines said, nodding curtly. I see. I tackled him
- this morning on belief. There was something on his mind, I saw. It’s
- rather interesting because professor Pokorny of Vienna makes an
- interesting point out of that.
- Buck Mulligan’s watchful eyes saw the waitress come. He helped her to
- unload her tray.
- —He can find no trace of hell in ancient Irish myth, Haines said, amid
- the cheerful cups. The moral idea seems lacking, the sense of destiny,
- of retribution. Rather strange he should have just that fixed idea.
- Does he write anything for your movement?
- He sank two lumps of sugar deftly longwise through the whipped cream.
- Buck Mulligan slit a steaming scone in two and plastered butter over
- its smoking pith. He bit off a soft piece hungrily.
- —Ten years, he said, chewing and laughing. He is going to write
- something in ten years.
- —Seems a long way off, Haines said, thoughtfully lifting his spoon.
- Still, I shouldn’t wonder if he did after all.
- He tasted a spoonful from the creamy cone of his cup.
- —This is real Irish cream I take it, he said with forbearance. I don’t
- want to be imposed on.
- Elijah, skiff, light crumpled throwaway, sailed eastward by flanks of
- ships and trawlers, amid an archipelago of corks, beyond new Wapping
- street past Benson’s ferry, and by the threemasted schooner _Rosevean_
- from Bridgwater with bricks.
- * * *
- Almidano Artifoni walked past Holles street, past Sewell’s yard. Behind
- him Cashel Boyle O’Connor Fitzmaurice Tisdall Farrell, with
- stickumbrelladustcoat dangling, shunned the lamp before Mr Law Smith’s
- house and, crossing, walked along Merrion square. Distantly behind him
- a blind stripling tapped his way by the wall of College park.
- Cashel Boyle O’Connor Fitzmaurice Tisdall Farrell walked as far as Mr
- Lewis Werner’s cheerful windows, then turned and strode back along
- Merrion square, his stickumbrelladustcoat dangling.
- At the corner of Wilde’s house he halted, frowned at Elijah’s name
- announced on the Metropolitan hall, frowned at the distant pleasance of
- duke’s lawn. His eyeglass flashed frowning in the sun. With ratsteeth
- bared he muttered:
- —_Coactus volui._
- He strode on for Clare street, grinding his fierce word.
- As he strode past Mr Bloom’s dental windows the sway of his dustcoat
- brushed rudely from its angle a slender tapping cane and swept onwards,
- having buffeted a thewless body. The blind stripling turned his sickly
- face after the striding form.
- —God’s curse on you, he said sourly, whoever you are! You’re blinder
- nor I am, you bitch’s bastard!
- * * *
- Opposite Ruggy O’Donohoe’s Master Patrick Aloysius Dignam, pawing the
- pound and a half of Mangan’s, late Fehrenbach’s, porksteaks he had been
- sent for, went along warm Wicklow street dawdling. It was too blooming
- dull sitting in the parlour with Mrs Stoer and Mrs Quigley and Mrs
- MacDowell and the blind down and they all at their sniffles and sipping
- sups of the superior tawny sherry uncle Barney brought from Tunney’s.
- And they eating crumbs of the cottage fruitcake, jawing the whole
- blooming time and sighing.
- After Wicklow lane the window of Madame Doyle, courtdress milliner,
- stopped him. He stood looking in at the two puckers stripped to their
- pelts and putting up their props. From the sidemirrors two mourning
- Masters Dignam gaped silently. Myler Keogh, Dublin’s pet lamb, will
- meet sergeantmajor Bennett, the Portobello bruiser, for a purse of
- fifty sovereigns. Gob, that’d be a good pucking match to see. Myler
- Keogh, that’s the chap sparring out to him with the green sash. Two bar
- entrance, soldiers half price. I could easy do a bunk on ma. Master
- Dignam on his left turned as he turned. That’s me in mourning. When is
- it? May the twentysecond. Sure, the blooming thing is all over. He
- turned to the right and on his right Master Dignam turned, his cap
- awry, his collar sticking up. Buttoning it down, his chin lifted, he
- saw the image of Marie Kendall, charming soubrette, beside the two
- puckers. One of them mots that do be in the packets of fags Stoer
- smokes that his old fellow welted hell out of him for one time he found
- out.
- Master Dignam got his collar down and dawdled on. The best pucker going
- for strength was Fitzsimons. One puck in the wind from that fellow
- would knock you into the middle of next week, man. But the best pucker
- for science was Jem Corbet before Fitzsimons knocked the stuffings out
- of him, dodging and all.
- In Grafton street Master Dignam saw a red flower in a toff’s mouth and
- a swell pair of kicks on him and he listening to what the drunk was
- telling him and grinning all the time.
- No Sandymount tram.
- Master Dignam walked along Nassau street, shifted the porksteaks to his
- other hand. His collar sprang up again and he tugged it down. The
- blooming stud was too small for the buttonhole of the shirt, blooming
- end to it. He met schoolboys with satchels. I’m not going tomorrow
- either, stay away till Monday. He met other schoolboys. Do they notice
- I’m in mourning? Uncle Barney said he’d get it into the paper tonight.
- Then they’ll all see it in the paper and read my name printed and pa’s
- name.
- His face got all grey instead of being red like it was and there was a
- fly walking over it up to his eye. The scrunch that was when they were
- screwing the screws into the coffin: and the bumps when they were
- bringing it downstairs.
- Pa was inside it and ma crying in the parlour and uncle Barney telling
- the men how to get it round the bend. A big coffin it was, and high and
- heavylooking. How was that? The last night pa was boosed he was
- standing on the landing there bawling out for his boots to go out to
- Tunney’s for to boose more and he looked butty and short in his shirt.
- Never see him again. Death, that is. Pa is dead. My father is dead. He
- told me to be a good son to ma. I couldn’t hear the other things he
- said but I saw his tongue and his teeth trying to say it better. Poor
- pa. That was Mr Dignam, my father. I hope he’s in purgatory now because
- he went to confession to Father Conroy on Saturday night.
- * * *
- William Humble, earl of Dudley, and lady Dudley, accompanied by
- lieutenantcolonel Heseltine, drove out after luncheon from the
- viceregal lodge. In the following carriage were the honourable Mrs
- Paget, Miss de Courcy and the honourable Gerald Ward A. D. C. in
- attendance.
- The cavalcade passed out by the lower gate of Phoenix park saluted by
- obsequious policemen and proceeded past Kingsbridge along the northern
- quays. The viceroy was most cordially greeted on his way through the
- metropolis. At Bloody bridge Mr Thomas Kernan beyond the river greeted
- him vainly from afar. Between Queen’s and Whitworth bridges lord
- Dudley’s viceregal carriages passed and were unsaluted by Mr Dudley
- White, B. L., M. A., who stood on Arran quay outside Mrs M. E. White’s,
- the pawnbroker’s, at the corner of Arran street west stroking his nose
- with his forefinger, undecided whether he should arrive at Phibsborough
- more quickly by a triple change of tram or by hailing a car or on foot
- through Smithfield, Constitution hill and Broadstone terminus. In the
- porch of Four Courts Richie Goulding with the costbag of Goulding,
- Collis and Ward saw him with surprise. Past Richmond bridge at the
- doorstep of the office of Reuben J Dodd, solicitor, agent for the
- Patriotic Insurance Company, an elderly female about to enter changed
- her plan and retracing her steps by King’s windows smiled credulously
- on the representative of His Majesty. From its sluice in Wood quay wall
- under Tom Devan’s office Poddle river hung out in fealty a tongue of
- liquid sewage. Above the crossblind of the Ormond hotel, gold by
- bronze, Miss Kennedy’s head by Miss Douce’s head watched and admired.
- On Ormond quay Mr Simon Dedalus, steering his way from the greenhouse
- for the subsheriff’s office, stood still in midstreet and brought his
- hat low. His Excellency graciously returned Mr Dedalus’ greeting. From
- Cahill’s corner the reverend Hugh C. Love, M. A., made obeisance
- unperceived, mindful of lords deputies whose hands benignant had held
- of yore rich advowsons. On Grattan bridge Lenehan and M’Coy, taking
- leave of each other, watched the carriages go by. Passing by Roger
- Greene’s office and Dollard’s big red printinghouse Gerty MacDowell,
- carrying the Catesby’s cork lino letters for her father who was laid
- up, knew by the style it was the lord and lady lieutenant but she
- couldn’t see what Her Excellency had on because the tram and Spring’s
- big yellow furniture van had to stop in front of her on account of its
- being the lord lieutenant. Beyond Lundy Foot’s from the shaded door of
- Kavanagh’s winerooms John Wyse Nolan smiled with unseen coldness
- towards the lord lieutenantgeneral and general governor of Ireland. The
- Right Honourable William Humble, earl of Dudley, G. C. V. O., passed
- Micky Anderson’s all times ticking watches and Henry and James’s wax
- smartsuited freshcheeked models, the gentleman Henry, _dernier cri_
- James. Over against Dame gate Tom Rochford and Nosey Flynn watched the
- approach of the cavalcade. Tom Rochford, seeing the eyes of lady Dudley
- fixed on him, took his thumbs quickly out of the pockets of his claret
- waistcoat and doffed his cap to her. A charming _soubrette,_ great
- Marie Kendall, with dauby cheeks and lifted skirt smiled daubily from
- her poster upon William Humble, earl of Dudley, and upon
- lieutenantcolonel H. G. Heseltine, and also upon the honourable Gerald
- Ward A. D. C. From the window of the D. B. C. Buck Mulligan gaily, and
- Haines gravely, gazed down on the viceregal equipage over the shoulders
- of eager guests, whose mass of forms darkened the chessboard whereon
- John Howard Parnell looked intently. In Fownes’s street Dilly Dedalus,
- straining her sight upward from Chardenal’s first French primer, saw
- sunshades spanned and wheelspokes spinning in the glare. John Henry
- Menton, filling the doorway of Commercial Buildings, stared from
- winebig oyster eyes, holding a fat gold hunter watch not looked at in
- his fat left hand not feeling it. Where the foreleg of King Billy’s
- horse pawed the air Mrs Breen plucked her hastening husband back from
- under the hoofs of the outriders. She shouted in his ear the tidings.
- Understanding, he shifted his tomes to his left breast and saluted the
- second carriage. The honourable Gerald Ward A. D. C., agreeably
- surprised, made haste to reply. At Ponsonby’s corner a jaded white
- flagon H. halted and four tallhatted white flagons halted behind him,
- E.L.Y.’S, while outriders pranced past and carriages. Opposite Pigott’s
- music warerooms Mr Denis J Maginni, professor of dancing &c, gaily
- apparelled, gravely walked, outpassed by a viceroy and unobserved. By
- the provost’s wall came jauntily Blazes Boylan, stepping in tan shoes
- and socks with skyblue clocks to the refrain of _My girl’s a Yorkshire
- girl._
- Blazes Boylan presented to the leaders’ skyblue frontlets and high
- action a skyblue tie, a widebrimmed straw hat at a rakish angle and a
- suit of indigo serge. His hands in his jacket pockets forgot to salute
- but he offered to the three ladies the bold admiration of his eyes and
- the red flower between his lips. As they drove along Nassau street His
- Excellency drew the attention of his bowing consort to the programme of
- music which was being discoursed in College park. Unseen brazen
- highland laddies blared and drumthumped after the _cortège_:
- But though she’s a factory lass
- And wears no fancy clothes.
- Baraabum.
- Yet I’ve a sort of a
- Yorkshire relish for
- My little Yorkshire rose.
- Baraabum.
- Thither of the wall the quartermile flat handicappers, M. C. Green, H.
- Shrift, T. M. Patey, C. Scaife, J. B. Jeffs, G. N. Morphy, F.
- Stevenson, C. Adderly and W. C. Huggard, started in pursuit. Striding
- past Finn’s hotel Cashel Boyle O’Connor Fitzmaurice Tisdall Farrell
- stared through a fierce eyeglass across the carriages at the head of Mr
- M. E. Solomons in the window of the Austro-Hungarian viceconsulate.
- Deep in Leinster street by Trinity’s postern a loyal king’s man,
- Hornblower, touched his tallyho cap. As the glossy horses pranced by
- Merrion square Master Patrick Aloysius Dignam, waiting, saw salutes
- being given to the gent with the topper and raised also his new black
- cap with fingers greased by porksteak paper. His collar too sprang up.
- The viceroy, on his way to inaugurate the Mirus bazaar in aid of funds
- for Mercer’s hospital, drove with his following towards Lower Mount
- street. He passed a blind stripling opposite Broadbent’s. In Lower
- Mount street a pedestrian in a brown macintosh, eating dry bread,
- passed swiftly and unscathed across the viceroy’s path. At the Royal
- Canal bridge, from his hoarding, Mr Eugene Stratton, his blub lips
- agrin, bade all comers welcome to Pembroke township. At Haddington road
- corner two sanded women halted themselves, an umbrella and a bag in
- which eleven cockles rolled to view with wonder the lord mayor and lady
- mayoress without his golden chain. On Northumberland and Lansdowne
- roads His Excellency acknowledged punctually salutes from rare male
- walkers, the salute of two small schoolboys at the garden gate of the
- house said to have been admired by the late queen when visiting the
- Irish capital with her husband, the prince consort, in 1849 and the
- salute of Almidano Artifoni’s sturdy trousers swallowed by a closing
- door.
- [ 11 ]
- Bronze by gold heard the hoofirons, steelyringing.
- Imperthnthn thnthnthn.
- Chips, picking chips off rocky thumbnail, chips.
- Horrid! And gold flushed more.
- A husky fifenote blew.
- Blew. Blue bloom is on the.
- Goldpinnacled hair.
- A jumping rose on satiny breast of satin, rose of Castile.
- Trilling, trilling: Idolores.
- Peep! Who’s in the... peepofgold?
- Tink cried to bronze in pity.
- And a call, pure, long and throbbing. Longindying call.
- Decoy. Soft word. But look: the bright stars fade. Notes chirruping
- answer.
- O rose! Castile. The morn is breaking.
- Jingle jingle jaunted jingling.
- Coin rang. Clock clacked.
- Avowal. _Sonnez._ I could. Rebound of garter. Not leave thee. Smack.
- _La cloche!_ Thigh smack. Avowal. Warm. Sweetheart, goodbye!
- Jingle. Bloo.
- Boomed crashing chords. When love absorbs. War! War! The tympanum.
- A sail! A veil awave upon the waves.
- Lost. Throstle fluted. All is lost now.
- Horn. Hawhorn.
- When first he saw. Alas!
- Full tup. Full throb.
- Warbling. Ah, lure! Alluring.
- Martha! Come!
- Clapclap. Clipclap. Clappyclap.
- Goodgod henev erheard inall.
- Deaf bald Pat brought pad knife took up.
- A moonlit nightcall: far, far.
- I feel so sad. P. S. So lonely blooming.
- Listen!
- The spiked and winding cold seahorn. Have you the? Each, and for other,
- plash and silent roar.
- Pearls: when she. Liszt’s rhapsodies. Hissss.
- You don’t?
- Did not: no, no: believe: Lidlyd. With a cock with a carra.
- Black. Deepsounding. Do, Ben, do.
- Wait while you wait. Hee hee. Wait while you hee.
- But wait!
- Low in dark middle earth. Embedded ore.
- Naminedamine. Preacher is he:
- All gone. All fallen.
- Tiny, her tremulous fernfoils of maidenhair.
- Amen! He gnashed in fury.
- Fro. To, fro. A baton cool protruding.
- Bronzelydia by Minagold.
- By bronze, by gold, in oceangreen of shadow. Bloom. Old Bloom.
- One rapped, one tapped, with a carra, with a cock.
- Pray for him! Pray, good people!
- His gouty fingers nakkering.
- Big Benaben. Big Benben.
- Last rose Castile of summer left bloom I feel so sad alone.
- Pwee! Little wind piped wee.
- True men. Lid Ker Cow De and Doll. Ay, ay. Like you men. Will lift your
- tschink with tschunk.
- Fff! Oo!
- Where bronze from anear? Where gold from afar? Where hoofs?
- Rrrpr. Kraa. Kraandl.
- Then not till then. My eppripfftaph. Be pfrwritt.
- Done.
- Begin!
- Bronze by gold, miss Douce’s head by miss Kennedy’s head, over the
- crossblind of the Ormond bar heard the viceregal hoofs go by, ringing
- steel.
- —Is that her? asked miss Kennedy.
- Miss Douce said yes, sitting with his ex, pearl grey and _eau de Nil._
- —Exquisite contrast, miss Kennedy said.
- When all agog miss Douce said eagerly:
- —Look at the fellow in the tall silk.
- —Who? Where? gold asked more eagerly.
- —In the second carriage, miss Douce’s wet lips said, laughing in the
- sun.
- He’s looking. Mind till I see.
- She darted, bronze, to the backmost corner, flattening her face against
- the pane in a halo of hurried breath.
- Her wet lips tittered:
- —He’s killed looking back.
- She laughed:
- —O wept! Aren’t men frightful idiots?
- With sadness.
- Miss Kennedy sauntered sadly from bright light, twining a loose hair
- behind an ear. Sauntering sadly, gold no more, she twisted twined a
- hair. Sadly she twined in sauntering gold hair behind a curving ear.
- —It’s them has the fine times, sadly then she said.
- A man.
- Bloowho went by by Moulang’s pipes bearing in his breast the sweets of
- sin, by Wine’s antiques, in memory bearing sweet sinful words, by
- Carroll’s dusky battered plate, for Raoul.
- The boots to them, them in the bar, them barmaids came. For them
- unheeding him he banged on the counter his tray of chattering china.
- And
- —There’s your teas, he said.
- Miss Kennedy with manners transposed the teatray down to an upturned
- lithia crate, safe from eyes, low.
- —What is it? loud boots unmannerly asked.
- —Find out, miss Douce retorted, leaving her spyingpoint.
- —Your _beau,_ is it?
- A haughty bronze replied:
- —I’ll complain to Mrs de Massey on you if I hear any more of your
- impertinent insolence.
- —Imperthnthn thnthnthn, bootssnout sniffed rudely, as he retreated as
- she threatened as he had come.
- Bloom.
- On her flower frowning miss Douce said:
- —Most aggravating that young brat is. If he doesn’t conduct himself
- I’ll wring his ear for him a yard long.
- Ladylike in exquisite contrast.
- —Take no notice, miss Kennedy rejoined.
- She poured in a teacup tea, then back in the teapot tea. They cowered
- under their reef of counter, waiting on footstools, crates upturned,
- waiting for their teas to draw. They pawed their blouses, both of black
- satin, two and nine a yard, waiting for their teas to draw, and two and
- seven.
- Yes, bronze from anear, by gold from afar, heard steel from anear,
- hoofs ring from afar, and heard steelhoofs ringhoof ringsteel.
- —Am I awfully sunburnt?
- Miss bronze unbloused her neck.
- —No, said miss Kennedy. It gets brown after. Did you try the borax with
- the cherry laurel water?
- Miss Douce halfstood to see her skin askance in the barmirror
- gildedlettered where hock and claret glasses shimmered and in their
- midst a shell.
- —And leave it to my hands, she said.
- —Try it with the glycerine, miss Kennedy advised.
- Bidding her neck and hands adieu miss Douce
- —Those things only bring out a rash, replied, reseated. I asked that
- old fogey in Boyd’s for something for my skin.
- Miss Kennedy, pouring now a fulldrawn tea, grimaced and prayed:
- —O, don’t remind me of him for mercy’ sake!
- —But wait till I tell you, miss Douce entreated.
- Sweet tea miss Kennedy having poured with milk plugged both two ears
- with little fingers.
- —No, don’t, she cried.
- —I won’t listen, she cried.
- But Bloom?
- Miss Douce grunted in snuffy fogey’s tone:
- —For your what? says he.
- Miss Kennedy unplugged her ears to hear, to speak: but said, but prayed
- again:
- —Don’t let me think of him or I’ll expire. The hideous old wretch! That
- night in the Antient Concert Rooms.
- She sipped distastefully her brew, hot tea, a sip, sipped, sweet tea.
- —Here he was, miss Douce said, cocking her bronze head three quarters,
- ruffling her nosewings. Hufa! Hufa!
- Shrill shriek of laughter sprang from miss Kennedy’s throat. Miss Douce
- huffed and snorted down her nostrils that quivered imperthnthn like a
- snout in quest.
- —O! shrieking, miss Kennedy cried. Will you ever forget his goggle eye?
- Miss Douce chimed in in deep bronze laughter, shouting:
- —And your other eye!
- Bloowhose dark eye read Aaron Figatner’s name. Why do I always think
- Figather? Gathering figs, I think. And Prosper Loré’s huguenot name. By
- Bassi’s blessed virgins Bloom’s dark eyes went by. Bluerobed, white
- under, come to me. God they believe she is: or goddess. Those today. I
- could not see. That fellow spoke. A student. After with Dedalus’ son.
- He might be Mulligan. All comely virgins. That brings those rakes of
- fellows in: her white.
- By went his eyes. The sweets of sin. Sweet are the sweets.
- Of sin.
- In a giggling peal young goldbronze voices blended, Douce with Kennedy
- your other eye. They threw young heads back, bronze gigglegold, to let
- freefly their laughter, screaming, your other, signals to each other,
- high piercing notes.
- Ah, panting, sighing, sighing, ah, fordone, their mirth died down.
- Miss Kennedy lipped her cup again, raised, drank a sip and
- gigglegiggled. Miss Douce, bending over the teatray, ruffled again her
- nose and rolled droll fattened eyes. Again Kennygiggles, stooping, her
- fair pinnacles of hair, stooping, her tortoise napecomb showed,
- spluttered out of her mouth her tea, choking in tea and laughter,
- coughing with choking, crying:
- —O greasy eyes! Imagine being married to a man like that! she cried.
- With his bit of beard!
- Douce gave full vent to a splendid yell, a full yell of full woman,
- delight, joy, indignation.
- —Married to the greasy nose! she yelled.
- Shrill, with deep laughter, after, gold after bronze, they urged each
- each to peal after peal, ringing in changes, bronzegold, goldbronze,
- shrilldeep, to laughter after laughter. And then laughed more. Greasy I
- knows. Exhausted, breathless, their shaken heads they laid, braided and
- pinnacled by glossycombed, against the counterledge. All flushed (O!),
- panting, sweating (O!), all breathless.
- Married to Bloom, to greaseabloom.
- —O saints above! miss Douce said, sighed above her jumping rose. I
- wished I hadn’t laughed so much. I feel all wet.
- —O, miss Douce! miss Kennedy protested. You horrid thing!
- And flushed yet more (you horrid!), more goldenly.
- By Cantwell’s offices roved Greaseabloom, by Ceppi’s virgins, bright of
- their oils. Nannetti’s father hawked those things about, wheedling at
- doors as I. Religion pays. Must see him for that par. Eat first. I
- want. Not yet. At four, she said. Time ever passing. Clockhands
- turning. On. Where eat? The Clarence, Dolphin. On. For Raoul. Eat. If I
- net five guineas with those ads. The violet silk petticoats. Not yet.
- The sweets of sin.
- Flushed less, still less, goldenly paled.
- Into their bar strolled Mr Dedalus. Chips, picking chips off one of his
- rocky thumbnails. Chips. He strolled.
- —O, welcome back, miss Douce.
- He held her hand. Enjoyed her holidays?
- —Tiptop.
- He hoped she had nice weather in Rostrevor.
- —Gorgeous, she said. Look at the holy show I am. Lying out on the
- strand all day.
- Bronze whiteness.
- —That was exceedingly naughty of you, Mr Dedalus told her and pressed
- her hand indulgently. Tempting poor simple males.
- Miss Douce of satin douced her arm away.
- —O go away! she said. You’re very simple, I don’t think.
- He was.
- —Well now I am, he mused. I looked so simple in the cradle they
- christened me simple Simon.
- —You must have been a doaty, miss Douce made answer. And what did the
- doctor order today?
- —Well now, he mused, whatever you say yourself. I think I’ll trouble
- you for some fresh water and a half glass of whisky.
- Jingle.
- —With the greatest alacrity, miss Douce agreed.
- With grace of alacrity towards the mirror gilt Cantrell and Cochrane’s
- she turned herself. With grace she tapped a measure of gold whisky from
- her crystal keg. Forth from the skirt of his coat Mr Dedalus brought
- pouch and pipe. Alacrity she served. He blew through the flue two husky
- fifenotes.
- —By Jove, he mused, I often wanted to see the Mourne mountains. Must be
- a great tonic in the air down there. But a long threatening comes at
- last, they say. Yes. Yes.
- Yes. He fingered shreds of hair, her maidenhair, her mermaid’s, into
- the bowl. Chips. Shreds. Musing. Mute.
- None nought said nothing. Yes.
- Gaily miss Douce polished a tumbler, trilling:
- —_O, Idolores, queen of the eastern seas!_
- —Was Mr Lidwell in today?
- In came Lenehan. Round him peered Lenehan. Mr Bloom reached Essex
- bridge. Yes, Mr Bloom crossed bridge of Yessex. To Martha I must write.
- Buy paper. Daly’s. Girl there civil. Bloom. Old Bloom. Blue bloom is on
- the rye.
- —He was in at lunchtime, miss Douce said.
- Lenehan came forward.
- —Was Mr Boylan looking for me?
- He asked. She answered:
- —Miss Kennedy, was Mr Boylan in while I was upstairs?
- She asked. Miss voice of Kennedy answered, a second teacup poised, her
- gaze upon a page:
- —No. He was not.
- Miss gaze of Kennedy, heard, not seen, read on. Lenehan round the
- sandwichbell wound his round body round.
- —Peep! Who’s in the corner?
- No glance of Kennedy rewarding him he yet made overtures. To mind her
- stops. To read only the black ones: round o and crooked ess.
- Jingle jaunty jingle.
- Girlgold she read and did not glance. Take no notice. She took no
- notice while he read by rote a solfa fable for her, plappering flatly:
- —Ah fox met ah stork. Said thee fox too thee stork: Will you put your
- bill down inn my troath and pull upp ah bone?
- He droned in vain. Miss Douce turned to her tea aside.
- He sighed aside:
- —Ah me! O my!
- He greeted Mr Dedalus and got a nod.
- —Greetings from the famous son of a famous father.
- —Who may he be? Mr Dedalus asked.
- Lenehan opened most genial arms. Who?
- —Who may he be? he asked. Can you ask? Stephen, the youthful bard.
- Dry.
- Mr Dedalus, famous father, laid by his dry filled pipe.
- —I see, he said. I didn’t recognise him for the moment. I hear he is
- keeping very select company. Have you seen him lately?
- He had.
- —I quaffed the nectarbowl with him this very day, said Lenehan. In
- Mooney’s _en ville_ and in Mooney’s _sur mer._ He had received the
- rhino for the labour of his muse.
- He smiled at bronze’s teabathed lips, at listening lips and eyes:
- —The _élite_ of Erin hung upon his lips. The ponderous pundit, Hugh
- MacHugh, Dublin’s most brilliant scribe and editor and that minstrel
- boy of the wild wet west who is known by the euphonious appellation of
- the O’Madden Burke.
- After an interval Mr Dedalus raised his grog and
- —That must have been highly diverting, said he. I see.
- He see. He drank. With faraway mourning mountain eye. Set down his
- glass.
- He looked towards the saloon door.
- —I see you have moved the piano.
- —The tuner was in today, miss Douce replied, tuning it for the smoking
- concert and I never heard such an exquisite player.
- —Is that a fact?
- —Didn’t he, miss Kennedy? The real classical, you know. And blind too,
- poor fellow. Not twenty I’m sure he was.
- —Is that a fact? Mr Dedalus said.
- He drank and strayed away.
- —So sad to look at his face, miss Douce condoled.
- God’s curse on bitch’s bastard.
- Tink to her pity cried a diner’s bell. To the door of the bar and
- diningroom came bald Pat, came bothered Pat, came Pat, waiter of
- Ormond. Lager for diner. Lager without alacrity she served.
- With patience Lenehan waited for Boylan with impatience, for
- jinglejaunty blazes boy.
- Upholding the lid he (who?) gazed in the coffin (coffin?) at the
- oblique triple (piano!) wires. He pressed (the same who pressed
- indulgently her hand), soft pedalling, a triple of keys to see the
- thicknesses of felt advancing, to hear the muffled hammerfall in
- action.
- Two sheets cream vellum paper one reserve two envelopes when I was in
- Wisdom Hely’s wise Bloom in Daly’s Henry Flower bought. Are you not
- happy in your home? Flower to console me and a pin cuts lo. Means
- something, language of flow. Was it a daisy? Innocence that is.
- Respectable girl meet after mass. Thanks awfully muchly. Wise Bloom
- eyed on the door a poster, a swaying mermaid smoking mid nice waves.
- Smoke mermaids, coolest whiff of all. Hair streaming: lovelorn. For
- some man. For Raoul. He eyed and saw afar on Essex bridge a gay hat
- riding on a jaunting car. It is. Again. Third time. Coincidence.
- Jingling on supple rubbers it jaunted from the bridge to Ormond quay.
- Follow. Risk it. Go quick. At four. Near now. Out.
- —Twopence, sir, the shopgirl dared to say.
- —Aha... I was forgetting... Excuse...
- —And four.
- At four she. Winsomely she on Bloohimwhom smiled. Bloo smi qui go.
- Ternoon. Think you’re the only pebble on the beach? Does that to all.
- For men.
- In drowsy silence gold bent on her page.
- From the saloon a call came, long in dying. That was a tuningfork the
- tuner had that he forgot that he now struck. A call again. That he now
- poised that it now throbbed. You hear? It throbbed, pure, purer, softly
- and softlier, its buzzing prongs. Longer in dying call.
- Pat paid for diner’s popcorked bottle: and over tumbler, tray and
- popcorked bottle ere he went he whispered, bald and bothered, with miss
- Douce.
- —_The bright stars fade_...
- A voiceless song sang from within, singing:
- —... _the morn is breaking._
- A duodene of birdnotes chirruped bright treble answer under sensitive
- hands. Brightly the keys, all twinkling, linked, all harpsichording,
- called to a voice to sing the strain of dewy morn, of youth, of love’s
- leavetaking, life’s, love’s morn.
- —_The dewdrops pearl_...
- Lenehan’s lips over the counter lisped a low whistle of decoy.
- —But look this way, he said, rose of Castile.
- Jingle jaunted by the curb and stopped.
- She rose and closed her reading, rose of Castile: fretted, forlorn,
- dreamily rose.
- —Did she fall or was she pushed? he asked her.
- She answered, slighting:
- —Ask no questions and you’ll hear no lies.
- Like lady, ladylike.
- Blazes Boylan’s smart tan shoes creaked on the barfloor where he
- strode. Yes, gold from anear by bronze from afar. Lenehan heard and
- knew and hailed him:
- —See the conquering hero comes.
- Between the car and window, warily walking, went Bloom, unconquered
- hero. See me he might. The seat he sat on: warm. Black wary hecat
- walked towards Richie Goulding’s legal bag, lifted aloft, saluting.
- —_And I from thee_...
- —I heard you were round, said Blazes Boylan.
- He touched to fair miss Kennedy a rim of his slanted straw. She smiled
- on him. But sister bronze outsmiled her, preening for him her richer
- hair, a bosom and a rose.
- Smart Boylan bespoke potions.
- —What’s your cry? Glass of bitter? Glass of bitter, please, and a
- sloegin for me. Wire in yet?
- Not yet. At four she. Who said four?
- Cowley’s red lugs and bulging apple in the door of the sheriff’s
- office.
- Avoid. Goulding a chance. What is he doing in the Ormond? Car waiting.
- Wait.
- Hello. Where off to? Something to eat? I too was just. In here. What,
- Ormond? Best value in Dublin. Is that so? Diningroom. Sit tight there.
- See, not be seen. I think I’ll join you. Come on. Richie led on. Bloom
- followed bag. Dinner fit for a prince.
- Miss Douce reached high to take a flagon, stretching her satin arm, her
- bust, that all but burst, so high.
- —O! O! jerked Lenehan, gasping at each stretch. O!
- But easily she seized her prey and led it low in triumph.
- —Why don’t you grow? asked Blazes Boylan.
- Shebronze, dealing from her oblique jar thick syrupy liquor for his
- lips, looked as it flowed (flower in his coat: who gave him?), and
- syrupped with her voice:
- —Fine goods in small parcels.
- That is to say she. Neatly she poured slowsyrupy sloe.
- —Here’s fortune, Blazes said.
- He pitched a broad coin down. Coin rang.
- —Hold on, said Lenehan, till I...
- —Fortune, he wished, lifting his bubbled ale.
- —Sceptre will win in a canter, he said.
- —I plunged a bit, said Boylan winking and drinking. Not on my own, you
- know. Fancy of a friend of mine.
- Lenehan still drank and grinned at his tilted ale and at miss Douce’s
- lips that all but hummed, not shut, the oceansong her lips had trilled.
- Idolores. The eastern seas.
- Clock whirred. Miss Kennedy passed their way (flower, wonder who gave),
- bearing away teatray. Clock clacked.
- Miss Douce took Boylan’s coin, struck boldly the cashregister. It
- clanged. Clock clacked. Fair one of Egypt teased and sorted in the till
- and hummed and handed coins in change. Look to the west. A clack. For
- me.
- —What time is that? asked Blazes Boylan. Four?
- O’clock.
- Lenehan, small eyes ahunger on her humming, bust ahumming, tugged
- Blazes Boylan’s elbowsleeve.
- —Let’s hear the time, he said.
- The bag of Goulding, Collis, Ward led Bloom by ryebloom flowered
- tables. Aimless he chose with agitated aim, bald Pat attending, a table
- near the door. Be near. At four. Has he forgotten? Perhaps a trick. Not
- come: whet appetite. I couldn’t do. Wait, wait. Pat, waiter, waited.
- Sparkling bronze azure eyed Blazure’s skyblue bow and eyes.
- —Go on, pressed Lenehan. There’s no-one. He never heard.
- —... _to Flora’s lips did hie._
- High, a high note pealed in the treble clear.
- Bronzedouce communing with her rose that sank and rose sought Blazes
- Boylan’s flower and eyes.
- —Please, please.
- He pleaded over returning phrases of avowal.
- —_I could not leave thee_...
- —Afterwits, miss Douce promised coyly.
- —No, now, urged Lenehan. _Sonnez la cloche!_ O do! There’s no-one.
- She looked. Quick. Miss Kenn out of earshot. Sudden bent. Two kindling
- faces watched her bend.
- Quavering the chords strayed from the air, found it again, lost chord,
- and lost and found it, faltering.
- —Go on! Do! _Sonnez!_
- Bending, she nipped a peak of skirt above her knee. Delayed. Taunted
- them still, bending, suspending, with wilful eyes.
- _—Sonnez!_
- Smack. She set free sudden in rebound her nipped elastic garter
- smackwarm against her smackable a woman’s warmhosed thigh.
- —_La cloche!_ cried gleeful Lenehan. Trained by owner. No sawdust
- there.
- She smilesmirked supercilious (wept! aren’t men?), but, lightward
- gliding, mild she smiled on Boylan.
- —You’re the essence of vulgarity, she in gliding said.
- Boylan, eyed, eyed. Tossed to fat lips his chalice, drank off his
- chalice tiny, sucking the last fat violet syrupy drops. His spellbound
- eyes went after, after her gliding head as it went down the bar by
- mirrors, gilded arch for ginger ale, hock and claret glasses
- shimmering, a spiky shell, where it concerted, mirrored, bronze with
- sunnier bronze.
- Yes, bronze from anearby.
- —... _Sweetheart, goodbye!_
- —I’m off, said Boylan with impatience.
- He slid his chalice brisk away, grasped his change.
- —Wait a shake, begged Lenehan, drinking quickly. I wanted to tell you.
- Tom Rochford...
- —Come on to blazes, said Blazes Boylan, going.
- Lenehan gulped to go.
- —Got the horn or what? he said. Wait. I’m coming.
- He followed the hasty creaking shoes but stood by nimbly by the
- threshold, saluting forms, a bulky with a slender.
- —How do you do, Mr Dollard?
- —Eh? How do? How do? Ben Dollard’s vague bass answered, turning an
- instant from Father Cowley’s woe. He won’t give you any trouble, Bob.
- Alf Bergan will speak to the long fellow. We’ll put a barleystraw in
- that Judas Iscariot’s ear this time.
- Sighing Mr Dedalus came through the saloon, a finger soothing an
- eyelid.
- —Hoho, we will, Ben Dollard yodled jollily. Come on, Simon. Give us a
- ditty. We heard the piano.
- Bald Pat, bothered waiter, waited for drink orders. Power for Richie.
- And Bloom? Let me see. Not make him walk twice. His corns. Four now.
- How warm this black is. Course nerves a bit. Refracts (is it?) heat.
- Let me see. Cider. Yes, bottle of cider.
- —What’s that? Mr Dedalus said. I was only vamping, man.
- —Come on, come on, Ben Dollard called. Begone dull care. Come, Bob.
- He ambled Dollard, bulky slops, before them (hold that fellow with the:
- hold him now) into the saloon. He plumped him Dollard on the stool. His
- gouty paws plumped chords. Plumped, stopped abrupt.
- Bald Pat in the doorway met tealess gold returning. Bothered, he wanted
- Power and cider. Bronze by the window, watched, bronze from afar.
- Jingle a tinkle jaunted.
- Bloom heard a jing, a little sound. He’s off. Light sob of breath Bloom
- sighed on the silent bluehued flowers. Jingling. He’s gone. Jingle.
- Hear.
- —Love and War, Ben, Mr Dedalus said. God be with old times.
- Miss Douce’s brave eyes, unregarded, turned from the crossblind,
- smitten by sunlight. Gone. Pensive (who knows?), smitten (the smiting
- light), she lowered the dropblind with a sliding cord. She drew down
- pensive (why did he go so quick when I?) about her bronze, over the bar
- where bald stood by sister gold, inexquisite contrast, contrast
- inexquisite nonexquisite, slow cool dim seagreen sliding depth of
- shadow, _eau de Nil._
- —Poor old Goodwin was the pianist that night, Father Cowley reminded
- them. There was a slight difference of opinion between himself and the
- Collard grand.
- There was.
- —A symposium all his own, Mr Dedalus said. The devil wouldn’t stop him.
- He was a crotchety old fellow in the primary stage of drink.
- —God, do you remember? Ben bulky Dollard said, turning from the
- punished keyboard. And by Japers I had no wedding garment.
- They laughed all three. He had no wed. All trio laughed. No wedding
- garment.
- —Our friend Bloom turned in handy that night, Mr Dedalus said. Where’s
- my pipe, by the way?
- He wandered back to the bar to the lost chord pipe. Bald Pat carried
- two diners’ drinks, Richie and Poldy. And Father Cowley laughed again.
- —I saved the situation, Ben, I think.
- —You did, averred Ben Dollard. I remember those tight trousers too.
- That was a brilliant idea, Bob.
- Father Cowley blushed to his brilliant purply lobes. He saved the
- situa. Tight trou. Brilliant ide.
- —I knew he was on the rocks, he said. The wife was playing the piano in
- the coffee palace on Saturdays for a very trifling consideration and
- who was it gave me the wheeze she was doing the other business? Do you
- remember? We had to search all Holles street to find them till the chap
- in Keogh’s gave us the number. Remember?
- Ben remembered, his broad visage wondering.
- —By God, she had some luxurious operacloaks and things there.
- Mr Dedalus wandered back, pipe in hand.
- —Merrion square style. Balldresses, by God, and court dresses. He
- wouldn’t take any money either. What? Any God’s quantity of cocked hats
- and boleros and trunkhose. What?
- —Ay, ay, Mr Dedalus nodded. Mrs Marion Bloom has left off clothes of
- all descriptions.
- Jingle jaunted down the quays. Blazes sprawled on bounding tyres.
- Liver and bacon. Steak and kidney pie. Right, sir. Right, Pat.
- Mrs Marion. Met him pike hoses. Smell of burn. Of Paul de Kock. Nice
- name he.
- —What’s this her name was? A buxom lassy. Marion...
- —Tweedy.
- —Yes. Is she alive?
- —And kicking.
- —She was a daughter of...
- —Daughter of the regiment.
- —Yes, begad. I remember the old drummajor.
- Mr Dedalus struck, whizzed, lit, puffed savoury puff after
- —Irish? I don’t know, faith. Is she, Simon?
- Puff after stiff, a puff, strong, savoury, crackling.
- —Buccinator muscle is... What?... Bit rusty... O, she is... My Irish
- Molly, O.
- He puffed a pungent plumy blast.
- —From the rock of Gibraltar... all the way.
- They pined in depth of ocean shadow, gold by the beerpull, bronze by
- maraschino, thoughtful all two. Mina Kennedy, 4 Lismore terrace,
- Drumcondra with Idolores, a queen, Dolores, silent.
- Pat served, uncovered dishes. Leopold cut liverslices. As said before
- he ate with relish the inner organs, nutty gizzards, fried cods’ roes
- while Richie Goulding, Collis, Ward ate steak and kidney, steak then
- kidney, bite by bite of pie he ate Bloom ate they ate.
- Bloom with Goulding, married in silence, ate. Dinners fit for princes.
- By Bachelor’s walk jogjaunty jingled Blazes Boylan, bachelor, in sun in
- heat, mare’s glossy rump atrot, with flick of whip, on bounding tyres:
- sprawled, warmseated, Boylan impatience, ardentbold. Horn. Have you
- the? Horn. Have you the? Haw haw horn.
- Over their voices Dollard bassooned attack, booming over bombarding
- chords:
- —_When love absorbs my ardent soul_...
- Roll of Bensoulbenjamin rolled to the quivery loveshivery roofpanes.
- —War! War! cried Father Cowley. You’re the warrior.
- —So I am, Ben Warrior laughed. I was thinking of your landlord. Love or
- money.
- He stopped. He wagged huge beard, huge face over his blunder huge.
- —Sure, you’d burst the tympanum of her ear, man, Mr Dedalus said
- through smoke aroma, with an organ like yours.
- In bearded abundant laughter Dollard shook upon the keyboard. He would.
- —Not to mention another membrane, Father Cowley added. Half time, Ben.
- _Amoroso ma non troppo._ Let me there.
- Miss Kennedy served two gentlemen with tankards of cool stout. She
- passed a remark. It was indeed, first gentleman said, beautiful
- weather. They drank cool stout. Did she know where the lord lieutenant
- was going? And heard steelhoofs ringhoof ring. No, she couldn’t say.
- But it would be in the paper. O, she need not trouble. No trouble. She
- waved about her outspread _Independent,_ searching, the lord
- lieutenant, her pinnacles of hair slowmoving, lord lieuten. Too much
- trouble, first gentleman said. O, not in the least. Way he looked that.
- Lord lieutenant. Gold by bronze heard iron steel.
- —............ _my ardent soul
- I care not foror the morrow._
- In liver gravy Bloom mashed mashed potatoes. Love and War someone is.
- Ben Dollard’s famous. Night he ran round to us to borrow a dress suit
- for that concert. Trousers tight as a drum on him. Musical porkers.
- Molly did laugh when he went out. Threw herself back across the bed,
- screaming, kicking. With all his belongings on show. O saints above,
- I’m drenched! O, the women in the front row! O, I never laughed so
- many! Well, of course that’s what gives him the base barreltone. For
- instance eunuchs. Wonder who’s playing. Nice touch. Must be Cowley.
- Musical. Knows whatever note you play. Bad breath he has, poor chap.
- Stopped.
- Miss Douce, engaging, Lydia Douce, bowed to suave solicitor, George
- Lidwell, gentleman, entering. Good afternoon. She gave her moist (a
- lady’s) hand to his firm clasp. Afternoon. Yes, she was back. To the
- old dingdong again.
- —Your friends are inside, Mr Lidwell.
- George Lidwell, suave, solicited, held a lydiahand.
- Bloom ate liv as said before. Clean here at least. That chap in the
- Burton, gummy with gristle. No-one here: Goulding and I. Clean tables,
- flowers, mitres of napkins. Pat to and fro. Bald Pat. Nothing to do.
- Best value in Dub.
- Piano again. Cowley it is. Way he sits in to it, like one together,
- mutual understanding. Tiresome shapers scraping fiddles, eye on the
- bowend, sawing the cello, remind you of toothache. Her high long snore.
- Night we were in the box. Trombone under blowing like a grampus,
- between the acts, other brass chap unscrewing, emptying spittle.
- Conductor’s legs too, bagstrousers, jiggedy jiggedy. Do right to hide
- them.
- Jiggedy jingle jaunty jaunty.
- Only the harp. Lovely. Gold glowering light. Girl touched it. Poop of a
- lovely. Gravy’s rather good fit for a. Golden ship. Erin. The harp that
- once or twice. Cool hands. Ben Howth, the rhododendrons. We are their
- harps. I. He. Old. Young.
- —Ah, I couldn’t, man, Mr Dedalus said, shy, listless.
- Strongly.
- —Go on, blast you! Ben Dollard growled. Get it out in bits.
- —_M’appari,_ Simon, Father Cowley said.
- Down stage he strode some paces, grave, tall in affliction, his long
- arms outheld. Hoarsely the apple of his throat hoarsed softly. Softly
- he sang to a dusty seascape there: _A Last Farewell._ A headland, a
- ship, a sail upon the billows. Farewell. A lovely girl, her veil awave
- upon the wind upon the headland, wind around her.
- Cowley sang:
- _—M’appari tutt’amor:
- Il mio sguardo l’incontr..._
- She waved, unhearing Cowley, her veil, to one departing, dear one, to
- wind, love, speeding sail, return.
- —Go on, Simon.
- —Ah, sure, my dancing days are done, Ben... Well...
- Mr Dedalus laid his pipe to rest beside the tuningfork and, sitting,
- touched the obedient keys.
- —No, Simon, Father Cowley turned. Play it in the original. One flat.
- The keys, obedient, rose higher, told, faltered, confessed, confused.
- Up stage strode Father Cowley.
- —Here, Simon, I’ll accompany you, he said. Get up.
- By Graham Lemon’s pineapple rock, by Elvery’s elephant jingly jogged.
- Steak, kidney, liver, mashed, at meat fit for princes sat princes Bloom
- and Goulding. Princes at meat they raised and drank, Power and cider.
- Most beautiful tenor air ever written, Richie said: _Sonnambula._ He
- heard Joe Maas sing that one night. Ah, what M’Guckin! Yes. In his way.
- Choirboy style. Maas was the boy. Massboy. A lyrical tenor if you like.
- Never forget it. Never.
- Tenderly Bloom over liverless bacon saw the tightened features strain.
- Backache he. Bright’s bright eye. Next item on the programme. Paying
- the piper. Pills, pounded bread, worth a guinea a box. Stave it off
- awhile. Sings too: _Down among the dead men._ Appropriate. Kidney pie.
- Sweets to the. Not making much hand of it. Best value in.
- Characteristic of him. Power. Particular about his drink. Flaw in the
- glass, fresh Vartry water. Fecking matches from counters to save. Then
- squander a sovereign in dribs and drabs. And when he’s wanted not a
- farthing. Screwed refusing to pay his fare. Curious types.
- Never would Richie forget that night. As long as he lived: never. In
- the gods of the old Royal with little Peake. And when the first note.
- Speech paused on Richie’s lips.
- Coming out with a whopper now. Rhapsodies about damn all. Believes his
- own lies. Does really. Wonderful liar. But want a good memory.
- —Which air is that? asked Leopold Bloom.
- —_All is lost now_.
- Richie cocked his lips apout. A low incipient note sweet banshee
- murmured: all. A thrush. A throstle. His breath, birdsweet, good teeth
- he’s proud of, fluted with plaintive woe. Is lost. Rich sound. Two
- notes in one there. Blackbird I heard in the hawthorn valley. Taking my
- motives he twined and turned them. All most too new call is lost in
- all. Echo. How sweet the answer. How is that done? All lost now.
- Mournful he whistled. Fall, surrender, lost.
- Bloom bent leopold ear, turning a fringe of doyley down under the vase.
- Order. Yes, I remember. Lovely air. In sleep she went to him. Innocence
- in the moon. Brave. Don’t know their danger. Still hold her back. Call
- name. Touch water. Jingle jaunty. Too late. She longed to go. That’s
- why. Woman. As easy stop the sea. Yes: all is lost.
- —A beautiful air, said Bloom lost Leopold. I know it well.
- Never in all his life had Richie Goulding.
- He knows it well too. Or he feels. Still harping on his daughter. Wise
- child that knows her father, Dedalus said. Me?
- Bloom askance over liverless saw. Face of the all is lost. Rollicking
- Richie once. Jokes old stale now. Wagging his ear. Napkinring in his
- eye. Now begging letters he sends his son with. Crosseyed Walter sir I
- did sir. Wouldn’t trouble only I was expecting some money. Apologise.
- Piano again. Sounds better than last time I heard. Tuned probably.
- Stopped again.
- Dollard and Cowley still urged the lingering singer out with it.
- —With it, Simon.
- —It, Simon.
- —Ladies and gentlemen, I am most deeply obliged by your kind
- solicitations.
- —It, Simon.
- —I have no money but if you will lend me your attention I shall
- endeavour to sing to you of a heart bowed down.
- By the sandwichbell in screening shadow Lydia, her bronze and rose, a
- lady’s grace, gave and withheld: as in cool glaucous _eau de Nil_ Mina
- to tankards two her pinnacles of gold.
- The harping chords of prelude closed. A chord, longdrawn, expectant,
- drew a voice away.
- —_When first I saw that form endearing_...
- Richie turned.
- —Si Dedalus’ voice, he said.
- Braintipped, cheek touched with flame, they listened feeling that flow
- endearing flow over skin limbs human heart soul spine. Bloom signed to
- Pat, bald Pat is a waiter hard of hearing, to set ajar the door of the
- bar. The door of the bar. So. That will do. Pat, waiter, waited,
- waiting to hear, for he was hard of hear by the door.
- —_Sorrow from me seemed to depart._
- Through the hush of air a voice sang to them, low, not rain, not leaves
- in murmur, like no voice of strings or reeds or whatdoyoucallthem
- dulcimers touching their still ears with words, still hearts of their
- each his remembered lives. Good, good to hear: sorrow from them each
- seemed to from both depart when first they heard. When first they saw,
- lost Richie Poldy, mercy of beauty, heard from a person wouldn’t expect
- it in the least, her first merciful lovesoft oftloved word.
- Love that is singing: love’s old sweet song. Bloom unwound slowly the
- elastic band of his packet. Love’s old sweet _sonnez la_ gold. Bloom
- wound a skein round four forkfingers, stretched it, relaxed, and wound
- it round his troubled double, fourfold, in octave, gyved them fast.
- —_Full of hope and all delighted_...
- Tenors get women by the score. Increase their flow. Throw flower at his
- feet. When will we meet? My head it simply. Jingle all delighted. He
- can’t sing for tall hats. Your head it simply swurls. Perfumed for him.
- What perfume does your wife? I want to know. Jing. Stop. Knock. Last
- look at mirror always before she answers the door. The hall. There? How
- do you? I do well. There? What? Or? Phial of cachous, kissing comfits,
- in her satchel. Yes? Hands felt for the opulent.
- Alas the voice rose, sighing, changed: loud, full, shining, proud.
- —_But alas, ’twas idle dreaming_...
- Glorious tone he has still. Cork air softer also their brogue. Silly
- man! Could have made oceans of money. Singing wrong words. Wore out his
- wife: now sings. But hard to tell. Only the two themselves. If he
- doesn’t break down. Keep a trot for the avenue. His hands and feet sing
- too. Drink. Nerves overstrung. Must be abstemious to sing. Jenny Lind
- soup: stock, sage, raw eggs, half pint of cream. For creamy dreamy.
- Tenderness it welled: slow, swelling, full it throbbed. That’s the
- chat. Ha, give! Take! Throb, a throb, a pulsing proud erect.
- Words? Music? No: it’s what’s behind.
- Bloom looped, unlooped, noded, disnoded.
- Bloom. Flood of warm jamjam lickitup secretness flowed to flow in music
- out, in desire, dark to lick flow invading. Tipping her tepping her
- tapping her topping her. Tup. Pores to dilate dilating. Tup. The joy
- the feel the warm the. Tup. To pour o’er sluices pouring gushes. Flood,
- gush, flow, joygush, tupthrob. Now! Language of love.
- —... _ray of hope is_...
- Beaming. Lydia for Lidwell squeak scarcely hear so ladylike the muse
- unsqueaked a ray of hopk.
- _Martha_ it is. Coincidence. Just going to write. Lionel’s song. Lovely
- name you have. Can’t write. Accept my little pres. Play on her
- heartstrings pursestrings too. She’s a. I called you naughty boy. Still
- the name: Martha. How strange! Today.
- The voice of Lionel returned, weaker but unwearied. It sang again to
- Richie Poldy Lydia Lidwell also sang to Pat open mouth ear waiting to
- wait. How first he saw that form endearing, how sorrow seemed to part,
- how look, form, word charmed him Gould Lidwell, won Pat Bloom’s heart.
- Wish I could see his face, though. Explain better. Why the barber in
- Drago’s always looked my face when I spoke his face in the glass. Still
- hear it better here than in the bar though farther.
- —_Each graceful look_...
- First night when first I saw her at Mat Dillon’s in Terenure. Yellow,
- black lace she wore. Musical chairs. We two the last. Fate. After her.
- Fate. Round and round slow. Quick round. We two. All looked. Halt. Down
- she sat. All ousted looked. Lips laughing. Yellow knees.
- —_Charmed my eye_...
- Singing. _Waiting_ she sang. I turned her music. Full voice of perfume
- of what perfume does your lilactrees. Bosom I saw, both full, throat
- warbling. First I saw. She thanked me. Why did she me? Fate. Spanishy
- eyes. Under a peartree alone patio this hour in old Madrid one side in
- shadow Dolores shedolores. At me. Luring. Ah, alluring.
- —_Martha! Ah, Martha!_
- Quitting all languor Lionel cried in grief, in cry of passion dominant
- to love to return with deepening yet with rising chords of harmony. In
- cry of lionel loneliness that she should know, must martha feel. For
- only her he waited. Where? Here there try there here all try where.
- Somewhere.
- —_Co-ome, thou lost one!
- Co-ome, thou dear one!_
- Alone. One love. One hope. One comfort me. Martha, chestnote, return!
- _—Come!_
- It soared, a bird, it held its flight, a swift pure cry, soar silver
- orb it leaped serene, speeding, sustained, to come, don’t spin it out
- too long long breath he breath long life, soaring high, high
- resplendent, aflame, crowned, high in the effulgence symbolistic, high,
- of the etherial bosom, high, of the high vast irradiation everywhere
- all soaring all around about the all, the endlessnessnessness...
- —_To me!_
- Siopold!
- Consumed.
- Come. Well sung. All clapped. She ought to. Come. To me, to him, to
- her, you too, me, us.
- —Bravo! Clapclap. Good man, Simon. Clappyclapclap. Encore! Clapclipclap
- clap. Sound as a bell. Bravo, Simon! Clapclopclap. Encore, enclap,
- said, cried, clapped all, Ben Dollard, Lydia Douce, George Lidwell,
- Pat, Mina Kennedy, two gentlemen with two tankards, Cowley, first gent
- with tank and bronze Miss Douce and gold Miss Mina.
- Blazes Boylan’s smart tan shoes creaked on the barfloor, said before.
- Jingle by monuments of sir John Gray, Horatio onehandled Nelson,
- reverend father Theobald Mathew, jaunted, as said before just now.
- Atrot, in heat, heatseated. _Cloche. Sonnez la. Cloche. Sonnez la._
- Slower the mare went up the hill by the Rotunda, Rutland square. Too
- slow for Boylan, blazes Boylan, impatience Boylan, joggled the mare.
- An afterclang of Cowley’s chords closed, died on the air made richer.
- And Richie Goulding drank his Power and Leopold Bloom his cider drank,
- Lidwell his Guinness, second gentleman said they would partake of two
- more tankards if she did not mind. Miss Kennedy smirked, disserving,
- coral lips, at first, at second. She did not mind.
- —Seven days in jail, Ben Dollard said, on bread and water. Then you’d
- sing, Simon, like a garden thrush.
- Lionel Simon, singer, laughed. Father Bob Cowley played. Mina Kennedy
- served. Second gentleman paid. Tom Kernan strutted in. Lydia, admired,
- admired. But Bloom sang dumb.
- Admiring.
- Richie, admiring, descanted on that man’s glorious voice. He remembered
- one night long ago. Never forget that night. Si sang _’Twas rank and
- fame_: in Ned Lambert’s ’twas. Good God he never heard in all his life
- a note like that he never did _then false one we had better part_ so
- clear so God he never heard _since love lives not_ a clinking voice
- lives not ask Lambert he can tell you too.
- Goulding, a flush struggling in his pale, told Mr Bloom, face of the
- night, Si in Ned Lambert’s, Dedalus house, sang _’Twas rank and fame._
- He, Mr Bloom, listened while he, Richie Goulding, told him, Mr Bloom,
- of the night he, Richie, heard him, Si Dedalus, sing _’Twas rank and
- fame_ in his, Ned Lambert’s, house.
- Brothers-in-law: relations. We never speak as we pass by. Rift in the
- lute I think. Treats him with scorn. See. He admires him all the more.
- The night Si sang. The human voice, two tiny silky chords, wonderful,
- more than all others.
- That voice was a lamentation. Calmer now. It’s in the silence after you
- feel you hear. Vibrations. Now silent air.
- Bloom ungyved his crisscrossed hands and with slack fingers plucked the
- slender catgut thong. He drew and plucked. It buzz, it twanged. While
- Goulding talked of Barraclough’s voice production, while Tom Kernan,
- harking back in a retrospective sort of arrangement talked to listening
- Father Cowley, who played a voluntary, who nodded as he played. While
- big Ben Dollard talked with Simon Dedalus, lighting, who nodded as he
- smoked, who smoked.
- Thou lost one. All songs on that theme. Yet more Bloom stretched his
- string. Cruel it seems. Let people get fond of each other: lure them
- on. Then tear asunder. Death. Explos. Knock on the head.
- Outtohelloutofthat. Human life. Dignam. Ugh, that rat’s tail wriggling!
- Five bob I gave. _Corpus paradisum._ Corncrake croaker: belly like a
- poisoned pup. Gone. They sing. Forgotten. I too. And one day she with.
- Leave her: get tired. Suffer then. Snivel. Big spanishy eyes goggling
- at nothing. Her wavyavyeavyheavyeavyevyevyhair un comb:’d.
- Yet too much happy bores. He stretched more, more. Are you not happy in
- your? Twang. It snapped.
- Jingle into Dorset street.
- Miss Douce withdrew her satiny arm, reproachful, pleased.
- —Don’t make half so free, said she, till we are better acquainted.
- George Lidwell told her really and truly: but she did not believe.
- First gentleman told Mina that was so. She asked him was that so. And
- second tankard told her so. That that was so.
- Miss Douce, miss Lydia, did not believe: miss Kennedy, Mina, did not
- believe: George Lidwell, no: miss Dou did not: the first, the first:
- gent with the tank: believe, no, no: did not, miss Kenn: Lidlydiawell:
- the tank.
- Better write it here. Quills in the postoffice chewed and twisted.
- Bald Pat at a sign drew nigh. A pen and ink. He went. A pad. He went. A
- pad to blot. He heard, deaf Pat.
- —Yes, Mr Bloom said, teasing the curling catgut line. It certainly is.
- Few lines will do. My present. All that Italian florid music is. Who is
- this wrote? Know the name you know better. Take out sheet notepaper,
- envelope: unconcerned. It’s so characteristic.
- —Grandest number in the whole opera, Goulding said.
- —It is, Bloom said.
- Numbers it is. All music when you come to think. Two multiplied by two
- divided by half is twice one. Vibrations: chords those are. One plus
- two plus six is seven. Do anything you like with figures juggling.
- Always find out this equal to that. Symmetry under a cemetery wall. He
- doesn’t see my mourning. Callous: all for his own gut. Musemathematics.
- And you think you’re listening to the etherial. But suppose you said it
- like: Martha, seven times nine minus x is thirtyfive thousand. Fall
- quite flat. It’s on account of the sounds it is.
- Instance he’s playing now. Improvising. Might be what you like, till
- you hear the words. Want to listen sharp. Hard. Begin all right: then
- hear chords a bit off: feel lost a bit. In and out of sacks, over
- barrels, through wirefences, obstacle race. Time makes the tune.
- Question of mood you’re in. Still always nice to hear. Except scales up
- and down, girls learning. Two together nextdoor neighbours. Ought to
- invent dummy pianos for that. _Blumenlied_ I bought for her. The name.
- Playing it slow, a girl, night I came home, the girl. Door of the
- stables near Cecilia street. Milly no taste. Queer because we both, I
- mean.
- Bald deaf Pat brought quite flat pad ink. Pat set with ink pen quite
- flat pad. Pat took plate dish knife fork. Pat went.
- It was the only language Mr Dedalus said to Ben. He heard them as a boy
- in Ringabella, Crosshaven, Ringabella, singing their barcaroles.
- Queenstown harbour full of Italian ships. Walking, you know, Ben, in
- the moonlight with those earthquake hats. Blending their voices. God,
- such music, Ben. Heard as a boy. Cross Ringabella haven mooncarole.
- Sour pipe removed he held a shield of hand beside his lips that cooed a
- moonlight nightcall, clear from anear, a call from afar, replying.
- Down the edge of his _Freeman_ baton ranged Bloom’s, your other eye,
- scanning for where did I see that. Callan, Coleman, Dignam Patrick.
- Heigho! Heigho! Fawcett. Aha! Just I was looking...
- Hope he’s not looking, cute as a rat. He held unfurled his _Freeman._
- Can’t see now. Remember write Greek ees. Bloom dipped, Bloo mur: dear
- sir. Dear Henry wrote: dear Mady. Got your lett and flow. Hell did I
- put? Some pock or oth. It is utterl imposs. Underline _imposs._ To
- write today.
- Bore this. Bored Bloom tambourined gently with I am just reflecting
- fingers on flat pad Pat brought.
- On. Know what I mean. No, change that ee. Accep my poor litt pres
- enclos. Ask her no answ. Hold on. Five Dig. Two about here. Penny the
- gulls. Elijah is com. Seven Davy Byrne’s. Is eight about. Say half a
- crown. My poor little pres: p. o. two and six. Write me a long. Do you
- despise? Jingle, have you the? So excited. Why do you call me naught?
- You naughty too? O, Mairy lost the string of her. Bye for today. Yes,
- yes, will tell you. Want to. To keep it up. Call me that other. Other
- world she wrote. My patience are exhaust. To keep it up. You must
- believe. Believe. The tank. It. Is. True.
- Folly am I writing? Husbands don’t. That’s marriage does, their wives.
- Because I’m away from. Suppose. But how? She must. Keep young. If she
- found out. Card in my high grade ha. No, not tell all. Useless pain. If
- they don’t see. Woman. Sauce for the gander.
- A hackney car, number three hundred and twentyfour, driver Barton James
- of number one Harmony avenue, Donnybrook, on which sat a fare, a young
- gentleman, stylishly dressed in an indigoblue serge suit made by George
- Robert Mesias, tailor and cutter, of number five Eden quay, and wearing
- a straw hat very dressy, bought of John Plasto of number one Great
- Brunswick street, hatter. Eh? This is the jingle that joggled and
- jingled. By Dlugacz’ porkshop bright tubes of Agendath trotted a
- gallantbuttocked mare.
- —Answering an ad? keen Richie’s eyes asked Bloom.
- —Yes, Mr Bloom said. Town traveller. Nothing doing, I expect.
- Bloom mur: best references. But Henry wrote: it will excite me. You
- know how. In haste. Henry. Greek ee. Better add postscript. What is he
- playing now? Improvising. Intermezzo. P. S. The rum tum tum. How will
- you pun? You punish me? Crooked skirt swinging, whack by. Tell me I
- want to. Know. O. Course if I didn’t I wouldn’t ask. La la la ree.
- Trails off there sad in minor. Why minor sad? Sign H. They like sad
- tail at end. P. P. S. La la la ree. I feel so sad today. La ree. So
- lonely. Dee.
- He blotted quick on pad of Pat. Envel. Address. Just copy out of paper.
- Murmured: Messrs Callan, Coleman and Co, limited. Henry wrote:
- Miss Martha Clifford
- c/o P. O.
- Dolphin’s Barn Lane
- Dublin.
- Blot over the other so he can’t read. There. Right. Idea prize titbit.
- Something detective read off blottingpad. Payment at the rate of guinea
- per col. Matcham often thinks the laughing witch. Poor Mrs Purefoy. U.
- P: up.
- Too poetical that about the sad. Music did that. Music hath charms.
- Shakespeare said. Quotations every day in the year. To be or not to be.
- Wisdom while you wait.
- In Gerard’s rosery of Fetter lane he walks, greyedauburn. One life is
- all. One body. Do. But do.
- Done anyhow. Postal order, stamp. Postoffice lower down. Walk now.
- Enough. Barney Kiernan’s I promised to meet them. Dislike that job.
- House of mourning. Walk. Pat! Doesn’t hear. Deaf beetle he is.
- Car near there now. Talk. Talk. Pat! Doesn’t. Settling those napkins.
- Lot of ground he must cover in the day. Paint face behind on him then
- he’d be two. Wish they’d sing more. Keep my mind off.
- Bald Pat who is bothered mitred the napkins. Pat is a waiter hard of
- his hearing. Pat is a waiter who waits while you wait. Hee hee hee hee.
- He waits while you wait. Hee hee. A waiter is he. Hee hee hee hee. He
- waits while you wait. While you wait if you wait he will wait while you
- wait. Hee hee hee hee. Hoh. Wait while you wait.
- Douce now. Douce Lydia. Bronze and rose.
- She had a gorgeous, simply gorgeous, time. And look at the lovely shell
- she brought.
- To the end of the bar to him she bore lightly the spiked and winding
- seahorn that he, George Lidwell, solicitor, might hear.
- —Listen! she bade him.
- Under Tom Kernan’s ginhot words the accompanist wove music slow.
- Authentic fact. How Walter Bapty lost his voice. Well, sir, the husband
- took him by the throat. _Scoundrel,_ said he, _You’ll sing no more
- lovesongs._ He did, faith, sir Tom. Bob Cowley wove. Tenors get wom.
- Cowley lay back.
- Ah, now he heard, she holding it to his ear. Hear! He heard. Wonderful.
- She held it to her own. And through the sifted light pale gold in
- contrast glided. To hear.
- Tap.
- Bloom through the bardoor saw a shell held at their ears. He heard more
- faintly that that they heard, each for herself alone, then each for
- other, hearing the plash of waves, loudly, a silent roar.
- Bronze by a weary gold, anear, afar, they listened.
- Her ear too is a shell, the peeping lobe there. Been to the seaside.
- Lovely seaside girls. Skin tanned raw. Should have put on coldcream
- first make it brown. Buttered toast. O and that lotion mustn’t forget.
- Fever near her mouth. Your head it simply. Hair braided over: shell
- with seaweed. Why do they hide their ears with seaweed hair? And Turks
- the mouth, why? Her eyes over the sheet. Yashmak. Find the way in. A
- cave. No admittance except on business.
- The sea they think they hear. Singing. A roar. The blood it is. Souse
- in the ear sometimes. Well, it’s a sea. Corpuscle islands.
- Wonderful really. So distinct. Again. George Lidwell held its murmur,
- hearing: then laid it by, gently.
- —What are the wild waves saying? he asked her, smiled.
- Charming, seasmiling and unanswering Lydia on Lidwell smiled.
- Tap.
- By Larry O’Rourke’s, by Larry, bold Larry O’, Boylan swayed and Boylan
- turned.
- From the forsaken shell miss Mina glided to her tankards waiting. No,
- she was not so lonely archly miss Douce’s head let Mr Lidwell know.
- Walks in the moonlight by the sea. No, not alone. With whom? She nobly
- answered: with a gentleman friend.
- Bob Cowley’s twinkling fingers in the treble played again. The landlord
- has the prior. A little time. Long John. Big Ben. Lightly he played a
- light bright tinkling measure for tripping ladies, arch and smiling,
- and for their gallants, gentlemen friends. One: one, one, one, one,
- one: two, one, three, four.
- Sea, wind, leaves, thunder, waters, cows lowing, the cattlemarket,
- cocks, hens don’t crow, snakes hissss. There’s music everywhere.
- Ruttledge’s door: ee creaking. No, that’s noise. Minuet of _Don
- Giovanni_ he’s playing now. Court dresses of all descriptions in castle
- chambers dancing. Misery. Peasants outside. Green starving faces eating
- dockleaves. Nice that is. Look: look, look, look, look, look: you look
- at us.
- That’s joyful I can feel. Never have written it. Why? My joy is other
- joy. But both are joys. Yes, joy it must be. Mere fact of music shows
- you are. Often thought she was in the dumps till she began to lilt.
- Then know.
- M’Coy valise. My wife and your wife. Squealing cat. Like tearing silk.
- Tongue when she talks like the clapper of a bellows. They can’t manage
- men’s intervals. Gap in their voices too. Fill me. I’m warm, dark,
- open. Molly in _quis est homo_: Mercadante. My ear against the wall to
- hear. Want a woman who can deliver the goods.
- Jog jig jogged stopped. Dandy tan shoe of dandy Boylan socks skyblue
- clocks came light to earth.
- O, look we are so! Chamber music. Could make a kind of pun on that. It
- is a kind of music I often thought when she. Acoustics that is.
- Tinkling. Empty vessels make most noise. Because the acoustics, the
- resonance changes according as the weight of the water is equal to the
- law of falling water. Like those rhapsodies of Liszt’s, Hungarian,
- gipsyeyed. Pearls. Drops. Rain. Diddleiddle addleaddle ooddleooddle.
- Hissss. Now. Maybe now. Before.
- One rapped on a door, one tapped with a knock, did he knock Paul de
- Kock with a loud proud knocker with a cock carracarracarra cock.
- Cockcock.
- Tap.
- —_Qui sdegno,_ Ben, said Father Cowley.
- —No, Ben, Tom Kernan interfered. _The Croppy Boy._ Our native Doric.
- —Ay do, Ben, Mr Dedalus said. Good men and true.
- —Do, do, they begged in one.
- I’ll go. Here, Pat, return. Come. He came, he came, he did not stay. To
- me. How much?
- —What key? Six sharps?
- —F sharp major, Ben Dollard said.
- Bob Cowley’s outstretched talons griped the black deepsounding chords.
- Must go prince Bloom told Richie prince. No, Richie said. Yes, must.
- Got money somewhere. He’s on for a razzle backache spree. Much? He
- seehears lipspeech. One and nine. Penny for yourself. Here. Give him
- twopence tip. Deaf, bothered. But perhaps he has wife and family
- waiting, waiting Patty come home. Hee hee hee hee. Deaf wait while they
- wait.
- But wait. But hear. Chords dark. Lugugugubrious. Low. In a cave of the
- dark middle earth. Embedded ore. Lumpmusic.
- The voice of dark age, of unlove, earth’s fatigue made grave approach
- and painful, come from afar, from hoary mountains, called on good men
- and true. The priest he sought. With him would he speak a word.
- Tap.
- Ben Dollard’s voice. Base barreltone. Doing his level best to say it.
- Croak of vast manless moonless womoonless marsh. Other comedown. Big
- ships’ chandler’s business he did once. Remember: rosiny ropes, ships’
- lanterns. Failed to the tune of ten thousand pounds. Now in the Iveagh
- home. Cubicle number so and so. Number one Bass did that for him.
- The priest’s at home. A false priest’s servant bade him welcome. Step
- in. The holy father. With bows a traitor servant. Curlycues of chords.
- Ruin them. Wreck their lives. Then build them cubicles to end their
- days in. Hushaby. Lullaby. Die, dog. Little dog, die.
- The voice of warning, solemn warning, told them the youth had entered a
- lonely hall, told them how solemn fell his footsteps there, told them
- the gloomy chamber, the vested priest sitting to shrive.
- Decent soul. Bit addled now. Thinks he’ll win in _Answers_, poets’
- picture puzzle. We hand you crisp five pound note. Bird sitting
- hatching in a nest. Lay of the last minstrel he thought it was. See
- blank tee what domestic animal? Tee dash ar most courageous mariner.
- Good voice he has still. No eunuch yet with all his belongings.
- Listen. Bloom listened. Richie Goulding listened. And by the door deaf
- Pat, bald Pat, tipped Pat, listened.
- The chords harped slower.
- The voice of penance and of grief came slow, embellished, tremulous.
- Ben’s contrite beard confessed. _in nomine Domini,_ in God’s name he
- knelt. He beat his hand upon his breast, confessing: _mea culpa._
- Latin again. That holds them like birdlime. Priest with the communion
- corpus for those women. Chap in the mortuary, coffin or coffey,
- _corpusnomine._ Wonder where that rat is by now. Scrape.
- Tap.
- They listened. Tankards and miss Kennedy. George Lidwell, eyelid well
- expressive, fullbusted satin. Kernan. Si.
- The sighing voice of sorrow sang. His sins. Since Easter he had cursed
- three times. You bitch’s bast. And once at masstime he had gone to
- play. Once by the churchyard he had passed and for his mother’s rest he
- had not prayed. A boy. A croppy boy.
- Bronze, listening, by the beerpull gazed far away. Soulfully. Doesn’t
- half know I’m. Molly great dab at seeing anyone looking.
- Bronze gazed far sideways. Mirror there. Is that best side of her face?
- They always know. Knock at the door. Last tip to titivate.
- Cockcarracarra.
- What do they think when they hear music? Way to catch rattlesnakes.
- Night Michael Gunn gave us the box. Tuning up. Shah of Persia liked
- that best. Remind him of home sweet home. Wiped his nose in curtain
- too. Custom his country perhaps. That’s music too. Not as bad as it
- sounds. Tootling. Brasses braying asses through uptrunks. Doublebasses
- helpless, gashes in their sides. Woodwinds mooing cows. Semigrand open
- crocodile music hath jaws. Woodwind like Goodwin’s name.
- She looked fine. Her crocus dress she wore lowcut, belongings on show.
- Clove her breath was always in theatre when she bent to ask a question.
- Told her what Spinoza says in that book of poor papa’s. Hypnotised,
- listening. Eyes like that. She bent. Chap in dresscircle staring down
- into her with his operaglass for all he was worth. Beauty of music you
- must hear twice. Nature woman half a look. God made the country man the
- tune. Met him pike hoses. Philosophy. O rocks!
- All gone. All fallen. At the siege of Ross his father, at Gorey all his
- brothers fell. To Wexford, we are the boys of Wexford, he would. Last
- of his name and race.
- I too. Last of my race. Milly young student. Well, my fault perhaps. No
- son. Rudy. Too late now. Or if not? If not? If still?
- He bore no hate.
- Hate. Love. Those are names. Rudy. Soon I am old.
- Big Ben his voice unfolded. Great voice Richie Goulding said, a flush
- struggling in his pale, to Bloom soon old. But when was young?
- Ireland comes now. My country above the king. She listens. Who fears to
- speak of nineteen four? Time to be shoving. Looked enough.
- —_Bless me, father,_ Dollard the croppy cried. _Bless me and let me
- go._
- Tap.
- Bloom looked, unblessed to go. Got up to kill: on eighteen bob a week.
- Fellows shell out the dibs. Want to keep your weathereye open. Those
- girls, those lovely. By the sad sea waves. Chorusgirl’s romance.
- Letters read out for breach of promise. From Chickabiddy’s owny
- Mumpsypum. Laughter in court. Henry. I never signed it. The lovely name
- you.
- Low sank the music, air and words. Then hastened. The false priest
- rustling soldier from his cassock. A yeoman captain. They know it all
- by heart. The thrill they itch for. Yeoman cap.
- Tap. Tap.
- Thrilled she listened, bending in sympathy to hear.
- Blank face. Virgin should say: or fingered only. Write something on it:
- page. If not what becomes of them? Decline, despair. Keeps them young.
- Even admire themselves. See. Play on her. Lip blow. Body of white
- woman, a flute alive. Blow gentle. Loud. Three holes, all women.
- Goddess I didn’t see. They want it. Not too much polite. That’s why he
- gets them. Gold in your pocket, brass in your face. Say something. Make
- her hear. With look to look. Songs without words. Molly, that
- hurdygurdy boy. She knew he meant the monkey was sick. Or because so
- like the Spanish. Understand animals too that way. Solomon did. Gift of
- nature.
- Ventriloquise. My lips closed. Think in my stom. What?
- Will? You? I. Want. You. To.
- With hoarse rude fury the yeoman cursed, swelling in apoplectic bitch’s
- bastard. A good thought, boy, to come. One hour’s your time to live,
- your last.
- Tap. Tap.
- Thrill now. Pity they feel. To wipe away a tear for martyrs that want
- to, dying to, die. For all things dying, for all things born. Poor Mrs
- Purefoy. Hope she’s over. Because their wombs.
- A liquid of womb of woman eyeball gazed under a fence of lashes,
- calmly, hearing. See real beauty of the eye when she not speaks. On
- yonder river. At each slow satiny heaving bosom’s wave (her heaving
- embon) red rose rose slowly sank red rose. Heartbeats: her breath:
- breath that is life. And all the tiny tiny fernfoils trembled of
- maidenhair.
- But look. The bright stars fade. O rose! Castile. The morn. Ha.
- Lidwell. For him then not for. Infatuated. I like that? See her from
- here though. Popped corks, splashes of beerfroth, stacks of empties.
- On the smooth jutting beerpull laid Lydia hand, lightly, plumply, leave
- it to my hands. All lost in pity for croppy. Fro, to: to, fro: over the
- polished knob (she knows his eyes, my eyes, her eyes) her thumb and
- finger passed in pity: passed, reposed and, gently touching, then slid
- so smoothly, slowly down, a cool firm white enamel baton protruding
- through their sliding ring.
- With a cock with a carra.
- Tap. Tap. Tap.
- I hold this house. Amen. He gnashed in fury. Traitors swing.
- The chords consented. Very sad thing. But had to be.
- Get out before the end. Thanks, that was heavenly. Where’s my hat. Pass
- by her. Can leave that _Freeman_. Letter I have. Suppose she were the?
- No. Walk, walk, walk. Like Cashel Boylo Connoro Coylo Tisdall Maurice
- Tisntdall Farrell. Waaaaaaalk.
- Well, I must be. Are you off? Yrfmstbyes. Blmstup. O’er ryehigh blue.
- Ow. Bloom stood up. Soap feeling rather sticky behind. Must have
- sweated: music. That lotion, remember. Well, so long. High grade. Card
- inside. Yes.
- By deaf Pat in the doorway straining ear Bloom passed.
- At Geneva barrack that young man died. At Passage was his body laid.
- Dolor! O, he dolores! The voice of the mournful chanter called to
- dolorous prayer.
- By rose, by satiny bosom, by the fondling hand, by slops, by empties,
- by popped corks, greeting in going, past eyes and maidenhair, bronze
- and faint gold in deepseashadow, went Bloom, soft Bloom, I feel so
- lonely Bloom.
- Tap. Tap. Tap.
- Pray for him, prayed the bass of Dollard. You who hear in peace.
- Breathe a prayer, drop a tear, good men, good people. He was the croppy
- boy.
- Scaring eavesdropping boots croppy bootsboy Bloom in the Ormond hallway
- heard the growls and roars of bravo, fat backslapping, their boots all
- treading, boots not the boots the boy. General chorus off for a swill
- to wash it down. Glad I avoided.
- —Come on, Ben, Simon Dedalus cried. By God, you’re as good as ever you
- were.
- —Better, said Tomgin Kernan. Most trenchant rendition of that ballad,
- upon my soul and honour it is.
- —Lablache, said Father Cowley.
- Ben Dollard bulkily cachuchad towards the bar, mightily praisefed and
- all big roseate, on heavyfooted feet, his gouty fingers nakkering
- castagnettes in the air.
- Big Benaben Dollard. Big Benben. Big Benben.
- Rrr.
- And deepmoved all, Simon trumping compassion from foghorn nose, all
- laughing they brought him forth, Ben Dollard, in right good cheer.
- —You’re looking rubicund, George Lidwell said.
- Miss Douce composed her rose to wait.
- —Ben machree, said Mr Dedalus, clapping Ben’s fat back shoulderblade.
- Fit as a fiddle only he has a lot of adipose tissue concealed about his
- person.
- Rrrrrrrsss.
- —Fat of death, Simon, Ben Dollard growled.
- Richie rift in the lute alone sat: Goulding, Collis, Ward. Uncertainly
- he waited. Unpaid Pat too.
- Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap.
- Miss Mina Kennedy brought near her lips to ear of tankard one.
- —Mr Dollard, they murmured low.
- —Dollard, murmured tankard.
- Tank one believed: miss Kenn when she: that doll he was: she doll: the
- tank.
- He murmured that he knew the name. The name was familiar to him, that
- is to say. That was to say he had heard the name of. Dollard, was it?
- Dollard, yes.
- Yes, her lips said more loudly, Mr Dollard. He sang that song lovely,
- murmured Mina. Mr Dollard. And _The last rose of summer_ was a lovely
- song. Mina loved that song. Tankard loved the song that Mina.
- ’Tis the last rose of summer dollard left bloom felt wind wound round
- inside.
- Gassy thing that cider: binding too. Wait. Postoffice near Reuben J’s
- one and eightpence too. Get shut of it. Dodge round by Greek street.
- Wish I hadn’t promised to meet. Freer in air. Music. Gets on your
- nerves. Beerpull. Her hand that rocks the cradle rules the. Ben Howth.
- That rules the world.
- Far. Far. Far. Far.
- Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap.
- Up the quay went Lionelleopold, naughty Henry with letter for Mady,
- with sweets of sin with frillies for Raoul with met him pike hoses went
- Poldy on.
- Tap blind walked tapping by the tap the curbstone tapping, tap by tap.
- Cowley, he stuns himself with it: kind of drunkenness. Better give way
- only half way the way of a man with a maid. Instance enthusiasts. All
- ears. Not lose a demisemiquaver. Eyes shut. Head nodding in time.
- Dotty. You daren’t budge. Thinking strictly prohibited. Always talking
- shop. Fiddlefaddle about notes.
- All a kind of attempt to talk. Unpleasant when it stops because you
- never know exac. Organ in Gardiner street. Old Glynn fifty quid a year.
- Queer up there in the cockloft, alone, with stops and locks and keys.
- Seated all day at the organ. Maunder on for hours, talking to himself
- or the other fellow blowing the bellows. Growl angry, then shriek
- cursing (want to have wadding or something in his no don’t she cried),
- then all of a soft sudden wee little wee little pipy wind.
- Pwee! A wee little wind piped eeee. In Bloom’s little wee.
- —Was he? Mr Dedalus said, returning with fetched pipe. I was with him
- this morning at poor little Paddy Dignam’s...
- —Ay, the Lord have mercy on him.
- —By the bye there’s a tuningfork in there on the...
- Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap.
- —The wife has a fine voice. Or had. What? Lidwell asked.
- —O, that must be the tuner, Lydia said to Simonlionel first I saw,
- forgot it when he was here.
- Blind he was she told George Lidwell second I saw. And played so
- exquisitely, treat to hear. Exquisite contrast: bronzelid, minagold.
- —Shout! Ben Dollard shouted, pouring. Sing out!
- —’lldo! cried Father Cowley.
- Rrrrrr.
- I feel I want...
- Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap
- —Very, Mr Dedalus said, staring hard at a headless sardine.
- Under the sandwichbell lay on a bier of bread one last, one lonely,
- last sardine of summer. Bloom alone.
- —Very, he stared. The lower register, for choice.
- Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap.
- Bloom went by Barry’s. Wish I could. Wait. That wonderworker if I had.
- Twentyfour solicitors in that one house. Counted them. Litigation. Love
- one another. Piles of parchment. Messrs Pick and Pocket have power of
- attorney. Goulding, Collis, Ward.
- But for example the chap that wallops the big drum. His vocation:
- Mickey Rooney’s band. Wonder how it first struck him. Sitting at home
- after pig’s cheek and cabbage nursing it in the armchair. Rehearsing
- his band part. Pom. Pompedy. Jolly for the wife. Asses’ skins. Welt
- them through life, then wallop after death. Pom. Wallop. Seems to be
- what you call yashmak or I mean kismet. Fate.
- Tap. Tap. A stripling, blind, with a tapping cane came taptaptapping by
- Daly’s window where a mermaid hair all streaming (but he couldn’t see)
- blew whiffs of a mermaid (blind couldn’t), mermaid, coolest whiff of
- all.
- Instruments. A blade of grass, shell of her hands, then blow. Even comb
- and tissuepaper you can knock a tune out of. Molly in her shift in
- Lombard street west, hair down. I suppose each kind of trade made its
- own, don’t you see? Hunter with a horn. Haw. Have you the? _Cloche.
- Sonnez la._ Shepherd his pipe. Pwee little wee. Policeman a whistle.
- Locks and keys! Sweep! Four o’clock’s all’s well! Sleep! All is lost
- now. Drum? Pompedy. Wait. I know. Towncrier, bumbailiff. Long John.
- Waken the dead. Pom. Dignam. Poor little _nominedomine._ Pom. It is
- music. I mean of course it’s all pom pom pom very much what they call
- _da capo._ Still you can hear. As we march, we march along, march
- along. Pom.
- I must really. Fff. Now if I did that at a banquet. Just a question of
- custom shah of Persia. Breathe a prayer, drop a tear. All the same he
- must have been a bit of a natural not to see it was a yeoman cap.
- Muffled up. Wonder who was that chap at the grave in the brown macin.
- O, the whore of the lane!
- A frowsy whore with black straw sailor hat askew came glazily in the
- day along the quay towards Mr Bloom. When first he saw that form
- endearing? Yes, it is. I feel so lonely. Wet night in the lane. Horn.
- Who had the? Heehaw shesaw. Off her beat here. What is she? Hope she.
- Psst! Any chance of your wash. Knew Molly. Had me decked. Stout lady
- does be with you in the brown costume. Put you off your stroke, that.
- Appointment we made knowing we’d never, well hardly ever. Too dear too
- near to home sweet home. Sees me, does she? Looks a fright in the day.
- Face like dip. Damn her. O, well, she has to live like the rest. Look
- in here.
- In Lionel Marks’s antique saleshop window haughty Henry Lionel Leopold
- dear Henry Flower earnestly Mr Leopold Bloom envisaged battered
- candlesticks melodeon oozing maggoty blowbags. Bargain: six bob. Might
- learn to play. Cheap. Let her pass. Course everything is dear if you
- don’t want it. That’s what good salesman is. Make you buy what he wants
- to sell. Chap sold me the Swedish razor he shaved me with. Wanted to
- charge me for the edge he gave it. She’s passing now. Six bob.
- Must be the cider or perhaps the burgund.
- Near bronze from anear near gold from afar they chinked their clinking
- glasses all, brighteyed and gallant, before bronze Lydia’s tempting
- last rose of summer, rose of Castile. First Lid, De, Cow, Ker, Doll, a
- fifth: Lidwell, Si Dedalus, Bob Cowley, Kernan and big Ben Dollard.
- Tap. A youth entered a lonely Ormond hall.
- Bloom viewed a gallant pictured hero in Lionel Marks’s window. Robert
- Emmet’s last words. Seven last words. Of Meyerbeer that is.
- —True men like you men.
- —Ay, ay, Ben.
- —Will lift your glass with us.
- They lifted.
- Tschink. Tschunk.
- Tip. An unseeing stripling stood in the door. He saw not bronze. He saw
- not gold. Nor Ben nor Bob nor Tom nor Si nor George nor tanks nor
- Richie nor Pat. Hee hee hee hee. He did not see.
- Seabloom, greaseabloom viewed last words. Softly. _When my country
- takes her place among._
- Prrprr.
- Must be the bur.
- Fff! Oo. Rrpr.
- _Nations of the earth._ No-one behind. She’s passed. _Then and not till
- then._ Tram kran kran kran. Good oppor. Coming. Krandlkrankran. I’m
- sure it’s the burgund. Yes. One, two. _Let my epitaph be._ Kraaaaaa.
- _Written. I have._
- Pprrpffrrppffff.
- _Done._
- [ 12 ]
- I was just passing the time of day with old Troy of the D. M. P. at the
- corner of Arbour hill there and be damned but a bloody sweep came along
- and he near drove his gear into my eye. I turned around to let him have
- the weight of my tongue when who should I see dodging along Stony
- Batter only Joe Hynes.
- —Lo, Joe, says I. How are you blowing? Did you see that bloody
- chimneysweep near shove my eye out with his brush?
- —Soot’s luck, says Joe. Who’s the old ballocks you were talking to?
- —Old Troy, says I, was in the force. I’m on two minds not to give that
- fellow in charge for obstructing the thoroughfare with his brooms and
- ladders.
- —What are you doing round those parts? says Joe.
- —Devil a much, says I. There’s a bloody big foxy thief beyond by the
- garrison church at the corner of Chicken lane—old Troy was just giving
- me a wrinkle about him—lifted any God’s quantity of tea and sugar to
- pay three bob a week said he had a farm in the county Down off a
- hop-of-my-thumb by the name of Moses Herzog over there near Heytesbury
- street.
- —Circumcised? says Joe.
- —Ay, says I. A bit off the top. An old plumber named Geraghty. I’m
- hanging on to his taw now for the past fortnight and I can’t get a
- penny out of him.
- —That the lay you’re on now? says Joe.
- —Ay, says I. How are the mighty fallen! Collector of bad and doubtful
- debts. But that’s the most notorious bloody robber you’d meet in a
- day’s walk and the face on him all pockmarks would hold a shower of
- rain. _Tell him,_ says he, _I dare him,_ says he, _and I doubledare him
- to send you round here again or if he does,_ says he, _I’ll have him
- summonsed up before the court, so I will, for trading without a
- licence._ And he after stuffing himself till he’s fit to burst. Jesus,
- I had to laugh at the little jewy getting his shirt out. _He drink me
- my teas. He eat me my sugars. Because he no pay me my moneys?_
- For nonperishable goods bought of Moses Herzog, of 13 Saint Kevin’s
- parade in the city of Dublin, Wood quay ward, merchant, hereinafter
- called the vendor, and sold and delivered to Michael E. Geraghty,
- esquire, of 29 Arbour hill in the city of Dublin, Arran quay ward,
- gentleman, hereinafter called the purchaser, videlicet, five pounds
- avoirdupois of first choice tea at three shillings and no pence per
- pound avoirdupois and three stone avoirdupois of sugar, crushed
- crystal, at threepence per pound avoirdupois, the said purchaser debtor
- to the said vendor of one pound five shillings and sixpence sterling
- for value received which amount shall be paid by said purchaser to said
- vendor in weekly instalments every seven calendar days of three
- shillings and no pence sterling: and the said nonperishable goods shall
- not be pawned or pledged or sold or otherwise alienated by the said
- purchaser but shall be and remain and be held to be the sole and
- exclusive property of the said vendor to be disposed of at his good
- will and pleasure until the said amount shall have been duly paid by
- the said purchaser to the said vendor in the manner herein set forth as
- this day hereby agreed between the said vendor, his heirs, successors,
- trustees and assigns of the one part and the said purchaser, his heirs,
- successors, trustees and assigns of the other part.
- —Are you a strict t.t.? says Joe.
- —Not taking anything between drinks, says I.
- —What about paying our respects to our friend? says Joe.
- —Who? says I. Sure, he’s out in John of God’s off his head, poor man.
- —Drinking his own stuff? says Joe.
- —Ay, says I. Whisky and water on the brain.
- —Come around to Barney Kiernan’s, says Joe. I want to see the citizen.
- —Barney mavourneen’s be it, says I. Anything strange or wonderful, Joe?
- —Not a word, says Joe. I was up at that meeting in the City Arms.
- —What was that, Joe? says I.
- —Cattle traders, says Joe, about the foot and mouth disease. I want to
- give the citizen the hard word about it.
- So we went around by the Linenhall barracks and the back of the
- courthouse talking of one thing or another. Decent fellow Joe when he
- has it but sure like that he never has it. Jesus, I couldn’t get over
- that bloody foxy Geraghty, the daylight robber. For trading without a
- licence, says he.
- In Inisfail the fair there lies a land, the land of holy Michan. There
- rises a watchtower beheld of men afar. There sleep the mighty dead as
- in life they slept, warriors and princes of high renown. A pleasant
- land it is in sooth of murmuring waters, fishful streams where sport
- the gurnard, the plaice, the roach, the halibut, the gibbed haddock,
- the grilse, the dab, the brill, the flounder, the pollock, the mixed
- coarse fish generally and other denizens of the aqueous kingdom too
- numerous to be enumerated. In the mild breezes of the west and of the
- east the lofty trees wave in different directions their firstclass
- foliage, the wafty sycamore, the Lebanonian cedar, the exalted
- planetree, the eugenic eucalyptus and other ornaments of the arboreal
- world with which that region is thoroughly well supplied. Lovely
- maidens sit in close proximity to the roots of the lovely trees singing
- the most lovely songs while they play with all kinds of lovely objects
- as for example golden ingots, silvery fishes, crans of herrings, drafts
- of eels, codlings, creels of fingerlings, purple seagems and playful
- insects. And heroes voyage from afar to woo them, from Eblana to
- Slievemargy, the peerless princes of unfettered Munster and of Connacht
- the just and of smooth sleek Leinster and of Cruachan’s land and of
- Armagh the splendid and of the noble district of Boyle, princes, the
- sons of kings.
- And there rises a shining palace whose crystal glittering roof is seen
- by mariners who traverse the extensive sea in barks built expressly for
- that purpose, and thither come all herds and fatlings and firstfruits
- of that land for O’Connell Fitzsimon takes toll of them, a chieftain
- descended from chieftains. Thither the extremely large wains bring
- foison of the fields, flaskets of cauliflowers, floats of spinach,
- pineapple chunks, Rangoon beans, strikes of tomatoes, drums of figs,
- drills of Swedes, spherical potatoes and tallies of iridescent kale,
- York and Savoy, and trays of onions, pearls of the earth, and punnets
- of mushrooms and custard marrows and fat vetches and bere and rape and
- red green yellow brown russet sweet big bitter ripe pomellated apples
- and chips of strawberries and sieves of gooseberries, pulpy and
- pelurious, and strawberries fit for princes and raspberries from their
- canes.
- I dare him, says he, and I doubledare him. Come out here, Geraghty, you
- notorious bloody hill and dale robber!
- And by that way wend the herds innumerable of bellwethers and flushed
- ewes and shearling rams and lambs and stubble geese and medium steers
- and roaring mares and polled calves and longwools and storesheep and
- Cuffe’s prime springers and culls and sowpigs and baconhogs and the
- various different varieties of highly distinguished swine and Angus
- heifers and polly bulllocks of immaculate pedigree together with prime
- premiated milchcows and beeves: and there is ever heard a trampling,
- cackling, roaring, lowing, bleating, bellowing, rumbling, grunting,
- champing, chewing, of sheep and pigs and heavyhooved kine from
- pasturelands of Lusk and Rush and Carrickmines and from the streamy
- vales of Thomond, from the M’Gillicuddy’s reeks the inaccessible and
- lordly Shannon the unfathomable, and from the gentle declivities of the
- place of the race of Kiar, their udders distended with superabundance
- of milk and butts of butter and rennets of cheese and farmer’s firkins
- and targets of lamb and crannocks of corn and oblong eggs in great
- hundreds, various in size, the agate with this dun.
- So we turned into Barney Kiernan’s and there, sure enough, was the
- citizen up in the corner having a great confab with himself and that
- bloody mangy mongrel, Garryowen, and he waiting for what the sky would
- drop in the way of drink.
- —There he is, says I, in his gloryhole, with his cruiskeen lawn and his
- load of papers, working for the cause.
- The bloody mongrel let a grouse out of him would give you the creeps.
- Be a corporal work of mercy if someone would take the life of that
- bloody dog. I’m told for a fact he ate a good part of the breeches off
- a constabulary man in Santry that came round one time with a blue paper
- about a licence.
- —Stand and deliver, says he.
- —That’s all right, citizen, says Joe. Friends here.
- —Pass, friends, says he.
- Then he rubs his hand in his eye and says he:
- —What’s your opinion of the times?
- Doing the rapparee and Rory of the hill. But, begob, Joe was equal to
- the occasion.
- —I think the markets are on a rise, says he, sliding his hand down his
- fork.
- So begob the citizen claps his paw on his knee and he says:
- —Foreign wars is the cause of it.
- And says Joe, sticking his thumb in his pocket:
- —It’s the Russians wish to tyrannise.
- —Arrah, give over your bloody codding, Joe, says I. I’ve a thirst on me
- I wouldn’t sell for half a crown.
- —Give it a name, citizen, says Joe.
- —Wine of the country, says he.
- —What’s yours? says Joe.
- —Ditto MacAnaspey, says I.
- —Three pints, Terry, says Joe. And how’s the old heart, citizen? says
- he.
- —Never better, _a chara_, says he. What Garry? Are we going to win? Eh?
- And with that he took the bloody old towser by the scruff of the neck
- and, by Jesus, he near throttled him.
- The figure seated on a large boulder at the foot of a round tower was
- that of a broadshouldered deepchested stronglimbed frankeyed redhaired
- freelyfreckled shaggybearded widemouthed largenosed longheaded
- deepvoiced barekneed brawnyhanded hairylegged ruddyfaced sinewyarmed
- hero. From shoulder to shoulder he measured several ells and his
- rocklike mountainous knees were covered, as was likewise the rest of
- his body wherever visible, with a strong growth of tawny prickly hair
- in hue and toughness similar to the mountain gorse (_Ulex Europeus_).
- The widewinged nostrils, from which bristles of the same tawny hue
- projected, were of such capaciousness that within their cavernous
- obscurity the fieldlark might easily have lodged her nest. The eyes in
- which a tear and a smile strove ever for the mastery were of the
- dimensions of a goodsized cauliflower. A powerful current of warm
- breath issued at regular intervals from the profound cavity of his
- mouth while in rhythmic resonance the loud strong hale reverberations
- of his formidable heart thundered rumblingly causing the ground, the
- summit of the lofty tower and the still loftier walls of the cave to
- vibrate and tremble.
- He wore a long unsleeved garment of recently flayed oxhide reaching to
- the knees in a loose kilt and this was bound about his middle by a
- girdle of plaited straw and rushes. Beneath this he wore trews of
- deerskin, roughly stitched with gut. His nether extremities were
- encased in high Balbriggan buskins dyed in lichen purple, the feet
- being shod with brogues of salted cowhide laced with the windpipe of
- the same beast. From his girdle hung a row of seastones which jangled
- at every movement of his portentous frame and on these were graven with
- rude yet striking art the tribal images of many Irish heroes and
- heroines of antiquity, Cuchulin, Conn of hundred battles, Niall of nine
- hostages, Brian of Kincora, the ardri Malachi, Art MacMurragh, Shane
- O’Neill, Father John Murphy, Owen Roe, Patrick Sarsfield, Red Hugh
- O’Donnell, Red Jim MacDermott, Soggarth Eoghan O’Growney, Michael
- Dwyer, Francy Higgins, Henry Joy M’Cracken, Goliath, Horace Wheatley,
- Thomas Conneff, Peg Woffington, the Village Blacksmith, Captain
- Moonlight, Captain Boycott, Dante Alighieri, Christopher Columbus, S.
- Fursa, S. Brendan, Marshal MacMahon, Charlemagne, Theobald Wolfe Tone,
- the Mother of the Maccabees, the Last of the Mohicans, the Rose of
- Castile, the Man for Galway, The Man that Broke the Bank at Monte
- Carlo, The Man in the Gap, The Woman Who Didn’t, Benjamin Franklin,
- Napoleon Bonaparte, John L. Sullivan, Cleopatra, Savourneen Deelish,
- Julius Caesar, Paracelsus, sir Thomas Lipton, William Tell,
- Michelangelo Hayes, Muhammad, the Bride of Lammermoor, Peter the
- Hermit, Peter the Packer, Dark Rosaleen, Patrick W. Shakespeare, Brian
- Confucius, Murtagh Gutenberg, Patricio Velasquez, Captain Nemo, Tristan
- and Isolde, the first Prince of Wales, Thomas Cook and Son, the Bold
- Soldier Boy, Arrah na Pogue, Dick Turpin, Ludwig Beethoven, the Colleen
- Bawn, Waddler Healy, Angus the Culdee, Dolly Mount, Sidney Parade, Ben
- Howth, Valentine Greatrakes, Adam and Eve, Arthur Wellesley, Boss
- Croker, Herodotus, Jack the Giantkiller, Gautama Buddha, Lady Godiva,
- The Lily of Killarney, Balor of the Evil Eye, the Queen of Sheba, Acky
- Nagle, Joe Nagle, Alessandro Volta, Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa, Don
- Philip O’Sullivan Beare. A couched spear of acuminated granite rested
- by him while at his feet reposed a savage animal of the canine tribe
- whose stertorous gasps announced that he was sunk in uneasy slumber, a
- supposition confirmed by hoarse growls and spasmodic movements which
- his master repressed from time to time by tranquilising blows of a
- mighty cudgel rudely fashioned out of paleolithic stone.
- So anyhow Terry brought the three pints Joe was standing and begob the
- sight nearly left my eyes when I saw him land out a quid. O, as true as
- I’m telling you. A goodlooking sovereign.
- —And there’s more where that came from, says he.
- —Were you robbing the poorbox, Joe? says I.
- —Sweat of my brow, says Joe. ’Twas the prudent member gave me the
- wheeze.
- —I saw him before I met you, says I, sloping around by Pill lane and
- Greek street with his cod’s eye counting up all the guts of the fish.
- Who comes through Michan’s land, bedight in sable armour? O’Bloom, the
- son of Rory: it is he. Impervious to fear is Rory’s son: he of the
- prudent soul.
- —For the old woman of Prince’s street, says the citizen, the subsidised
- organ. The pledgebound party on the floor of the house. And look at
- this blasted rag, says he. Look at this, says he. _The Irish
- Independent,_ if you please, founded by Parnell to be the workingman’s
- friend. Listen to the births and deaths in the _Irish all for Ireland
- Independent,_ and I’ll thank you and the marriages.
- And he starts reading them out:
- —Gordon, Barnfield crescent, Exeter; Redmayne of Iffley, Saint Anne’s
- on Sea: the wife of William T Redmayne of a son. How’s that, eh? Wright
- and Flint, Vincent and Gillett to Rotha Marion daughter of Rosa and the
- late George Alfred Gillett, 179 Clapham road, Stockwell, Playwood and
- Ridsdale at Saint Jude’s, Kensington by the very reverend Dr Forrest,
- dean of Worcester. Eh? Deaths. Bristow, at Whitehall lane, London:
- Carr, Stoke Newington, of gastritis and heart disease: Cockburn, at the
- Moat house, Chepstow...
- —I know that fellow, says Joe, from bitter experience.
- —Cockburn. Dimsey, wife of David Dimsey, late of the admiralty: Miller,
- Tottenham, aged eightyfive: Welsh, June 12, at 35 Canning street,
- Liverpool, Isabella Helen. How’s that for a national press, eh, my
- brown son! How’s that for Martin Murphy, the Bantry jobber?
- —Ah, well, says Joe, handing round the boose. Thanks be to God they had
- the start of us. Drink that, citizen.
- —I will, says he, honourable person.
- —Health, Joe, says I. And all down the form.
- Ah! Ow! Don’t be talking! I was blue mouldy for the want of that pint.
- Declare to God I could hear it hit the pit of my stomach with a click.
- And lo, as they quaffed their cup of joy, a godlike messenger came
- swiftly in, radiant as the eye of heaven, a comely youth and behind him
- there passed an elder of noble gait and countenance, bearing the sacred
- scrolls of law and with him his lady wife a dame of peerless lineage,
- fairest of her race.
- Little Alf Bergan popped in round the door and hid behind Barney’s
- snug, squeezed up with the laughing. And who was sitting up there in
- the corner that I hadn’t seen snoring drunk blind to the world only Bob
- Doran. I didn’t know what was up and Alf kept making signs out of the
- door. And begob what was it only that bloody old pantaloon Denis Breen
- in his bathslippers with two bloody big books tucked under his oxter
- and the wife hotfoot after him, unfortunate wretched woman, trotting
- like a poodle. I thought Alf would split.
- —Look at him, says he. Breen. He’s traipsing all round Dublin with a
- postcard someone sent him with U. p: up on it to take a li...
- And he doubled up.
- —Take a what? says I.
- —Libel action, says he, for ten thousand pounds.
- —O hell! says I.
- The bloody mongrel began to growl that’d put the fear of God in you
- seeing something was up but the citizen gave him a kick in the ribs.
- _—Bi i dho husht,_ says he.
- —Who? says Joe.
- —Breen, says Alf. He was in John Henry Menton’s and then he went round
- to Collis and Ward’s and then Tom Rochford met him and sent him round
- to the subsheriff’s for a lark. O God, I’ve a pain laughing. U. p: up.
- The long fellow gave him an eye as good as a process and now the bloody
- old lunatic is gone round to Green street to look for a G man.
- —When is long John going to hang that fellow in Mountjoy? says Joe.
- —Bergan, says Bob Doran, waking up. Is that Alf Bergan?
- —Yes, says Alf. Hanging? Wait till I show you. Here, Terry, give us a
- pony. That bloody old fool! Ten thousand pounds. You should have seen
- long John’s eye. U. p ....
- And he started laughing.
- —Who are you laughing at? says Bob Doran. Is that Bergan?
- —Hurry up, Terry boy, says Alf.
- Terence O’Ryan heard him and straightway brought him a crystal cup full
- of the foamy ebon ale which the noble twin brothers Bungiveagh and
- Bungardilaun brew ever in their divine alevats, cunning as the sons of
- deathless Leda. For they garner the succulent berries of the hop and
- mass and sift and bruise and brew them and they mix therewith sour
- juices and bring the must to the sacred fire and cease not night or day
- from their toil, those cunning brothers, lords of the vat.
- Then did you, chivalrous Terence, hand forth, as to the manner born,
- that nectarous beverage and you offered the crystal cup to him that
- thirsted, the soul of chivalry, in beauty akin to the immortals.
- But he, the young chief of the O’Bergan’s, could ill brook to be
- outdone in generous deeds but gave therefor with gracious gesture a
- testoon of costliest bronze. Thereon embossed in excellent smithwork
- was seen the image of a queen of regal port, scion of the house of
- Brunswick, Victoria her name, Her Most Excellent Majesty, by grace of
- God of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and of the
- British dominions beyond the sea, queen, defender of the faith, Empress
- of India, even she, who bore rule, a victress over many peoples, the
- wellbeloved, for they knew and loved her from the rising of the sun to
- the going down thereof, the pale, the dark, the ruddy and the ethiop.
- —What’s that bloody freemason doing, says the citizen, prowling up and
- down outside?
- —What’s that? says Joe.
- —Here you are, says Alf, chucking out the rhino. Talking about hanging,
- I’ll show you something you never saw. Hangmen’s letters. Look at here.
- So he took a bundle of wisps of letters and envelopes out of his
- pocket.
- —Are you codding? says I.
- —Honest injun, says Alf. Read them.
- So Joe took up the letters.
- —Who are you laughing at? says Bob Doran.
- So I saw there was going to be a bit of a dust. Bob’s a queer chap when
- the porter’s up in him so says I just to make talk:
- —How’s Willy Murray those times, Alf?
- —I don’t know, says Alf. I saw him just now in Capel street with Paddy
- Dignam. Only I was running after that...
- —You what? says Joe, throwing down the letters. With who?
- —With Dignam, says Alf.
- —Is it Paddy? says Joe.
- —Yes, says Alf. Why?
- —Don’t you know he’s dead? says Joe.
- —Paddy Dignam dead! says Alf.
- —Ay, says Joe.
- —Sure I’m after seeing him not five minutes ago, says Alf, as plain as
- a pikestaff.
- —Who’s dead? says Bob Doran.
- —You saw his ghost then, says Joe, God between us and harm.
- —What? says Alf. Good Christ, only five... What?... And Willy Murray
- with him, the two of them there near whatdoyoucallhim’s... What? Dignam
- dead?
- —What about Dignam? says Bob Doran. Who’s talking about...?
- —Dead! says Alf. He’s no more dead than you are.
- —Maybe so, says Joe. They took the liberty of burying him this morning
- anyhow.
- —Paddy? says Alf.
- —Ay, says Joe. He paid the debt of nature, God be merciful to him.
- —Good Christ! says Alf.
- Begob he was what you might call flabbergasted.
- In the darkness spirit hands were felt to flutter and when prayer by
- tantras had been directed to the proper quarter a faint but increasing
- luminosity of ruby light became gradually visible, the apparition of
- the etheric double being particularly lifelike owing to the discharge
- of jivic rays from the crown of the head and face. Communication was
- effected through the pituitary body and also by means of the
- orangefiery and scarlet rays emanating from the sacral region and solar
- plexus. Questioned by his earthname as to his whereabouts in the
- heavenworld he stated that he was now on the path of prālāyā or return
- but was still submitted to trial at the hands of certain bloodthirsty
- entities on the lower astral levels. In reply to a question as to his
- first sensations in the great divide beyond he stated that previously
- he had seen as in a glass darkly but that those who had passed over had
- summit possibilities of atmic development opened up to them.
- Interrogated as to whether life there resembled our experience in the
- flesh he stated that he had heard from more favoured beings now in the
- spirit that their abodes were equipped with every modern home comfort
- such as tālāfānā, ālāvātār, hātākāldā, wātāklāsāt and that the highest
- adepts were steeped in waves of volupcy of the very purest nature.
- Having requested a quart of buttermilk this was brought and evidently
- afforded relief. Asked if he had any message for the living he exhorted
- all who were still at the wrong side of Māyā to acknowledge the true
- path for it was reported in devanic circles that Mars and Jupiter were
- out for mischief on the eastern angle where the ram has power. It was
- then queried whether there were any special desires on the part of the
- defunct and the reply was: _We greet you, friends of earth, who are
- still in the body. Mind C. K. doesn’t pile it on._ It was ascertained
- that the reference was to Mr Cornelius Kelleher, manager of Messrs H.
- J. O’Neill’s popular funeral establishment, a personal friend of the
- defunct, who had been responsible for the carrying out of the interment
- arrangements. Before departing he requested that it should be told to
- his dear son Patsy that the other boot which he had been looking for
- was at present under the commode in the return room and that the pair
- should be sent to Cullen’s to be soled only as the heels were still
- good. He stated that this had greatly perturbed his peace of mind in
- the other region and earnestly requested that his desire should be made
- known.
- Assurances were given that the matter would be attended to and it was
- intimated that this had given satisfaction.
- He is gone from mortal haunts: O’Dignam, sun of our morning. Fleet was
- his foot on the bracken: Patrick of the beamy brow. Wail, Banba, with
- your wind: and wail, O ocean, with your whirlwind.
- —There he is again, says the citizen, staring out.
- —Who? says I.
- —Bloom, says he. He’s on point duty up and down there for the last ten
- minutes.
- And, begob, I saw his physog do a peep in and then slidder off again.
- Little Alf was knocked bawways. Faith, he was.
- —Good Christ! says he. I could have sworn it was him.
- And says Bob Doran, with the hat on the back of his poll, lowest
- blackguard in Dublin when he’s under the influence:
- —Who said Christ is good?
- —I beg your parsnips, says Alf.
- —Is that a good Christ, says Bob Doran, to take away poor little Willy
- Dignam?
- —Ah, well, says Alf, trying to pass it off. He’s over all his troubles.
- But Bob Doran shouts out of him.
- —He’s a bloody ruffian, I say, to take away poor little Willy Dignam.
- Terry came down and tipped him the wink to keep quiet, that they didn’t
- want that kind of talk in a respectable licensed premises. And Bob
- Doran starts doing the weeps about Paddy Dignam, true as you’re there.
- —The finest man, says he, snivelling, the finest purest character.
- The tear is bloody near your eye. Talking through his bloody hat.
- Fitter for him go home to the little sleepwalking bitch he married,
- Mooney, the bumbailiff’s daughter, mother kept a kip in Hardwicke
- street, that used to be stravaging about the landings Bantam Lyons told
- me that was stopping there at two in the morning without a stitch on
- her, exposing her person, open to all comers, fair field and no favour.
- —The noblest, the truest, says he. And he’s gone, poor little Willy,
- poor little Paddy Dignam.
- And mournful and with a heavy heart he bewept the extinction of that
- beam of heaven.
- Old Garryowen started growling again at Bloom that was skeezing round
- the door.
- —Come in, come on, he won’t eat you, says the citizen.
- So Bloom slopes in with his cod’s eye on the dog and he asks Terry was
- Martin Cunningham there.
- —O, Christ M’Keown, says Joe, reading one of the letters. Listen to
- this, will you?
- And he starts reading out one.
- _7 Hunter Street,
- Liverpool._
- _To the High Sheriff of Dublin,
- Dublin._
- _Honoured sir i beg to offer my services in the abovementioned painful
- case i hanged Joe Gann in Bootle jail on the 12 of Febuary 1900 and i
- hanged..._
- —Show us, Joe, says I.
- —_... private Arthur Chace for fowl murder of Jessie Tilsit in
- Pentonville prison and i was assistant when..._
- —Jesus, says I.
- —_... Billington executed the awful murderer Toad Smith..._
- The citizen made a grab at the letter.
- —Hold hard, says Joe, _i have a special nack of putting the noose once
- in he can’t get out hoping to be favoured i remain, honoured sir, my
- terms is five ginnees._
- _H. Rumbold,
- Master Barber._
- —And a barbarous bloody barbarian he is too, says the citizen.
- —And the dirty scrawl of the wretch, says Joe. Here, says he, take them
- to hell out of my sight, Alf. Hello, Bloom, says he, what will you
- have?
- So they started arguing about the point, Bloom saying he wouldn’t and
- he couldn’t and excuse him no offence and all to that and then he said
- well he’d just take a cigar. Gob, he’s a prudent member and no mistake.
- —Give us one of your prime stinkers, Terry, says Joe.
- And Alf was telling us there was one chap sent in a mourning card with
- a black border round it.
- —They’re all barbers, says he, from the black country that would hang
- their own fathers for five quid down and travelling expenses.
- And he was telling us there’s two fellows waiting below to pull his
- heels down when he gets the drop and choke him properly and then they
- chop up the rope after and sell the bits for a few bob a skull.
- In the dark land they bide, the vengeful knights of the razor. Their
- deadly coil they grasp: yea, and therein they lead to Erebus whatsoever
- wight hath done a deed of blood for I will on nowise suffer it even so
- saith the Lord.
- So they started talking about capital punishment and of course Bloom
- comes out with the why and the wherefore and all the codology of the
- business and the old dog smelling him all the time I’m told those
- jewies does have a sort of a queer odour coming off them for dogs about
- I don’t know what all deterrent effect and so forth and so on.
- —There’s one thing it hasn’t a deterrent effect on, says Alf.
- —What’s that? says Joe.
- —The poor bugger’s tool that’s being hanged, says Alf.
- —That so? says Joe.
- —God’s truth, says Alf. I heard that from the head warder that was in
- Kilmainham when they hanged Joe Brady, the invincible. He told me when
- they cut him down after the drop it was standing up in their faces like
- a poker.
- —Ruling passion strong in death, says Joe, as someone said.
- —That can be explained by science, says Bloom. It’s only a natural
- phenomenon, don’t you see, because on account of the...
- And then he starts with his jawbreakers about phenomenon and science
- and this phenomenon and the other phenomenon.
- The distinguished scientist Herr Professor Luitpold Blumenduft tendered
- medical evidence to the effect that the instantaneous fracture of the
- cervical vertebrae and consequent scission of the spinal cord would,
- according to the best approved tradition of medical science, be
- calculated to inevitably produce in the human subject a violent
- ganglionic stimulus of the nerve centres of the genital apparatus,
- thereby causing the elastic pores of the _corpora cavernosa_ to rapidly
- dilate in such a way as to instantaneously facilitate the flow of blood
- to that part of the human anatomy known as the penis or male organ
- resulting in the phenomenon which has been denominated by the faculty a
- morbid upwards and outwards philoprogenitive erection _in articulo
- mortis per diminutionem capitis._
- So of course the citizen was only waiting for the wink of the word and
- he starts gassing out of him about the invincibles and the old guard
- and the men of sixtyseven and who fears to speak of ninetyeight and Joe
- with him about all the fellows that were hanged, drawn and transported
- for the cause by drumhead courtmartial and a new Ireland and new this,
- that and the other. Talking about new Ireland he ought to go and get a
- new dog so he ought. Mangy ravenous brute sniffing and sneezing all
- round the place and scratching his scabs. And round he goes to Bob
- Doran that was standing Alf a half one sucking up for what he could
- get. So of course Bob Doran starts doing the bloody fool with him:
- —Give us the paw! Give the paw, doggy! Good old doggy! Give the paw
- here! Give us the paw!
- Arrah, bloody end to the paw he’d paw and Alf trying to keep him from
- tumbling off the bloody stool atop of the bloody old dog and he talking
- all kinds of drivel about training by kindness and thoroughbred dog and
- intelligent dog: give you the bloody pip. Then he starts scraping a few
- bits of old biscuit out of the bottom of a Jacobs’ tin he told Terry to
- bring. Gob, he golloped it down like old boots and his tongue hanging
- out of him a yard long for more. Near ate the tin and all, hungry
- bloody mongrel.
- And the citizen and Bloom having an argument about the point, the
- brothers Sheares and Wolfe Tone beyond on Arbour Hill and Robert Emmet
- and die for your country, the Tommy Moore touch about Sara Curran and
- she’s far from the land. And Bloom, of course, with his knockmedown
- cigar putting on swank with his lardy face. Phenomenon! The fat heap he
- married is a nice old phenomenon with a back on her like a ballalley.
- Time they were stopping up in the _City Arms_ pisser Burke told me
- there was an old one there with a cracked loodheramaun of a nephew and
- Bloom trying to get the soft side of her doing the mollycoddle playing
- bézique to come in for a bit of the wampum in her will and not eating
- meat of a Friday because the old one was always thumping her craw and
- taking the lout out for a walk. And one time he led him the rounds of
- Dublin and, by the holy farmer, he never cried crack till he brought
- him home as drunk as a boiled owl and he said he did it to teach him
- the evils of alcohol and by herrings, if the three women didn’t near
- roast him, it’s a queer story, the old one, Bloom’s wife and Mrs O’Dowd
- that kept the hotel. Jesus, I had to laugh at pisser Burke taking them
- off chewing the fat. And Bloom with his _but don’t you see?_ and _but
- on the other hand_. And sure, more be token, the lout I’m told was in
- Power’s after, the blender’s, round in Cope street going home footless
- in a cab five times in the week after drinking his way through all the
- samples in the bloody establishment. Phenomenon!
- —The memory of the dead, says the citizen taking up his pintglass and
- glaring at Bloom.
- —Ay, ay, says Joe.
- —You don’t grasp my point, says Bloom. What I mean is...
- —_Sinn Fein!_ says the citizen. _Sinn Fein amhain!_ The friends we love
- are by our side and the foes we hate before us.
- The last farewell was affecting in the extreme. From the belfries far
- and near the funereal deathbell tolled unceasingly while all around the
- gloomy precincts rolled the ominous warning of a hundred muffled drums
- punctuated by the hollow booming of pieces of ordnance. The deafening
- claps of thunder and the dazzling flashes of lightning which lit up the
- ghastly scene testified that the artillery of heaven had lent its
- supernatural pomp to the already gruesome spectacle. A torrential rain
- poured down from the floodgates of the angry heavens upon the bared
- heads of the assembled multitude which numbered at the lowest
- computation five hundred thousand persons. A posse of Dublin
- Metropolitan police superintended by the Chief Commissioner in person
- maintained order in the vast throng for whom the York street brass and
- reed band whiled away the intervening time by admirably rendering on
- their blackdraped instruments the matchless melody endeared to us from
- the cradle by Speranza’s plaintive muse. Special quick excursion trains
- and upholstered charabancs had been provided for the comfort of our
- country cousins of whom there were large contingents. Considerable
- amusement was caused by the favourite Dublin streetsingers L-n-h-n and
- M-ll-g-n who sang _The Night before Larry was stretched_ in their usual
- mirth-provoking fashion. Our two inimitable drolls did a roaring trade
- with their broadsheets among lovers of the comedy element and nobody
- who has a corner in his heart for real Irish fun without vulgarity will
- grudge them their hardearned pennies. The children of the Male and
- Female Foundling Hospital who thronged the windows overlooking the
- scene were delighted with this unexpected addition to the day’s
- entertainment and a word of praise is due to the Little Sisters of the
- Poor for their excellent idea of affording the poor fatherless and
- motherless children a genuinely instructive treat. The viceregal
- houseparty which included many wellknown ladies was chaperoned by Their
- Excellencies to the most favourable positions on the grandstand while
- the picturesque foreign delegation known as the Friends of the Emerald
- Isle was accommodated on a tribune directly opposite. The delegation,
- present in full force, consisted of Commendatore Bacibaci Beninobenone
- (the semiparalysed _doyen_ of the party who had to be assisted to his
- seat by the aid of a powerful steam crane), Monsieur Pierrepaul
- Petitépatant, the Grandjoker Vladinmire Pokethankertscheff, the
- Archjoker Leopold Rudolph von Schwanzenbad-Hodenthaler, Countess Marha
- Virága Kisászony Putrápesthi, Hiram Y. Bomboost, Count Athanatos
- Karamelopulos, Ali Baba Backsheesh Rahat Lokum Effendi, Señor Hidalgo
- Caballero Don Pecadillo y Palabras y Paternoster de la Malora de la
- Malaria, Hokopoko Harakiri, Hi Hung Chang, Olaf Kobberkeddelsen,
- Mynheer Trik van Trumps, Pan Poleaxe Paddyrisky, Goosepond Prhklstr
- Kratchinabritchisitch, Borus Hupinkoff, Herr Hurhausdirektorpresident
- Hans Chuechli-Steuerli,
- Nationalgymnasiummuseumsanatoriumandsuspensoriumsordinaryprivatdocentge
- neralhistoryspecialprofessordoctor Kriegfried Ueberallgemein. All the
- delegates without exception expressed themselves in the strongest
- possible heterogeneous terms concerning the nameless barbarity which
- they had been called upon to witness. An animated altercation (in which
- all took part) ensued among the F. O. T. E. I. as to whether the eighth
- or the ninth of March was the correct date of the birth of Ireland’s
- patron saint. In the course of the argument cannonballs, scimitars,
- boomerangs, blunderbusses, stinkpots, meatchoppers, umbrellas,
- catapults, knuckledusters, sandbags, lumps of pig iron were resorted to
- and blows were freely exchanged. The baby policeman, Constable
- MacFadden, summoned by special courier from Booterstown, quickly
- restored order and with lightning promptitude proposed the seventeenth
- of the month as a solution equally honourable for both contending
- parties. The readywitted ninefooter’s suggestion at once appealed to
- all and was unanimously accepted. Constable MacFadden was heartily
- congratulated by all the F. O. T. E. I., several of whom were bleeding
- profusely. Commendatore Beninobenone having been extricated from
- underneath the presidential armchair, it was explained by his legal
- adviser Avvocato Pagamimi that the various articles secreted in his
- thirtytwo pockets had been abstracted by him during the affray from the
- pockets of his junior colleagues in the hope of bringing them to their
- senses. The objects (which included several hundred ladies’ and
- gentlemen’s gold and silver watches) were promptly restored to their
- rightful owners and general harmony reigned supreme.
- Quietly, unassumingly Rumbold stepped on to the scaffold in faultless
- morning dress and wearing his favourite flower, the _Gladiolus
- Cruentus_. He announced his presence by that gentle Rumboldian cough
- which so many have tried (unsuccessfully) to imitate—short, painstaking
- yet withal so characteristic of the man. The arrival of the
- worldrenowned headsman was greeted by a roar of acclamation from the
- huge concourse, the viceregal ladies waving their handkerchiefs in
- their excitement while the even more excitable foreign delegates
- cheered vociferously in a medley of cries, _hoch, banzai, eljen, zivio,
- chinchin, polla kronia, hiphip, vive, Allah_, amid which the ringing
- _evviva_ of the delegate of the land of song (a high double F recalling
- those piercingly lovely notes with which the eunuch Catalani
- beglamoured our greatgreatgrandmothers) was easily distinguishable. It
- was exactly seventeen o’clock. The signal for prayer was then promptly
- given by megaphone and in an instant all heads were bared, the
- commendatore’s patriarchal sombrero, which has been in the possession
- of his family since the revolution of Rienzi, being removed by his
- medical adviser in attendance, Dr Pippi. The learned prelate who
- administered the last comforts of holy religion to the hero martyr when
- about to pay the death penalty knelt in a most christian spirit in a
- pool of rainwater, his cassock above his hoary head, and offered up to
- the throne of grace fervent prayers of supplication. Hard by the block
- stood the grim figure of the executioner, his visage being concealed in
- a tengallon pot with two circular perforated apertures through which
- his eyes glowered furiously. As he awaited the fatal signal he tested
- the edge of his horrible weapon by honing it upon his brawny forearm or
- decapitated in rapid succession a flock of sheep which had been
- provided by the admirers of his fell but necessary office. On a
- handsome mahogany table near him were neatly arranged the quartering
- knife, the various finely tempered disembowelling appliances (specially
- supplied by the worldfamous firm of cutlers, Messrs John Round and
- Sons, Sheffield), a terra cotta saucepan for the reception of the
- duodenum, colon, blind intestine and appendix etc when successfully
- extracted and two commodious milkjugs destined to receive the most
- precious blood of the most precious victim. The housesteward of the
- amalgamated cats’ and dogs’ home was in attendance to convey these
- vessels when replenished to that beneficent institution. Quite an
- excellent repast consisting of rashers and eggs, fried steak and
- onions, done to a nicety, delicious hot breakfast rolls and
- invigorating tea had been considerately provided by the authorities for
- the consumption of the central figure of the tragedy who was in capital
- spirits when prepared for death and evinced the keenest interest in the
- proceedings from beginning to end but he, with an abnegation rare in
- these our times, rose nobly to the occasion and expressed the dying
- wish (immediately acceded to) that the meal should be divided in
- aliquot parts among the members of the sick and indigent roomkeepers’
- association as a token of his regard and esteem. The _nec_ and _non
- plus ultra_ of emotion were reached when the blushing bride elect burst
- her way through the serried ranks of the bystanders and flung herself
- upon the muscular bosom of him who was about to be launched into
- eternity for her sake. The hero folded her willowy form in a loving
- embrace murmuring fondly _Sheila, my own_. Encouraged by this use of
- her christian name she kissed passionately all the various suitable
- areas of his person which the decencies of prison garb permitted her
- ardour to reach. She swore to him as they mingled the salt streams of
- their tears that she would ever cherish his memory, that she would
- never forget her hero boy who went to his death with a song on his lips
- as if he were but going to a hurling match in Clonturk park. She
- brought back to his recollection the happy days of blissful childhood
- together on the banks of Anna Liffey when they had indulged in the
- innocent pastimes of the young and, oblivious of the dreadful present,
- they both laughed heartily, all the spectators, including the venerable
- pastor, joining in the general merriment. That monster audience simply
- rocked with delight. But anon they were overcome with grief and clasped
- their hands for the last time. A fresh torrent of tears burst from
- their lachrymal ducts and the vast concourse of people, touched to the
- inmost core, broke into heartrending sobs, not the least affected being
- the aged prebendary himself. Big strong men, officers of the peace and
- genial giants of the royal Irish constabulary, were making frank use of
- their handkerchiefs and it is safe to say that there was not a dry eye
- in that record assemblage. A most romantic incident occurred when a
- handsome young Oxford graduate, noted for his chivalry towards the fair
- sex, stepped forward and, presenting his visiting card, bankbook and
- genealogical tree, solicited the hand of the hapless young lady,
- requesting her to name the day, and was accepted on the spot. Every
- lady in the audience was presented with a tasteful souvenir of the
- occasion in the shape of a skull and crossbones brooch, a timely and
- generous act which evoked a fresh outburst of emotion: and when the
- gallant young Oxonian (the bearer, by the way, of one of the most
- timehonoured names in Albion’s history) placed on the finger of his
- blushing _fiancée_ an expensive engagement ring with emeralds set in
- the form of a fourleaved shamrock the excitement knew no bounds. Nay,
- even the stern provostmarshal, lieutenantcolonel Tomkin-Maxwell
- ffrenchmullan Tomlinson, who presided on the sad occasion, he who had
- blown a considerable number of sepoys from the cannonmouth without
- flinching, could not now restrain his natural emotion. With his mailed
- gauntlet he brushed away a furtive tear and was overheard, by those
- privileged burghers who happened to be in his immediate _entourage,_ to
- murmur to himself in a faltering undertone:
- —God blimey if she aint a clinker, that there bleeding tart. Blimey it
- makes me kind of bleeding cry, straight, it does, when I sees her cause
- I thinks of my old mashtub what’s waiting for me down Limehouse way.
- So then the citizen begins talking about the Irish language and the
- corporation meeting and all to that and the shoneens that can’t speak
- their own language and Joe chipping in because he stuck someone for a
- quid and Bloom putting in his old goo with his twopenny stump that he
- cadged off of Joe and talking about the Gaelic league and the
- antitreating league and drink, the curse of Ireland. Antitreating is
- about the size of it. Gob, he’d let you pour all manner of drink down
- his throat till the Lord would call him before you’d ever see the froth
- of his pint. And one night I went in with a fellow into one of their
- musical evenings, song and dance about she could get up on a truss of
- hay she could my Maureen Lay and there was a fellow with a Ballyhooly
- blue ribbon badge spiffing out of him in Irish and a lot of colleen
- bawns going about with temperance beverages and selling medals and
- oranges and lemonade and a few old dry buns, gob, flahoolagh
- entertainment, don’t be talking. Ireland sober is Ireland free. And
- then an old fellow starts blowing into his bagpipes and all the gougers
- shuffling their feet to the tune the old cow died of. And one or two
- sky pilots having an eye around that there was no goings on with the
- females, hitting below the belt.
- So howandever, as I was saying, the old dog seeing the tin was empty
- starts mousing around by Joe and me. I’d train him by kindness, so I
- would, if he was my dog. Give him a rousing fine kick now and again
- where it wouldn’t blind him.
- —Afraid he’ll bite you? says the citizen, jeering.
- —No, says I. But he might take my leg for a lamppost.
- So he calls the old dog over.
- —What’s on you, Garry? says he.
- Then he starts hauling and mauling and talking to him in Irish and the
- old towser growling, letting on to answer, like a duet in the opera.
- Such growling you never heard as they let off between them. Someone
- that has nothing better to do ought to write a letter _pro bono
- publico_ to the papers about the muzzling order for a dog the like of
- that. Growling and grousing and his eye all bloodshot from the drouth
- is in it and the hydrophobia dropping out of his jaws.
- All those who are interested in the spread of human culture among the
- lower animals (and their name is legion) should make a point of not
- missing the really marvellous exhibition of cynanthropy given by the
- famous old Irish red setter wolfdog formerly known by the _sobriquet_
- of Garryowen and recently rechristened by his large circle of friends
- and acquaintances Owen Garry. The exhibition, which is the result of
- years of training by kindness and a carefully thoughtout dietary
- system, comprises, among other achievements, the recitation of verse.
- Our greatest living phonetic expert (wild horses shall not drag it from
- us!) has left no stone unturned in his efforts to delucidate and
- compare the verse recited and has found it bears a _striking_
- resemblance (the italics are ours) to the ranns of ancient Celtic
- bards. We are not speaking so much of those delightful lovesongs with
- which the writer who conceals his identity under the graceful pseudonym
- of the Little Sweet Branch has familiarised the bookloving world but
- rather (as a contributor D. O. C. points out in an interesting
- communication published by an evening contemporary) of the harsher and
- more personal note which is found in the satirical effusions of the
- famous Raftery and of Donal MacConsidine to say nothing of a more
- modern lyrist at present very much in the public eye. We subjoin a
- specimen which has been rendered into English by an eminent scholar
- whose name for the moment we are not at liberty to disclose though we
- believe that our readers will find the topical allusion rather more
- than an indication. The metrical system of the canine original, which
- recalls the intricate alliterative and isosyllabic rules of the Welsh
- englyn, is infinitely more complicated but we believe our readers will
- agree that the spirit has been well caught. Perhaps it should be added
- that the effect is greatly increased if Owen’s verse be spoken somewhat
- slowly and indistinctly in a tone suggestive of suppressed rancour.
- The curse of my curses
- Seven days every day
- And seven dry Thursdays
- On you, Barney Kiernan,
- Has no sup of water
- To cool my courage,
- And my guts red roaring
- After Lowry’s lights.
- So he told Terry to bring some water for the dog and, gob, you could
- hear him lapping it up a mile off. And Joe asked him would he have
- another.
- —I will, says he, _a chara_, to show there’s no ill feeling.
- Gob, he’s not as green as he’s cabbagelooking. Arsing around from one
- pub to another, leaving it to your own honour, with old Giltrap’s dog
- and getting fed up by the ratepayers and corporators. Entertainment for
- man and beast. And says Joe:
- —Could you make a hole in another pint?
- —Could a swim duck? says I.
- —Same again, Terry, says Joe. Are you sure you won’t have anything in
- the way of liquid refreshment? says he.
- —Thank you, no, says Bloom. As a matter of fact I just wanted to meet
- Martin Cunningham, don’t you see, about this insurance of poor
- Dignam’s. Martin asked me to go to the house. You see, he, Dignam, I
- mean, didn’t serve any notice of the assignment on the company at the
- time and nominally under the act the mortgagee can’t recover on the
- policy.
- —Holy Wars, says Joe, laughing, that’s a good one if old Shylock is
- landed. So the wife comes out top dog, what?
- —Well, that’s a point, says Bloom, for the wife’s admirers.
- —Whose admirers? says Joe.
- —The wife’s advisers, I mean, says Bloom.
- Then he starts all confused mucking it up about mortgagor under the act
- like the lord chancellor giving it out on the bench and for the benefit
- of the wife and that a trust is created but on the other hand that
- Dignam owed Bridgeman the money and if now the wife or the widow
- contested the mortgagee’s right till he near had the head of me addled
- with his mortgagor under the act. He was bloody safe he wasn’t run in
- himself under the act that time as a rogue and vagabond only he had a
- friend in court. Selling bazaar tickets or what do you call it royal
- Hungarian privileged lottery. True as you’re there. O, commend me to an
- israelite! Royal and privileged Hungarian robbery.
- So Bob Doran comes lurching around asking Bloom to tell Mrs Dignam he
- was sorry for her trouble and he was very sorry about the funeral and
- to tell her that he said and everyone who knew him said that there was
- never a truer, a finer than poor little Willy that’s dead to tell her.
- Choking with bloody foolery. And shaking Bloom’s hand doing the tragic
- to tell her that. Shake hands, brother. You’re a rogue and I’m another.
- —Let me, said he, so far presume upon our acquaintance which, however
- slight it may appear if judged by the standard of mere time, is
- founded, as I hope and believe, on a sentiment of mutual esteem as to
- request of you this favour. But, should I have overstepped the limits
- of reserve let the sincerity of my feelings be the excuse for my
- boldness.
- —No, rejoined the other, I appreciate to the full the motives which
- actuate your conduct and I shall discharge the office you entrust to me
- consoled by the reflection that, though the errand be one of sorrow,
- this proof of your confidence sweetens in some measure the bitterness
- of the cup.
- —Then suffer me to take your hand, said he. The goodness of your heart,
- I feel sure, will dictate to you better than my inadequate words the
- expressions which are most suitable to convey an emotion whose
- poignancy, were I to give vent to my feelings, would deprive me even of
- speech.
- And off with him and out trying to walk straight. Boosed at five
- o’clock. Night he was near being lagged only Paddy Leonard knew the
- bobby, 14A. Blind to the world up in a shebeen in Bride street after
- closing time, fornicating with two shawls and a bully on guard,
- drinking porter out of teacups. And calling himself a Frenchy for the
- shawls, Joseph Manuo, and talking against the Catholic religion, and he
- serving mass in Adam and Eve’s when he was young with his eyes shut,
- who wrote the new testament, and the old testament, and hugging and
- smugging. And the two shawls killed with the laughing, picking his
- pockets, the bloody fool and he spilling the porter all over the bed
- and the two shawls screeching laughing at one another. _How is your
- testament? Have you got an old testament?_ Only Paddy was passing
- there, I tell you what. Then see him of a Sunday with his little
- concubine of a wife, and she wagging her tail up the aisle of the
- chapel with her patent boots on her, no less, and her violets, nice as
- pie, doing the little lady. Jack Mooney’s sister. And the old
- prostitute of a mother procuring rooms to street couples. Gob, Jack
- made him toe the line. Told him if he didn’t patch up the pot, Jesus,
- he’d kick the shite out of him.
- So Terry brought the three pints.
- —Here, says Joe, doing the honours. Here, citizen.
- —_Slan leat_, says he.
- —Fortune, Joe, says I. Good health, citizen.
- Gob, he had his mouth half way down the tumbler already. Want a small
- fortune to keep him in drinks.
- —Who is the long fellow running for the mayoralty, Alf? says Joe.
- —Friend of yours, says Alf.
- —Nannan? says Joe. The mimber?
- —I won’t mention any names, says Alf.
- —I thought so, says Joe. I saw him up at that meeting now with William
- Field, M. P., the cattle traders.
- —Hairy Iopas, says the citizen, that exploded volcano, the darling of
- all countries and the idol of his own.
- So Joe starts telling the citizen about the foot and mouth disease and
- the cattle traders and taking action in the matter and the citizen
- sending them all to the rightabout and Bloom coming out with his
- sheepdip for the scab and a hoose drench for coughing calves and the
- guaranteed remedy for timber tongue. Because he was up one time in a
- knacker’s yard. Walking about with his book and pencil here’s my head
- and my heels are coming till Joe Cuffe gave him the order of the boot
- for giving lip to a grazier. Mister Knowall. Teach your grandmother how
- to milk ducks. Pisser Burke was telling me in the hotel the wife used
- to be in rivers of tears some times with Mrs O’Dowd crying her eyes out
- with her eight inches of fat all over her. Couldn’t loosen her farting
- strings but old cod’s eye was waltzing around her showing her how to do
- it. What’s your programme today? Ay. Humane methods. Because the poor
- animals suffer and experts say and the best known remedy that doesn’t
- cause pain to the animal and on the sore spot administer gently. Gob,
- he’d have a soft hand under a hen.
- Ga Ga Gara. Klook Klook Klook. Black Liz is our hen. She lays eggs for
- us. When she lays her egg she is so glad. Gara. Klook Klook Klook. Then
- comes good uncle Leo. He puts his hand under black Liz and takes her
- fresh egg. Ga ga ga ga Gara. Klook Klook Klook.
- —Anyhow, says Joe, Field and Nannetti are going over tonight to London
- to ask about it on the floor of the house of commons.
- —Are you sure, says Bloom, the councillor is going? I wanted to see
- him, as it happens.
- —Well, he’s going off by the mailboat, says Joe, tonight.
- —That’s too bad, says Bloom. I wanted particularly. Perhaps only Mr
- Field is going. I couldn’t phone. No. You’re sure?
- —Nannan’s going too, says Joe. The league told him to ask a question
- tomorrow about the commissioner of police forbidding Irish games in the
- park. What do you think of that, citizen? _The Sluagh na h-Eireann_.
- Mr Cowe Conacre (Multifarnham. Nat.): Arising out of the question of my
- honourable friend, the member for Shillelagh, may I ask the right
- honourable gentleman whether the government has issued orders that
- these animals shall be slaughtered though no medical evidence is
- forthcoming as to their pathological condition?
- Mr Allfours (Tamoshant. Con.): Honourable members are already in
- possession of the evidence produced before a committee of the whole
- house. I feel I cannot usefully add anything to that. The answer to the
- honourable member’s question is in the affirmative.
- Mr Orelli O’Reilly (Montenotte. Nat.): Have similar orders been issued
- for the slaughter of human animals who dare to play Irish games in the
- Phoenix park?
- Mr Allfours: The answer is in the negative.
- Mr Cowe Conacre: Has the right honourable gentleman’s famous
- Mitchelstown telegram inspired the policy of gentlemen on the Treasury
- bench? (O! O!)
- Mr Allfours: I must have notice of that question.
- Mr Staylewit (Buncombe. Ind.): Don’t hesitate to shoot.
- (Ironical opposition cheers.)
- The speaker: Order! Order!
- (The house rises. Cheers.)
- —There’s the man, says Joe, that made the Gaelic sports revival. There
- he is sitting there. The man that got away James Stephens. The champion
- of all Ireland at putting the sixteen pound shot. What was your best
- throw, citizen?
- —_Na bacleis_, says the citizen, letting on to be modest. There was a
- time I was as good as the next fellow anyhow.
- —Put it there, citizen, says Joe. You were and a bloody sight better.
- —Is that really a fact? says Alf.
- —Yes, says Bloom. That’s well known. Did you not know that?
- So off they started about Irish sports and shoneen games the like of
- lawn tennis and about hurley and putting the stone and racy of the soil
- and building up a nation once again and all to that. And of course
- Bloom had to have his say too about if a fellow had a rower’s heart
- violent exercise was bad. I declare to my antimacassar if you took up a
- straw from the bloody floor and if you said to Bloom: _Look at, Bloom.
- Do you see that straw? That’s a straw_. Declare to my aunt he’d talk
- about it for an hour so he would and talk steady.
- A most interesting discussion took place in the ancient hall of _Brian
- O’Ciarnain’s_ in _Sraid na Bretaine Bheag_, under the auspices of
- _Sluagh na h-Eireann_, on the revival of ancient Gaelic sports and the
- importance of physical culture, as understood in ancient Greece and
- ancient Rome and ancient Ireland, for the development of the race. The
- venerable president of the noble order was in the chair and the
- attendance was of large dimensions. After an instructive discourse by
- the chairman, a magnificent oration eloquently and forcibly expressed,
- a most interesting and instructive discussion of the usual high
- standard of excellence ensued as to the desirability of the
- revivability of the ancient games and sports of our ancient Panceltic
- forefathers. The wellknown and highly respected worker in the cause of
- our old tongue, Mr Joseph M’Carthy Hynes, made an eloquent appeal for
- the resuscitation of the ancient Gaelic sports and pastimes, practised
- morning and evening by Finn MacCool, as calculated to revive the best
- traditions of manly strength and prowess handed down to us from ancient
- ages. L. Bloom, who met with a mixed reception of applause and hisses,
- having espoused the negative the vocalist chairman brought the
- discussion to a close, in response to repeated requests and hearty
- plaudits from all parts of a bumper house, by a remarkably noteworthy
- rendering of the immortal Thomas Osborne Davis’ evergreen verses
- (happily too familiar to need recalling here) _A nation once again_ in
- the execution of which the veteran patriot champion may be said without
- fear of contradiction to have fairly excelled himself. The Irish
- Caruso-Garibaldi was in superlative form and his stentorian notes were
- heard to the greatest advantage in the timehonoured anthem sung as only
- our citizen can sing it. His superb highclass vocalism, which by its
- superquality greatly enhanced his already international reputation, was
- vociferously applauded by the large audience among which were to be
- noticed many prominent members of the clergy as well as representatives
- of the press and the bar and the other learned professions. The
- proceedings then terminated.
- Amongst the clergy present were the very rev. William Delany, S. J., L.
- L. D.; the rt rev. Gerald Molloy, D. D.; the rev. P. J. Kavanagh, C. S.
- Sp.; the rev. T. Waters, C. C.; the rev. John M. Ivers, P. P.; the rev.
- P. J. Cleary, O. S. F.; the rev. L. J. Hickey, O. P.; the very rev. Fr.
- Nicholas, O. S. F. C.; the very rev. B. Gorman, O. D. C.; the rev. T.
- Maher, S. J.; the very rev. James Murphy, S. J.; the rev. John Lavery,
- V. F.; the very rev. William Doherty, D. D.; the rev. Peter Fagan, O.
- M.; the rev. T. Brangan, O. S. A.; the rev. J. Flavin, C. C.; the rev.
- M. A. Hackett, C. C.; the rev. W. Hurley, C. C.; the rt rev. Mgr
- M’Manus, V. G.; the rev. B. R. Slattery, O. M. I.; the very rev. M. D.
- Scally, P. P.; the rev. F. T. Purcell, O. P.; the very rev. Timothy
- canon Gorman, P. P.; the rev. J. Flanagan, C. C. The laity included P.
- Fay, T. Quirke, etc., etc.
- —Talking about violent exercise, says Alf, were you at that
- Keogh-Bennett match?
- —No, says Joe.
- —I heard So and So made a cool hundred quid over it, says Alf.
- —Who? Blazes? says Joe.
- And says Bloom:
- —What I meant about tennis, for example, is the agility and training
- the eye.
- —Ay, Blazes, says Alf. He let out that Myler was on the beer to run up
- the odds and he swatting all the time.
- —We know him, says the citizen. The traitor’s son. We know what put
- English gold in his pocket.
- —True for you, says Joe.
- And Bloom cuts in again about lawn tennis and the circulation of the
- blood, asking Alf:
- —Now, don’t you think, Bergan?
- —Myler dusted the floor with him, says Alf. Heenan and Sayers was only
- a bloody fool to it. Handed him the father and mother of a beating. See
- the little kipper not up to his navel and the big fellow swiping. God,
- he gave him one last puck in the wind, Queensberry rules and all, made
- him puke what he never ate.
- It was a historic and a hefty battle when Myler and Percy were
- scheduled to don the gloves for the purse of fifty sovereigns.
- Handicapped as he was by lack of poundage, Dublin’s pet lamb made up
- for it by superlative skill in ringcraft. The final bout of fireworks
- was a gruelling for both champions. The welterweight sergeantmajor had
- tapped some lively claret in the previous mixup during which Keogh had
- been receivergeneral of rights and lefts, the artilleryman putting in
- some neat work on the pet’s nose, and Myler came on looking groggy. The
- soldier got to business, leading off with a powerful left jab to which
- the Irish gladiator retaliated by shooting out a stiff one flush to the
- point of Bennett’s jaw. The redcoat ducked but the Dubliner lifted him
- with a left hook, the body punch being a fine one. The men came to
- handigrips. Myler quickly became busy and got his man under, the bout
- ending with the bulkier man on the ropes, Myler punishing him. The
- Englishman, whose right eye was nearly closed, took his corner where he
- was liberally drenched with water and when the bell went came on gamey
- and brimful of pluck, confident of knocking out the fistic Eblanite in
- jigtime. It was a fight to a finish and the best man for it. The two
- fought like tigers and excitement ran fever high. The referee twice
- cautioned Pucking Percy for holding but the pet was tricky and his
- footwork a treat to watch. After a brisk exchange of courtesies during
- which a smart upper cut of the military man brought blood freely from
- his opponent’s mouth the lamb suddenly waded in all over his man and
- landed a terrific left to Battling Bennett’s stomach, flooring him
- flat. It was a knockout clean and clever. Amid tense expectation the
- Portobello bruiser was being counted out when Bennett’s second Ole
- Pfotts Wettstein threw in the towel and the Santry boy was declared
- victor to the frenzied cheers of the public who broke through the
- ringropes and fairly mobbed him with delight.
- —He knows which side his bread is buttered, says Alf. I hear he’s
- running a concert tour now up in the north.
- —He is, says Joe. Isn’t he?
- —Who? says Bloom. Ah, yes. That’s quite true. Yes, a kind of summer
- tour, you see. Just a holiday.
- —Mrs B. is the bright particular star, isn’t she? says Joe.
- —My wife? says Bloom. She’s singing, yes. I think it will be a success
- too. He’s an excellent man to organise. Excellent.
- Hoho begob says I to myself says I. That explains the milk in the
- cocoanut and absence of hair on the animal’s chest. Blazes doing the
- tootle on the flute. Concert tour. Dirty Dan the dodger’s son off
- Island bridge that sold the same horses twice over to the government to
- fight the Boers. Old Whatwhat. I called about the poor and water rate,
- Mr Boylan. You what? The water rate, Mr Boylan. You whatwhat? That’s
- the bucko that’ll organise her, take my tip. ’Twixt me and you
- Caddareesh.
- Pride of Calpe’s rocky mount, the ravenhaired daughter of Tweedy. There
- grew she to peerless beauty where loquat and almond scent the air. The
- gardens of Alameda knew her step: the garths of olives knew and bowed.
- The chaste spouse of Leopold is she: Marion of the bountiful bosoms.
- And lo, there entered one of the clan of the O’Molloy’s, a comely hero
- of white face yet withal somewhat ruddy, his majesty’s counsel learned
- in the law, and with him the prince and heir of the noble line of
- Lambert.
- —Hello, Ned.
- —Hello, Alf.
- —Hello, Jack.
- —Hello, Joe.
- —God save you, says the citizen.
- —Save you kindly, says J. J. What’ll it be, Ned?
- —Half one, says Ned.
- So J. J. ordered the drinks.
- —Were you round at the court? says Joe.
- —Yes, says J. J. He’ll square that, Ned, says he.
- —Hope so, says Ned.
- Now what were those two at? J. J. getting him off the grand jury list
- and the other give him a leg over the stile. With his name in Stubbs’s.
- Playing cards, hobnobbing with flash toffs with a swank glass in their
- eye, adrinking fizz and he half smothered in writs and garnishee
- orders. Pawning his gold watch in Cummins of Francis street where
- no-one would know him in the private office when I was there with
- Pisser releasing his boots out of the pop. What’s your name, sir?
- Dunne, says he. Ay, and done says I. Gob, he’ll come home by weeping
- cross one of those days, I’m thinking.
- —Did you see that bloody lunatic Breen round there? says Alf. U. p: up.
- —Yes, says J. J. Looking for a private detective.
- —Ay, says Ned. And he wanted right go wrong to address the court only
- Corny Kelleher got round him telling him to get the handwriting
- examined first.
- —Ten thousand pounds, says Alf, laughing. God, I’d give anything to
- hear him before a judge and jury.
- —Was it you did it, Alf? says Joe. The truth, the whole truth and
- nothing but the truth, so help you Jimmy Johnson.
- —Me? says Alf. Don’t cast your nasturtiums on my character.
- —Whatever statement you make, says Joe, will be taken down in evidence
- against you.
- —Of course an action would lie, says J. J. It implies that he is not
- _compos mentis_. U. p: up.
- _—Compos_ your eye! says Alf, laughing. Do you know that he’s balmy?
- Look at his head. Do you know that some mornings he has to get his hat
- on with a shoehorn.
- —Yes, says J. J., but the truth of a libel is no defence to an
- indictment for publishing it in the eyes of the law.
- —Ha ha, Alf, says Joe.
- —Still, says Bloom, on account of the poor woman, I mean his wife.
- —Pity about her, says the citizen. Or any other woman marries a half
- and half.
- —How half and half? says Bloom. Do you mean he...
- —Half and half I mean, says the citizen. A fellow that’s neither fish
- nor flesh.
- —Nor good red herring, says Joe.
- —That what’s I mean, says the citizen. A pishogue, if you know what
- that is.
- Begob I saw there was trouble coming. And Bloom explaining he meant on
- account of it being cruel for the wife having to go round after the old
- stuttering fool. Cruelty to animals so it is to let that bloody
- povertystricken Breen out on grass with his beard out tripping him,
- bringing down the rain. And she with her nose cockahoop after she
- married him because a cousin of his old fellow’s was pewopener to the
- pope. Picture of him on the wall with his Smashall Sweeney’s
- moustaches, the signior Brini from Summerhill, the eyetallyano, papal
- Zouave to the Holy Father, has left the quay and gone to Moss street.
- And who was he, tell us? A nobody, two pair back and passages, at seven
- shillings a week, and he covered with all kinds of breastplates bidding
- defiance to the world.
- —And moreover, says J. J., a postcard is publication. It was held to be
- sufficient evidence of malice in the testcase Sadgrove v. Hole. In my
- opinion an action might lie.
- Six and eightpence, please. Who wants your opinion? Let us drink our
- pints in peace. Gob, we won’t be let even do that much itself.
- —Well, good health, Jack, says Ned.
- —Good health, Ned, says J. J.
- —-There he is again, says Joe.
- —Where? says Alf.
- And begob there he was passing the door with his books under his oxter
- and the wife beside him and Corny Kelleher with his wall eye looking in
- as they went past, talking to him like a father, trying to sell him a
- secondhand coffin.
- —How did that Canada swindle case go off? says Joe.
- —Remanded, says J. J.
- One of the bottlenosed fraternity it was went by the name of James
- Wought alias Saphiro alias Spark and Spiro, put an ad in the papers
- saying he’d give a passage to Canada for twenty bob. What? Do you see
- any green in the white of my eye? Course it was a bloody barney. What?
- Swindled them all, skivvies and badhachs from the county Meath, ay, and
- his own kidney too. J. J. was telling us there was an ancient Hebrew
- Zaretsky or something weeping in the witnessbox with his hat on him,
- swearing by the holy Moses he was stuck for two quid.
- —Who tried the case? says Joe.
- —Recorder, says Ned.
- —Poor old sir Frederick, says Alf, you can cod him up to the two eyes.
- —Heart as big as a lion, says Ned. Tell him a tale of woe about arrears
- of rent and a sick wife and a squad of kids and, faith, he’ll dissolve
- in tears on the bench.
- —Ay, says Alf. Reuben J was bloody lucky he didn’t clap him in the dock
- the other day for suing poor little Gumley that’s minding stones, for
- the corporation there near Butt bridge.
- And he starts taking off the old recorder letting on to cry:
- —A most scandalous thing! This poor hardworking man! How many children?
- Ten, did you say?
- —Yes, your worship. And my wife has the typhoid.
- —And the wife with typhoid fever! Scandalous! Leave the court
- immediately, sir. No, sir, I’ll make no order for payment. How dare
- you, sir, come up before me and ask me to make an order! A poor
- hardworking industrious man! I dismiss the case.
- And whereas on the sixteenth day of the month of the oxeyed goddess and
- in the third week after the feastday of the Holy and Undivided Trinity,
- the daughter of the skies, the virgin moon being then in her first
- quarter, it came to pass that those learned judges repaired them to the
- halls of law. There master Courtenay, sitting in his own chamber, gave
- his rede and master Justice Andrews, sitting without a jury in the
- probate court, weighed well and pondered the claim of the first
- chargeant upon the property in the matter of the will propounded and
- final testamentary disposition _in re_ the real and personal estate of
- the late lamented Jacob Halliday, vintner, deceased, versus
- Livingstone, an infant, of unsound mind, and another. And to the solemn
- court of Green street there came sir Frederick the Falconer. And he sat
- him there about the hour of five o’clock to administer the law of the
- brehons at the commission for all that and those parts to be holden in
- and for the county of the city of Dublin. And there sat with him the
- high sinhedrim of the twelve tribes of Iar, for every tribe one man, of
- the tribe of Patrick and of the tribe of Hugh and of the tribe of Owen
- and of the tribe of Conn and of the tribe of Oscar and of the tribe of
- Fergus and of the tribe of Finn and of the tribe of Dermot and of the
- tribe of Cormac and of the tribe of Kevin and of the tribe of Caolte
- and of the tribe of Ossian, there being in all twelve good men and
- true. And he conjured them by Him who died on rood that they should
- well and truly try and true deliverance make in the issue joined
- between their sovereign lord the king and the prisoner at the bar and
- true verdict give according to the evidence so help them God and kiss
- the book. And they rose in their seats, those twelve of Iar, and they
- swore by the name of Him Who is from everlasting that they would do His
- rightwiseness. And straightway the minions of the law led forth from
- their donjon keep one whom the sleuthhounds of justice had apprehended
- in consequence of information received. And they shackled him hand and
- foot and would take of him ne bail ne mainprise but preferred a charge
- against him for he was a malefactor.
- —Those are nice things, says the citizen, coming over here to Ireland
- filling the country with bugs.
- So Bloom lets on he heard nothing and he starts talking with Joe,
- telling him he needn’t trouble about that little matter till the first
- but if he would just say a word to Mr Crawford. And so Joe swore high
- and holy by this and by that he’d do the devil and all.
- —Because, you see, says Bloom, for an advertisement you must have
- repetition. That’s the whole secret.
- —Rely on me, says Joe.
- —Swindling the peasants, says the citizen, and the poor of Ireland. We
- want no more strangers in our house.
- —O, I’m sure that will be all right, Hynes, says Bloom. It’s just that
- Keyes, you see.
- —Consider that done, says Joe.
- —Very kind of you, says Bloom.
- —The strangers, says the citizen. Our own fault. We let them come in.
- We brought them in. The adulteress and her paramour brought the Saxon
- robbers here.
- —Decree _nisi,_ says J. J.
- And Bloom letting on to be awfully deeply interested in nothing, a
- spider’s web in the corner behind the barrel, and the citizen scowling
- after him and the old dog at his feet looking up to know who to bite
- and when.
- —A dishonoured wife, says the citizen, that’s what’s the cause of all
- our misfortunes.
- —And here she is, says Alf, that was giggling over the _Police Gazette_
- with Terry on the counter, in all her warpaint.
- —Give us a squint at her, says I.
- And what was it only one of the smutty yankee pictures Terry borrows
- off of Corny Kelleher. Secrets for enlarging your private parts.
- Misconduct of society belle. Norman W. Tupper, wealthy Chicago
- contractor, finds pretty but faithless wife in lap of officer Taylor.
- Belle in her bloomers misconducting herself, and her fancyman feeling
- for her tickles and Norman W. Tupper bouncing in with his peashooter
- just in time to be late after she doing the trick of the loop with
- officer Taylor.
- —O jakers, Jenny, says Joe, how short your shirt is!
- —There’s hair, Joe, says I. Get a queer old tailend of corned beef off
- of that one, what?
- So anyhow in came John Wyse Nolan and Lenehan with him with a face on
- him as long as a late breakfast.
- —Well, says the citizen, what’s the latest from the scene of action?
- What did those tinkers in the city hall at their caucus meeting decide
- about the Irish language?
- O’Nolan, clad in shining armour, low bending made obeisance to the
- puissant and high and mighty chief of all Erin and did him to wit of
- that which had befallen, how that the grave elders of the most obedient
- city, second of the realm, had met them in the tholsel, and there,
- after due prayers to the gods who dwell in ether supernal, had taken
- solemn counsel whereby they might, if so be it might be, bring once
- more into honour among mortal men the winged speech of the seadivided
- Gael.
- —It’s on the march, says the citizen. To hell with the bloody brutal
- Sassenachs and their _patois._
- So J. J. puts in a word, doing the toff about one story was good till
- you heard another and blinking facts and the Nelson policy, putting
- your blind eye to the telescope and drawing up a bill of attainder to
- impeach a nation, and Bloom trying to back him up moderation and
- botheration and their colonies and their civilisation.
- —Their syphilisation, you mean, says the citizen. To hell with them!
- The curse of a goodfornothing God light sideways on the bloody
- thicklugged sons of whores’ gets! No music and no art and no literature
- worthy of the name. Any civilisation they have they stole from us.
- Tonguetied sons of bastards’ ghosts.
- —The European family, says J. J....
- —They’re not European, says the citizen. I was in Europe with Kevin
- Egan of Paris. You wouldn’t see a trace of them or their language
- anywhere in Europe except in a _cabinet d’aisance._
- And says John Wyse:
- —Full many a flower is born to blush unseen.
- And says Lenehan that knows a bit of the lingo:
- —_Conspuez les Anglais! Perfide Albion!_
- He said and then lifted he in his rude great brawny strengthy hands the
- medher of dark strong foamy ale and, uttering his tribal slogan _Lamh
- Dearg Abu_, he drank to the undoing of his foes, a race of mighty
- valorous heroes, rulers of the waves, who sit on thrones of alabaster
- silent as the deathless gods.
- —What’s up with you, says I to Lenehan. You look like a fellow that had
- lost a bob and found a tanner.
- —Gold cup, says he.
- —Who won, Mr Lenehan? says Terry.
- _—Throwaway,_ says he, at twenty to one. A rank outsider. And the rest
- nowhere.
- —And Bass’s mare? says Terry.
- —Still running, says he. We’re all in a cart. Boylan plunged two quid
- on my tip _Sceptre_ for himself and a lady friend.
- —I had half a crown myself, says Terry, on _Zinfandel_ that Mr Flynn
- gave me. Lord Howard de Walden’s.
- —Twenty to one, says Lenehan. Such is life in an outhouse. _Throwaway,_
- says he. Takes the biscuit, and talking about bunions. Frailty, thy
- name is _Sceptre._
- So he went over to the biscuit tin Bob Doran left to see if there was
- anything he could lift on the nod, the old cur after him backing his
- luck with his mangy snout up. Old Mother Hubbard went to the cupboard.
- —Not there, my child, says he.
- —Keep your pecker up, says Joe. She’d have won the money only for the
- other dog.
- And J. J. and the citizen arguing about law and history with Bloom
- sticking in an odd word.
- —Some people, says Bloom, can see the mote in others’ eyes but they
- can’t see the beam in their own.
- —_Raimeis_, says the citizen. There’s no-one as blind as the fellow
- that won’t see, if you know what that means. Where are our missing
- twenty millions of Irish should be here today instead of four, our lost
- tribes? And our potteries and textiles, the finest in the whole world!
- And our wool that was sold in Rome in the time of Juvenal and our flax
- and our damask from the looms of Antrim and our Limerick lace, our
- tanneries and our white flint glass down there by Ballybough and our
- Huguenot poplin that we have since Jacquard de Lyon and our woven silk
- and our Foxford tweeds and ivory raised point from the Carmelite
- convent in New Ross, nothing like it in the whole wide world. Where are
- the Greek merchants that came through the pillars of Hercules, the
- Gibraltar now grabbed by the foe of mankind, with gold and Tyrian
- purple to sell in Wexford at the fair of Carmen? Read Tacitus and
- Ptolemy, even Giraldus Cambrensis. Wine, peltries, Connemara marble,
- silver from Tipperary, second to none, our farfamed horses even today,
- the Irish hobbies, with king Philip of Spain offering to pay customs
- duties for the right to fish in our waters. What do the yellowjohns of
- Anglia owe us for our ruined trade and our ruined hearths? And the beds
- of the Barrow and Shannon they won’t deepen with millions of acres of
- marsh and bog to make us all die of consumption?
- —As treeless as Portugal we’ll be soon, says John Wyse, or Heligoland
- with its one tree if something is not done to reafforest the land.
- Larches, firs, all the trees of the conifer family are going fast. I
- was reading a report of lord Castletown’s...
- —Save them, says the citizen, the giant ash of Galway and the chieftain
- elm of Kildare with a fortyfoot bole and an acre of foliage. Save the
- trees of Ireland for the future men of Ireland on the fair hills of
- Eire, O.
- —Europe has its eyes on you, says Lenehan.
- The fashionable international world attended _en masse_ this afternoon
- at the wedding of the chevalier Jean Wyse de Neaulan, grand high chief
- ranger of the Irish National Foresters, with Miss Fir Conifer of Pine
- Valley. Lady Sylvester Elmshade, Mrs Barbara Lovebirch, Mrs Poll Ash,
- Mrs Holly Hazeleyes, Miss Daphne Bays, Miss Dorothy Canebrake, Mrs
- Clyde Twelvetrees, Mrs Rowan Greene, Mrs Helen Vinegadding, Miss
- Virginia Creeper, Miss Gladys Beech, Miss Olive Garth, Miss Blanche
- Maple, Mrs Maud Mahogany, Miss Myra Myrtle, Miss Priscilla Elderflower,
- Miss Bee Honeysuckle, Miss Grace Poplar, Miss O Mimosa San, Miss Rachel
- Cedarfrond, the Misses Lilian and Viola Lilac, Miss Timidity Aspenall,
- Mrs Kitty Dewey-Mosse, Miss May Hawthorne, Mrs Gloriana Palme, Mrs
- Liana Forrest, Mrs Arabella Blackwood and Mrs Norma Holyoake of
- Oakholme Regis graced the ceremony by their presence. The bride who was
- given away by her father, the M’Conifer of the Glands, looked
- exquisitely charming in a creation carried out in green mercerised
- silk, moulded on an underslip of gloaming grey, sashed with a yoke of
- broad emerald and finished with a triple flounce of darkerhued fringe,
- the scheme being relieved by bretelles and hip insertions of acorn
- bronze. The maids of honour, Miss Larch Conifer and Miss Spruce
- Conifer, sisters of the bride, wore very becoming costumes in the same
- tone, a dainty _motif_ of plume rose being worked into the pleats in a
- pinstripe and repeated capriciously in the jadegreen toques in the form
- of heron feathers of paletinted coral. Senhor Enrique Flor presided at
- the organ with his wellknown ability and, in addition to the prescribed
- numbers of the nuptial mass, played a new and striking arrangement of
- _Woodman, spare that tree_ at the conclusion of the service. On leaving
- the church of Saint Fiacre _in Horto_ after the papal blessing the
- happy pair were subjected to a playful crossfire of hazelnuts,
- beechmast, bayleaves, catkins of willow, ivytod, hollyberries,
- mistletoe sprigs and quicken shoots. Mr and Mrs Wyse Conifer Neaulan
- will spend a quiet honeymoon in the Black Forest.
- —And our eyes are on Europe, says the citizen. We had our trade with
- Spain and the French and with the Flemings before those mongrels were
- pupped, Spanish ale in Galway, the winebark on the winedark waterway.
- —And will again, says Joe.
- —And with the help of the holy mother of God we will again, says the
- citizen, clapping his thigh. Our harbours that are empty will be full
- again, Queenstown, Kinsale, Galway, Blacksod Bay, Ventry in the kingdom
- of Kerry, Killybegs, the third largest harbour in the wide world with a
- fleet of masts of the Galway Lynches and the Cavan O’Reillys and the
- O’Kennedys of Dublin when the earl of Desmond could make a treaty with
- the emperor Charles the Fifth himself. And will again, says he, when
- the first Irish battleship is seen breasting the waves with our own
- flag to the fore, none of your Henry Tudor’s harps, no, the oldest flag
- afloat, the flag of the province of Desmond and Thomond, three crowns
- on a blue field, the three sons of Milesius.
- And he took the last swig out of the pint. Moya. All wind and piss like
- a tanyard cat. Cows in Connacht have long horns. As much as his bloody
- life is worth to go down and address his tall talk to the assembled
- multitude in Shanagolden where he daren’t show his nose with the Molly
- Maguires looking for him to let daylight through him for grabbing the
- holding of an evicted tenant.
- —Hear, hear to that, says John Wyse. What will you have?
- —An imperial yeomanry, says Lenehan, to celebrate the occasion.
- —Half one, Terry, says John Wyse, and a hands up. Terry! Are you
- asleep?
- —Yes, sir, says Terry. Small whisky and bottle of Allsop. Right, sir.
- Hanging over the bloody paper with Alf looking for spicy bits instead
- of attending to the general public. Picture of a butting match, trying
- to crack their bloody skulls, one chap going for the other with his
- head down like a bull at a gate. And another one: _Black Beast Burned
- in Omaha, Ga_. A lot of Deadwood Dicks in slouch hats and they firing
- at a Sambo strung up in a tree with his tongue out and a bonfire under
- him. Gob, they ought to drown him in the sea after and electrocute and
- crucify him to make sure of their job.
- —But what about the fighting navy, says Ned, that keeps our foes at
- bay?
- —I’ll tell you what about it, says the citizen. Hell upon earth it is.
- Read the revelations that’s going on in the papers about flogging on
- the training ships at Portsmouth. A fellow writes that calls himself
- _Disgusted One_.
- So he starts telling us about corporal punishment and about the crew of
- tars and officers and rearadmirals drawn up in cocked hats and the
- parson with his protestant bible to witness punishment and a young lad
- brought out, howling for his ma, and they tie him down on the buttend
- of a gun.
- —A rump and dozen, says the citizen, was what that old ruffian sir John
- Beresford called it but the modern God’s Englishman calls it caning on
- the breech.
- And says John Wyse:
- —’Tis a custom more honoured in the breach than in the observance.
- Then he was telling us the master at arms comes along with a long cane
- and he draws out and he flogs the bloody backside off of the poor lad
- till he yells meila murder.
- —That’s your glorious British navy, says the citizen, that bosses the
- earth. The fellows that never will be slaves, with the only hereditary
- chamber on the face of God’s earth and their land in the hands of a
- dozen gamehogs and cottonball barons. That’s the great empire they
- boast about of drudges and whipped serfs.
- —On which the sun never rises, says Joe.
- —And the tragedy of it is, says the citizen, they believe it. The
- unfortunate yahoos believe it.
- They believe in rod, the scourger almighty, creator of hell upon earth,
- and in Jacky Tar, the son of a gun, who was conceived of unholy boast,
- born of the fighting navy, suffered under rump and dozen, was
- scarified, flayed and curried, yelled like bloody hell, the third day
- he arose again from the bed, steered into haven, sitteth on his beamend
- till further orders whence he shall come to drudge for a living and be
- paid.
- —But, says Bloom, isn’t discipline the same everywhere. I mean wouldn’t
- it be the same here if you put force against force?
- Didn’t I tell you? As true as I’m drinking this porter if he was at his
- last gasp he’d try to downface you that dying was living.
- —We’ll put force against force, says the citizen. We have our greater
- Ireland beyond the sea. They were driven out of house and home in the
- black 47. Their mudcabins and their shielings by the roadside were laid
- low by the batteringram and the _Times_ rubbed its hands and told the
- whitelivered Saxons there would soon be as few Irish in Ireland as
- redskins in America. Even the Grand Turk sent us his piastres. But the
- Sassenach tried to starve the nation at home while the land was full of
- crops that the British hyenas bought and sold in Rio de Janeiro. Ay,
- they drove out the peasants in hordes. Twenty thousand of them died in
- the coffinships. But those that came to the land of the free remember
- the land of bondage. And they will come again and with a vengeance, no
- cravens, the sons of Granuaile, the champions of Kathleen ni Houlihan.
- —Perfectly true, says Bloom. But my point was...
- —We are a long time waiting for that day, citizen, says Ned. Since the
- poor old woman told us that the French were on the sea and landed at
- Killala.
- —Ay, says John Wyse. We fought for the royal Stuarts that reneged us
- against the Williamites and they betrayed us. Remember Limerick and the
- broken treatystone. We gave our best blood to France and Spain, the
- wild geese. Fontenoy, eh? And Sarsfield and O’Donnell, duke of Tetuan
- in Spain, and Ulysses Browne of Camus that was fieldmarshal to Maria
- Teresa. But what did we ever get for it?
- —The French! says the citizen. Set of dancing masters! Do you know what
- it is? They were never worth a roasted fart to Ireland. Aren’t they
- trying to make an _Entente cordiale_ now at Tay Pay’s dinnerparty with
- perfidious Albion? Firebrands of Europe and they always were.
- —_Conspuez les Français_, says Lenehan, nobbling his beer.
- —And as for the Prooshians and the Hanoverians, says Joe, haven’t we
- had enough of those sausageeating bastards on the throne from George
- the elector down to the German lad and the flatulent old bitch that’s
- dead?
- Jesus, I had to laugh at the way he came out with that about the old
- one with the winkers on her, blind drunk in her royal palace every
- night of God, old Vic, with her jorum of mountain dew and her coachman
- carting her up body and bones to roll into bed and she pulling him by
- the whiskers and singing him old bits of songs about _Ehren on the
- Rhine_ and come where the boose is cheaper.
- —Well, says J. J. We have Edward the peacemaker now.
- —Tell that to a fool, says the citizen. There’s a bloody sight more pox
- than pax about that boyo. Edward Guelph-Wettin!
- —And what do you think, says Joe, of the holy boys, the priests and
- bishops of Ireland doing up his room in Maynooth in His Satanic
- Majesty’s racing colours and sticking up pictures of all the horses his
- jockeys rode. The earl of Dublin, no less.
- —They ought to have stuck up all the women he rode himself, says little
- Alf.
- And says J. J.:
- —Considerations of space influenced their lordships’ decision.
- —Will you try another, citizen? says Joe.
- —Yes, sir, says he. I will.
- —You? says Joe.
- —Beholden to you, Joe, says I. May your shadow never grow less.
- —Repeat that dose, says Joe.
- Bloom was talking and talking with John Wyse and he quite excited with
- his dunducketymudcoloured mug on him and his old plumeyes rolling
- about.
- —Persecution, says he, all the history of the world is full of it.
- Perpetuating national hatred among nations.
- —But do you know what a nation means? says John Wyse.
- —Yes, says Bloom.
- —What is it? says John Wyse.
- —A nation? says Bloom. A nation is the same people living in the same
- place.
- —By God, then, says Ned, laughing, if that’s so I’m a nation for I’m
- living in the same place for the past five years.
- So of course everyone had the laugh at Bloom and says he, trying to
- muck out of it:
- —Or also living in different places.
- —That covers my case, says Joe.
- —What is your nation if I may ask? says the citizen.
- —Ireland, says Bloom. I was born here. Ireland.
- The citizen said nothing only cleared the spit out of his gullet and,
- gob, he spat a Red bank oyster out of him right in the corner.
- —After you with the push, Joe, says he, taking out his handkerchief to
- swab himself dry.
- —Here you are, citizen, says Joe. Take that in your right hand and
- repeat after me the following words.
- The muchtreasured and intricately embroidered ancient Irish facecloth
- attributed to Solomon of Droma and Manus Tomaltach og MacDonogh,
- authors of the Book of Ballymote, was then carefully produced and
- called forth prolonged admiration. No need to dwell on the legendary
- beauty of the cornerpieces, the acme of art, wherein one can distinctly
- discern each of the four evangelists in turn presenting to each of the
- four masters his evangelical symbol, a bogoak sceptre, a North American
- puma (a far nobler king of beasts than the British article, be it said
- in passing), a Kerry calf and a golden eagle from Carrantuohill. The
- scenes depicted on the emunctory field, showing our ancient duns and
- raths and cromlechs and grianauns and seats of learning and maledictive
- stones, are as wonderfully beautiful and the pigments as delicate as
- when the Sligo illuminators gave free rein to their artistic fantasy
- long long ago in the time of the Barmecides. Glendalough, the lovely
- lakes of Killarney, the ruins of Clonmacnois, Cong Abbey, Glen Inagh
- and the Twelve Pins, Ireland’s Eye, the Green Hills of Tallaght, Croagh
- Patrick, the brewery of Messrs Arthur Guinness, Son and Company
- (Limited), Lough Neagh’s banks, the vale of Ovoca, Isolde’s tower, the
- Mapas obelisk, Sir Patrick Dun’s hospital, Cape Clear, the glen of
- Aherlow, Lynch’s castle, the Scotch house, Rathdown Union Workhouse at
- Loughlinstown, Tullamore jail, Castleconnel rapids,
- Kilballymacshonakill, the cross at Monasterboice, Jury’s Hotel, S.
- Patrick’s Purgatory, the Salmon Leap, Maynooth college refectory,
- Curley’s hole, the three birthplaces of the first duke of Wellington,
- the rock of Cashel, the bog of Allen, the Henry Street Warehouse,
- Fingal’s Cave—all these moving scenes are still there for us today
- rendered more beautiful still by the waters of sorrow which have passed
- over them and by the rich incrustations of time.
- —Show us over the drink, says I. Which is which?
- —That’s mine, says Joe, as the devil said to the dead policeman.
- —And I belong to a race too, says Bloom, that is hated and persecuted.
- Also now. This very moment. This very instant.
- Gob, he near burnt his fingers with the butt of his old cigar.
- —Robbed, says he. Plundered. Insulted. Persecuted. Taking what belongs
- to us by right. At this very moment, says he, putting up his fist, sold
- by auction in Morocco like slaves or cattle.
- —Are you talking about the new Jerusalem? says the citizen.
- —I’m talking about injustice, says Bloom.
- —Right, says John Wyse. Stand up to it then with force like men.
- That’s an almanac picture for you. Mark for a softnosed bullet. Old
- lardyface standing up to the business end of a gun. Gob, he’d adorn a
- sweepingbrush, so he would, if he only had a nurse’s apron on him. And
- then he collapses all of a sudden, twisting around all the opposite, as
- limp as a wet rag.
- —But it’s no use, says he. Force, hatred, history, all that. That’s not
- life for men and women, insult and hatred. And everybody knows that
- it’s the very opposite of that that is really life.
- —What? says Alf.
- —Love, says Bloom. I mean the opposite of hatred. I must go now, says
- he to John Wyse. Just round to the court a moment to see if Martin is
- there. If he comes just say I’ll be back in a second. Just a moment.
- Who’s hindering you? And off he pops like greased lightning.
- —A new apostle to the gentiles, says the citizen. Universal love.
- —Well, says John Wyse. Isn’t that what we’re told. Love your neighbour.
- —That chap? says the citizen. Beggar my neighbour is his motto. Love,
- moya! He’s a nice pattern of a Romeo and Juliet.
- Love loves to love love. Nurse loves the new chemist. Constable 14A
- loves Mary Kelly. Gerty MacDowell loves the boy that has the bicycle.
- M. B. loves a fair gentleman. Li Chi Han lovey up kissy Cha Pu Chow.
- Jumbo, the elephant, loves Alice, the elephant. Old Mr Verschoyle with
- the ear trumpet loves old Mrs Verschoyle with the turnedin eye. The man
- in the brown macintosh loves a lady who is dead. His Majesty the King
- loves Her Majesty the Queen. Mrs Norman W. Tupper loves officer Taylor.
- You love a certain person. And this person loves that other person
- because everybody loves somebody but God loves everybody.
- —Well, Joe, says I, your very good health and song. More power,
- citizen.
- —Hurrah, there, says Joe.
- —The blessing of God and Mary and Patrick on you, says the citizen.
- And he ups with his pint to wet his whistle.
- —We know those canters, says he, preaching and picking your pocket.
- What about sanctimonious Cromwell and his ironsides that put the women
- and children of Drogheda to the sword with the bible text _God is love_
- pasted round the mouth of his cannon? The bible! Did you read that skit
- in the _United Irishman_ today about that Zulu chief that’s visiting
- England?
- —What’s that? says Joe.
- So the citizen takes up one of his paraphernalia papers and he starts
- reading out:
- —A delegation of the chief cotton magnates of Manchester was presented
- yesterday to His Majesty the Alaki of Abeakuta by Gold Stick in
- Waiting, Lord Walkup of Walkup on Eggs, to tender to His Majesty the
- heartfelt thanks of British traders for the facilities afforded them in
- his dominions. The delegation partook of luncheon at the conclusion of
- which the dusky potentate, in the course of a happy speech, freely
- translated by the British chaplain, the reverend Ananias Praisegod
- Barebones, tendered his best thanks to Massa Walkup and emphasised the
- cordial relations existing between Abeakuta and the British empire,
- stating that he treasured as one of his dearest possessions an
- illuminated bible, the volume of the word of God and the secret of
- England’s greatness, graciously presented to him by the white chief
- woman, the great squaw Victoria, with a personal dedication from the
- august hand of the Royal Donor. The Alaki then drank a lovingcup of
- firstshot usquebaugh to the toast _Black and White_ from the skull of
- his immediate predecessor in the dynasty Kakachakachak, surnamed Forty
- Warts, after which he visited the chief factory of Cottonopolis and
- signed his mark in the visitors’ book, subsequently executing a
- charming old Abeakutic wardance, in the course of which he swallowed
- several knives and forks, amid hilarious applause from the girl hands.
- —Widow woman, says Ned. I wouldn’t doubt her. Wonder did he put that
- bible to the same use as I would.
- —Same only more so, says Lenehan. And thereafter in that fruitful land
- the broadleaved mango flourished exceedingly.
- —Is that by Griffith? says John Wyse.
- —No, says the citizen. It’s not signed Shanganagh. It’s only
- initialled: P.
- —And a very good initial too, says Joe.
- —That’s how it’s worked, says the citizen. Trade follows the flag.
- —Well, says J. J., if they’re any worse than those Belgians in the
- Congo Free State they must be bad. Did you read that report by a man
- what’s this his name is?
- —Casement, says the citizen. He’s an Irishman.
- —Yes, that’s the man, says J. J. Raping the women and girls and
- flogging the natives on the belly to squeeze all the red rubber they
- can out of them.
- —I know where he’s gone, says Lenehan, cracking his fingers.
- —Who? says I.
- —Bloom, says he. The courthouse is a blind. He had a few bob on
- _Throwaway_ and he’s gone to gather in the shekels.
- —Is it that whiteeyed kaffir? says the citizen, that never backed a
- horse in anger in his life?
- —That’s where he’s gone, says Lenehan. I met Bantam Lyons going to back
- that horse only I put him off it and he told me Bloom gave him the tip.
- Bet you what you like he has a hundred shillings to five on. He’s the
- only man in Dublin has it. A dark horse.
- —He’s a bloody dark horse himself, says Joe.
- —Mind, Joe, says I. Show us the entrance out.
- —There you are, says Terry.
- Goodbye Ireland I’m going to Gort. So I just went round the back of the
- yard to pumpship and begob (hundred shillings to five) while I was
- letting off my _(Throwaway_ twenty to) letting off my load gob says I
- to myself I knew he was uneasy in his (two pints off of Joe and one in
- Slattery’s off) in his mind to get off the mark to (hundred shillings
- is five quid) and when they were in the (dark horse) pisser Burke was
- telling me card party and letting on the child was sick (gob, must have
- done about a gallon) flabbyarse of a wife speaking down the tube _she’s
- better_ or _she’s_ (ow!) all a plan so he could vamoose with the pool
- if he won or (Jesus, full up I was) trading without a licence (ow!)
- Ireland my nation says he (hoik! phthook!) never be up to those bloody
- (there’s the last of it) Jerusalem (ah!) cuckoos.
- So anyhow when I got back they were at it dingdong, John Wyse saying it
- was Bloom gave the ideas for Sinn Fein to Griffith to put in his paper
- all kinds of jerrymandering, packed juries and swindling the taxes off
- of the government and appointing consuls all over the world to walk
- about selling Irish industries. Robbing Peter to pay Paul. Gob, that
- puts the bloody kybosh on it if old sloppy eyes is mucking up the show.
- Give us a bloody chance. God save Ireland from the likes of that bloody
- mouseabout. Mr Bloom with his argol bargol. And his old fellow before
- him perpetrating frauds, old Methusalem Bloom, the robbing bagman, that
- poisoned himself with the prussic acid after he swamping the country
- with his baubles and his penny diamonds. Loans by post on easy terms.
- Any amount of money advanced on note of hand. Distance no object. No
- security. Gob, he’s like Lanty MacHale’s goat that’d go a piece of the
- road with every one.
- —Well, it’s a fact, says John Wyse. And there’s the man now that’ll
- tell you all about it, Martin Cunningham.
- Sure enough the castle car drove up with Martin on it and Jack Power
- with him and a fellow named Crofter or Crofton, pensioner out of the
- collector general’s, an orangeman Blackburn does have on the
- registration and he drawing his pay or Crawford gallivanting around the
- country at the king’s expense.
- Our travellers reached the rustic hostelry and alighted from their
- palfreys.
- —Ho, varlet! cried he, who by his mien seemed the leader of the party.
- Saucy knave! To us!
- So saying he knocked loudly with his swordhilt upon the open lattice.
- Mine host came forth at the summons, girding him with his tabard.
- —Give you good den, my masters, said he with an obsequious bow.
- —Bestir thyself, sirrah! cried he who had knocked. Look to our steeds.
- And for ourselves give us of your best for ifaith we need it.
- —Lackaday, good masters, said the host, my poor house has but a bare
- larder. I know not what to offer your lordships.
- —How now, fellow? cried the second of the party, a man of pleasant
- countenance, So servest thou the king’s messengers, master Taptun?
- An instantaneous change overspread the landlord’s visage.
- —Cry you mercy, gentlemen, he said humbly. An you be the king’s
- messengers (God shield His Majesty!) you shall not want for aught. The
- king’s friends (God bless His Majesty!) shall not go afasting in my
- house I warrant me.
- —Then about! cried the traveller who had not spoken, a lusty
- trencherman by his aspect. Hast aught to give us?
- Mine host bowed again as he made answer:
- —What say you, good masters, to a squab pigeon pasty, some collops of
- venison, a saddle of veal, widgeon with crisp hog’s bacon, a boar’s
- head with pistachios, a bason of jolly custard, a medlar tansy and a
- flagon of old Rhenish?
- —Gadzooks! cried the last speaker. That likes me well. Pistachios!
- —Aha! cried he of the pleasant countenance. A poor house and a bare
- larder, quotha! ’Tis a merry rogue.
- So in comes Martin asking where was Bloom.
- —Where is he? says Lenehan. Defrauding widows and orphans.
- —Isn’t that a fact, says John Wyse, what I was telling the citizen
- about Bloom and the Sinn Fein?
- —That’s so, says Martin. Or so they allege.
- —Who made those allegations? says Alf.
- —I, says Joe. I’m the alligator.
- —And after all, says John Wyse, why can’t a jew love his country like
- the next fellow?
- —Why not? says J. J., when he’s quite sure which country it is.
- —Is he a jew or a gentile or a holy Roman or a swaddler or what the
- hell is he? says Ned. Or who is he? No offence, Crofton.
- —Who is Junius? says J. J.
- —We don’t want him, says Crofter the Orangeman or presbyterian.
- —He’s a perverted jew, says Martin, from a place in Hungary and it was
- he drew up all the plans according to the Hungarian system. We know
- that in the castle.
- —Isn’t he a cousin of Bloom the dentist? says Jack Power.
- —Not at all, says Martin. Only namesakes. His name was Virag, the
- father’s name that poisoned himself. He changed it by deedpoll, the
- father did.
- —That’s the new Messiah for Ireland! says the citizen. Island of saints
- and sages!
- —Well, they’re still waiting for their redeemer, says Martin. For that
- matter so are we.
- —Yes, says J. J., and every male that’s born they think it may be their
- Messiah. And every jew is in a tall state of excitement, I believe,
- till he knows if he’s a father or a mother.
- —Expecting every moment will be his next, says Lenehan.
- —O, by God, says Ned, you should have seen Bloom before that son of his
- that died was born. I met him one day in the south city markets buying
- a tin of Neave’s food six weeks before the wife was delivered.
- —_En ventre sa mère_, says J. J.
- —Do you call that a man? says the citizen.
- —I wonder did he ever put it out of sight, says Joe.
- —Well, there were two children born anyhow, says Jack Power.
- —And who does he suspect? says the citizen.
- Gob, there’s many a true word spoken in jest. One of those mixed
- middlings he is. Lying up in the hotel Pisser was telling me once a
- month with headache like a totty with her courses. Do you know what I’m
- telling you? It’d be an act of God to take a hold of a fellow the like
- of that and throw him in the bloody sea. Justifiable homicide, so it
- would. Then sloping off with his five quid without putting up a pint of
- stuff like a man. Give us your blessing. Not as much as would blind
- your eye.
- —Charity to the neighbour, says Martin. But where is he? We can’t wait.
- —A wolf in sheep’s clothing, says the citizen. That’s what he is. Virag
- from Hungary! Ahasuerus I call him. Cursed by God.
- —Have you time for a brief libation, Martin? says Ned.
- —Only one, says Martin. We must be quick. J. J. and S.
- —You, Jack? Crofton? Three half ones, Terry.
- —Saint Patrick would want to land again at Ballykinlar and convert us,
- says the citizen, after allowing things like that to contaminate our
- shores.
- —Well, says Martin, rapping for his glass. God bless all here is my
- prayer.
- —Amen, says the citizen.
- —And I’m sure He will, says Joe.
- And at the sound of the sacring bell, headed by a crucifer with
- acolytes, thurifers, boatbearers, readers, ostiarii, deacons and
- subdeacons, the blessed company drew nigh of mitred abbots and priors
- and guardians and monks and friars: the monks of Benedict of Spoleto,
- Carthusians and Camaldolesi, Cistercians and Olivetans, Oratorians and
- Vallombrosans, and the friars of Augustine, Brigittines,
- Premonstratensians, Servi, Trinitarians, and the children of Peter
- Nolasco: and therewith from Carmel mount the children of Elijah prophet
- led by Albert bishop and by Teresa of Avila, calced and other: and
- friars, brown and grey, sons of poor Francis, capuchins, cordeliers,
- minimes and observants and the daughters of Clara: and the sons of
- Dominic, the friars preachers, and the sons of Vincent: and the monks
- of S. Wolstan: and Ignatius his children: and the confraternity of the
- christian brothers led by the reverend brother Edmund Ignatius Rice.
- And after came all saints and martyrs, virgins and confessors: S. Cyr
- and S. Isidore Arator and S. James the Less and S. Phocas of Sinope and
- S. Julian Hospitator and S. Felix de Cantalice and S. Simon Stylites
- and S. Stephen Protomartyr and S. John of God and S. Ferreol and S.
- Leugarde and S. Theodotus and S. Vulmar and S. Richard and S. Vincent
- de Paul and S. Martin of Todi and S. Martin of Tours and S. Alfred and
- S. Joseph and S. Denis and S. Cornelius and S. Leopold and S. Bernard
- and S. Terence and S. Edward and S. Owen Caniculus and S. Anonymous and
- S. Eponymous and S. Pseudonymous and S. Homonymous and S. Paronymous
- and S. Synonymous and S. Laurence O’Toole and S. James of Dingle and
- Compostella and S. Columcille and S. Columba and S. Celestine and S.
- Colman and S. Kevin and S. Brendan and S. Frigidian and S. Senan and S.
- Fachtna and S. Columbanus and S. Gall and S. Fursey and S. Fintan and
- S. Fiacre and S. John Nepomuc and S. Thomas Aquinas and S. Ives of
- Brittany and S. Michan and S. Herman-Joseph and the three patrons of
- holy youth S. Aloysius Gonzaga and S. Stanislaus Kostka and S. John
- Berchmans and the saints Gervasius, Servasius and Bonifacius and S.
- Bride and S. Kieran and S. Canice of Kilkenny and S. Jarlath of Tuam
- and S. Finbarr and S. Pappin of Ballymun and Brother Aloysius Pacificus
- and Brother Louis Bellicosus and the saints Rose of Lima and of Viterbo
- and S. Martha of Bethany and S. Mary of Egypt and S. Lucy and S. Brigid
- and S. Attracta and S. Dympna and S. Ita and S. Marion Calpensis and
- the Blessed Sister Teresa of the Child Jesus and S. Barbara and S.
- Scholastica and S. Ursula with eleven thousand virgins. And all came
- with nimbi and aureoles and gloriae, bearing palms and harps and swords
- and olive crowns, in robes whereon were woven the blessed symbols of
- their efficacies, inkhorns, arrows, loaves, cruses, fetters, axes,
- trees, bridges, babes in a bathtub, shells, wallets, shears, keys,
- dragons, lilies, buckshot, beards, hogs, lamps, bellows, beehives,
- soupladles, stars, snakes, anvils, boxes of vaseline, bells, crutches,
- forceps, stags’ horns, watertight boots, hawks, millstones, eyes on a
- dish, wax candles, aspergills, unicorns. And as they wended their way
- by Nelson’s Pillar, Henry street, Mary street, Capel street, Little
- Britain street chanting the introit in _Epiphania Domini_ which
- beginneth _Surge, illuminare_ and thereafter most sweetly the gradual
- _Omnes_ which saith _de Saba venient_ they did divers wonders such as
- casting out devils, raising the dead to life, multiplying fishes,
- healing the halt and the blind, discovering various articles which had
- been mislaid, interpreting and fulfilling the scriptures, blessing and
- prophesying. And last, beneath a canopy of cloth of gold came the
- reverend Father O’Flynn attended by Malachi and Patrick. And when the
- good fathers had reached the appointed place, the house of Bernard
- Kiernan and Co, limited, 8, 9 and 10 little Britain street, wholesale
- grocers, wine and brandy shippers, licensed for the sale of beer, wine
- and spirits for consumption on the premises, the celebrant blessed the
- house and censed the mullioned windows and the groynes and the vaults
- and the arrises and the capitals and the pediments and the cornices and
- the engrailed arches and the spires and the cupolas and sprinkled the
- lintels thereof with blessed water and prayed that God might bless that
- house as he had blessed the house of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and
- make the angels of His light to inhabit therein. And entering he
- blessed the viands and the beverages and the company of all the blessed
- answered his prayers.
- —_Adiutorium nostrum in nomine Domini._
- —_Qui fecit cœlum et terram._
- —_Dominus vobiscum._
- —_Et cum spiritu tuo._
- And he laid his hands upon that he blessed and gave thanks and he
- prayed and they all with him prayed:
- —_Deus, cuius verbo sanctificantur omnia, benedictionem tuam effunde
- super creaturas istas: et praesta ut quisquis eis secundum legem et
- voluntatem Tuam cum gratiarum actione usus fuerit per invocationem
- sanctissimi nominis Tui corporis sanitatem et animæ tutelam Te auctore
- percipiat per Christum Dominum nostrum._
- —And so say all of us, says Jack.
- —Thousand a year, Lambert, says Crofton or Crawford.
- —Right, says Ned, taking up his John Jameson. And butter for fish.
- I was just looking around to see who the happy thought would strike
- when be damned but in he comes again letting on to be in a hell of a
- hurry.
- —I was just round at the courthouse, says he, looking for you. I hope
- I’m not...
- —No, says Martin, we’re ready.
- Courthouse my eye and your pockets hanging down with gold and silver.
- Mean bloody scut. Stand us a drink itself. Devil a sweet fear! There’s
- a jew for you! All for number one. Cute as a shithouse rat. Hundred to
- five.
- —Don’t tell anyone, says the citizen.
- —Beg your pardon, says he.
- —Come on boys, says Martin, seeing it was looking blue. Come along now.
- —Don’t tell anyone, says the citizen, letting a bawl out of him. It’s a
- secret.
- And the bloody dog woke up and let a growl.
- —Bye bye all, says Martin.
- And he got them out as quick as he could, Jack Power and Crofton or
- whatever you call him and him in the middle of them letting on to be
- all at sea and up with them on the bloody jaunting car.
- —Off with you, says Martin to the jarvey.
- The milkwhite dolphin tossed his mane and, rising in the golden poop
- the helmsman spread the bellying sail upon the wind and stood off
- forward with all sail set, the spinnaker to larboard. A many comely
- nymphs drew nigh to starboard and to larboard and, clinging to the
- sides of the noble bark, they linked their shining forms as doth the
- cunning wheelwright when he fashions about the heart of his wheel the
- equidistant rays whereof each one is sister to another and he binds
- them all with an outer ring and giveth speed to the feet of men whenas
- they ride to a hosting or contend for the smile of ladies fair. Even so
- did they come and set them, those willing nymphs, the undying sisters.
- And they laughed, sporting in a circle of their foam: and the bark
- clave the waves.
- But begob I was just lowering the heel of the pint when I saw the
- citizen getting up to waddle to the door, puffing and blowing with the
- dropsy, and he cursing the curse of Cromwell on him, bell, book and
- candle in Irish, spitting and spatting out of him and Joe and little
- Alf round him like a leprechaun trying to peacify him.
- —Let me alone, says he.
- And begob he got as far as the door and they holding him and he bawls
- out of him:
- —Three cheers for Israel!
- Arrah, sit down on the parliamentary side of your arse for Christ’ sake
- and don’t be making a public exhibition of yourself. Jesus, there’s
- always some bloody clown or other kicking up a bloody murder about
- bloody nothing. Gob, it’d turn the porter sour in your guts, so it
- would.
- And all the ragamuffins and sluts of the nation round the door and
- Martin telling the jarvey to drive ahead and the citizen bawling and
- Alf and Joe at him to whisht and he on his high horse about the jews
- and the loafers calling for a speech and Jack Power trying to get him
- to sit down on the car and hold his bloody jaw and a loafer with a
- patch over his eye starts singing _If the man in the moon was a jew,
- jew, jew_ and a slut shouts out of her:
- —Eh, mister! Your fly is open, mister!
- And says he:
- —Mendelssohn was a jew and Karl Marx and Mercadante and Spinoza. And
- the Saviour was a jew and his father was a jew. Your God.
- —He had no father, says Martin. That’ll do now. Drive ahead.
- —Whose God? says the citizen.
- —Well, his uncle was a jew, says he. Your God was a jew. Christ was a
- jew like me.
- Gob, the citizen made a plunge back into the shop.
- —By Jesus, says he, I’ll brain that bloody jewman for using the holy
- name. By Jesus, I’ll crucify him so I will. Give us that biscuitbox here.
- —Stop! Stop! says Joe.
- A large and appreciative gathering of friends and acquaintances from
- the metropolis and greater Dublin assembled in their thousands to bid
- farewell to Nagyaságos uram Lipóti Virag, late of Messrs Alexander
- Thom’s, printers to His Majesty, on the occasion of his departure for
- the distant clime of Százharminczbrojúgulyás-Dugulás (Meadow of
- Murmuring Waters). The ceremony which went off with great _éclat_ was
- characterised by the most affecting cordiality. An illuminated scroll
- of ancient Irish vellum, the work of Irish artists, was presented to
- the distinguished phenomenologist on behalf of a large section of the
- community and was accompanied by the gift of a silver casket,
- tastefully executed in the style of ancient Celtic ornament, a work
- which reflects every credit on the makers, Messrs Jacob _agus_ Jacob.
- The departing guest was the recipient of a hearty ovation, many of
- those who were present being visibly moved when the select orchestra of
- Irish pipes struck up the wellknown strains of _Come Back to Erin_,
- followed immediately by _Rakóczsy’s March_. Tarbarrels and bonfires
- were lighted along the coastline of the four seas on the summits of the
- Hill of Howth, Three Rock Mountain, Sugarloaf, Bray Head, the mountains
- of Mourne, the Galtees, the Ox and Donegal and Sperrin peaks, the
- Nagles and the Bograghs, the Connemara hills, the reeks of
- M’Gillicuddy, Slieve Aughty, Slieve Bernagh and Slieve Bloom. Amid
- cheers that rent the welkin, responded to by answering cheers from a
- big muster of henchmen on the distant Cambrian and Caledonian hills,
- the mastodontic pleasureship slowly moved away saluted by a final
- floral tribute from the representatives of the fair sex who were
- present in large numbers while, as it proceeded down the river,
- escorted by a flotilla of barges, the flags of the Ballast office and
- Custom House were dipped in salute as were also those of the electrical
- power station at the Pigeonhouse and the Poolbeg Light.
- _Visszontlátásra, kedvés barátom! Visszontlátásra!_ Gone but not
- forgotten.
- Gob, the devil wouldn’t stop him till he got hold of the bloody tin
- anyhow and out with him and little Alf hanging on to his elbow and he
- shouting like a stuck pig, as good as any bloody play in the Queen’s
- royal theatre:
- —Where is he till I murder him?
- And Ned and J. J. paralysed with the laughing.
- —Bloody wars, says I, I’ll be in for the last gospel.
- But as luck would have it the jarvey got the nag’s head round the other
- way and off with him.
- —Hold on, citizen, says Joe. Stop!
- Begob he drew his hand and made a swipe and let fly. Mercy of God the
- sun was in his eyes or he’d have left him for dead. Gob, he near sent
- it into the county Longford. The bloody nag took fright and the old
- mongrel after the car like bloody hell and all the populace shouting
- and laughing and the old tinbox clattering along the street.
- The catastrophe was terrific and instantaneous in its effect. The
- observatory of Dunsink registered in all eleven shocks, all of the
- fifth grade of Mercalli’s scale, and there is no record extant of a
- similar seismic disturbance in our island since the earthquake of 1534,
- the year of the rebellion of Silken Thomas. The epicentre appears to
- have been that part of the metropolis which constitutes the Inn’s Quay
- ward and parish of Saint Michan covering a surface of fortyone acres,
- two roods and one square pole or perch. All the lordly residences in
- the vicinity of the palace of justice were demolished and that noble
- edifice itself, in which at the time of the catastrophe important legal
- debates were in progress, is literally a mass of ruins beneath which it
- is to be feared all the occupants have been buried alive. From the
- reports of eyewitnesses it transpires that the seismic waves were
- accompanied by a violent atmospheric perturbation of cyclonic
- character. An article of headgear since ascertained to belong to the
- much respected clerk of the crown and peace Mr George Fottrell and a
- silk umbrella with gold handle with the engraved initials, crest, coat
- of arms and house number of the erudite and worshipful chairman of
- quarter sessions sir Frederick Falkiner, recorder of Dublin, have been
- discovered by search parties in remote parts of the island
- respectively, the former on the third basaltic ridge of the giant’s
- causeway, the latter embedded to the extent of one foot three inches in
- the sandy beach of Holeopen bay near the old head of Kinsale. Other
- eyewitnesses depose that they observed an incandescent object of
- enormous proportions hurtling through the atmosphere at a terrifying
- velocity in a trajectory directed southwest by west. Messages of
- condolence and sympathy are being hourly received from all parts of the
- different continents and the sovereign pontiff has been graciously
- pleased to decree that a special _missa pro defunctis_ shall be
- celebrated simultaneously by the ordinaries of each and every cathedral
- church of all the episcopal dioceses subject to the spiritual authority
- of the Holy See in suffrage of the souls of those faithful departed who
- have been so unexpectedly called away from our midst. The work of
- salvage, removal of _débris,_ human remains etc has been entrusted to
- Messrs Michael Meade and Son, 159 Great Brunswick street, and Messrs T.
- and C. Martin, 77, 78, 79 and 80 North Wall, assisted by the men and
- officers of the Duke of Cornwall’s light infantry under the general
- supervision of H. R. H., rear admiral, the right honourable sir
- Hercules Hannibal Habeas Corpus Anderson, K. G., K. P., K. T., P. C.,
- K. C. B., M. P., J. P., M. B., D. S. O., S. O. D., M. F. H., M. R. I.
- A., B. L., Mus. Doc., P. L. G., F. T. C. D., F. R. U. I., F. R. C. P.
- I. and F. R. C. S. I.
- You never saw the like of it in all your born puff. Gob, if he got that
- lottery ticket on the side of his poll he’d remember the gold cup, he
- would so, but begob the citizen would have been lagged for assault and
- battery and Joe for aiding and abetting. The jarvey saved his life by
- furious driving as sure as God made Moses. What? O, Jesus, he did. And
- he let a volley of oaths after him.
- —Did I kill him, says he, or what?
- And he shouting to the bloody dog:
- —After him, Garry! After him, boy!
- And the last we saw was the bloody car rounding the corner and old
- sheepsface on it gesticulating and the bloody mongrel after it with his
- lugs back for all he was bloody well worth to tear him limb from limb.
- Hundred to five! Jesus, he took the value of it out of him, I promise
- you.
- When, lo, there came about them all a great brightness and they beheld
- the chariot wherein He stood ascend to heaven. And they beheld Him in
- the chariot, clothed upon in the glory of the brightness, having
- raiment as of the sun, fair as the moon and terrible that for awe they
- durst not look upon Him. And there came a voice out of heaven, calling:
- _Elijah! Elijah!_ And He answered with a main cry: _Abba! Adonai!_ And
- they beheld Him even Him, ben Bloom Elijah, amid clouds of angels
- ascend to the glory of the brightness at an angle of fortyfive degrees
- over Donohoe’s in Little Green street like a shot off a shovel.
- [ 13 ]
- The summer evening had begun to fold the world in its mysterious
- embrace. Far away in the west the sun was setting and the last glow of
- all too fleeting day lingered lovingly on sea and strand, on the proud
- promontory of dear old Howth guarding as ever the waters of the bay, on
- the weedgrown rocks along Sandymount shore and, last but not least, on
- the quiet church whence there streamed forth at times upon the
- stillness the voice of prayer to her who is in her pure radiance a
- beacon ever to the stormtossed heart of man, Mary, star of the sea.
- The three girl friends were seated on the rocks, enjoying the evening
- scene and the air which was fresh but not too chilly. Many a time and
- oft were they wont to come there to that favourite nook to have a cosy
- chat beside the sparkling waves and discuss matters feminine, Cissy
- Caffrey and Edy Boardman with the baby in the pushcar and Tommy and
- Jacky Caffrey, two little curlyheaded boys, dressed in sailor suits
- with caps to match and the name _H. M. S. Belleisle_ printed on both.
- For Tommy and Jacky Caffrey were twins, scarce four years old and very
- noisy and spoiled twins sometimes but for all that darling little
- fellows with bright merry faces and endearing ways about them. They
- were dabbling in the sand with their spades and buckets, building
- castles as children do, or playing with their big coloured ball, happy
- as the day was long. And Edy Boardman was rocking the chubby baby to
- and fro in the pushcar while that young gentleman fairly chuckled with
- delight. He was but eleven months and nine days old and, though still a
- tiny toddler, was just beginning to lisp his first babyish words. Cissy
- Caffrey bent over to him to tease his fat little plucks and the dainty
- dimple in his chin.
- —Now, baby, Cissy Caffrey said. Say out big, big. I want a drink of
- water.
- And baby prattled after her:
- —A jink a jink a jawbo.
- Cissy Caffrey cuddled the wee chap for she was awfully fond of
- children, so patient with little sufferers and Tommy Caffrey could
- never be got to take his castor oil unless it was Cissy Caffrey that
- held his nose and promised him the scatty heel of the loaf or brown
- bread with golden syrup on. What a persuasive power that girl had! But
- to be sure baby Boardman was as good as gold, a perfect little dote in
- his new fancy bib. None of your spoilt beauties, Flora MacFlimsy sort,
- was Cissy Caffrey. A truerhearted lass never drew the breath of life,
- always with a laugh in her gipsylike eyes and a frolicsome word on her
- cherryripe red lips, a girl lovable in the extreme. And Edy Boardman
- laughed too at the quaint language of little brother.
- But just then there was a slight altercation between Master Tommy and
- Master Jacky. Boys will be boys and our two twins were no exception to
- this golden rule. The apple of discord was a certain castle of sand
- which Master Jacky had built and Master Tommy would have it right go
- wrong that it was to be architecturally improved by a frontdoor like
- the Martello tower had. But if Master Tommy was headstrong Master Jacky
- was selfwilled too and, true to the maxim that every little Irishman’s
- house is his castle, he fell upon his hated rival and to such purpose
- that the wouldbe assailant came to grief and (alas to relate!) the
- coveted castle too. Needless to say the cries of discomfited Master
- Tommy drew the attention of the girl friends.
- —Come here, Tommy, his sister called imperatively. At once! And you,
- Jacky, for shame to throw poor Tommy in the dirty sand. Wait till I
- catch you for that.
- His eyes misty with unshed tears Master Tommy came at her call for
- their big sister’s word was law with the twins. And in a sad plight he
- was too after his misadventure. His little man-o’-war top and
- unmentionables were full of sand but Cissy was a past mistress in the
- art of smoothing over life’s tiny troubles and very quickly not one
- speck of sand was to be seen on his smart little suit. Still the blue
- eyes were glistening with hot tears that would well up so she kissed
- away the hurtness and shook her hand at Master Jacky the culprit and
- said if she was near him she wouldn’t be far from him, her eyes dancing
- in admonition.
- —Nasty bold Jacky! she cried.
- She put an arm round the little mariner and coaxed winningly:
- —What’s your name? Butter and cream?
- —Tell us who is your sweetheart, spoke Edy Boardman. Is Cissy your
- sweetheart?
- —Nao, tearful Tommy said.
- —Is Edy Boardman your sweetheart? Cissy queried.
- —Nao, Tommy said.
- —I know, Edy Boardman said none too amiably with an arch glance from
- her shortsighted eyes. I know who is Tommy’s sweetheart. Gerty is
- Tommy’s sweetheart.
- —Nao, Tommy said on the verge of tears.
- Cissy’s quick motherwit guessed what was amiss and she whispered to Edy
- Boardman to take him there behind the pushcar where the gentleman
- couldn’t see and to mind he didn’t wet his new tan shoes.
- But who was Gerty?
- Gerty MacDowell who was seated near her companions, lost in thought,
- gazing far away into the distance was, in very truth, as fair a
- specimen of winsome Irish girlhood as one could wish to see. She was
- pronounced beautiful by all who knew her though, as folks often said,
- she was more a Giltrap than a MacDowell. Her figure was slight and
- graceful, inclining even to fragility but those iron jelloids she had
- been taking of late had done her a world of good much better than the
- Widow Welch’s female pills and she was much better of those discharges
- she used to get and that tired feeling. The waxen pallor of her face
- was almost spiritual in its ivorylike purity though her rosebud mouth
- was a genuine Cupid’s bow, Greekly perfect. Her hands were of finely
- veined alabaster with tapering fingers and as white as lemonjuice and
- queen of ointments could make them though it was not true that she used
- to wear kid gloves in bed or take a milk footbath either. Bertha Supple
- told that once to Edy Boardman, a deliberate lie, when she was black
- out at daggers drawn with Gerty (the girl chums had of course their
- little tiffs from time to time like the rest of mortals) and she told
- her not to let on whatever she did that it was her that told her or
- she’d never speak to her again. No. Honour where honour is due. There
- was an innate refinement, a languid queenly _hauteur_ about Gerty which
- was unmistakably evidenced in her delicate hands and higharched instep.
- Had kind fate but willed her to be born a gentlewoman of high degree in
- her own right and had she only received the benefit of a good education
- Gerty MacDowell might easily have held her own beside any lady in the
- land and have seen herself exquisitely gowned with jewels on her brow
- and patrician suitors at her feet vying with one another to pay their
- devoirs to her. Mayhap it was this, the love that might have been, that
- lent to her softlyfeatured face at whiles a look, tense with suppressed
- meaning, that imparted a strange yearning tendency to the beautiful
- eyes, a charm few could resist. Why have women such eyes of witchery?
- Gerty’s were of the bluest Irish blue, set off by lustrous lashes and
- dark expressive brows. Time was when those brows were not so silkily
- seductive. It was Madame Vera Verity, directress of the Woman Beautiful
- page of the Princess Novelette, who had first advised her to try
- eyebrowleine which gave that haunting expression to the eyes, so
- becoming in leaders of fashion, and she had never regretted it. Then
- there was blushing scientifically cured and how to be tall increase
- your height and you have a beautiful face but your nose? That would
- suit Mrs Dignam because she had a button one. But Gerty’s crowning
- glory was her wealth of wonderful hair. It was dark brown with a
- natural wave in it. She had cut it that very morning on account of the
- new moon and it nestled about her pretty head in a profusion of
- luxuriant clusters and pared her nails too, Thursday for wealth. And
- just now at Edy’s words as a telltale flush, delicate as the faintest
- rosebloom, crept into her cheeks she looked so lovely in her sweet
- girlish shyness that of a surety God’s fair land of Ireland did not
- hold her equal.
- For an instant she was silent with rather sad downcast eyes. She was
- about to retort but something checked the words on her tongue.
- Inclination prompted her to speak out: dignity told her to be silent.
- The pretty lips pouted awhile but then she glanced up and broke out
- into a joyous little laugh which had in it all the freshness of a young
- May morning. She knew right well, no-one better, what made squinty Edy
- say that because of him cooling in his attentions when it was simply a
- lovers’ quarrel. As per usual somebody’s nose was out of joint about
- the boy that had the bicycle off the London bridge road always riding
- up and down in front of her window. Only now his father kept him in in
- the evenings studying hard to get an exhibition in the intermediate
- that was on and he was going to go to Trinity college to study for a
- doctor when he left the high school like his brother W. E. Wylie who
- was racing in the bicycle races in Trinity college university. Little
- recked he perhaps for what she felt, that dull aching void in her heart
- sometimes, piercing to the core. Yet he was young and perchance he
- might learn to love her in time. They were protestants in his family
- and of course Gerty knew Who came first and after Him the Blessed
- Virgin and then Saint Joseph. But he was undeniably handsome with an
- exquisite nose and he was what he looked, every inch a gentleman, the
- shape of his head too at the back without his cap on that she would
- know anywhere something off the common and the way he turned the
- bicycle at the lamp with his hands off the bars and also the nice
- perfume of those good cigarettes and besides they were both of a size
- too he and she and that was why Edy Boardman thought she was so
- frightfully clever because he didn’t go and ride up and down in front
- of her bit of a garden.
- Gerty was dressed simply but with the instinctive taste of a votary of
- Dame Fashion for she felt that there was just a might that he might be
- out. A neat blouse of electric blue selftinted by dolly dyes (because
- it was expected in the _Lady’s Pictorial_ that electric blue would be
- worn) with a smart vee opening down to the division and kerchief pocket
- (in which she always kept a piece of cottonwool scented with her
- favourite perfume because the handkerchief spoiled the sit) and a navy
- threequarter skirt cut to the stride showed off her slim graceful
- figure to perfection. She wore a coquettish little love of a hat of
- wideleaved nigger straw contrast trimmed with an underbrim of eggblue
- chenille and at the side a butterfly bow of silk to tone. All Tuesday
- week afternoon she was hunting to match that chenille but at last she
- found what she wanted at Clery’s summer sales, the very it, slightly
- shopsoiled but you would never notice, seven fingers two and a penny.
- She did it up all by herself and what joy was hers when she tried it on
- then, smiling at the lovely reflection which the mirror gave back to
- her! And when she put it on the waterjug to keep the shape she knew
- that that would take the shine out of some people she knew. Her shoes
- were the newest thing in footwear (Edy Boardman prided herself that she
- was very _petite_ but she never had a foot like Gerty MacDowell, a
- five, and never would ash, oak or elm) with patent toecaps and just one
- smart buckle over her higharched instep. Her wellturned ankle displayed
- its perfect proportions beneath her skirt and just the proper amount
- and no more of her shapely limbs encased in finespun hose with
- highspliced heels and wide garter tops. As for undies they were Gerty’s
- chief care and who that knows the fluttering hopes and fears of sweet
- seventeen (though Gerty would never see seventeen again) can find it in
- his heart to blame her? She had four dinky sets with awfully pretty
- stitchery, three garments and nighties extra, and each set slotted with
- different coloured ribbons, rosepink, pale blue, mauve and peagreen,
- and she aired them herself and blued them when they came home from the
- wash and ironed them and she had a brickbat to keep the iron on because
- she wouldn’t trust those washerwomen as far as she’d see them scorching
- the things. She was wearing the blue for luck, hoping against hope, her
- own colour and lucky too for a bride to have a bit of blue somewhere on
- her because the green she wore that day week brought grief because his
- father brought him in to study for the intermediate exhibition and
- because she thought perhaps he might be out because when she was
- dressing that morning she nearly slipped up the old pair on her inside
- out and that was for luck and lovers’ meeting if you put those things
- on inside out or if they got untied that he was thinking about you so
- long as it wasn’t of a Friday.
- And yet and yet! That strained look on her face! A gnawing sorrow is
- there all the time. Her very soul is in her eyes and she would give
- worlds to be in the privacy of her own familiar chamber where, giving
- way to tears, she could have a good cry and relieve her pentup feelings
- though not too much because she knew how to cry nicely before the
- mirror. You are lovely, Gerty, it said. The paly light of evening falls
- upon a face infinitely sad and wistful. Gerty MacDowell yearns in vain.
- Yes, she had known from the very first that her daydream of a marriage
- has been arranged and the weddingbells ringing for Mrs Reggy Wylie T.
- C. D. (because the one who married the elder brother would be Mrs
- Wylie) and in the fashionable intelligence Mrs Gertrude Wylie was
- wearing a sumptuous confection of grey trimmed with expensive blue fox
- was not to be. He was too young to understand. He would not believe in
- love, a woman’s birthright. The night of the party long ago in Stoer’s
- (he was still in short trousers) when they were alone and he stole an
- arm round her waist she went white to the very lips. He called her
- little one in a strangely husky voice and snatched a half kiss (the
- first!) but it was only the end of her nose and then he hastened from
- the room with a remark about refreshments. Impetuous fellow! Strength
- of character had never been Reggy Wylie’s strong point and he who would
- woo and win Gerty MacDowell must be a man among men. But waiting,
- always waiting to be asked and it was leap year too and would soon be
- over. No prince charming is her beau ideal to lay a rare and wondrous
- love at her feet but rather a manly man with a strong quiet face who
- had not found his ideal, perhaps his hair slightly flecked with grey,
- and who would understand, take her in his sheltering arms, strain her
- to him in all the strength of his deep passionate nature and comfort
- her with a long long kiss. It would be like heaven. For such a one she
- yearns this balmy summer eve. With all the heart of her she longs to be
- his only, his affianced bride for riches for poor, in sickness in
- health, till death us two part, from this to this day forward.
- And while Edy Boardman was with little Tommy behind the pushcar she was
- just thinking would the day ever come when she could call herself his
- little wife to be. Then they could talk about her till they went blue
- in the face, Bertha Supple too, and Edy, little spitfire, because she
- would be twentytwo in November. She would care for him with creature
- comforts too for Gerty was womanly wise and knew that a mere man liked
- that feeling of hominess. Her griddlecakes done to a goldenbrown hue
- and queen Ann’s pudding of delightful creaminess had won golden
- opinions from all because she had a lucky hand also for lighting a
- fire, dredge in the fine selfraising flour and always stir in the same
- direction, then cream the milk and sugar and whisk well the white of
- eggs though she didn’t like the eating part when there were any people
- that made her shy and often she wondered why you couldn’t eat something
- poetical like violets or roses and they would have a beautifully
- appointed drawingroom with pictures and engravings and the photograph
- of grandpapa Giltrap’s lovely dog Garryowen that almost talked it was
- so human and chintz covers for the chairs and that silver toastrack in
- Clery’s summer jumble sales like they have in rich houses. He would be
- tall with broad shoulders (she had always admired tall men for a
- husband) with glistening white teeth under his carefully trimmed
- sweeping moustache and they would go on the continent for their
- honeymoon (three wonderful weeks!) and then, when they settled down in
- a nice snug and cosy little homely house, every morning they would both
- have brekky, simple but perfectly served, for their own two selves and
- before he went out to business he would give his dear little wifey a
- good hearty hug and gaze for a moment deep down into her eyes.
- Edy Boardman asked Tommy Caffrey was he done and he said yes so then
- she buttoned up his little knickerbockers for him and told him to run
- off and play with Jacky and to be good now and not to fight. But Tommy
- said he wanted the ball and Edy told him no that baby was playing with
- the ball and if he took it there’d be wigs on the green but Tommy said
- it was his ball and he wanted his ball and he pranced on the ground, if
- you please. The temper of him! O, he was a man already was little Tommy
- Caffrey since he was out of pinnies. Edy told him no, no and to be off
- now with him and she told Cissy Caffrey not to give in to him.
- —You’re not my sister, naughty Tommy said. It’s my ball.
- But Cissy Caffrey told baby Boardman to look up, look up high at her
- finger and she snatched the ball quickly and threw it along the sand
- and Tommy after it in full career, having won the day.
- —Anything for a quiet life, laughed Ciss.
- And she tickled tiny tot’s two cheeks to make him forget and played
- here’s the lord mayor, here’s his two horses, here’s his gingerbread
- carriage and here he walks in, chinchopper, chinchopper, chinchopper
- chin. But Edy got as cross as two sticks about him getting his own way
- like that from everyone always petting him.
- —I’d like to give him something, she said, so I would, where I won’t
- say.
- —On the beeoteetom, laughed Cissy merrily.
- Gerty MacDowell bent down her head and crimsoned at the idea of Cissy
- saying an unladylike thing like that out loud she’d be ashamed of her
- life to say, flushing a deep rosy red, and Edy Boardman said she was
- sure the gentleman opposite heard what she said. But not a pin cared
- Ciss.
- —Let him! she said with a pert toss of her head and a piquant tilt of
- her nose. Give it to him too on the same place as quick as I’d look at
- him.
- Madcap Ciss with her golliwog curls. You had to laugh at her sometimes.
- For instance when she asked you would you have some more Chinese tea
- and jaspberry ram and when she drew the jugs too and the men’s faces on
- her nails with red ink make you split your sides or when she wanted to
- go where you know she said she wanted to run and pay a visit to the
- Miss White. That was just like Cissycums. O, and will you ever forget
- her the evening she dressed up in her father’s suit and hat and the
- burned cork moustache and walked down Tritonville road, smoking a
- cigarette. There was none to come up to her for fun. But she was
- sincerity itself, one of the bravest and truest hearts heaven ever
- made, not one of your twofaced things, too sweet to be wholesome.
- And then there came out upon the air the sound of voices and the
- pealing anthem of the organ. It was the men’s temperance retreat
- conducted by the missioner, the reverend John Hughes S. J., rosary,
- sermon and benediction of the Most Blessed Sacrament. They were there
- gathered together without distinction of social class (and a most
- edifying spectacle it was to see) in that simple fane beside the waves,
- after the storms of this weary world, kneeling before the feet of the
- immaculate, reciting the litany of Our Lady of Loreto, beseeching her
- to intercede for them, the old familiar words, holy Mary, holy virgin
- of virgins. How sad to poor Gerty’s ears! Had her father only avoided
- the clutches of the demon drink, by taking the pledge or those powders
- the drink habit cured in Pearson’s Weekly, she might now be rolling in
- her carriage, second to none. Over and over had she told herself that
- as she mused by the dying embers in a brown study without the lamp
- because she hated two lights or oftentimes gazing out of the window
- dreamily by the hour at the rain falling on the rusty bucket, thinking.
- But that vile decoction which has ruined so many hearths and homes had
- cast its shadow over her childhood days. Nay, she had even witnessed in
- the home circle deeds of violence caused by intemperance and had seen
- her own father, a prey to the fumes of intoxication, forget himself
- completely for if there was one thing of all things that Gerty knew it
- was that the man who lifts his hand to a woman save in the way of
- kindness, deserves to be branded as the lowest of the low.
- And still the voices sang in supplication to the Virgin most powerful,
- Virgin most merciful. And Gerty, rapt in thought, scarce saw or heard
- her companions or the twins at their boyish gambols or the gentleman
- off Sandymount green that Cissy Caffrey called the man that was so like
- himself passing along the strand taking a short walk. You never saw him
- any way screwed but still and for all that she would not like him for a
- father because he was too old or something or on account of his face
- (it was a palpable case of Doctor Fell) or his carbuncly nose with the
- pimples on it and his sandy moustache a bit white under his nose. Poor
- father! With all his faults she loved him still when he sang _Tell me,
- Mary, how to woo thee_ or _My love and cottage near Rochelle_ and they
- had stewed cockles and lettuce with Lazenby’s salad dressing for supper
- and when he sang _The moon hath raised_ with Mr Dignam that died
- suddenly and was buried, God have mercy on him, from a stroke. Her
- mother’s birthday that was and Charley was home on his holidays and Tom
- and Mr Dignam and Mrs and Patsy and Freddy Dignam and they were to have
- had a group taken. No-one would have thought the end was so near. Now
- he was laid to rest. And her mother said to him to let that be a
- warning to him for the rest of his days and he couldn’t even go to the
- funeral on account of the gout and she had to go into town to bring him
- the letters and samples from his office about Catesby’s cork lino,
- artistic, standard designs, fit for a palace, gives tiptop wear and
- always bright and cheery in the home.
- A sterling good daughter was Gerty just like a second mother in the
- house, a ministering angel too with a little heart worth its weight in
- gold. And when her mother had those raging splitting headaches who was
- it rubbed the menthol cone on her forehead but Gerty though she didn’t
- like her mother’s taking pinches of snuff and that was the only single
- thing they ever had words about, taking snuff. Everyone thought the
- world of her for her gentle ways. It was Gerty who turned off the gas
- at the main every night and it was Gerty who tacked up on the wall of
- that place where she never forgot every fortnight the chlorate of lime
- Mr Tunney the grocer’s christmas almanac, the picture of halcyon days
- where a young gentleman in the costume they used to wear then with a
- threecornered hat was offering a bunch of flowers to his ladylove with
- oldtime chivalry through her lattice window. You could see there was a
- story behind it. The colours were done something lovely. She was in a
- soft clinging white in a studied attitude and the gentleman was in
- chocolate and he looked a thorough aristocrat. She often looked at them
- dreamily when she went there for a certain purpose and felt her own
- arms that were white and soft just like hers with the sleeves back and
- thought about those times because she had found out in Walker’s
- pronouncing dictionary that belonged to grandpapa Giltrap about the
- halcyon days what they meant.
- The twins were now playing in the most approved brotherly fashion till
- at last Master Jacky who was really as bold as brass there was no
- getting behind that deliberately kicked the ball as hard as ever he
- could down towards the seaweedy rocks. Needless to say poor Tommy was
- not slow to voice his dismay but luckily the gentleman in black who was
- sitting there by himself came gallantly to the rescue and intercepted
- the ball. Our two champions claimed their plaything with lusty cries
- and to avoid trouble Cissy Caffrey called to the gentleman to throw it
- to her please. The gentleman aimed the ball once or twice and then
- threw it up the strand towards Cissy Caffrey but it rolled down the
- slope and stopped right under Gerty’s skirt near the little pool by the
- rock. The twins clamoured again for it and Cissy told her to kick it
- away and let them fight for it so Gerty drew back her foot but she
- wished their stupid ball hadn’t come rolling down to her and she gave a
- kick but she missed and Edy and Cissy laughed.
- —If you fail try again, Edy Boardman said.
- Gerty smiled assent and bit her lip. A delicate pink crept into her
- pretty cheek but she was determined to let them see so she just lifted
- her skirt a little but just enough and took good aim and gave the ball
- a jolly good kick and it went ever so far and the two twins after it
- down towards the shingle. Pure jealousy of course it was nothing else
- to draw attention on account of the gentleman opposite looking. She
- felt the warm flush, a danger signal always with Gerty MacDowell,
- surging and flaming into her cheeks. Till then they had only exchanged
- glances of the most casual but now under the brim of her new hat she
- ventured a look at him and the face that met her gaze there in the
- twilight, wan and strangely drawn, seemed to her the saddest she had
- ever seen.
- Through the open window of the church the fragrant incense was wafted
- and with it the fragrant names of her who was conceived without stain
- of original sin, spiritual vessel, pray for us, honourable vessel, pray
- for us, vessel of singular devotion, pray for us, mystical rose. And
- careworn hearts were there and toilers for their daily bread and many
- who had erred and wandered, their eyes wet with contrition but for all
- that bright with hope for the reverend father Father Hughes had told
- them what the great saint Bernard said in his famous prayer of Mary,
- the most pious Virgin’s intercessory power that it was not recorded in
- any age that those who implored her powerful protection were ever
- abandoned by her.
- The twins were now playing again right merrily for the troubles of
- childhood are but as fleeting summer showers. Cissy Caffrey played with
- baby Boardman till he crowed with glee, clapping baby hands in air.
- Peep she cried behind the hood of the pushcar and Edy asked where was
- Cissy gone and then Cissy popped up her head and cried ah! and, my
- word, didn’t the little chap enjoy that! And then she told him to say
- papa.
- —Say papa, baby. Say pa pa pa pa pa pa pa.
- And baby did his level best to say it for he was very intelligent for
- eleven months everyone said and big for his age and the picture of
- health, a perfect little bunch of love, and he would certainly turn out
- to be something great, they said.
- —Haja ja ja haja.
- Cissy wiped his little mouth with the dribbling bib and wanted him to
- sit up properly and say pa pa pa but when she undid the strap she cried
- out, holy saint Denis, that he was possing wet and to double the half
- blanket the other way under him. Of course his infant majesty was most
- obstreperous at such toilet formalities and he let everyone know it:
- —Habaa baaaahabaaa baaaa.
- And two great big lovely big tears coursing down his cheeks. It was all
- no use soothering him with no, nono, baby, no and telling him about the
- geegee and where was the puffpuff but Ciss, always readywitted, gave
- him in his mouth the teat of the suckingbottle and the young heathen
- was quickly appeased.
- Gerty wished to goodness they would take their squalling baby home out
- of that and not get on her nerves, no hour to be out, and the little
- brats of twins. She gazed out towards the distant sea. It was like the
- paintings that man used to do on the pavement with all the coloured
- chalks and such a pity too leaving them there to be all blotted out,
- the evening and the clouds coming out and the Bailey light on Howth and
- to hear the music like that and the perfume of those incense they
- burned in the church like a kind of waft. And while she gazed her heart
- went pitapat. Yes, it was her he was looking at, and there was meaning
- in his look. His eyes burned into her as though they would search her
- through and through, read her very soul. Wonderful eyes they were,
- superbly expressive, but could you trust them? People were so queer.
- She could see at once by his dark eyes and his pale intellectual face
- that he was a foreigner, the image of the photo she had of Martin
- Harvey, the matinee idol, only for the moustache which she preferred
- because she wasn’t stagestruck like Winny Rippingham that wanted they
- two to always dress the same on account of a play but she could not see
- whether he had an aquiline nose or a slightly _retroussé_ from where he
- was sitting. He was in deep mourning, she could see that, and the story
- of a haunting sorrow was written on his face. She would have given
- worlds to know what it was. He was looking up so intently, so still,
- and he saw her kick the ball and perhaps he could see the bright steel
- buckles of her shoes if she swung them like that thoughtfully with the
- toes down. She was glad that something told her to put on the
- transparent stockings thinking Reggy Wylie might be out but that was
- far away. Here was that of which she had so often dreamed. It was he
- who mattered and there was joy on her face because she wanted him
- because she felt instinctively that he was like no-one else. The very
- heart of the girlwoman went out to him, her dreamhusband, because she
- knew on the instant it was him. If he had suffered, more sinned against
- than sinning, or even, even, if he had been himself a sinner, a wicked
- man, she cared not. Even if he was a protestant or methodist she could
- convert him easily if he truly loved her. There were wounds that wanted
- healing with heartbalm. She was a womanly woman not like other flighty
- girls unfeminine he had known, those cyclists showing off what they
- hadn’t got and she just yearned to know all, to forgive all if she
- could make him fall in love with her, make him forget the memory of the
- past. Then mayhap he would embrace her gently, like a real man,
- crushing her soft body to him, and love her, his ownest girlie, for
- herself alone.
- Refuge of sinners. Comfortress of the afflicted. _Ora pro nobis_. Well
- has it been said that whosoever prays to her with faith and constancy
- can never be lost or cast away: and fitly is she too a haven of refuge
- for the afflicted because of the seven dolours which transpierced her
- own heart. Gerty could picture the whole scene in the church, the
- stained glass windows lighted up, the candles, the flowers and the blue
- banners of the blessed Virgin’s sodality and Father Conroy was helping
- Canon O’Hanlon at the altar, carrying things in and out with his eyes
- cast down. He looked almost a saint and his confessionbox was so quiet
- and clean and dark and his hands were just like white wax and if ever
- she became a Dominican nun in their white habit perhaps he might come
- to the convent for the novena of Saint Dominic. He told her that time
- when she told him about that in confession, crimsoning up to the roots
- of her hair for fear he could see, not to be troubled because that was
- only the voice of nature and we were all subject to nature’s laws, he
- said, in this life and that that was no sin because that came from the
- nature of woman instituted by God, he said, and that Our Blessed Lady
- herself said to the archangel Gabriel be it done unto me according to
- Thy Word. He was so kind and holy and often and often she thought and
- thought could she work a ruched teacosy with embroidered floral design
- for him as a present or a clock but they had a clock she noticed on the
- mantelpiece white and gold with a canarybird that came out of a little
- house to tell the time the day she went there about the flowers for the
- forty hours’ adoration because it was hard to know what sort of a
- present to give or perhaps an album of illuminated views of Dublin or
- some place.
- The exasperating little brats of twins began to quarrel again and Jacky
- threw the ball out towards the sea and they both ran after it. Little
- monkeys common as ditchwater. Someone ought to take them and give them
- a good hiding for themselves to keep them in their places, the both of
- them. And Cissy and Edy shouted after them to come back because they
- were afraid the tide might come in on them and be drowned.
- —Jacky! Tommy!
- Not they! What a great notion they had! So Cissy said it was the very
- last time she’d ever bring them out. She jumped up and called them and
- she ran down the slope past him, tossing her hair behind her which had
- a good enough colour if there had been more of it but with all the
- thingamerry she was always rubbing into it she couldn’t get it to grow
- long because it wasn’t natural so she could just go and throw her hat
- at it. She ran with long gandery strides it was a wonder she didn’t rip
- up her skirt at the side that was too tight on her because there was a
- lot of the tomboy about Cissy Caffrey and she was a forward piece
- whenever she thought she had a good opportunity to show off and just
- because she was a good runner she ran like that so that he could see
- all the end of her petticoat running and her skinny shanks up as far as
- possible. It would have served her just right if she had tripped up
- over something accidentally on purpose with her high crooked French
- heels on her to make her look tall and got a fine tumble. _Tableau!_
- That would have been a very charming exposé for a gentleman like that
- to witness.
- Queen of angels, queen of patriarchs, queen of prophets, of all saints,
- they prayed, queen of the most holy rosary and then Father Conroy
- handed the thurible to Canon O’Hanlon and he put in the incense and
- censed the Blessed Sacrament and Cissy Caffrey caught the two twins and
- she was itching to give them a ringing good clip on the ear but she
- didn’t because she thought he might be watching but she never made a
- bigger mistake in all her life because Gerty could see without looking
- that he never took his eyes off of her and then Canon O’Hanlon handed
- the thurible back to Father Conroy and knelt down looking up at the
- Blessed Sacrament and the choir began to sing the _Tantum ergo_ and she
- just swung her foot in and out in time as the music rose and fell to
- the _Tantumer gosa cramen tum_. Three and eleven she paid for those
- stockings in Sparrow’s of George’s street on the Tuesday, no the Monday
- before Easter and there wasn’t a brack on them and that was what he was
- looking at, transparent, and not at her insignificant ones that had
- neither shape nor form (the cheek of her!) because he had eyes in his
- head to see the difference for himself.
- Cissy came up along the strand with the two twins and their ball with
- her hat anyhow on her to one side after her run and she did look a
- streel tugging the two kids along with the flimsy blouse she bought
- only a fortnight before like a rag on her back and a bit of her
- petticoat hanging like a caricature. Gerty just took off her hat for a
- moment to settle her hair and a prettier, a daintier head of nutbrown
- tresses was never seen on a girl’s shoulders—a radiant little vision,
- in sooth, almost maddening in its sweetness. You would have to travel
- many a long mile before you found a head of hair the like of that. She
- could almost see the swift answering flash of admiration in his eyes
- that set her tingling in every nerve. She put on her hat so that she
- could see from underneath the brim and swung her buckled shoe faster
- for her breath caught as she caught the expression in his eyes. He was
- eying her as a snake eyes its prey. Her woman’s instinct told her that
- she had raised the devil in him and at the thought a burning scarlet
- swept from throat to brow till the lovely colour of her face became a
- glorious rose.
- Edy Boardman was noticing it too because she was squinting at Gerty,
- half smiling, with her specs like an old maid, pretending to nurse the
- baby. Irritable little gnat she was and always would be and that was
- why no-one could get on with her poking her nose into what was no
- concern of hers. And she said to Gerty:
- —A penny for your thoughts.
- —What? replied Gerty with a smile reinforced by the whitest of teeth. I
- was only wondering was it late.
- Because she wished to goodness they’d take the snottynosed twins and
- their babby home to the mischief out of that so that was why she just
- gave a gentle hint about its being late. And when Cissy came up Edy
- asked her the time and Miss Cissy, as glib as you like, said it was
- half past kissing time, time to kiss again. But Edy wanted to know
- because they were told to be in early.
- —Wait, said Cissy, I’ll run ask my uncle Peter over there what’s the
- time by his conundrum.
- So over she went and when he saw her coming she could see him take his
- hand out of his pocket, getting nervous, and beginning to play with his
- watchchain, looking up at the church. Passionate nature though he was
- Gerty could see that he had enormous control over himself. One moment
- he had been there, fascinated by a loveliness that made him gaze, and
- the next moment it was the quiet gravefaced gentleman, selfcontrol
- expressed in every line of his distinguishedlooking figure.
- Cissy said to excuse her would he mind please telling her what was the
- right time and Gerty could see him taking out his watch, listening to
- it and looking up and clearing his throat and he said he was very sorry
- his watch was stopped but he thought it must be after eight because the
- sun was set. His voice had a cultured ring in it and though he spoke in
- measured accents there was a suspicion of a quiver in the mellow tones.
- Cissy said thanks and came back with her tongue out and said uncle said
- his waterworks were out of order.
- Then they sang the second verse of the _Tantum ergo_ and Canon O’Hanlon
- got up again and censed the Blessed Sacrament and knelt down and he
- told Father Conroy that one of the candles was just going to set fire
- to the flowers and Father Conroy got up and settled it all right and
- she could see the gentleman winding his watch and listening to the
- works and she swung her leg more in and out in time. It was getting
- darker but he could see and he was looking all the time that he was
- winding the watch or whatever he was doing to it and then he put it
- back and put his hands back into his pockets. She felt a kind of a
- sensation rushing all over her and she knew by the feel of her scalp
- and that irritation against her stays that that thing must be coming on
- because the last time too was when she clipped her hair on account of
- the moon. His dark eyes fixed themselves on her again drinking in her
- every contour, literally worshipping at her shrine. If ever there was
- undisguised admiration in a man’s passionate gaze it was there plain to
- be seen on that man’s face. It is for you, Gertrude MacDowell, and you
- know it.
- Edy began to get ready to go and it was high time for her and Gerty
- noticed that that little hint she gave had had the desired effect
- because it was a long way along the strand to where there was the place
- to push up the pushcar and Cissy took off the twins’ caps and tidied
- their hair to make herself attractive of course and Canon O’Hanlon
- stood up with his cope poking up at his neck and Father Conroy handed
- him the card to read off and he read out _Panem de coelo praestitisti
- eis_ and Edy and Cissy were talking about the time all the time and
- asking her but Gerty could pay them back in their own coin and she just
- answered with scathing politeness when Edy asked her was she
- heartbroken about her best boy throwing her over. Gerty winced sharply.
- A brief cold blaze shone from her eyes that spoke volumes of scorn
- immeasurable. It hurt—O yes, it cut deep because Edy had her own quiet
- way of saying things like that she knew would wound like the confounded
- little cat she was. Gerty’s lips parted swiftly to frame the word but
- she fought back the sob that rose to her throat, so slim, so flawless,
- so beautifully moulded it seemed one an artist might have dreamed of.
- She had loved him better than he knew. Lighthearted deceiver and fickle
- like all his sex he would never understand what he had meant to her and
- for an instant there was in the blue eyes a quick stinging of tears.
- Their eyes were probing her mercilessly but with a brave effort she
- sparkled back in sympathy as she glanced at her new conquest for them
- to see.
- —O, responded Gerty, quick as lightning, laughing, and the proud head
- flashed up. I can throw my cap at who I like because it’s leap year.
- Her words rang out crystalclear, more musical than the cooing of the
- ringdove, but they cut the silence icily. There was that in her young
- voice that told that she was not a one to be lightly trifled with. As
- for Mr Reggy with his swank and his bit of money she could just chuck
- him aside as if he was so much filth and never again would she cast as
- much as a second thought on him and tear his silly postcard into a
- dozen pieces. And if ever after he dared to presume she could give him
- one look of measured scorn that would make him shrivel up on the spot.
- Miss puny little Edy’s countenance fell to no slight extent and Gerty
- could see by her looking as black as thunder that she was simply in a
- towering rage though she hid it, the little kinnatt, because that shaft
- had struck home for her petty jealousy and they both knew that she was
- something aloof, apart, in another sphere, that she was not of them and
- never would be and there was somebody else too that knew it and saw it
- so they could put that in their pipe and smoke it.
- Edy straightened up baby Boardman to get ready to go and Cissy tucked
- in the ball and the spades and buckets and it was high time too because
- the sandman was on his way for Master Boardman junior. And Cissy told
- him too that billy winks was coming and that baby was to go deedaw and
- baby looked just too ducky, laughing up out of his gleeful eyes, and
- Cissy poked him like that out of fun in his wee fat tummy and baby,
- without as much as by your leave, sent up his compliments to all and
- sundry on to his brandnew dribbling bib.
- —O my! Puddeny pie! protested Ciss. He has his bib destroyed.
- The slight _contretemps_ claimed her attention but in two twos she set
- that little matter to rights.
- Gerty stifled a smothered exclamation and gave a nervous cough and Edy
- asked what and she was just going to tell her to catch it while it was
- flying but she was ever ladylike in her deportment so she simply passed
- it off with consummate tact by saying that that was the benediction
- because just then the bell rang out from the steeple over the quiet
- seashore because Canon O’Hanlon was up on the altar with the veil that
- Father Conroy put round his shoulders giving the benediction with the
- Blessed Sacrament in his hands.
- How moving the scene there in the gathering twilight, the last glimpse
- of Erin, the touching chime of those evening bells and at the same time
- a bat flew forth from the ivied belfry through the dusk, hither,
- thither, with a tiny lost cry. And she could see far away the lights of
- the lighthouses so picturesque she would have loved to do with a box of
- paints because it was easier than to make a man and soon the
- lamplighter would be going his rounds past the presbyterian church
- grounds and along by shady Tritonville avenue where the couples walked
- and lighting the lamp near her window where Reggy Wylie used to turn
- his freewheel like she read in that book _The Lamplighter_ by Miss
- Cummins, author of _Mabel Vaughan_ and other tales. For Gerty had her
- dreams that no-one knew of. She loved to read poetry and when she got a
- keepsake from Bertha Supple of that lovely confession album with the
- coralpink cover to write her thoughts in she laid it in the drawer of
- her toilettable which, though it did not err on the side of luxury, was
- scrupulously neat and clean. It was there she kept her girlish treasure
- trove, the tortoiseshell combs, her child of Mary badge, the whiterose
- scent, the eyebrowleine, her alabaster pouncetbox and the ribbons to
- change when her things came home from the wash and there were some
- beautiful thoughts written in it in violet ink that she bought in
- Hely’s of Dame Street for she felt that she too could write poetry if
- she could only express herself like that poem that appealed to her so
- deeply that she had copied out of the newspaper she found one evening
- round the potherbs. _Art thou real, my ideal?_ it was called by Louis J
- Walsh, Magherafelt, and after there was something about _twilight, wilt
- thou ever?_ and ofttimes the beauty of poetry, so sad in its transient
- loveliness, had misted her eyes with silent tears for she felt that the
- years were slipping by for her, one by one, and but for that one
- shortcoming she knew she need fear no competition and that was an
- accident coming down Dalkey hill and she always tried to conceal it.
- But it must end, she felt. If she saw that magic lure in his eyes there
- would be no holding back for her. Love laughs at locksmiths. She would
- make the great sacrifice. Her every effort would be to share his
- thoughts. Dearer than the whole world would she be to him and gild his
- days with happiness. There was the allimportant question and she was
- dying to know was he a married man or a widower who had lost his wife
- or some tragedy like the nobleman with the foreign name from the land
- of song had to have her put into a madhouse, cruel only to be kind. But
- even if—what then? Would it make a very great difference? From
- everything in the least indelicate her finebred nature instinctively
- recoiled. She loathed that sort of person, the fallen women off the
- accommodation walk beside the Dodder that went with the soldiers and
- coarse men with no respect for a girl’s honour, degrading the sex and
- being taken up to the police station. No, no: not that. They would be
- just good friends like a big brother and sister without all that other
- in spite of the conventions of Society with a big ess. Perhaps it was
- an old flame he was in mourning for from the days beyond recall. She
- thought she understood. She would try to understand him because men
- were so different. The old love was waiting, waiting with little white
- hands stretched out, with blue appealing eyes. Heart of mine! She would
- follow, her dream of love, the dictates of her heart that told her he
- was her all in all, the only man in all the world for her for love was
- the master guide. Nothing else mattered. Come what might she would be
- wild, untrammelled, free.
- Canon O’Hanlon put the Blessed Sacrament back into the tabernacle and
- genuflected and the choir sang _Laudate Dominum omnes gentes_ and then
- he locked the tabernacle door because the benediction was over and
- Father Conroy handed him his hat to put on and crosscat Edy asked
- wasn’t she coming but Jacky Caffrey called out:
- —O, look, Cissy!
- And they all looked was it sheet lightning but Tommy saw it too over
- the trees beside the church, blue and then green and purple.
- —It’s fireworks, Cissy Caffrey said.
- And they all ran down the strand to see over the houses and the church,
- helterskelter, Edy with the pushcar with baby Boardman in it and Cissy
- holding Tommy and Jacky by the hand so they wouldn’t fall running.
- —Come on, Gerty, Cissy called. It’s the bazaar fireworks.
- But Gerty was adamant. She had no intention of being at their beck and
- call. If they could run like rossies she could sit so she said she
- could see from where she was. The eyes that were fastened upon her set
- her pulses tingling. She looked at him a moment, meeting his glance,
- and a light broke in upon her. Whitehot passion was in that face,
- passion silent as the grave, and it had made her his. At last they were
- left alone without the others to pry and pass remarks and she knew he
- could be trusted to the death, steadfast, a sterling man, a man of
- inflexible honour to his fingertips. His hands and face were working
- and a tremour went over her. She leaned back far to look up where the
- fireworks were and she caught her knee in her hands so as not to fall
- back looking up and there was no-one to see only him and her when she
- revealed all her graceful beautifully shaped legs like that, supply
- soft and delicately rounded, and she seemed to hear the panting of his
- heart, his hoarse breathing, because she knew too about the passion of
- men like that, hotblooded, because Bertha Supple told her once in dead
- secret and made her swear she’d never about the gentleman lodger that
- was staying with them out of the Congested Districts Board that had
- pictures cut out of papers of those skirtdancers and highkickers and
- she said he used to do something not very nice that you could imagine
- sometimes in the bed. But this was altogether different from a thing
- like that because there was all the difference because she could almost
- feel him draw her face to his and the first quick hot touch of his
- handsome lips. Besides there was absolution so long as you didn’t do
- the other thing before being married and there ought to be women
- priests that would understand without your telling out and Cissy
- Caffrey too sometimes had that dreamy kind of dreamy look in her eyes
- so that she too, my dear, and Winny Rippingham so mad about actors’
- photographs and besides it was on account of that other thing coming on
- the way it did.
- And Jacky Caffrey shouted to look, there was another and she leaned
- back and the garters were blue to match on account of the transparent
- and they all saw it and they all shouted to look, look, there it was
- and she leaned back ever so far to see the fireworks and something
- queer was flying through the air, a soft thing, to and fro, dark. And
- she saw a long Roman candle going up over the trees, up, up, and, in
- the tense hush, they were all breathless with excitement as it went
- higher and higher and she had to lean back more and more to look up
- after it, high, high, almost out of sight, and her face was suffused
- with a divine, an entrancing blush from straining back and he could see
- her other things too, nainsook knickers, the fabric that caresses the
- skin, better than those other pettiwidth, the green, four and eleven,
- on account of being white and she let him and she saw that he saw and
- then it went so high it went out of sight a moment and she was
- trembling in every limb from being bent so far back that he had a full
- view high up above her knee where no-one ever not even on the swing or
- wading and she wasn’t ashamed and he wasn’t either to look in that
- immodest way like that because he couldn’t resist the sight of the
- wondrous revealment half offered like those skirtdancers behaving so
- immodest before gentlemen looking and he kept on looking, looking. She
- would fain have cried to him chokingly, held out her snowy slender arms
- to him to come, to feel his lips laid on her white brow, the cry of a
- young girl’s love, a little strangled cry, wrung from her, that cry
- that has rung through the ages. And then a rocket sprang and bang shot
- blind blank and O! then the Roman candle burst and it was like a sigh
- of O! and everyone cried O! O! in raptures and it gushed out of it a
- stream of rain gold hair threads and they shed and ah! they were all
- greeny dewy stars falling with golden, O so lovely, O, soft, sweet,
- soft!
- Then all melted away dewily in the grey air: all was silent. Ah! She
- glanced at him as she bent forward quickly, a pathetic little glance of
- piteous protest, of shy reproach under which he coloured like a girl.
- He was leaning back against the rock behind. Leopold Bloom (for it is
- he) stands silent, with bowed head before those young guileless eyes.
- What a brute he had been! At it again? A fair unsullied soul had called
- to him and, wretch that he was, how had he answered? An utter cad he
- had been! He of all men! But there was an infinite store of mercy in
- those eyes, for him too a word of pardon even though he had erred and
- sinned and wandered. Should a girl tell? No, a thousand times no. That
- was their secret, only theirs, alone in the hiding twilight and there
- was none to know or tell save the little bat that flew so softly
- through the evening to and fro and little bats don’t tell.
- Cissy Caffrey whistled, imitating the boys in the football field to
- show what a great person she was: and then she cried:
- —Gerty! Gerty! We’re going. Come on. We can see from farther up.
- Gerty had an idea, one of love’s little ruses. She slipped a hand into
- her kerchief pocket and took out the wadding and waved in reply of
- course without letting him and then slipped it back. Wonder if he’s too
- far to. She rose. Was it goodbye? No. She had to go but they would meet
- again, there, and she would dream of that till then, tomorrow, of her
- dream of yester eve. She drew herself up to her full height. Their
- souls met in a last lingering glance and the eyes that reached her
- heart, full of a strange shining, hung enraptured on her sweet
- flowerlike face. She half smiled at him wanly, a sweet forgiving smile,
- a smile that verged on tears, and then they parted.
- Slowly, without looking back she went down the uneven strand to Cissy,
- to Edy to Jacky and Tommy Caffrey, to little baby Boardman. It was
- darker now and there were stones and bits of wood on the strand and
- slippy seaweed. She walked with a certain quiet dignity characteristic
- of her but with care and very slowly because—because Gerty MacDowell
- was...
- Tight boots? No. She’s lame! O!
- Mr Bloom watched her as she limped away. Poor girl! That’s why she’s
- left on the shelf and the others did a sprint. Thought something was
- wrong by the cut of her jib. Jilted beauty. A defect is ten times worse
- in a woman. But makes them polite. Glad I didn’t know it when she was
- on show. Hot little devil all the same. I wouldn’t mind. Curiosity like
- a nun or a negress or a girl with glasses. That squinty one is
- delicate. Near her monthlies, I expect, makes them feel ticklish. I
- have such a bad headache today. Where did I put the letter? Yes, all
- right. All kinds of crazy longings. Licking pennies. Girl in Tranquilla
- convent that nun told me liked to smell rock oil. Virgins go mad in the
- end I suppose. Sister? How many women in Dublin have it today? Martha,
- she. Something in the air. That’s the moon. But then why don’t all
- women menstruate at the same time with the same moon, I mean? Depends
- on the time they were born I suppose. Or all start scratch then get out
- of step. Sometimes Molly and Milly together. Anyhow I got the best of
- that. Damned glad I didn’t do it in the bath this morning over her
- silly I will punish you letter. Made up for that tramdriver this
- morning. That gouger M’Coy stopping me to say nothing. And his wife
- engagement in the country valise, voice like a pickaxe. Thankful for
- small mercies. Cheap too. Yours for the asking. Because they want it
- themselves. Their natural craving. Shoals of them every evening poured
- out of offices. Reserve better. Don’t want it they throw it at you.
- Catch em alive, O. Pity they can’t see themselves. A dream of
- wellfilled hose. Where was that? Ah, yes. Mutoscope pictures in Capel
- street: for men only. Peeping Tom. Willy’s hat and what the girls did
- with it. Do they snapshot those girls or is it all a fake? _Lingerie_
- does it. Felt for the curves inside her _déshabillé._ Excites them also
- when they’re. I’m all clean come and dirty me. And they like dressing
- one another for the sacrifice. Milly delighted with Molly’s new blouse.
- At first. Put them all on to take them all off. Molly. Why I bought her
- the violet garters. Us too: the tie he wore, his lovely socks and
- turnedup trousers. He wore a pair of gaiters the night that first we
- met. His lovely shirt was shining beneath his what? of jet. Say a woman
- loses a charm with every pin she takes out. Pinned together. O, Mairy
- lost the pin of her. Dressed up to the nines for somebody. Fashion part
- of their charm. Just changes when you’re on the track of the secret.
- Except the east: Mary, Martha: now as then. No reasonable offer
- refused. She wasn’t in a hurry either. Always off to a fellow when they
- are. They never forget an appointment. Out on spec probably. They
- believe in chance because like themselves. And the others inclined to
- give her an odd dig. Girl friends at school, arms round each other’s
- necks or with ten fingers locked, kissing and whispering secrets about
- nothing in the convent garden. Nuns with whitewashed faces, cool coifs
- and their rosaries going up and down, vindictive too for what they
- can’t get. Barbed wire. Be sure now and write to me. And I’ll write to
- you. Now won’t you? Molly and Josie Powell. Till Mr Right comes along,
- then meet once in a blue moon. _Tableau!_ O, look who it is for the
- love of God! How are you at all? What have you been doing with
- yourself? Kiss and delighted to, kiss, to see you. Picking holes in
- each other’s appearance. You’re looking splendid. Sister souls. Showing
- their teeth at one another. How many have you left? Wouldn’t lend each
- other a pinch of salt.
- Ah!
- Devils they are when that’s coming on them. Dark devilish appearance.
- Molly often told me feel things a ton weight. Scratch the sole of my
- foot. O that way! O, that’s exquisite! Feel it myself too. Good to rest
- once in a way. Wonder if it’s bad to go with them then. Safe in one
- way. Turns milk, makes fiddlestrings snap. Something about withering
- plants I read in a garden. Besides they say if the flower withers she
- wears she’s a flirt. All are. Daresay she felt I. When you feel like
- that you often meet what you feel. Liked me or what? Dress they look
- at. Always know a fellow courting: collars and cuffs. Well cocks and
- lions do the same and stags. Same time might prefer a tie undone or
- something. Trousers? Suppose I when I was? No. Gently does it. Dislike
- rough and tumble. Kiss in the dark and never tell. Saw something in me.
- Wonder what. Sooner have me as I am than some poet chap with
- bearsgrease plastery hair, lovelock over his dexter optic. To aid
- gentleman in literary. Ought to attend to my appearance my age. Didn’t
- let her see me in profile. Still, you never know. Pretty girls and ugly
- men marrying. Beauty and the beast. Besides I can’t be so if Molly.
- Took off her hat to show her hair. Wide brim. Bought to hide her face,
- meeting someone might know her, bend down or carry a bunch of flowers
- to smell. Hair strong in rut. Ten bob I got for Molly’s combings when
- we were on the rocks in Holles street. Why not? Suppose he gave her
- money. Why not? All a prejudice. She’s worth ten, fifteen, more, a
- pound. What? I think so. All that for nothing. Bold hand: Mrs Marion.
- Did I forget to write address on that letter like the postcard I sent
- to Flynn? And the day I went to Drimmie’s without a necktie. Wrangle
- with Molly it was put me off. No, I remember. Richie Goulding: he’s
- another. Weighs on his mind. Funny my watch stopped at half past four.
- Dust. Shark liver oil they use to clean. Could do it myself. Save. Was
- that just when he, she?
- O, he did. Into her. She did. Done.
- Ah!
- Mr Bloom with careful hand recomposed his wet shirt. O Lord, that
- little limping devil. Begins to feel cold and clammy. Aftereffect not
- pleasant. Still you have to get rid of it someway. They don’t care.
- Complimented perhaps. Go home to nicey bread and milky and say night
- prayers with the kiddies. Well, aren’t they? See her as she is spoil
- all. Must have the stage setting, the rouge, costume, position, music.
- The name too. _Amours_ of actresses. Nell Gwynn, Mrs Bracegirdle, Maud
- Branscombe. Curtain up. Moonlight silver effulgence. Maiden discovered
- with pensive bosom. Little sweetheart come and kiss me. Still, I feel.
- The strength it gives a man. That’s the secret of it. Good job I let
- off there behind the wall coming out of Dignam’s. Cider that was.
- Otherwise I couldn’t have. Makes you want to sing after. _Lacaus esant
- taratara_. Suppose I spoke to her. What about? Bad plan however if you
- don’t know how to end the conversation. Ask them a question they ask
- you another. Good idea if you’re stuck. Gain time. But then you’re in a
- cart. Wonderful of course if you say: good evening, and you see she’s
- on for it: good evening. O but the dark evening in the Appian way I
- nearly spoke to Mrs Clinch O thinking she was. Whew! Girl in Meath
- street that night. All the dirty things I made her say. All wrong of
- course. My arks she called it. It’s so hard to find one who. Aho! If
- you don’t answer when they solicit must be horrible for them till they
- harden. And kissed my hand when I gave her the extra two shillings.
- Parrots. Press the button and the bird will squeak. Wish she hadn’t
- called me sir. O, her mouth in the dark! And you a married man with a
- single girl! That’s what they enjoy. Taking a man from another woman.
- Or even hear of it. Different with me. Glad to get away from other
- chap’s wife. Eating off his cold plate. Chap in the Burton today
- spitting back gumchewed gristle. French letter still in my pocketbook.
- Cause of half the trouble. But might happen sometime, I don’t think.
- Come in, all is prepared. I dreamt. What? Worst is beginning. How they
- change the venue when it’s not what they like. Ask you do you like
- mushrooms because she once knew a gentleman who. Or ask you what
- someone was going to say when he changed his mind and stopped. Yet if I
- went the whole hog, say: I want to, something like that. Because I did.
- She too. Offend her. Then make it up. Pretend to want something
- awfully, then cry off for her sake. Flatters them. She must have been
- thinking of someone else all the time. What harm? Must since she came
- to the use of reason, he, he and he. First kiss does the trick. The
- propitious moment. Something inside them goes pop. Mushy like, tell by
- their eye, on the sly. First thoughts are best. Remember that till
- their dying day. Molly, lieutenant Mulvey that kissed her under the
- Moorish wall beside the gardens. Fifteen she told me. But her breasts
- were developed. Fell asleep then. After Glencree dinner that was when
- we drove home. Featherbed mountain. Gnashing her teeth in sleep. Lord
- mayor had his eye on her too. Val Dillon. Apoplectic.
- There she is with them down there for the fireworks. My fireworks. Up
- like a rocket, down like a stick. And the children, twins they must be,
- waiting for something to happen. Want to be grownups. Dressing in
- mother’s clothes. Time enough, understand all the ways of the world.
- And the dark one with the mop head and the nigger mouth. I knew she
- could whistle. Mouth made for that. Like Molly. Why that highclass
- whore in Jammet’s wore her veil only to her nose. Would you mind,
- please, telling me the right time? I’ll tell you the right time up a
- dark lane. Say prunes and prisms forty times every morning, cure for
- fat lips. Caressing the little boy too. Onlookers see most of the game.
- Of course they understand birds, animals, babies. In their line.
- Didn’t look back when she was going down the strand. Wouldn’t give that
- satisfaction. Those girls, those girls, those lovely seaside girls.
- Fine eyes she had, clear. It’s the white of the eye brings that out not
- so much the pupil. Did she know what I? Course. Like a cat sitting
- beyond a dog’s jump. Women never meet one like that Wilkins in the high
- school drawing a picture of Venus with all his belongings on show. Call
- that innocence? Poor idiot! His wife has her work cut out for her.
- Never see them sit on a bench marked _Wet Paint_. Eyes all over them.
- Look under the bed for what’s not there. Longing to get the fright of
- their lives. Sharp as needles they are. When I said to Molly the man at
- the corner of Cuffe street was goodlooking, thought she might like,
- twigged at once he had a false arm. Had, too. Where do they get that?
- Typist going up Roger Greene’s stairs two at a time to show her
- understandings. Handed down from father to, mother to daughter, I mean.
- Bred in the bone. Milly for example drying her handkerchief on the
- mirror to save the ironing. Best place for an ad to catch a woman’s eye
- on a mirror. And when I sent her for Molly’s Paisley shawl to
- Prescott’s by the way that ad I must, carrying home the change in her
- stocking! Clever little minx. I never told her. Neat way she carries
- parcels too. Attract men, small thing like that. Holding up her hand,
- shaking it, to let the blood flow back when it was red. Who did you
- learn that from? Nobody. Something the nurse taught me. O, don’t they
- know! Three years old she was in front of Molly’s dressingtable, just
- before we left Lombard street west. Me have a nice pace. Mullingar. Who
- knows? Ways of the world. Young student. Straight on her pins anyway
- not like the other. Still she was game. Lord, I am wet. Devil you are.
- Swell of her calf. Transparent stockings, stretched to breaking point.
- Not like that frump today. A. E. Rumpled stockings. Or the one in
- Grafton street. White. Wow! Beef to the heel.
- A monkey puzzle rocket burst, spluttering in darting crackles. Zrads
- and zrads, zrads, zrads. And Cissy and Tommy and Jacky ran out to see
- and Edy after with the pushcar and then Gerty beyond the curve of the
- rocks. Will she? Watch! Watch! See! Looked round. She smelt an onion.
- Darling, I saw, your. I saw all.
- Lord!
- Did me good all the same. Off colour after Kiernan’s, Dignam’s. For
- this relief much thanks. In _Hamlet,_ that is. Lord! It was all things
- combined. Excitement. When she leaned back, felt an ache at the butt of
- my tongue. Your head it simply swirls. He’s right. Might have made a
- worse fool of myself however. Instead of talking about nothing. Then I
- will tell you all. Still it was a kind of language between us. It
- couldn’t be? No, Gerty they called her. Might be false name however
- like my name and the address Dolphin’s barn a blind.
- Her maiden name was Jemina Brown
- And she lived with her mother in Irishtown.
- Place made me think of that I suppose. All tarred with the same brush.
- Wiping pens in their stockings. But the ball rolled down to her as if
- it understood. Every bullet has its billet. Course I never could throw
- anything straight at school. Crooked as a ram’s horn. Sad however
- because it lasts only a few years till they settle down to potwalloping
- and papa’s pants will soon fit Willy and fuller’s earth for the baby
- when they hold him out to do ah ah. No soft job. Saves them. Keeps them
- out of harm’s way. Nature. Washing child, washing corpse. Dignam.
- Children’s hands always round them. Cocoanut skulls, monkeys, not even
- closed at first, sour milk in their swaddles and tainted curds.
- Oughtn’t to have given that child an empty teat to suck. Fill it up
- with wind. Mrs Beaufoy, Purefoy. Must call to the hospital. Wonder is
- nurse Callan there still. She used to look over some nights when Molly
- was in the Coffee Palace. That young doctor O’Hare I noticed her
- brushing his coat. And Mrs Breen and Mrs Dignam once like that too,
- marriageable. Worst of all at night Mrs Duggan told me in the City
- Arms. Husband rolling in drunk, stink of pub off him like a polecat.
- Have that in your nose in the dark, whiff of stale boose. Then ask in
- the morning: was I drunk last night? Bad policy however to fault the
- husband. Chickens come home to roost. They stick by one another like
- glue. Maybe the women’s fault also. That’s where Molly can knock spots
- off them. It’s the blood of the south. Moorish. Also the form, the
- figure. Hands felt for the opulent. Just compare for instance those
- others. Wife locked up at home, skeleton in the cupboard. Allow me to
- introduce my. Then they trot you out some kind of a nondescript,
- wouldn’t know what to call her. Always see a fellow’s weak point in his
- wife. Still there’s destiny in it, falling in love. Have their own
- secrets between them. Chaps that would go to the dogs if some woman
- didn’t take them in hand. Then little chits of girls, height of a
- shilling in coppers, with little hubbies. As God made them he matched
- them. Sometimes children turn out well enough. Twice nought makes one.
- Or old rich chap of seventy and blushing bride. Marry in May and repent
- in December. This wet is very unpleasant. Stuck. Well the foreskin is
- not back. Better detach.
- Ow!
- Other hand a sixfooter with a wifey up to his watchpocket. Long and the
- short of it. Big he and little she. Very strange about my watch.
- Wristwatches are always going wrong. Wonder is there any magnetic
- influence between the person because that was about the time he. Yes, I
- suppose, at once. Cat’s away, the mice will play. I remember looking in
- Pill lane. Also that now is magnetism. Back of everything magnetism.
- Earth for instance pulling this and being pulled. That causes movement.
- And time, well that’s the time the movement takes. Then if one thing
- stopped the whole ghesabo would stop bit by bit. Because it’s all
- arranged. Magnetic needle tells you what’s going on in the sun, the
- stars. Little piece of steel iron. When you hold out the fork. Come.
- Come. Tip. Woman and man that is. Fork and steel. Molly, he. Dress up
- and look and suggest and let you see and see more and defy you if
- you’re a man to see that and, like a sneeze coming, legs, look, look
- and if you have any guts in you. Tip. Have to let fly.
- Wonder how is she feeling in that region. Shame all put on before third
- person. More put out about a hole in her stocking. Molly, her underjaw
- stuck out, head back, about the farmer in the ridingboots and spurs at
- the horse show. And when the painters were in Lombard street west. Fine
- voice that fellow had. How Giuglini began. Smell that I did. Like
- flowers. It was too. Violets. Came from the turpentine probably in the
- paint. Make their own use of everything. Same time doing it scraped her
- slipper on the floor so they wouldn’t hear. But lots of them can’t kick
- the beam, I think. Keep that thing up for hours. Kind of a general all
- round over me and half down my back.
- Wait. Hm. Hm. Yes. That’s her perfume. Why she waved her hand. I leave
- you this to think of me when I’m far away on the pillow. What is it?
- Heliotrope? No. Hyacinth? Hm. Roses, I think. She’d like scent of that
- kind. Sweet and cheap: soon sour. Why Molly likes opoponax. Suits her,
- with a little jessamine mixed. Her high notes and her low notes. At the
- dance night she met him, dance of the hours. Heat brought it out. She
- was wearing her black and it had the perfume of the time before. Good
- conductor, is it? Or bad? Light too. Suppose there’s some connection.
- For instance if you go into a cellar where it’s dark. Mysterious thing
- too. Why did I smell it only now? Took its time in coming like herself,
- slow but sure. Suppose it’s ever so many millions of tiny grains blown
- across. Yes, it is. Because those spice islands, Cinghalese this
- morning, smell them leagues off. Tell you what it is. It’s like a fine
- fine veil or web they have all over the skin, fine like what do you
- call it gossamer, and they’re always spinning it out of them, fine as
- anything, like rainbow colours without knowing it. Clings to everything
- she takes off. Vamp of her stockings. Warm shoe. Stays. Drawers: little
- kick, taking them off. Byby till next time. Also the cat likes to sniff
- in her shift on the bed. Know her smell in a thousand. Bathwater too.
- Reminds me of strawberries and cream. Wonder where it is really. There
- or the armpits or under the neck. Because you get it out of all holes
- and corners. Hyacinth perfume made of oil of ether or something.
- Muskrat. Bag under their tails. One grain pour off odour for years.
- Dogs at each other behind. Good evening. Evening. How do you sniff? Hm.
- Hm. Very well, thank you. Animals go by that. Yes now, look at it that
- way. We’re the same. Some women, instance, warn you off when they have
- their period. Come near. Then get a hogo you could hang your hat on.
- Like what? Potted herrings gone stale or. Boof! Please keep off the
- grass.
- Perhaps they get a man smell off us. What though? Cigary gloves long
- John had on his desk the other day. Breath? What you eat and drink
- gives that. No. Mansmell, I mean. Must be connected with that because
- priests that are supposed to be are different. Women buzz round it like
- flies round treacle. Railed off the altar get on to it at any cost. The
- tree of forbidden priest. O, father, will you? Let me be the first to.
- That diffuses itself all through the body, permeates. Source of life.
- And it’s extremely curious the smell. Celery sauce. Let me.
- Mr Bloom inserted his nose. Hm. Into the. Hm. Opening of his waistcoat.
- Almonds or. No. Lemons it is. Ah no, that’s the soap.
- O by the by that lotion. I knew there was something on my mind. Never
- went back and the soap not paid. Dislike carrying bottles like that hag
- this morning. Hynes might have paid me that three shillings. I could
- mention Meagher’s just to remind him. Still if he works that paragraph.
- Two and nine. Bad opinion of me he’ll have. Call tomorrow. How much do
- I owe you? Three and nine? Two and nine, sir. Ah. Might stop him giving
- credit another time. Lose your customers that way. Pubs do. Fellows run
- up a bill on the slate and then slinking around the back streets into
- somewhere else.
- Here’s this nobleman passed before. Blown in from the bay. Just went as
- far as turn back. Always at home at dinnertime. Looks mangled out: had
- a good tuck in. Enjoying nature now. Grace after meals. After supper
- walk a mile. Sure he has a small bank balance somewhere, government
- sit. Walk after him now make him awkward like those newsboys me today.
- Still you learn something. See ourselves as others see us. So long as
- women don’t mock what matter? That’s the way to find out. Ask yourself
- who is he now. _The Mystery Man on the Beach_, prize titbit story by Mr
- Leopold Bloom. Payment at the rate of one guinea per column. And that
- fellow today at the graveside in the brown macintosh. Corns on his
- kismet however. Healthy perhaps absorb all the. Whistle brings rain
- they say. Must be some somewhere. Salt in the Ormond damp. The body
- feels the atmosphere. Old Betty’s joints are on the rack. Mother
- Shipton’s prophecy that is about ships around they fly in the
- twinkling. No. Signs of rain it is. The royal reader. And distant hills
- seem coming nigh.
- Howth. Bailey light. Two, four, six, eight, nine. See. Has to change or
- they might think it a house. Wreckers. Grace Darling. People afraid of
- the dark. Also glowworms, cyclists: lightingup time. Jewels diamonds
- flash better. Women. Light is a kind of reassuring. Not going to hurt
- you. Better now of course than long ago. Country roads. Run you through
- the small guts for nothing. Still two types there are you bob against.
- Scowl or smile. Pardon! Not at all. Best time to spray plants too in
- the shade after the sun. Some light still. Red rays are longest.
- Roygbiv Vance taught us: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo,
- violet. A star I see. Venus? Can’t tell yet. Two. When three it’s
- night. Were those nightclouds there all the time? Looks like a phantom
- ship. No. Wait. Trees are they? An optical illusion. Mirage. Land of
- the setting sun this. Homerule sun setting in the southeast. My native
- land, goodnight.
- Dew falling. Bad for you, dear, to sit on that stone. Brings on white
- fluxions. Never have little baby then less he was big strong fight his
- way up through. Might get piles myself. Sticks too like a summer cold,
- sore on the mouth. Cut with grass or paper worst. Friction of the
- position. Like to be that rock she sat on. O sweet little, you don’t
- know how nice you looked. I begin to like them at that age. Green
- apples. Grab at all that offer. Suppose it’s the only time we cross
- legs, seated. Also the library today: those girl graduates. Happy
- chairs under them. But it’s the evening influence. They feel all that.
- Open like flowers, know their hours, sunflowers, Jerusalem artichokes,
- in ballrooms, chandeliers, avenues under the lamps. Nightstock in Mat
- Dillon’s garden where I kissed her shoulder. Wish I had a full length
- oilpainting of her then. June that was too I wooed. The year returns.
- History repeats itself. Ye crags and peaks I’m with you once again.
- Life, love, voyage round your own little world. And now? Sad about her
- lame of course but must be on your guard not to feel too much pity.
- They take advantage.
- All quiet on Howth now. The distant hills seem. Where we. The
- rhododendrons. I am a fool perhaps. He gets the plums, and I the
- plumstones. Where I come in. All that old hill has seen. Names change:
- that’s all. Lovers: yum yum.
- Tired I feel now. Will I get up? O wait. Drained all the manhood out of
- me, little wretch. She kissed me. Never again. My youth. Only once it
- comes. Or hers. Take the train there tomorrow. No. Returning not the
- same. Like kids your second visit to a house. The new I want. Nothing
- new under the sun. Care of P. O. Dolphin’s Barn. Are you not happy in
- your? Naughty darling. At Dolphin’s barn charades in Luke Doyle’s
- house. Mat Dillon and his bevy of daughters: Tiny, Atty, Floey, Maimy,
- Louy, Hetty. Molly too. Eightyseven that was. Year before we. And the
- old major, partial to his drop of spirits. Curious she an only child, I
- an only child. So it returns. Think you’re escaping and run into
- yourself. Longest way round is the shortest way home. And just when he
- and she. Circus horse walking in a ring. Rip van Winkle we played. Rip:
- tear in Henny Doyle’s overcoat. Van: breadvan delivering. Winkle:
- cockles and periwinkles. Then I did Rip van Winkle coming back. She
- leaned on the sideboard watching. Moorish eyes. Twenty years asleep in
- Sleepy Hollow. All changed. Forgotten. The young are old. His gun rusty
- from the dew.
- Ba. What is that flying about? Swallow? Bat probably. Thinks I’m a
- tree, so blind. Have birds no smell? Metempsychosis. They believed you
- could be changed into a tree from grief. Weeping willow. Ba. There he
- goes. Funny little beggar. Wonder where he lives. Belfry up there. Very
- likely. Hanging by his heels in the odour of sanctity. Bell scared him
- out, I suppose. Mass seems to be over. Could hear them all at it. Pray
- for us. And pray for us. And pray for us. Good idea the repetition.
- Same thing with ads. Buy from us. And buy from us. Yes, there’s the
- light in the priest’s house. Their frugal meal. Remember about the
- mistake in the valuation when I was in Thom’s. Twentyeight it is. Two
- houses they have. Gabriel Conroy’s brother is curate. Ba. Again. Wonder
- why they come out at night like mice. They’re a mixed breed. Birds are
- like hopping mice. What frightens them, light or noise? Better sit
- still. All instinct like the bird in drouth got water out of the end of
- a jar by throwing in pebbles. Like a little man in a cloak he is with
- tiny hands. Weeny bones. Almost see them shimmering, kind of a bluey
- white. Colours depend on the light you see. Stare the sun for example
- like the eagle then look at a shoe see a blotch blob yellowish. Wants
- to stamp his trademark on everything. Instance, that cat this morning
- on the staircase. Colour of brown turf. Say you never see them with
- three colours. Not true. That half tabbywhite tortoiseshell in the
- _City Arms_ with the letter em on her forehead. Body fifty different
- colours. Howth a while ago amethyst. Glass flashing. That’s how that
- wise man what’s his name with the burning glass. Then the heather goes
- on fire. It can’t be tourists’ matches. What? Perhaps the sticks dry
- rub together in the wind and light. Or broken bottles in the furze act
- as a burning glass in the sun. Archimedes. I have it! My memory’s not
- so bad.
- Ba. Who knows what they’re always flying for. Insects? That bee last
- week got into the room playing with his shadow on the ceiling. Might be
- the one bit me, come back to see. Birds too. Never find out. Or what
- they say. Like our small talk. And says she and says he. Nerve they
- have to fly over the ocean and back. Lots must be killed in storms,
- telegraph wires. Dreadful life sailors have too. Big brutes of
- oceangoing steamers floundering along in the dark, lowing out like
- seacows. _Faugh a ballagh!_ Out of that, bloody curse to you! Others in
- vessels, bit of a handkerchief sail, pitched about like snuff at a wake
- when the stormy winds do blow. Married too. Sometimes away for years at
- the ends of the earth somewhere. No ends really because it’s round.
- Wife in every port they say. She has a good job if she minds it till
- Johnny comes marching home again. If ever he does. Smelling the tail
- end of ports. How can they like the sea? Yet they do. The anchor’s
- weighed. Off he sails with a scapular or a medal on him for luck. Well.
- And the tephilim no what’s this they call it poor papa’s father had on
- his door to touch. That brought us out of the land of Egypt and into
- the house of bondage. Something in all those superstitions because when
- you go out never know what dangers. Hanging on to a plank or astride of
- a beam for grim life, lifebelt round him, gulping salt water, and
- that’s the last of his nibs till the sharks catch hold of him. Do fish
- ever get seasick?
- Then you have a beautiful calm without a cloud, smooth sea, placid,
- crew and cargo in smithereens, Davy Jones’ locker, moon looking down so
- peaceful. Not my fault, old cockalorum.
- A last lonely candle wandered up the sky from Mirus bazaar in search of
- funds for Mercer’s hospital and broke, drooping, and shed a cluster of
- violet but one white stars. They floated, fell: they faded. The
- shepherd’s hour: the hour of folding: hour of tryst. From house to
- house, giving his everwelcome double knock, went the nine o’clock
- postman, the glowworm’s lamp at his belt gleaming here and there
- through the laurel hedges. And among the five young trees a hoisted
- lintstock lit the lamp at Leahy’s terrace. By screens of lighted
- windows, by equal gardens a shrill voice went crying, wailing: _Evening
- Telegraph, stop press edition! Result of the Gold Cup races!_ and from
- the door of Dignam’s house a boy ran out and called. Twittering the bat
- flew here, flew there. Far out over the sands the coming surf crept,
- grey. Howth settled for slumber, tired of long days, of yumyum
- rhododendrons (he was old) and felt gladly the night breeze lift,
- ruffle his fell of ferns. He lay but opened a red eye unsleeping, deep
- and slowly breathing, slumberous but awake. And far on Kish bank the
- anchored lightship twinkled, winked at Mr Bloom.
- Life those chaps out there must have, stuck in the same spot. Irish
- Lights board. Penance for their sins. Coastguards too. Rocket and
- breeches buoy and lifeboat. Day we went out for the pleasure cruise in
- the Erin’s King, throwing them the sack of old papers. Bears in the
- zoo. Filthy trip. Drunkards out to shake up their livers. Puking
- overboard to feed the herrings. Nausea. And the women, fear of God in
- their faces. Milly, no sign of funk. Her blue scarf loose, laughing.
- Don’t know what death is at that age. And then their stomachs clean.
- But being lost they fear. When we hid behind the tree at Crumlin. I
- didn’t want to. Mamma! Mamma! Babes in the wood. Frightening them with
- masks too. Throwing them up in the air to catch them. I’ll murder you.
- Is it only half fun? Or children playing battle. Whole earnest. How can
- people aim guns at each other. Sometimes they go off. Poor kids! Only
- troubles wildfire and nettlerash. Calomel purge I got her for that.
- After getting better asleep with Molly. Very same teeth she has. What
- do they love? Another themselves? But the morning she chased her with
- the umbrella. Perhaps so as not to hurt. I felt her pulse. Ticking.
- Little hand it was: now big. Dearest Papli. All that the hand says when
- you touch. Loved to count my waistcoat buttons. Her first stays I
- remember. Made me laugh to see. Little paps to begin with. Left one is
- more sensitive, I think. Mine too. Nearer the heart? Padding themselves
- out if fat is in fashion. Her growing pains at night, calling, wakening
- me. Frightened she was when her nature came on her first. Poor child!
- Strange moment for the mother too. Brings back her girlhood. Gibraltar.
- Looking from Buena Vista. O’Hara’s tower. The seabirds screaming. Old
- Barbary ape that gobbled all his family. Sundown, gunfire for the men
- to cross the lines. Looking out over the sea she told me. Evening like
- this, but clear, no clouds. I always thought I’d marry a lord or a rich
- gentleman coming with a private yacht. _Buenas noches, señorita. El
- hombre ama la muchacha hermosa_. Why me? Because you were so foreign
- from the others.
- Better not stick here all night like a limpet. This weather makes you
- dull. Must be getting on for nine by the light. Go home. Too late for
- _Leah, Lily of Killarney._ No. Might be still up. Call to the hospital
- to see. Hope she’s over. Long day I’ve had. Martha, the bath, funeral,
- house of Keyes, museum with those goddesses, Dedalus’ song. Then that
- bawler in Barney Kiernan’s. Got my own back there. Drunken ranters what
- I said about his God made him wince. Mistake to hit back. Or? No. Ought
- to go home and laugh at themselves. Always want to be swilling in
- company. Afraid to be alone like a child of two. Suppose he hit me.
- Look at it other way round. Not so bad then. Perhaps not to hurt he
- meant. Three cheers for Israel. Three cheers for the sister-in-law he
- hawked about, three fangs in her mouth. Same style of beauty.
- Particularly nice old party for a cup of tea. The sister of the wife of
- the wild man of Borneo has just come to town. Imagine that in the early
- morning at close range. Everyone to his taste as Morris said when he
- kissed the cow. But Dignam’s put the boots on it. Houses of mourning so
- depressing because you never know. Anyhow she wants the money. Must
- call to those Scottish Widows as I promised. Strange name. Takes it for
- granted we’re going to pop off first. That widow on Monday was it
- outside Cramer’s that looked at me. Buried the poor husband but
- progressing favourably on the premium. Her widow’s mite. Well? What do
- you expect her to do? Must wheedle her way along. Widower I hate to
- see. Looks so forlorn. Poor man O’Connor wife and five children
- poisoned by mussels here. The sewage. Hopeless. Some good matronly
- woman in a porkpie hat to mother him. Take him in tow, platter face and
- a large apron. Ladies’ grey flannelette bloomers, three shillings a
- pair, astonishing bargain. Plain and loved, loved for ever, they say.
- Ugly: no woman thinks she is. Love, lie and be handsome for tomorrow we
- die. See him sometimes walking about trying to find out who played the
- trick. U. p: up. Fate that is. He, not me. Also a shop often noticed.
- Curse seems to dog it. Dreamt last night? Wait. Something confused. She
- had red slippers on. Turkish. Wore the breeches. Suppose she does?
- Would I like her in pyjamas? Damned hard to answer. Nannetti’s gone.
- Mailboat. Near Holyhead by now. Must nail that ad of Keyes’s. Work
- Hynes and Crawford. Petticoats for Molly. She has something to put in
- them. What’s that? Might be money.
- Mr Bloom stooped and turned over a piece of paper on the strand. He
- brought it near his eyes and peered. Letter? No. Can’t read. Better go.
- Better. I’m tired to move. Page of an old copybook. All those holes and
- pebbles. Who could count them? Never know what you find. Bottle with
- story of a treasure in it, thrown from a wreck. Parcels post. Children
- always want to throw things in the sea. Trust? Bread cast on the
- waters. What’s this? Bit of stick.
- O! Exhausted that female has me. Not so young now. Will she come here
- tomorrow? Wait for her somewhere for ever. Must come back. Murderers
- do. Will I?
- Mr Bloom with his stick gently vexed the thick sand at his foot. Write
- a message for her. Might remain. What?
- I.
- Some flatfoot tramp on it in the morning. Useless. Washed away. Tide
- comes here. Saw a pool near her foot. Bend, see my face there, dark
- mirror, breathe on it, stirs. All these rocks with lines and scars and
- letters. O, those transparent! Besides they don’t know. What is the
- meaning of that other world. I called you naughty boy because I do not
- like.
- AM. A.
- No room. Let it go.
- Mr Bloom effaced the letters with his slow boot. Hopeless thing sand.
- Nothing grows in it. All fades. No fear of big vessels coming up here.
- Except Guinness’s barges. Round the Kish in eighty days. Done half by
- design.
- He flung his wooden pen away. The stick fell in silted sand, stuck. Now
- if you were trying to do that for a week on end you couldn’t. Chance.
- We’ll never meet again. But it was lovely. Goodbye, dear. Thanks. Made
- me feel so young.
- Short snooze now if I had. Must be near nine. Liverpool boat long gone.
- Not even the smoke. And she can do the other. Did too. And Belfast. I
- won’t go. Race there, race back to Ennis. Let him. Just close my eyes a
- moment. Won’t sleep, though. Half dream. It never comes the same. Bat
- again. No harm in him. Just a few.
- O sweety all your little girlwhite up I saw dirty bracegirdle made me
- do love sticky we two naughty Grace darling she him half past the bed
- met him pike hoses frillies for Raoul de perfume your wife black hair
- heave under embon _señorita_ young eyes Mulvey plump bubs me breadvan
- Winkle red slippers she rusty sleep wander years of dreams return tail
- end Agendath swoony lovey showed me her next year in drawers return
- next in her next her next.
- A bat flew. Here. There. Here. Far in the grey a bell chimed. Mr Bloom
- with open mouth, his left boot sanded sideways, leaned, breathed. Just
- for a few
- Cuckoo
- Cuckoo
- Cuckoo.
- The clock on the mantelpiece in the priest’s house cooed where Canon
- O’Hanlon and Father Conroy and the reverend John Hughes S. J. were
- taking tea and sodabread and butter and fried mutton chops with catsup
- and talking about
- Cuckoo
- Cuckoo
- Cuckoo.
- Because it was a little canarybird that came out of its little house to
- tell the time that Gerty MacDowell noticed the time she was there
- because she was as quick as anything about a thing like that, was Gerty
- MacDowell, and she noticed at once that that foreign gentleman that was
- sitting on the rocks looking was
- Cuckoo
- Cuckoo
- Cuckoo.
- [ 14 ]
- Deshil Holles Eamus. Deshil Holles Eamus. Deshil Holles Eamus.
- Send us bright one, light one, Horhorn, quickening and wombfruit. Send
- us bright one, light one, Horhorn, quickening and wombfruit. Send us
- bright one, light one, Horhorn, quickening and wombfruit.
- Hoopsa boyaboy hoopsa! Hoopsa boyaboy hoopsa! Hoopsa boyaboy hoopsa!
- Universally that person’s acumen is esteemed very little perceptive
- concerning whatsoever matters are being held as most profitably by
- mortals with sapience endowed to be studied who is ignorant of that
- which the most in doctrine erudite and certainly by reason of that in
- them high mind’s ornament deserving of veneration constantly maintain
- when by general consent they affirm that other circumstances being
- equal by no exterior splendour is the prosperity of a nation more
- efficaciously asserted than by the measure of how far forward may have
- progressed the tribute of its solicitude for that proliferent
- continuance which of evils the original if it be absent when
- fortunately present constitutes the certain sign of omnipollent
- nature’s incorrupted benefaction. For who is there who anything of some
- significance has apprehended but is conscious that that exterior
- splendour may be the surface of a downwardtending lutulent reality or
- on the contrary anyone so is there unilluminated as not to perceive
- that as no nature’s boon can contend against the bounty of increase so
- it behoves every most just citizen to become the exhortator and
- admonisher of his semblables and to tremble lest what had in the past
- been by the nation excellently commenced might be in the future not
- with similar excellence accomplished if an inverecund habit shall have
- gradually traduced the honourable by ancestors transmitted customs to
- that thither of profundity that that one was audacious excessively who
- would have the hardihood to rise affirming that no more odious offence
- can for anyone be than to oblivious neglect to consign that evangel
- simultaneously command and promise which on all mortals with prophecy
- of abundance or with diminution’s menace that exalted of reiteratedly
- procreating function ever irrevocably enjoined?
- It is not why therefore we shall wonder if, as the best historians
- relate, among the Celts, who nothing that was not in its nature
- admirable admired, the art of medicine shall have been highly honoured.
- Not to speak of hostels, leperyards, sweating chambers, plaguegraves,
- their greatest doctors, the O’Shiels, the O’Hickeys, the O’Lees, have
- sedulously set down the divers methods by which the sick and the
- relapsed found again health whether the malady had been the trembling
- withering or loose boyconnell flux. Certainly in every public work
- which in it anything of gravity contains preparation should be with
- importance commensurate and therefore a plan was by them adopted
- (whether by having preconsidered or as the maturation of experience it
- is difficult in being said which the discrepant opinions of subsequent
- inquirers are not up to the present congrued to render manifest)
- whereby maternity was so far from all accident possibility removed that
- whatever care the patient in that allhardest of woman hour chiefly
- required and not solely for the copiously opulent but also for her who
- not being sufficiently moneyed scarcely and often not even scarcely
- could subsist valiantly and for an inconsiderable emolument was
- provided.
- To her nothing already then and thenceforward was anyway able to be
- molestful for this chiefly felt all citizens except with proliferent
- mothers prosperity at all not to can be and as they had received
- eternity gods mortals generation to befit them her beholding, when the
- case was so hoving itself, parturient in vehicle thereward carrying
- desire immense among all one another was impelling on of her to be
- received into that domicile. O thing of prudent nation not merely in
- being seen but also even in being related worthy of being praised that
- they her by anticipation went seeing mother, that she by them suddenly
- to be about to be cherished had been begun she felt!
- Before born bliss babe had. Within womb won he worship. Whatever in
- that one case done commodiously done was. A couch by midwives attended
- with wholesome food reposeful, cleanest swaddles as though
- forthbringing were now done and by wise foresight set: but to this no
- less of what drugs there is need and surgical implements which are
- pertaining to her case not omitting aspect of all very distracting
- spectacles in various latitudes by our terrestrial orb offered together
- with images, divine and human, the cogitation of which by sejunct
- females is to tumescence conducive or eases issue in the high sunbright
- wellbuilt fair home of mothers when, ostensibly far gone and
- reproductitive, it is come by her thereto to lie in, her term up.
- Some man that wayfaring was stood by housedoor at night’s oncoming. Of
- Israel’s folk was that man that on earth wandering far had fared. Stark
- ruth of man his errand that him lone led till that house.
- Of that house A. Horne is lord. Seventy beds keeps he there teeming
- mothers are wont that they lie for to thole and bring forth bairns hale
- so God’s angel to Mary quoth. Watchers tway there walk, white sisters
- in ward sleepless. Smarts they still, sickness soothing: in twelve
- moons thrice an hundred. Truest bedthanes they twain are, for Horne
- holding wariest ward.
- In ward wary the watcher hearing come that man mildhearted eft rising
- with swire ywimpled to him her gate wide undid. Lo, levin leaping
- lightens in eyeblink Ireland’s westward welkin. Full she drad that God
- the Wreaker all mankind would fordo with water for his evil sins.
- Christ’s rood made she on breastbone and him drew that he would rathe
- infare under her thatch. That man her will wotting worthful went in
- Horne’s house.
- Loth to irk in Horne’s hall hat holding the seeker stood. On her stow
- he ere was living with dear wife and lovesome daughter that then over
- land and seafloor nine years had long outwandered. Once her in
- townhithe meeting he to her bow had not doffed. Her to forgive now he
- craved with good ground of her allowed that that of him swiftseen face,
- hers, so young then had looked. Light swift her eyes kindled, bloom of
- blushes his word winning.
- As her eyes then ongot his weeds swart therefor sorrow she feared. Glad
- after she was that ere adread was. Her he asked if O’Hare Doctor
- tidings sent from far coast and she with grameful sigh him answered
- that O’Hare Doctor in heaven was. Sad was the man that word to hear
- that him so heavied in bowels ruthful. All she there told him, ruing
- death for friend so young, algate sore unwilling God’s rightwiseness to
- withsay. She said that he had a fair sweet death through God His
- goodness with masspriest to be shriven, holy housel and sick men’s oil
- to his limbs. The man then right earnest asked the nun of which death
- the dead man was died and the nun answered him and said that he was
- died in Mona Island through bellycrab three year agone come Childermas
- and she prayed to God the Allruthful to have his dear soul in his
- undeathliness. He heard her sad words, in held hat sad staring. So
- stood they there both awhile in wanhope sorrowing one with other.
- Therefore, everyman, look to that last end that is thy death and the
- dust that gripeth on every man that is born of woman for as he came
- naked forth from his mother’s womb so naked shall he wend him at the
- last for to go as he came.
- The man that was come in to the house then spoke to the nursingwoman
- and he asked her how it fared with the woman that lay there in
- childbed. The nursingwoman answered him and said that that woman was in
- throes now full three days and that it would be a hard birth unneth to
- bear but that now in a little it would be. She said thereto that she
- had seen many births of women but never was none so hard as was that
- woman’s birth. Then she set it all forth to him for because she knew
- the man that time was had lived nigh that house. The man hearkened to
- her words for he felt with wonder women’s woe in the travail that they
- have of motherhood and he wondered to look on her face that was a fair
- face for any man to see but yet was she left after long years a
- handmaid. Nine twelve bloodflows chiding her childless.
- And whiles they spake the door of the castle was opened and there
- nighed them a mickle noise as of many that sat there at meat. And there
- came against the place as they stood a young learningknight yclept
- Dixon. And the traveller Leopold was couth to him sithen it had happed
- that they had had ado each with other in the house of misericord where
- this learningknight lay by cause the traveller Leopold came there to be
- healed for he was sore wounded in his breast by a spear wherewith a
- horrible and dreadful dragon was smitten him for which he did do make a
- salve of volatile salt and chrism as much as he might suffice. And he
- said now that he should go in to that castle for to make merry with
- them that were there. And the traveller Leopold said that he should go
- otherwhither for he was a man of cautels and a subtile. Also the lady
- was of his avis and repreved the learningknight though she trowed well
- that the traveller had said thing that was false for his subtility. But
- the learningknight would not hear say nay nor do her mandement ne have
- him in aught contrarious to his list and he said how it was a
- marvellous castle. And the traveller Leopold went into the castle for
- to rest him for a space being sore of limb after many marches
- environing in divers lands and sometime venery.
- And in the castle was set a board that was of the birchwood of Finlandy
- and it was upheld by four dwarfmen of that country but they durst not
- move more for enchantment. And on this board were frightful swords and
- knives that are made in a great cavern by swinking demons out of white
- flames that they fix then in the horns of buffalos and stags that there
- abound marvellously. And there were vessels that are wrought by magic
- of Mahound out of seasand and the air by a warlock with his breath that
- he blases in to them like to bubbles. And full fair cheer and rich was
- on the board that no wight could devise a fuller ne richer. And there
- was a vat of silver that was moved by craft to open in the which lay
- strange fishes withouten heads though misbelieving men nie that this be
- possible thing without they see it natheless they are so. And these
- fishes lie in an oily water brought there from Portugal land because of
- the fatness that therein is like to the juices of the olivepress. And
- also it was a marvel to see in that castle how by magic they make a
- compost out of fecund wheatkidneys out of Chaldee that by aid of
- certain angry spirits that they do in to it swells up wondrously like
- to a vast mountain. And they teach the serpents there to entwine
- themselves up on long sticks out of the ground and of the scales of
- these serpents they brew out a brewage like to mead.
- And the learning knight let pour for childe Leopold a draught and halp
- thereto the while all they that were there drank every each. And childe
- Leopold did up his beaver for to pleasure him and took apertly somewhat
- in amity for he never drank no manner of mead which he then put by and
- anon full privily he voided the more part in his neighbour glass and
- his neighbour nist not of this wile. And he sat down in that castle
- with them for to rest him there awhile. Thanked be Almighty God.
- This meanwhile this good sister stood by the door and begged them at
- the reverence of Jesu our alther liege Lord to leave their wassailing
- for there was above one quick with child, a gentle dame, whose time
- hied fast. Sir Leopold heard on the upfloor cry on high and he wondered
- what cry that it was whether of child or woman and I marvel, said he,
- that it be not come or now. Meseems it dureth overlong. And he was ware
- and saw a franklin that hight Lenehan on that side the table that was
- older than any of the tother and for that they both were knights
- virtuous in the one emprise and eke by cause that he was elder he spoke
- to him full gently. But, said he, or it be long too she will bring
- forth by God His bounty and have joy of her childing for she hath
- waited marvellous long. And the franklin that had drunken said,
- Expecting each moment to be her next. Also he took the cup that stood
- tofore him for him needed never none asking nor desiring of him to
- drink and, Now drink, said he, fully delectably, and he quaffed as far
- as he might to their both’s health for he was a passing good man of his
- lustiness. And sir Leopold that was the goodliest guest that ever sat
- in scholars’ hall and that was the meekest man and the kindest that
- ever laid husbandly hand under hen and that was the very truest knight
- of the world one that ever did minion service to lady gentle pledged
- him courtly in the cup. Woman’s woe with wonder pondering.
- Now let us speak of that fellowship that was there to the intent to be
- drunken an they might. There was a sort of scholars along either side
- the board, that is to wit, Dixon yclept junior of saint Mary
- Merciable’s with other his fellows Lynch and Madden, scholars of
- medicine, and the franklin that hight Lenehan and one from Alba Longa,
- one Crotthers, and young Stephen that had mien of a frere that was at
- head of the board and Costello that men clepen Punch Costello all long
- of a mastery of him erewhile gested (and of all them, reserved young
- Stephen, he was the most drunken that demanded still of more mead) and
- beside the meek sir Leopold. But on young Malachi they waited for that
- he promised to have come and such as intended to no goodness said how
- he had broke his avow. And sir Leopold sat with them for he bore fast
- friendship to sir Simon and to this his son young Stephen and for that
- his languor becalmed him there after longest wanderings insomuch as
- they feasted him for that time in the honourablest manner. Ruth red
- him, love led on with will to wander, loth to leave.
- For they were right witty scholars. And he heard their aresouns each
- gen other as touching birth and righteousness, young Madden maintaining
- that put such case it were hard the wife to die (for so it had fallen
- out a matter of some year agone with a woman of Eblana in Horne’s house
- that now was trespassed out of this world and the self night next
- before her death all leeches and pothecaries had taken counsel of her
- case). And they said farther she should live because in the beginning,
- they said, the woman should bring forth in pain and wherefore they that
- were of this imagination affirmed how young Madden had said truth for
- he had conscience to let her die. And not few and of these was young
- Lynch were in doubt that the world was now right evil governed as it
- was never other howbeit the mean people believed it otherwise but the
- law nor his judges did provide no remedy. A redress God grant. This was
- scant said but all cried with one acclaim nay, by our Virgin Mother,
- the wife should live and the babe to die. In colour whereof they waxed
- hot upon that head what with argument and what for their drinking but
- the franklin Lenehan was prompt each when to pour them ale so that at
- the least way mirth might not lack. Then young Madden showed all the
- whole affair and said how that she was dead and how for holy religion
- sake by rede of palmer and bedesman and for a vow he had made to Saint
- Ultan of Arbraccan her goodman husband would not let her death whereby
- they were all wondrous grieved. To whom young Stephen had these words
- following: Murmur, sirs, is eke oft among lay folk. Both babe and
- parent now glorify their Maker, the one in limbo gloom, the other in
- purgefire. But, gramercy, what of those Godpossibled souls that we
- nightly impossibilise, which is the sin against the Holy Ghost, Very
- God, Lord and Giver of Life? For, sirs, he said, our lust is brief. We
- are means to those small creatures within us and nature has other ends
- than we. Then said Dixon junior to Punch Costello wist he what ends.
- But he had overmuch drunken and the best word he could have of him was
- that he would ever dishonest a woman whoso she were or wife or maid or
- leman if it so fortuned him to be delivered of his spleen of lustihead.
- Whereat Crotthers of Alba Longa sang young Malachi’s praise of that
- beast the unicorn how once in the millennium he cometh by his horn, the
- other all this while, pricked forward with their jibes wherewith they
- did malice him, witnessing all and several by saint Foutinus his
- engines that he was able to do any manner of thing that lay in man to
- do. Thereat laughed they all right jocundly only young Stephen and sir
- Leopold which never durst laugh too open by reason of a strange humour
- which he would not bewray and also for that he rued for her that bare
- whoso she might be or wheresoever. Then spake young Stephen orgulous of
- mother Church that would cast him out of her bosom, of law of canons,
- of Lilith, patron of abortions, of bigness wrought by wind of seeds of
- brightness or by potency of vampires mouth to mouth or, as Virgilius
- saith, by the influence of the occident or by the reek of moonflower or
- an she lie with a woman which her man has but lain with, _effectu
- secuto_, or peradventure in her bath according to the opinions of
- Averroes and Moses Maimonides. He said also how at the end of the
- second month a human soul was infused and how in all our holy mother
- foldeth ever souls for God’s greater glory whereas that earthly mother
- which was but a dam to bear beastly should die by canon for so saith he
- that holdeth the fisherman’s seal, even that blessed Peter on which
- rock was holy church for all ages founded. All they bachelors then
- asked of sir Leopold would he in like case so jeopard her person as
- risk life to save life. A wariness of mind he would answer as fitted
- all and, laying hand to jaw, he said dissembling, as his wont was, that
- as it was informed him, who had ever loved the art of physic as might a
- layman, and agreeing also with his experience of so seldomseen an
- accident it was good for that mother Church belike at one blow had
- birth and death pence and in such sort deliverly he scaped their
- questions. That is truth, pardy, said Dixon, and, or I err, a pregnant
- word. Which hearing young Stephen was a marvellous glad man and he
- averred that he who stealeth from the poor lendeth to the Lord for he
- was of a wild manner when he was drunken and that he was now in that
- taking it appeared eftsoons.
- But sir Leopold was passing grave maugre his word by cause he still had
- pity of the terrorcausing shrieking of shrill women in their labour and
- as he was minded of his good lady Marion that had borne him an only
- manchild which on his eleventh day on live had died and no man of art
- could save so dark is destiny. And she was wondrous stricken of heart
- for that evil hap and for his burial did him on a fair corselet of
- lamb’s wool, the flower of the flock, lest he might perish utterly and
- lie akeled (for it was then about the midst of the winter) and now sir
- Leopold that had of his body no manchild for an heir looked upon him
- his friend’s son and was shut up in sorrow for his forepassed happiness
- and as sad as he was that him failed a son of such gentle courage (for
- all accounted him of real parts) so grieved he also in no less measure
- for young Stephen for that he lived riotously with those wastrels and
- murdered his goods with whores.
- About that present time young Stephen filled all cups that stood empty
- so as there remained but little mo if the prudenter had not shadowed
- their approach from him that still plied it very busily who, praying
- for the intentions of the sovereign pontiff, he gave them for a pledge
- the vicar of Christ which also as he said is vicar of Bray. Now drink
- we, quod he, of this mazer and quaff ye this mead which is not indeed
- parcel of my body but my soul’s bodiment. Leave ye fraction of bread to
- them that live by bread alone. Be not afeard neither for any want for
- this will comfort more than the other will dismay. See ye here. And he
- showed them glistering coins of the tribute and goldsmith notes the
- worth of two pound nineteen shilling that he had, he said, for a song
- which he writ. They all admired to see the foresaid riches in such
- dearth of money as was herebefore. His words were then these as
- followeth: Know all men, he said, time’s ruins build eternity’s
- mansions. What means this? Desire’s wind blasts the thorntree but after
- it becomes from a bramblebush to be a rose upon the rood of time. Mark
- me now. In woman’s womb word is made flesh but in the spirit of the
- maker all flesh that passes becomes the word that shall not pass away.
- This is the postcreation. _Omnis caro ad te veniet_. No question but
- her name is puissant who aventried the dear corse of our Agenbuyer,
- Healer and Herd, our mighty mother and mother most venerable and
- Bernardus saith aptly that She hath an _omnipotentiam deiparae
- supplicem_, that is to wit, an almightiness of petition because she is
- the second Eve and she won us, saith Augustine too, whereas that other,
- our grandam, which we are linked up with by successive anastomosis of
- navelcords sold us all, seed, breed and generation, for a penny pippin.
- But here is the matter now. Or she knew him, that second I say, and was
- but creature of her creature, _vergine madre, figlia di tuo figlio_, or
- she knew him not and then stands she in the one denial or ignorancy
- with Peter Piscator who lives in the house that Jack built and with
- Joseph the joiner patron of the happy demise of all unhappy marriages,
- _parceque M. Léo Taxil nous a dit que qui l’avait mise dans cette
- fichue position c’était le sacré pigeon, ventre de Dieu! Entweder_
- transubstantiality _oder_ consubstantiality but in no case
- subsubstantiality. And all cried out upon it for a very scurvy word. A
- pregnancy without joy, he said, a birth without pangs, a body without
- blemish, a belly without bigness. Let the lewd with faith and fervour
- worship. With will will we withstand, withsay.
- Hereupon Punch Costello dinged with his fist upon the board and would
- sing a bawdy catch _Staboo Stabella_ about a wench that was put in pod
- of a jolly swashbuckler in Almany which he did straightways now attack:
- _The first three months she was not well, Staboo,_ when here nurse
- Quigley from the door angerly bid them hist ye should shame you nor was
- it not meet as she remembered them being her mind was to have all
- orderly against lord Andrew came for because she was jealous that no
- gasteful turmoil might shorten the honour of her guard. It was an
- ancient and a sad matron of a sedate look and christian walking, in
- habit dun beseeming her megrims and wrinkled visage, nor did her
- hortative want of it effect for incontinently Punch Costello was of
- them all embraided and they reclaimed the churl with civil rudeness
- some and shaked him with menace of blandishments others whiles they all
- chode with him, a murrain seize the dolt, what a devil he would be at,
- thou chuff, thou puny, thou got in peasestraw, thou losel, thou
- chitterling, thou spawn of a rebel, thou dykedropt, thou abortion thou,
- to shut up his drunken drool out of that like a curse of God ape, the
- good sir Leopold that had for his cognisance the flower of quiet,
- margerain gentle, advising also the time’s occasion as most sacred and
- most worthy to be most sacred. In Horne’s house rest should reign.
- To be short this passage was scarce by when Master Dixon of Mary in
- Eccles, goodly grinning, asked young Stephen what was the reason why he
- had not cided to take friar’s vows and he answered him obedience in the
- womb, chastity in the tomb but involuntary poverty all his days. Master
- Lenehan at this made return that he had heard of those nefarious deeds
- and how, as he heard hereof counted, he had besmirched the lily virtue
- of a confiding female which was corruption of minors and they all
- intershowed it too, waxing merry and toasting to his fathership. But he
- said very entirely it was clean contrary to their suppose for he was
- the eternal son and ever virgin. Thereat mirth grew in them the more
- and they rehearsed to him his curious rite of wedlock for the disrobing
- and deflowering of spouses, as the priests use in Madagascar island,
- she to be in guise of white and saffron, her groom in white and grain,
- with burning of nard and tapers, on a bridebed while clerks sung kyries
- and the anthem _Ut novetur sexus omnis corporis mysterium_ till she was
- there unmaided. He gave them then a much admirable hymen minim by those
- delicate poets Master John Fletcher and Master Francis Beaumont that is
- in their _Maid’s Tragedy_ that was writ for a like twining of lovers:
- _To bed, to bed_ was the burden of it to be played with accompanable
- concent upon the virginals. An exquisite dulcet epithalame of most
- mollificative suadency for juveniles amatory whom the odoriferous
- flambeaus of the paranymphs have escorted to the quadrupedal proscenium
- of connubial communion. Well met they were, said Master Dixon, joyed,
- but, harkee, young sir, better were they named Beau Mount and Lecher
- for, by my troth, of such a mingling much might come. Young Stephen
- said indeed to his best remembrance they had but the one doxy between
- them and she of the stews to make shift with in delights amorous for
- life ran very high in those days and the custom of the country approved
- with it. Greater love than this, he said, no man hath that a man lay
- down his wife for his friend. Go thou and do likewise. Thus, or words
- to that effect, saith Zarathustra, sometime regius professor of French
- letters to the university of Oxtail nor breathed there ever that man to
- whom mankind was more beholden. Bring a stranger within thy tower it
- will go hard but thou wilt have the secondbest bed. _Orate, fratres,
- pro memetipso_. And all the people shall say, Amen. Remember, Erin, thy
- generations and thy days of old, how thou settedst little by me and by
- my word and broughtedst in a stranger to my gates to commit fornication
- in my sight and to wax fat and kick like Jeshurum. Therefore hast thou
- sinned against my light and hast made me, thy lord, to be the slave of
- servants. Return, return, Clan Milly: forget me not, O Milesian. Why
- hast thou done this abomination before me that thou didst spurn me for
- a merchant of jalaps and didst deny me to the Roman and to the Indian
- of dark speech with whom thy daughters did lie luxuriously? Look forth
- now, my people, upon the land of behest, even from Horeb and from Nebo
- and from Pisgah and from the Horns of Hatten unto a land flowing with
- milk and money. But thou hast suckled me with a bitter milk: my moon
- and my sun thou hast quenched for ever. And thou hast left me alone for
- ever in the dark ways of my bitterness: and with a kiss of ashes hast
- thou kissed my mouth. This tenebrosity of the interior, he proceeded to
- say, hath not been illumined by the wit of the septuagint nor so much
- as mentioned for the Orient from on high which brake hell’s gates
- visited a darkness that was foraneous. Assuefaction minorates
- atrocities (as Tully saith of his darling Stoics) and Hamlet his father
- showeth the prince no blister of combustion. The adiaphane in the noon
- of life is an Egypt’s plague which in the nights of prenativity and
- postmortemity is their most proper _ubi_ and _quomodo_. And as the ends
- and ultimates of all things accord in some mean and measure with their
- inceptions and originals, that same multiplicit concordance which leads
- forth growth from birth accomplishing by a retrogressive metamorphosis
- that minishing and ablation towards the final which is agreeable unto
- nature so is it with our subsolar being. The aged sisters draw us into
- life: we wail, batten, sport, clip, clasp, sunder, dwindle, die: over
- us dead they bend. First, saved from waters of old Nile, among
- bulrushes, a bed of fasciated wattles: at last the cavity of a
- mountain, an occulted sepulchre amid the conclamation of the hillcat
- and the ossifrage. And as no man knows the ubicity of his tumulus nor
- to what processes we shall thereby be ushered nor whether to Tophet or
- to Edenville in the like way is all hidden when we would backward see
- from what region of remoteness the whatness of our whoness hath fetched
- his whenceness.
- Thereto Punch Costello roared out mainly _Etienne chanson_ but he
- loudly bid them, lo, wisdom hath built herself a house, this vast
- majestic longstablished vault, the crystal palace of the Creator, all
- in applepie order, a penny for him who finds the pea.
- Behold the mansion reared by dedal Jack
- See the malt stored in many a refluent sack,
- In the proud cirque of Jackjohn’s bivouac.
- A black crack of noise in the street here, alack, bawled back. Loud on
- left Thor thundered: in anger awful the hammerhurler. Came now the
- storm that hist his heart. And Master Lynch bade him have a care to
- flout and witwanton as the god self was angered for his hellprate and
- paganry. And he that had erst challenged to be so doughty waxed wan as
- they might all mark and shrank together and his pitch that was before
- so haught uplift was now of a sudden quite plucked down and his heart
- shook within the cage of his breast as he tasted the rumour of that
- storm. Then did some mock and some jeer and Punch Costello fell hard
- again to his yale which Master Lenehan vowed he would do after and he
- was indeed but a word and a blow on any the least colour. But the
- braggart boaster cried that an old Nobodaddy was in his cups it was
- muchwhat indifferent and he would not lag behind his lead. But this was
- only to dye his desperation as cowed he crouched in Horne’s hall. He
- drank indeed at one draught to pluck up a heart of any grace for it
- thundered long rumblingly over all the heavens so that Master Madden,
- being godly certain whiles, knocked him on his ribs upon that crack of
- doom and Master Bloom, at the braggart’s side, spoke to him calming
- words to slumber his great fear, advertising how it was no other thing
- but a hubbub noise that he heard, the discharge of fluid from the
- thunderhead, look you, having taken place, and all of the order of a
- natural phenomenon.
- But was young Boasthard’s fear vanquished by Calmer’s words? No, for he
- had in his bosom a spike named Bitterness which could not by words be
- done away. And was he then neither calm like the one nor godly like the
- other? He was neither as much as he would have liked to be either. But
- could he not have endeavoured to have found again as in his youth the
- bottle Holiness that then he lived withal? Indeed no for Grace was not
- there to find that bottle. Heard he then in that clap the voice of the
- god Bringforth or, what Calmer said, a hubbub of Phenomenon? Heard?
- Why, he could not but hear unless he had plugged him up the tube
- Understanding (which he had not done). For through that tube he saw
- that he was in the land of Phenomenon where he must for a certain one
- day die as he was like the rest too a passing show. And would he not
- accept to die like the rest and pass away? By no means would he though
- he must nor would he make more shows according as men do with wives
- which Phenomenon has commanded them to do by the book Law. Then wotted
- he nought of that other land which is called Believe-on-Me, that is the
- land of promise which behoves to the king Delightful and shall be for
- ever where there is no death and no birth neither wiving nor mothering
- at which all shall come as many as believe on it? Yes, Pious had told
- him of that land and Chaste had pointed him to the way but the reason
- was that in the way he fell in with a certain whore of an eyepleasing
- exterior whose name, she said, is Bird-in-the-Hand and she beguiled him
- wrongways from the true path by her flatteries that she said to him as,
- Ho, you pretty man, turn aside hither and I will show you a brave
- place, and she lay at him so flatteringly that she had him in her grot
- which is named Two-in-the-Bush or, by some learned, Carnal
- Concupiscence.
- This was it what all that company that sat there at commons in Manse of
- Mothers the most lusted after and if they met with this whore
- Bird-in-the-Hand (which was within all foul plagues, monsters and a
- wicked devil) they would strain the last but they would make at her and
- know her. For regarding Believe-on-Me they said it was nought else but
- notion and they could conceive no thought of it for, first,
- Two-in-the-Bush whither she ticed them was the very goodliest grot and
- in it were four pillows on which were four tickets with these words
- printed on them, Pickaback and Topsyturvy and Shameface and Cheek by
- Jowl and, second, for that foul plague Allpox and the monsters they
- cared not for them for Preservative had given them a stout shield of
- oxengut and, third, that they might take no hurt neither from Offspring
- that was that wicked devil by virtue of this same shield which was
- named Killchild. So were they all in their blind fancy, Mr Cavil and Mr
- Sometimes Godly, Mr Ape Swillale, Mr False Franklin, Mr Dainty Dixon,
- Young Boasthard and Mr Cautious Calmer. Wherein, O wretched company,
- were ye all deceived for that was the voice of the god that was in a
- very grievous rage that he would presently lift his arm up and spill
- their souls for their abuses and their spillings done by them
- contrariwise to his word which forth to bring brenningly biddeth.
- So Thursday sixteenth June Patk. Dignam laid in clay of an apoplexy and
- after hard drought, please God, rained, a bargeman coming in by water a
- fifty mile or thereabout with turf saying the seed won’t sprout, fields
- athirst, very sadcoloured and stunk mightily, the quags and tofts too.
- Hard to breathe and all the young quicks clean consumed without
- sprinkle this long while back as no man remembered to be without. The
- rosy buds all gone brown and spread out blobs and on the hills nought
- but dry flag and faggots that would catch at first fire. All the world
- saying, for aught they knew, the big wind of last February a year that
- did havoc the land so pitifully a small thing beside this barrenness.
- But by and by, as said, this evening after sundown, the wind sitting in
- the west, biggish swollen clouds to be seen as the night increased and
- the weatherwise poring up at them and some sheet lightnings at first
- and after, past ten of the clock, one great stroke with a long thunder
- and in a brace of shakes all scamper pellmell within door for the
- smoking shower, the men making shelter for their straws with a clout or
- kerchief, womenfolk skipping off with kirtles catched up soon as the
- pour came. In Ely place, Baggot street, Duke’s lawn, thence through
- Merrion green up to Holles street a swash of water flowing that was
- before bonedry and not one chair or coach or fiacre seen about but no
- more crack after that first. Over against the Rt. Hon. Mr Justice
- Fitzgibbon’s door (that is to sit with Mr Healy the lawyer upon the
- college lands) Mal. Mulligan a gentleman’s gentleman that had but come
- from Mr Moore’s the writer’s (that was a papish but is now, folk say, a
- good Williamite) chanced against Alec. Bannon in a cut bob (which are
- now in with dance cloaks of Kendal green) that was new got to town from
- Mullingar with the stage where his coz and Mal M’s brother will stay a
- month yet till Saint Swithin and asks what in the earth he does there,
- he bound home and he to Andrew Horne’s being stayed for to crush a cup
- of wine, so he said, but would tell him of a skittish heifer, big of
- her age and beef to the heel, and all this while poured with rain and
- so both together on to Horne’s. There Leop. Bloom of Crawford’s journal
- sitting snug with a covey of wags, likely brangling fellows, Dixon
- jun., scholar of my lady of Mercy’s, Vin. Lynch, a Scots fellow, Will.
- Madden, T. Lenehan, very sad about a racer he fancied and Stephen D.
- Leop. Bloom there for a languor he had but was now better, he having
- dreamed tonight a strange fancy of his dame Mrs Moll with red slippers
- on in a pair of Turkey trunks which is thought by those in ken to be
- for a change and Mistress Purefoy there, that got in through pleading
- her belly, and now on the stools, poor body, two days past her term,
- the midwives sore put to it and can’t deliver, she queasy for a bowl of
- riceslop that is a shrewd drier up of the insides and her breath very
- heavy more than good and should be a bullyboy from the knocks, they
- say, but God give her soon issue. ’Tis her ninth chick to live, I hear,
- and Lady day bit off her last chick’s nails that was then a twelvemonth
- and with other three all breastfed that died written out in a fair hand
- in the king’s bible. Her hub fifty odd and a methodist but takes the
- sacrament and is to be seen any fair sabbath with a pair of his boys
- off Bullock harbour dapping on the sound with a heavybraked reel or in
- a punt he has trailing for flounder and pollock and catches a fine bag,
- I hear. In sum an infinite great fall of rain and all refreshed and
- will much increase the harvest yet those in ken say after wind and
- water fire shall come for a prognostication of Malachi’s almanac (and I
- hear that Mr Russell has done a prophetical charm of the same gist out
- of the Hindustanish for his farmer’s gazette) to have three things in
- all but this a mere fetch without bottom of reason for old crones and
- bairns yet sometimes they are found in the right guess with their
- queerities no telling how.
- With this came up Lenehan to the feet of the table to say how the
- letter was in that night’s gazette and he made a show to find it about
- him (for he swore with an oath that he had been at pains about it) but
- on Stephen’s persuasion he gave over the search and was bidden to sit
- near by which he did mighty brisk. He was a kind of sport gentleman
- that went for a merryandrew or honest pickle and what belonged of
- women, horseflesh or hot scandal he had it pat. To tell the truth he
- was mean in fortunes and for the most part hankered about the
- coffeehouses and low taverns with crimps, ostlers, bookies, Paul’s men,
- runners, flatcaps, waistcoateers, ladies of the bagnio and other rogues
- of the game or with a chanceable catchpole or a tipstaff often at
- nights till broad day of whom he picked up between his sackpossets much
- loose gossip. He took his ordinary at a boilingcook’s and if he had but
- gotten into him a mess of broken victuals or a platter of tripes with a
- bare tester in his purse he could always bring himself off with his
- tongue, some randy quip he had from a punk or whatnot that every
- mother’s son of them would burst their sides. The other, Costello that
- is, hearing this talk asked was it poetry or a tale. Faith, no, he
- says, Frank (that was his name), ’tis all about Kerry cows that are to
- be butchered along of the plague. But they can go hang, says he with a
- wink, for me with their bully beef, a pox on it. There’s as good fish
- in this tin as ever came out of it and very friendly he offered to take
- of some salty sprats that stood by which he had eyed wishly in the
- meantime and found the place which was indeed the chief design of his
- embassy as he was sharpset. _Mort aux vaches_, says Frank then in the
- French language that had been indentured to a brandyshipper that has a
- winelodge in Bordeaux and he spoke French like a gentleman too. From a
- child this Frank had been a donought that his father, a headborough,
- who could ill keep him to school to learn his letters and the use of
- the globes, matriculated at the university to study the mechanics but
- he took the bit between his teeth like a raw colt and was more familiar
- with the justiciary and the parish beadle than with his volumes. One
- time he would be a playactor, then a sutler or a welsher, then nought
- would keep him from the bearpit and the cocking main, then he was for
- the ocean sea or to hoof it on the roads with the romany folk,
- kidnapping a squire’s heir by favour of moonlight or fecking maids’
- linen or choking chicken behind a hedge. He had been off as many times
- as a cat has lives and back again with naked pockets as many more to
- his father the headborough who shed a pint of tears as often as he saw
- him. What, says Mr Leopold with his hands across, that was earnest to
- know the drift of it, will they slaughter all? I protest I saw them but
- this day morning going to the Liverpool boats, says he. I can scarce
- believe ’tis so bad, says he. And he had experience of the like brood
- beasts and of springers, greasy hoggets and wether wool, having been
- some years before actuary for Mr Joseph Cuffe, a worthy salesmaster
- that drove his trade for live stock and meadow auctions hard by Mr
- Gavin Low’s yard in Prussia street. I question with you there, says he.
- More like ’tis the hoose or the timber tongue. Mr Stephen, a little
- moved but very handsomely told him no such matter and that he had
- dispatches from the emperor’s chief tailtickler thanking him for the
- hospitality, that was sending over Doctor Rinderpest, the bestquoted
- cowcatcher in all Muscovy, with a bolus or two of physic to take the
- bull by the horns. Come, come, says Mr Vincent, plain dealing. He’ll
- find himself on the horns of a dilemma if he meddles with a bull that’s
- Irish, says he. Irish by name and irish by nature, says Mr Stephen, and
- he sent the ale purling about, an Irish bull in an English chinashop. I
- conceive you, says Mr Dixon. It is that same bull that was sent to our
- island by farmer Nicholas, the bravest cattlebreeder of them all, with
- an emerald ring in his nose. True for you, says Mr Vincent cross the
- table, and a bullseye into the bargain, says he, and a plumper and a
- portlier bull, says he, never shit on shamrock. He had horns galore, a
- coat of cloth of gold and a sweet smoky breath coming out of his
- nostrils so that the women of our island, leaving doughballs and
- rollingpins, followed after him hanging his bulliness in daisychains.
- What for that, says Mr Dixon, but before he came over farmer Nicholas
- that was a eunuch had him properly gelded by a college of doctors who
- were no better off than himself. So be off now, says he, and do all my
- cousin german the lord Harry tells you and take a farmer’s blessing,
- and with that he slapped his posteriors very soundly. But the slap and
- the blessing stood him friend, says Mr Vincent, for to make up he
- taught him a trick worth two of the other so that maid, wife, abbess
- and widow to this day affirm that they would rather any time of the
- month whisper in his ear in the dark of a cowhouse or get a lick on the
- nape from his long holy tongue than lie with the finest strapping young
- ravisher in the four fields of all Ireland. Another then put in his
- word: And they dressed him, says he, in a point shift and petticoat
- with a tippet and girdle and ruffles on his wrists and clipped his
- forelock and rubbed him all over with spermacetic oil and built stables
- for him at every turn of the road with a gold manger in each full of
- the best hay in the market so that he could doss and dung to his
- heart’s content. By this time the father of the faithful (for so they
- called him) was grown so heavy that he could scarce walk to pasture. To
- remedy which our cozening dames and damsels brought him his fodder in
- their apronlaps and as soon as his belly was full he would rear up on
- his hind quarters to show their ladyships a mystery and roar and bellow
- out of him in bulls’ language and they all after him. Ay, says another,
- and so pampered was he that he would suffer nought to grow in all the
- land but green grass for himself (for that was the only colour to his
- mind) and there was a board put up on a hillock in the middle of the
- island with a printed notice, saying: By the Lord Harry, Green is the
- grass that grows on the ground. And, says Mr Dixon, if ever he got
- scent of a cattleraider in Roscommon or the wilds of Connemara or a
- husbandman in Sligo that was sowing as much as a handful of mustard or
- a bag of rapeseed out he’d run amok over half the countryside rooting
- up with his horns whatever was planted and all by lord Harry’s orders.
- There was bad blood between them at first, says Mr Vincent, and the
- lord Harry called farmer Nicholas all the old Nicks in the world and an
- old whoremaster that kept seven trulls in his house and I’ll meddle in
- his matters, says he. I’ll make that animal smell hell, says he, with
- the help of that good pizzle my father left me. But one evening, says
- Mr Dixon, when the lord Harry was cleaning his royal pelt to go to
- dinner after winning a boatrace (he had spade oars for himself but the
- first rule of the course was that the others were to row with
- pitchforks) he discovered in himself a wonderful likeness to a bull and
- on picking up a blackthumbed chapbook that he kept in the pantry he
- found sure enough that he was a lefthanded descendant of the famous
- champion bull of the Romans, _Bos Bovum_, which is good bog Latin for
- boss of the show. After that, says Mr Vincent, the lord Harry put his
- head into a cow’s drinkingtrough in the presence of all his courtiers
- and pulling it out again told them all his new name. Then, with the
- water running off him, he got into an old smock and skirt that had
- belonged to his grandmother and bought a grammar of the bulls’ language
- to study but he could never learn a word of it except the first
- personal pronoun which he copied out big and got off by heart and if
- ever he went out for a walk he filled his pockets with chalk to write
- it upon what took his fancy, the side of a rock or a teahouse table or
- a bale of cotton or a corkfloat. In short, he and the bull of Ireland
- were soon as fast friends as an arse and a shirt. They were, says Mr
- Stephen, and the end was that the men of the island seeing no help was
- toward, as the ungrate women were all of one mind, made a wherry raft,
- loaded themselves and their bundles of chattels on shipboard, set all
- masts erect, manned the yards, sprang their luff, heaved to, spread
- three sheets in the wind, put her head between wind and water, weighed
- anchor, ported her helm, ran up the jolly Roger, gave three times
- three, let the bullgine run, pushed off in their bumboat and put to sea
- to recover the main of America. Which was the occasion, says Mr
- Vincent, of the composing by a boatswain of that rollicking chanty:
- _—Pope Peter’s but a pissabed.
- A man’s a man for a’ that._
- Our worthy acquaintance Mr Malachi Mulligan now appeared in the doorway
- as the students were finishing their apologue accompanied with a friend
- whom he had just rencountered, a young gentleman, his name Alec Bannon,
- who had late come to town, it being his intention to buy a colour or a
- cornetcy in the fencibles and list for the wars. Mr Mulligan was civil
- enough to express some relish of it all the more as it jumped with a
- project of his own for the cure of the very evil that had been touched
- on. Whereat he handed round to the company a set of pasteboard cards
- which he had had printed that day at Mr Quinnell’s bearing a legend
- printed in fair italics: _Mr Malachi Mulligan. Fertiliser and
- Incubator. Lambay Island_. His project, as he went on to expound, was
- to withdraw from the round of idle pleasures such as form the chief
- business of sir Fopling Popinjay and sir Milksop Quidnunc in town and
- to devote himself to the noblest task for which our bodily organism has
- been framed. Well, let us hear of it, good my friend, said Mr Dixon. I
- make no doubt it smacks of wenching. Come, be seated, both. ’Tis as
- cheap sitting as standing. Mr Mulligan accepted of the invitation and,
- expatiating upon his design, told his hearers that he had been led into
- this thought by a consideration of the causes of sterility, both the
- inhibitory and the prohibitory, whether the inhibition in its turn were
- due to conjugal vexations or to a parsimony of the balance as well as
- whether the prohibition proceeded from defects congenital or from
- proclivities acquired. It grieved him plaguily, he said, to see the
- nuptial couch defrauded of its dearest pledges: and to reflect upon so
- many agreeable females with rich jointures, a prey to the vilest
- bonzes, who hide their flambeau under a bushel in an uncongenial
- cloister or lose their womanly bloom in the embraces of some
- unaccountable muskin when they might multiply the inlets of happiness,
- sacrificing the inestimable jewel of their sex when a hundred pretty
- fellows were at hand to caress, this, he assured them, made his heart
- weep. To curb this inconvenient (which he concluded due to a
- suppression of latent heat), having advised with certain counsellors of
- worth and inspected into this matter, he had resolved to purchase in
- fee simple for ever the freehold of Lambay island from its holder, lord
- Talbot de Malahide, a Tory gentleman of note much in favour with our
- ascendancy party. He proposed to set up there a national fertilising
- farm to be named _Omphalos_ with an obelisk hewn and erected after the
- fashion of Egypt and to offer his dutiful yeoman services for the
- fecundation of any female of what grade of life soever who should there
- direct to him with the desire of fulfilling the functions of her
- natural. Money was no object, he said, nor would he take a penny for
- his pains. The poorest kitchenwench no less than the opulent lady of
- fashion, if so be their constructions and their tempers were warm
- persuaders for their petitions, would find in him their man. For his
- nutriment he shewed how he would feed himself exclusively upon a diet
- of savoury tubercles and fish and coneys there, the flesh of these
- latter prolific rodents being highly recommended for his purpose, both
- broiled and stewed with a blade of mace and a pod or two of capsicum
- chillies. After this homily which he delivered with much warmth of
- asseveration Mr Mulligan in a trice put off from his hat a kerchief
- with which he had shielded it. They both, it seems, had been overtaken
- by the rain and for all their mending their pace had taken water, as
- might be observed by Mr Mulligan’s smallclothes of a hodden grey which
- was now somewhat piebald. His project meanwhile was very favourably
- entertained by his auditors and won hearty eulogies from all though Mr
- Dixon of Mary’s excepted to it, asking with a finicking air did he
- purpose also to carry coals to Newcastle. Mr Mulligan however made
- court to the scholarly by an apt quotation from the classics which, as
- it dwelt upon his memory, seemed to him a sound and tasteful support of
- his contention: _Talis ac tanta depravatio hujus seculi, O quirites, ut
- matresfamiliarum nostrae lascivas cujuslibet semiviri libici
- titillationes testibus ponderosis atque excelsis erectionibus
- centurionum Romanorum magnopere anteponunt_, while for those of ruder
- wit he drove home his point by analogies of the animal kingdom more
- suitable to their stomach, the buck and doe of the forest glade, the
- farmyard drake and duck.
- Valuing himself not a little upon his elegance, being indeed a proper
- man of person, this talkative now applied himself to his dress with
- animadversions of some heat upon the sudden whimsy of the atmospherics
- while the company lavished their encomiums upon the project he had
- advanced. The young gentleman, his friend, overjoyed as he was at a
- passage that had late befallen him, could not forbear to tell it his
- nearest neighbour. Mr Mulligan, now perceiving the table, asked for
- whom were those loaves and fishes and, seeing the stranger, he made him
- a civil bow and said, Pray, sir, was you in need of any professional
- assistance we could give? Who, upon his offer, thanked him very
- heartily, though preserving his proper distance, and replied that he
- was come there about a lady, now an inmate of Horne’s house, that was
- in an interesting condition, poor body, from woman’s woe (and here he
- fetched a deep sigh) to know if her happiness had yet taken place. Mr
- Dixon, to turn the table, took on to ask of Mr Mulligan himself whether
- his incipient ventripotence, upon which he rallied him, betokened an
- ovoblastic gestation in the prostatic utricle or male womb or was due,
- as with the noted physician, Mr Austin Meldon, to a wolf in the
- stomach. For answer Mr Mulligan, in a gale of laughter at his smalls,
- smote himself bravely below the diaphragm, exclaiming with an admirable
- droll mimic of Mother Grogan (the most excellent creature of her sex
- though ’tis pity she’s a trollop): There’s a belly that never bore a
- bastard. This was so happy a conceit that it renewed the storm of mirth
- and threw the whole room into the most violent agitations of delight.
- The spry rattle had run on in the same vein of mimicry but for some
- larum in the antechamber.
- Here the listener who was none other than the Scotch student, a little
- fume of a fellow, blond as tow, congratulated in the liveliest fashion
- with the young gentleman and, interrupting the narrative at a salient
- point, having desired his visavis with a polite beck to have the
- obligingness to pass him a flagon of cordial waters at the same time by
- a questioning poise of the head (a whole century of polite breeding had
- not achieved so nice a gesture) to which was united an equivalent but
- contrary balance of the bottle asked the narrator as plainly as was
- ever done in words if he might treat him with a cup of it. _Mais bien
- sûr_, noble stranger, said he cheerily, _et mille compliments_. That
- you may and very opportunely. There wanted nothing but this cup to
- crown my felicity. But, gracious heaven, was I left with but a crust in
- my wallet and a cupful of water from the well, my God, I would accept
- of them and find it in my heart to kneel down upon the ground and give
- thanks to the powers above for the happiness vouchsafed me by the Giver
- of good things. With these words he approached the goblet to his lips,
- took a complacent draught of the cordial, slicked his hair and, opening
- his bosom, out popped a locket that hung from a silk riband, that very
- picture which he had cherished ever since her hand had wrote therein.
- Gazing upon those features with a world of tenderness, Ah, Monsieur, he
- said, had you but beheld her as I did with these eyes at that affecting
- instant with her dainty tucker and her new coquette cap (a gift for her
- feastday as she told me prettily) in such an artless disorder, of so
- melting a tenderness, ’pon my conscience, even you, Monsieur, had been
- impelled by generous nature to deliver yourself wholly into the hands
- of such an enemy or to quit the field for ever. I declare, I was never
- so touched in all my life. God, I thank thee, as the Author of my days!
- Thrice happy will he be whom so amiable a creature will bless with her
- favours. A sigh of affection gave eloquence to these words and, having
- replaced the locket in his bosom, he wiped his eye and sighed again.
- Beneficent Disseminator of blessings to all Thy creatures, how great
- and universal must be that sweetest of Thy tyrannies which can hold in
- thrall the free and the bond, the simple swain and the polished
- coxcomb, the lover in the heyday of reckless passion and the husband of
- maturer years. But indeed, sir, I wander from the point. How mingled
- and imperfect are all our sublunary joys. Maledicity! he exclaimed in
- anguish. Would to God that foresight had but remembered me to take my
- cloak along! I could weep to think of it. Then, though it had poured
- seven showers, we were neither of us a penny the worse. But beshrew me,
- he cried, clapping hand to his forehead, tomorrow will be a new day
- and, thousand thunders, I know of a _marchand de capotes_, Monsieur
- Poyntz, from whom I can have for a _livre_ as snug a cloak of the
- French fashion as ever kept a lady from wetting. Tut, tut! cries Le
- Fécondateur, tripping in, my friend Monsieur Moore, that most
- accomplished traveller (I have just cracked a half bottle _avec lui_ in
- a circle of the best wits of the town), is my authority that in Cape
- Horn, _ventre biche_, they have a rain that will wet through any, even
- the stoutest cloak. A drenching of that violence, he tells me, _sans
- blague_, has sent more than one luckless fellow in good earnest
- posthaste to another world. Pooh! A _livre!_ cries Monsieur Lynch. The
- clumsy things are dear at a sou. One umbrella, were it no bigger than a
- fairy mushroom, is worth ten such stopgaps. No woman of any wit would
- wear one. My dear Kitty told me today that she would dance in a deluge
- before ever she would starve in such an ark of salvation for, as she
- reminded me (blushing piquantly and whispering in my ear though there
- was none to snap her words but giddy butterflies), dame Nature, by the
- divine blessing, has implanted it in our hearts and it has become a
- household word that _il y a deux choses_ for which the innocence of our
- original garb, in other circumstances a breach of the proprieties, is
- the fittest, nay, the only garment. The first, said she (and here my
- pretty philosopher, as I handed her to her tilbury, to fix my
- attention, gently tipped with her tongue the outer chamber of my ear),
- the first is a bath... But at this point a bell tinkling in the hall
- cut short a discourse which promised so bravely for the enrichment of
- our store of knowledge.
- Amid the general vacant hilarity of the assembly a bell rang and, while
- all were conjecturing what might be the cause, Miss Callan entered and,
- having spoken a few words in a low tone to young Mr Dixon, retired with
- a profound bow to the company. The presence even for a moment among a
- party of debauchees of a woman endued with every quality of modesty and
- not less severe than beautiful refrained the humourous sallies even of
- the most licentious but her departure was the signal for an outbreak of
- ribaldry. Strike me silly, said Costello, a low fellow who was fuddled.
- A monstrous fine bit of cowflesh! I’ll be sworn she has rendezvoused
- you. What, you dog? Have you a way with them? Gad’s bud, immensely so,
- said Mr Lynch. The bedside manner it is that they use in the Mater
- hospice. Demme, does not Doctor O’Gargle chuck the nuns there under the
- chin. As I look to be saved I had it from my Kitty who has been
- wardmaid there any time these seven months. Lawksamercy, doctor, cried
- the young blood in the primrose vest, feigning a womanish simper and
- with immodest squirmings of his body, how you do tease a body! Drat the
- man! Bless me, I’m all of a wibbly wobbly. Why, you’re as bad as dear
- little Father Cantekissem, that you are! May this pot of four half
- choke me, cried Costello, if she aint in the family way. I knows a lady
- what’s got a white swelling quick as I claps eyes on her. The young
- surgeon, however, rose and begged the company to excuse his retreat as
- the nurse had just then informed him that he was needed in the ward.
- Merciful providence had been pleased to put a period to the sufferings
- of the lady who was _enceinte_ which she had borne with a laudable
- fortitude and she had given birth to a bouncing boy. I want patience,
- said he, with those who, without wit to enliven or learning to
- instruct, revile an ennobling profession which, saving the reverence
- due to the Deity, is the greatest power for happiness upon the earth. I
- am positive when I say that if need were I could produce a cloud of
- witnesses to the excellence of her noble exercitations which, so far
- from being a byword, should be a glorious incentive in the human
- breast. I cannot away with them. What? Malign such an one, the amiable
- Miss Callan, who is the lustre of her own sex and the astonishment of
- ours? And at an instant the most momentous that can befall a puny child
- of clay? Perish the thought! I shudder to think of the future of a race
- where the seeds of such malice have been sown and where no right
- reverence is rendered to mother and maid in house of Horne. Having
- delivered himself of this rebuke he saluted those present on the by and
- repaired to the door. A murmur of approval arose from all and some were
- for ejecting the low soaker without more ado, a design which would have
- been effected nor would he have received more than his bare deserts had
- he not abridged his transgression by affirming with a horrid
- imprecation (for he swore a round hand) that he was as good a son of
- the true fold as ever drew breath. Stap my vitals, said he, them was
- always the sentiments of honest Frank Costello which I was bred up most
- particular to honour thy father and thy mother that had the best hand
- to a rolypoly or a hasty pudding as you ever see what I always looks
- back on with a loving heart.
- To revert to Mr Bloom who, after his first entry, had been conscious of
- some impudent mocks which he however had borne with as being the fruits
- of that age upon which it is commonly charged that it knows not pity.
- The young sparks, it is true, were as full of extravagancies as
- overgrown children: the words of their tumultuary discussions were
- difficultly understood and not often nice: their testiness and
- outrageous _mots_ were such that his intellects resiled from: nor were
- they scrupulously sensible of the proprieties though their fund of
- strong animal spirits spoke in their behalf. But the word of Mr
- Costello was an unwelcome language for him for he nauseated the wretch
- that seemed to him a cropeared creature of a misshapen gibbosity, born
- out of wedlock and thrust like a crookback toothed and feet first into
- the world, which the dint of the surgeon’s pliers in his skull lent
- indeed a colour to, so as to put him in thought of that missing link of
- creation’s chain desiderated by the late ingenious Mr Darwin. It was
- now for more than the middle span of our allotted years that he had
- passed through the thousand vicissitudes of existence and, being of a
- wary ascendancy and self a man of rare forecast, he had enjoined his
- heart to repress all motions of a rising choler and, by intercepting
- them with the readiest precaution, foster within his breast that
- plenitude of sufferance which base minds jeer at, rash judgers scorn
- and all find tolerable and but tolerable. To those who create
- themselves wits at the cost of feminine delicacy (a habit of mind which
- he never did hold with) to them he would concede neither to bear the
- name nor to herit the tradition of a proper breeding: while for such
- that, having lost all forbearance, can lose no more, there remained the
- sharp antidote of experience to cause their insolency to beat a
- precipitate and inglorious retreat. Not but what he could feel with
- mettlesome youth which, caring nought for the mows of dotards or the
- gruntlings of the severe, is ever (as the chaste fancy of the Holy
- Writer expresses it) for eating of the tree forbid it yet not so far
- forth as to pretermit humanity upon any condition soever towards a
- gentlewoman when she was about her lawful occasions. To conclude, while
- from the sister’s words he had reckoned upon a speedy delivery he was,
- however, it must be owned, not a little alleviated by the intelligence
- that the issue so auspicated after an ordeal of such duress now
- testified once more to the mercy as well as to the bounty of the
- Supreme Being.
- Accordingly he broke his mind to his neighbour, saying that, to express
- his notion of the thing, his opinion (who ought not perchance to
- express one) was that one must have a cold constitution and a frigid
- genius not to be rejoiced by this freshest news of the fruition of her
- confinement since she had been in such pain through no fault of hers.
- The dressy young blade said it was her husband’s that put her in that
- expectation or at least it ought to be unless she were another Ephesian
- matron. I must acquaint you, said Mr Crotthers, clapping on the table
- so as to evoke a resonant comment of emphasis, old Glory Allelujurum
- was round again today, an elderly man with dundrearies, preferring
- through his nose a request to have word of Wilhelmina, my life, as he
- calls her. I bade him hold himself in readiness for that the event
- would burst anon. ’Slife, I’ll be round with you. I cannot but extol
- the virile potency of the old bucko that could still knock another
- child out of her. All fell to praising of it, each after his own
- fashion, though the same young blade held with his former view that
- another than her conjugial had been the man in the gap, a clerk in
- orders, a linkboy (virtuous) or an itinerant vendor of articles needed
- in every household. Singular, communed the guest with himself, the
- wonderfully unequal faculty of metempsychosis possessed by them, that
- the puerperal dormitory and the dissecting theatre should be the
- seminaries of such frivolity, that the mere acquisition of academic
- titles should suffice to transform in a pinch of time these votaries of
- levity into exemplary practitioners of an art which most men anywise
- eminent have esteemed the noblest. But, he further added, it is mayhap
- to relieve the pentup feelings that in common oppress them for I have
- more than once observed that birds of a feather laugh together.
- But with what fitness, let it be asked of the noble lord, his patron,
- has this alien, whom the concession of a gracious prince has admitted
- to civic rights, constituted himself the lord paramount of our internal
- polity? Where is now that gratitude which loyalty should have
- counselled? During the recent war whenever the enemy had a temporary
- advantage with his granados did this traitor to his kind not seize that
- moment to discharge his piece against the empire of which he is a
- tenant at will while he trembled for the security of his four per
- cents? Has he forgotten this as he forgets all benefits received? Or is
- it that from being a deluder of others he has become at last his own
- dupe as he is, if report belie him not, his own and his only enjoyer?
- Far be it from candour to violate the bedchamber of a respectable lady,
- the daughter of a gallant major, or to cast the most distant
- reflections upon her virtue but if he challenges attention there (as it
- was indeed highly his interest not to have done) then be it so. Unhappy
- woman, she has been too long and too persistently denied her legitimate
- prerogative to listen to his objurgations with any other feeling than
- the derision of the desperate. He says this, a censor of morals, a very
- pelican in his piety, who did not scruple, oblivious of the ties of
- nature, to attempt illicit intercourse with a female domestic drawn
- from the lowest strata of society! Nay, had the hussy’s scouringbrush
- not been her tutelary angel, it had gone with her as hard as with
- Hagar, the Egyptian! In the question of the grazing lands his peevish
- asperity is notorious and in Mr Cuffe’s hearing brought upon him from
- an indignant rancher a scathing retort couched in terms as
- straightforward as they were bucolic. It ill becomes him to preach that
- gospel. Has he not nearer home a seedfield that lies fallow for the
- want of the ploughshare? A habit reprehensible at puberty is second
- nature and an opprobrium in middle life. If he must dispense his balm
- of Gilead in nostrums and apothegms of dubious taste to restore to
- health a generation of unfledged profligates let his practice consist
- better with the doctrines that now engross him. His marital breast is
- the repository of secrets which decorum is reluctant to adduce. The
- lewd suggestions of some faded beauty may console him for a consort
- neglected and debauched but this new exponent of morals and healer of
- ills is at his best an exotic tree which, when rooted in its native
- orient, throve and flourished and was abundant in balm but,
- transplanted to a clime more temperate, its roots have lost their
- quondam vigour while the stuff that comes away from it is stagnant,
- acid and inoperative.
- The news was imparted with a circumspection recalling the ceremonial
- usage of the Sublime Porte by the second female infirmarian to the
- junior medical officer in residence, who in his turn announced to the
- delegation that an heir had been born. When he had betaken himself to
- the women’s apartment to assist at the prescribed ceremony of the
- afterbirth in the presence of the secretary of state for domestic
- affairs and the members of the privy council, silent in unanimous
- exhaustion and approbation the delegates, chafing under the length and
- solemnity of their vigil and hoping that the joyful occurrence would
- palliate a licence which the simultaneous absence of abigail and
- obstetrician rendered the easier, broke out at once into a strife of
- tongues. In vain the voice of Mr Canvasser Bloom was heard endeavouring
- to urge, to mollify, to refrain. The moment was too propitious for the
- display of that discursiveness which seemed the only bond of union
- among tempers so divergent. Every phase of the situation was
- successively eviscerated: the prenatal repugnance of uterine brothers,
- the Caesarean section, posthumity with respect to the father and, that
- rarer form, with respect to the mother, the fratricidal case known as
- the Childs Murder and rendered memorable by the impassioned plea of Mr
- Advocate Bushe which secured the acquittal of the wrongfully accused,
- the rights of primogeniture and king’s bounty touching twins and
- triplets, miscarriages and infanticides, simulated or dissimulated, the
- acardiac _foetus in foetu_ and aprosopia due to a congestion, the
- agnathia of certain chinless Chinamen (cited by Mr Candidate Mulligan)
- in consequence of defective reunion of the maxillary knobs along the
- medial line so that (as he said) one ear could hear what the other
- spoke, the benefits of anesthesia or twilight sleep, the prolongation
- of labour pains in advanced gravidancy by reason of pressure on the
- vein, the premature relentment of the amniotic fluid (as exemplified in
- the actual case) with consequent peril of sepsis to the matrix,
- artificial insemination by means of syringes, involution of the womb
- consequent upon the menopause, the problem of the perpetration of the
- species in the case of females impregnated by delinquent rape, that
- distressing manner of delivery called by the Brandenburghers
- _Sturzgeburt,_ the recorded instances of multiseminal, twikindled and
- monstrous births conceived during the catamenic period or of
- consanguineous parents—in a word all the cases of human nativity which
- Aristotle has classified in his masterpiece with chromolithographic
- illustrations. The gravest problems of obstetrics and forensic medicine
- were examined with as much animation as the most popular beliefs on the
- state of pregnancy such as the forbidding to a gravid woman to step
- over a countrystile lest, by her movement, the navelcord should
- strangle her creature and the injunction upon her in the event of a
- yearning, ardently and ineffectually entertained, to place her hand
- against that part of her person which long usage has consecrated as the
- seat of castigation. The abnormalities of harelip, breastmole,
- supernumerary digits, negro’s inkle, strawberry mark and portwine stain
- were alleged by one as a _prima facie_ and natural hypothetical
- explanation of those swineheaded (the case of Madame Grissel Steevens
- was not forgotten) or doghaired infants occasionally born. The
- hypothesis of a plasmic memory, advanced by the Caledonian envoy and
- worthy of the metaphysical traditions of the land he stood for,
- envisaged in such cases an arrest of embryonic development at some
- stage antecedent to the human. An outlandish delegate sustained against
- both these views, with such heat as almost carried conviction, the
- theory of copulation between women and the males of brutes, his
- authority being his own avouchment in support of fables such as that of
- the Minotaur which the genius of the elegant Latin poet has handed down
- to us in the pages of his Metamorphoses. The impression made by his
- words was immediate but shortlived. It was effaced as easily as it had
- been evoked by an allocution from Mr Candidate Mulligan in that vein of
- pleasantry which none better than he knew how to affect, postulating as
- the supremest object of desire a nice clean old man. Contemporaneously,
- a heated argument having arisen between Mr Delegate Madden and Mr
- Candidate Lynch regarding the juridical and theological dilemma created
- in the event of one Siamese twin predeceasing the other, the difficulty
- by mutual consent was referred to Mr Canvasser Bloom for instant
- submittal to Mr Coadjutor Deacon Dedalus. Hitherto silent, whether the
- better to show by preternatural gravity that curious dignity of the
- garb with which he was invested or in obedience to an inward voice, he
- delivered briefly and, as some thought, perfunctorily the
- ecclesiastical ordinance forbidding man to put asunder what God has
- joined.
- But Malachias’ tale began to freeze them with horror. He conjured up
- the scene before them. The secret panel beside the chimney slid back
- and in the recess appeared... Haines! Which of us did not feel his
- flesh creep! He had a portfolio full of Celtic literature in one hand,
- in the other a phial marked _Poison._ Surprise, horror, loathing were
- depicted on all faces while he eyed them with a ghostly grin. I
- anticipated some such reception, he began with an eldritch laugh, for
- which, it seems, history is to blame. Yes, it is true. I am the
- murderer of Samuel Childs. And how I am punished! The inferno has no
- terrors for me. This is the appearance is on me. Tare and ages, what
- way would I be resting at all, he muttered thickly, and I tramping
- Dublin this while back with my share of songs and himself after me the
- like of a soulth or a bullawurrus? My hell, and Ireland’s, is in this
- life. It is what I tried to obliterate my crime. Distractions,
- rookshooting, the Erse language (he recited some), laudanum (he raised
- the phial to his lips), camping out. In vain! His spectre stalks me.
- Dope is my only hope... Ah! Destruction! The black panther! With a cry
- he suddenly vanished and the panel slid back. An instant later his head
- appeared in the door opposite and said: Meet me at Westland Row station
- at ten past eleven. He was gone. Tears gushed from the eyes of the
- dissipated host. The seer raised his hand to heaven, murmuring: The
- vendetta of Mananaun! The sage repeated: _Lex talionis_. The
- sentimentalist is he who would enjoy without incurring the immense
- debtorship for a thing done. Malachias, overcome by emotion, ceased.
- The mystery was unveiled. Haines was the third brother. His real name
- was Childs. The black panther was himself the ghost of his own father.
- He drank drugs to obliterate. For this relief much thanks. The lonely
- house by the graveyard is uninhabited. No soul will live there. The
- spider pitches her web in the solitude. The nocturnal rat peers from
- his hole. A curse is on it. It is haunted. Murderer’s ground.
- What is the age of the soul of man? As she hath the virtue of the
- chameleon to change her hue at every new approach, to be gay with the
- merry and mournful with the downcast, so too is her age changeable as
- her mood. No longer is Leopold, as he sits there, ruminating, chewing
- the cud of reminiscence, that staid agent of publicity and holder of a
- modest substance in the funds. A score of years are blown away. He is
- young Leopold. There, as in a retrospective arrangement, a mirror
- within a mirror (hey, presto!), he beholdeth himself. That young figure
- of then is seen, precociously manly, walking on a nipping morning from
- the old house in Clanbrassil street to the high school, his booksatchel
- on him bandolierwise, and in it a goodly hunk of wheaten loaf, a
- mother’s thought. Or it is the same figure, a year or so gone over, in
- his first hard hat (ah, that was a day!), already on the road, a
- fullfledged traveller for the family firm, equipped with an orderbook,
- a scented handkerchief (not for show only), his case of bright
- trinketware (alas! a thing now of the past!) and a quiverful of
- compliant smiles for this or that halfwon housewife reckoning it out
- upon her fingertips or for a budding virgin, shyly acknowledging (but
- the heart? tell me!) his studied baisemoins. The scent, the smile, but,
- more than these, the dark eyes and oleaginous address, brought home at
- duskfall many a commission to the head of the firm, seated with Jacob’s
- pipe after like labours in the paternal ingle (a meal of noodles, you
- may be sure, is aheating), reading through round horned spectacles some
- paper from the Europe of a month before. But hey, presto, the mirror is
- breathed on and the young knighterrant recedes, shrivels, dwindles to a
- tiny speck within the mist. Now he is himself paternal and these about
- him might be his sons. Who can say? The wise father knows his own
- child. He thinks of a drizzling night in Hatch street, hard by the
- bonded stores there, the first. Together (she is a poor waif, a child
- of shame, yours and mine and of all for a bare shilling and her
- luckpenny), together they hear the heavy tread of the watch as two
- raincaped shadows pass the new royal university. Bridie! Bridie Kelly!
- He will never forget the name, ever remember the night: first night,
- the bridenight. They are entwined in nethermost darkness, the willer
- with the willed, and in an instant (_fiat!_) light shall flood the
- world. Did heart leap to heart? Nay, fair reader. In a breath ’twas
- done but—hold! Back! It must not be! In terror the poor girl flees away
- through the murk. She is the bride of darkness, a daughter of night.
- She dare not bear the sunnygolden babe of day. No, Leopold. Name and
- memory solace thee not. That youthful illusion of thy strength was
- taken from thee—and in vain. No son of thy loins is by thee. There is
- none now to be for Leopold, what Leopold was for Rudolph.
- The voices blend and fuse in clouded silence: silence that is the
- infinite of space: and swiftly, silently the soul is wafted over
- regions of cycles of generations that have lived. A region where grey
- twilight ever descends, never falls on wide sagegreen pasturefields,
- shedding her dusk, scattering a perennial dew of stars. She follows her
- mother with ungainly steps, a mare leading her fillyfoal. Twilight
- phantoms are they, yet moulded in prophetic grace of structure, slim
- shapely haunches, a supple tendonous neck, the meek apprehensive skull.
- They fade, sad phantoms: all is gone. Agendath is a waste land, a home
- of screechowls and the sandblind upupa. Netaim, the golden, is no more.
- And on the highway of the clouds they come, muttering thunder of
- rebellion, the ghosts of beasts. Huuh! Hark! Huuh! Parallax stalks
- behind and goads them, the lancinating lightnings of whose brow are
- scorpions. Elk and yak, the bulls of Bashan and of Babylon, mammoth and
- mastodon, they come trooping to the sunken sea, _Lacus Mortis_. Ominous
- revengeful zodiacal host! They moan, passing upon the clouds, horned
- and capricorned, the trumpeted with the tusked, the lionmaned, the
- giantantlered, snouter and crawler, rodent, ruminant and pachyderm, all
- their moving moaning multitude, murderers of the sun.
- Onward to the dead sea they tramp to drink, unslaked and with horrible
- gulpings, the salt somnolent inexhaustible flood. And the equine
- portent grows again, magnified in the deserted heavens, nay to heaven’s
- own magnitude, till it looms, vast, over the house of Virgo. And lo,
- wonder of metempsychosis, it is she, the everlasting bride, harbinger
- of the daystar, the bride, ever virgin. It is she, Martha, thou lost
- one, Millicent, the young, the dear, the radiant. How serene does she
- now arise, a queen among the Pleiades, in the penultimate antelucan
- hour, shod in sandals of bright gold, coifed with a veil of what do you
- call it gossamer. It floats, it flows about her starborn flesh and
- loose it streams, emerald, sapphire, mauve and heliotrope, sustained on
- currents of the cold interstellar wind, winding, coiling, simply
- swirling, writhing in the skies a mysterious writing till, after a
- myriad metamorphoses of symbol, it blazes, Alpha, a ruby and triangled
- sign upon the forehead of Taurus.
- Francis was reminding Stephen of years before when they had been at
- school together in Conmee’s time. He asked about Glaucon, Alcibiades,
- Pisistratus. Where were they now? Neither knew. You have spoken of the
- past and its phantoms, Stephen said. Why think of them? If I call them
- into life across the waters of Lethe will not the poor ghosts troop to
- my call? Who supposes it? I, Bous Stephanoumenos, bullockbefriending
- bard, am lord and giver of their life. He encircled his gadding hair
- with a coronal of vineleaves, smiling at Vincent. That answer and those
- leaves, Vincent said to him, will adorn you more fitly when something
- more, and greatly more, than a capful of light odes can call your
- genius father. All who wish you well hope this for you. All desire to
- see you bring forth the work you meditate, to acclaim you
- Stephaneforos. I heartily wish you may not fail them. O no, Vincent
- Lenehan said, laying a hand on the shoulder near him. Have no fear. He
- could not leave his mother an orphan. The young man’s face grew dark.
- All could see how hard it was for him to be reminded of his promise and
- of his recent loss. He would have withdrawn from the feast had not the
- noise of voices allayed the smart. Madden had lost five drachmas on
- Sceptre for a whim of the rider’s name: Lenehan as much more. He told
- them of the race. The flag fell and, huuh! off, scamper, the mare ran
- out freshly with O. Madden up. She was leading the field. All hearts
- were beating. Even Phyllis could not contain herself. She waved her
- scarf and cried: Huzzah! Sceptre wins! But in the straight on the run
- home when all were in close order the dark horse Throwaway drew level,
- reached, outstripped her. All was lost now. Phyllis was silent: her
- eyes were sad anemones. Juno, she cried, I am undone. But her lover
- consoled her and brought her a bright casket of gold in which lay some
- oval sugarplums which she partook. A tear fell: one only. A whacking
- fine whip, said Lenehan, is W. Lane. Four winners yesterday and three
- today. What rider is like him? Mount him on the camel or the boisterous
- buffalo the victory in a hack canter is still his. But let us bear it
- as was the ancient wont. Mercy on the luckless! Poor Sceptre! he said
- with a light sigh. She is not the filly that she was. Never, by this
- hand, shall we behold such another. By gad, sir, a queen of them. Do
- you remember her, Vincent? I wish you could have seen my queen today,
- Vincent said. How young she was and radiant (Lalage were scarce fair
- beside her) in her yellow shoes and frock of muslin, I do not know the
- right name of it. The chestnuts that shaded us were in bloom: the air
- drooped with their persuasive odour and with pollen floating by us. In
- the sunny patches one might easily have cooked on a stone a batch of
- those buns with Corinth fruit in them that Periplipomenes sells in his
- booth near the bridge. But she had nought for her teeth but the arm
- with which I held her and in that she nibbled mischievously when I
- pressed too close. A week ago she lay ill, four days on the couch, but
- today she was free, blithe, mocked at peril. She is more taking then.
- Her posies too! Mad romp that she is, she had pulled her fill as we
- reclined together. And in your ear, my friend, you will not think who
- met us as we left the field. Conmee himself! He was walking by the
- hedge, reading, I think a brevier book with, I doubt not, a witty
- letter in it from Glycera or Chloe to keep the page. The sweet creature
- turned all colours in her confusion, feigning to reprove a slight
- disorder in her dress: a slip of underwood clung there for the very
- trees adore her. When Conmee had passed she glanced at her lovely echo
- in that little mirror she carries. But he had been kind. In going by he
- had blessed us. The gods too are ever kind, Lenehan said. If I had poor
- luck with Bass’s mare perhaps this draught of his may serve me more
- propensely. He was laying his hand upon a winejar: Malachi saw it and
- withheld his act, pointing to the stranger and to the scarlet label.
- Warily, Malachi whispered, preserve a druid silence. His soul is far
- away. It is as painful perhaps to be awakened from a vision as to be
- born. Any object, intensely regarded, may be a gate of access to the
- incorruptible eon of the gods. Do you not think it, Stephen? Theosophos
- told me so, Stephen answered, whom in a previous existence Egyptian
- priests initiated into the mysteries of karmic law. The lords of the
- moon, Theosophos told me, an orangefiery shipload from planet Alpha of
- the lunar chain would not assume the etheric doubles and these were
- therefore incarnated by the rubycoloured egos from the second
- constellation.
- However, as a matter of fact though, the preposterous surmise about him
- being in some description of a doldrums or other or mesmerised which
- was entirely due to a misconception of the shallowest character, was
- not the case at all. The individual whose visual organs while the above
- was going on were at this juncture commencing to exhibit symptoms of
- animation was as astute if not astuter than any man living and anybody
- that conjectured the contrary would have found themselves pretty
- speedily in the wrong shop. During the past four minutes or thereabouts
- he had been staring hard at a certain amount of number one Bass bottled
- by Messrs Bass and Co at Burton-on-Trent which happened to be situated
- amongst a lot of others right opposite to where he was and which was
- certainly calculated to attract anyone’s remark on account of its
- scarlet appearance. He was simply and solely, as it subsequently
- transpired for reasons best known to himself, which put quite an
- altogether different complexion on the proceedings, after the moment
- before’s observations about boyhood days and the turf, recollecting two
- or three private transactions of his own which the other two were as
- mutually innocent of as the babe unborn. Eventually, however, both
- their eyes met and as soon as it began to dawn on him that the other
- was endeavouring to help himself to the thing he involuntarily
- determined to help him himself and so he accordingly took hold of the
- neck of the mediumsized glass recipient which contained the fluid
- sought after and made a capacious hole in it by pouring a lot of it out
- with, also at the same time, however, a considerable degree of
- attentiveness in order not to upset any of the beer that was in it
- about the place.
- The debate which ensued was in its scope and progress an epitome of the
- course of life. Neither place nor council was lacking in dignity. The
- debaters were the keenest in the land, the theme they were engaged on
- the loftiest and most vital. The high hall of Horne’s house had never
- beheld an assembly so representative and so varied nor had the old
- rafters of that establishment ever listened to a language so
- encyclopaedic. A gallant scene in truth it made. Crotthers was there at
- the foot of the table in his striking Highland garb, his face glowing
- from the briny airs of the Mull of Galloway. There too, opposite to
- him, was Lynch whose countenance bore already the stigmata of early
- depravity and premature wisdom. Next the Scotchman was the place
- assigned to Costello, the eccentric, while at his side was seated in
- stolid repose the squat form of Madden. The chair of the resident
- indeed stood vacant before the hearth but on either flank of it the
- figure of Bannon in explorer’s kit of tweed shorts and salted cowhide
- brogues contrasted sharply with the primrose elegance and townbred
- manners of Malachi Roland St John Mulligan. Lastly at the head of the
- board was the young poet who found a refuge from his labours of
- pedagogy and metaphysical inquisition in the convivial atmosphere of
- Socratic discussion, while to right and left of him were accommodated
- the flippant prognosticator, fresh from the hippodrome, and that
- vigilant wanderer, soiled by the dust of travel and combat and stained
- by the mire of an indelible dishonour, but from whose steadfast and
- constant heart no lure or peril or threat or degradation could ever
- efface the image of that voluptuous loveliness which the inspired
- pencil of Lafayette has limned for ages yet to come.
- It had better be stated here and now at the outset that the perverted
- transcendentalism to which Mr S. Dedalus’ (Div. Scep.) contentions
- would appear to prove him pretty badly addicted runs directly counter
- to accepted scientific methods. Science, it cannot be too often
- repeated, deals with tangible phenomena. The man of science like the
- man in the street has to face hardheaded facts that cannot be blinked
- and explain them as best he can. There may be, it is true, some
- questions which science cannot answer—at present—such as the first
- problem submitted by Mr L. Bloom (Pubb. Canv.) regarding the future
- determination of sex. Must we accept the view of Empedocles of
- Trinacria that the right ovary (the postmenstrual period, assert
- others) is responsible for the birth of males or are the too long
- neglected spermatozoa or nemasperms the differentiating factors or is
- it, as most embryologists incline to opine, such as Culpepper,
- Spallanzani, Blumenbach, Lusk, Hertwig, Leopold and Valenti, a mixture
- of both? This would be tantamount to a cooperation (one of nature’s
- favourite devices) between the _nisus formativus_ of the nemasperm on
- the one hand and on the other a happily chosen position, _succubitus
- felix_, of the passive element. The other problem raised by the same
- inquirer is scarcely less vital: infant mortality. It is interesting
- because, as he pertinently remarks, we are all born in the same way but
- we all die in different ways. Mr M. Mulligan (Hyg. et Eug. Doc.) blames
- the sanitary conditions in which our greylunged citizens contract
- adenoids, pulmonary complaints etc. by inhaling the bacteria which lurk
- in dust. These factors, he alleged, and the revolting spectacles
- offered by our streets, hideous publicity posters, religious ministers
- of all denominations, mutilated soldiers and sailors, exposed scorbutic
- cardrivers, the suspended carcases of dead animals, paranoic bachelors
- and unfructified duennas—these, he said, were accountable for any and
- every fallingoff in the calibre of the race. Kalipedia, he prophesied,
- would soon be generally adopted and all the graces of life, genuinely
- good music, agreeable literature, light philosophy, instructive
- pictures, plastercast reproductions of the classical statues such as
- Venus and Apollo, artistic coloured photographs of prize babies, all
- these little attentions would enable ladies who were in a particular
- condition to pass the intervening months in a most enjoyable manner. Mr
- J. Crotthers (Disc. Bacc.) attributes some of these demises to
- abdominal trauma in the case of women workers subjected to heavy
- labours in the workshop and to marital discipline in the home but by
- far the vast majority to neglect, private or official, culminating in
- the exposure of newborn infants, the practice of criminal abortion or
- in the atrocious crime of infanticide. Although the former (we are
- thinking of neglect) is undoubtedly only too true the case he cites of
- nurses forgetting to count the sponges in the peritoneal cavity is too
- rare to be normative. In fact when one comes to look into it the wonder
- is that so many pregnancies and deliveries go off so well as they do,
- all things considered and in spite of our human shortcomings which
- often baulk nature in her intentions. An ingenious suggestion is that
- thrown out by Mr V. Lynch (Bacc. Arith.) that both natality and
- mortality, as well as all other phenomena of evolution, tidal
- movements, lunar phases, blood temperatures, diseases in general,
- everything, in fine, in nature’s vast workshop from the extinction of
- some remote sun to the blossoming of one of the countless flowers which
- beautify our public parks is subject to a law of numeration as yet
- unascertained. Still the plain straightforward question why a child of
- normally healthy parents and seemingly a healthy child and properly
- looked after succumbs unaccountably in early childhood (though other
- children of the same marriage do not) must certainly, in the poet’s
- words, give us pause. Nature, we may rest assured, has her own good and
- cogent reasons for whatever she does and in all probability such deaths
- are due to some law of anticipation by which organisms in which morbous
- germs have taken up their residence (modern science has conclusively
- shown that only the plasmic substance can be said to be immortal) tend
- to disappear at an increasingly earlier stage of development, an
- arrangement which, though productive of pain to some of our feelings
- (notably the maternal), is nevertheless, some of us think, in the long
- run beneficial to the race in general in securing thereby the survival
- of the fittest. Mr S. Dedalus’ (Div. Scep.) remark (or should it be
- called an interruption?) that an omnivorous being which can masticate,
- deglute, digest and apparently pass through the ordinary channel with
- pluterperfect imperturbability such multifarious aliments as cancrenous
- females emaciated by parturition, corpulent professional gentlemen, not
- to speak of jaundiced politicians and chlorotic nuns, might possibly
- find gastric relief in an innocent collation of staggering bob, reveals
- as nought else could and in a very unsavoury light the tendency above
- alluded to. For the enlightenment of those who are not so intimately
- acquainted with the minutiae of the municipal abattoir as this
- morbidminded esthete and embryo philosopher who for all his overweening
- bumptiousness in things scientific can scarcely distinguish an acid
- from an alkali prides himself on being, it should perhaps be stated
- that staggering bob in the vile parlance of our lowerclass licensed
- victuallers signifies the cookable and eatable flesh of a calf newly
- dropped from its mother. In a recent public controversy with Mr L.
- Bloom (Pubb. Canv.) which took place in the commons’ hall of the
- National Maternity Hospital, 29, 30 and 31 Holles street, of which, as
- is well known, Dr A. Horne (Lic. in Midw., F. K. Q. C. P. I.) is the
- able and popular master, he is reported by eyewitnesses as having
- stated that once a woman has let the cat into the bag (an esthete’s
- allusion, presumably, to one of the most complicated and marvellous of
- all nature’s processes—the act of sexual congress) she must let it out
- again or give it life, as he phrased it, to save her own. At the risk
- of her own, was the telling rejoinder of his interlocutor, none the
- less effective for the moderate and measured tone in which it was
- delivered.
- Meanwhile the skill and patience of the physician had brought about a
- happy _accouchement._ It had been a weary weary while both for patient
- and doctor. All that surgical skill could do was done and the brave
- woman had manfully helped. She had. She had fought the good fight and
- now she was very very happy. Those who have passed on, who have gone
- before, are happy too as they gaze down and smile upon the touching
- scene. Reverently look at her as she reclines there with the
- motherlight in her eyes, that longing hunger for baby fingers (a pretty
- sight it is to see), in the first bloom of her new motherhood,
- breathing a silent prayer of thanksgiving to One above, the Universal
- Husband. And as her loving eyes behold her babe she wishes only one
- blessing more, to have her dear Doady there with her to share her joy,
- to lay in his arms that mite of God’s clay, the fruit of their lawful
- embraces. He is older now (you and I may whisper it) and a trifle
- stooped in the shoulders yet in the whirligig of years a grave dignity
- has come to the conscientious second accountant of the Ulster bank,
- College Green branch. O Doady, loved one of old, faithful lifemate now,
- it may never be again, that faroff time of the roses! With the old
- shake of her pretty head she recalls those days. God! How beautiful now
- across the mist of years! But their children are grouped in her
- imagination about the bedside, hers and his, Charley, Mary Alice,
- Frederick Albert (if he had lived), Mamy, Budgy (Victoria Frances),
- Tom, Violet Constance Louisa, darling little Bobsy (called after our
- famous hero of the South African war, lord Bobs of Waterford and
- Candahar) and now this last pledge of their union, a Purefoy if ever
- there was one, with the true Purefoy nose. Young hopeful will be
- christened Mortimer Edward after the influential third cousin of Mr
- Purefoy in the Treasury Remembrancer’s office, Dublin Castle. And so
- time wags on: but father Cronion has dealt lightly here. No, let no
- sigh break from that bosom, dear gentle Mina. And Doady, knock the
- ashes from your pipe, the seasoned briar you still fancy when the
- curfew rings for you (may it be the distant day!) and dout the light
- whereby you read in the Sacred Book for the oil too has run low, and so
- with a tranquil heart to bed, to rest. He knows and will call in His
- own good time. You too have fought the good fight and played loyally
- your man’s part. Sir, to you my hand. Well done, thou good and faithful
- servant!
- There are sins or (let us call them as the world calls them) evil
- memories which are hidden away by man in the darkest places of the
- heart but they abide there and wait. He may suffer their memory to grow
- dim, let them be as though they had not been and all but persuade
- himself that they were not or at least were otherwise. Yet a chance
- word will call them forth suddenly and they will rise up to confront
- him in the most various circumstances, a vision or a dream, or while
- timbrel and harp soothe his senses or amid the cool silver tranquility
- of the evening or at the feast, at midnight, when he is now filled with
- wine. Not to insult over him will the vision come as over one that lies
- under her wrath, not for vengeance to cut him off from the living but
- shrouded in the piteous vesture of the past, silent, remote,
- reproachful.
- The stranger still regarded on the face before him a slow recession of
- that false calm there, imposed, as it seemed, by habit or some studied
- trick, upon words so embittered as to accuse in their speaker an
- unhealthiness, a _flair,_ for the cruder things of life. A scene
- disengages itself in the observer’s memory, evoked, it would seem, by a
- word of so natural a homeliness as if those days were really present
- there (as some thought) with their immediate pleasures. A shaven space
- of lawn one soft May evening, the wellremembered grove of lilacs at
- Roundtown, purple and white, fragrant slender spectators of the game
- but with much real interest in the pellets as they run slowly forward
- over the sward or collide and stop, one by its fellow, with a brief
- alert shock. And yonder about that grey urn where the water moves at
- times in thoughtful irrigation you saw another as fragrant sisterhood,
- Floey, Atty, Tiny and their darker friend with I know not what of
- arresting in her pose then, Our Lady of the Cherries, a comely brace of
- them pendent from an ear, bringing out the foreign warmth of the skin
- so daintily against the cool ardent fruit. A lad of four or five in
- linseywoolsey (blossomtime but there will be cheer in the kindly hearth
- when ere long the bowls are gathered and hutched) is standing on the
- urn secured by that circle of girlish fond hands. He frowns a little
- just as this young man does now with a perhaps too conscious enjoyment
- of the danger but must needs glance at whiles towards where his mother
- watches from the _piazzetta_ giving upon the flowerclose with a faint
- shadow of remoteness or of reproach (_alles Vergängliche_) in her glad
- look.
- Mark this farther and remember. The end comes suddenly. Enter that
- antechamber of birth where the studious are assembled and note their
- faces. Nothing, as it seems, there of rash or violent. Quietude of
- custody, rather, befitting their station in that house, the vigilant
- watch of shepherds and of angels about a crib in Bethlehem of Juda long
- ago. But as before the lightning the serried stormclouds, heavy with
- preponderant excess of moisture, in swollen masses turgidly distended,
- compass earth and sky in one vast slumber, impending above parched
- field and drowsy oxen and blighted growth of shrub and verdure till in
- an instant a flash rives their centres and with the reverberation of
- the thunder the cloudburst pours its torrent, so and not otherwise was
- the transformation, violent and instantaneous, upon the utterance of
- the word.
- Burke’s! outflings my lord Stephen, giving the cry, and a tag and
- bobtail of all them after, cockerel, jackanapes, welsher, pilldoctor,
- punctual Bloom at heels with a universal grabbing at headgear,
- ashplants, bilbos, Panama hats and scabbards, Zermatt alpenstocks and
- what not. A dedale of lusty youth, noble every student there. Nurse
- Callan taken aback in the hallway cannot stay them nor smiling surgeon
- coming downstairs with news of placentation ended, a full pound if a
- milligramme. They hark him on. The door! It is open? Ha! They are out,
- tumultuously, off for a minute’s race, all bravely legging it, Burke’s
- of Denzille and Holles their ulterior goal. Dixon follows giving them
- sharp language but raps out an oath, he too, and on. Bloom stays with
- nurse a thought to send a kind word to happy mother and nurseling up
- there. Doctor Diet and Doctor Quiet. Looks she too not other now? Ward
- of watching in Horne’s house has told its tale in that washedout
- pallor. Then all being gone, a glance of motherwit helping, he whispers
- close in going: Madam, when comes the storkbird for thee?
- The air without is impregnated with raindew moisture, life essence
- celestial, glistening on Dublin stone there under starshiny _coelum._
- God’s air, the Allfather’s air, scintillant circumambient cessile air.
- Breathe it deep into thee. By heaven, Theodore Purefoy, thou hast done
- a doughty deed and no botch! Thou art, I vow, the remarkablest
- progenitor barring none in this chaffering allincluding most
- farraginous chronicle. Astounding! In her lay a Godframed Godgiven
- preformed possibility which thou hast fructified with thy modicum of
- man’s work. Cleave to her! Serve! Toil on, labour like a very bandog
- and let scholarment and all Malthusiasts go hang. Thou art all their
- daddies, Theodore. Art drooping under thy load, bemoiled with butcher’s
- bills at home and ingots (not thine!) in the countinghouse? Head up!
- For every newbegotten thou shalt gather thy homer of ripe wheat. See,
- thy fleece is drenched. Dost envy Darby Dullman there with his Joan? A
- canting jay and a rheumeyed curdog is all their progeny. Pshaw, I tell
- thee! He is a mule, a dead gasteropod, without vim or stamina, not
- worth a cracked kreutzer. Copulation without population! No, say I!
- Herod’s slaughter of the innocents were the truer name. Vegetables,
- forsooth, and sterile cohabitation! Give her beefsteaks, red, raw,
- bleeding! She is a hoary pandemonium of ills, enlarged glands, mumps,
- quinsy, bunions, hayfever, bedsores, ringworm, floating kidney,
- Derbyshire neck, warts, bilious attacks, gallstones, cold feet,
- varicose veins. A truce to threnes and trentals and jeremies and all
- such congenital defunctive music! Twenty years of it, regret them not.
- With thee it was not as with many that will and would and wait and
- never—do. Thou sawest thy America, thy lifetask, and didst charge to
- cover like the transpontine bison. How saith Zarathustra? _Deine Kuh
- Trübsal melkest Du. Nun Trinkst Du die süsse Milch des Euters_. See! it
- displodes for thee in abundance. Drink, man, an udderful! Mother’s
- milk, Purefoy, the milk of human kin, milk too of those burgeoning
- stars overhead rutilant in thin rainvapour, punch milk, such as those
- rioters will quaff in their guzzling den, milk of madness, the
- honeymilk of Canaan’s land. Thy cow’s dug was tough, what? Ay, but her
- milk is hot and sweet and fattening. No dollop this but thick rich
- bonnyclaber. To her, old patriarch! Pap! _Per deam Partulam et
- Pertundam nunc est bibendum!_
- All off for a buster, armstrong, hollering down the street. Bonafides.
- Where you slep las nigh? Timothy of the battered naggin. Like ole
- Billyo. Any brollies or gumboots in the fambly? Where the Henry Nevil’s
- sawbones and ole clo? Sorra one o’ me knows. Hurrah there, Dix! Forward
- to the ribbon counter. Where’s Punch? All serene. Jay, look at the
- drunken minister coming out of the maternity hospal! _Benedicat vos
- omnipotens Deus, Pater et Filius_. A make, mister. The Denzille lane
- boys. Hell, blast ye! Scoot. Righto, Isaacs, shove em out of the
- bleeding limelight. Yous join uz, dear sir? No hentrusion in life. Lou
- heap good man. Allee samee dis bunch. _En avant, mes enfants!_ Fire
- away number one on the gun. Burke’s! Burke’s! Thence they advanced five
- parasangs. Slattery’s mounted foot. Where’s that bleeding awfur? Parson
- Steve, apostates’ creed! No, no, Mulligan! Abaft there! Shove ahead.
- Keep a watch on the clock. Chuckingout time. Mullee! What’s on you? _Ma
- mère m’a mariée._ British Beatitudes! _Retamplatan digidi boumboum_.
- Ayes have it. To be printed and bound at the Druiddrum press by two
- designing females. Calf covers of pissedon green. Last word in art
- shades. Most beautiful book come out of Ireland my time. _Silentium!_
- Get a spurt on. Tention. Proceed to nearest canteen and there annex
- liquor stores. March! Tramp, tramp, tramp, the boys are (attitudes!)
- parching. Beer, beef, business, bibles, bulldogs battleships, buggery
- and bishops. Whether on the scaffold high. Beer, beef, trample the
- bibles. When for Irelandear. Trample the trampellers. Thunderation!
- Keep the durned millingtary step. We fall. Bishops boosebox. Halt!
- Heave to. Rugger. Scrum in. No touch kicking. Wow, my tootsies! You
- hurt? Most amazingly sorry!
- Query. Who’s astanding this here do? Proud possessor of damnall.
- Declare misery. Bet to the ropes. Me nantee saltee. Not a red at me
- this week gone. Yours? Mead of our fathers for the _Übermensch._
- Dittoh. Five number ones. You, sir? Ginger cordial. Chase me, the
- cabby’s caudle. Stimulate the caloric. Winding of his ticker. Stopped
- short never to go again when the old. Absinthe for me, savvy?
- _Caramba!_ Have an eggnog or a prairie oyster. Enemy? Avuncular’s got
- my timepiece. Ten to. Obligated awful. Don’t mention it. Got a pectoral
- trauma, eh, Dix? Pos fact. Got bet be a boomblebee whenever he wus
- settin sleepin in hes bit garten. Digs up near the Mater. Buckled he
- is. Know his dona? Yup, sartin I do. Full of a dure. See her in her
- dishybilly. Peels off a credit. Lovey lovekin. None of your lean kine,
- not much. Pull down the blind, love. Two Ardilauns. Same here. Look
- slippery. If you fall don’t wait to get up. Five, seven, nine. Fine!
- Got a prime pair of mincepies, no kid. And her take me to rests and her
- anker of rum. Must be seen to be believed. Your starving eyes and
- allbeplastered neck you stole my heart, O gluepot. Sir? Spud again the
- rheumatiz? All poppycock, you’ll scuse me saying. For the hoi polloi. I
- vear thee beest a gert vool. Well, doc? Back fro Lapland? Your
- corporosity sagaciating O K? How’s the squaws and papooses? Womanbody
- after going on the straw? Stand and deliver. Password. There’s hair.
- Ours the white death and the ruddy birth. Hi! Spit in your own eye,
- boss! Mummer’s wire. Cribbed out of Meredith. Jesified, orchidised,
- polycimical jesuit! Aunty mine’s writing Pa Kinch. Baddybad Stephen
- lead astray goodygood Malachi.
- Hurroo! Collar the leather, youngun. Roun wi the nappy. Here, Jock braw
- Hielentman’s your barleybree. Lang may your lum reek and your kailpot
- boil! My tipple. _Merci._ Here’s to us. How’s that? Leg before wicket.
- Don’t stain my brandnew sitinems. Give’s a shake of peppe, you there.
- Catch aholt. Caraway seed to carry away. Twig? Shrieks of silence.
- Every cove to his gentry mort. Venus Pandemos. _Les petites femmes_.
- Bold bad girl from the town of Mullingar. Tell her I was axing at her.
- Hauding Sara by the wame. On the road to Malahide. Me? If she who
- seduced me had left but the name. What do you want for ninepence?
- Machree, macruiskeen. Smutty Moll for a mattress jig. And a pull all
- together. _Ex!_
- Waiting, guvnor? Most deciduously. Bet your boots on. Stunned like,
- seeing as how no shiners is acoming. Underconstumble? He’ve got the
- chink _ad lib_. Seed near free poun on un a spell ago a said war hisn.
- Us come right in on your invite, see? Up to you, matey. Out with the
- oof. Two bar and a wing. You larn that go off of they there Frenchy
- bilks? Won’t wash here for nuts nohow. Lil chile velly solly. Ise de
- cutest colour coon down our side. Gawds teruth, Chawley. We are nae
- fou. We’re nae tha fou. Au reservoir, mossoo. Tanks you.
- ’Tis, sure. What say? In the speakeasy. Tight. I shee you, shir.
- Bantam, two days teetee. Bowsing nowt but claretwine. Garn! Have a
- glint, do. Gum, I’m jiggered. And been to barber he have. Too full for
- words. With a railway bloke. How come you so? Opera he’d like? Rose of
- Castile. Rows of cast. Police! Some H2O for a gent fainted. Look at
- Bantam’s flowers. Gemini. He’s going to holler. The colleen bawn. My
- colleen bawn. O, cheese it! Shut his blurry Dutch oven with a firm
- hand. Had the winner today till I tipped him a dead cert. The ruffin
- cly the nab of Stephen Hand as give me the jady coppaleen. He strike a
- telegramboy paddock wire big bug Bass to the depot. Shove him a joey
- and grahamise. Mare on form hot order. Guinea to a goosegog. Tell a
- cram, that. Gospeltrue. Criminal diversion? I think that yes. Sure
- thing. Land him in chokeechokee if the harman beck copped the game.
- Madden back Madden’s a maddening back. O lust our refuge and our
- strength. Decamping. Must you go? Off to mammy. Stand by. Hide my
- blushes someone. All in if he spots me. Come ahome, our Bantam.
- Horryvar, mong vioo. Dinna forget the cowslips for hersel. Cornfide.
- Wha gev ye thon colt? Pal to pal. Jannock. Of John Thomas, her spouse.
- No fake, old man Leo. S’elp me, honest injun. Shiver my timbers if I
- had. There’s a great big holy friar. Vyfor you no me tell? Vel, I ses,
- if that aint a sheeny nachez, vel, I vil get misha mishinnah. Through
- yerd our lord, Amen.
- You move a motion? Steve boy, you’re going it some. More bluggy
- drunkables? Will immensely splendiferous stander permit one stooder of
- most extreme poverty and one largesize grandacious thirst to terminate
- one expensive inaugurated libation? Give’s a breather. Landlord,
- landlord, have you good wine, staboo? Hoots, mon, a wee drap to pree.
- Cut and come again. Right. Boniface! Absinthe the lot. _Nos omnes
- biberimus viridum toxicum diabolus capiat posterioria nostria_.
- Closingtime, gents. Eh? Rome boose for the Bloom toff. I hear you say
- onions? Bloo? Cadges ads. Photo’s papli, by all that’s gorgeous. Play
- low, pardner. Slide. _Bonsoir la compagnie_. And snares of the
- poxfiend. Where’s the buck and Namby Amby? Skunked? Leg bail. Aweel, ye
- maun e’en gang yer gates. Checkmate. King to tower. Kind Kristyann wil
- yu help yung man hoose frend tuk bungellow kee tu find plais whear tu
- lay crown of his hed 2 night. Crickey, I’m about sprung. Tarnally dog
- gone my shins if this beent the bestest puttiest longbreak yet. Item,
- curate, couple of cookies for this child. Cot’s plood and prandypalls,
- none! Not a pite of sheeses? Thrust syphilis down to hell and with him
- those other licensed spirits. Time, gents! Who wander through the
- world. Health all! _À la vôtre_!
- Golly, whatten tunket’s yon guy in the mackintosh? Dusty Rhodes. Peep
- at his wearables. By mighty! What’s he got? Jubilee mutton. Bovril, by
- James. Wants it real bad. D’ye ken bare socks? Seedy cuss in the
- Richmond? Rawthere! Thought he had a deposit of lead in his penis.
- Trumpery insanity. Bartle the Bread we calls him. That, sir, was once a
- prosperous cit. Man all tattered and torn that married a maiden all
- forlorn. Slung her hook, she did. Here see lost love. Walking
- Mackintosh of lonely canyon. Tuck and turn in. Schedule time. Nix for
- the hornies. Pardon? Seen him today at a runefal? Chum o’ yourn passed
- in his checks? Ludamassy! Pore piccaninnies! Thou’ll no be telling me
- thot, Pold veg! Did ums blubble bigsplash crytears cos fren Padney was
- took off in black bag? Of all de darkies Massa Pat was verra best. I
- never see the like since I was born. _Tiens, tiens_, but it is well
- sad, that, my faith, yes. O, get, rev on a gradient one in nine. Live
- axle drives are souped. Lay you two to one Jenatzy licks him ruddy well
- hollow. Jappies? High angle fire, inyah! Sunk by war specials. Be worse
- for him, says he, nor any Rooshian. Time all. There’s eleven of them.
- Get ye gone. Forward, woozy wobblers! Night. Night. May Allah the
- Excellent One your soul this night ever tremendously conserve.
- Your attention! We’re nae tha fou. The Leith police dismisseth us. The
- least tholice. Ware hawks for the chap puking. Unwell in his abominable
- regions. Yooka. Night. Mona, my true love. Yook. Mona, my own love.
- Ook.
- Hark! Shut your obstropolos. Pflaap! Pflaap! Blaze on. There she goes.
- Brigade! Bout ship. Mount street way. Cut up! Pflaap! Tally ho. You not
- come? Run, skelter, race. Pflaaaap!
- Lynch! Hey? Sign on long o’ me. Denzille lane this way. Change here for
- Bawdyhouse. We two, she said, will seek the kips where shady Mary is.
- Righto, any old time. _Laetabuntur in cubilibus suis_. You coming long?
- Whisper, who the sooty hell’s the johnny in the black duds? Hush!
- Sinned against the light and even now that day is at hand when he shall
- come to judge the world by fire. Pflaap! _Ut implerentur scripturae_.
- Strike up a ballad. Then outspake medical Dick to his comrade medical
- Davy. Christicle, who’s this excrement yellow gospeller on the Merrion
- hall? Elijah is coming! Washed in the blood of the Lamb. Come on you
- winefizzling, ginsizzling, booseguzzling existences! Come on, you
- dog-gone, bullnecked, beetlebrowed, hogjowled, peanutbrained,
- weaseleyed fourflushers, false alarms and excess baggage! Come on, you
- triple extract of infamy! Alexander J Christ Dowie, that’s my name,
- that’s yanked to glory most half this planet from Frisco beach to
- Vladivostok. The Deity aint no nickel dime bumshow. I put it to you
- that He’s on the square and a corking fine business proposition. He’s
- the grandest thing yet and don’t you forget it. Shout salvation in King
- Jesus. You’ll need to rise precious early, you sinner there, if you
- want to diddle the Almighty God. Pflaaaap! Not half. He’s got a
- coughmixture with a punch in it for you, my friend, in his back pocket.
- Just you try it on.
- [ 15 ]
- _(The Mabbot street entrance of nighttown, before which stretches an
- uncobbled tramsiding set with skeleton tracks, red and green
- will-o’-the-wisps and danger signals. Rows of grimy houses with gaping
- doors. Rare lamps with faint rainbow fans. Round Rabaiotti’s halted ice
- gondola stunted men and women squabble. They grab wafers between which
- are wedged lumps of coral and copper snow. Sucking, they scatter
- slowly. Children. The swancomb of the gondola, highreared, forges on
- through the murk, white and blue under a lighthouse. Whistles call and
- answer.)_
- THE CALLS: Wait, my love, and I’ll be with you.
- THE ANSWERS: Round behind the stable.
- _(A deafmute idiot with goggle eyes, his shapeless mouth dribbling,
- jerks past, shaken in Saint Vitus’ dance. A chain of children ’s hands
- imprisons him.)_
- THE CHILDREN: Kithogue! Salute!
- THE IDIOT: _(Lifts a palsied left arm and gurgles.)_ Grhahute!
- THE CHILDREN: Where’s the great light?
- THE IDIOT: _(Gobbling.)_ Ghaghahest.
- _(They release him. He jerks on. A pigmy woman swings on a rope slung
- between two railings, counting. A form sprawled against a dustbin and
- muffled by its arm and hat snores, groans, grinding growling teeth, and
- snores again. On a step a gnome totting among a rubbishtip crouches to
- shoulder a sack of rags and bones. A crone standing by with a smoky
- oillamp rams her last bottle in the maw of his sack. He heaves his
- booty, tugs askew his peaked cap and hobbles off mutely. The crone
- makes back for her lair, swaying her lamp. A bandy child, asquat on the
- doorstep with a paper shuttlecock, crawls sidling after her in spurts,
- clutches her skirt, scrambles up. A drunken navvy grips with both hands
- the railings of an area, lurching heavily. At a corner two night watch
- in shouldercapes, their hands upon their staffholsters, loom tall. A
- plate crashes: a woman screams: a child wails. Oaths of a man roar,
- mutter, cease. Figures wander, lurk, peer from warrens. In a room lit
- by a candle stuck in a bottleneck a slut combs out the tatts from the
- hair of a scrofulous child. Cissy Caffrey’s voice, still young, sings
- shrill from a lane.)_
- CISSY CAFFREY:
- I gave it to Molly
- Because she was jolly,
- The leg of the duck,
- The leg of the duck.
- _(Private Carr and Private Compton, swaggersticks tight in their
- oxters, as they march unsteadily rightaboutface and burst together from
- their mouths a volleyed fart. Laughter of men from the lane. A hoarse
- virago retorts.)_
- THE VIRAGO: Signs on you, hairy arse. More power the Cavan girl.
- CISSY CAFFREY: More luck to me. Cavan, Cootehill and Belturbet. _(She
- sings.)_
- I gave it to Nelly
- To stick in her belly,
- The leg of the duck,
- The leg of the duck.
- _(Private Carr and Private Compton turn and counterretort, their tunics
- bloodbright in a lampglow, black sockets of caps on their blond cropped
- polls. Stephen Dedalus and Lynch pass through the crowd close to the
- redcoats.)_
- PRIVATE COMPTON: _(Jerks his finger.)_ Way for the parson.
- PRIVATE CARR: _(Turns and calls.)_ What ho, parson!
- CISSY CAFFREY: _(Her voice soaring higher.)_
- She has it, she got it,
- Wherever she put it,
- The leg of the duck.
- _(Stephen, flourishing the ashplant in his left hand, chants with joy
- the_ introit _for paschal time. Lynch, his jockeycap low on his brow,
- attends him, a sneer of discontent wrinkling his face.)_
- STEPHEN: _Vidi aquam egredientem de templo a latere dextro. Alleluia_.
- _(The famished snaggletusks of an elderly bawd protrude from a
- doorway.)_
- THE BAWD: _(Her voice whispering huskily.)_ Sst! Come here till I tell
- you. Maidenhead inside. Sst!
- STEPHEN: _(Altius aliquantulum.) Et omnes ad quos pervenit aqua ista_.
- THE BAWD: _(Spits in their trail her jet of venom.)_ Trinity medicals.
- Fallopian tube. All prick and no pence.
- _(Edy Boardman, sniffling, crouched with Bertha Supple, draws her shawl
- across her nostrils.)_
- EDY BOARDMAN: _(Bickering.)_ And says the one: I seen you up Faithful
- place with your squarepusher, the greaser off the railway, in his
- cometobed hat. Did you, says I. That’s not for you to say, says I. You
- never seen me in the mantrap with a married highlander, says I. The
- likes of her! Stag that one is! Stubborn as a mule! And her walking
- with two fellows the one time, Kilbride, the enginedriver, and
- lancecorporal Oliphant.
- STEPHEN: _(Triumphaliter.) Salvi facti sunt._
- _(He flourishes his ashplant, shivering the lamp image, shattering
- light over the world. A liver and white spaniel on the prowl slinks
- after him, growling. Lynch scares it with a kick.)_
- LYNCH: So that?
- STEPHEN: (_Looks behind_.) So that gesture, not music not odour, would
- be a universal language, the gift of tongues rendering visible not the
- lay sense but the first entelechy, the structural rhythm.
- LYNCH: Pornosophical philotheology. Metaphysics in Mecklenburgh street!
- STEPHEN: We have shrewridden Shakespeare and henpecked Socrates. Even
- the allwisest Stagyrite was bitted, bridled and mounted by a light of
- love.
- LYNCH: Ba!
- STEPHEN: Anyway, who wants two gestures to illustrate a loaf and a jug?
- This movement illustrates the loaf and jug of bread or wine in Omar.
- Hold my stick.
- LYNCH: Damn your yellow stick. Where are we going?
- STEPHEN: Lecherous lynx, to _la belle dame sans merci,_ Georgina
- Johnson, _ad deam qui laetificat iuventutem meam._
- _(Stephen thrusts the ashplant on him and slowly holds out his hands,
- his head going back till both hands are a span from his breast, down
- turned, in planes intersecting, the fingers about to part, the left
- being higher.)_
- LYNCH: Which is the jug of bread? It skills not. That or the
- customhouse. Illustrate thou. Here take your crutch and walk.
- _(They pass. Tommy Caffrey scrambles to a gaslamp and, clasping, climbs
- in spasms. From the top spur he slides down. Jacky Caffrey clasps to
- climb. The navvy lurches against the lamp. The twins scuttle off in the
- dark. The navvy, swaying, presses a forefinger against a wing of his
- nose and ejects from the farther nostril a long liquid jet of snot.
- Shouldering the lamp he staggers away through the crowd with his
- flaring cresset._
- _Snakes of river fog creep slowly. From drains, clefts, cesspools,
- middens arise on all sides stagnant fumes. A glow leaps in the south
- beyond the seaward reaches of the river. The navvy, staggering forward,
- cleaves the crowd and lurches towards the tramsiding. On the farther
- side under the railway bridge Bloom appears, flushed, panting, cramming
- bread and chocolate into a sidepocket. From Gillen’s hairdresser’s
- window a composite portrait shows him gallant Nelson’s image. A concave
- mirror at the side presents to him lovelorn longlost lugubru
- Booloohoom. Grave Gladstone sees him level, Bloom for Bloom. He passes,
- struck by the stare of truculent Wellington, but in the convex mirror
- grin unstruck the bonham eyes and fatchuck cheekchops of Jollypoldy the
- rixdix doldy._
- _At Antonio Rabaiotti’s door Bloom halts, sweated under the bright
- arclamp. He disappears. In a moment he reappears and hurries on.)_
- BLOOM: Fish and taters. N. g. Ah!
- _(He disappears into Olhausen’s, the porkbutcher’s, under the
- downcoming rollshutter. A few moments later he emerges from under the
- shutter, puffing Poldy, blowing Bloohoom. In each hand he holds a
- parcel, one containing a lukewarm pig’s crubeen, the other a cold
- sheep’s trotter, sprinkled with wholepepper. He gasps, standing
- upright. Then bending to one side he presses a parcel against his ribs
- and groans.)_
- BLOOM: Stitch in my side. Why did I run?
- _(He takes breath with care and goes forward slowly towards the lampset
- siding. The glow leaps again.)_
- BLOOM: What is that? A flasher? Searchlight.
- _(He stands at Cormack’s corner, watching.)_
- BLOOM: _Aurora borealis_ or a steel foundry? Ah, the brigade, of
- course. South side anyhow. Big blaze. Might be his house. Beggar’s
- bush. We’re safe. _(He hums cheerfully.)_ London’s burning, London’s
- burning! On fire, on fire! (_He catches sight of the navvy lurching
- through the crowd at the farther side of Talbot street._) I’ll miss
- him. Run. Quick. Better cross here.
- _(He darts to cross the road. Urchins shout.)_
- THE URCHINS: Mind out, mister!
- (_Two cyclists, with lighted paper lanterns aswing, swim by him,
- grazing him, their bells rattling._)
- THE BELLS: Haltyaltyaltyall.
- BLOOM: _(Halts erect, stung by a spasm.)_ Ow!
- _(He looks round, darts forward suddenly. Through rising fog a dragon
- sandstrewer, travelling at caution, slews heavily down upon him, its
- huge red headlight winking, its trolley hissing on the wire. The
- motorman bangs his footgong.)_
- THE GONG: Bang Bang Bla Bak Blud Bugg Bloo.
- _(The brake cracks violently. Bloom, raising a policeman’s whitegloved
- hand, blunders stifflegged out of the track. The motorman, thrown
- forward, pugnosed, on the guidewheel, yells as he slides past over
- chains and keys.)_
- THE MOTORMAN: Hey, shitbreeches, are you doing the hat trick?
- _(Bloom trickleaps to the curbstone and halts again. He brushes a
- mudflake from his cheek with a parcelled hand.)_
- BLOOM: No thoroughfare. Close shave that but cured the stitch. Must
- take up Sandow’s exercises again. On the hands down. Insure against
- street accident too. The Providential. _(He feels his trouser pocket.)_
- Poor mamma’s panacea. Heel easily catch in track or bootlace in a cog.
- Day the wheel of the black Maria peeled off my shoe at Leonard’s
- corner. Third time is the charm. Shoe trick. Insolent driver. I ought
- to report him. Tension makes them nervous. Might be the fellow balked
- me this morning with that horsey woman. Same style of beauty. Quick of
- him all the same. The stiff walk. True word spoken in jest. That awful
- cramp in Lad lane. Something poisonous I ate. Emblem of luck. Why?
- Probably lost cattle. Mark of the beast. _(He closes his eyes an
- instant.)_ Bit light in the head. Monthly or effect of the other.
- Brainfogfag. That tired feeling. Too much for me now. Ow!
- _(A sinister figure leans on plaited legs against O’Beirne’s wall, a
- visage unknown, injected with dark mercury. From under a wideleaved
- sombrero the figure regards him with evil eye.)_
- BLOOM: _Buenas noches, señorita Blanca, que calle es esta?_
- THE FIGURE: (_Impassive, raises a signal arm._) Password. _Sraid
- Mabbot._
- BLOOM: Haha. _Merci._ Esperanto. _Slan leath. (He mutters.)_ Gaelic
- league spy, sent by that fireeater.
- _(He steps forward. A sackshouldered ragman bars his path. He steps
- left, ragsackman left.)_
- BLOOM: I beg.
- (_He leaps right, sackragman right._)
- BLOOM: I beg.
- (_He swerves, sidles, stepaside, slips past and on._)
- BLOOM: Keep to the right, right, right. If there is a signpost planted
- by the Touring Club at Stepaside who procured that public boon? I who
- lost my way and contributed to the columns of the _Irish Cyclist_ the
- letter headed _In darkest Stepaside_. Keep, keep, keep to the right.
- Rags and bones at midnight. A fence more likely. First place murderer
- makes for. Wash off his sins of the world.
- _(Jacky Caffrey, hunted by Tommy Caffrey, runs full tilt against
- Bloom.)_
- BLOOM: O.
- _(Shocked, on weak hams, he halts. Tommy and Jacky vanish there, there.
- Bloom pats with parcelled hands watch, fobpocket, bookpocket,
- pursepoke, sweets of sin, potato soap.)_
- BLOOM: Beware of pickpockets. Old thieves’ dodge. Collide. Then snatch
- your purse.
- _(The retriever approaches sniffing, nose to the ground. A sprawled
- form sneezes. A stooped bearded figure appears garbed in the long
- caftan of an elder in Zion and a smokingcap with magenta tassels.
- Horned spectacles hang down at the wings of the nose. Yellow poison
- streaks are on the drawn face.)_
- RUDOLPH: Second halfcrown waste money today. I told you not go with
- drunken goy ever. So you catch no money.
- BLOOM: _(Hides the crubeen and trotter behind his back and,
- crestfallen, feels warm and cold feetmeat.) Ja, ich weiss, papachi._
- RUDOLPH: What you making down this place? Have you no soul? _(With
- feeble vulture talons he feels the silent face of Bloom.)_ Are you not
- my son Leopold, the grandson of Leopold? Are you not my dear son
- Leopold who left the house of his father and left the god of his
- fathers Abraham and Jacob?
- BLOOM: _(With precaution.)_ I suppose so, father. Mosenthal. All that’s
- left of him.
- RUDOLPH: _(Severely.)_ One night they bring you home drunk as dog after
- spend your good money. What you call them running chaps?
- BLOOM: _(In youth’s smart blue Oxford suit with white vestslips,
- narrowshouldered, in brown Alpine hat, wearing gent’s sterling silver
- waterbury keyless watch and double curb Albert with seal attached, one
- side of him coated with stiffening mud.)_ Harriers, father. Only that
- once.
- RUDOLPH: Once! Mud head to foot. Cut your hand open. Lockjaw. They make
- you kaputt, Leopoldleben. You watch them chaps.
- BLOOM: _(Weakly.)_ They challenged me to a sprint. It was muddy. I
- slipped.
- RUDOLPH: _(With contempt.) Goim nachez!_ Nice spectacles for your poor
- mother!
- BLOOM: Mamma!
- ELLEN BLOOM: _(In pantomime dame’s stringed mobcap, widow Twankey’s
- crinoline and bustle, blouse with muttonleg sleeves buttoned behind,
- grey mittens and cameo brooch, her plaited hair in a crispine net,
- appears over the staircase banisters, a slanted candlestick in her
- hand, and cries out in shrill alarm.)_ O blessed Redeemer, what have
- they done to him! My smelling salts! _(She hauls up a reef of skirt and
- ransacks the pouch of her striped blay petticoat. A phial, an Agnus
- Dei, a shrivelled potato and a celluloid doll fall out.)_ Sacred Heart
- of Mary, where were you at all at all?
- _(Bloom, mumbling, his eyes downcast, begins to bestow his parcels in
- his filled pockets but desists, muttering.)_
- A VOICE: _(Sharply.)_ Poldy!
- BLOOM: Who? _(He ducks and wards off a blow clumsily.)_ At your
- service.
- _(He looks up. Beside her mirage of datepalms a handsome woman in
- Turkish costume stands before him. Opulent curves fill out her scarlet
- trousers and jacket, slashed with gold. A wide yellow cummerbund
- girdles her. A white yashmak, violet in the night, covers her face,
- leaving free only her large dark eyes and raven hair.)_
- BLOOM: Molly!
- MARION: Welly? Mrs Marion from this out, my dear man, when you speak to
- me. _(Satirically.)_ Has poor little hubby cold feet waiting so long?
- BLOOM: _(Shifts from foot to foot.)_ No, no. Not the least little bit.
- _(He breathes in deep agitation, swallowing gulps of air, questions,
- hopes, crubeens for her supper, things to tell her, excuse, desire,
- spellbound. A coin gleams on her forehead. On her feet are jewelled
- toerings. Her ankles are linked by a slender fetterchain. Beside her a
- camel, hooded with a turreting turban, waits. A silk ladder of
- innumerable rungs climbs to his bobbing howdah. He ambles near with
- disgruntled hindquarters. Fiercely she slaps his haunch, her goldcurb
- wristbangles angriling, scolding him in Moorish.)_
- MARION: Nebrakada! Femininum!
- _(The camel, lifting a foreleg, plucks from a tree a large mango fruit,
- offers it to his mistress, blinking, in his cloven hoof, then droops
- his head and, grunting, with uplifted neck, fumbles to kneel. Bloom
- stoops his back for leapfrog.)_
- BLOOM: I can give you... I mean as your business menagerer... Mrs
- Marion... if you...
- MARION: So you notice some change? _(Her hands passing slowly over her
- trinketed stomacher, a slow friendly mockery in her eyes.)_ O Poldy,
- Poldy, you are a poor old stick in the mud! Go and see life. See the
- wide world.
- BLOOM: I was just going back for that lotion whitewax, orangeflower
- water. Shop closes early on Thursday. But the first thing in the
- morning. _(He pats divers pockets.)_ This moving kidney. Ah!
- _(He points to the south, then to the east. A cake of new clean lemon
- soap arises, diffusing light and perfume.)_
- THE SOAP:
- We’re a capital couple are Bloom and I.
- He brightens the earth. I polish the sky.
- _(The freckled face of Sweny, the druggist, appears in the disc of the
- soapsun.)_
- SWENY: Three and a penny, please.
- BLOOM: Yes. For my wife. Mrs Marion. Special recipe.
- MARION: _(Softly.)_ Poldy!
- BLOOM: Yes, ma’am?
- MARION: _Ti trema un poco il cuore?_
- _(In disdain she saunters away, plump as a pampered pouter pigeon,
- humming the duet from_ Don Giovanni.)
- BLOOM: Are you sure about that _Voglio_? I mean the pronunciati...
- _(He follows, followed by the sniffing terrier. The elderly bawd seizes
- his sleeve, the bristles of her chinmole glittering.)_
- THE BAWD: Ten shillings a maidenhead. Fresh thing was never touched.
- Fifteen. There’s no-one in it only her old father that’s dead drunk.
- _(She points. In the gap of her dark den furtive, rainbedraggled,
- Bridie Kelly stands.)_
- BRIDIE: Hatch street. Any good in your mind?
- _(With a squeak she flaps her bat shawl and runs. A burly rough pursues
- with booted strides. He stumbles on the steps, recovers, plunges into
- gloom. Weak squeaks of laughter are heard, weaker.)_
- THE BAWD: _(Her wolfeyes shining.)_ He’s getting his pleasure. You
- won’t get a virgin in the flash houses. Ten shillings. Don’t be all
- night before the polis in plain clothes sees us. Sixtyseven is a bitch.
- _(Leering, Gerty Macdowell limps forward. She draws from behind,
- ogling, and shows coyly her bloodied clout.)_
- GERTY: With all my worldly goods I thee and thou. _(She murmurs.)_ You
- did that. I hate you.
- BLOOM: I? When? You’re dreaming. I never saw you.
- THE BAWD: Leave the gentleman alone, you cheat. Writing the gentleman
- false letters. Streetwalking and soliciting. Better for your mother
- take the strap to you at the bedpost, hussy like you.
- GERTY: _(To Bloom.)_ When you saw all the secrets of my bottom drawer.
- _(She paws his sleeve, slobbering.)_ Dirty married man! I love you for
- doing that to me.
- _(She glides away crookedly. Mrs Breen in man’s frieze overcoat with
- loose bellows pockets, stands in the causeway, her roguish eyes
- wideopen, smiling in all her herbivorous buckteeth.)_
- MRS BREEN: Mr...
- BLOOM: _(Coughs gravely.)_ Madam, when we last had this pleasure by
- letter dated the sixteenth instant...
- MRS BREEN: Mr Bloom! You down here in the haunts of sin! I caught you
- nicely! Scamp!
- BLOOM: _(Hurriedly.)_ Not so loud my name. Whatever do you think of me?
- Don’t give me away. Walls have ears. How do you do? It’s ages since I.
- You’re looking splendid. Absolutely it. Seasonable weather we are
- having this time of year. Black refracts heat. Short cut home here.
- Interesting quarter. Rescue of fallen women. Magdalen asylum. I am the
- secretary...
- MRS BREEN: _(Holds up a finger.)_ Now, don’t tell a big fib! I know
- somebody won’t like that. O just wait till I see Molly! _(Slily.)_
- Account for yourself this very sminute or woe betide you!
- BLOOM: _(Looks behind.)_ She often said she’d like to visit. Slumming.
- The exotic, you see. Negro servants in livery too if she had money.
- Othello black brute. Eugene Stratton. Even the bones and cornerman at
- the Livermore christies. Bohee brothers. Sweep for that matter.
- _(Tom and Sam Bohee, coloured coons in white duck suits, scarlet socks,
- upstarched Sambo chokers and large scarlet asters in their buttonholes,
- leap out. Each has his banjo slung. Their paler smaller negroid hands
- jingle the twingtwang wires. Flashing white Kaffir eyes and tusks they
- rattle through a breakdown in clumsy clogs, twinging, singing, back to
- back, toe heel, heel toe, with smackfatclacking nigger lips.)_
- TOM AND SAM:
- There’s someone in the house with Dina
- There’s someone in the house, I know,
- There’s someone in the house with Dina
- Playing on the old banjo.
- _(They whisk black masks from raw babby faces: then, chuckling,
- chortling, trumming, twanging, they diddle diddle cakewalk dance
- away.)_
- BLOOM: _(With a sour tenderish smile.)_ A little frivol, shall we, if
- you are so inclined? Would you like me perhaps to embrace you just for
- a fraction of a second?
- MRS BREEN: _(Screams gaily.)_ O, you ruck! You ought to see yourself!
- BLOOM: For old sake’ sake. I only meant a square party, a mixed
- marriage mingling of our different little conjugials. You know I had a
- soft corner for you. _(Gloomily.)_ ’Twas I sent you that valentine of
- the dear gazelle.
- MRS BREEN: Glory Alice, you do look a holy show! Killing simply. _(She
- puts out her hand inquisitively.)_ What are you hiding behind your
- back? Tell us, there’s a dear.
- BLOOM: _(Seizes her wrist with his free hand.)_ Josie Powell that was,
- prettiest deb in Dublin. How time flies by! Do you remember, harking
- back in a retrospective arrangement, Old Christmas night, Georgina
- Simpson’s housewarming while they were playing the Irving Bishop game,
- finding the pin blindfold and thoughtreading? Subject, what is in this
- snuffbox?
- MRS BREEN: You were the lion of the night with your seriocomic
- recitation and you looked the part. You were always a favourite with
- the ladies.
- BLOOM: _(Squire of dames, in dinner jacket with wateredsilk facings,
- blue masonic badge in his buttonhole, black bow and mother-of-pearl
- studs, a prismatic champagne glass tilted in his hand.)_ Ladies and
- gentlemen, I give you Ireland, home and beauty.
- MRS BREEN: The dear dead days beyond recall. Love’s old sweet song.
- BLOOM: _(Meaningfully dropping his voice.)_ I confess I’m teapot with
- curiosity to find out whether some person’s something is a little
- teapot at present.
- MRS BREEN: _(Gushingly.)_ Tremendously teapot! London’s teapot and I’m
- simply teapot all over me! _(She rubs sides with him.)_ After the
- parlour mystery games and the crackers from the tree we sat on the
- staircase ottoman. Under the mistletoe. Two is company.
- BLOOM: _(Wearing a purple Napoleon hat with an amber halfmoon, his
- fingers and thumb passing slowly down to her soft moist meaty palm
- which she surrenders gently.)_ The witching hour of night. I took the
- splinter out of this hand, carefully, slowly. _(Tenderly, as he slips
- on her finger a ruby ring.) Là ci darem la mano._
- MRS BREEN: _(In a onepiece evening frock executed in moonlight blue, a
- tinsel sylph’s diadem on her brow with her dancecard fallen beside her
- moonblue satin slipper, curves her palm softly, breathing quickly.)
- Voglio e non._ You’re hot! You’re scalding! The left hand nearest the
- heart.
- BLOOM: When you made your present choice they said it was beauty and
- the beast. I can never forgive you for that. _(His clenched fist at his
- brow.)_ Think what it means. All you meant to me then. _(Hoarsely.)_
- Woman, it’s breaking me!
- _(Denis Breen, whitetallhatted, with Wisdom Hely’s sandwichboards,
- shuffles past them in carpet slippers, his dull beard thrust out,
- muttering to right and left. Little Alf Bergan, cloaked in the pall of
- the ace of spades, dogs him to left and right, doubled in laughter.)_
- ALF BERGAN: _(Points jeering at the sandwichboards.)_ U. p: up.
- MRS BREEN: _(To Bloom.)_ High jinks below stairs. _(She gives him the
- glad eye.)_ Why didn’t you kiss the spot to make it well? You wanted
- to.
- BLOOM: _(Shocked.)_ Molly’s best friend! Could you?
- MRS BREEN: _(Her pulpy tongue between her lips, offers a pigeon kiss.)_
- Hnhn. The answer is a lemon. Have you a little present for me there?
- BLOOM: _(Offhandedly.)_ Kosher. A snack for supper. The home without
- potted meat is incomplete. I was at _Leah_, Mrs Bandmann Palmer.
- Trenchant exponent of Shakespeare. Unfortunately threw away the
- programme. Rattling good place round there for pigs’ feet. Feel.
- _(Richie Goulding, three ladies’ hats pinned on his head, appears
- weighted to one side by the black legal bag of Collis and Ward on which
- a skull and crossbones are painted in white limewash. He opens it and
- shows it full of polonies, kippered herrings, Findon haddies and
- tightpacked pills.)_
- RICHIE: Best value in Dub.
- _(Bald Pat, bothered beetle, stands on the curbstone, folding his
- napkin, waiting to wait.)_
- PAT: _(Advances with a tilted dish of spillspilling gravy.)_ Steak and
- kidney. Bottle of lager. Hee hee hee. Wait till I wait.
- RICHIE: Goodgod. Inev erate inall...
- _(With hanging head he marches doggedly forward. The navvy, lurching
- by, gores him with his flaming pronghorn.)_
- RICHIE: _(With a cry of pain, his hand to his back.)_ Ah! Bright’s!
- Lights!
- BLOOM: _(Points to the navvy.)_ A spy. Don’t attract attention. I hate
- stupid crowds. I am not on pleasure bent. I am in a grave predicament.
- MRS BREEN: Humbugging and deluthering as per usual with your cock and
- bull story.
- BLOOM: I want to tell you a little secret about how I came to be here.
- But you must never tell. Not even Molly. I have a most particular
- reason.
- MRS BREEN: _(All agog.)_ O, not for worlds.
- BLOOM: Let’s walk on. Shall us?
- MRS BREEN: Let’s.
- _(The bawd makes an unheeded sign. Bloom walks on with Mrs Breen. The
- terrier follows, whining piteously, wagging his tail.)_
- THE BAWD: Jewman’s melt!
- BLOOM: _(In an oatmeal sporting suit, a sprig of woodbine in the lapel,
- tony buff shirt, shepherd’s plaid Saint Andrew’s cross scarftie, white
- spats, fawn dustcoat on his arm, tawny red brogues, fieldglasses in
- bandolier and a grey billycock hat.)_ Do you remember a long long time,
- years and years ago, just after Milly, Marionette we called her, was
- weaned when we all went together to Fairyhouse races, was it?
- MRS BREEN: _(In smart Saxe tailormade, white velours hat and spider
- veil.)_ Leopardstown.
- BLOOM: I mean, Leopardstown. And Molly won seven shillings on a three
- year old named Nevertell and coming home along by Foxrock in that old
- fiveseater shanderadan of a waggonette you were in your heyday then and
- you had on that new hat of white velours with a surround of molefur
- that Mrs Hayes advised you to buy because it was marked down to
- nineteen and eleven, a bit of wire and an old rag of velveteen, and
- I’ll lay you what you like she did it on purpose...
- MRS BREEN: She did, of course, the cat! Don’t tell me! Nice adviser!
- BLOOM: Because it didn’t suit you one quarter as well as the other
- ducky little tammy toque with the bird of paradise wing in it that I
- admired on you and you honestly looked just too fetching in it though
- it was a pity to kill it, you cruel naughty creature, little mite of a
- thing with a heart the size of a fullstop.
- MRS BREEN: _(Squeezes his arm, simpers.)_ Naughty cruel I was!
- BLOOM: _(Low, secretly, ever more rapidly.)_ And Molly was eating a
- sandwich of spiced beef out of Mrs Joe Gallaher’s lunch basket.
- Frankly, though she had her advisers or admirers, I never cared much
- for her style. She was...
- MRS BREEN: Too...
- BLOOM: Yes. And Molly was laughing because Rogers and Maggot O’Reilly
- were mimicking a cock as we passed a farmhouse and Marcus Tertius
- Moses, the tea merchant, drove past us in a gig with his daughter,
- Dancer Moses was her name, and the poodle in her lap bridled up and you
- asked me if I ever heard or read or knew or came across...
- MRS BREEN: _(Eagerly.)_ Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
- _(She fades from his side. Followed by the whining dog he walks on
- towards hellsgates. In an archway a standing woman, bent forward, her
- feet apart, pisses cowily. Outside a shuttered pub a bunch of loiterers
- listen to a tale which their brokensnouted gaffer rasps out with
- raucous humour. An armless pair of them flop wrestling, growling, in
- maimed sodden playfight.)_
- THE GAFFER: _(Crouches, his voice twisted in his snout.)_ And when
- Cairns came down from the scaffolding in Beaver street what was he
- after doing it into only into the bucket of porter that was there
- waiting on the shavings for Derwan’s plasterers.
- THE LOITERERS: _(Guffaw with cleft palates.)_ O jays!
- _(Their paintspeckled hats wag. Spattered with size and lime of their
- lodges they frisk limblessly about him.)_
- BLOOM: Coincidence too. They think it funny. Anything but that. Broad
- daylight. Trying to walk. Lucky no woman.
- THE LOITERERS: Jays, that’s a good one. Glauber salts. O jays, into the
- men’s porter.
- _(Bloom passes. Cheap whores, singly, coupled, shawled, dishevelled,
- call from lanes, doors, corners.)_
- THE WHORES:
- Are you going far, queer fellow?
- How’s your middle leg?
- Got a match on you?
- Eh, come here till I stiffen it for you.
- _(He plodges through their sump towards the lighted street beyond. From
- a bulge of window curtains a gramophone rears a battered brazen trunk.
- In the shadow a shebeenkeeper haggles with the navvy and the two
- redcoats.)_
- THE NAVVY: _(Belching.)_ Where’s the bloody house?
- THE SHEBEENKEEPER: Purdon street. Shilling a bottle of stout.
- Respectable woman.
- THE NAVVY: _(Gripping the two redcoats, staggers forward with them.)_
- Come on, you British army!
- PRIVATE CARR: _(Behind his back.)_ He aint half balmy.
- PRIVATE COMPTON: _(Laughs.)_ What ho!
- PRIVATE CARR: _(To the navvy.)_ Portobello barracks canteen. You ask
- for Carr. Just Carr.
- THE NAVVY: _(Shouts.)_
- We are the boys. Of Wexford.
- PRIVATE COMPTON: Say! What price the sergeantmajor?
- PRIVATE CARR: Bennett? He’s my pal. I love old Bennett.
- THE NAVVY: _(Shouts.)_
- The galling chain.
- And free our native land.
- _(He staggers forward, dragging them with him. Bloom stops, at fault.
- The dog approaches, his tongue outlolling, panting.)_
- BLOOM: Wildgoose chase this. Disorderly houses. Lord knows where they
- are gone. Drunks cover distance double quick. Nice mixup. Scene at
- Westland row. Then jump in first class with third ticket. Then too far.
- Train with engine behind. Might have taken me to Malahide or a siding
- for the night or collision. Second drink does it. Once is a dose. What
- am I following him for? Still, he’s the best of that lot. If I hadn’t
- heard about Mrs Beaufoy Purefoy I wouldn’t have gone and wouldn’t have
- met. Kismet. He’ll lose that cash. Relieving office here. Good biz for
- cheapjacks, organs. What do ye lack? Soon got, soon gone. Might have
- lost my life too with that mangongwheeltracktrolleyglarejuggernaut only
- for presence of mind. Can’t always save you, though. If I had passed
- Truelock’s window that day two minutes later would have been shot.
- Absence of body. Still if bullet only went through my coat get damages
- for shock, five hundred pounds. What was he? Kildare street club toff.
- God help his gamekeeper.
- _(He gazes ahead, reading on the wall a scrawled chalk legend_ Wet
- Dream _and a phallic design._) Odd! Molly drawing on the frosted
- carriagepane at Kingstown. What’s that like? _(Gaudy dollwomen loll in
- the lighted doorways, in window embrasures, smoking birdseye
- cigarettes. The odour of the sicksweet weed floats towards him in slow
- round ovalling wreaths.)_
- THE WREATHS: Sweet are the sweets. Sweets of sin.
- BLOOM: My spine’s a bit limp. Go or turn? And this food? Eat it and get
- all pigsticky. Absurd I am. Waste of money. One and eightpence too
- much. _(The retriever drives a cold snivelling muzzle against his hand,
- wagging his tail.)_ Strange how they take to me. Even that brute today.
- Better speak to him first. Like women they like _rencontres._ Stinks
- like a polecat. _Chacun son goût_. He might be mad. Dogdays. Uncertain
- in his movements. Good fellow! Fido! Good fellow! Garryowen! _(The
- wolfdog sprawls on his back, wriggling obscenely with begging paws, his
- long black tongue lolling out.)_ Influence of his surroundings. Give
- and have done with it. Provided nobody. _(Calling encouraging words he
- shambles back with a furtive poacher’s tread, dogged by the setter into
- a dark stalestunk corner. He unrolls one parcel and goes to dump the
- crubeen softly but holds back and feels the trotter.)_ Sizeable for
- threepence. But then I have it in my left hand. Calls for more effort.
- Why? Smaller from want of use. O, let it slide. Two and six.
- _(With regret he lets the unrolled crubeen and trotter slide. The
- mastiff mauls the bundle clumsily and gluts himself with growling
- greed, crunching the bones. Two raincaped watch approach, silent,
- vigilant. They murmur together.)_
- THE WATCH: Bloom. Of Bloom. For Bloom. Bloom.
- _(Each lays hand on Bloom’s shoulder.)_
- FIRST WATCH: Caught in the act. Commit no nuisance.
- BLOOM: _(Stammers.)_ I am doing good to others.
- _(A covey of gulls, storm petrels, rises hungrily from Liffey slime
- with Banbury cakes in their beaks.)_
- THE GULLS: Kaw kave kankury kake.
- BLOOM: The friend of man. Trained by kindness.
- _(He points. Bob Doran, toppling from a high barstool, sways over the
- munching spaniel.)_
- BOB DORAN: Towser. Give us the paw. Give the paw.
- _(The bulldog growls, his scruff standing, a gobbet of pig’s knuckle
- between his molars through which rabid scumspittle dribbles. Bob Doran
- falls silently into an area.)_
- SECOND WATCH: Prevention of cruelty to animals.
- BLOOM: _(Enthusiastically.)_ A noble work! I scolded that tramdriver on
- Harold’s cross bridge for illusing the poor horse with his harness
- scab. Bad French I got for my pains. Of course it was frosty and the
- last tram. All tales of circus life are highly demoralising.
- _(Signor Maffei, passionpale, in liontamer’s costume with diamond studs
- in his shirtfront, steps forward, holding a circus paperhoop, a curling
- carriagewhip and a revolver with which he covers the gorging
- boarhound.)_
- SIGNOR MAFFEI: _(With a sinister smile.)_ Ladies and gentlemen, my
- educated greyhound. It was I broke in the bucking broncho Ajax with my
- patent spiked saddle for carnivores. Lash under the belly with a
- knotted thong. Block tackle and a strangling pulley will bring your
- lion to heel, no matter how fractious, even _Leo ferox_ there, the
- Libyan maneater. A redhot crowbar and some liniment rubbing on the
- burning part produced Fritz of Amsterdam, the thinking hyena. _(He
- glares.)_ I possess the Indian sign. The glint of my eye does it with
- these breastsparklers. _(With a bewitching smile.)_ I now introduce
- Mademoiselle Ruby, the pride of the ring.
- FIRST WATCH: Come. Name and address.
- BLOOM: I have forgotten for the moment. Ah, yes! _(He takes off his
- high grade hat, saluting.)_ Dr Bloom, Leopold, dental surgeon. You have
- heard of von Blum Pasha. Umpteen millions. _Donnerwetter!_ Owns half
- Austria. Egypt. Cousin.
- FIRST WATCH: Proof.
- _(A card falls from inside the leather headband of Bloom’s hat.)_
- BLOOM: _(In red fez, cadi’s dress coat with broad green sash, wearing a
- false badge of the Legion of Honour, picks up the card hastily and
- offers it.)_ Allow me. My club is the Junior Army and Navy. Solicitors:
- Messrs John Henry Menton, 27 Bachelor’s Walk.
- FIRST WATCH: _(Reads.)_ Henry Flower. No fixed abode. Unlawfully
- watching and besetting.
- SECOND WATCH: An alibi. You are cautioned.
- BLOOM: _(Produces from his heartpocket a crumpled yellow flower.)_ This
- is the flower in question. It was given me by a man I don’t know his
- name. _(Plausibly.)_ You know that old joke, rose of Castile. Bloom.
- The change of name. Virag. _(He murmurs privately and confidentially.)_
- We are engaged you see, sergeant. Lady in the case. Love entanglement.
- _(He shoulders the second watch gently.)_ Dash it all. It’s a way we
- gallants have in the navy. Uniform that does it. _(He turns gravely to
- the first watch.)_ Still, of course, you do get your Waterloo
- sometimes. Drop in some evening and have a glass of old Burgundy. _(To
- the second watch gaily.)_ I’ll introduce you, inspector. She’s game. Do
- it in the shake of a lamb’s tail.
- _(A dark mercurialised face appears, leading a veiled figure.)_
- THE DARK MERCURY: The Castle is looking for him. He was drummed out of
- the army.
- MARTHA: _(Thickveiled, a crimson halter round her neck, a copy of the_
- Irish Times _in her hand, in tone of reproach, pointing.)_ Henry!
- Leopold! Lionel, thou lost one! Clear my name.
- FIRST WATCH: _(Sternly.)_ Come to the station.
- BLOOM: _(Scared, hats himself, steps back, then, plucking at his heart
- and lifting his right forearm on the square, he gives the sign and
- dueguard of fellowcraft.)_ No, no, worshipful master, light of love.
- Mistaken identity. The Lyons mail. Lesurques and Dubosc. You remember
- the Childs fratricide case. We medical men. By striking him dead with a
- hatchet. I am wrongfully accused. Better one guilty escape than
- ninetynine wrongfully condemned.
- MARTHA: _(Sobbing behind her veil.)_ Breach of promise. My real name is
- Peggy Griffin. He wrote to me that he was miserable. I’ll tell my
- brother, the Bective rugger fullback, on you, heartless flirt.
- BLOOM: _(Behind his hand.)_ She’s drunk. The woman is inebriated. _(He
- murmurs vaguely the pass of Ephraim.)_ Shitbroleeth.
- SECOND WATCH: _(Tears in his eyes, to Bloom.)_ You ought to be
- thoroughly well ashamed of yourself.
- BLOOM: Gentlemen of the jury, let me explain. A pure mare’s nest. I am
- a man misunderstood. I am being made a scapegoat of. I am a respectable
- married man, without a stain on my character. I live in Eccles street.
- My wife, I am the daughter of a most distinguished commander, a gallant
- upstanding gentleman, what do you call him, Majorgeneral Brian Tweedy,
- one of Britain’s fighting men who helped to win our battles. Got his
- majority for the heroic defence of Rorke’s Drift.
- FIRST WATCH: Regiment.
- BLOOM: _(Turns to the gallery.)_ The royal Dublins, boys, the salt of
- the earth, known the world over. I think I see some old comrades in
- arms up there among you. The R. D. F., with our own Metropolitan
- police, guardians of our homes, the pluckiest lads and the finest body
- of men, as physique, in the service of our sovereign.
- A VOICE: Turncoat! Up the Boers! Who booed Joe Chamberlain?
- BLOOM: _(His hand on the shoulder of the first watch.)_ My old dad too
- was a J. P. I’m as staunch a Britisher as you are, sir. I fought with
- the colours for king and country in the absentminded war under general
- Gough in the park and was disabled at Spion Kop and Bloemfontein, was
- mentioned in dispatches. I did all a white man could. _(With quiet
- feeling.)_ Jim Bludso. Hold her nozzle again the bank.
- FIRST WATCH: Profession or trade.
- BLOOM: Well, I follow a literary occupation, author-journalist. In fact
- we are just bringing out a collection of prize stories of which I am
- the inventor, something that is an entirely new departure. I am
- connected with the British and Irish press. If you ring up...
- _(Myles Crawford strides out jerkily, a quill between his teeth. His
- scarlet beak blazes within the aureole of his straw hat. He dangles a
- hank of Spanish onions in one hand and holds with the other hand a
- telephone receiver nozzle to his ear.)_
- MYLES CRAWFORD: _(His cock’s wattles wagging.)_ Hello, seventyseven
- eightfour. Hello. _Freeman’s Urinal_ and _Weekly Arsewipe_ here.
- Paralyse Europe. You which? Bluebags? Who writes? Is it Bloom?
- _(Mr Philip Beaufoy, palefaced, stands in the witnessbox, in accurate
- morning dress, outbreast pocket with peak of handkerchief showing,
- creased lavender trousers and patent boots. He carries a large
- portfolio labelled_ Matcham’s Masterstrokes.)
- BEAUFOY: _(Drawls.)_ No, you aren’t. Not by a long shot if I know it. I
- don’t see it, that’s all. No born gentleman, no-one with the most
- rudimentary promptings of a gentleman would stoop to such particularly
- loathsome conduct. One of those, my lord. A plagiarist. A soapy sneak
- masquerading as a literateur. It’s perfectly obvious that with the most
- inherent baseness he has cribbed some of my bestselling copy, really
- gorgeous stuff, a perfect gem, the love passages in which are beneath
- suspicion. The Beaufoy books of love and great possessions, with which
- your lordship is doubtless familiar, are a household word throughout
- the kingdom.
- BLOOM: _(Murmurs with hangdog meekness glum.)_ That bit about the
- laughing witch hand in hand I take exception to, if I may...
- BEAUFOY: _(His lip upcurled, smiles superciliously on the court.)_ You
- funny ass, you! You’re too beastly awfully weird for words! I don’t
- think you need over excessively disincommodate yourself in that regard.
- My literary agent Mr J. B. Pinker is in attendance. I presume, my lord,
- we shall receive the usual witnesses’ fees, shan’t we? We are
- considerably out of pocket over this bally pressman johnny, this
- jackdaw of Rheims, who has not even been to a university.
- BLOOM: _(Indistinctly.)_ University of life. Bad art.
- BEAUFOY: _(Shouts.)_ It’s a damnably foul lie, showing the moral
- rottenness of the man! _(He extends his portfolio.)_ We have here
- damning evidence, the _corpus delicti_, my lord, a specimen of my
- maturer work disfigured by the hallmark of the beast.
- A VOICE FROM THE GALLERY:
- Moses, Moses, king of the jews,
- Wiped his arse in the _Daily News_.
- BLOOM: _(Bravely.)_ Overdrawn.
- BEAUFOY: You low cad! You ought to be ducked in the horsepond, you
- rotter! _(To the court.)_ Why, look at the man’s private life! Leading
- a quadruple existence! Street angel and house devil. Not fit to be
- mentioned in mixed society! The archconspirator of the age!
- BLOOM: _(To the court.)_ And he, a bachelor, how...
- FIRST WATCH: The King versus Bloom. Call the woman Driscoll.
- THE CRIER: Mary Driscoll, scullerymaid!
- _(Mary Driscoll, a slipshod servant girl, approaches. She has a bucket
- on the crook of her arm and a scouringbrush in her hand.)_
- SECOND WATCH: Another! Are you of the unfortunate class?
- MARY DRISCOLL: _(Indignantly.)_ I’m not a bad one. I bear a respectable
- character and was four months in my last place. I was in a situation,
- six pounds a year and my chances with Fridays out and I had to leave
- owing to his carryings on.
- FIRST WATCH: What do you tax him with?
- MARY DRISCOLL: He made a certain suggestion but I thought more of
- myself as poor as I am.
- BLOOM: _(In housejacket of ripplecloth, flannel trousers, heelless
- slippers, unshaven, his hair rumpled: softly.)_ I treated you white. I
- gave you mementos, smart emerald garters far above your station.
- Incautiously I took your part when you were accused of pilfering.
- There’s a medium in all things. Play cricket.
- MARY DRISCOLL: _(Excitedly.)_ As God is looking down on me this night
- if ever I laid a hand to them oylsters!
- FIRST WATCH: The offence complained of? Did something happen?
- MARY DRISCOLL: He surprised me in the rere of the premises, Your
- honour, when the missus was out shopping one morning with a request for
- a safety pin. He held me and I was discoloured in four places as a
- result. And he interfered twict with my clothing.
- BLOOM: She counterassaulted.
- MARY DRISCOLL: _(Scornfully.)_ I had more respect for the
- scouringbrush, so I had. I remonstrated with him, Your lord, and he
- remarked: keep it quiet.
- _(General laughter.)_
- GEORGE FOTTRELL: _(Clerk of the crown and peace, resonantly.)_ Order in
- court! The accused will now make a bogus statement.
- _(Bloom, pleading not guilty and holding a fullblown waterlily, begins
- a long unintelligible speech. They would hear what counsel had to say
- in his stirring address to the grand jury. He was down and out but,
- though branded as a black sheep, if he might say so, he meant to
- reform, to retrieve the memory of the past in a purely sisterly way and
- return to nature as a purely domestic animal. A sevenmonths’ child, he
- had been carefully brought up and nurtured by an aged bedridden parent.
- There might have been lapses of an erring father but he wanted to turn
- over a new leaf and now, when at long last in sight of the whipping
- post, to lead a homely life in the evening of his days, permeated by
- the affectionate surroundings of the heaving bosom of the family. An
- acclimatised Britisher, he had seen that summer eve from the footplate
- of an engine cab of the Loop line railway company while the rain
- refrained from falling glimpses, as it were, through the windows of
- loveful households in Dublin city and urban district of scenes truly
- rural of happiness of the better land with Dockrell’s wallpaper at one
- and ninepence a dozen, innocent Britishborn bairns lisping prayers to
- the Sacred Infant, youthful scholars grappling with their pensums or
- model young ladies playing on the pianoforte or anon all with fervour
- reciting the family rosary round the crackling Yulelog while in the
- boreens and green lanes the colleens with their swains strolled what
- times the strains of the organtoned melodeon Britannia metalbound with
- four acting stops and twelvefold bellows, a sacrifice, greatest bargain
- ever...._
- _(Renewed laughter. He mumbles incoherently. Reporters complain that
- they cannot hear.)_
- LONGHAND AND SHORTHAND: _(Without looking up from their notebooks.)_
- Loosen his boots.
- PROFESSOR MACHUGH: _(From the presstable, coughs and calls.)_ Cough it
- up, man. Get it out in bits.
- _(The crossexamination proceeds_ re _Bloom and the bucket. A large
- bucket. Bloom himself. Bowel trouble. In Beaver street. Gripe, yes.
- Quite bad. A plasterer’s bucket. By walking stifflegged. Suffered
- untold misery. Deadly agony. About noon. Love or burgundy. Yes, some
- spinach. Crucial moment. He did not look in the bucket. Nobody. Rather
- a mess. Not completely. A_ Titbits _back number_.)
- _(Uproar and catcalls. Bloom in a torn frockcoat stained with
- whitewash, dinged silk hat sideways on his head, a strip of
- stickingplaster across his nose, talks inaudibly.)_
- J. J. O’MOLLOY: _(In barrister’s grey wig and stuffgown, speaking with
- a voice of pained protest.)_ This is no place for indecent levity at
- the expense of an erring mortal disguised in liquor. We are not in a
- beargarden nor at an Oxford rag nor is this a travesty of justice. My
- client is an infant, a poor foreign immigrant who started scratch as a
- stowaway and is now trying to turn an honest penny. The trumped up
- misdemeanour was due to a momentary aberration of heredity, brought on
- by hallucination, such familiarities as the alleged guilty occurrence
- being quite permitted in my client’s native place, the land of the
- Pharaoh. _Prima facie_, I put it to you that there was no attempt at
- carnally knowing. Intimacy did not occur and the offence complained of
- by Driscoll, that her virtue was solicited, was not repeated. I would
- deal in especial with atavism. There have been cases of shipwreck and
- somnambulism in my client’s family. If the accused could speak he could
- a tale unfold—one of the strangest that have ever been narrated between
- the covers of a book. He himself, my lord, is a physical wreck from
- cobbler’s weak chest. His submission is that he is of Mongolian
- extraction and irresponsible for his actions. Not all there, in fact.
- BLOOM: _(Barefoot, pigeonbreasted, in lascar’s vest and trousers,
- apologetic toes turned in, opens his tiny mole’s eyes and looks about
- him dazedly, passing a slow hand across his forehead. Then he hitches
- his belt sailor fashion and with a shrug of oriental obeisance salutes
- the court, pointing one thumb heavenward.)_ Him makee velly muchee fine
- night. _(He begins to lilt simply.)_
- Li li poo lil chile
- Blingee pigfoot evly night
- Payee two shilly...
- _(He is howled down.)_
- J. J. O’MOLLOY: _(Hotly to the populace.)_ This is a lonehand fight. By
- Hades, I will not have any client of mine gagged and badgered in this
- fashion by a pack of curs and laughing hyenas. The Mosaic code has
- superseded the law of the jungle. I say it and I say it emphatically,
- without wishing for one moment to defeat the ends of justice, accused
- was not accessory before the act and prosecutrix has not been tampered
- with. The young person was treated by defendant as if she were his very
- own daughter. _(Bloom takes J. J. O’Molloy’s hand and raises it to his
- lips.)_ I shall call rebutting evidence to prove up to the hilt that
- the hidden hand is again at its old game. When in doubt persecute
- Bloom. My client, an innately bashful man, would be the last man in the
- world to do anything ungentlemanly which injured modesty could object
- to or cast a stone at a girl who took the wrong turning when some
- dastard, responsible for her condition, had worked his own sweet will
- on her. He wants to go straight. I regard him as the whitest man I
- know. He is down on his luck at present owing to the mortgaging of his
- extensive property at Agendath Netaim in faraway Asia Minor, slides of
- which will now be shown. _(To Bloom.)_ I suggest that you will do the
- handsome thing.
- BLOOM: A penny in the pound.
- _(The image of the lake of Kinnereth with blurred cattle cropping in
- silver haze is projected on the wall. Moses Dlugacz, ferreteyed albino,
- in blue dungarees, stands up in the gallery, holding in each hand an
- orange citron and a pork kidney.)_
- DLUGACZ: _(Hoarsely.)_ Bleibtreustrasse, Berlin, W. 13.
- _(J. J. O’Molloy steps on to a low plinth and holds the lapel of his
- coat with solemnity. His face lengthens, grows pale and bearded, with
- sunken eyes, the blotches of phthisis and hectic cheekbones of John F.
- Taylor. He applies his handkerchief to his mouth and scrutinises the
- galloping tide of rosepink blood.)_
- J. J. O’MOLLOY: _(Almost voicelessly.)_ Excuse me. I am suffering from
- a severe chill, have recently come from a sickbed. A few wellchosen
- words. _(He assumes the avine head, foxy moustache and proboscidal
- eloquence of Seymour Bushe.)_ When the angel’s book comes to be opened
- if aught that the pensive bosom has inaugurated of soultransfigured and
- of soultransfiguring deserves to live I say accord the prisoner at the
- bar the sacred benefit of the doubt.
- _(A paper with something written on it is handed into court._)
- BLOOM: _(In court dress.)_ Can give best references. Messrs Callan,
- Coleman. Mr Wisdom Hely J. P. My old chief Joe Cuffe. Mr V. B. Dillon,
- ex lord mayor of Dublin. I have moved in the charmed circle of the
- highest... Queens of Dublin society. _(Carelessly.)_ I was just
- chatting this afternoon at the viceregal lodge to my old pals, sir
- Robert and lady Ball, astronomer royal, at the levee. Sir Bob, I
- said...
- MRS YELVERTON BARRY: _(In lowcorsaged opal balldress and elbowlength
- ivory gloves, wearing a sabletrimmed brickquilted dolman, a comb of
- brilliants and panache of osprey in her hair.)_ Arrest him, constable.
- He wrote me an anonymous letter in prentice backhand when my husband
- was in the North Riding of Tipperary on the Munster circuit, signed
- James Lovebirch. He said that he had seen from the gods my peerless
- globes as I sat in a box of the _Theatre Royal_ at a command
- performance of _La Cigale_. I deeply inflamed him, he said. He made
- improper overtures to me to misconduct myself at half past four p.m. on
- the following Thursday, Dunsink time. He offered to send me through the
- post a work of fiction by Monsieur Paul de Kock, entitled _The Girl
- with the Three Pairs of Stays_.
- MRS BELLINGHAM: _(In cap and seal coney mantle, wrapped up to the nose,
- steps out of her brougham and scans through tortoiseshell
- quizzing-glasses which she takes from inside her huge opossum muff.)_
- Also to me. Yes, I believe it is the same objectionable person. Because
- he closed my carriage door outside sir Thornley Stoker’s one sleety day
- during the cold snap of February ninetythree when even the grid of the
- wastepipe and the ballstop in my bath cistern were frozen. Subsequently
- he enclosed a bloom of edelweiss culled on the heights, as he said, in
- my honour. I had it examined by a botanical expert and elicited the
- information that it was a blossom of the homegrown potato plant
- purloined from a forcingcase of the model farm.
- MRS YELVERTON BARRY: Shame on him!
- _(A crowd of sluts and ragamuffins surges forward.)_
- THE SLUTS AND RAGAMUFFINS: _(Screaming.)_ Stop thief! Hurrah there,
- Bluebeard! Three cheers for Ikey Mo!
- SECOND WATCH: _(Produces handcuffs.)_ Here are the darbies.
- MRS BELLINGHAM: He addressed me in several handwritings with fulsome
- compliments as a Venus in furs and alleged profound pity for my
- frostbound coachman Palmer while in the same breath he expressed
- himself as envious of his earflaps and fleecy sheepskins and of his
- fortunate proximity to my person, when standing behind my chair wearing
- my livery and the armorial bearings of the Bellingham escutcheon
- garnished sable, a buck’s head couped or. He lauded almost
- extravagantly my nether extremities, my swelling calves in silk hose
- drawn up to the limit, and eulogised glowingly my other hidden
- treasures in priceless lace which, he said, he could conjure up. He
- urged me (Stating that he felt it his mission in life to urge me.) to
- defile the marriage bed, to commit adultery at the earliest possible
- opportunity.
- THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS: _(In amazon costume, hard hat,
- jackboots cockspurred, vermilion waistcoat, fawn musketeer gauntlets
- with braided drums, long train held up and hunting crop with which she
- strikes her welt constantly.)_ Also me. Because he saw me on the polo
- ground of the Phoenix park at the match All Ireland versus the Rest of
- Ireland. My eyes, I know, shone divinely as I watched Captain Slogger
- Dennehy of the Inniskillings win the final chukkar on his darling cob
- _Centaur._ This plebeian Don Juan observed me from behind a hackney car
- and sent me in double envelopes an obscene photograph, such as are sold
- after dark on Paris boulevards, insulting to any lady. I have it still.
- It represents a partially nude señorita, frail and lovely (his wife, as
- he solemnly assured me, taken by him from nature), practising illicit
- intercourse with a muscular torero, evidently a blackguard. He urged me
- to do likewise, to misbehave, to sin with officers of the garrison. He
- implored me to soil his letter in an unspeakable manner, to chastise
- him as he richly deserves, to bestride and ride him, to give him a most
- vicious horsewhipping.
- MRS BELLINGHAM: Me too.
- MRS YELVERTON BARRY: Me too.
- _(Several highly respectable Dublin ladies hold up improper letters
- received from Bloom.)_
- THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS: _(Stamps her jingling spurs in a
- sudden paroxysm of fury.)_ I will, by the God above me. I’ll scourge
- the pigeonlivered cur as long as I can stand over him. I’ll flay him
- alive.
- BLOOM: _(His eyes closing, quails expectantly.)_ Here? _(He squirms.)_
- Again! _(He pants cringing.)_ I love the danger.
- THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS: Very much so! I’ll make it hot for
- you. I’ll make you dance Jack Latten for that.
- MRS BELLINGHAM: Tan his breech well, the upstart! Write the stars and
- stripes on it!
- MRS YELVERTON BARRY: Disgraceful! There’s no excuse for him! A married
- man!
- BLOOM: All these people. I meant only the spanking idea. A warm
- tingling glow without effusion. Refined birching to stimulate the
- circulation.
- THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS: _(Laughs derisively.)_ O, did you,
- my fine fellow? Well, by the living God, you’ll get the surprise of
- your life now, believe me, the most unmerciful hiding a man ever
- bargained for. You have lashed the dormant tigress in my nature into
- fury.
- MRS BELLINGHAM: _(Shakes her muff and quizzing-glasses vindictively.)_
- Make him smart, Hanna dear. Give him ginger. Thrash the mongrel within
- an inch of his life. The cat-o’-nine-tails. Geld him. Vivisect him.
- BLOOM: _(Shuddering, shrinking, joins his hands: with hangdog mien.)_ O
- cold! O shivery! It was your ambrosial beauty. Forget, forgive. Kismet.
- Let me off this once. _(He offers the other cheek.)_
- MRS YELVERTON BARRY: _(Severely.)_ Don’t do so on any account, Mrs
- Talboys! He should be soundly trounced!
- THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS: _(Unbuttoning her gauntlet
- violently.)_ I’ll do no such thing. Pigdog and always was ever since he
- was pupped! To dare address me! I’ll flog him black and blue in the
- public streets. I’ll dig my spurs in him up to the rowel. He is a
- wellknown cuckold. _(She swishes her huntingcrop savagely in the air.)_
- Take down his trousers without loss of time. Come here, sir! Quick!
- Ready?
- BLOOM: _(Trembling, beginning to obey.)_ The weather has been so warm.
- _(Davy Stephens, ringletted, passes with a bevy of barefoot newsboys.)_
- DAVY STEPHENS: _Messenger of the Sacred Heart_ and _Evening Telegraph_
- with Saint Patrick’s Day supplement. Containing the new addresses of
- all the cuckolds in Dublin.
- _(The very reverend Canon O’Hanlon in cloth of gold cope elevates and
- exposes a marble timepiece. Before him Father Conroy and the reverend
- John Hughes S. J. bend low.)_
- THE TIMEPIECE: _(Unportalling.)_
- Cuckoo.
- Cuckoo.
- Cuckoo.
- _(The brass quoits of a bed are heard to jingle.)_
- THE QUOITS: Jigjag. Jigajiga. Jigjag.
- _(A panel of fog rolls back rapidly, revealing rapidly in the jurybox
- the faces of Martin Cunningham, foreman, silkhatted, Jack Power, Simon
- Dedalus, Tom Kernan, Ned Lambert, John Henry Menton, Myles Crawford,
- Lenehan, Paddy Leonard, Nosey Flynn, M’Coy and the featureless face of
- a Nameless One.)_
- THE NAMELESS ONE: Bareback riding. Weight for age. Gob, he organised
- her.
- THE JURORS: _(All their heads turned to his voice.)_ Really?
- THE NAMELESS ONE: _(Snarls.)_ Arse over tip. Hundred shillings to five.
- THE JURORS: _(All their heads lowered in assent.)_ Most of us thought
- as much.
- FIRST WATCH: He is a marked man. Another girl’s plait cut. Wanted: Jack
- the Ripper. A thousand pounds reward.
- SECOND WATCH: _(Awed, whispers.)_ And in black. A mormon. Anarchist.
- THE CRIER: _(Loudly.)_ Whereas Leopold Bloom of no fixed abode is a
- wellknown dynamitard, forger, bigamist, bawd and cuckold and a public
- nuisance to the citizens of Dublin and whereas at this commission of
- assizes the most honourable...
- _(His Honour, sir Frederick Falkiner, recorder of Dublin, in judicial
- garb of grey stone rises from the bench, stonebearded. He bears in his
- arms an umbrella sceptre. From his forehead arise starkly the Mosaic
- ramshorns.)_
- THE RECORDER: I will put an end to this white slave traffic and rid
- Dublin of this odious pest. Scandalous! _(He dons the black cap.)_ Let
- him be taken, Mr Subsheriff, from the dock where he now stands and
- detained in custody in Mountjoy prison during His Majesty’s pleasure
- and there be hanged by the neck until he is dead and therein fail not
- at your peril or may the Lord have mercy on your soul. Remove him. _(A
- black skullcap descends upon his head.)_
- _(The subsheriff Long John Fanning appears, smoking a pungent Henry
- Clay.)_
- LONG JOHN FANNING: _(Scowls and calls with rich rolling utterance.)_
- Who’ll hang Judas Iscariot?
- _(H. Rumbold, master barber, in a bloodcoloured jerkin and tanner’s
- apron, a rope coiled over his shoulder, mounts the block. A life
- preserver and a nailstudded bludgeon are stuck in his belt. He rubs
- grimly his grappling hands, knobbed with knuckledusters.)_
- RUMBOLD: _(To the recorder with sinister familiarity.)_ Hanging Harry,
- your Majesty, the Mersey terror. Five guineas a jugular. Neck or
- nothing.
- _(The bells of George’s church toll slowly, loud dark iron.)_
- THE BELLS: Heigho! Heigho!
- BLOOM: _(Desperately.)_ Wait. Stop. Gulls. Good heart. I saw.
- Innocence. Girl in the monkeyhouse. Zoo. Lewd chimpanzee.
- _(Breathlessly.)_ Pelvic basin. Her artless blush unmanned me.
- _(Overcome with emotion.)_ I left the precincts. (He turns to a figure
- in the crowd, appealing.) Hynes, may I speak to you? You know me. That
- three shillings you can keep. If you want a little more...
- HYNES: _(Coldly.)_ You are a perfect stranger.
- SECOND WATCH: _(Points to the corner.)_ The bomb is here.
- FIRST WATCH: Infernal machine with a time fuse.
- BLOOM: No, no. Pig’s feet. I was at a funeral.
- FIRST WATCH: _(Draws his truncheon.)_ Liar!
- _(The beagle lifts his snout, showing the grey scorbutic face of Paddy
- Dignam. He has gnawed all. He exhales a putrid carcasefed breath. He
- grows to human size and shape. His dachshund coat becomes a brown
- mortuary habit. His green eye flashes bloodshot. Half of one ear, all
- the nose and both thumbs are ghouleaten.)_
- PADDY DIGNAM: _(In a hollow voice.)_ It is true. It was my funeral.
- Doctor Finucane pronounced life extinct when I succumbed to the disease
- from natural causes.
- _(He lifts his mutilated ashen face moonwards and bays lugubriously.)_
- BLOOM: _(In triumph.)_ You hear?
- PADDY DIGNAM: Bloom, I am Paddy Dignam’s spirit. List, list, O list!
- BLOOM: The voice is the voice of Esau.
- SECOND WATCH: _(Blesses himself.)_ How is that possible?
- FIRST WATCH: It is not in the penny catechism.
- PADDY DIGNAM: By metempsychosis. Spooks.
- A VOICE: O rocks.
- PADDY DIGNAM: _(Earnestly.)_ Once I was in the employ of Mr J. H.
- Menton, solicitor, commissioner for oaths and affidavits, of 27
- Bachelor’s Walk. Now I am defunct, the wall of the heart hypertrophied.
- Hard lines. The poor wife was awfully cut up. How is she bearing it?
- Keep her off that bottle of sherry. _(He looks round him.)_ A lamp. I
- must satisfy an animal need. That buttermilk didn’t agree with me.
- _(The portly figure of John O’Connell, caretaker, stands forth, holding
- a bunch of keys tied with crape. Beside him stands Father Coffey,
- chaplain, toadbellied, wrynecked, in a surplice and bandanna nightcap,
- holding sleepily a staff of twisted poppies.)_
- FATHER COFFEY: _(Yawns, then chants with a hoarse croak.)_ Namine.
- Jacobs. Vobiscuits. Amen.
- JOHN O’CONNELL: _(Foghorns stormily through his megaphone.)_ Dignam,
- Patrick T, deceased.
- PADDY DIGNAM: _(With pricked up ears, winces.)_ Overtones. _(He
- wriggles forward and places an ear to the ground.)_ My master’s voice!
- JOHN O’CONNELL: Burial docket letter number U. P. eightyfive thousand.
- Field seventeen. House of Keys. Plot, one hundred and one.
- _(Paddy Dignam listens with visible effort, thinking, his tail
- stiffpointed, his ears cocked.)_
- PADDY DIGNAM: Pray for the repose of his soul.
- _(He worms down through a coalhole, his brown habit trailing its tether
- over rattling pebbles. After him toddles an obese grandfather rat on
- fungus turtle paws under a grey carapace. Dignam’s voice, muffled, is
- heard baying under ground:_ Dignam’s dead and gone below. _Tom
- Rochford, robinredbreasted, in cap and breeches, jumps from his
- twocolumned machine.)_
- TOM ROCHFORD: _(A hand to his breastbone, bows.)_ Reuben J. A florin I
- find him. _(He fixes the manhole with a resolute stare.)_ My turn now
- on. Follow me up to Carlow.
- _(He executes a daredevil salmon leap in the air and is engulfed in the
- coalhole. Two discs on the columns wobble, eyes of nought. All recedes.
- Bloom plodges forward again through the sump. Kisses chirp amid the
- rifts of fog. A piano sounds. He stands before a lighted house,
- listening. The kisses, winging from their bowers, fly about him,
- twittering, warbling, cooing.)_
- THE KISSES: _(Warbling.)_ Leo! _(Twittering.)_ Icky licky micky sticky
- for Leo! _(Cooing.)_ Coo coocoo! Yummyyum, Womwom! _(Warbling.)_ Big
- comebig! Pirouette! Leopopold! _(Twittering.)_ Leeolee! _(Warbling.)_ O
- Leo!
- _(They rustle, flutter upon his garments, alight, bright giddy flecks,
- silvery sequins.)_
- BLOOM: A man’s touch. Sad music. Church music. Perhaps here.
- _(Zoe Higgins, a young whore in a sapphire slip, closed with three
- bronze buckles, a slim black velvet fillet round her throat, nods,
- trips down the steps and accosts him.)_
- ZOE: Are you looking for someone? He’s inside with his friend.
- BLOOM: Is this Mrs Mack’s?
- ZOE: No, eightyone. Mrs Cohen’s. You might go farther and fare worse.
- Mother Slipperslapper. _(Familiarly.)_ She’s on the job herself tonight
- with the vet her tipster that gives her all the winners and pays for
- her son in Oxford. Working overtime but her luck’s turned today.
- _(Suspiciously.)_ You’re not his father, are you?
- BLOOM: Not I!
- ZOE: You both in black. Has little mousey any tickles tonight?
- _(His skin, alert, feels her fingertips approach. A hand glides over
- his left thigh.)_
- ZOE: How’s the nuts?
- BLOOM: Off side. Curiously they are on the right. Heavier, I suppose.
- One in a million my tailor, Mesias, says.
- ZOE: _(In sudden alarm.)_ You’ve a hard chancre.
- BLOOM: Not likely.
- ZOE: I feel it.
- _(Her hand slides into his left trouser pocket and brings out a hard
- black shrivelled potato. She regards it and Bloom with dumb moist
- lips.)_
- BLOOM: A talisman. Heirloom.
- ZOE: For Zoe? For keeps? For being so nice, eh?
- _(She puts the potato greedily into a pocket then links his arm,
- cuddling him with supple warmth. He smiles uneasily. Slowly, note by
- note, oriental music is played. He gazes in the tawny crystal of her
- eyes, ringed with kohol. His smile softens.)_
- ZOE: You’ll know me the next time.
- BLOOM: _(Forlornly.)_ I never loved a dear gazelle but it was sure
- to...
- _(Gazelles are leaping, feeding on the mountains. Near are lakes. Round
- their shores file shadows black of cedargroves. Aroma rises, a strong
- hairgrowth of resin. It burns, the orient, a sky of sapphire, cleft by
- the bronze flight of eagles. Under it lies the womancity, nude, white,
- still, cool, in luxury. A fountain murmurs among damask roses. Mammoth
- roses murmur of scarlet winegrapes. A wine of shame, lust, blood
- exudes, strangely murmuring.)_
- ZOE: _(Murmuring singsong with the music, her odalisk lips lusciously
- smeared with salve of swinefat and rosewater.) Schorach ani wenowach,
- benoith Hierushaloim._
- BLOOM: _(Fascinated.)_ I thought you were of good stock by your accent.
- ZOE: And you know what thought did?
- _(She bites his ear gently with little goldstopped teeth, sending on
- him a cloying breath of stale garlic. The roses draw apart, disclose a
- sepulchre of the gold of kings and their mouldering bones.)_
- BLOOM: _(Draws back, mechanically caressing her right bub with a flat
- awkward hand.)_ Are you a Dublin girl?
- ZOE: _(Catches a stray hair deftly and twists it to her coil.)_ No
- bloody fear. I’m English. Have you a swaggerroot?
- BLOOM: _(As before.)_ Rarely smoke, dear. Cigar now and then. Childish
- device. _(Lewdly.)_ The mouth can be better engaged than with a
- cylinder of rank weed.
- ZOE: Go on. Make a stump speech out of it.
- BLOOM: _(In workman’s corduroy overalls, black gansy with red floating
- tie and apache cap.)_ Mankind is incorrigible. Sir Walter Ralegh
- brought from the new world that potato and that weed, the one a killer
- of pestilence by absorption, the other a poisoner of the ear, eye,
- heart, memory, will, understanding, all. That is to say he brought the
- poison a hundred years before another person whose name I forget
- brought the food. Suicide. Lies. All our habits. Why, look at our
- public life!
- _(Midnight chimes from distant steeples.)_
- THE CHIMES: Turn again, Leopold! Lord mayor of Dublin!
- BLOOM: _(In alderman’s gown and chain.)_ Electors of Arran Quay, Inns
- Quay, Rotunda, Mountjoy and North Dock, better run a tramline, I say,
- from the cattlemarket to the river. That’s the music of the future.
- That’s my programme. _Cui bono?_ But our bucaneering Vanderdeckens in
- their phantom ship of finance...
- AN ELECTOR: Three times three for our future chief magistrate!
- _(The aurora borealis of the torchlight procession leaps.)_
- THE TORCHBEARERS: Hooray!
- _(Several wellknown burgesses, city magnates and freemen of the city
- shake hands with Bloom and congratulate him. Timothy Harrington, late
- thrice Lord Mayor of Dublin, imposing in mayoral scarlet, gold chain
- and white silk tie, confers with councillor Lorcan Sherlock,_ locum
- tenens. _They nod vigorously in agreement.)_
- LATE LORD MAYOR HARRINGTON: _(In scarlet robe with mace, gold mayoral
- chain and large white silk scarf.)_ That alderman sir Leo Bloom’s
- speech be printed at the expense of the ratepayers. That the house in
- which he was born be ornamented with a commemorative tablet and that
- the thoroughfare hitherto known as Cow Parlour off Cork street be
- henceforth designated Boulevard Bloom.
- COUNCILLOR LORCAN SHERLOCK: Carried unanimously.
- BLOOM: _(Impassionedly.)_ These flying Dutchmen or lying Dutchmen as
- they recline in their upholstered poop, casting dice, what reck they?
- Machines is their cry, their chimera, their panacea. Laboursaving
- apparatuses, supplanters, bugbears, manufactured monsters for mutual
- murder, hideous hobgoblins produced by a horde of capitalistic lusts
- upon our prostituted labour. The poor man starves while they are
- grassing their royal mountain stags or shooting peasants and
- phartridges in their purblind pomp of pelf and power. But their reign
- is rover for rever and ever and ev...
- _(Prolonged applause. Venetian masts, maypoles and festal arches spring
- up. A streamer bearing the legends_ Cead Mile Failte _and_ Mah Ttob
- Melek Israel _spans the street. All the windows are thronged with
- sightseers, chiefly ladies. Along the route the regiments of the Royal
- Dublin Fusiliers, the King’s own Scottish Borderers, the Cameron
- Highlanders and the Welsh Fusiliers, standing to attention, keep back
- the crowd. Boys from High school are perched on the lampposts,
- telegraph poles, windowsills, cornices, gutters, chimneypots, railings,
- rainspouts, whistling and cheering. The pillar of the cloud appears. A
- fife and drum band is heard in the distance playing the Kol Nidre. The
- beaters approach with imperial eagles hoisted, trailing banners and
- waving oriental palms. The chryselephantine papal standard rises high,
- surrounded by pennons of the civic flag. The van of the procession
- appears headed by John Howard Parnell, city marshal, in a chessboard
- tabard, the Athlone Poursuivant and Ulster King of Arms. They are
- followed by the Right Honourable Joseph Hutchinson, lord mayor of
- Dublin, his lordship the lord mayor of Cork, their worships the mayors
- of Limerick, Galway, Sligo and Waterford, twentyeight Irish
- representative peers, sirdars, grandees and maharajahs bearing the
- cloth of estate, the Dublin Metropolitan Fire Brigade, the chapter of
- the saints of finance in their plutocratic order of precedence, the
- bishop of Down and Connor, His Eminence Michael cardinal Logue,
- archbishop of Armagh, primate of all Ireland, His Grace, the most
- reverend Dr William Alexander, archbishop of Armagh, primate of all
- Ireland, the chief rabbi, the presbyterian moderator, the heads of the
- baptist, anabaptist, methodist and Moravian chapels and the honorary
- secretary of the society of friends. After them march the guilds and
- trades and trainbands with flying colours: coopers, bird fanciers,
- millwrights, newspaper canvassers, law scriveners, masseurs, vintners,
- trussmakers, chimneysweeps, lard refiners, tabinet and poplin weavers,
- farriers, Italian warehousemen, church decorators, bootjack
- manufacturers, undertakers, silk mercers, lapidaries, salesmasters,
- corkcutters, assessors of fire losses, dyers and cleaners, export
- bottlers, fellmongers, ticketwriters, heraldic seal engravers, horse
- repository hands, bullion brokers, cricket and archery outfitters,
- riddlemakers, egg and potato factors, hosiers and glovers, plumbing
- contractors. After them march gentlemen of the bedchamber, Black Rod,
- Deputy Garter, Gold Stick, the master of horse, the lord great
- chamberlain, the earl marshal, the high constable carrying the sword of
- state, saint Stephen’s iron crown, the chalice and bible. Four buglers
- on foot blow a sennet. Beefeaters reply, winding clarions of welcome.
- Under an arch of triumph Bloom appears, bareheaded, in a crimson velvet
- mantle trimmed with ermine, bearing Saint Edward’s staff, the orb and
- sceptre with the dove, the curtana. He is seated on a milkwhite horse
- with long flowing crimson tail, richly caparisoned, with golden
- headstall. Wild excitement. The ladies from their balconies throw down
- rosepetals. The air is perfumed with essences. The men cheer. Bloom’s
- boys run amid the bystanders with branches of hawthorn and
- wrenbushes.)_
- BLOOM’S BOYS:
- The wren, the wren,
- The king of all birds,
- Saint Stephen’s his day
- Was caught in the furze.
- A BLACKSMITH: _(Murmurs.)_ For the honour of God! And is that Bloom? He
- scarcely looks thirtyone.
- A PAVIOR AND FLAGGER: That’s the famous Bloom now, the world’s greatest
- reformer. Hats off!
- _(All uncover their heads. Women whisper eagerly.)_
- A MILLIONAIRESS: _(Richly.)_ Isn’t he simply wonderful?
- A NOBLEWOMAN: _(Nobly.)_ All that man has seen!
- A FEMINIST: _(Masculinely.)_ And done!
- A BELLHANGER: A classic face! He has the forehead of a thinker.
- _(Bloom’s weather. A sunburst appears in the northwest.)_
- THE BISHOP OF DOWN AND CONNOR: I here present your undoubted
- emperor-president and king-chairman, the most serene and potent and
- very puissant ruler of this realm. God save Leopold the First!
- ALL: God save Leopold the First!
- BLOOM: _(In dalmatic and purple mantle, to the bishop of Down and
- Connor, with dignity.)_ Thanks, somewhat eminent sir.
- WILLIAM, ARCHBISHOP OF ARMAGH: _(In purple stock and shovel hat.)_ Will
- you to your power cause law and mercy to be executed in all your
- judgments in Ireland and territories thereunto belonging?
- BLOOM: _(Placing his right hand on his testicles, swears.)_ So may the
- Creator deal with me. All this I promise to do.
- MICHAEL, ARCHBISHOP OF ARMAGH: _(Pours a cruse of hairoil over Bloom’s
- head.) Gaudium magnum annuntio vobis. Habemus carneficem._ Leopold,
- Patrick, Andrew, David, George, be thou anointed!
- _(Bloom assumes a mantle of cloth of gold and puts on a ruby ring. He
- ascends and stands on the stone of destiny. The representative peers
- put on at the same time their twentyeight crowns. Joybells ring in
- Christ church, Saint Patrick’s, George’s and gay Malahide. Mirus bazaar
- fireworks go up from all sides with symbolical phallopyrotechnic
- designs. The peers do homage, one by one, approaching and
- genuflecting.)_
- THE PEERS: I do become your liege man of life and limb to earthly
- worship.
- _(Bloom holds up his right hand on which sparkles the Koh-i-Noor
- diamond. His palfrey neighs. Immediate silence. Wireless
- intercontinental and interplanetary transmitters are set for reception
- of message.)_
- BLOOM: My subjects! We hereby nominate our faithful charger Copula
- Felix hereditary Grand Vizier and announce that we have this day
- repudiated our former spouse and have bestowed our royal hand upon the
- princess Selene, the splendour of night.
- _(The former morganatic spouse of Bloom is hastily removed in the Black
- Maria. The princess Selene, in moonblue robes, a silver crescent on her
- head, descends from a Sedan chair, borne by two giants. An outburst of
- cheering.)_
- JOHN HOWARD PARNELL: _(Raises the royal standard.)_ Illustrious Bloom!
- Successor to my famous brother!
- BLOOM: _(Embraces John Howard Parnell.)_ We thank you from our heart,
- John, for this right royal welcome to green Erin, the promised land of
- our common ancestors.
- _(The freedom of the city is presented to him embodied in a charter.
- The keys of Dublin, crossed on a crimson cushion, are given to him. He
- shows all that he is wearing green socks.)_
- TOM KERNAN: You deserve it, your honour.
- BLOOM: On this day twenty years ago we overcame the hereditary enemy at
- Ladysmith. Our howitzers and camel swivel guns played on his lines with
- telling effect. Half a league onward! They charge! All is lost now! Do
- we yield? No! We drive them headlong! Lo! We charge! Deploying to the
- left our light horse swept across the heights of Plevna and, uttering
- their warcry _Bonafide Sabaoth_, sabred the Saracen gunners to a man.
- THE CHAPEL OF FREEMAN TYPESETTERS: Hear! Hear!
- JOHN WYSE NOLAN: There’s the man that got away James Stephens.
- A BLUECOAT SCHOOLBOY: Bravo!
- AN OLD RESIDENT: You’re a credit to your country, sir, that’s what you
- are.
- AN APPLEWOMAN: He’s a man like Ireland wants.
- BLOOM: My beloved subjects, a new era is about to dawn. I, Bloom, tell
- you verily it is even now at hand. Yea, on the word of a Bloom, ye
- shall ere long enter into the golden city which is to be, the new
- Bloomusalem in the Nova Hibernia of the future.
- _(Thirtytwo workmen, wearing rosettes, from all the counties of
- Ireland, under the guidance of Derwan the builder, construct the new
- Bloomusalem. It is a colossal edifice with crystal roof, built in the
- shape of a huge pork kidney, containing forty thousand rooms. In the
- course of its extension several buildings and monuments are demolished.
- Government offices are temporarily transferred to railway sheds.
- Numerous houses are razed to the ground. The inhabitants are lodged in
- barrels and boxes, all marked in red with the letters: L. B. Several
- paupers fall from a ladder. A part of the walls of Dublin, crowded with
- loyal sightseers, collapses.)_
- THE SIGHTSEERS: _(Dying.) Morituri te salutant. (They die.)_
- _(A man in a brown macintosh springs up through a trapdoor. He points
- an elongated finger at Bloom.)_
- THE MAN IN THE MACINTOSH: Don’t you believe a word he says. That man is
- Leopold M’Intosh, the notorious fireraiser. His real name is Higgins.
- BLOOM: Shoot him! Dog of a christian! So much for M’Intosh!
- _(A cannonshot. The man in the macintosh disappears. Bloom with his
- sceptre strikes down poppies. The instantaneous deaths of many powerful
- enemies, graziers, members of parliament, members of standing
- committees, are reported. Bloom’s bodyguard distribute Maundy money,
- commemoration medals, loaves and fishes, temperance badges, expensive
- Henry Clay cigars, free cowbones for soup, rubber preservatives in
- sealed envelopes tied with gold thread, butter scotch, pineapple rock,_
- billets doux _in the form of cocked hats, readymade suits, porringers
- of toad in the hole, bottles of Jeyes’ Fluid, purchase stamps, 40 days’
- indulgences, spurious coins, dairyfed pork sausages, theatre passes,
- season tickets available for all tramlines, coupons of the royal and
- privileged Hungarian lottery, penny dinner counters, cheap reprints of
- the World’s Twelve Worst Books: Froggy And Fritz (politic), Care of the
- Baby (infantilic), 50 Meals for 7/6 (culinic), Was Jesus a Sun Myth?
- (historic), Expel that Pain (medic), Infant’s Compendium of the
- Universe (cosmic), Let’s All Chortle (hilaric), Canvasser’s Vade Mecum
- (journalic), Loveletters of Mother Assistant (erotic), Who’s Who in
- Space (astric), Songs that Reached Our Heart (melodic), Pennywise’s Way
- to Wealth (parsimonic). A general rush and scramble. Women press
- forward to touch the hem of Bloom’s robe. The lady Gwendolen Dubedat
- bursts through the throng, leaps on his horse and kisses him on both
- cheeks amid great acclamation. A magnesium flashlight photograph is
- taken. Babes and sucklings are held up.)_
- THE WOMEN: Little father! Little father!
- THE BABES AND SUCKLINGS:
- Clap clap hands till Poldy comes home,
- Cakes in his pocket for Leo alone.
- _(Bloom, bending down, pokes Baby Boardman gently in the stomach.)_
- BABY BOARDMAN: _(Hiccups, curdled milk flowing from his mouth.)_
- Hajajaja.
- BLOOM: _(Shaking hands with a blind stripling.)_ My more than Brother!
- _(Placing his arms round the shoulders of an old couple.)_ Dear old
- friends! _(He plays pussy fourcorners with ragged boys and girls.)_
- Peep! Bopeep! _(He wheels twins in a perambulator.)_ Ticktacktwo
- wouldyousetashoe? _(He performs juggler’s tricks, draws red, orange,
- yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet silk handkerchiefs from his
- mouth.)_ Roygbiv. 32 feet per second. _(He consoles a widow.)_ Absence
- makes the heart grow younger. _(He dances the Highland fling with
- grotesque antics.)_ Leg it, ye devils! _(He kisses the bedsores of a
- palsied veteran.)_ Honourable wounds! _(He trips up a fat policeman.)_
- U. p: up. U. p: up. _(He whispers in the ear of a blushing waitress and
- laughs kindly.)_ Ah, naughty, naughty! _(He eats a raw turnip offered
- him by Maurice Butterly, farmer.)_ Fine! Splendid! _(He refuses to
- accept three shillings offered him by Joseph Hynes, journalist.)_ My
- dear fellow, not at all! _(He gives his coat to a beggar.)_ Please
- accept. _(He takes part in a stomach race with elderly male and female
- cripples.)_ Come on, boys! Wriggle it, girls!
- THE CITIZEN: _(Choked with emotion, brushes aside a tear in his emerald
- muffler.)_ May the good God bless him!
- _(The rams’ horns sound for silence. The standard of Zion is hoisted.)_
- BLOOM: _(Uncloaks impressively, revealing obesity, unrolls a paper and
- reads solemnly.)_ Aleph Beth Ghimel Daleth Hagadah Tephilim Kosher Yom
- Kippur Hanukah Roschaschana Beni Brith Bar Mitzvah Mazzoth Askenazim
- Meshuggah Talith.
- _(An official translation is read by Jimmy Henry, assistant town
- clerk.)_
- JIMMY HENRY: The Court of Conscience is now open. His Most Catholic
- Majesty will now administer open air justice. Free medical and legal
- advice, solution of doubles and other problems. All cordially invited.
- Given at this our loyal city of Dublin in the year 1 of the
- Paradisiacal Era.
- PADDY LEONARD: What am I to do about my rates and taxes?
- BLOOM: Pay them, my friend.
- PADDY LEONARD: Thank you.
- NOSEY FLYNN: Can I raise a mortgage on my fire insurance?
- BLOOM: _(Obdurately.)_ Sirs, take notice that by the law of torts you
- are bound over in your own recognisances for six months in the sum of
- five pounds.
- J. J. O’MOLLOY: A Daniel did I say? Nay! A Peter O’Brien!
- NOSEY FLYNN: Where do I draw the five pounds?
- PISSER BURKE: For bladder trouble?
- BLOOM:
- _Acid. nit. hydrochlor. dil.,_ 20 minims
- _Tinct. nux vom.,_ 5 minims
- _Extr. taraxel. lig.,_ 30 minims.
- _Aq. dis. ter in die._
- CHRIS CALLINAN: What is the parallax of the subsolar ecliptic of
- Aldebaran?
- BLOOM: Pleased to hear from you, Chris. K. 11.
- JOE HYNES: Why aren’t you in uniform?
- BLOOM: When my progenitor of sainted memory wore the uniform of the
- Austrian despot in a dank prison where was yours?
- BEN DOLLARD: Pansies?
- BLOOM: Embellish (beautify) suburban gardens.
- BEN DOLLARD: When twins arrive?
- BLOOM: Father (pater, dad) starts thinking.
- LARRY O’ROURKE: An eightday licence for my new premises. You remember
- me, sir Leo, when you were in number seven. I’m sending around a dozen
- of stout for the missus.
- BLOOM: _(Coldly.)_ You have the advantage of me. Lady Bloom accepts no
- presents.
- CROFTON: This is indeed a festivity.
- BLOOM: _(Solemnly.)_ You call it a festivity. I call it a sacrament.
- ALEXANDER KEYES: When will we have our own house of keys?
- BLOOM: I stand for the reform of municipal morals and the plain ten
- commandments. New worlds for old. Union of all, jew, moslem and
- gentile. Three acres and a cow for all children of nature. Saloon motor
- hearses. Compulsory manual labour for all. All parks open to the public
- day and night. Electric dishscrubbers. Tuberculosis, lunacy, war and
- mendicancy must now cease. General amnesty, weekly carnival with masked
- licence, bonuses for all, esperanto the universal language with
- universal brotherhood. No more patriotism of barspongers and dropsical
- impostors. Free money, free rent, free love and a free lay church in a
- free lay state.
- O’MADDEN BURKE: Free fox in a free henroost.
- DAVY BYRNE: _(Yawning.)_ Iiiiiiiiiaaaaaaach!
- BLOOM: Mixed races and mixed marriage.
- LENEHAN: What about mixed bathing?
- _(Bloom explains to those near him his schemes for social regeneration.
- All agree with him. The keeper of the Kildare street museum appears,
- dragging a lorry on which are the shaking statues of several naked
- goddesses, Venus Callipyge, Venus Pandemos, Venus Metempsychosis, and
- plaster figures, also naked, representing the new nine muses, Commerce,
- Operatic Music, Amor, Publicity, Manufacture, Liberty of Speech, Plural
- Voting, Gastronomy, Private Hygiene, Seaside Concert Entertainments,
- Painless Obstetrics and Astronomy for the People.)_
- FATHER FARLEY: He is an episcopalian, an agnostic, an anythingarian
- seeking to overthrow our holy faith.
- MRS RIORDAN: _(Tears up her will.)_ I’m disappointed in you! You bad
- man!
- MOTHER GROGAN: _(Removes her boot to throw it at Bloom.)_ You beast!
- You abominable person!
- NOSEY FLYNN: Give us a tune, Bloom. One of the old sweet songs.
- BLOOM: _(With rollicking humour.)_
- I vowed that I never would leave her,
- She turned out a cruel deceiver.
- With my tooraloom tooraloom tooraloom tooraloom.
- HOPPY HOLOHAN: Good old Bloom! There’s nobody like him after all.
- PADDY LEONARD: Stage Irishman!
- BLOOM: What railway opera is like a tramline in Gibraltar? The Rows of
- Casteele.
- _(Laughter.)_
- LENEHAN: Plagiarist! Down with Bloom!
- THE VEILED SIBYL: _(Enthusiastically.)_ I’m a Bloomite and I glory in
- it. I believe in him in spite of all. I’d give my life for him, the
- funniest man on earth.
- BLOOM: _(Winks at the bystanders.)_ I bet she’s a bonny lassie.
- THEODORE PUREFOY: _(In fishingcap and oilskin jacket.)_ He employs a
- mechanical device to frustrate the sacred ends of nature.
- THE VEILED SIBYL: _(Stabs herself.)_ My hero god! _(She dies.)_
- _(Many most attractive and enthusiastic women also commit suicide by
- stabbing, drowning, drinking prussic acid, aconite, arsenic, opening
- their veins, refusing food, casting themselves under steamrollers, from
- the top of Nelson’s Pillar, into the great vat of Guinness’s brewery,
- asphyxiating themselves by placing their heads in gasovens, hanging
- themselves in stylish garters, leaping from windows of different
- storeys.)_
- ALEXANDER J DOWIE: _(Violently.)_ Fellowchristians and antiBloomites,
- the man called Bloom is from the roots of hell, a disgrace to christian
- men. A fiendish libertine from his earliest years this stinking goat of
- Mendes gave precocious signs of infantile debauchery, recalling the
- cities of the plain, with a dissolute granddam. This vile hypocrite,
- bronzed with infamy, is the white bull mentioned in the Apocalypse. A
- worshipper of the Scarlet Woman, intrigue is the very breath of his
- nostrils. The stake faggots and the caldron of boiling oil are for him.
- Caliban!
- THE MOB: Lynch him! Roast him! He’s as bad as Parnell was. Mr Fox!
- _(Mother Grogan throws her boot at Bloom. Several shopkeepers from
- upper and lower Dorset street throw objects of little or no commercial
- value, hambones, condensed milk tins, unsaleable cabbage, stale bread,
- sheep’s tails, odd pieces of fat.)_
- BLOOM: _(Excitedly.)_ This is midsummer madness, some ghastly joke
- again. By heaven, I am guiltless as the unsunned snow! It was my
- brother Henry. He is my double. He lives in number 2 Dolphin’s Barn.
- Slander, the viper, has wrongfully accused me. Fellowcountrymen, _sgenl
- inn ban bata coisde gan capall._ I call on my old friend, Dr Malachi
- Mulligan, sex specialist, to give medical testimony on my behalf.
- DR MULLIGAN: _(In motor jerkin, green motorgoggles on his brow.)_ Dr
- Bloom is bisexually abnormal. He has recently escaped from Dr Eustace’s
- private asylum for demented gentlemen. Born out of bedlock hereditary
- epilepsy is present, the consequence of unbridled lust. Traces of
- elephantiasis have been discovered among his ascendants. There are
- marked symptoms of chronic exhibitionism. Ambidexterity is also latent.
- He is prematurely bald from selfabuse, perversely idealistic in
- consequence, a reformed rake, and has metal teeth. In consequence of a
- family complex he has temporarily lost his memory and I believe him to
- be more sinned against than sinning. I have made a pervaginal
- examination and, after application of the acid test to 5427 anal,
- axillary, pectoral and pubic hairs, I declare him to be _virgo
- intacta._
- _(Bloom holds his high grade hat over his genital organs.)_
- DR MADDEN: Hypsospadia is also marked. In the interest of coming
- generations I suggest that the parts affected should be preserved in
- spirits of wine in the national teratological museum.
- DR CROTTHERS: I have examined the patient’s urine. It is albuminoid.
- Salivation is insufficient, the patellar reflex intermittent.
- DR PUNCH COSTELLO: The _fetor judaicus_ is most perceptible.
- DR DIXON: _(Reads a bill of health.)_ Professor Bloom is a finished
- example of the new womanly man. His moral nature is simple and lovable.
- Many have found him a dear man, a dear person. He is a rather quaint
- fellow on the whole, coy though not feebleminded in the medical sense.
- He has written a really beautiful letter, a poem in itself, to the
- court missionary of the Reformed Priests’ Protection Society which
- clears up everything. He is practically a total abstainer and I can
- affirm that he sleeps on a straw litter and eats the most Spartan food,
- cold dried grocer’s peas. He wears a hairshirt of pure Irish
- manufacture winter and summer and scourges himself every Saturday. He
- was, I understand, at one time a firstclass misdemeanant in Glencree
- reformatory. Another report states that he was a very posthumous child.
- I appeal for clemency in the name of the most sacred word our vocal
- organs have ever been called upon to speak. He is about to have a baby.
- _(General commotion and compassion. Women faint. A wealthy American
- makes a street collection for Bloom. Gold and silver coins, blank
- cheques, banknotes, jewels, treasury bonds, maturing bills of exchange,
- I. O. U’s, wedding rings, watchchains, lockets, necklaces and bracelets
- are rapidly collected.)_
- BLOOM: O, I so want to be a mother.
- MRS THORNTON: _(In nursetender’s gown.)_ Embrace me tight, dear. You’ll
- be soon over it. Tight, dear.
- _(Bloom embraces her tightly and bears eight male yellow and white
- children. They appear on a redcarpeted staircase adorned with expensive
- plants. All the octuplets are handsome, with valuable metallic faces,
- wellmade, respectably dressed and wellconducted, speaking five modern
- languages fluently and interested in various arts and sciences. Each
- has his name printed in legible letters on his shirtfront: Nasodoro,
- Goldfinger, Chrysostomos, Maindorée, Silversmile, Silberselber,
- Vifargent, Panargyros. They are immediately appointed to positions of
- high public trust in several different countries as managing directors
- of banks, traffic managers of railways, chairmen of limited liability
- companies, vicechairmen of hotel syndicates.)_
- A VOICE: Bloom, are you the Messiah ben Joseph or ben David?
- BLOOM: _(Darkly.)_ You have said it.
- BROTHER BUZZ: Then perform a miracle like Father Charles.
- BANTAM LYONS: Prophesy who will win the Saint Leger.
- _(Bloom walks on a net, covers his left eye with his left ear, passes
- through several walls, climbs Nelson’s Pillar, hangs from the top ledge
- by his eyelids, eats twelve dozen oysters (shells included), heals
- several sufferers from king’s evil, contracts his face so as to
- resemble many historical personages, Lord Beaconsfield, Lord Byron, Wat
- Tyler, Moses of Egypt, Moses Maimonides, Moses Mendelssohn, Henry
- Irving, Rip van Winkle, Kossuth, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Baron Leopold
- Rothschild, Robinson Crusoe, Sherlock Holmes, Pasteur, turns each foot
- simultaneously in different directions, bids the tide turn back,
- eclipses the sun by extending his little finger.)_
- BRINI, PAPAL NUNCIO: _(In papal zouave’s uniform, steel cuirasses as
- breastplate, armplates, thighplates, legplates, large profane
- moustaches and brown paper mitre.) Leopoldi autem generatio._ Moses
- begat Noah and Noah begat Eunuch and Eunuch begat O’Halloran and
- O’Halloran begat Guggenheim and Guggenheim begat Agendath and Agendath
- begat Netaim and Netaim begat Le Hirsch and Le Hirsch begat Jesurum and
- Jesurum begat MacKay and MacKay begat Ostrolopsky and Ostrolopsky begat
- Smerdoz and Smerdoz begat Weiss and Weiss begat Schwarz and Schwarz
- begat Adrianopoli and Adrianopoli begat Aranjuez and Aranjuez begat
- Lewy Lawson and Lewy Lawson begat Ichabudonosor and Ichabudonosor begat
- O’Donnell Magnus and O’Donnell Magnus begat Christbaum and Christbaum
- begat ben Maimun and ben Maimun begat Dusty Rhodes and Dusty Rhodes
- begat Benamor and Benamor begat Jones-Smith and Jones-Smith begat
- Savorgnanovich and Savorgnanovich begat Jasperstone and Jasperstone
- begat Vingtetunieme and Vingtetunieme begat Szombathely and Szombathely
- begat Virag and Virag begat Bloom _et vocabitur nomen eius Emmanuel._
- A DEADHAND: _(Writes on the wall.)_ Bloom is a cod.
- CRAB: _(In bushranger’s kit.)_ What did you do in the cattlecreep
- behind Kilbarrack?
- A FEMALE INFANT: _(Shakes a rattle.)_ And under Ballybough bridge?
- A HOLLYBUSH: And in the devil’s glen?
- BLOOM: _(Blushes furiously all over from frons to nates, three tears
- falling from his left eye.)_ Spare my past.
- THE IRISH EVICTED TENANTS: _(In bodycoats, kneebreeches, with
- Donnybrook fair shillelaghs.)_ Sjambok him!
- _(Bloom with asses’ ears seats himself in the pillory with crossed
- arms, his feet protruding. He whistles_ Don Giovanni, a cenar teco.
- _Artane orphans, joining hands, caper round him. Girls of the Prison
- Gate Mission, joining hands, caper round in the opposite direction.)_
- THE ARTANE ORPHANS:
- You hig, you hog, you dirty dog!
- You think the ladies love you!
- THE PRISON GATE GIRLS:
- If you see Kay
- Tell him he may
- See you in tea
- Tell him from me.
- HORNBLOWER: _(In ephod and huntingcap, announces.)_ And he shall carry
- the sins of the people to Azazel, the spirit which is in the
- wilderness, and to Lilith, the nighthag. And they shall stone him and
- defile him, yea, all from Agendath Netaim and from Mizraim, the land of
- Ham.
- _(All the people cast soft pantomime stones at Bloom. Many bonafide
- travellers and ownerless dogs come near him and defile him. Mastiansky
- and Citron approach in gaberdines, wearing long earlocks. They wag
- their beards at Bloom.)_
- MASTIANSKY AND CITRON: Belial! Laemlein of Istria, the false Messiah!
- Abulafia! Recant!
- _(George R Mesias, Bloom’s tailor, appears, a tailor’s goose under his
- arm, presenting a bill.)_
- MESIAS: To alteration one pair trousers eleven shillings.
- BLOOM: _(Rubs his hands cheerfully.)_ Just like old times. Poor Bloom!
- _(Reuben J Dodd, blackbearded Iscariot, bad shepherd, bearing on his
- shoulders the drowned corpse of his son, approaches the pillory.)_
- REUBEN J: _(Whispers hoarsely.)_ The squeak is out. A split is gone for
- the flatties. Nip the first rattler.
- THE FIRE BRIGADE: Pflaap!
- BROTHER BUZZ: _(Invests Bloom in a yellow habit with embroidery of
- painted flames and high pointed hat. He places a bag of gunpowder round
- his neck and hands him over to the civil power, saying.)_ Forgive him
- his trespasses.
- _(Lieutenant Myers of the Dublin Fire Brigade by general request sets
- fire to Bloom. Lamentations.)_
- THE CITIZEN: Thank heaven!
- BLOOM: _(In a seamless garment marked I. H. S. stands upright amid
- phoenix flames.)_ Weep not for me, O daughters of Erin.
- _(He exhibits to Dublin reporters traces of burning. The daughters of
- Erin, in black garments, with large prayerbooks and long lighted
- candles in their hands, kneel down and pray.)_
- THE DAUGHTERS OF ERIN:
- Kidney of Bloom, pray for us
- Flower of the Bath, pray for us
- Mentor of Menton, pray for us
- Canvasser for the Freeman, pray for us
- Charitable Mason, pray for us
- Wandering Soap, pray for us
- Sweets of Sin, pray for us
- Music without Words, pray for us
- Reprover of the Citizen, pray for us
- Friend of all Frillies, pray for us
- Midwife Most Merciful, pray for us
- Potato Preservative against Plague and Pestilence, pray for us.
- _(A choir of six hundred voices, conducted by Vincent O’Brien, sings
- the chorus from Handel’s Messiah_ Alleluia for the Lord God Omnipotent
- reigneth, _accompanied on the organ by Joseph Glynn. Bloom becomes
- mute, shrunken, carbonised.)_
- ZOE: Talk away till you’re black in the face.
- BLOOM: _(In caubeen with clay pipe stuck in the band, dusty brogues, an
- emigrant’s red handkerchief bundle in his hand, leading a black bogoak
- pig by a sugaun, with a smile in his eye.)_ Let me be going now, woman
- of the house, for by all the goats in Connemara I’m after having the
- father and mother of a bating. _(With a tear in his eye.)_ All
- insanity. Patriotism, sorrow for the dead, music, future of the race.
- To be or not to be. Life’s dream is o’er. End it peacefully. They can
- live on. _(He gazes far away mournfully.)_ I am ruined. A few pastilles
- of aconite. The blinds drawn. A letter. Then lie back to rest. _(He
- breathes softly.)_ No more. I have lived. Fare. Farewell.
- ZOE: _(Stiffly, her finger in her neckfillet.)_ Honest? Till the next
- time. _(She sneers.)_ Suppose you got up the wrong side of the bed or
- came too quick with your best girl. O, I can read your thoughts!
- BLOOM: _(Bitterly.)_ Man and woman, love, what is it? A cork and
- bottle. I’m sick of it. Let everything rip.
- ZOE: _(In sudden sulks.)_ I hate a rotter that’s insincere. Give a
- bleeding whore a chance.
- BLOOM: _(Repentantly.)_ I am very disagreeable. You are a necessary
- evil. Where are you from? London?
- ZOE: _(Glibly.)_ Hog’s Norton where the pigs plays the organs. I’m
- Yorkshire born. _(She holds his hand which is feeling for her nipple.)_
- I say, Tommy Tittlemouse. Stop that and begin worse. Have you cash for
- a short time? Ten shillings?
- BLOOM: _(Smiles, nods slowly.)_ More, houri, more.
- ZOE: And more’s mother? _(She pats him offhandedly with velvet paws.)_
- Are you coming into the musicroom to see our new pianola? Come and I’ll
- peel off.
- BLOOM: _(Feeling his occiput dubiously with the unparalleled
- embarrassment of a harassed pedlar gauging the symmetry of her peeled
- pears.)_ Somebody would be dreadfully jealous if she knew. The
- greeneyed monster. _(Earnestly.)_ You know how difficult it is. I
- needn’t tell you.
- ZOE: _(Flattered.)_ What the eye can’t see the heart can’t grieve for.
- _(She pats him.)_ Come.
- BLOOM: Laughing witch! The hand that rocks the cradle.
- ZOE: Babby!
- BLOOM: _(In babylinen and pelisse, bigheaded, with a caul of dark hair,
- fixes big eyes on her fluid slip and counts its bronze buckles with a
- chubby finger, his moist tongue lolling and lisping.)_ One two tlee:
- tlee tlwo tlone.
- THE BUCKLES: Love me. Love me not. Love me.
- ZOE: Silent means consent. _(With little parted talons she captures his
- hand, her forefinger giving to his palm the passtouch of secret
- monitor, luring him to doom.)_ Hot hands cold gizzard.
- _(He hesitates amid scents, music, temptations. She leads him towards
- the steps, drawing him by the odour of her armpits, the vice of her
- painted eyes, the rustle of her slip in whose sinuous folds lurks the
- lion reek of all the male brutes that have possessed her.)_
- THE MALE BRUTES: _(Exhaling sulphur of rut and dung and ramping in
- their loosebox, faintly roaring, their drugged heads swaying to and
- fro.)_ Good!
- _(Zoe and Bloom reach the doorway where two sister whores are seated.
- They examine him curiously from under their pencilled brows and smile
- to his hasty bow. He trips awkwardly.)_
- ZOE: _(Her lucky hand instantly saving him.)_ Hoopsa! Don’t fall
- upstairs.
- BLOOM: The just man falls seven times. _(He stands aside at the
- threshold.)_ After you is good manners.
- ZOE: Ladies first, gentlemen after.
- _(She crosses the threshold. He hesitates. She turns and, holding out
- her hands, draws him over. He hops. On the antlered rack of the hall
- hang a man’s hat and waterproof. Bloom uncovers himself but, seeing
- them, frowns, then smiles, preoccupied. A door on the return landing is
- flung open. A man in purple shirt and grey trousers, brownsocked,
- passes with an ape’s gait, his bald head and goatee beard upheld,
- hugging a full waterjugjar, his twotailed black braces dangling at
- heels. Averting his face quickly Bloom bends to examine on the
- halltable the spaniel eyes of a running fox: then, his lifted head
- sniffing, follows Zoe into the musicroom. A shade of mauve tissuepaper
- dims the light of the chandelier. Round and round a moth flies,
- colliding, escaping. The floor is covered with an oilcloth mosaic of
- jade and azure and cinnabar rhomboids. Footmarks are stamped over it in
- all senses, heel to heel, heel to hollow, toe to toe, feet locked, a
- morris of shuffling feet without body phantoms, all in a scrimmage
- higgledypiggledy. The walls are tapestried with a paper of yewfronds
- and clear glades. In the grate is spread a screen of peacock feathers.
- Lynch squats crosslegged on the hearthrug of matted hair, his cap back
- to the front. With a wand he beats time slowly. Kitty Ricketts, a bony
- pallid whore in navy costume, doeskin gloves rolled back from a coral
- wristlet, a chain purse in her hand, sits perched on the edge of the
- table swinging her leg and glancing at herself in the gilt mirror over
- the mantelpiece. A tag of her corsetlace hangs slightly below her
- jacket. Lynch indicates mockingly the couple at the piano.)_
- KITTY: _(Coughs behind her hand.)_ She’s a bit imbecillic. _(She signs
- with a waggling forefinger.)_ Blemblem. _(Lynch lifts up her skirt and
- white petticoat with the wand. She settles them down quickly.)_ Respect
- yourself. _(She hiccups, then bends quickly her sailor hat under which
- her hair glows, red with henna.)_ O, excuse!
- ZOE: More limelight, Charley. _(She goes to the chandelier and turns
- the gas full cock.)_
- KITTY: _(Peers at the gasjet.)_ What ails it tonight?
- LYNCH: _(Deeply.)_ Enter a ghost and hobgoblins.
- ZOE: Clap on the back for Zoe.
- _(The wand in Lynch’s hand flashes: a brass poker. Stephen stands at
- the pianola on which sprawl his hat and ashplant. With two fingers he
- repeats once more the series of empty fifths. Florry Talbot, a blond
- feeble goosefat whore in a tatterdemalion gown of mildewed strawberry,
- lolls spreadeagle in the sofacorner, her limp forearm pendent over the
- bolster, listening. A heavy stye droops over her sleepy eyelid.)_
- KITTY: _(Hiccups again with a kick of her horsed foot.)_ O, excuse!
- ZOE: _(Promptly.)_ Your boy’s thinking of you. Tie a knot on your
- shift.
- _(Kitty Ricketts bends her head. Her boa uncoils, slides, glides over
- her shoulder, back, arm, chair to the ground. Lynch lifts the curled
- catterpillar on his wand. She snakes her neck, nestling. Stephen
- glances behind at the squatted figure with its cap back to the front.)_
- STEPHEN: As a matter of fact it is of no importance whether Benedetto
- Marcello found it or made it. The rite is the poet’s rest. It may be an
- old hymn to Demeter or also illustrate _Cœla enarrant gloriam Domini._
- It is susceptible of nodes or modes as far apart as hyperphrygian and
- mixolydian and of texts so divergent as priests haihooping round
- David’s that is Circe’s or what am I saying Ceres’ altar and David’s
- tip from the stable to his chief bassoonist about the alrightness of
- his almightiness. _Mais nom de nom,_ that is another pair of trousers.
- _Jetez la gourme. Faut que jeunesse se passe. (He stops, points at
- Lynch’s cap, smiles, laughs.)_ Which side is your knowledge bump?
- THE CAP: _(With saturnine spleen.)_ Bah! It is because it is. Woman’s
- reason. Jewgreek is greekjew. Extremes meet. Death is the highest form
- of life. Bah!
- STEPHEN: You remember fairly accurately all my errors, boasts,
- mistakes. How long shall I continue to close my eyes to disloyalty?
- Whetstone!
- THE CAP: Bah!
- STEPHEN: Here’s another for you. _(He frowns.)_ The reason is because
- the fundamental and the dominant are separated by the greatest possible
- interval which...
- THE CAP: Which? Finish. You can’t.
- STEPHEN: _(With an effort.)_ Interval which. Is the greatest possible
- ellipse. Consistent with. The ultimate return. The octave. Which.
- THE CAP: Which?
- _(Outside the gramophone begins to blare_ The Holy City.)
- STEPHEN: _(Abruptly.)_ What went forth to the ends of the world to
- traverse not itself, God, the sun, Shakespeare, a commercial traveller,
- having itself traversed in reality itself becomes that self. Wait a
- moment. Wait a second. Damn that fellow’s noise in the street. Self
- which it itself was ineluctably preconditioned to become. _Ecco!_
- LYNCH: _(With a mocking whinny of laughter grins at Bloom and Zoe
- Higgins.)_ What a learned speech, eh?
- ZOE: _(Briskly.)_ God help your head, he knows more than you have
- forgotten.
- _(With obese stupidity Florry Talbot regards Stephen.)_
- FLORRY: They say the last day is coming this summer.
- KITTY: No!
- ZOE: _(Explodes in laughter.)_ Great unjust God!
- FLORRY: _(Offended.)_ Well, it was in the papers about Antichrist. O,
- my foot’s tickling.
- _(Ragged barefoot newsboys, jogging a wagtail kite, patter past,
- yelling.)_
- THE NEWSBOYS: Stop press edition. Result of the rockinghorse races. Sea
- serpent in the royal canal. Safe arrival of Antichrist.
- _(Stephen turns and sees Bloom.)_
- STEPHEN: A time, times and half a time.
- _(Reuben J Antichrist, wandering jew, a clutching hand open on his
- spine, stumps forward. Across his loins is slung a pilgrim’s wallet
- from which protrude promissory notes and dishonoured bills. Aloft over
- his shoulder he bears a long boatpole from the hook of which the sodden
- huddled mass of his only son, saved from Liffey waters, hangs from the
- slack of its breeches. A hobgoblin in the image of Punch Costello,
- hipshot, crookbacked, hydrocephalic, prognathic with receding forehead
- and Ally Sloper nose, tumbles in somersaults through the gathering
- darkness.)_
- ALL: What?
- THE HOBGOBLIN: _(His jaws chattering, capers to and fro, goggling his
- eyes, squeaking, kangaroohopping with outstretched clutching arms, then
- all at once thrusts his lipless face through the fork of his thighs.)
- Il vient! C’est moi! L’homme qui rit! L’homme primigène! (He whirls
- round and round with dervish howls.) Sieurs et dames, faites vos jeux!
- (He crouches juggling. Tiny roulette planets fly from his hands.) Les
- jeux sont faits! (The planets rush together, uttering crepitant
- cracks.) Rien va plus! (The planets, buoyant balloons, sail swollen up
- and away. He springs off into vacuum.)_
- FLORRY: _(Sinking into torpor, crossing herself secretly.)_ The end of
- the world!
- _(A female tepid effluvium leaks out from her. Nebulous obscurity
- occupies space. Through the drifting fog without the gramophone blares
- over coughs and feetshuffling.)_
- THE GRAMOPHONE:
- Jerusalem!
- Open your gates and sing
- Hosanna...
- _(A rocket rushes up the sky and bursts. A white star falls from it,
- proclaiming the consummation of all things and second coming of Elijah.
- Along an infinite invisible tightrope taut from zenith to nadir the End
- of the World, a twoheaded octopus in gillie’s kilts, busby and tartan
- filibegs, whirls through the murk, head over heels, in the form of the
- Three Legs of Man.)_
- THE END OF THE WORLD: _(With a Scotch accent.)_ Wha’ll dance the keel
- row, the keel row, the keel row?
- _(Over the possing drift and choking breathcoughs, Elijah’s voice,
- harsh as a corncrake’s, jars on high. Perspiring in a loose lawn
- surplice with funnel sleeves he is seen, vergerfaced, above a rostrum
- about which the banner of old glory is draped. He thumps the parapet.)_
- ELIJAH: No yapping, if you please, in this booth. Jake Crane, Creole
- Sue, Dove Campbell, Abe Kirschner, do your coughing with your mouths
- shut. Say, I am operating all this trunk line. Boys, do it now. God’s
- time is 12.25. Tell mother you’ll be there. Rush your order and you
- play a slick ace. Join on right here. Book through to eternity
- junction, the nonstop run. Just one word more. Are you a god or a
- doggone clod? If the second advent came to Coney Island are we ready?
- Florry Christ, Stephen Christ, Zoe Christ, Bloom Christ, Kitty Christ,
- Lynch Christ, it’s up to you to sense that cosmic force. Have we cold
- feet about the cosmos? No. Be on the side of the angels. Be a prism.
- You have that something within, the higher self. You can rub shoulders
- with a Jesus, a Gautama, an Ingersoll. Are you all in this vibration? I
- say you are. You once nobble that, congregation, and a buck joyride to
- heaven becomes a back number. You got me? It’s a lifebrightener, sure.
- The hottest stuff ever was. It’s the whole pie with jam in. It’s just
- the cutest snappiest line out. It is immense, supersumptuous. It
- restores. It vibrates. I know and I am some vibrator. Joking apart and,
- getting down to bedrock, A. J. Christ Dowie and the harmonial
- philosophy, have you got that? O. K. Seventyseven west sixtyninth
- street. Got me? That’s it. You call me up by sunphone any old time.
- Bumboosers, save your stamps. _(He shouts.)_ Now then our glory song.
- All join heartily in the singing. Encore! _(He sings.)_ Jeru...
- THE GRAMOPHONE: _(Drowning his voice.)_ Whorusalaminyourhighhohhhh...
- _(The disc rasps gratingly against the needle.)_
- THE THREE WHORES: _(Covering their ears, squawk.)_ Ahhkkk!
- ELIJAH: _(In rolledup shirtsleeves, black in the face, shouts at the
- top of his voice, his arms uplifted.)_ Big Brother up there, Mr
- President, you hear what I done just been saying to you. Certainly, I
- sort of believe strong in you, Mr President. I certainly am thinking
- now Miss Higgins and Miss Ricketts got religion way inside them.
- Certainly seems to me I don’t never see no wusser scared female than
- the way you been, Miss Florry, just now as I done seed you. Mr
- President, you come long and help me save our sisters dear. _(He winks
- at his audience.)_ Our Mr President, he twig the whole lot and he aint
- saying nothing.
- KITTY-KATE: I forgot myself. In a weak moment I erred and did what I
- did on Constitution hill. I was confirmed by the bishop and enrolled in
- the brown scapular. My mother’s sister married a Montmorency. It was a
- working plumber was my ruination when I was pure.
- ZOE-FANNY: I let him larrup it into me for the fun of it.
- FLORRY-TERESA: It was in consequence of a portwine beverage on top of
- Hennessy’s three star. I was guilty with Whelan when he slipped into
- the bed.
- STEPHEN: In the beginning was the word, in the end the world without
- end. Blessed be the eight beatitudes.
- _(The beatitudes, Dixon, Madden, Crotthers, Costello, Lenehan, Bannon,
- Mulligan and Lynch in white surgical students’ gowns, four abreast,
- goosestepping, tramp fast past in noisy marching.)_
- THE BEATITUDES: _(Incoherently.)_ Beer beef battledog buybull businum
- barnum buggerum bishop.
- LYSTER: _(In quakergrey kneebreeches and broadbrimmed hat, says
- discreetly.)_ He is our friend. I need not mention names. Seek thou the
- light.
- _(He corantos by. Best enters in hairdresser’s attire, shinily
- laundered, his locks in curlpapers. He leads John Eglinton who wears a
- mandarin’s kimono of Nankeen yellow, lizardlettered, and a high pagoda
- hat.)_
- BEST: _(Smiling, lifts the hat and displays a shaven poll from the
- crown of which bristles a pigtail toupee tied with an orange topknot.)_
- I was just beautifying him, don’t you know. A thing of beauty, don’t
- you know, Yeats says, or I mean, Keats says.
- JOHN EGLINTON: _(Produces a greencapped dark lantern and flashes it
- towards a corner: with carping accent.)_ Esthetics and cosmetics are
- for the boudoir. I am out for truth. Plain truth for a plain man.
- Tanderagee wants the facts and means to get them.
- _(In the cone of the searchlight behind the coalscuttle, ollave,
- holyeyed, the bearded figure of Mananaun MacLir broods, chin on knees.
- He rises slowly. A cold seawind blows from his druid mouth. About his
- head writhe eels and elvers. He is encrusted with weeds and shells. His
- right hand holds a bicycle pump. His left hand grasps a huge crayfish
- by its two talons.)_
- MANANAUN MACLIR: _(With a voice of waves.)_ Aum! Hek! Wal! Ak! Lub!
- Mor! Ma! White yoghin of the gods. Occult pimander of Hermes
- Trismegistos. _(With a voice of whistling seawind.)_ Punarjanam
- patsypunjaub! I won’t have my leg pulled. It has been said by one:
- beware the left, the cult of Shakti. _(With a cry of stormbirds.)_
- Shakti Shiva, darkhidden Father! _(He smites with his bicycle pump the
- crayfish in his left hand. On its cooperative dial glow the twelve
- signs of the zodiac. He wails with the vehemence of the ocean.)_ Aum!
- Baum! Pyjaum! I am the light of the homestead! I am the dreamery
- creamery butter.
- _(A skeleton judashand strangles the light. The green light wanes to
- mauve. The gasjet wails whistling.)_
- THE GASJET: Pooah! Pfuiiiiiii!
- _(Zoe runs to the chandelier and, crooking her leg, adjusts the
- mantle.)_
- ZOE: Who has a fag as I’m here?
- LYNCH: _(Tossing a cigarette on to the table.)_ Here.
- ZOE: _(Her head perched aside in mock pride.)_ Is that the way to hand
- the _pot_ to a lady? _(She stretches up to light the cigarette over the
- flame, twirling it slowly, showing the brown tufts of her armpits.
- Lynch with his poker lifts boldly a side of her slip. Bare from her
- garters up her flesh appears under the sapphire a nixie’s green. She
- puffs calmly at her cigarette.)_ Can you see the beautyspot of my
- behind?
- LYNCH: I’m not looking
- ZOE: _(Makes sheep’s eyes.)_ No? You wouldn’t do a less thing. Would
- you suck a lemon?
- _(Squinting in mock shame she glances with sidelong meaning at Bloom,
- then twists round towards him, pulling her slip free of the poker. Blue
- fluid again flows over her flesh. Bloom stands, smiling desirously,
- twirling his thumbs. Kitty Ricketts licks her middle finger with her
- spittle and, gazing in the mirror, smooths both eyebrows. Lipoti Virag,
- basilicogrammate, chutes rapidly down through the chimneyflue and
- struts two steps to the left on gawky pink stilts. He is sausaged into
- several overcoats and wears a brown macintosh under which he holds a
- roll of parchment. In his left eye flashes the monocle of Cashel Boyle
- O’Connor Fitzmaurice Tisdall Farrell. On his head is perched an
- Egyptian pshent. Two quills project over his ears.)_
- VIRAG: _(Heels together, bows.)_ My name is Virag Lipoti, of
- Szombathely. _(He coughs thoughtfully, drily.)_ Promiscuous nakedness
- is much in evidence hereabouts, eh? Inadvertently her backview revealed
- the fact that she is not wearing those rather intimate garments of
- which you are a particular devotee. The injection mark on the thigh I
- hope you perceived? Good.
- BLOOM: Granpapachi. But...
- VIRAG: Number two on the other hand, she of the cherry rouge and
- coiffeuse white, whose hair owes not a little to our tribal elixir of
- gopherwood, is in walking costume and tightly staysed by her sit, I
- should opine. Backbone in front, so to say. Correct me but I always
- understood that the act so performed by skittish humans with glimpses
- of lingerie appealed to you in virtue of its exhibitionististicicity.
- In a word. Hippogriff. Am I right?
- BLOOM: She is rather lean.
- VIRAG: _(Not unpleasantly.)_ Absolutely! Well observed and those
- pannier pockets of the skirt and slightly pegtop effect are devised to
- suggest bunchiness of hip. A new purchase at some monster sale for
- which a gull has been mulcted. Meretricious finery to deceive the eye.
- Observe the attention to details of dustspecks. Never put on you
- tomorrow what you can wear today. Parallax! _(With a nervous twitch of
- his head.)_ Did you hear my brain go snap? Pollysyllabax!
- BLOOM: _(An elbow resting in a hand, a forefinger against his cheek.)_
- She seems sad.
- VIRAG: _(Cynically, his weasel teeth bared yellow, draws down his left
- eye with a finger and barks hoarsely.)_ Hoax! Beware of the flapper and
- bogus mournful. Lily of the alley. All possess bachelor’s button
- discovered by Rualdus Columbus. Tumble her. Columble her. Chameleon.
- _(More genially.)_ Well then, permit me to draw your attention to item
- number three. There is plenty of her visible to the naked eye. Observe
- the mass of oxygenated vegetable matter on her skull. What ho, she
- bumps! The ugly duckling of the party, longcasted and deep in keel.
- BLOOM: _(Regretfully.)_ When you come out without your gun.
- VIRAG: We can do you all brands, mild, medium and strong. Pay your
- money, take your choice. How happy could you be with either...
- BLOOM: With...?
- VIRAG: _(His tongue upcurling.)_ Lyum! Look. Her beam is broad. She is
- coated with quite a considerable layer of fat. Obviously mammal in
- weight of bosom you remark that she has in front well to the fore two
- protuberances of very respectable dimensions, inclined to fall in the
- noonday soupplate, while on her rere lower down are two additional
- protuberances, suggestive of potent rectum and tumescent for palpation,
- which leave nothing to be desired save compactness. Such fleshy parts
- are the product of careful nurture. When coopfattened their livers
- reach an elephantine size. Pellets of new bread with fennygreek and
- gumbenjamin swamped down by potions of green tea endow them during
- their brief existence with natural pincushions of quite colossal
- blubber. That suits your book, eh? Fleshhotpots of Egypt to hanker
- after. Wallow in it. Lycopodium. _(His throat twitches.)_ Slapbang!
- There he goes again.
- BLOOM: The stye I dislike.
- VIRAG: _(Arches his eyebrows.)_ Contact with a goldring, they say.
- _Argumentum ad feminam_, as we said in old Rome and ancient Greece in
- the consulship of Diplodocus and Ichthyosauros. For the rest Eve’s
- sovereign remedy. Not for sale. Hire only. Huguenot. _(He twitches.)_
- It is a funny sound. _(He coughs encouragingly.)_ But possibly it is
- only a wart. I presume you shall have remembered what I will have
- taught you on that head? Wheatenmeal with honey and nutmeg.
- BLOOM: _(Reflecting.)_ Wheatenmeal with lycopodium and syllabax. This
- searching ordeal. It has been an unusually fatiguing day, a chapter of
- accidents. Wait. I mean, wartsblood spreads warts, you said...
- VIRAG: _(Severely, his nose hardhumped, his side eye winking.)_ Stop
- twirling your thumbs and have a good old thunk. See, you have
- forgotten. Exercise your mnemotechnic. _La causa è santa_. Tara. Tara.
- _(Aside.)_ He will surely remember.
- BLOOM: Rosemary also did I understand you to say or willpower over
- parasitic tissues. Then nay no I have an inkling. The touch of a
- deadhand cures. Mnemo?
- VIRAG: _(Excitedly.)_ I say so. I say so. E’en so. Technic. _(He taps
- his parchmentroll energetically.)_ This book tells you how to act with
- all descriptive particulars. Consult index for agitated fear of
- aconite, melancholy of muriatic, priapic pulsatilla. Virag is going to
- talk about amputation. Our old friend caustic. They must be starved.
- Snip off with horsehair under the denned neck. But, to change the venue
- to the Bulgar and the Basque, have you made up your mind whether you
- like or dislike women in male habiliments? _(With a dry snigger.)_ You
- intended to devote an entire year to the study of the religious problem
- and the summer months of 1886 to square the circle and win that
- million. Pomegranate! From the sublime to the ridiculous is but a step.
- Pyjamas, let us say? Or stockingette gussetted knickers, closed? Or,
- put we the case, those complicated combinations, camiknickers? _(He
- crows derisively.)_ Keekeereekee!
- _(Bloom surveys uncertainly the three whores then gazes at the veiled
- mauve light, hearing the everflying moth.)_
- BLOOM: I wanted then to have now concluded. Nightdress was never. Hence
- this. But tomorrow is a new day will be. Past was is today. What now is
- will then morrow as now was be past yester.
- VIRAG: _(Prompts in a pig’s whisper.)_ Insects of the day spend their
- brief existence in reiterated coition, lured by the smell of the
- inferiorly pulchritudinous female possessing extendified pudendal nerve
- in dorsal region. Pretty Poll! _(His yellow parrotbeak gabbles
- nasally.)_ They had a proverb in the Carpathians in or about the year
- five thousand five hundred and fifty of our era. One tablespoonful of
- honey will attract friend Bruin more than half a dozen barrels of first
- choice malt vinegar. Bear’s buzz bothers bees. But of this apart. At
- another time we may resume. We were very pleased, we others. _(He
- coughs and, bending his brow, rubs his nose thoughtfully with a
- scooping hand.)_ You shall find that these night insects follow the
- light. An illusion for remember their complex unadjustable eye. For all
- these knotty points see the seventeenth book of my Fundamentals of
- Sexology or the Love Passion which Doctor L. B. says is the book
- sensation of the year. Some, to example, there are again whose
- movements are automatic. Perceive. That is his appropriate sun.
- Nightbird nightsun nighttown. Chase me, Charley! _(He blows into
- Bloom’s ear.)_ Buzz!
- BLOOM: Bee or bluebottle too other day butting shadow on wall dazed
- self then me wandered dazed down shirt good job I...
- VIRAG: _(His face impassive, laughs in a rich feminine key.)_ Splendid!
- Spanish fly in his fly or mustard plaster on his dibble. _(He gobbles
- gluttonously with turkey wattles.)_ Bubbly jock! Bubbly jock! Where are
- we? Open Sesame! Cometh forth! _(He unrolls his parchment rapidly and
- reads, his glowworm’s nose running backwards over the letters which he
- claws.)_ Stay, good friend. I bring thee thy answer. Redbank oysters
- will shortly be upon us. I’m the best o’cook. Those succulent bivalves
- may help us and the truffles of Perigord, tubers dislodged through
- mister omnivorous porker, were unsurpassed in cases of nervous debility
- or viragitis. Though they stink yet they sting. _(He wags his head with
- cackling raillery.)_ Jocular. With my eyeglass in my ocular. _(He
- sneezes.)_ Amen!
- BLOOM: _(Absently.)_ Ocularly woman’s bivalve case is worse. Always
- open sesame. The cloven sex. Why they fear vermin, creeping things. Yet
- Eve and the serpent contradicts. Not a historical fact. Obvious analogy
- to my idea. Serpents too are gluttons for woman’s milk. Wind their way
- through miles of omnivorous forest to sucksucculent her breast dry.
- Like those bubblyjocular Roman matrons one reads of in Elephantuliasis.
- VIRAG: _(His mouth projected in hard wrinkles, eyes stonily forlornly
- closed, psalms in outlandish monotone.)_ That the cows with their those
- distended udders that they have been the the known...
- BLOOM: I am going to scream. I beg your pardon. Ah? So. _(He repeats.)_
- Spontaneously to seek out the saurian’s lair in order to entrust their
- teats to his avid suction. Ant milks aphis. _(Profoundly.)_ Instinct
- rules the world. In life. In death.
- VIRAG: _(Head askew, arches his back and hunched wingshoulders, peers
- at the moth out of blear bulged eyes, points a horning claw and
- cries.)_ Who’s moth moth? Who’s dear Gerald? Dear Ger, that you? O
- dear, he is Gerald. O, I much fear he shall be most badly burned. Will
- some pleashe pershon not now impediment so catastrophics mit agitation
- of firstclass tablenumpkin? _(He mews.)_ Puss puss puss puss! _(He
- sighs, draws back and stares sideways down with dropping underjaw.)_
- Well, well. He doth rest anon. (He snaps his jaws suddenly on the air.)
- THE MOTH:
- I’m a tiny tiny thing
- Ever flying in the spring
- Round and round a ringaring.
- Long ago I was a king
- Now I do this kind of thing
- On the wing, on the wing!
- Bing!
- _(He rushes against the mauve shade, flapping noisily.)_ Pretty pretty
- pretty pretty pretty pretty petticoats.
- _(From left upper entrance with two gliding steps Henry Flower comes
- forward to left front centre. He wears a dark mantle and drooping
- plumed sombrero. He carries a silverstringed inlaid dulcimer and a
- longstemmed bamboo Jacob’s pipe, its clay bowl fashioned as a female
- head. He wears dark velvet hose and silverbuckled pumps. He has the
- romantic Saviour’s face with flowing locks, thin beard and moustache.
- His spindlelegs and sparrow feet are those of the tenor Mario, prince
- of Candia. He settles down his goffered ruffs and moistens his lips
- with a passage of his amorous tongue.)_
- HENRY: _(In a low dulcet voice, touching the strings of his guitar.)_
- There is a flower that bloometh.
- _(Virag truculent, his jowl set, stares at the lamp. Grave Bloom
- regards Zoe’s neck. Henry gallant turns with pendant dewlap to the
- piano.)_
- STEPHEN: _(To himself.)_ Play with your eyes shut. Imitate pa. Filling
- my belly with husks of swine. Too much of this. I will arise and go to
- my. Expect this is the. Steve, thou art in a parlous way. Must visit
- old Deasy or telegraph. Our interview of this morning has left on me a
- deep impression. Though our ages. Will write fully tomorrow. I’m
- partially drunk, by the way. _(He touches the keys again.)_ Minor chord
- comes now. Yes. Not much however.
- _(Almidano Artifoni holds out a batonroll of music with vigorous
- moustachework.)_
- ARTIFONI: _Ci rifletta. Lei rovina tutto._
- FLORRY: Sing us something. Love’s old sweet song.
- STEPHEN: No voice. I am a most finished artist. Lynch, did I show you
- the letter about the lute?
- FLORRY: _(Smirking.)_ The bird that can sing and won’t sing.
- _(The Siamese twins, Philip Drunk and Philip Sober, two Oxford dons
- with lawnmowers, appear in the window embrasure. Both are masked with
- Matthew Arnold’s face.)_
- PHILIP SOBER: Take a fool’s advice. All is not well. Work it out with
- the buttend of a pencil, like a good young idiot. Three pounds twelve
- you got, two notes, one sovereign, two crowns, if youth but knew.
- Mooney’s en ville, Mooney’s sur mer, the Moira, Larchet’s, Holles
- street hospital, Burke’s. Eh? I am watching you.
- PHILIP DRUNK: _(Impatiently.)_ Ah, bosh, man. Go to hell! I paid my
- way. If I could only find out about octaves. Reduplication of
- personality. Who was it told me his name? _(His lawnmower begins to
- purr.)_ Aha, yes. _Zoe mou sas agapo_. Have a notion I was here before.
- When was it not Atkinson his card I have somewhere. Mac Somebody.
- Unmack I have it. He told me about, hold on, Swinburne, was it, no?
- FLORRY: And the song?
- STEPHEN: Spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.
- FLORRY: Are you out of Maynooth? You’re like someone I knew once.
- STEPHEN: Out of it now. _(To himself.)_ Clever.
- PHILIP DRUNK AND PHILIP SOBER: _(Their lawnmowers purring with a
- rigadoon of grasshalms.)_ Clever ever. Out of it out of it. By the bye
- have you the book, the thing, the ashplant? Yes, there it, yes.
- Cleverever outofitnow. Keep in condition. Do like us.
- ZOE: There was a priest down here two nights ago to do his bit of
- business with his coat buttoned up. You needn’t try to hide, I says to
- him. I know you’ve a Roman collar.
- VIRAG: Perfectly logical from his standpoint. Fall of man. _(Harshly,
- his pupils waxing.)_ To hell with the pope! Nothing new under the sun.
- I am the Virag who disclosed the Sex Secrets of Monks and Maidens. Why
- I left the church of Rome. Read the Priest, the Woman and the
- Confessional. Penrose. Flipperty Jippert. _(He wriggles.)_ Woman,
- undoing with sweet pudor her belt of rushrope, offers her allmoist yoni
- to man’s lingam. Short time after man presents woman with pieces of
- jungle meat. Woman shows joy and covers herself with featherskins. Man
- loves her yoni fiercely with big lingam, the stiff one. _(He cries.)
- Coactus volui._ Then giddy woman will run about. Strong man grapses
- woman’s wrist. Woman squeals, bites, spucks. Man, now fierce angry,
- strikes woman’s fat yadgana. _(He chases his tail.)_ Piffpaff! Popo!
- _(He stops, sneezes.)_ Pchp! _(He worries his butt.)_ Prrrrrht!
- LYNCH: I hope you gave the good father a penance. Nine glorias for
- shooting a bishop.
- ZOE: _(Spouts walrus smoke through her nostrils.)_ He couldn’t get a
- connection. Only, you know, sensation. A dry rush.
- BLOOM: Poor man!
- ZOE: _(Lightly.)_ Only for what happened him.
- BLOOM: How?
- VIRAG: _(A diabolic rictus of black luminosity contracting his visage,
- cranes his scraggy neck forward. He lifts a mooncalf nozzle and howls.)
- Verfluchte Goim!_ He had a father, forty fathers. He never existed. Pig
- God! He had two left feet. He was Judas Iacchia, a Libyan eunuch, the
- pope’s bastard. _(He leans out on tortured forepaws, elbows bent rigid,
- his eye agonising in his flat skullneck and yelps over the mute
- world.)_ A son of a whore. Apocalypse.
- KITTY: And Mary Shortall that was in the lock with the pox she got from
- Jimmy Pidgeon in the blue caps had a child off him that couldn’t
- swallow and was smothered with the convulsions in the mattress and we
- all subscribed for the funeral.
- PHILIP DRUNK: _(Gravely.) Qui vous a mis dans cette fichue position,
- Philippe?_
- PHILIP SOBER: _(Gaily.) C’était le sacré pigeon, Philippe._
- _(Kitty unpins her hat and sets it down calmly, patting her henna hair.
- And a prettier, a daintier head of winsome curls was never seen on a
- whore’s shoulders. Lynch puts on her hat. She whips it off.)_
- LYNCH: _(Laughs.)_ And to such delights has Metchnikoff inoculated
- anthropoid apes.
- FLORRY: _(Nods.)_ Locomotor ataxy.
- ZOE: _(Gaily.)_ O, my dictionary.
- LYNCH: Three wise virgins.
- VIRAG: _(Agueshaken, profuse yellow spawn foaming over his bony
- epileptic lips.)_ She sold lovephiltres, whitewax, orangeflower.
- Panther, the Roman centurion, polluted her with his genitories. _(He
- sticks out a flickering phosphorescent scorpion tongue, his hand on his
- fork.)_ Messiah! He burst her tympanum. _(With gibbering baboon’s cries
- he jerks his hips in the cynical spasm.)_ Hik! Hek! Hak! Hok! Huk! Kok!
- Kuk!
- _(Ben Jumbo Dollard, rubicund, musclebound, hairynostrilled,
- hugebearded, cabbageeared, shaggychested, shockmaned, fatpapped, stands
- forth, his loins and genitals tightened into a pair of black bathing
- bagslops.)_
- BEN DOLLARD: _(Nakkering castanet bones in his huge padded paws, yodels
- jovially in base barreltone.)_ When love absorbs my ardent soul.
- _(The virgins Nurse Callan and Nurse Quigley burst through the
- ringkeepers and the ropes and mob him with open arms.)_
- THE VIRGINS: _(Gushingly.)_ Big Ben! Ben my Chree!
- A VOICE: Hold that fellow with the bad breeches.
- BEN DOLLARD: _(Smites his thigh in abundant laughter.)_ Hold him now.
- HENRY: _(Caressing on his breast a severed female head, murmurs.)_
- Thine heart, mine love. _(He plucks his lutestrings.)_ When first I
- saw...
- VIRAG: _(Sloughing his skins, his multitudinous plumage moulting.)_
- Rats! _(He yawns, showing a coalblack throat, and closes his jaws by an
- upward push of his parchmentroll.)_ After having said which I took my
- departure. Farewell. Fare thee well. _Dreck!_
- _(Henry Flower combs his moustache and beard rapidly with a pocketcomb
- and gives a cow’s lick to his hair. Steered by his rapier, he glides to
- the door, his wild harp slung behind him. Virag reaches the door in two
- ungainly stilthops, his tail cocked, and deftly claps sideways on the
- wall a pusyellow flybill, butting it with his head.)_
- THE FLYBILL: K. 11. Post No Bills. Strictly confidential. Dr Hy Franks.
- HENRY: All is lost now.
- _(Virag unscrews his head in a trice and holds it under his arm.)_
- VIRAG’S HEAD: Quack!
- _(Exeunt severally.)_
- STEPHEN: _(Over his shoulder to Zoe.)_ You would have preferred the
- fighting parson who founded the protestant error. But beware
- Antisthenes, the dog sage, and the last end of Arius Heresiarchus. The
- agony in the closet.
- LYNCH: All one and the same God to her.
- STEPHEN: _(Devoutly.)_ And sovereign Lord of all things.
- FLORRY: _(To Stephen.)_ I’m sure you’re a spoiled priest. Or a monk.
- LYNCH: He is. A cardinal’s son.
- STEPHEN: Cardinal sin. Monks of the screw.
- _(His Eminence Simon Stephen Cardinal Dedalus, Primate of all Ireland,
- appears in the doorway, dressed in red soutane, sandals and socks.
- Seven dwarf simian acolytes, also in red, cardinal sins, uphold his
- train, peeping under it. He wears a battered silk hat sideways on his
- head. His thumbs are stuck in his armpits and his palms outspread.
- Round his neck hangs a rosary of corks ending on his breast in a
- corkscrew cross. Releasing his thumbs, he invokes grace from on high
- with large wave gestures and proclaims with bloated pomp:)_
- THE CARDINAL:
- Conservio lies captured
- He lies in the lowest dungeon
- With manacles and chains around his limbs
- Weighing upwards of three tons.
- _(He looks at all for a moment, his right eye closed tight, his left
- cheek puffed out. Then, unable to repress his merriment, he rocks to
- and fro, arms akimbo, and sings with broad rollicking humour:)_
- O, the poor little fellow
- Hihihihihis legs they were yellow
- He was plump, fat and heavy and brisk as a snake
- But some bloody savage
- To graize his white cabbage
- He murdered Nell Flaherty’s duckloving drake.
- _(A multitude of midges swarms white over his robe. He scratches
- himself with crossed arms at his ribs, grimacing, and exclaims:)_
- I’m suffering the agony of the damned. By the hoky fiddle, thanks be to
- Jesus those funny little chaps are not unanimous. If they were they’d
- walk me off the face of the bloody globe.
- _(His head aslant he blesses curtly with fore and middle fingers,
- imparts the Easter kiss and doubleshuffles off comically, swaying his
- hat from side to side, shrinking quickly to the size of his
- trainbearers. The dwarf acolytes, giggling, peeping, nudging, ogling,
- Easterkissing, zigzag behind him. His voice is heard mellow from afar,
- merciful male, melodious:)_
- Shall carry my heart to thee,
- Shall carry my heart to thee,
- And the breath of the balmy night
- Shall carry my heart to thee!
- _(The trick doorhandle turns.)_
- THE DOORHANDLE: Theeee!
- ZOE: The devil is in that door.
- _(A male form passes down the creaking staircase and is heard taking
- the waterproof and hat from the rack. Bloom starts forward
- involuntarily and, half closing the door as he passes, takes the
- chocolate from his pocket and offers it nervously to Zoe.)_
- ZOE: _(Sniffs his hair briskly.)_ Hmmm! Thank your mother for the
- rabbits. I’m very fond of what I like.
- BLOOM: _(Hearing a male voice in talk with the whores on the doorstep,
- pricks his ears.)_ If it were he? After? Or because not? Or the double
- event?
- ZOE: _(Tears open the silverfoil.)_ Fingers was made before forks.
- _(She breaks off and nibbles a piece, gives a piece to Kitty Ricketts
- and then turns kittenishly to Lynch.)_ No objection to French lozenges?
- _(He nods. She taunts him.)_ Have it now or wait till you get it? _(He
- opens his mouth, his head cocked. She whirls the prize in left circle.
- His head follows. She whirls it back in right circle. He eyes her.)_
- Catch!
- _(She tosses a piece. With an adroit snap he catches it and bites it
- through with a crack.)_
- KITTY: _(Chewing.)_ The engineer I was with at the bazaar does have
- lovely ones. Full of the best liqueurs. And the viceroy was there with
- his lady. The gas we had on the Toft’s hobbyhorses. I’m giddy still.
- BLOOM: _(In Svengali’s fur overcoat, with folded arms and Napoleonic
- forelock, frowns in ventriloquial exorcism with piercing eagle glance
- towards the door. Then rigid with left foot advanced he makes a swift
- pass with impelling fingers and gives the sign of past master, drawing
- his right arm downwards from his left shoulder.)_ Go, go, go, I conjure
- you, whoever you are!
- _(A male cough and tread are heard passing through the mist outside.
- Bloom’s features relax. He places a hand in his waistcoat, posing
- calmly. Zoe offers him chocolate.)_
- BLOOM: _(Solemnly.)_ Thanks.
- ZOE: Do as you’re bid. Here!
- _(A firm heelclacking tread is heard on the stairs.)_
- BLOOM: _(Takes the chocolate.)_ Aphrodisiac? Tansy and pennyroyal. But
- I bought it. Vanilla calms or? Mnemo. Confused light confuses memory.
- Red influences lupus. Colours affect women’s characters, any they have.
- This black makes me sad. Eat and be merry for tomorrow. _(He eats.)_
- Influence taste too, mauve. But it is so long since I. Seems new.
- Aphro. That priest. Must come. Better late than never. Try truffles at
- Andrews.
- _(The door opens. Bella Cohen, a massive whoremistress, enters. She is
- dressed in a threequarter ivory gown, fringed round the hem with
- tasselled selvedge, and cools herself flirting a black horn fan like
- Minnie Hauck in_ Carmen. _On her left hand are wedding and keeper
- rings. Her eyes are deeply carboned. She has a sprouting moustache. Her
- olive face is heavy, slightly sweated and fullnosed with orangetainted
- nostrils. She has large pendant beryl eardrops.)_
- BELLA: My word! I’m all of a mucksweat.
- _(She glances round her at the couples. Then her eyes rest on Bloom
- with hard insistence. Her large fan winnows wind towards her heated
- faceneck and embonpoint. Her falcon eyes glitter.)_
- THE FAN: _(Flirting quickly, then slowly.)_ Married, I see.
- BLOOM: Yes. Partly, I have mislaid...
- THE FAN: _(Half opening, then closing.)_ And the missus is master.
- Petticoat government.
- BLOOM: _(Looks down with a sheepish grin.)_ That is so.
- THE FAN: _(Folding together, rests against her left eardrop.)_ Have you
- forgotten me?
- BLOOM: Nes. Yo.
- THE FAN: _(Folded akimbo against her waist.)_ Is me her was you dreamed
- before? Was then she him you us since knew? Am all them and the same
- now we?
- _(Bella approaches, gently tapping with the fan.)_
- BLOOM: _(Wincing.)_ Powerful being. In my eyes read that slumber which
- women love.
- THE FAN: _(Tapping.)_ We have met. You are mine. It is fate.
- BLOOM: _(Cowed.)_ Exuberant female. Enormously I desiderate your
- domination. I am exhausted, abandoned, no more young. I stand, so to
- speak, with an unposted letter bearing the extra regulation fee before
- the too late box of the general postoffice of human life. The door and
- window open at a right angle cause a draught of thirtytwo feet per
- second according to the law of falling bodies. I have felt this instant
- a twinge of sciatica in my left glutear muscle. It runs in our family.
- Poor dear papa, a widower, was a regular barometer from it. He believed
- in animal heat. A skin of tabby lined his winter waistcoat. Near the
- end, remembering king David and the Sunamite, he shared his bed with
- Athos, faithful after death. A dog’s spittle as you probably... _(He
- winces.)_ Ah!
- RICHIE GOULDING: _(Bagweighted, passes the door.)_ Mocking is catch.
- Best value in Dub. Fit for a prince’s. Liver and kidney.
- THE FAN: _(Tapping.)_ All things end. Be mine. Now.
- BLOOM: _(Undecided.)_ All now? I should not have parted with my
- talisman. Rain, exposure at dewfall on the searocks, a peccadillo at my
- time of life. Every phenomenon has a natural cause.
- THE FAN: _(Points downwards slowly.)_ You may.
- BLOOM: _(Looks downwards and perceives her unfastened bootlace.)_ We
- are observed.
- THE FAN: _(Points downwards quickly.)_ You must.
- BLOOM: _(With desire, with reluctance.)_ I can make a true black knot.
- Learned when I served my time and worked the mail order line for
- Kellett’s. Experienced hand. Every knot says a lot. Let me. In
- courtesy. I knelt once before today. Ah!
- _(Bella raises her gown slightly and, steadying her pose, lifts to the
- edge of a chair a plump buskined hoof and a full pastern, silksocked.
- Bloom, stifflegged, aging, bends over her hoof and with gentle fingers
- draws out and in her laces.)_
- BLOOM: _(Murmurs lovingly.)_ To be a shoefitter in Manfield’s was my
- love’s young dream, the darling joys of sweet buttonhooking, to lace up
- crisscrossed to kneelength the dressy kid footwear satinlined, so
- incredibly impossibly small, of Clyde Road ladies. Even their wax model
- Raymonde I visited daily to admire her cobweb hose and stick of rhubarb
- toe, as worn in Paris.
- THE HOOF: Smell my hot goathide. Feel my royal weight.
- BLOOM: _(Crosslacing.)_ Too tight?
- THE HOOF: If you bungle, Handy Andy, I’ll kick your football for you.
- BLOOM: Not to lace the wrong eyelet as I did the night of the bazaar
- dance. Bad luck. Hook in wrong tache of her... person you mentioned.
- That night she met... Now!
- _(He knots the lace. Bella places her foot on the floor. Bloom raises
- his head. Her heavy face, her eyes strike him in midbrow. His eyes grow
- dull, darker and pouched, his nose thickens.)_
- BLOOM: _(Mumbles.)_ Awaiting your further orders we remain,
- gentlemen,...
- BELLO: _(With a hard basilisk stare, in a baritone voice.)_ Hound of
- dishonour!
- BLOOM: _(Infatuated.)_ Empress!
- BELLO: _(His heavy cheekchops sagging.)_ Adorer of the adulterous rump!
- BLOOM: _(Plaintively.)_ Hugeness!
- BELLO: Dungdevourer!
- BLOOM: _(With sinews semiflexed.)_ Magmagnificence!
- BELLO: Down! _(He taps her on the shoulder with his fan.)_ Incline feet
- forward! Slide left foot one pace back! You will fall. You are falling.
- On the hands down!
- BLOOM: _(Her eyes upturned in the sign of admiration, closing, yaps.)_
- Truffles!
- _(With a piercing epileptic cry she sinks on all fours, grunting,
- snuffling, rooting at his feet: then lies, shamming dead, with eyes
- shut tight, trembling eyelids, bowed upon the ground in the attitude of
- most excellent master.)_
- BELLO: _(With bobbed hair, purple gills, fat moustache rings round his
- shaven mouth, in mountaineer’s puttees, green silverbuttoned coat,
- sport skirt and alpine hat with moorcock’s feather, his hands stuck
- deep in his breeches pockets, places his heel on her neck and grinds it
- in.)_ Footstool! Feel my entire weight. Bow, bondslave, before the
- throne of your despot’s glorious heels so glistening in their proud
- erectness.
- BLOOM: _(Enthralled, bleats.)_ I promise never to disobey.
- BELLO: _(Laughs loudly.)_ Holy smoke! You little know what’s in store
- for you. I’m the Tartar to settle your little lot and break you in!
- I’ll bet Kentucky cocktails all round I shame it out of you, old son.
- Cheek me, I dare you. If you do tremble in anticipation of heel
- discipline to be inflicted in gym costume.
- _(Bloom creeps under the sofa and peers out through the fringe.)_
- ZOE: _(Widening her slip to screen her.)_ She’s not here.
- BLOOM: _(Closing her eyes.)_ She’s not here.
- FLORRY: _(Hiding her with her gown.)_ She didn’t mean it, Mr Bello.
- She’ll be good, sir.
- KITTY: Don’t be too hard on her, Mr Bello. Sure you won’t, ma’amsir.
- BELLO: _(Coaxingly.)_ Come, ducky dear, I want a word with you,
- darling, just to administer correction. Just a little heart to heart
- talk, sweety. _(Bloom puts out her timid head.)_ There’s a good girly
- now. _(Bello grabs her hair violently and drags her forward.)_ I only
- want to correct you for your own good on a soft safe spot. How’s that
- tender behind? O, ever so gently, pet. Begin to get ready.
- BLOOM: _(Fainting.)_ Don’t tear my...
- BELLO: _(Savagely.)_ The nosering, the pliers, the bastinado, the
- hanging hook, the knout I’ll make you kiss while the flutes play like
- the Nubian slave of old. You’re in for it this time! I’ll make you
- remember me for the balance of your natural life. _(His forehead veins
- swollen, his face congested.)_ I shall sit on your ottoman saddleback
- every morning after my thumping good breakfast of Matterson’s fat
- hamrashers and a bottle of Guinness’s porter. _(He belches.)_ And suck
- my thumping good Stock Exchange cigar while I read the _Licensed
- Victualler’s Gazette_. Very possibly I shall have you slaughtered and
- skewered in my stables and enjoy a slice of you with crisp crackling
- from the baking tin basted and baked like sucking pig with rice and
- lemon or currant sauce. It will hurt you. _(He twists her arm. Bloom
- squeals, turning turtle.)_
- BLOOM: Don’t be cruel, nurse! Don’t!
- BELLO: _(Twisting.)_ Another!
- BLOOM: _(Screams.)_ O, it’s hell itself! Every nerve in my body aches
- like mad!
- BELLO: _(Shouts.)_ Good, by the rumping jumping general! That’s the
- best bit of news I heard these six weeks. Here, don’t keep me waiting,
- damn you! _(He slaps her face.)_
- BLOOM: _(Whimpers.)_ You’re after hitting me. I’ll tell...
- BELLO: Hold him down, girls, till I squat on him.
- ZOE: Yes. Walk on him! I will.
- FLORRY: I will. Don’t be greedy.
- KITTY: No, me. Lend him to me.
- _(The brothel cook, Mrs Keogh, wrinkled, greybearded, in a greasy bib,
- men’s grey and green socks and brogues, floursmeared, a rollingpin
- stuck with raw pastry in her bare red arm and hand, appears at the
- door.)_
- MRS KEOGH: _(Ferociously.)_ Can I help? _(They hold and pinion Bloom.)_
- BELLO: _(Squats with a grunt on Bloom’s upturned face, puffing
- cigarsmoke, nursing a fat leg.)_ I see Keating Clay is elected
- vicechairman of the Richmond asylum and by the by Guinness’s preference
- shares are at sixteen three quarters. Curse me for a fool that didn’t
- buy that lot Craig and Gardner told me about. Just my infernal luck,
- curse it. And that Goddamned outsider _Throwaway_ at twenty to one.
- _(He quenches his cigar angrily on Bloom’s ear.)_ Where’s that
- Goddamned cursed ashtray?
- BLOOM: _(Goaded, buttocksmothered.)_ O! O! Monsters! Cruel one!
- BELLO: Ask for that every ten minutes. Beg. Pray for it as you never
- prayed before. _(He thrusts out a figged fist and foul cigar.)_ Here,
- kiss that. Both. Kiss. _(He throws a leg astride and, pressing with
- horseman’s knees, calls in a hard voice.)_ Gee up! A cockhorse to
- Banbury cross. I’ll ride him for the Eclipse stakes. _(He bends
- sideways and squeezes his mount’s testicles roughly, shouting.)_ Ho!
- Off we pop! I’ll nurse you in proper fashion. _(He horserides
- cockhorse, leaping in the, in the saddle.)_ The lady goes a pace a pace
- and the coachman goes a trot a trot and the gentleman goes a gallop a
- gallop a gallop a gallop.
- FLORRY: _(Pulls at Bello.)_ Let me on him now. You had enough. I asked
- before you.
- ZOE: _(Pulling at Florry.)_ Me. Me. Are you not finished with him yet,
- suckeress?
- BLOOM: _(Stifling.)_ Can’t.
- BELLO: Well, I’m not. Wait. _(He holds in his breath.)_ Curse it. Here.
- This bung’s about burst. _(He uncorks himself behind: then, contorting
- his features, farts loudly.)_ Take that! _(He recorks himself.)_ Yes,
- by Jingo, sixteen three quarters.
- BLOOM: _(A sweat breaking out over him.)_ Not man. _(He sniffs.)_
- Woman.
- BELLO: _(Stands up.)_ No more blow hot and cold. What you longed for
- has come to pass. Henceforth you are unmanned and mine in earnest, a
- thing under the yoke. Now for your punishment frock. You will shed your
- male garments, you understand, Ruby Cohen? and don the shot silk
- luxuriously rustling over head and shoulders. And quickly too!
- BLOOM: _(Shrinks.)_ Silk, mistress said! O crinkly! scrapy! Must I
- tiptouch it with my nails?
- BELLO: _(Points to his whores.)_ As they are now so will you be,
- wigged, singed, perfumesprayed, ricepowdered, with smoothshaven
- armpits. Tape measurements will be taken next your skin. You will be
- laced with cruel force into vicelike corsets of soft dove coutille with
- whalebone busk to the diamondtrimmed pelvis, the absolute outside edge,
- while your figure, plumper than when at large, will be restrained in
- nettight frocks, pretty two ounce petticoats and fringes and things
- stamped, of course, with my houseflag, creations of lovely lingerie for
- Alice and nice scent for Alice. Alice will feel the pullpull. Martha
- and Mary will be a little chilly at first in such delicate thighcasing
- but the frilly flimsiness of lace round your bare knees will remind
- you...
- BLOOM: _(A charming soubrette with dauby cheeks, mustard hair and large
- male hands and nose, leering mouth.)_ I tried her things on only twice,
- a small prank, in Holles street. When we were hard up I washed them to
- save the laundry bill. My own shirts I turned. It was the purest
- thrift.
- BELLO: _(Jeers.)_ Little jobs that make mother pleased, eh? And showed
- off coquettishly in your domino at the mirror behind closedrawn blinds
- your unskirted thighs and hegoat’s udders in various poses of
- surrender, eh? Ho! ho! I have to laugh! That secondhand black operatop
- shift and short trunkleg naughties all split up the stitches at her
- last rape that Mrs Miriam Dandrade sold you from the Shelbourne hotel,
- eh?
- BLOOM: Miriam. Black. Demimondaine.
- BELLO: _(Guffaws.)_ Christ Almighty it’s too tickling, this! You were a
- nicelooking Miriam when you clipped off your backgate hairs and lay
- swooning in the thing across the bed as Mrs Dandrade about to be
- violated by lieutenant Smythe-Smythe, Mr Philip Augustus Blockwell M.
- P., signor Laci Daremo, the robust tenor, blueeyed Bert, the liftboy,
- Henri Fleury of Gordon Bennett fame, Sheridan, the quadroon Croesus,
- the varsity wetbob eight from old Trinity, Ponto, her splendid
- Newfoundland and Bobs, dowager duchess of Manorhamilton. _(He guffaws
- again.)_ Christ, wouldn’t it make a Siamese cat laugh?
- BLOOM: _(Her hands and features working.)_ It was Gerald converted me
- to be a true corsetlover when I was female impersonator in the High
- School play _Vice Versa_. It was dear Gerald. He got that kink,
- fascinated by sister’s stays. Now dearest Gerald uses pinky greasepaint
- and gilds his eyelids. Cult of the beautiful.
- BELLO: _(With wicked glee.)_ Beautiful! Give us a breather! When you
- took your seat with womanish care, lifting your billowy flounces, on
- the smoothworn throne.
- BLOOM: Science. To compare the various joys we each enjoy.
- _(Earnestly.)_ And really it’s better the position... because often I
- used to wet...
- BELLO: _(Sternly.)_ No insubordination! The sawdust is there in the
- corner for you. I gave you strict instructions, didn’t I? Do it
- standing, sir! I’ll teach you to behave like a jinkleman! If I catch a
- trace on your swaddles. Aha! By the ass of the Dorans you’ll find I’m a
- martinet. The sins of your past are rising against you. Many. Hundreds.
- THE SINS OF THE PAST: _(In a medley of voices.)_ He went through a form
- of clandestine marriage with at least one woman in the shadow of the
- Black church. Unspeakable messages he telephoned mentally to Miss Dunn
- at an address in D’Olier street while he presented himself indecently
- to the instrument in the callbox. By word and deed he frankly
- encouraged a nocturnal strumpet to deposit fecal and other matter in an
- unsanitary outhouse attached to empty premises. In five public
- conveniences he wrote pencilled messages offering his nuptial partner
- to all strongmembered males. And by the offensively smelling vitriol
- works did he not pass night after night by loving courting couples to
- see if and what and how much he could see? Did he not lie in bed, the
- gross boar, gloating over a nauseous fragment of wellused toilet paper
- presented to him by a nasty harlot, stimulated by gingerbread and a
- postal order?
- BELLO: _(Whistles loudly.)_ Say! What was the most revolting piece of
- obscenity in all your career of crime? Go the whole hog. Puke it out!
- Be candid for once.
- _(Mute inhuman faces throng forward, leering, vanishing, gibbering,
- Booloohoom. Poldy Kock, Bootlaces a penny, Cassidy’s hag, blind
- stripling, Larry Rhinoceros, the girl, the woman, the whore, the other,
- the...)_
- BLOOM: Don’t ask me! Our mutual faith. Pleasants street. I only thought
- the half of the... I swear on my sacred oath...
- BELLO: _(Peremptorily.)_ Answer. Repugnant wretch! I insist on knowing.
- Tell me something to amuse me, smut or a bloody good ghoststory or a
- line of poetry, quick, quick, quick! Where? How? What time? With how
- many? I give you just three seconds. One! Two! Thr...
- BLOOM: _(Docile, gurgles.)_ I rererepugnosed in rerererepugnant...
- BELLO: _(Imperiously.)_ O, get out, you skunk! Hold your tongue! Speak
- when you’re spoken to.
- BLOOM: _(Bows.)_ Master! Mistress! Mantamer!
- _(He lifts his arms. His bangle bracelets fall.)_
- BELLO: _(Satirically.)_ By day you will souse and bat our smelling
- underclothes also when we ladies are unwell, and swab out our latrines
- with dress pinned up and a dishclout tied to your tail. Won’t that be
- nice? _(He places a ruby ring on her finger.)_ And there now! With this
- ring I thee own. Say, thank you, mistress.
- BLOOM: Thank you, mistress.
- BELLO: You will make the beds, get my tub ready, empty the pisspots in
- the different rooms, including old Mrs Keogh’s the cook’s, a sandy one.
- Ay, and rinse the seven of them well, mind, or lap it up like
- champagne. Drink me piping hot. Hop! You will dance attendance or I’ll
- lecture you on your misdeeds, Miss Ruby, and spank your bare bot right
- well, miss, with the hairbrush. You’ll be taught the error of your
- ways. At night your wellcreamed braceletted hands will wear
- fortythreebutton gloves newpowdered with talc and having delicately
- scented fingertips. For such favours knights of old laid down their
- lives. _(He chuckles.)_ My boys will be no end charmed to see you so
- ladylike, the colonel, above all, when they come here the night before
- the wedding to fondle my new attraction in gilded heels. First I’ll
- have a go at you myself. A man I know on the turf named Charles Alberta
- Marsh (I was in bed with him just now and another gentleman out of the
- Hanaper and Petty Bag office) is on the lookout for a maid of all work
- at a short knock. Swell the bust. Smile. Droop shoulders. What offers?
- _(He points.)_ For that lot. Trained by owner to fetch and carry,
- basket in mouth. _(He bares his arm and plunges it elbowdeep in Bloom’s
- vulva.)_ There’s fine depth for you! What, boys? That give you a
- hardon? _(He shoves his arm in a bidder’s face.)_ Here wet the deck and
- wipe it round!
- A BIDDER: A florin.
- _(Dillon’s lacquey rings his handbell.)_
- THE LACQUEY: Barang!
- A VOICE: One and eightpence too much.
- CHARLES ALBERTA MARSH: Must be virgin. Good breath. Clean.
- BELLO: _(Gives a rap with his gavel.)_ Two bar. Rockbottom figure and
- cheap at the price. Fourteen hands high. Touch and examine shis points.
- Handle hrim. This downy skin, these soft muscles, this tender flesh. If
- I had only my gold piercer here! And quite easy to milk. Three newlaid
- gallons a day. A pure stockgetter, due to lay within the hour. His
- sire’s milk record was a thousand gallons of whole milk in forty weeks.
- Whoa, my jewel! Beg up! Whoa! _(He brands his initial C on Bloom’s
- croup.)_ So! Warranted Cohen! What advance on two bob, gentlemen?
- A DARKVISAGED MAN: _(In disguised accent.)_ Hoondert punt sterlink.
- VOICES: _(Subdued.)_ For the Caliph. Haroun Al Raschid.
- BELLO: _(Gaily.)_ Right. Let them all come. The scanty, daringly short
- skirt, riding up at the knee to show a peep of white pantalette, is a
- potent weapon and transparent stockings, emeraldgartered, with the long
- straight seam trailing up beyond the knee, appeal to the better
- instincts of the _blasé_ man about town. Learn the smooth mincing walk
- on four inch Louis Quinze heels, the Grecian bend with provoking croup,
- the thighs fluescent, knees modestly kissing. Bring all your powers of
- fascination to bear on them. Pander to their Gomorrahan vices.
- BLOOM: _(Bends his blushing face into his armpit and simpers with
- forefinger in mouth.)_ O, I know what you’re hinting at now!
- BELLO: What else are you good for, an impotent thing like you? _(He
- stoops and, peering, pokes with his fan rudely under the fat suet folds
- of Bloom’s haunches.)_ Up! Up! Manx cat! What have we here? Where’s
- your curly teapot gone to or who docked it on you, cockyolly? Sing,
- birdy, sing. It’s as limp as a boy of six’s doing his pooly behind a
- cart. Buy a bucket or sell your pump. _(Loudly.)_ Can you do a man’s
- job?
- BLOOM: Eccles street...
- BELLO: _(Sarcastically.)_ I wouldn’t hurt your feelings for the world
- but there’s a man of brawn in possession there. The tables are turned,
- my gay young fellow! He is something like a fullgrown outdoor man. Well
- for you, you muff, if you had that weapon with knobs and lumps and
- warts all over it. He shot his bolt, I can tell you! Foot to foot, knee
- to knee, belly to belly, bubs to breast! He’s no eunuch. A shock of red
- hair he has sticking out of him behind like a furzebush! Wait for nine
- months, my lad! Holy ginger, it’s kicking and coughing up and down in
- her guts already! That makes you wild, don’t it? Touches the spot? _(He
- spits in contempt.)_ Spittoon!
- BLOOM: I was indecently treated, I... Inform the police. Hundred
- pounds. Unmentionable. I...
- BELLO: Would if you could, lame duck. A downpour we want not your
- drizzle.
- BLOOM: To drive me mad! Moll! I forgot! Forgive! Moll... We... Still...
- BELLO: _(Ruthlessly.)_ No, Leopold Bloom, all is changed by woman’s
- will since you slept horizontal in Sleepy Hollow your night of twenty
- years. Return and see.
- _(Old Sleepy Hollow calls over the wold.)_
- SLEEPY HOLLOW: Rip van Wink! Rip van Winkle!
- BLOOM: _(In tattered mocassins with a rusty fowlingpiece, tiptoeing,
- fingertipping, his haggard bony bearded face peering through the
- diamond panes, cries out.)_ I see her! It’s she! The first night at Mat
- Dillon’s! But that dress, the green! And her hair is dyed gold and
- he...
- BELLO: _(Laughs mockingly.)_ That’s your daughter, you owl, with a
- Mullingar student.
- _(Milly Bloom, fairhaired, greenvested, slimsandalled, her blue scarf
- in the seawind simply swirling, breaks from the arms of her lover and
- calls, her young eyes wonderwide.)_
- MILLY: My! It’s Papli! But, O Papli, how old you’ve grown!
- BELLO: Changed, eh? Our whatnot, our writingtable where we never wrote,
- aunt Hegarty’s armchair, our classic reprints of old masters. A man and
- his menfriends are living there in clover. The _Cuckoos’ Rest!_ Why
- not? How many women had you, eh, following them up dark streets,
- flatfoot, exciting them by your smothered grunts, what, you male
- prostitute? Blameless dames with parcels of groceries. Turn about.
- Sauce for the goose, my gander O.
- BLOOM: They... I...
- BELLO: _(Cuttingly.)_ Their heelmarks will stamp the Brusselette carpet
- you bought at Wren’s auction. In their horseplay with Moll the romp to
- find the buck flea in her breeches they will deface the little statue
- you carried home in the rain for art for art’s sake. They will violate
- the secrets of your bottom drawer. Pages will be torn from your
- handbook of astronomy to make them pipespills. And they will spit in
- your ten shilling brass fender from Hampton Leedom’s.
- BLOOM: Ten and six. The act of low scoundrels. Let me go. I will
- return. I will prove...
- A VOICE: Swear!
- _(Bloom clenches his fists and crawls forward, a bowieknife between his
- teeth.)_
- BELLO: As a paying guest or a kept man? Too late. You have made your
- secondbest bed and others must lie in it. Your epitaph is written. You
- are down and out and don’t you forget it, old bean.
- BLOOM: Justice! All Ireland versus one! Has nobody...? _(He bites his
- thumb.)_
- BELLO: Die and be damned to you if you have any sense of decency or
- grace about you. I can give you a rare old wine that’ll send you
- skipping to hell and back. Sign a will and leave us any coin you have!
- If you have none see you damn well get it, steal it, rob it! We’ll bury
- you in our shrubbery jakes where you’ll be dead and dirty with old Cuck
- Cohen, my stepnephew I married, the bloody old gouty procurator and
- sodomite with a crick in his neck, and my other ten or eleven husbands,
- whatever the buggers’ names were, suffocated in the one cesspool. _(He
- explodes in a loud phlegmy laugh.)_ We’ll manure you, Mr Flower! _(He
- pipes scoffingly.)_ Byby, Poldy! Byby, Papli!
- BLOOM: _(Clasps his head.)_ My willpower! Memory! I have sinned! I have
- suff...
- _(He weeps tearlessly.)_
- BELLO: _(Sneers.)_ Crybabby! Crocodile tears!
- _(Bloom, broken, closely veiled for the sacrifice, sobs, his face to
- the earth. The passing bell is heard. Darkshawled figures of the
- circumcised, in sackcloth and ashes, stand by the wailing wall. M.
- Shulomowitz, Joseph Goldwater, Moses Herzog, Harris Rosenberg, M.
- Moisel, J. Citron, Minnie Watchman, P. Mastiansky, The Reverend Leopold
- Abramovitz, Chazen. With swaying arms they wail in pneuma over the
- recreant Bloom.)_
- THE CIRCUMCISED: _(In dark guttural chant as they cast dead sea fruit
- upon him, no flowers.) Shema Israel Adonai Elohenu Adonai Echad._
- VOICES: _(Sighing.)_ So he’s gone. Ah yes. Yes, indeed. Bloom? Never
- heard of him. No? Queer kind of chap. There’s the widow. That so? Ah,
- yes.
- _(From the suttee pyre the flame of gum camphire ascends. The pall of
- incense smoke screens and disperses. Out of her oakframe a nymph with
- hair unbound, lightly clad in teabrown artcolours, descends from her
- grotto and passing under interlacing yews stands over Bloom.)_
- THE YEWS: _(Their leaves whispering.)_ Sister. Our sister. Ssh!
- THE NYMPH: _(Softly.)_ Mortal! _(Kindly.)_ Nay, dost not weepest!
- BLOOM: _(Crawls jellily forward under the boughs, streaked by sunlight,
- with dignity.)_ This position. I felt it was expected of me. Force of
- habit.
- THE NYMPH: Mortal! You found me in evil company, highkickers, coster
- picnicmakers, pugilists, popular generals, immoral panto boys in
- fleshtights and the nifty shimmy dancers, La Aurora and Karini, musical
- act, the hit of the century. I was hidden in cheap pink paper that
- smelt of rock oil. I was surrounded by the stale smut of clubmen,
- stories to disturb callow youth, ads for transparencies, truedup dice
- and bustpads, proprietary articles and why wear a truss with
- testimonial from ruptured gentleman. Useful hints to the married.
- BLOOM: _(Lifts a turtle head towards her lap.)_ We have met before. On
- another star.
- THE NYMPH: _(Sadly.)_ Rubber goods. Neverrip brand as supplied to the
- aristocracy. Corsets for men. I cure fits or money refunded.
- Unsolicited testimonials for Professor Waldmann’s wonderful chest
- exuber. My bust developed four inches in three weeks, reports Mrs Gus
- Rublin with photo.
- BLOOM: You mean _Photo Bits?_
- THE NYMPH: I do. You bore me away, framed me in oak and tinsel, set me
- above your marriage couch. Unseen, one summer eve, you kissed me in
- four places. And with loving pencil you shaded my eyes, my bosom and my
- shame.
- BLOOM: _(Humbly kisses her long hair.)_ Your classic curves, beautiful
- immortal, I was glad to look on you, to praise you, a thing of beauty,
- almost to pray.
- THE NYMPH: During dark nights I heard your praise.
- BLOOM: _(Quickly.)_ Yes, yes. You mean that I... Sleep reveals the
- worst side of everyone, children perhaps excepted. I know I fell out of
- bed or rather was pushed. Steel wine is said to cure snoring. For the
- rest there is that English invention, pamphlet of which I received some
- days ago, incorrectly addressed. It claims to afford a noiseless,
- inoffensive vent. _(He sighs.)_ ’Twas ever thus. Frailty, thy name is
- marriage.
- THE NYMPH: _(Her fingers in her ears.)_ And words. They are not in my
- dictionary.
- BLOOM: You understood them?
- THE YEWS: Ssh!
- THE NYMPH: _(Covers her face with her hands.)_ What have I not seen in
- that chamber? What must my eyes look down on?
- BLOOM: _(Apologetically.)_ I know. Soiled personal linen, wrong side up
- with care. The quoits are loose. From Gibraltar by long sea long ago.
- THE NYMPH: _(Bends her head.)_ Worse, worse!
- BLOOM: _(Reflects precautiously.)_ That antiquated commode. It wasn’t
- her weight. She scaled just eleven stone nine. She put on nine pounds
- after weaning. It was a crack and want of glue. Eh? And that absurd
- orangekeyed utensil which has only one handle.
- _(The sound of a waterfall is heard in bright cascade.)_
- THE WATERFALL:
- Poulaphouca Poulaphouca
- Poulaphouca Poulaphouca.
- THE YEWS: _(Mingling their boughs.)_ Listen. Whisper. She is right, our
- sister. We grew by Poulaphouca waterfall. We gave shade on languorous
- summer days.
- JOHN WYSE NOLAN: _(In the background, in Irish National Forester’s
- uniform, doffs his plumed hat.)_ Prosper! Give shade on languorous
- days, trees of Ireland!
- THE YEWS: _(Murmuring.)_ Who came to Poulaphouca with the High School
- excursion? Who left his nutquesting classmates to seek our shade?
- BLOOM: _(Scared.)_ High School of Poula? Mnemo? Not in full possession
- of faculties. Concussion. Run over by tram.
- THE ECHO: Sham!
- BLOOM: _(Pigeonbreasted, bottleshouldered, padded, in nondescript
- juvenile grey and black striped suit, too small for him, white tennis
- shoes, bordered stockings with turnover tops and a red schoolcap with
- badge.)_ I was in my teens, a growing boy. A little then sufficed, a
- jolting car, the mingling odours of the ladies’ cloakroom and lavatory,
- the throng penned tight on the old Royal stairs (for they love crushes,
- instinct of the herd, and the dark sexsmelling theatre unbridles vice),
- even a pricelist of their hosiery. And then the heat. There were
- sunspots that summer. End of school. And tipsycake. Halcyon days.
- _(Halcyon days, high school boys in blue and white football jerseys and
- shorts, Master Donald Turnbull, Master Abraham Chatterton, Master Owen
- Goldberg, Master Jack Meredith, Master Percy Apjohn, stand in a
- clearing of the trees and shout to Master Leopold Bloom.)_
- THE HALCYON DAYS: Mackerel! Live us again. Hurray! _(They cheer.)_
- BLOOM: _(Hobbledehoy, warmgloved, mammamufflered, starred with spent
- snowballs, struggles to rise.)_ Again! I feel sixteen! What a lark!
- Let’s ring all the bells in Montague street. _(He cheers feebly.)_
- Hurray for the High School!
- THE ECHO: Fool!
- THE YEWS: _(Rustling.)_ She is right, our sister. Whisper. _(Whispered
- kisses are heard in all the wood. Faces of hamadryads peep out from the
- boles and among the leaves and break, blossoming into bloom.)_ Who
- profaned our silent shade?
- THE NYMPH: _(Coyly, through parting fingers.)_ There? In the open air?
- THE YEWS: _(Sweeping downward.)_ Sister, yes. And on our virgin sward.
- THE WATERFALL:
- Poulaphouca Poulaphouca
- Phoucaphouca Phoucaphouca.
- THE NYMPH: _(With wide fingers.)_ O, infamy!
- BLOOM: I was precocious. Youth. The fauna. I sacrificed to the god of
- the forest. The flowers that bloom in the spring. It was pairing time.
- Capillary attraction is a natural phenomenon. Lotty Clarke,
- flaxenhaired, I saw at her night toilette through illclosed curtains
- with poor papa’s operaglasses: The wanton ate grass wildly. She rolled
- downhill at Rialto bridge to tempt me with her flow of animal spirits.
- She climbed their crooked tree and I... A saint couldn’t resist it. The
- demon possessed me. Besides, who saw?
- _(Staggering Bob, a whitepolled calf, thrusts a ruminating head with
- humid nostrils through the foliage.)_
- STAGGERING BOB: (_Large teardrops rolling from his prominent eyes,
- snivels._) Me. Me see.
- BLOOM: Simply satisfying a need I... _(With pathos.)_ No girl would
- when I went girling. Too ugly. They wouldn’t play...
- _(High on Ben Howth through rhododendrons a nannygoat passes,
- plumpuddered, buttytailed, dropping currants.)_
- THE NANNYGOAT: _(Bleats.)_ Megeggaggegg! Nannannanny!
- BLOOM: _(Hatless, flushed, covered with burrs of thistledown and
- gorsespine.)_ Regularly engaged. Circumstances alter cases. _(He gazes
- intently downwards on the water.)_ Thirtytwo head over heels per
- second. Press nightmare. Giddy Elijah. Fall from cliff. Sad end of
- government printer’s clerk. _(Through silversilent summer air the dummy
- of Bloom, rolled in a mummy, rolls roteatingly from the Lion’s Head
- cliff into the purple waiting waters.)_
- THE DUMMYMUMMY: Bbbbblllllblblblblobschbg!
- _(Far out in the bay between Bailey and Kish lights the_ Erin’s King
- _sails, sending a broadening plume of coalsmoke from her funnel towards
- the land.)_
- COUNCILLOR NANNETTI: _(Alone on deck, in dark alpaca, yellowkitefaced,
- his hand in his waistcoat opening, declaims.)_ When my country takes
- her place among the nations of the earth, then, and not till then, let
- my epitaph be written. I have...
- BLOOM: Done. Prff!
- THE NYMPH: _(Loftily.)_ We immortals, as you saw today, have not such a
- place and no hair there either. We are stonecold and pure. We eat
- electric light. _(She arches her body in lascivious crispation, placing
- her forefinger in her mouth.)_ Spoke to me. Heard from behind. How then
- could you...?
- BLOOM: _(Pawing the heather abjectly.)_ O, I have been a perfect pig.
- Enemas too I have administered. One third of a pint of quassia to which
- add a tablespoonful of rocksalt. Up the fundament. With Hamilton Long’s
- syringe, the ladies’ friend.
- THE NYMPH: In my presence. The powderpuff. _(She blushes and makes a
- knee.)_ And the rest!
- BLOOM: _(Dejected.)_ Yes. _Peccavi!_ I have paid homage on that living
- altar where the back changes name. _(With sudden fervour.)_ For why
- should the dainty scented jewelled hand, the hand that rules...?
- _(Figures wind serpenting in slow woodland pattern around the
- treestems, cooeeing.)_
- THE VOICE OF KITTY: _(In the thicket.)_ Show us one of them cushions.
- THE VOICE OF FLORRY: Here.
- _(A grouse wings clumsily through the underwood.)_
- THE VOICE OF LYNCH: _(In the thicket.)_ Whew! Piping hot!
- THE VOICE OF ZOE: _(From the thicket.)_ Came from a hot place.
- THE VOICE OF VIRAG: _(A birdchief, bluestreaked and feathered in war
- panoply with his assegai, striding through a crackling canebrake over
- beechmast and acorns.)_ Hot! Hot! Ware Sitting Bull!
- BLOOM: It overpowers me. The warm impress of her warm form. Even to sit
- where a woman has sat, especially with divaricated thighs, as though to
- grant the last favours, most especially with previously well uplifted
- white sateen coatpans. So womanly, full. It fills me full.
- THE WATERFALL:
- Phillaphulla Poulaphouca
- Poulaphouca Poulaphouca.
- THE YEWS: Ssh! Sister, speak!
- THE NYMPH: _(Eyeless, in nun’s white habit, coif and hugewinged wimple,
- softly, with remote eyes.)_ Tranquilla convent. Sister Agatha. Mount
- Carmel. The apparitions of Knock and Lourdes. No more desire. _(She
- reclines her head, sighing.)_ Only the ethereal. Where dreamy creamy
- gull waves o’er the waters dull.
- _(Bloom half rises. His back trouserbutton snaps.)_
- THE BUTTON: Bip!
- _(Two sluts of the Coombe dance rainily by, shawled, yelling flatly.)_
- THE SLUTS:
- O, Leopold lost the pin of his drawers
- He didn’t know what to do,
- To keep it up,
- To keep it up.
- BLOOM: _(Coldly.)_ You have broken the spell. The last straw. If there
- were only ethereal where would you all be, postulants and novices? Shy
- but willing like an ass pissing.
- THE YEWS: _(Their silverfoil of leaves precipitating, their skinny arms
- aging and swaying.)_ Deciduously!
- THE NYMPH: _(Her features hardening, gropes in the folds of her
- habit.)_ Sacrilege! To attempt my virtue! _(A large moist stain appears
- on her robe.)_ Sully my innocence! You are not fit to touch the garment
- of a pure woman. _(She clutches again in her robe.)_ Wait. Satan,
- you’ll sing no more lovesongs. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. _(She draws a
- poniard and, clad in the sheathmail of an elected knight of nine,
- strikes at his loins.)_ Nekum!
- BLOOM: _(Starts up, seizes her hand.)_ Hoy! Nebrakada! Cat o’ nine
- lives! Fair play, madam. No pruningknife. The fox and the grapes, is
- it? What do you lack with your barbed wire? Crucifix not thick enough?
- _(He clutches her veil.)_ A holy abbot you want or Brophy, the lame
- gardener, or the spoutless statue of the watercarrier, or good mother
- Alphonsus, eh Reynard?
- THE NYMPH: _(With a cry flees from him unveiled, her plaster cast
- cracking, a cloud of stench escaping from the cracks.)_ Poli...!
- BLOOM: _(Calls after her.)_ As if you didn’t get it on the double
- yourselves. No jerks and multiple mucosities all over you. I tried it.
- Your strength our weakness. What’s our studfee? What will you pay on
- the nail? You fee mendancers on the Riviera, I read. _(The fleeing
- nymph raises a keen.)_ Eh? I have sixteen years of black slave labour
- behind me. And would a jury give me five shillings alimony tomorrow,
- eh? Fool someone else, not me. _(He sniffs.)_ Rut. Onions. Stale.
- Sulphur. Grease.
- _(The figure of Bella Cohen stands before him.)_
- BELLA: You’ll know me the next time.
- BLOOM: _(Composed, regards her.) Passée._ Mutton dressed as lamb. Long
- in the tooth and superfluous hair. A raw onion the last thing at night
- would benefit your complexion. And take some double chin drill. Your
- eyes are as vapid as the glasseyes of your stuffed fox. They have the
- dimensions of your other features, that’s all. I’m not a triple screw
- propeller.
- BELLA: _(Contemptuously.)_ You’re not game, in fact. _(Her sowcunt
- barks.)_ Fbhracht!
- BLOOM: _(Contemptuously.)_ Clean your nailless middle finger first,
- your bully’s cold spunk is dripping from your cockscomb. Take a handful
- of hay and wipe yourself.
- BELLA: I know you, canvasser! Dead cod!
- BLOOM: I saw him, kipkeeper! Pox and gleet vendor!
- BELLA: _(Turns to the piano.)_ Which of you was playing the dead march
- from _Saul?_
- ZOE: Me. Mind your cornflowers. _(She darts to the piano and bangs
- chords on it with crossed arms.)_ The cat’s ramble through the slag.
- _(She glances back.)_ Eh? Who’s making love to my sweeties? _(She darts
- back to the table.)_ What’s yours is mine and what’s mine is my own.
- _(Kitty, disconcerted, coats her teeth with the silver paper. Bloom
- approaches Zoe.)_
- BLOOM: _(Gently.)_ Give me back that potato, will you?
- ZOE: Forfeits, a fine thing and a superfine thing.
- BLOOM: _(With feeling.)_ It is nothing, but still, a relic of poor
- mamma.
- ZOE:
- Give a thing and take it back
- God’ll ask you where is that
- You’ll say you don’t know
- God’ll send you down below.
- BLOOM: There is a memory attached to it. I should like to have it.
- STEPHEN: To have or not to have that is the question.
- ZOE: Here. _(She hauls up a reef of her slip, revealing her bare thigh,
- and unrolls the potato from the top of her stocking.)_ Those that hides
- knows where to find.
- BELLA: _(Frowns.)_ Here. This isn’t a musical peepshow. And don’t you
- smash that piano. Who’s paying here?
- _(She goes to the pianola. Stephen fumbles in his pocket and, taking
- out a banknote by its corner, hands it to her.)_
- STEPHEN: _(With exaggerated politeness.)_ This silken purse I made out
- of the sow’s ear of the public. Madam, excuse me. If you allow me. _(He
- indicates vaguely Lynch and Bloom.)_ We are all in the same sweepstake,
- Kinch and Lynch. _Dans ce bordel où tenons nostre état_.
- LYNCH: _(Calls from the hearth.)_ Dedalus! Give her your blessing for
- me.
- STEPHEN: _(Hands Bella a coin.)_ Gold. She has it.
- BELLA: _(Looks at the money, then at Stephen, then at Zoe, Florry and
- Kitty.)_ Do you want three girls? It’s ten shillings here.
- STEPHEN: _(Delightedly.)_ A hundred thousand apologies. _(He fumbles
- again and takes out and hands her two crowns.)_ Permit, _brevi manu_,
- my sight is somewhat troubled.
- _(Bella goes to the table to count the money while Stephen talks to
- himself in monosyllables. Zoe bends over the table. Kitty leans over
- Zoe’s neck. Lynch gets up, rights his cap and, clasping Kitty’s waist,
- adds his head to the group.)_
- FLORRY: _(Strives heavily to rise.)_ Ow! My foot’s asleep. _(She limps
- over to the table. Bloom approaches.)_
- BELLA, ZOE, KITTY, LYNCH, BLOOM: _(Chattering and squabbling.)_ The
- gentleman... ten shillings... paying for the three... allow me a
- moment... this gentleman pays separate... who’s touching it?... ow! ...
- mind who you’re pinching... are you staying the night or a short
- time?... who did?... you’re a liar, excuse me... the gentleman paid
- down like a gentleman... drink... it’s long after eleven.
- STEPHEN: _(At the pianola, making a gesture of abhorrence.)_ No
- bottles! What, eleven? A riddle!
- ZOE: _(Lifting up her pettigown and folding a half sovereign into the
- top of her stocking.)_ Hard earned on the flat of my back.
- LYNCH: _(Lifting Kitty from the table.)_ Come!
- KITTY: Wait. _(She clutches the two crowns.)_
- FLORRY: And me?
- LYNCH: Hoopla!
- _(He lifts her, carries her and bumps her down on the sofa.)_
- STEPHEN:
- The fox crew, the cocks flew,
- The bells in heaven
- Were striking eleven.
- ’Tis time for her poor soul
- To get out of heaven.
- BLOOM: _(Quietly lays a half sovereign on the table between Bella and
- Florry.)_ So. Allow me. _(He takes up the poundnote.)_ Three times ten.
- We’re square.
- BELLA: _(Admiringly.)_ You’re such a slyboots, old cocky. I could kiss
- you.
- ZOE: _(Points.)_ Him? Deep as a drawwell. _(Lynch bends Kitty back over
- the sofa and kisses her. Bloom goes with the poundnote to Stephen.)_
- BLOOM: This is yours.
- STEPHEN: How is that? _Le distrait_ or absentminded beggar. _(He
- fumbles again in his pocket and draws out a handful of coins. An object
- falls.)_ That fell.
- BLOOM: _(Stooping, picks up and hands a box of matches.)_ This.
- STEPHEN: Lucifer. Thanks.
- BLOOM: _(Quietly.)_ You had better hand over that cash to me to take
- care of. Why pay more?
- STEPHEN: _(Hands him all his coins.)_ Be just before you are generous.
- BLOOM: I will but is it wise? _(He counts.)_ One, seven, eleven, and
- five. Six. Eleven. I don’t answer for what you may have lost.
- STEPHEN: Why striking eleven? Proparoxyton. Moment before the next
- Lessing says. Thirsty fox. _(He laughs loudly.)_ Burying his
- grandmother. Probably he killed her.
- BLOOM: That is one pound six and eleven. One pound seven, say.
- STEPHEN: Doesn’t matter a rambling damn.
- BLOOM: No, but...
- STEPHEN: _(Comes to the table.)_ Cigarette, please. _(Lynch tosses a
- cigarette from the sofa to the table.)_ And so Georgina Johnson is dead
- and married. _(A cigarette appears on the table. Stephen looks at it.)_
- Wonder. Parlour magic. Married. Hm. _(He strikes a match and proceeds
- to light the cigarette with enigmatic melancholy.)_
- LYNCH: _(Watching him.)_ You would have a better chance of lighting it
- if you held the match nearer.
- STEPHEN: _(Brings the match near his eye.)_ Lynx eye. Must get glasses.
- Broke them yesterday. Sixteen years ago. Distance. The eye sees all
- flat. _(He draws the match away. It goes out.)_ Brain thinks. Near:
- far. Ineluctable modality of the visible. _(He frowns mysteriously.)_
- Hm. Sphinx. The beast that has two backs at midnight. Married.
- ZOE: It was a commercial traveller married her and took her away with
- him.
- FLORRY: _(Nods.)_ Mr Lambe from London.
- STEPHEN: Lamb of London, who takest away the sins of our world.
- LYNCH: _(Embracing Kitty on the sofa, chants deeply.) Dona nobis
- pacem._
- _(The cigarette slips from Stephen’s fingers. Bloom picks it up and
- throws it in the grate.)_
- BLOOM: Don’t smoke. You ought to eat. Cursed dog I met. _(To Zoe.)_ You
- have nothing?
- ZOE: Is he hungry?
- STEPHEN: _(Extends his hand to her smiling and chants to the air of the
- bloodoath in the_ Dusk of the Gods.)
- Hangende Hunger,
- Fragende Frau,
- Macht uns alle kaputt.
- ZOE: _(Tragically.)_ Hamlet, I am thy father’s gimlet! _(She takes his
- hand.)_ Blue eyes beauty I’ll read your hand. _(She points to his
- forehead.)_ No wit, no wrinkles. _(She counts.)_ Two, three, Mars,
- that’s courage. _(Stephen shakes his head.)_ No kid.
- LYNCH: Sheet lightning courage. The youth who could not shiver and
- shake. _(To Zoe.)_ Who taught you palmistry?
- ZOE: _(Turns.)_ Ask my ballocks that I haven’t got. _(To Stephen.)_ I
- see it in your face. The eye, like that. _(She frowns with lowered
- head.)_
- LYNCH: _(Laughing, slaps Kitty behind twice.)_ Like that. Pandybat.
- _(Twice loudly a pandybat cracks, the coffin of the pianola flies open,
- the bald little round jack-in-the-box head of Father Dolan springs
- up.)_
- FATHER DOLAN: Any boy want flogging? Broke his glasses? Lazy idle
- little schemer. See it in your eye.
- _(Mild, benign, rectorial, reproving, the head of Don John Conmee rises
- from the pianola coffin.)_
- DON JOHN CONMEE: Now, Father Dolan! Now. I’m sure that Stephen is a
- very good little boy!
- ZOE: _(Examining Stephen’s palm.)_ Woman’s hand.
- STEPHEN: _(Murmurs.)_ Continue. Lie. Hold me. Caress. I never could
- read His handwriting except His criminal thumbprint on the haddock.
- ZOE: What day were you born?
- STEPHEN: Thursday. Today.
- ZOE: Thursday’s child has far to go. _(She traces lines on his hand.)_
- Line of fate. Influential friends.
- FLORRY: _(Pointing.)_ Imagination.
- ZOE: Mount of the moon. You’ll meet with a... _(She peers at his hands
- abruptly.)_ I won’t tell you what’s not good for you. Or do you want to
- know?
- BLOOM: _(Detaches her fingers and offers his palm.)_ More harm than
- good. Here. Read mine.
- BELLA: Show. _(She turns up Bloom’s hand.)_ I thought so. Knobby
- knuckles for the women.
- ZOE: _(Peering at Bloom’s palm.)_ Gridiron. Travels beyond the sea and
- marry money.
- BLOOM: Wrong.
- ZOE: _(Quickly.)_ O, I see. Short little finger. Henpecked husband.
- That wrong?
- _(Black Liz, a huge rooster hatching in a chalked circle, rises,
- stretches her wings and clucks.)_
- BLACK LIZ: Gara. Klook. Klook. Klook.
- _(She sidles from her newlaid egg and waddles off.)_
- BLOOM: _(Points to his hand.)_ That weal there is an accident. Fell and
- cut it twentytwo years ago. I was sixteen.
- ZOE: I see, says the blind man. Tell us news.
- STEPHEN: See? Moves to one great goal. I am twentytwo. Sixteen years
- ago he was twentytwo too. Sixteen years ago I twentytwo tumbled.
- Twentytwo years ago he sixteen fell off his hobbyhorse. _(He winces.)_
- Hurt my hand somewhere. Must see a dentist. Money?
- _(Zoe whispers to Florry. They giggle. Bloom releases his hand and
- writes idly on the table in backhand, pencilling slow curves.)_
- FLORRY: What?
- _(A hackneycar, number three hundred and twentyfour, with a
- gallantbuttocked mare, driven by James Barton, Harmony Avenue,
- Donnybrook, trots past. Blazes Boylan and Lenehan sprawl swaying on the
- sideseats. The Ormond boots crouches behind on the axle. Sadly over the
- crossblind Lydia Douce and Mina Kennedy gaze.)_
- THE BOOTS: _(Jogging, mocks them with thumb and wriggling
- wormfingers.)_ Haw haw have you the horn?
- _(Bronze by gold they whisper.)_
- ZOE: _(To Florry.)_ Whisper.
- _(They whisper again.)_
- _(Over the well of the car Blazes Boylan leans, his boater straw set
- sideways, a red flower in his mouth. Lenehan in yachtsman’s cap and
- white shoes officiously detaches a long hair from Blazes Boylan’s coat
- shoulder.)_
- LENEHAN: Ho! What do I here behold? Were you brushing the cobwebs off a
- few quims?
- BOYLAN: _(Sated, smiles.)_ Plucking a turkey.
- LENEHAN: A good night’s work.
- BOYLAN: _(Holding up four thick bluntungulated fingers, winks.)_ Blazes
- Kate! Up to sample or your money back. _(He holds out a forefinger.)_
- Smell that.
- LENEHAN: _(Smells gleefully.)_ Ah! Lobster and mayonnaise. Ah!
- ZOE AND FLORRY: _(Laugh together.)_ Ha ha ha ha.
- BOYLAN: _(Jumps surely from the car and calls loudly for all to hear.)_
- Hello, Bloom! Mrs Bloom dressed yet?
- BLOOM: _(In flunkey’s prune plush coat and kneebreeches, buff stockings
- and powdered wig.)_ I’m afraid not, sir. The last articles...
- BOYLAN: _(Tosses him sixpence.)_ Here, to buy yourself a gin and
- splash. _(He hangs his hat smartly on a peg of Bloom’s antlered head.)_
- Show me in. I have a little private business with your wife, you
- understand?
- BLOOM: Thank you, sir. Yes, sir. Madam Tweedy is in her bath, sir.
- MARION: He ought to feel himself highly honoured. _(She plops splashing
- out of the water.)_ Raoul darling, come and dry me. I’m in my pelt.
- Only my new hat and a carriage sponge.
- BOYLAN: _(A merry twinkle in his eye.)_ Topping!
- BELLA: What? What is it?
- _(Zoe whispers to her.)_
- MARION: Let him look, the pishogue! Pimp! And scourge himself! I’ll
- write to a powerful prostitute or Bartholomona, the bearded woman, to
- raise weals out on him an inch thick and make him bring me back a
- signed and stamped receipt.
- BOYLAN: (Clasps himself.) Here, I can’t hold this little lot much
- longer. (He strides off on stiff cavalry legs.)
- BELLA: _(Laughing.)_ Ho ho ho ho.
- BOYLAN: _(To Bloom, over his shoulder.)_ You can apply your eye to the
- keyhole and play with yourself while I just go through her a few times.
- BLOOM: Thank you, sir. I will, sir. May I bring two men chums to
- witness the deed and take a snapshot? _(He holds out an ointment jar.)_
- Vaseline, sir? Orangeflower...? Lukewarm water...?
- KITTY: _(From the sofa.)_ Tell us, Florry. Tell us. What...
- _(Florry whispers to her. Whispering lovewords murmur, liplapping
- loudly, poppysmic plopslop.)_
- MINA KENNEDY: _(Her eyes upturned.)_ O, it must be like the scent of
- geraniums and lovely peaches! O, he simply idolises every bit of her!
- Stuck together! Covered with kisses!
- LYDIA DOUCE: _(Her mouth opening.)_ Yumyum. O, he’s carrying her round
- the room doing it! Ride a cockhorse. You could hear them in Paris and
- New York. Like mouthfuls of strawberries and cream.
- KITTY: _(Laughing.)_ Hee hee hee.
- BOYLAN’S VOICE: _(Sweetly, hoarsely, in the pit of his stomach.)_ Ah!
- Godblazeqrukbrukarchkrasht!
- MARION’S VOICE: _(Hoarsely, sweetly, rising to her throat.)_ O!
- Weeshwashtkissinapooisthnapoohuck?
- BLOOM: _(His eyes wildly dilated, clasps himself.)_ Show! Hide! Show!
- Plough her! More! Shoot!
- BELLA, ZOE, FLORRY, KITTY: Ho ho! Ha ha! Hee hee!
- LYNCH: _(Points.)_ The mirror up to nature. _(He laughs.)_ Hu hu hu hu
- hu!
- _(Stephen and Bloom gaze in the mirror. The face of William
- Shakespeare, beardless, appears there, rigid in facial paralysis,
- crowned by the reflection of the reindeer antlered hatrack in the
- hall.)_
- SHAKESPEARE: _(In dignified ventriloquy.)_ ’Tis the loud laugh bespeaks
- the vacant mind. _(To Bloom.)_ Thou thoughtest as how thou wastest
- invisible. Gaze. _(He crows with a black capon’s laugh.)_ Iagogo! How
- my Oldfellow chokit his Thursdaymornun. Iagogogo!
- BLOOM: _(Smiles yellowly at the three whores.)_ When will I hear the
- joke?
- ZOE: Before you’re twice married and once a widower.
- BLOOM: Lapses are condoned. Even the great Napoleon when measurements
- were taken next the skin after his death...
- _(Mrs Dignam, widow woman, her snubnose and cheeks flushed with
- deathtalk, tears and Tunney’s tawny sherry, hurries by in her weeds,
- her bonnet awry, rouging and powdering her cheeks, lips and nose, a pen
- chivvying her brood of cygnets. Beneath her skirt appear her late
- husband’s everyday trousers and turnedup boots, large eights. She holds
- a Scottish widow’s insurance policy and a large marquee umbrella under
- which her brood run with her, Patsy hopping on one shod foot, his
- collar loose, a hank of porksteaks dangling, Freddy whimpering, Susy
- with a crying cod’s mouth, Alice struggling with the baby. She cuffs
- them on, her streamers flaunting aloft.)_
- FREDDY: Ah, ma, you’re dragging me along!
- SUSY: Mamma, the beeftea is fizzing over!
- SHAKESPEARE: _(With paralytic rage.)_ Weda seca whokilla farst.
- _(The face of Martin Cunningham, bearded, refeatures Shakespeare’s
- beardless face. The marquee umbrella sways drunkenly, the children run
- aside. Under the umbrella appears Mrs Cunningham in Merry Widow hat and
- kimono gown. She glides sidling and bowing, twirling japanesily.)_
- MRS CUNNINGHAM: _(Sings.)_
- And they call me the jewel of Asia!
- MARTIN CUNNINGHAM: _(Gazes on her, impassive.)_ Immense! Most bloody
- awful demirep!
- STEPHEN: _Et exaltabuntur cornua iusti._ Queens lay with prize bulls.
- Remember Pasiphae for whose lust my grandoldgrossfather made the first
- confessionbox. Forget not Madam Grissel Steevens nor the suine scions
- of the house of Lambert. And Noah was drunk with wine. And his ark was
- open.
- BELLA: None of that here. Come to the wrong shop.
- LYNCH: Let him alone. He’s back from Paris.
- ZOE: _(Runs to stephen and links him.)_ O go on! Give us some
- parleyvoo.
- _(Stephen claps hat on head and leaps over to the fireplace where he
- stands with shrugged shoulders, finny hands outspread, a painted smile
- on his face.)_
- LYNCH: _(Pommelling on the sofa.)_ Rmm Rmm Rmm Rrrrrrmmmmm.
- STEPHEN: _(Gabbles with marionette jerks.)_ Thousand places of
- entertainment to expense your evenings with lovely ladies saling gloves
- and other things perhaps hers heart beerchops perfect fashionable house
- very eccentric where lots cocottes beautiful dressed much about
- princesses like are dancing cancan and walking there parisian
- clowneries extra foolish for bachelors foreigns the same if talking a
- poor english how much smart they are on things love and sensations
- voluptuous. Misters very selects for is pleasure must to visit heaven
- and hell show with mortuary candles and they tears silver which occur
- every night. Perfectly shocking terrific of religion’s things mockery
- seen in universal world. All chic womans which arrive full of modesty
- then disrobe and squeal loud to see vampire man debauch nun very fresh
- young with _dessous troublants_. _(He clacks his tongue loudly.)_ _Ho,
- là là! Ce pif qu’il a!_
- LYNCH: _Vive le vampire!_
- THE WHORES: Bravo! Parleyvoo!
- STEPHEN: _(Grimacing with head back, laughs loudly, clapping himself.)_
- Great success of laughing. Angels much prostitutes like and holy
- apostles big damn ruffians. _Demimondaines_ nicely handsome sparkling
- of diamonds very amiable costumed. Or do you are fond better what
- belongs they moderns pleasure turpitude of old mans? _(He points about
- him with grotesque gestures which Lynch and the whores reply to.)_
- Caoutchouc statue woman reversible or lifesize tompeeptom of virgins
- nudities very lesbic the kiss five ten times. Enter, gentleman, to see
- in mirror every positions trapezes all that machine there besides also
- if desire act awfully bestial butcher’s boy pollutes in warm veal liver
- or omlet on the belly _pièce de Shakespeare._
- BELLA: _(Clapping her belly sinks back on the sofa, with a shout of
- laughter.)_ An omelette on the... Ho! ho! ho! ho!... omelette on the...
- STEPHEN: _(Mincingly.)_ I love you, sir darling. Speak you englishman
- tongue for _double entente cordiale._ O yes, _mon loup_. How much cost?
- Waterloo. Watercloset. _(He ceases suddenly and holds up a
- forefinger.)_
- BELLA: _(Laughing.)_ Omelette...
- THE WHORES: _(Laughing.)_ Encore! Encore!
- STEPHEN: Mark me. I dreamt of a watermelon.
- ZOE: Go abroad and love a foreign lady.
- LYNCH: Across the world for a wife.
- FLORRY: Dreams goes by contraries.
- STEPHEN: _(Extends his arms.)_ It was here. Street of harlots. In
- Serpentine avenue Beelzebub showed me her, a fubsy widow. Where’s the
- red carpet spread?
- BLOOM: _(Approaching Stephen.)_ Look...
- STEPHEN: No, I flew. My foes beneath me. And ever shall be. World
- without end. _(He cries.) Pater!_ Free!
- BLOOM: I say, look...
- STEPHEN: Break my spirit, will he? _O merde alors! (He cries, his
- vulture talons sharpened.)_ Hola! Hillyho!
- _(Simon Dedalus’ voice hilloes in answer, somewhat sleepy but ready.)_
- SIMON: That’s all right. _(He swoops uncertainly through the air,
- wheeling, uttering cries of heartening, on strong ponderous buzzard
- wings.)_ Ho, boy! Are you going to win? Hoop! Pschatt! Stable with
- those halfcastes. Wouldn’t let them within the bawl of an ass. Head up!
- Keep our flag flying! An eagle gules volant in a field argent
- displayed. Ulster king at arms! Haihoop! _(He makes the beagle’s call,
- giving tongue.)_ Bulbul! Burblblburblbl! Hai, boy!
- _(The fronds and spaces of the wallpaper file rapidly across country. A
- stout fox, drawn from covert, brush pointed, having buried his
- grandmother, runs swift for the open, brighteyed, seeking badger earth,
- under the leaves. The pack of staghounds follows, nose to the ground,
- sniffing their quarry, beaglebaying, burblbrbling to be blooded. Ward
- Union huntsmen and huntswomen live with them, hot for a kill. From Six
- Mile Point, Flathouse, Nine Mile Stone follow the footpeople with
- knotty sticks, hayforks, salmongaffs, lassos, flockmasters with
- stockwhips, bearbaiters with tomtoms, toreadors with bullswords, grey
- negroes waving torches. The crowd bawls of dicers, crown and anchor
- players, thimbleriggers, broadsmen. Crows and touts, hoarse bookies in
- high wizard hats clamour deafeningly.)_
- THE CROWD:
- Card of the races. Racing card!
- Ten to one the field!
- Tommy on the clay here! Tommy on the clay!
- Ten to one bar one! Ten to one bar one!
- Try your luck on Spinning Jenny!
- Ten to one bar one!
- Sell the monkey, boys! Sell the monkey!
- I’ll give ten to one!
- Ten to one bar one!
- _(A dark horse, riderless, bolts like a phantom past the winningpost,
- his mane moonfoaming, his eyeballs stars. The field follows, a bunch of
- bucking mounts. Skeleton horses, Sceptre, Maximum the Second,
- Zinfandel, the Duke of Westminster’s Shotover, Repulse, the Duke of
- Beaufort’s Ceylon, prix de Paris. Dwarfs ride them, rustyarmoured,
- leaping, leaping in their, in their saddles. Last in a drizzle of rain
- on a brokenwinded isabelle nag, Cock of the North, the favourite, honey
- cap, green jacket, orange sleeves, Garrett Deasy up, gripping the
- reins, a hockeystick at the ready. His nag on spavined whitegaitered
- feet jogs along the rocky road.)_
- THE ORANGE LODGES: _(Jeering.)_ Get down and push, mister. Last lap!
- You’ll be home the night!
- GARRETT DEASY: _(Bolt upright, his nailscraped face plastered with
- postagestamps, brandishes his hockeystick, his blue eyes flashing in
- the prism of the chandelier as his mount lopes by at schooling
- gallop.)_
- _Per vias rectas!_
- _(A yoke of buckets leopards all over him and his rearing nag a torrent
- of mutton broth with dancing coins of carrots, barley, onions, turnips,
- potatoes.)_
- THE GREEN LODGES: Soft day, sir John! Soft day, your honour!
- _(Private Carr, Private Compton and Cissy Caffrey pass beneath the
- windows, singing in discord.)_
- STEPHEN: Hark! Our friend noise in the street.
- ZOE: _(Holds up her hand.)_ Stop!
- PRIVATE CARR, PRIVATE COMPTON AND CISSY CAFFREY:
- Yet I’ve a sort of a
- Yorkshire relish for...
- ZOE: That’s me. _(She claps her hands.)_ Dance! Dance! _(She runs to
- the pianola.)_ Who has twopence?
- BLOOM: Who’ll...?
- LYNCH: _(Handing her coins.)_ Here.
- STEPHEN: _(Cracking his fingers impatiently.)_ Quick! Quick! Where’s my
- augur’s rod? _(He runs to the piano and takes his ashplant, beating his
- foot in tripudium.)_
- ZOE: _(Turns the drumhandle.)_ There.
- _(She drops two pennies in the slot. Gold, pink and violet lights start
- forth. The drum turns purring in low hesitation waltz. Professor
- Goodwin, in a bowknotted periwig, in court dress, wearing a stained
- inverness cape, bent in two from incredible age, totters across the
- room, his hands fluttering. He sits tinily on the pianostool and lifts
- and beats handless sticks of arms on the keyboard, nodding with
- damsel’s grace, his bowknot bobbing.)_
- ZOE: _(Twirls round herself, heeltapping.)_ Dance. Anybody here for
- there? Who’ll dance? Clear the table.
- _(The pianola with changing lights plays in waltz time the prelude of_
- My Girl’s a Yorkshire Girl. _Stephen throws his ashplant on the table
- and seizes Zoe round the waist. Florry and Bella push the table towards
- the fireplace. Stephen, arming Zoe with exaggerated grace, begins to
- waltz her round the room. Bloom stands aside. Her sleeve falling from
- gracing arms, reveals a white fleshflower of vaccination. Between the
- curtains Professor Maginni inserts a leg on the toepoint of which spins
- a silk hat. With a deft kick he sends it spinning to his crown and
- jauntyhatted skates in. He wears a slate frockcoat with claret silk
- lapels, a gorget of cream tulle, a green lowcut waistcoat, stock collar
- with white kerchief, tight lavender trousers, patent pumps and canary
- gloves. In his buttonhole is an immense dahlia. He twirls in reversed
- directions a clouded cane, then wedges it tight in his oxter. He places
- a hand lightly on his breastbone, bows, and fondles his flower and
- buttons.)_
- MAGINNI: The poetry of motion, art of calisthenics. No connection with
- Madam Legget Byrne’s or Levenston’s. Fancy dress balls arranged.
- Deportment. The Katty Lanner step. So. Watch me! My terpsichorean
- abilities. _(He minuets forward three paces on tripping bee’s feet.)
- Tout le monde en avant! Révérence! Tout le monde en place!_
- _(The prelude ceases. Professor Goodwin, beating vague arms shrivels,
- sinks, his live cape falling about the stool. The air in firmer waltz
- time sounds. Stephen and Zoe circle freely. The lights change, glow,
- fade gold rosy violet.)_
- THE PIANOLA:
- Two young fellows were talking about their girls, girls, girls,
- Sweethearts they’d left behind...
- _(From a corner the morning hours run out, goldhaired, slimsandalled,
- in girlish blue, waspwaisted, with innocent hands. Nimbly they dance,
- twirling their skipping ropes. The hours of noon follow in amber gold.
- Laughing, linked, high haircombs flashing, they catch the sun in
- mocking mirrors, lifting their arms.)_
- MAGINNI: _(Clipclaps glovesilent hands.) Carré! Avant deux!_ Breathe
- evenly! _Balance!_
- _(The morning and noon hours waltz in their places, turning, advancing
- to each other, shaping their curves, bowing visavis. Cavaliers behind
- them arch and suspend their arms, with hands descending to, touching,
- rising from their shoulders.)_
- HOURS: You may touch my.
- CAVALIERS: May I touch your?
- HOURS: O, but lightly!
- CAVALIERS: O, so lightly!
- THE PIANOLA:
- My little shy little lass has a waist.
- _(Zoe and Stephen turn boldly with looser swing. The twilight hours
- advance from long landshadows, dispersed, lagging, languideyed, their
- cheeks delicate with cipria and false faint bloom. They are in grey
- gauze with dark bat sleeves that flutter in the land breeze.)_
- MAGINNI: _Avant huit! Traversé! Salut! Cours de mains! Croisé!_
- _(The night hours, one by one, steal to the last place. Morning, noon
- and twilight hours retreat before them. They are masked, with daggered
- hair and bracelets of dull bells. Weary they curchycurchy under
- veils.)_
- THE BRACELETS: Heigho! Heigho!
- ZOE: _(Twirling, her hand to her brow.)_ O!
- MAGINNI: _Les tiroirs! Chaîne de dames! La corbeille! Dos à dos!_
- _(Arabesquing wearily they weave a pattern on the floor, weaving,
- unweaving, curtseying, twirling, simply swirling.)_
- ZOE: I’m giddy!
- _(She frees herself, droops on a chair. Stephen seizes Florry and turns
- with her.)_
- MAGINNI: _Boulangère! Les ronds! Les ponts! Chevaux de bois!
- Escargots!_
- _(Twining, receding, with interchanging hands the night hours link each
- each with arching arms in a mosaic of movements. Stephen and Florry
- turn cumbrously.)_
- MAGINNI: _Dansez avec vos dames! Changez de dames! Donnez le petit
- bouquet à votre dame! Remerciez!_
- THE PIANOLA:
- Best, best of all,
- Baraabum!
- KITTY: _(Jumps up.)_ O, they played that on the hobbyhorses at the
- _Mirus_ bazaar!
- _(She runs to Stephen. He leaves Florry brusquely and seizes Kitty. A
- screaming bittern’s harsh high whistle shrieks. Groangrousegurgling
- Toft’s cumbersome whirligig turns slowly the room right roundabout the
- room.)_
- THE PIANOLA:
- My girl’s a Yorkshire girl.
- ZOE:
- Yorkshire through and through. Come on all!
- _(She seizes Florry and waltzes her.)_
- STEPHEN: _Pas seul!_
- _(He wheels Kitty into Lynch’s arms, snatches up his ashplant from the
- table and takes the floor. All wheel whirl waltz twirl. Bloombella
- Kittylynch Florryzoe jujuby women. Stephen with hat ashplant frogsplits
- in middle highkicks with skykicking mouth shut hand clasp part under
- thigh. With clang tinkle boomhammer tallyho hornblower blue green
- yellow flashes Toft’s cumbersome turns with hobbyhorse riders from
- gilded snakes dangled, bowels fandango leaping spurn soil foot and fall
- again.)_
- THE PIANOLA:
- Though she’s a factory lass
- And wears no fancy clothes.
- _(Closeclutched swift swifter with glareblareflare scudding they
- scootlootshoot lumbering by. Baraabum!)_
- TUTTI: Encore! Bis! Bravo! Encore!
- SIMON: Think of your mother’s people!
- STEPHEN: Dance of death.
- _(Bang fresh barang bang of lacquey’s bell, horse, nag, steer,
- piglings, Conmee on Christass, lame crutch and leg sailor in cockboat
- armfolded ropepulling hitching stamp hornpipe through and through.
- Baraabum! On nags hogs bellhorses Gadarene swine Corny in coffin steel
- shark stone onehandled Nelson two trickies Frauenzimmer plumstained
- from pram falling bawling. Gum he’s a champion. Fuseblue peer from
- barrel rev. evensong Love on hackney jaunt Blazes blind coddoubled
- bicyclers Dilly with snowcake no fancy clothes. Then in last switchback
- lumbering up and down bump mashtub sort of viceroy and reine relish for
- tublumber bumpshire rose. Baraabum!)_
- _(The couples fall aside. Stephen whirls giddily. Room whirls back.
- Eyes closed he totters. Red rails fly spacewards. Stars all around suns
- turn roundabout. Bright midges dance on walls. He stops dead.)_
- STEPHEN: Ho!
- _(Stephen’s mother, emaciated, rises stark through the floor, in leper
- grey with a wreath of faded orangeblossoms and a torn bridal veil, her
- face worn and noseless, green with gravemould. Her hair is scant and
- lank. She fixes her bluecircled hollow eyesockets on Stephen and opens
- her toothless mouth uttering a silent word. A choir of virgins and
- confessors sing voicelessly.)_
- THE CHOIR:
- Liliata rutilantium te confessorum...
- Iubilantium te virginum...
- _(From the top of a tower Buck Mulligan, in particoloured jester’s
- dress of puce and yellow and clown’s cap with curling bell, stands
- gaping at her, a smoking buttered split scone in his hand.)_
- BUCK MULLIGAN: She’s beastly dead. The pity of it! Mulligan meets the
- afflicted mother. _(He upturns his eyes.)_ Mercurial Malachi!
- THE MOTHER: _(With the subtle smile of death’s madness.)_ I was once
- the beautiful May Goulding. I am dead.
- STEPHEN: _(Horrorstruck.)_ Lemur, who are you? No. What bogeyman’s
- trick is this?
- BUCK MULLIGAN: _(Shakes his curling capbell.)_ The mockery of it! Kinch
- dogsbody killed her bitchbody. She kicked the bucket. _(Tears of molten
- butter fall from his eyes on to the scone.)_ Our great sweet mother!
- _Epi oinopa ponton._
- THE MOTHER: _(Comes nearer, breathing upon him softly her breath of
- wetted ashes.)_ All must go through it, Stephen. More women than men in
- the world. You too. Time will come.
- STEPHEN: _(Choking with fright, remorse and horror.)_ They say I killed
- you, mother. He offended your memory. Cancer did it, not I. Destiny.
- THE MOTHER: _(A green rill of bile trickling from a side of her
- mouth.)_ You sang that song to me. _Love’s bitter mystery._
- STEPHEN: _(Eagerly.)_ Tell me the word, mother, if you know now. The
- word known to all men.
- THE MOTHER: Who saved you the night you jumped into the train at Dalkey
- with Paddy Lee? Who had pity for you when you were sad among the
- strangers? Prayer is allpowerful. Prayer for the suffering souls in the
- Ursuline manual and forty days’ indulgence. Repent, Stephen.
- STEPHEN: The ghoul! Hyena!
- THE MOTHER: I pray for you in my other world. Get Dilly to make you
- that boiled rice every night after your brainwork. Years and years I
- loved you, O, my son, my firstborn, when you lay in my womb.
- ZOE: _(Fanning herself with the grate fan.)_ I’m melting!
- FLORRY: _(Points to Stephen.)_ Look! He’s white.
- BLOOM: _(Goes to the window to open it more.)_ Giddy.
- THE MOTHER: _(With smouldering eyes.)_ Repent! O, the fire of hell!
- STEPHEN: _(Panting.)_ His noncorrosive sublimate! The corpsechewer! Raw
- head and bloody bones.
- THE MOTHER: _(Her face drawing near and nearer, sending out an ashen
- breath.)_ Beware! _(She raises her blackened withered right arm slowly
- towards Stephen’s breast with outstretched finger.)_ Beware God’s hand!
- _(A green crab with malignant red eyes sticks deep its grinning claws
- in Stephen’s heart.)_
- STEPHEN: _(Strangled with rage.)_ Shite! _(His features grow drawn and
- grey and old.)_
- BLOOM: _(At the window.)_ What?
- STEPHEN: _Ah non, par exemple!_ The intellectual imagination! With me
- all or not at all. _Non serviam!_
- FLORRY: Give him some cold water. Wait. _(She rushes out.)_
- THE MOTHER: _(Wrings her hands slowly, moaning desperately.)_ O Sacred
- Heart of Jesus, have mercy on him! Save him from hell, O Divine Sacred
- Heart!
- STEPHEN: No! No! No! Break my spirit, all of you, if you can! I’ll
- bring you all to heel!
- THE MOTHER: _(In the agony of her deathrattle.)_ Have mercy on Stephen,
- Lord, for my sake! Inexpressible was my anguish when expiring with
- love, grief and agony on Mount Calvary.
- STEPHEN: _Nothung!_
- _(He lifts his ashplant high with both hands and smashes the
- chandelier. Time’s livid final flame leaps and, in the following
- darkness, ruin of all space, shattered glass and toppling masonry.)_
- THE GASJET: Pwfungg!
- BLOOM: Stop!
- LYNCH: _(Rushes forward and seizes Stephen’s hand.)_ Here! Hold on!
- Don’t run amok!
- BELLA: Police!
- _(Stephen, abandoning his ashplant, his head and arms thrown back
- stark, beats the ground and flies from the room, past the whores at the
- door.)_
- BELLA: _(Screams.)_ After him!
- _(The two whores rush to the halldoor. Lynch and Kitty and Zoe stampede
- from the room. They talk excitedly. Bloom follows, returns.)_
- THE WHORES: _(Jammed in the doorway, pointing.)_ Down there.
- ZOE: _(Pointing.)_ There. There’s something up.
- BELLA: Who pays for the lamp? _(She seizes Bloom’s coattail.)_ Here,
- you were with him. The lamp’s broken.
- BLOOM: _(Rushes to the hall, rushes back.)_ What lamp, woman?
- A WHORE: He tore his coat.
- BELLA: _(Her eyes hard with anger and cupidity, points.)_ Who’s to pay
- for that? Ten shillings. You’re a witness.
- BLOOM: _(Snatches up Stephen’s ashplant.)_ Me? Ten shillings? Haven’t
- you lifted enough off him? Didn’t he...?
- BELLA: _(Loudly.)_ Here, none of your tall talk. This isn’t a brothel.
- A ten shilling house.
- BLOOM: _(His head under the lamp, pulls the chain. Pulling, the gasjet
- lights up a crushed mauve purple shade. He raises the ashplant.)_ Only
- the chimney’s broken. Here is all he...
- BELLA: _(Shrinks back and screams.)_ Jesus! Don’t!
- BLOOM: _(Warding off a blow.)_ To show you how he hit the paper.
- There’s not sixpenceworth of damage done. Ten shillings!
- FLORRY: _(With a glass of water, enters.)_ Where is he?
- BELLA: Do you want me to call the police?
- BLOOM: O, I know. Bulldog on the premises. But he’s a Trinity student.
- Patrons of your establishment. Gentlemen that pay the rent. _(He makes
- a masonic sign.)_ Know what I mean? Nephew of the vicechancellor. You
- don’t want a scandal.
- BELLA: _(Angrily.)_ Trinity. Coming down here ragging after the
- boatraces and paying nothing. Are you my commander here or? Where is
- he? I’ll charge him! Disgrace him, I will! _(She shouts.)_ Zoe! Zoe!
- BLOOM: _(Urgently.)_ And if it were your own son in Oxford?
- _(Warningly.)_ I know.
- BELLA: _(Almost speechless.)_ Who are. Incog!
- ZOE: _(In the doorway.)_ There’s a row on.
- BLOOM: What? Where? _(He throws a shilling on the table and starts.)_
- That’s for the chimney. Where? I need mountain air.
- _(He hurries out through the hall. The whores point. Florry follows,
- spilling water from her tilted tumbler. On the doorstep all the whores
- clustered talk volubly, pointing to the right where the fog has cleared
- off. From the left arrives a jingling hackney car. It slows to in front
- of the house. Bloom at the halldoor perceives Corny Kelleher who is
- about to dismount from the car with two silent lechers. He averts his
- face. Bella from within the hall urges on her whores. They blow
- ickylickysticky yumyum kisses. Corny Kelleher replies with a ghastly
- lewd smile. The silent lechers turn to pay the jarvey. Zoe and Kitty
- still point right. Bloom, parting them swiftly, draws his caliph’s hood
- and poncho and hurries down the steps with sideways face. Incog Haroun
- al Raschid he flits behind the silent lechers and hastens on by the
- railings with fleet step of a pard strewing the drag behind him, torn
- envelopes drenched in aniseed. The ashplant marks his stride. A pack of
- bloodhounds, led by Hornblower of Trinity brandishing a dogwhip in
- tallyho cap and an old pair of grey trousers, follows from far, picking
- up the scent, nearer, baying, panting, at fault, breaking away,
- throwing their tongues, biting his heels, leaping at his tail. He
- walks, runs, zigzags, gallops, lugs laid back. He is pelted with
- gravel, cabbagestumps, biscuitboxes, eggs, potatoes, dead codfish,
- woman’s slipperslappers. After him freshfound the hue and cry zigzag
- gallops in hot pursuit of follow my leader: 65 C, 66 C, night watch,
- John Henry Menton, Wisdom Hely, V. B. Dillon, Councillor Nannetti,
- Alexander Keyes, Larry O’Rourke, Joe Cuffe, Mrs O’Dowd, Pisser Burke,
- The Nameless One, Mrs Riordan, The Citizen, Garryowen, Whodoyoucallhim,
- Strangeface, Fellowthatsolike, Sawhimbefore, Chapwithawen, Chris
- Callinan, sir Charles Cameron, Benjamin Dollard, Lenehan, Bartell
- d’Arcy, Joe Hynes, red Murray, editor Brayden, T. M. Healy, Mr Justice
- Fitzgibbon, John Howard Parnell, the reverend Tinned Salmon, Professor
- Joly, Mrs Breen, Denis Breen, Theodore Purefoy, Mina Purefoy, the
- Westland Row postmistress, C. P. M’Coy, friend of Lyons, Hoppy Holohan,
- maninthestreet, othermaninthestreet, Footballboots, pugnosed driver,
- rich protestant lady, Davy Byrne, Mrs Ellen M’Guinness, Mrs Joe
- Gallaher, George Lidwell, Jimmy Henry on corns, Superintendent Laracy,
- Father Cowley, Crofton out of the Collector-general’s, Dan Dawson,
- dental surgeon Bloom with tweezers, Mrs Bob Doran, Mrs Kennefick, Mrs
- Wyse Nolan, John Wyse Nolan,
- handsomemarriedwomanrubbedagainstwidebehindinClonskea tram, the
- bookseller of_ Sweets of Sin, _Miss Dubedatandshedidbedad, Mesdames
- Gerald and Stanislaus Moran of Roebuck, the managing clerk of
- Drimmie’s, Wetherup, colonel Hayes, Mastiansky, Citron, Penrose, Aaron
- Figatner, Moses Herzog, Michael E Geraghty, Inspector Troy, Mrs
- Galbraith, the constable off Eccles street corner, old doctor Brady
- with stethoscope, the mystery man on the beach, a retriever, Mrs Miriam
- Dandrade and all her lovers.)_
- THE HUE AND CRY: _(Helterskelterpelterwelter.)_ He’s Bloom! Stop Bloom!
- Stopabloom! Stopperrobber! Hi! Hi! Stophim on the corner!
- _(At the corner of Beaver street beneath the scaffolding Bloom panting
- stops on the fringe of the noisy quarrelling knot, a lot not knowing a
- jot what hi! hi! row and wrangle round the whowhat brawlaltogether.)_
- STEPHEN: _(With elaborate gestures, breathing deeply and slowly.)_ You
- are my guests. Uninvited. By virtue of the fifth of George and seventh
- of Edward. History to blame. Fabled by mothers of memory.
- PRIVATE CARR: _(To Cissy Caffrey.)_ Was he insulting you?
- STEPHEN: Addressed her in vocative feminine. Probably neuter.
- Ungenitive.
- VOICES: No, he didn’t. I seen him. The girl there. He was in Mrs
- Cohen’s. What’s up? Soldier and civilian.
- CISSY CAFFREY: I was in company with the soldiers and they left me to
- do—you know, and the young man run up behind me. But I’m faithful to
- the man that’s treating me though I’m only a shilling whore.
- STEPHEN: _(Catches sight of Lynch’s and Kitty’s heads.)_ Hail,
- Sisyphus. _(He points to himself and the others.)_ Poetic. Uropoetic.
- VOICES: Shes faithfultheman.
- CISSY CAFFREY: Yes, to go with him. And me with a soldier friend.
- PRIVATE COMPTON: He doesn’t half want a thick ear, the blighter. Biff
- him one, Harry.
- PRIVATE CARR: _(To Cissy.)_ Was he insulting you while me and him was
- having a piss?
- LORD TENNYSON: _(Gentleman poet in Union Jack blazer and cricket
- flannels, bareheaded, flowingbearded.)_ Theirs not to reason why.
- PRIVATE COMPTON: Biff him, Harry.
- STEPHEN: _(To Private Compton.)_ I don’t know your name but you are
- quite right. Doctor Swift says one man in armour will beat ten men in
- their shirts. Shirt is synechdoche. Part for the whole.
- CISSY CAFFREY: _(To the crowd.)_ No, I was with the privates.
- STEPHEN: _(Amiably.)_ Why not? The bold soldier boy. In my opinion
- every lady for example...
- PRIVATE CARR: _(His cap awry, advances to Stephen.)_ Say, how would it
- be, governor, if I was to bash in your jaw?
- STEPHEN: _(Looks up to the sky.)_ How? Very unpleasant. Noble art of
- selfpretence. Personally, I detest action. _(He waves his hand.)_ Hand
- hurts me slightly. _Enfin ce sont vos oignons._ _(To Cissy Caffrey.)_
- Some trouble is on here. What is it precisely?
- DOLLY GRAY: _(From her balcony waves her handkerchief, giving the sign
- of the heroine of Jericho.)_ Rahab. Cook’s son, goodbye. Safe home to
- Dolly. Dream of the girl you left behind and she will dream of you.
- _(The soldiers turn their swimming eyes.)_
- BLOOM: _(Elbowing through the crowd, plucks Stephen’s sleeve
- vigorously.)_ Come now, professor, that carman is waiting.
- STEPHEN: _(Turns.)_ Eh? _(He disengages himself.)_ Why should I not
- speak to him or to any human being who walks upright upon this oblate
- orange? _(He points his finger.)_ I’m not afraid of what I can talk to
- if I see his eye. Retaining the perpendicular.
- _(He staggers a pace back.)_
- BLOOM: _(Propping him.)_ Retain your own.
- STEPHEN: _(Laughs emptily.)_ My centre of gravity is displaced. I have
- forgotten the trick. Let us sit down somewhere and discuss. Struggle
- for life is the law of existence but but human philirenists, notably
- the tsar and the king of England, have invented arbitration. _(He taps
- his brow.)_ But in here it is I must kill the priest and the king.
- BIDDY THE CLAP: Did you hear what the professor said? He’s a professor
- out of the college.
- CUNTY KATE: I did. I heard that.
- BIDDY THE CLAP: He expresses himself with such marked refinement of
- phraseology.
- CUNTY KATE: Indeed, yes. And at the same time with such apposite
- trenchancy.
- PRIVATE CARR: _(Pulls himself free and comes forward.)_ What’s that
- you’re saying about my king?
- _(Edward the Seventh appears in an archway. He wears a white jersey on
- which an image of the Sacred Heart is stitched with the insignia of
- Garter and Thistle, Golden Fleece, Elephant of Denmark, Skinner’s and
- Probyn’s horse, Lincoln’s Inn bencher and ancient and honourable
- artillery company of Massachusetts. He sucks a red jujube. He is robed
- as a grand elect perfect and sublime mason with trowel and apron,
- marked_ made in Germany. _In his left hand he holds a plasterer’s
- bucket on which is printed_ Défense d’uriner. _A roar of welcome greets
- him.)_
- EDWARD THE SEVENTH: _(Slowly, solemnly but indistinctly.)_ Peace,
- perfect peace. For identification, bucket in my hand. Cheerio, boys.
- _(He turns to his subjects.)_ We have come here to witness a clean
- straight fight and we heartily wish both men the best of good luck.
- Mahak makar a bak.
- _(He shakes hands with Private Carr, Private Compton, Stephen, Bloom
- and Lynch. General applause. Edward the Seventh lifts his bucket
- graciously in acknowledgment.)_
- PRIVATE CARR: _(To Stephen.)_ Say it again.
- STEPHEN: _(Nervous, friendly, pulls himself up.)_ I understand your
- point of view though I have no king myself for the moment. This is the
- age of patent medicines. A discussion is difficult down here. But this
- is the point. You die for your country. Suppose. _(He places his arm on
- Private Carr’s sleeve.)_ Not that I wish it for you. But I say: Let my
- country die for me. Up to the present it has done so. I didn’t want it
- to die. Damn death. Long live life!
- EDWARD THE SEVENTH: _(Levitates over heaps of slain, in the garb and
- with the halo of Joking Jesus, a white jujube in his phosphorescent
- face.)_
- My methods are new and are causing surprise.
- To make the blind see I throw dust in their eyes.
- STEPHEN: Kings and unicorns! _(He falls back a pace.)_ Come somewhere
- and we’ll... What was that girl saying?...
- PRIVATE COMPTON: Eh, Harry, give him a kick in the knackers. Stick one
- into Jerry.
- BLOOM: _(To the privates, softly.)_ He doesn’t know what he’s saying.
- Taken a little more than is good for him. Absinthe. Greeneyed monster.
- I know him. He’s a gentleman, a poet. It’s all right.
- STEPHEN: _(Nods, smiling and laughing.)_ Gentleman, patriot, scholar
- and judge of impostors.
- PRIVATE CARR: I don’t give a bugger who he is.
- PRIVATE COMPTON: We don’t give a bugger who he is.
- STEPHEN: I seem to annoy them. Green rag to a bull.
- _(Kevin Egan of Paris in black Spanish tasselled shirt and peep-o’-day
- boy’s hat signs to Stephen.)_
- KEVIN EGAN: H’lo! _Bonjour!_ The _vieille ogresse_ with the _dents
- jaunes_.
- _(Patrice Egan peeps from behind, his rabbitface nibbling a quince
- leaf.)_
- PATRICE: _Socialiste!_
- DON EMILE PATRIZIO FRANZ RUPERT POPE HENNESSY: _(In medieval hauberk,
- two wild geese volant on his helm, with noble indignation points a
- mailed hand against the privates.)_ Werf those eykes to footboden, big
- grand porcos of johnyellows todos covered of gravy!
- BLOOM: _(To Stephen.)_ Come home. You’ll get into trouble.
- STEPHEN: _(Swaying.)_ I don’t avoid it. He provokes my intelligence.
- BIDDY THE CLAP: One immediately observes that he is of patrician
- lineage.
- THE VIRAGO: Green above the red, says he. Wolfe Tone.
- THE BAWD: The red’s as good as the green. And better. Up the soldiers!
- Up King Edward!
- A ROUGH: _(Laughs.)_ Ay! Hands up to De Wet.
- THE CITIZEN: _(With a huge emerald muffler and shillelagh, calls.)_
- May the God above
- Send down a dove
- With teeth as sharp as razors
- To slit the throats
- Of the English dogs
- That hanged our Irish leaders.
- THE CROPPY BOY: _(The ropenoose round his neck, gripes in his issuing
- bowels with both hands.)_
- I bear no hate to a living thing,
- But I love my country beyond the king.
- RUMBOLD, DEMON BARBER: _(Accompanied by two blackmasked assistants,
- advances with gladstone bag which he opens.)_ Ladies and gents, cleaver
- purchased by Mrs Pearcy to slay Mogg. Knife with which Voisin
- dismembered the wife of a compatriot and hid remains in a sheet in the
- cellar, the unfortunate female’s throat being cut from ear to ear.
- Phial containing arsenic retrieved from body of Miss Barron which sent
- Seddon to the gallows.
- _(He jerks the rope. The assistants leap at the victim’s legs and drag
- him downward, grunting: the croppy boy’s tongue protrudes violently.)_
- THE CROPPY BOY:
- Horhot ho hray hor hother’s hest.
- _(He gives up the ghost. A violent erection of the hanged sends gouts
- of sperm spouting through his deathclothes on to the cobblestones. Mrs
- Bellingham, Mrs Yelverton Barry and the Honourable Mrs Mervyn Talboys
- rush forward with their handkerchiefs to sop it up.)_
- RUMBOLD: I’m near it myself. _(He undoes the noose.)_ Rope which hanged
- the awful rebel. Ten shillings a time. As applied to Her Royal
- Highness. _(He plunges his head into the gaping belly of the hanged and
- draws out his head again clotted with coiled and smoking entrails.)_ My
- painful duty has now been done. God save the king!
- EDWARD THE SEVENTH: _(Dances slowly, solemnly, rattling his bucket, and
- sings with soft contentment.)_
- On coronation day, on coronation day,
- O, won’t we have a merry time,
- Drinking whisky, beer and wine!
- PRIVATE CARR: Here. What are you saying about my king?
- STEPHEN: _(Throws up his hands.)_ O, this is too monotonous! Nothing.
- He wants my money and my life, though want must be his master, for some
- brutish empire of his. Money I haven’t. _(He searches his pockets
- vaguely.)_ Gave it to someone.
- PRIVATE CARR: Who wants your bleeding money?
- STEPHEN: _(Tries to move off.)_ Will someone tell me where I am least
- likely to meet these necessary evils? _Ça se voit aussi à Paris._ Not
- that I... But, by Saint Patrick...!
- _(The women’s heads coalesce. Old Gummy Granny in sugarloaf hat appears
- seated on a toadstool, the deathflower of the potato blight on her
- breast.)_
- STEPHEN: Aha! I know you, gammer! Hamlet, revenge! The old sow that
- eats her farrow!
- OLD GUMMY GRANNY: _(Rocking to and fro.)_ Ireland’s sweetheart, the
- king of Spain’s daughter, alanna. Strangers in my house, bad manners to
- them! _(She keens with banshee woe.)_ Ochone! Ochone! Silk of the kine!
- _(She wails.)_ You met with poor old Ireland and how does she stand?
- STEPHEN: How do I stand you? The hat trick! Where’s the third person of
- the Blessed Trinity? Soggarth Aroon? The reverend Carrion Crow.
- CISSY CAFFREY: _(Shrill.)_ Stop them from fighting!
- A ROUGH: Our men retreated.
- PRIVATE CARR: _(Tugging at his belt.)_ I’ll wring the neck of any
- fucker says a word against my fucking king.
- BLOOM: _(Terrified.)_ He said nothing. Not a word. A pure
- misunderstanding.
- THE CITIZEN: _Erin go bragh!_
- _(Major Tweedy and the Citizen exhibit to each other medals,
- decorations, trophies of war, wounds. Both salute with fierce
- hostility.)_
- PRIVATE COMPTON: Go it, Harry. Do him one in the eye. He’s a proboer.
- STEPHEN: Did I? When?
- BLOOM: _(To the redcoats.)_ We fought for you in South Africa, Irish
- missile troops. Isn’t that history? Royal Dublin Fusiliers. Honoured by
- our monarch.
- THE NAVVY: _(Staggering past.)_ O, yes! O God, yes! O, make the kwawr a
- krowawr! O! Bo!
- _(Casqued halberdiers in armour thrust forward a pentice of gutted
- spearpoints. Major Tweedy, moustached like Turko the terrible, in
- bearskin cap with hackleplume and accoutrements, with epaulettes, gilt
- chevrons and sabretaches, his breast bright with medals, toes the line.
- He gives the pilgrim warrior’s sign of the knights templars.)_
- MAJOR TWEEDY: _(Growls gruffly.)_ Rorke’s Drift! Up, guards, and at
- them! Mahar shalal hashbaz.
- PRIVATE CARR: I’ll do him in.
- PRIVATE COMPTON: _(Waves the crowd back.)_ Fair play, here. Make a
- bleeding butcher’s shop of the bugger.
- _(Massed bands blare_ Garryowen _and_ God save the King.)
- CISSY CAFFREY: They’re going to fight. For me!
- CUNTY KATE: The brave and the fair.
- BIDDY THE CLAP: Methinks yon sable knight will joust it with the best.
- CUNTY KATE: _(Blushing deeply.)_ Nay, madam. The gules doublet and
- merry saint George for me!
- STEPHEN:
- The harlot’s cry from street to street
- Shall weave Old Ireland’s windingsheet.
- PRIVATE CARR: _(Loosening his belt, shouts.)_ I’ll wring the neck of
- any fucking bastard says a word against my bleeding fucking king.
- BLOOM: _(Shakes Cissy Caffrey’s shoulders.)_ Speak, you! Are you struck
- dumb? You are the link between nations and generations. Speak, woman,
- sacred lifegiver!
- CISSY CAFFREY: _(Alarmed, seizes Private Carr’s sleeve.)_ Amn’t I with
- you? Amn’t I your girl? Cissy’s your girl. _(She cries.)_ Police!
- STEPHEN: _(Ecstatically, to Cissy Caffrey.)_
- White thy fambles, red thy gan
- And thy quarrons dainty is.
- VOICES: Police!
- DISTANT VOICES: Dublin’s burning! Dublin’s burning! On fire, on fire!
- _(Brimstone fires spring up. Dense clouds roll past. Heavy Gatling guns
- boom. Pandemonium. Troops deploy. Gallop of hoofs. Artillery. Hoarse
- commands. Bells clang. Backers shout. Drunkards bawl. Whores screech.
- Foghorns hoot. Cries of valour. Shrieks of dying. Pikes clash on
- cuirasses. Thieves rob the slain. Birds of prey, winging from the sea,
- rising from marshlands, swooping from eyries, hover screaming, gannets,
- cormorants, vultures, goshawks, climbing woodcocks, peregrines,
- merlins, blackgrouse, sea eagles, gulls, albatrosses, barnacle geese.
- The midnight sun is darkened. The earth trembles. The dead of Dublin
- from Prospect and Mount Jerome in white sheepskin overcoats and black
- goatfell cloaks arise and appear to many. A chasm opens with a
- noiseless yawn. Tom Rochford, winner, in athlete’s singlet and
- breeches, arrives at the head of the national hurdle handicap and leaps
- into the void. He is followed by a race of runners and leapers. In wild
- attitudes they spring from the brink. Their bodies plunge. Factory
- lasses with fancy clothes toss redhot Yorkshire baraabombs. Society
- ladies lift their skirts above their heads to protect themselves.
- Laughing witches in red cutty sarks ride through the air on
- broomsticks. Quakerlyster plasters blisters. It rains dragons’ teeth.
- Armed heroes spring up from furrows. They exchange in amity the pass of
- knights of the red cross and fight duels with cavalry sabres: Wolfe
- Tone against Henry Grattan, Smith O’Brien against Daniel O’Connell,
- Michael Davitt against Isaac Butt, Justin M’Carthy against Parnell,
- Arthur Griffith against John Redmond, John O’Leary against Lear
- O’Johnny, Lord Edward Fitzgerald against Lord Gerald Fitzedward, The
- O’Donoghue of the Glens against The Glens of The O’Donoghue. On an
- eminence, the centre of the earth, rises the fieldaltar of Saint
- Barbara. Black candles rise from its gospel and epistle horns. From the
- high barbacans of the tower two shafts of light fall on the smokepalled
- altarstone. On the altarstone Mrs Mina Purefoy, goddess of unreason,
- lies, naked, fettered, a chalice resting on her swollen belly. Father
- Malachi O’Flynn in a lace petticoat and reversed chasuble, his two left
- feet back to the front, celebrates camp mass. The Reverend Mr Hugh C
- Haines Love M. A. in a plain cassock and mortarboard, his head and
- collar back to the front, holds over the celebrant’s head an open
- umbrella.)_
- FATHER MALACHI O’FLYNN: _Introibo ad altare diaboli._
- THE REVEREND MR HAINES LOVE: To the devil which hath made glad my young
- days.
- FATHER MALACHI O’FLYNN: _(Takes from the chalice and elevates a
- blooddripping host.) Corpus meum._
- THE REVEREND MR HAINES LOVE: _(Raises high behind the celebrant’s
- petticoat, revealing his grey bare hairy buttocks between which a
- carrot is stuck.)_ My body.
- THE VOICE OF ALL THE DAMNED: Htengier Tnetopinmo Dog Drol eht rof,
- Aiulella!
- _(From on high the voice of Adonai calls.)_
- ADONAI: Dooooooooooog!
- THE VOICE OF ALL THE BLESSED: Alleluia, for the Lord God Omnipotent
- reigneth!
- _(From on high the voice of Adonai calls.)_
- ADONAI: Goooooooooood!
- _(In strident discord peasants and townsmen of Orange and Green
- factions sing_ Kick the Pope _and_ Daily, daily sing to Mary.)
- PRIVATE CARR: _(With ferocious articulation.)_ I’ll do him in, so help
- me fucking Christ! I’ll wring the bastard fucker’s bleeding blasted
- fucking windpipe!
- _(The retriever, nosing on the fringe of the crowd, barks noisily.)_
- OLD GUMMY GRANNY: _(Thrusts a dagger towards Stephen’s hand.)_ Remove
- him, acushla. At 8.35 a.m. you will be in heaven and Ireland will be
- free. _(She prays.)_ O good God, take him!
- BLOOM: _(Runs to Lynch.)_ Can’t you get him away?
- LYNCH: He likes dialectic, the universal language. Kitty! _(To Bloom.)_
- Get him away, you. He won’t listen to me.
- _(He drags Kitty away.)_
- STEPHEN: _(Points.) Exit Judas. Et laqueo se suspendit._
- BLOOM: _(Runs to Stephen.)_ Come along with me now before worse
- happens. Here’s your stick.
- STEPHEN: Stick, no. Reason. This feast of pure reason.
- CISSY CAFFREY: _(Pulling Private Carr.)_ Come on, you’re boosed. He
- insulted me but I forgive him. _(Shouting in his ear.)_ I forgive him
- for insulting me.
- BLOOM: _(Over Stephen’s shoulder.)_ Yes, go. You see he’s incapable.
- PRIVATE CARR: _(Breaks loose.)_ I’ll insult him.
- _(He rushes towards Stephen, fist outstretched, and strikes him in the
- face. Stephen totters, collapses, falls, stunned. He lies prone, his
- face to the sky, his hat rolling to the wall. Bloom follows and picks
- it up.)_
- MAJOR TWEEDY: _(Loudly.)_ Carbine in bucket! Cease fire! Salute!
- THE RETRIEVER: _(Barking furiously.)_ Ute ute ute ute ute ute ute ute.
- THE CROWD: Let him up! Don’t strike him when he’s down! Air! Who? The
- soldier hit him. He’s a professor. Is he hurted? Don’t manhandle him!
- He’s fainted!
- A HAG: What call had the redcoat to strike the gentleman and he under
- the influence. Let them go and fight the Boers!
- THE BAWD: Listen to who’s talking! Hasn’t the soldier a right to go
- with his girl? He gave him the coward’s blow.
- _(They grab at each other’s hair, claw at each other and spit.)_
- THE RETRIEVER: _(Barking.)_ Wow wow wow.
- BLOOM: _(Shoves them back, loudly.)_ Get back, stand back!
- PRIVATE COMPTON: _(Tugging his comrade.)_ Here. Bugger off, Harry.
- Here’s the cops! _(Two raincaped watch, tall, stand in the group.)_
- FIRST WATCH: What’s wrong here?
- PRIVATE COMPTON: We were with this lady. And he insulted us. And
- assaulted my chum. _(The retriever barks.)_ Who owns the bleeding tyke?
- CISSY CAFFREY: _(With expectation.)_ Is he bleeding!
- A MAN: _(Rising from his knees.)_ No. Gone off. He’ll come to all
- right.
- BLOOM: _(Glances sharply at the man.)_ Leave him to me. I can easily...
- SECOND WATCH: Who are you? Do you know him?
- PRIVATE CARR: _(Lurches towards the watch.)_ He insulted my lady
- friend.
- BLOOM: _(Angrily.)_ You hit him without provocation. I’m a witness.
- Constable, take his regimental number.
- SECOND WATCH: I don’t want your instructions in the discharge of my
- duty.
- PRIVATE COMPTON: _(Pulling his comrade.)_ Here, bugger off Harry. Or
- Bennett’ll shove you in the lockup.
- PRIVATE CARR: _(Staggering as he is pulled away.)_ God fuck old
- Bennett. He’s a whitearsed bugger. I don’t give a shit for him.
- FIRST WATCH: _(Takes out his notebook.)_ What’s his name?
- BLOOM: _(Peering over the crowd.)_ I just see a car there. If you give
- me a hand a second, sergeant...
- FIRST WATCH: Name and address.
- _(Corny Kelleher, weepers round his hat, a death wreath in his hand,
- appears among the bystanders.)_
- BLOOM: _(Quickly.)_ O, the very man! _(He whispers.)_ Simon Dedalus’
- son. A bit sprung. Get those policemen to move those loafers back.
- SECOND WATCH: Night, Mr Kelleher.
- CORNY KELLEHER: _(To the watch, with drawling eye.)_ That’s all right.
- I know him. Won a bit on the races. Gold cup. Throwaway. _(He laughs.)_
- Twenty to one. Do you follow me?
- FIRST WATCH: _(Turns to the crowd.)_ Here, what are you all gaping at?
- Move on out of that.
- _(The crowd disperses slowly, muttering, down the lane.)_
- CORNY KELLEHER: Leave it to me, sergeant. That’ll be all right. _(He
- laughs, shaking his head.)_ We were often as bad ourselves, ay or
- worse. What? Eh, what?
- FIRST WATCH: _(Laughs.)_ I suppose so.
- CORNY KELLEHER: _(Nudges the second watch.)_ Come and wipe your name
- off the slate. _(He lilts, wagging his head.)_ With my tooraloom
- tooraloom tooraloom tooraloom. What, eh, do you follow me?
- SECOND WATCH: _(Genially.)_ Ah, sure we were too.
- CORNY KELLEHER: _(Winking.)_ Boys will be boys. I’ve a car round there.
- SECOND WATCH: All right, Mr Kelleher. Good night.
- CORNY KELLEHER: I’ll see to that.
- BLOOM: _(Shakes hands with both of the watch in turn.)_ Thank you very
- much, gentlemen. Thank you. _(He mumbles confidentially.)_ We don’t
- want any scandal, you understand. Father is a wellknown highly
- respected citizen. Just a little wild oats, you understand.
- FIRST WATCH: O. I understand, sir.
- SECOND WATCH: That’s all right, sir.
- FIRST WATCH: It was only in case of corporal injuries I’d have to
- report it at the station.
- BLOOM: _(Nods rapidly.)_ Naturally. Quite right. Only your bounden
- duty.
- SECOND WATCH: It’s our duty.
- CORNY KELLEHER: Good night, men.
- THE WATCH: _(Saluting together.)_ Night, gentlemen. _(They move off
- with slow heavy tread.)_
- BLOOM: _(Blows.)_ Providential you came on the scene. You have a
- car?...
- CORNY KELLEHER: _(Laughs, pointing his thumb over his right shoulder to
- the car brought up against the scaffolding.)_ Two commercials that were
- standing fizz in Jammet’s. Like princes, faith. One of them lost two
- quid on the race. Drowning his grief. And were on for a go with the
- jolly girls. So I landed them up on Behan’s car and down to nighttown.
- BLOOM: I was just going home by Gardiner street when I happened to...
- CORNY KELLEHER: _(Laughs.)_ Sure they wanted me to join in with the
- mots. No, by God, says I. Not for old stagers like myself and yourself.
- _(He laughs again and leers with lacklustre eye.)_ Thanks be to God we
- have it in the house, what, eh, do you follow me? Hah, hah, hah!
- BLOOM: _(Tries to laugh.)_ He, he, he! Yes. Matter of fact I was just
- visiting an old friend of mine there, Virag, you don’t know him (poor
- fellow, he’s laid up for the past week) and we had a liquor together
- and I was just making my way home...
- _(The horse neighs.)_
- THE HORSE: Hohohohohohoh! Hohohohome!
- CORNY KELLEHER: Sure it was Behan our jarvey there that told me after
- we left the two commercials in Mrs Cohen’s and I told him to pull up
- and got off to see. _(He laughs.)_ Sober hearsedrivers a speciality.
- Will I give him a lift home? Where does he hang out? Somewhere in
- Cabra, what?
- BLOOM: No, in Sandycove, I believe, from what he let drop.
- _(Stephen, prone, breathes to the stars. Corny Kelleher, asquint,
- drawls at the horse. Bloom, in gloom, looms down.)_
- CORNY KELLEHER: _(Scratches his nape.)_ Sandycove! _(He bends down and
- calls to Stephen.)_ Eh! _(He calls again.)_ Eh! He’s covered with
- shavings anyhow. Take care they didn’t lift anything off him.
- BLOOM: No, no, no. I have his money and his hat here and stick.
- CORNY KELLEHER: Ah, well, he’ll get over it. No bones broken. Well,
- I’ll shove along. _(He laughs.)_ I’ve a rendezvous in the morning.
- Burying the dead. Safe home!
- THE HORSE: _(Neighs.)_ Hohohohohome.
- BLOOM: Good night. I’ll just wait and take him along in a few...
- _(Corny Kelleher returns to the outside car and mounts it. The horse
- harness jingles.)_
- CORNY KELLEHER: _(From the car, standing.)_ Night.
- BLOOM: Night.
- _(The jarvey chucks the reins and raises his whip encouragingly. The
- car and horse back slowly, awkwardly, and turn. Corny Kelleher on the
- sideseat sways his head to and fro in sign of mirth at Bloom’s plight.
- The jarvey joins in the mute pantomimic merriment nodding from the
- farther seat. Bloom shakes his head in mute mirthful reply. With thumb
- and palm Corny Kelleher reassures that the two bobbies will allow the
- sleep to continue for what else is to be done. With a slow nod Bloom
- conveys his gratitude as that is exactly what Stephen needs. The car
- jingles tooraloom round the corner of the tooraloom lane. Corny
- Kelleher again reassuralooms with his hand. Bloom with his hand
- assuralooms Corny Kelleher that he is reassuraloomtay. The tinkling
- hoofs and jingling harness grow fainter with their tooralooloo looloo
- lay. Bloom, holding in his hand Stephen’s hat, festooned with shavings,
- and ashplant, stands irresolute. Then he bends to him and shakes him by
- the shoulder.)_
- BLOOM: Eh! Ho! _(There is no answer; he bends again.)_ Mr Dedalus!
- _(There is no answer.)_ The name if you call. Somnambulist. _(He bends
- again and, hesitating, brings his mouth near the face of the prostrate
- form.)_ Stephen! _(There is no answer. He calls again.)_ Stephen!
- STEPHEN: _(Groans.)_ Who? Black panther. Vampire. _(He sighs and
- stretches himself, then murmurs thickly with prolonged vowels.)_
- Who... drive... Fergus now
- And pierce... wood’s woven shade?...
- _(He turns on his left side, sighing, doubling himself together.)_
- BLOOM: Poetry. Well educated. Pity. _(He bends again and undoes the
- buttons of Stephen’s waistcoat.)_ To breathe. _(He brushes the
- woodshavings from Stephen’s clothes with light hand and fingers.)_ One
- pound seven. Not hurt anyhow. _(He listens.)_ What?
- STEPHEN: _(Murmurs.)_
- ... shadows... the woods
- ... white breast... dim sea.
- _(He stretches out his arms, sighs again and curls his body. Bloom,
- holding the hat and ashplant, stands erect. A dog barks in the
- distance. Bloom tightens and loosens his grip on the ashplant. He looks
- down on Stephen’s face and form.)_
- BLOOM: _(Communes with the night.)_ Face reminds me of his poor mother.
- In the shady wood. The deep white breast. Ferguson, I think I caught. A
- girl. Some girl. Best thing could happen him. _(He murmurs.)_... swear
- that I will always hail, ever conceal, never reveal, any part or parts,
- art or arts... _(He murmurs.)_... in the rough sands of the sea... a
- cabletow’s length from the shore... where the tide ebbs... and flows
- ...
- _(Silent, thoughtful, alert he stands on guard, his fingers at his lips
- in the attitude of secret master. Against the dark wall a figure
- appears slowly, a fairy boy of eleven, a changeling, kidnapped, dressed
- in an Eton suit with glass shoes and a little bronze helmet, holding a
- book in his hand. He reads from right to left inaudibly, smiling,
- kissing the page.)_
- BLOOM: _(Wonderstruck, calls inaudibly.)_ Rudy!
- RUDY: _(Gazes, unseeing, into Bloom’s eyes and goes on reading,
- kissing, smiling. He has a delicate mauve face. On his suit he has
- diamond and ruby buttons. In his free left hand he holds a slim ivory
- cane with a violet bowknot. A white lambkin peeps out of his waistcoat
- pocket.)_
- — III —
- [ 16 ]
- Preparatory to anything else Mr Bloom brushed off the greater bulk of
- the shavings and handed Stephen the hat and ashplant and bucked him up
- generally in orthodox Samaritan fashion which he very badly needed. His
- (Stephen’s) mind was not exactly what you would call wandering but a
- bit unsteady and on his expressed desire for some beverage to drink Mr
- Bloom in view of the hour it was and there being no pump of Vartry
- water available for their ablutions let alone drinking purposes hit
- upon an expedient by suggesting, off the reel, the propriety of the
- cabman’s shelter, as it was called, hardly a stonesthrow away near Butt
- bridge where they might hit upon some drinkables in the shape of a milk
- and soda or a mineral. But how to get there was the rub. For the nonce
- he was rather nonplussed but inasmuch as the duty plainly devolved upon
- him to take some measures on the subject he pondered suitable ways and
- means during which Stephen repeatedly yawned. So far as he could see he
- was rather pale in the face so that it occurred to him as highly
- advisable to get a conveyance of some description which would answer in
- their then condition, both of them being e.d.ed, particularly Stephen,
- always assuming that there was such a thing to be found. Accordingly
- after a few such preliminaries as brushing, in spite of his having
- forgotten to take up his rather soapsuddy handkerchief after it had
- done yeoman service in the shaving line, they both walked together
- along Beaver street or, more properly, lane as far as the farrier’s and
- the distinctly fetid atmosphere of the livery stables at the corner of
- Montgomery street where they made tracks to the left from thence
- debouching into Amiens street round by the corner of Dan Bergin’s. But
- as he confidently anticipated there was not a sign of a Jehu plying for
- hire anywhere to be seen except a fourwheeler, probably engaged by some
- fellows inside on the spree, outside the North Star hotel and there was
- no symptom of its budging a quarter of an inch when Mr Bloom, who was
- anything but a professional whistler, endeavoured to hail it by
- emitting a kind of a whistle, holding his arms arched over his head,
- twice.
- This was a quandary but, bringing common sense to bear on it, evidently
- there was nothing for it but put a good face on the matter and foot it
- which they accordingly did. So, bevelling around by Mullett’s and the
- Signal House which they shortly reached, they proceeded perforce in the
- direction of Amiens street railway terminus, Mr Bloom being handicapped
- by the circumstance that one of the back buttons of his trousers had,
- to vary the timehonoured adage, gone the way of all buttons though,
- entering thoroughly into the spirit of the thing, he heroically made
- light of the mischance. So as neither of them were particularly pressed
- for time, as it happened, and the temperature refreshing since it
- cleared up after the recent visitation of Jupiter Pluvius, they
- dandered along past by where the empty vehicle was waiting without a
- fare or a jarvey. As it so happened a Dublin United Tramways Company’s
- sandstrewer happened to be returning and the elder man recounted to his
- companion _à propos_ of the incident his own truly miraculous escape of
- some little while back. They passed the main entrance of the Great
- Northern railway station, the starting point for Belfast, where of
- course all traffic was suspended at that late hour and passing the
- backdoor of the morgue (a not very enticing locality, not to say
- gruesome to a degree, more especially at night) ultimately gained the
- Dock Tavern and in due course turned into Store street, famous for its
- C division police station. Between this point and the high at present
- unlit warehouses of Beresford place Stephen thought to think of Ibsen,
- associated with Baird’s the stonecutter’s in his mind somehow in Talbot
- place, first turning on the right, while the other who was acting as
- his _fidus Achates_ inhaled with internal satisfaction the smell of
- James Rourke’s city bakery, situated quite close to where they were,
- the very palatable odour indeed of our daily bread, of all commodities
- of the public the primary and most indispensable. Bread, the staff of
- life, earn your bread, O tell me where is fancy bread, at Rourke’s the
- baker’s it is said.
- _En route_ to his taciturn and, not to put too fine a point on it, not
- yet perfectly sober companion Mr Bloom who at all events was in
- complete possession of his faculties, never more so, in fact
- disgustingly sober, spoke a word of caution _re_ the dangers of
- nighttown, women of ill fame and swell mobsmen, which, barely
- permissible once in a while though not as a habitual practice, was of
- the nature of a regular deathtrap for young fellows of his age
- particularly if they had acquired drinking habits under the influence
- of liquor unless you knew a little jiujitsu for every contingency as
- even a fellow on the broad of his back could administer a nasty kick if
- you didn’t look out. Highly providential was the appearance on the
- scene of Corny Kelleher when Stephen was blissfully unconscious but for
- that man in the gap turning up at the eleventh hour the finis might
- have been that he might have been a candidate for the accident ward or,
- failing that, the bridewell and an appearance in the court next day
- before Mr Tobias or, he being the solicitor rather, old Wall, he meant
- to say, or Mahony which simply spelt ruin for a chap when it got
- bruited about. The reason he mentioned the fact was that a lot of those
- policemen, whom he cordially disliked, were admittedly unscrupulous in
- the service of the Crown and, as Mr Bloom put it, recalling a case or
- two in the A division in Clanbrassil street, prepared to swear a hole
- through a ten gallon pot. Never on the spot when wanted but in quiet
- parts of the city, Pembroke road for example, the guardians of the law
- were well in evidence, the obvious reason being they were paid to
- protect the upper classes. Another thing he commented on was equipping
- soldiers with firearms or sidearms of any description liable to go off
- at any time which was tantamount to inciting them against civilians
- should by any chance they fall out over anything. You frittered away
- your time, he very sensibly maintained, and health and also character
- besides which, the squandermania of the thing, fast women of the
- _demimonde_ ran away with a lot of £. s. d. into the bargain and the
- greatest danger of all was who you got drunk with though, touching the
- much vexed question of stimulants, he relished a glass of choice old
- wine in season as both nourishing and bloodmaking and possessing
- aperient virtues (notably a good burgundy which he was a staunch
- believer in) still never beyond a certain point where he invariably
- drew the line as it simply led to trouble all round to say nothing of
- your being at the tender mercy of others practically. Most of all he
- commented adversely on the desertion of Stephen by all his pubhunting
- _confrères_ but one, a most glaring piece of ratting on the part of his
- brother medicos under all the circs.
- —And that one was Judas, Stephen said, who up to then had said nothing
- whatsoever of any kind.
- Discussing these and kindred topics they made a beeline across the back
- of the Customhouse and passed under the Loop Line bridge where a
- brazier of coke burning in front of a sentrybox or something like one
- attracted their rather lagging footsteps. Stephen of his own accord
- stopped for no special reason to look at the heap of barren
- cobblestones and by the light emanating from the brazier he could just
- make out the darker figure of the corporation watchman inside the gloom
- of the sentrybox. He began to remember that this had happened or had
- been mentioned as having happened before but it cost him no small
- effort before he remembered that he recognised in the sentry a
- _quondam_ friend of his father’s, Gumley. To avoid a meeting he drew
- nearer to the pillars of the railway bridge.
- —Someone saluted you, Mr Bloom said.
- A figure of middle height on the prowl evidently under the arches
- saluted again, calling:
- —Night!
- Stephen of course started rather dizzily and stopped to return the
- compliment. Mr Bloom actuated by motives of inherent delicacy inasmuch
- as he always believed in minding his own business moved off but
- nevertheless remained on the _qui vive_ with just a shade of anxiety
- though not funkyish in the least. Though unusual in the Dublin area he
- knew that it was not by any means unknown for desperadoes who had next
- to nothing to live on to be abroad waylaying and generally terrorising
- peaceable pedestrians by placing a pistol at their head in some
- secluded spot outside the city proper, famished loiterers of the Thames
- embankment category they might be hanging about there or simply
- marauders ready to decamp with whatever boodle they could in one fell
- swoop at a moment’s notice, your money or your life, leaving you there
- to point a moral, gagged and garrotted.
- Stephen, that is when the accosting figure came to close quarters,
- though he was not in an over sober state himself recognised Corley’s
- breath redolent of rotten cornjuice. Lord John Corley some called him
- and his genealogy came about in this wise. He was the eldest son of
- inspector Corley of the G division, lately deceased, who had married a
- certain Katherine Brophy, the daughter of a Louth farmer. His
- grandfather Patrick Michael Corley of New Ross had married the widow of
- a publican there whose maiden name had been Katherine (also) Talbot.
- Rumour had it (though not proved) that she descended from the house of
- the lords Talbot de Malahide in whose mansion, really an unquestionably
- fine residence of its kind and well worth seeing, her mother or aunt or
- some relative, a woman, as the tale went, of extreme beauty, had
- enjoyed the distinction of being in service in the washkitchen. This
- therefore was the reason why the still comparatively young though
- dissolute man who now addressed Stephen was spoken of by some with
- facetious proclivities as Lord John Corley.
- Taking Stephen on one side he had the customary doleful ditty to tell.
- Not as much as a farthing to purchase a night’s lodgings. His friends
- had all deserted him. Furthermore he had a row with Lenehan and called
- him to Stephen a mean bloody swab with a sprinkling of a number of
- other uncalledfor expressions. He was out of a job and implored of
- Stephen to tell him where on God’s earth he could get something,
- anything at all, to do. No, it was the daughter of the mother in the
- washkitchen that was fostersister to the heir of the house or else they
- were connected through the mother in some way, both occurrences
- happening at the same time if the whole thing wasn’t a complete
- fabrication from start to finish. Anyhow he was all in.
- —I wouldn’t ask you only, pursued he, on my solemn oath and God knows
- I’m on the rocks.
- —There’ll be a job tomorrow or next day, Stephen told him, in a boys’
- school at Dalkey for a gentleman usher. Mr Garrett Deasy. Try it. You
- may mention my name.
- —Ah, God, Corley replied, sure I couldn’t teach in a school, man. I was
- never one of your bright ones, he added with a half laugh. I got stuck
- twice in the junior at the christian brothers.
- —I have no place to sleep myself, Stephen informed him.
- Corley at the first go-off was inclined to suspect it was something to
- do with Stephen being fired out of his digs for bringing in a bloody
- tart off the street. There was a dosshouse in Marlborough street, Mrs
- Maloney’s, but it was only a tanner touch and full of undesirables but
- M’Conachie told him you got a decent enough do in the Brazen Head over
- in Winetavern street (which was distantly suggestive to the person
- addressed of friar Bacon) for a bob. He was starving too though he
- hadn’t said a word about it.
- Though this sort of thing went on every other night or very near it
- still Stephen’s feelings got the better of him in a sense though he
- knew that Corley’s brandnew rigmarole on a par with the others was
- hardly deserving of much credence. However _haud ignarus malorum
- miseris succurrere disco etcetera_ as the Latin poet remarks especially
- as luck would have it he got paid his screw after every middle of the
- month on the sixteenth which was the date of the month as a matter of
- fact though a good bit of the wherewithal was demolished. But the cream
- of the joke was nothing would get it out of Corley’s head that he was
- living in affluence and hadn’t a thing to do but hand out the needful.
- Whereas. He put his hand in a pocket anyhow not with the idea of
- finding any food there but thinking he might lend him anything up to a
- bob or so in lieu so that he might endeavour at all events and get
- sufficient to eat but the result was in the negative for, to his
- chagrin, he found his cash missing. A few broken biscuits were all the
- result of his investigation. He tried his hardest to recollect for the
- moment whether he had lost as well he might have or left because in
- that contingency it was not a pleasant lookout, very much the reverse
- in fact. He was altogether too fagged out to institute a thorough
- search though he tried to recollect. About biscuits he dimly
- remembered. Who now exactly gave them he wondered or where was or did
- he buy. However in another pocket he came across what he surmised in
- the dark were pennies, erroneously however, as it turned out.
- —Those are halfcrowns, man, Corley corrected him.
- And so in point of fact they turned out to be. Stephen anyhow lent him
- one of them.
- —Thanks, Corley answered, you’re a gentleman. I’ll pay you back one
- time. Who’s that with you? I saw him a few times in the Bleeding Horse
- in Camden street with Boylan, the billsticker. You might put in a good
- word for us to get me taken on there. I’d carry a sandwichboard only
- the girl in the office told me they’re full up for the next three
- weeks, man. God, you’ve to book ahead, man, you’d think it was for the
- Carl Rosa. I don’t give a shite anyway so long as I get a job, even as
- a crossing sweeper.
- Subsequently being not quite so down in the mouth after the two and six
- he got he informed Stephen about a fellow by the name of Bags Comisky
- that he said Stephen knew well out of Fullam’s, the shipchandler’s,
- bookkeeper there that used to be often round in Nagle’s back with
- O’Mara and a little chap with a stutter the name of Tighe. Anyhow he
- was lagged the night before last and fined ten bob for a drunk and
- disorderly and refusing to go with the constable.
- Mr Bloom in the meanwhile kept dodging about in the vicinity of the
- cobblestones near the brazier of coke in front of the corporation
- watchman’s sentrybox who evidently a glutton for work, it struck him,
- was having a quiet forty winks for all intents and purposes on his own
- private account while Dublin slept. He threw an odd eye at the same
- time now and then at Stephen’s anything but immaculately attired
- interlocutor as if he had seen that nobleman somewhere or other though
- where he was not in a position to truthfully state nor had he the
- remotest idea when. Being a levelheaded individual who could give
- points to not a few in point of shrewd observation he also remarked on
- his very dilapidated hat and slouchy wearing apparel generally
- testifying to a chronic impecuniosity. Palpably he was one of his
- hangerson but for the matter of that it was merely a question of one
- preying on his nextdoor neighbour all round, in every deep, so to put
- it, a deeper depth and for the matter of that if the man in the street
- chanced to be in the dock himself penal servitude with or without the
- option of a fine would be a very _rara avis_ altogether. In any case he
- had a consummate amount of cool assurance intercepting people at that
- hour of the night or morning. Pretty thick that was certainly.
- The pair parted company and Stephen rejoined Mr Bloom who, with his
- practised eye, was not without perceiving that he had succumbed to the
- blandiloquence of the other parasite. Alluding to the encounter he
- said, laughingly, Stephen, that is:
- —He is down on his luck. He asked me to ask you to ask somebody named
- Boylan, a billsticker, to give him a job as a sandwichman.
- At this intelligence, in which he seemingly evinced little interest, Mr
- Bloom gazed abstractedly for the space of a half a second or so in the
- direction of a bucketdredger, rejoicing in the farfamed name of Eblana,
- moored alongside Customhouse quay and quite possibly out of repair,
- whereupon he observed evasively:
- —Everybody gets their own ration of luck, they say. Now you mention it
- his face was familiar to me. But, leaving that for the moment, how much
- did you part with, he queried, if I am not too inquisitive?
- —Half a crown, Stephen responded. I daresay he needs it to sleep
- somewhere.
- —Needs! Mr Bloom ejaculated, professing not the least surprise at the
- intelligence, I can quite credit the assertion and I guarantee he
- invariably does. Everyone according to his needs or everyone according
- to his deeds. But, talking about things in general, where, added he
- with a smile, will you sleep yourself? Walking to Sandycove is out of
- the question. And even supposing you did you won’t get in after what
- occurred at Westland Row station. Simply fag out there for nothing. I
- don’t mean to presume to dictate to you in the slightest degree but why
- did you leave your father’s house?
- —To seek misfortune, was Stephen’s answer.
- —I met your respected father on a recent occasion, Mr Bloom
- diplomatically returned, today in fact, or to be strictly accurate, on
- yesterday. Where does he live at present? I gathered in the course of
- conversation that he had moved.
- —I believe he is in Dublin somewhere, Stephen answered unconcernedly.
- Why?
- —A gifted man, Mr Bloom said of Mr Dedalus senior, in more respects
- than one and a born _raconteur_ if ever there was one. He takes great
- pride, quite legitimate, out of you. You could go back perhaps, he
- hasarded, still thinking of the very unpleasant scene at Westland Row
- terminus when it was perfectly evident that the other two, Mulligan,
- that is, and that English tourist friend of his, who eventually euchred
- their third companion, were patently trying as if the whole bally
- station belonged to them to give Stephen the slip in the confusion,
- which they did.
- There was no response forthcoming to the suggestion however, such as it
- was, Stephen’s mind’s eye being too busily engaged in repicturing his
- family hearth the last time he saw it with his sister Dilly sitting by
- the ingle, her hair hanging down, waiting for some weak Trinidad shell
- cocoa that was in the sootcoated kettle to be done so that she and he
- could drink it with the oatmealwater for milk after the Friday herrings
- they had eaten at two a penny with an egg apiece for Maggy, Boody and
- Katey, the cat meanwhile under the mangle devouring a mess of eggshells
- and charred fish heads and bones on a square of brown paper, in
- accordance with the third precept of the church to fast and abstain on
- the days commanded, it being quarter tense or if not, ember days or
- something like that.
- —No, Mr Bloom repeated again, I wouldn’t personally repose much trust
- in that boon companion of yours who contributes the humorous element,
- Dr Mulligan, as a guide, philosopher and friend if I were in your
- shoes. He knows which side his bread is buttered on though in all
- probability he never realised what it is to be without regular meals.
- Of course you didn’t notice as much as I did. But it wouldn’t occasion
- me the least surprise to learn that a pinch of tobacco or some narcotic
- was put in your drink for some ulterior object.
- He understood however from all he heard that Dr Mulligan was a
- versatile allround man, by no means confined to medicine only, who was
- rapidly coming to the fore in his line and, if the report was verified,
- bade fair to enjoy a flourishing practice in the not too distant future
- as a tony medical practitioner drawing a handsome fee for his services
- in addition to which professional status his rescue of that man from
- certain drowning by artificial respiration and what they call first aid
- at Skerries, or Malahide was it?, was, he was bound to admit, an
- exceedingly plucky deed which he could not too highly praise, so that
- frankly he was utterly at a loss to fathom what earthly reason could be
- at the back of it except he put it down to sheer cussedness or
- jealousy, pure and simple.
- —Except it simply amounts to one thing and he is what they call picking
- your brains, he ventured to throw out.
- The guarded glance of half solicitude half curiosity augmented by
- friendliness which he gave at Stephen’s at present morose expression of
- features did not throw a flood of light, none at all in fact on the
- problem as to whether he had let himself be badly bamboozled to judge
- by two or three lowspirited remarks he let drop or the other way about
- saw through the affair and for some reason or other best known to
- himself allowed matters to more or less. Grinding poverty did have that
- effect and he more than conjectured that, high educational abilities
- though he possessed, he experienced no little difficulty in making both
- ends meet.
- Adjacent to the men’s public urinal they perceived an icecream car
- round which a group of presumably Italians in heated altercation were
- getting rid of voluble expressions in their vivacious language in a
- particularly animated way, there being some little differences between
- the parties.
- —_Puttana madonna, che ci dia i quattrini! Ho ragione? Culo rotto!_
- _—Intendiamoci. Mezzo sovrano più..._
- _—Dice lui, però!_
- _—Mezzo._
- _—Farabutto! Mortacci sui!_
- _—Ma ascolta! Cinque la testa più..._
- Mr Bloom and Stephen entered the cabman’s shelter, an unpretentious
- wooden structure, where, prior to then, he had rarely if ever been
- before, the former having previously whispered to the latter a few
- hints anent the keeper of it said to be the once famous Skin-the-Goat
- Fitzharris, the invincible, though he could not vouch for the actual
- facts which quite possibly there was not one vestige of truth in. A few
- moments later saw our two noctambules safely seated in a discreet
- corner only to be greeted by stares from the decidedly miscellaneous
- collection of waifs and strays and other nondescript specimens of the
- genus _homo_ already there engaged in eating and drinking diversified
- by conversation for whom they seemingly formed an object of marked
- curiosity.
- —Now touching a cup of coffee, Mr Bloom ventured to plausibly suggest
- to break the ice, it occurs to me you ought to sample something in the
- shape of solid food, say, a roll of some description.
- Accordingly his first act was with characteristic _sangfroid_ to order
- these commodities quietly. The _hoi polloi_ of jarvies or stevedores or
- whatever they were after a cursory examination turned their eyes
- apparently dissatisfied, away though one redbearded bibulous
- individual, portion of whose hair was greyish, a sailor probably, still
- stared for some appreciable time before transferring his rapt attention
- to the floor. Mr Bloom, availing himself of the right of free speech,
- he having just a bowing acquaintance with the language in dispute,
- though, to be sure, rather in a quandary over _voglio_, remarked to his
- _protégé_ in an audible tone of voice _à propos_ of the battle royal in
- the street which was still raging fast and furious:
- —A beautiful language. I mean for singing purposes. Why do you not
- write your poetry in that language? _Bella Poetria_! It is so melodious
- and full. _Belladonna. Voglio._
- Stephen, who was trying his dead best to yawn if he could, suffering
- from lassitude generally, replied:
- —To fill the ear of a cow elephant. They were haggling over money.
- —Is that so? Mr Bloom asked. Of course, he subjoined pensively, at the
- inward reflection of there being more languages to start with than were
- absolutely necessary, it may be only the southern glamour that
- surrounds it.
- The keeper of the shelter in the middle of this _tête-à-tête_ put a
- boiling swimming cup of a choice concoction labelled coffee on the
- table and a rather antediluvian specimen of a bun, or so it seemed.
- After which he beat a retreat to his counter, Mr Bloom determining to
- have a good square look at him later on so as not to appear to. For
- which reason he encouraged Stephen to proceed with his eyes while he
- did the honours by surreptitiously pushing the cup of what was
- temporarily supposed to be called coffee gradually nearer him.
- —Sounds are impostures, Stephen said after a pause of some little time,
- like names. Cicero, Podmore, Napoleon, Mr Goodbody. Jesus, Mr Doyle.
- Shakespeares were as common as Murphies. What’s in a name?
- —Yes, to be sure, Mr Bloom unaffectedly concurred. Of course. Our name
- was changed too, he added, pushing the socalled roll across.
- The redbearded sailor who had his weather eye on the newcomers boarded
- Stephen, whom he had singled out for attention in particular, squarely
- by asking:
- —And what might your name be?
- Just in the nick of time Mr Bloom touched his companion’s boot but
- Stephen, apparently disregarding the warm pressure from an unexpected
- quarter, answered:
- —Dedalus.
- The sailor stared at him heavily from a pair of drowsy baggy eyes,
- rather bunged up from excessive use of boose, preferably good old
- Hollands and water.
- —You know Simon Dedalus? he asked at length.
- —I’ve heard of him, Stephen said.
- Mr Bloom was all at sea for a moment, seeing the others evidently
- eavesdropping too.
- —He’s Irish, the seaman bold affirmed, staring still in much the same
- way and nodding. All Irish.
- —All too Irish, Stephen rejoined.
- As for Mr Bloom he could neither make head or tail of the whole
- business and he was just asking himself what possible connection when
- the sailor of his own accord turned to the other occupants of the
- shelter with the remark:
- —I seen him shoot two eggs off two bottles at fifty yards over his
- shoulder. The lefthand dead shot.
- Though he was slightly hampered by an occasional stammer and his
- gestures being also clumsy as it was still he did his best to explain.
- —Bottles out there, say. Fifty yards measured. Eggs on the bottles.
- Cocks his gun over his shoulder. Aims.
- He turned his body half round, shut up his right eye completely. Then
- he screwed his features up someway sideways and glared out into the
- night with an unprepossessing cast of countenance.
- —Pom! he then shouted once.
- The entire audience waited, anticipating an additional detonation,
- there being still a further egg.
- —Pom! he shouted twice.
- Egg two evidently demolished, he nodded and winked, adding
- bloodthirstily:
- _—Buffalo Bill shoots to kill,
- Never missed nor he never will._
- A silence ensued till Mr Bloom for agreeableness’ sake just felt like
- asking him whether it was for a marksmanship competition like the
- Bisley.
- —Beg pardon, the sailor said.
- —Long ago? Mr Bloom pursued without flinching a hairsbreadth.
- —Why, the sailor replied, relaxing to a certain extent under the magic
- influence of diamond cut diamond, it might be a matter of ten years. He
- toured the wide world with Hengler’s Royal Circus. I seen him do that
- in Stockholm.
- —Curious coincidence, Mr Bloom confided to Stephen unobtrusively.
- —Murphy’s my name, the sailor continued. D. B. Murphy of Carrigaloe.
- Know where that is?
- —Queenstown harbour, Stephen replied.
- —That’s right, the sailor said. Fort Camden and Fort Carlisle. That’s
- where I hails from. I belongs there. That’s where I hails from. My
- little woman’s down there. She’s waiting for me, I know. _For England,
- home and beauty_. She’s my own true wife I haven’t seen for seven years
- now, sailing about.
- Mr Bloom could easily picture his advent on this scene, the homecoming
- to the mariner’s roadside shieling after having diddled Davy Jones, a
- rainy night with a blind moon. Across the world for a wife. Quite a
- number of stories there were on that particular Alice Ben Bolt topic,
- Enoch Arden and Rip van Winkle and does anybody hereabouts remember
- Caoc O’Leary, a favourite and most trying declamation piece by the way
- of poor John Casey and a bit of perfect poetry in its own small way.
- Never about the runaway wife coming back, however much devoted to the
- absentee. The face at the window! Judge of his astonishment when he
- finally did breast the tape and the awful truth dawned upon him anent
- his better half, wrecked in his affections. You little expected me but
- I’ve come to stay and make a fresh start. There she sits, a grasswidow,
- at the selfsame fireside. Believes me dead, rocked in the cradle of the
- deep. And there sits uncle Chubb or Tomkin, as the case might be, the
- publican of the Crown and Anchor, in shirtsleeves, eating rumpsteak and
- onions. No chair for father. Broo! The wind! Her brandnew arrival is on
- her knee, _post mortem_ child. With a high ro! and a randy ro! and my
- galloping tearing tandy, O! Bow to the inevitable. Grin and bear it. I
- remain with much love your brokenhearted husband W. B. Murphy.
- The sailor, who scarcely seemed to be a Dublin resident, turned to one
- of the jarvies with the request:
- —You don’t happen to have such a thing as a spare chaw about you?
- The jarvey addressed as it happened had not but the keeper took a die
- of plug from his good jacket hanging on a nail and the desired object
- was passed from hand to hand.
- —Thank you, the sailor said.
- He deposited the quid in his gob and, chewing and with some slow
- stammers, proceeded:
- —We come up this morning eleven o’clock. The threemaster _Rosevean_
- from Bridgwater with bricks. I shipped to get over. Paid off this
- afternoon. There’s my discharge. See? D. B. Murphy. A. B. S.
- In confirmation of which statement he extricated from an inside pocket
- and handed to his neighbour a not very cleanlooking folded document.
- —You must have seen a fair share of the world, the keeper remarked,
- leaning on the counter.
- —Why, the sailor answered upon reflection upon it, I’ve circumnavigated
- a bit since I first joined on. I was in the Red Sea. I was in China and
- North America and South America. We was chased by pirates one voyage. I
- seen icebergs plenty, growlers. I was in Stockholm and the Black Sea,
- the Dardanelles under Captain Dalton, the best bloody man that ever
- scuttled a ship. I seen Russia. _Gospodi pomilyou_. That’s how the
- Russians prays.
- —You seen queer sights, don’t be talking, put in a jarvey.
- —Why, the sailor said, shifting his partially chewed plug. I seen queer
- things too, ups and downs. I seen a crocodile bite the fluke of an
- anchor same as I chew that quid.
- He took out of his mouth the pulpy quid and, lodging it between his
- teeth, bit ferociously:
- —Khaan! Like that. And I seen maneaters in Peru that eats corpses and
- the livers of horses. Look here. Here they are. A friend of mine sent
- me.
- He fumbled out a picture postcard from his inside pocket which seemed
- to be in its way a species of repository and pushed it along the table.
- The printed matter on it stated: _Choza de Indios. Beni, Bolivia._
- All focussed their attention at the scene exhibited, a group of savage
- women in striped loincloths, squatted, blinking, suckling, frowning,
- sleeping amid a swarm of infants (there must have been quite a score of
- them) outside some primitive shanties of osier.
- —Chews coca all day, the communicative tarpaulin added. Stomachs like
- breadgraters. Cuts off their diddies when they can’t bear no more
- children.
- See them sitting there stark ballocknaked eating a dead horse’s liver
- raw.
- His postcard proved a centre of attraction for Messrs the greenhorns
- for several minutes if not more.
- —Know how to keep them off? he inquired generally.
- Nobody volunteering a statement he winked, saying:
- —Glass. That boggles ’em. Glass.
- Mr Bloom, without evincing surprise, unostentatiously turned over the
- card to peruse the partially obliterated address and postmark. It ran
- as follows: _Tarjeta Postal, Señor A Boudin, Galeria Becche, Santiago,
- Chile._ There was no message evidently, as he took particular notice.
- Though not an implicit believer in the lurid story narrated (or the
- eggsniping transaction for that matter despite William Tell and the
- Lazarillo-Don Cesar de Bazan incident depicted in _Maritana_ on which
- occasion the former’s ball passed through the latter’s hat) having
- detected a discrepancy between his name (assuming he was the person he
- represented himself to be and not sailing under false colours after
- having boxed the compass on the strict q.t. somewhere) and the
- fictitious addressee of the missive which made him nourish some
- suspicions of our friend’s _bona fides_ nevertheless it reminded him in
- a way of a longcherished plan he meant to one day realise some
- Wednesday or Saturday of travelling to London _via_ long sea not to say
- that he had ever travelled extensively to any great extent but he was
- at heart a born adventurer though by a trick of fate he had
- consistently remained a landlubber except you call going to Holyhead
- which was his longest. Martin Cunningham frequently said he would work
- a pass through Egan but some deuced hitch or other eternally cropped up
- with the net result that the scheme fell through. But even suppose it
- did come to planking down the needful and breaking Boyd’s heart it was
- not so dear, purse permitting, a few guineas at the outside considering
- the fare to Mullingar where he figured on going was five and six, there
- and back. The trip would benefit health on account of the bracing ozone
- and be in every way thoroughly pleasurable, especially for a chap whose
- liver was out of order, seeing the different places along the route,
- Plymouth, Falmouth, Southampton and so on culminating in an instructive
- tour of the sights of the great metropolis, the spectacle of our modern
- Babylon where doubtless he would see the greatest improvement, tower,
- abbey, wealth of Park lane to renew acquaintance with. Another thing
- just struck him as a by no means bad notion was he might have a gaze
- around on the spot to see about trying to make arrangements about a
- concert tour of summer music embracing the most prominent pleasure
- resorts, Margate with mixed bathing and firstrate hydros and spas,
- Eastbourne, Scarborough, Margate and so on, beautiful Bournemouth, the
- Channel islands and similar bijou spots, which might prove highly
- remunerative. Not, of course, with a hole and corner scratch company or
- local ladies on the job, witness Mrs C P M’Coy type lend me your valise
- and I’ll post you the ticket. No, something top notch, an all star
- Irish caste, the Tweedy-Flower grand opera company with his own legal
- consort as leading lady as a sort of counterblast to the Elster Grimes
- and Moody-Manners, perfectly simple matter and he was quite sanguine of
- success, providing puffs in the local papers could be managed by some
- fellow with a bit of bounce who could pull the indispensable wires and
- thus combine business with pleasure. But who? That was the rub.
- Also, without being actually positive, it struck him a great field was
- to be opened up in the line of opening up new routes to keep pace with
- the times _apropos_ of the Fishguard-Rosslare route which, it was
- mooted, was once more on the _tapis_ in the circumlocution departments
- with the usual quantity of red tape and dillydallying of effete
- fogeydom and dunderheads generally. A great opportunity there certainly
- was for push and enterprise to meet the travelling needs of the public
- at large, the average man, i.e. Brown, Robinson and Co.
- It was a subject of regret and absurd as well on the face of it and no
- small blame to our vaunted society that the man in the street, when the
- system really needed toning up, for the matter of a couple of paltry
- pounds was debarred from seeing more of the world they lived in instead
- of being always and ever cooped up since my old stick-in-the-mud took
- me for a wife. After all, hang it, they had their eleven and more
- humdrum months of it and merited a radical change of _venue_ after the
- grind of city life in the summertime for choice when dame Nature is at
- her spectacular best constituting nothing short of a new lease of life.
- There were equally excellent opportunities for vacationists in the home
- island, delightful sylvan spots for rejuvenation, offering a plethora
- of attractions as well as a bracing tonic for the system in and around
- Dublin and its picturesque environs even, Poulaphouca to which there
- was a steamtram, but also farther away from the madding crowd in
- Wicklow, rightly termed the garden of Ireland, an ideal neighbourhood
- for elderly wheelmen so long as it didn’t come down, and in the wilds
- of Donegal where if report spoke true the _coup d’œil_ was exceedingly
- grand though the lastnamed locality was not easily getatable so that
- the influx of visitors was not as yet all that it might be considering
- the signal benefits to be derived from it while Howth with its historic
- associations and otherwise, Silken Thomas, Grace O’Malley, George IV,
- rhododendrons several hundred feet above sealevel was a favourite haunt
- with all sorts and conditions of men especially in the spring when
- young men’s fancy, though it had its own toll of deaths by falling off
- the cliffs by design or accidentally, usually, by the way, on their
- left leg, it being only about three quarters of an hour’s run from the
- pillar. Because of course uptodate tourist travelling was as yet merely
- in its infancy, so to speak, and the accommodation left much to be
- desired. Interesting to fathom it seemed to him from a motive of
- curiosity, pure and simple, was whether it was the traffic that created
- the route or viceversa or the two sides in fact. He turned back the
- other side of the card, picture, and passed it along to Stephen.
- —I seen a Chinese one time, related the doughty narrator, that had
- little pills like putty and he put them in the water and they opened
- and every pill was something different. One was a ship, another was a
- house, another was a flower. Cooks rats in your soup, he appetisingly
- added, the chinks does.
- Possibly perceiving an expression of dubiosity on their faces the
- globetrotter went on, adhering to his adventures.
- —And I seen a man killed in Trieste by an Italian chap. Knife in his
- back. Knife like that.
- Whilst speaking he produced a dangerouslooking claspknife quite in
- keeping with his character and held it in the striking position.
- —In a knockingshop it was count of a tryon between two smugglers.
- Fellow hid behind a door, come up behind him. Like that. _Prepare to
- meet your God_, says he. Chuk! It went into his back up to the butt.
- His heavy glance drowsily roaming about kind of defied their further
- questions even should they by any chance want to.
- —That’s a good bit of steel, repeated he, examining his formidable
- _stiletto_.
- After which harrowing _dénouement_ sufficient to appal the stoutest he
- snapped the blade to and stowed the weapon in question away as before
- in his chamber of horrors, otherwise pocket.
- —They’re great for the cold steel, somebody who was evidently quite in
- the dark said for the benefit of them all. That was why they thought
- the park murders of the invincibles was done by foreigners on account
- of them using knives.
- At this remark passed obviously in the spirit of _where ignorance is
- bliss_ Mr B. and Stephen, each in his own particular way, both
- instinctively exchanged meaning glances, in a religious silence of the
- strictly _entre nous_ variety however, towards where Skin-the-Goat,
- _alias_ the keeper, not turning a hair, was drawing spurts of liquid
- from his boiler affair. His inscrutable face which was really a work of
- art, a perfect study in itself, beggaring description, conveyed the
- impression that he didn’t understand one jot of what was going on.
- Funny, very!
- There ensued a somewhat lengthy pause. One man was reading in fits and
- starts a stained by coffee evening journal, another the card with the
- natives _choza de_, another the seaman’s discharge. Mr Bloom, so far as
- he was personally concerned, was just pondering in pensive mood. He
- vividly recollected when the occurrence alluded to took place as well
- as yesterday, roughly some score of years previously in the days of the
- land troubles, when it took the civilised world by storm, figuratively
- speaking, early in the eighties, eightyone to be correct, when he was
- just turned fifteen.
- —Ay, boss, the sailor broke in. Give us back them papers.
- The request being complied with he clawed them up with a scrape.
- —Have you seen the rock of Gibraltar? Mr Bloom inquired.
- The sailor grimaced, chewing, in a way that might be read as yes, ay or
- no.
- —Ah, you’ve touched there too, Mr Bloom said, Europa point, thinking he
- had, in the hope that the rover might possibly by some reminiscences
- but he failed to do so, simply letting spirt a jet of spew into the
- sawdust, and shook his head with a sort of lazy scorn.
- —What year would that be about? Mr B interrogated. Can you recall the
- boats?
- Our _soi-disant_ sailor munched heavily awhile hungrily before
- answering:
- —I’m tired of all them rocks in the sea, he said, and boats and ships.
- Salt junk all the time.
- Tired seemingly, he ceased. His questioner perceiving that he was not
- likely to get a great deal of change out of such a wily old customer,
- fell to woolgathering on the enormous dimensions of the water about the
- globe, suffice it to say that, as a casual glance at the map revealed,
- it covered fully three fourths of it and he fully realised accordingly
- what it meant to rule the waves. On more than one occasion, a dozen at
- the lowest, near the North Bull at Dollymount he had remarked a
- superannuated old salt, evidently derelict, seated habitually near the
- not particularly redolent sea on the wall, staring quite obliviously at
- it and it at him, dreaming of fresh woods and pastures new as someone
- somewhere sings. And it left him wondering why. Possibly he had tried
- to find out the secret for himself, floundering up and down the
- antipodes and all that sort of thing and over and under, well, not
- exactly under, tempting the fates. And the odds were twenty to nil
- there was really no secret about it at all. Nevertheless, without going
- into the _minutiae_ of the business, the eloquent fact remained that
- the sea was there in all its glory and in the natural course of things
- somebody or other had to sail on it and fly in the face of providence
- though it merely went to show how people usually contrived to load that
- sort of onus on to the other fellow like the hell idea and the lottery
- and insurance which were run on identically the same lines so that for
- that very reason if no other lifeboat Sunday was a highly laudable
- institution to which the public at large, no matter where living inland
- or seaside, as the case might be, having it brought home to them like
- that should extend its gratitude also to the harbourmasters and
- coastguard service who had to man the rigging and push off and out amid
- the elements whatever the season when duty called _Ireland expects that
- every man_ and so on and sometimes had a terrible time of it in the
- wintertime not forgetting the Irish lights, Kish and others, liable to
- capsize at any moment, rounding which he once with his daughter had
- experienced some remarkably choppy, not to say stormy, weather.
- —There was a fellow sailed with me in the _Rover_, the old seadog,
- himself a rover, proceeded, went ashore and took up a soft job as
- gentleman’s valet at six quid a month. Them are his trousers I’ve on me
- and he gave me an oilskin and that jackknife. I’m game for that job,
- shaving and brushup. I hate roaming about. There’s my son now, Danny,
- run off to sea and his mother got him took in a draper’s in Cork where
- he could be drawing easy money.
- —What age is he? queried one hearer who, by the way, seen from the
- side, bore a distant resemblance to Henry Campbell, the townclerk, away
- from the carking cares of office, unwashed of course and in a seedy
- getup and a strong suspicion of nosepaint about the nasal appendage.
- —Why, the sailor answered with a slow puzzled utterance, my son, Danny?
- He’d be about eighteen now, way I figure it.
- The Skibbereen father hereupon tore open his grey or unclean anyhow
- shirt with his two hands and scratched away at his chest on which was
- to be seen an image tattooed in blue Chinese ink intended to represent
- an anchor.
- —There was lice in that bunk in Bridgwater, he remarked, sure as nuts.
- I must get a wash tomorrow or next day. It’s them black lads I objects
- to. I hate those buggers. Suck your blood dry, they does.
- Seeing they were all looking at his chest he accommodatingly dragged
- his shirt more open so that on top of the timehonoured symbol of the
- mariner’s hope and rest they had a full view of the figure 16 and a
- young man’s sideface looking frowningly rather.
- —Tattoo, the exhibitor explained. That was done when we were lying
- becalmed off Odessa in the Black Sea under Captain Dalton. Fellow, the
- name of Antonio, done that. There he is himself, a Greek.
- —Did it hurt much doing it? one asked the sailor.
- That worthy, however, was busily engaged in collecting round the.
- Someway in his. Squeezing or.
- —See here, he said, showing Antonio. There he is cursing the mate. And
- there he is now, he added, the same fellow, pulling the skin with his
- fingers, some special knack evidently, and he laughing at a yarn.
- And in point of fact the young man named Antonio’s livid face did
- actually look like forced smiling and the curious effect excited the
- unreserved admiration of everybody including Skin-the-Goat, who this
- time stretched over.
- —Ay, ay, sighed the sailor, looking down on his manly chest. He’s gone
- too. Ate by sharks after. Ay, ay.
- He let go of the skin so that the profile resumed the normal expression
- of before.
- —Neat bit of work, one longshoreman said.
- —And what’s the number for? loafer number two queried.
- —Eaten alive? a third asked the sailor.
- —Ay, ay, sighed again the latter personage, more cheerily this time
- with some sort of a half smile for a brief duration only in the
- direction of the questioner about the number. Ate. A Greek he was.
- And then he added with rather gallowsbird humour considering his
- alleged end:
- —As bad as old Antonio,
- For he left me on my ownio.
- The face of a streetwalker glazed and haggard under a black straw hat
- peered askew round the door of the shelter palpably reconnoitring on
- her own with the object of bringing more grist to her mill. Mr Bloom,
- scarcely knowing which way to look, turned away on the moment
- flusterfied but outwardly calm, and, picking up from the table the pink
- sheet of the Abbey street organ which the jarvey, if such he was, had
- laid aside, he picked it up and looked at the pink of the paper though
- why pink. His reason for so doing was he recognised on the moment round
- the door the same face he had caught a fleeting glimpse of that
- afternoon on Ormond quay, the partially idiotic female, namely, of the
- lane who knew the lady in the brown costume does be with you (Mrs B.)
- and begged the chance of his washing. Also why washing which seemed
- rather vague than not, your washing. Still candour compelled him to
- admit he had washed his wife’s undergarments when soiled in Holles
- street and women would and did too a man’s similar garments initialled
- with Bewley and Draper’s marking ink (hers were, that is) if they
- really loved him, that is to say, love me, love my dirty shirt. Still
- just then, being on tenterhooks, he desired the female’s room more than
- her company so it came as a genuine relief when the keeper made her a
- rude sign to take herself off. Round the side of the _Evening
- Telegraph_ he just caught a fleeting glimpse of her face round the side
- of the door with a kind of demented glassy grin showing that she was
- not exactly all there, viewing with evident amusement the group of
- gazers round skipper Murphy’s nautical chest and then there was no more
- of her.
- —The gunboat, the keeper said.
- —It beats me, Mr Bloom confided to Stephen, medically I am speaking,
- how a wretched creature like that from the Lock hospital reeking with
- disease can be barefaced enough to solicit or how any man in his sober
- senses, if he values his health in the least. Unfortunate creature! Of
- course I suppose some man is ultimately responsible for her condition.
- Still no matter what the cause is from...
- Stephen had not noticed her and shrugged his shoulders, merely
- remarking:
- —In this country people sell much more than she ever had and do a
- roaring trade. Fear not them that sell the body but have not power to
- buy the soul. She is a bad merchant. She buys dear and sells cheap.
- The elder man, though not by any manner of means an old maid or a
- prude, said it was nothing short of a crying scandal that ought to be
- put a stop to _instanter_ to say that women of that stamp (quite apart
- from any oldmaidish squeamishness on the subject), a necessary evil,
- were not licensed and medically inspected by the proper authorities, a
- thing, he could truthfully state, he, as a _paterfamilias_, was a
- stalwart advocate of from the very first start. Whoever embarked on a
- policy of the sort, he said, and ventilated the matter thoroughly would
- confer a lasting boon on everybody concerned.
- —You as a good catholic, he observed, talking of body and soul, believe
- in the soul. Or do you mean the intelligence, the brainpower as such,
- as distinct from any outside object, the table, let us say, that cup. I
- believe in that myself because it has been explained by competent men
- as the convolutions of the grey matter. Otherwise we would never have
- such inventions as X rays, for instance. Do you?
- Thus cornered, Stephen had to make a superhuman effort of memory to try
- and concentrate and remember before he could say:
- —They tell me on the best authority it is a simple substance and
- therefore incorruptible. It would be immortal, I understand, but for
- the possibility of its annihilation by its First Cause Who, from all I
- can hear, is quite capable of adding that to the number of His other
- practical jokes, _corruptio per se_ and _corruptio per accidens_ both
- being excluded by court etiquette.
- Mr Bloom thoroughly acquiesced in the general gist of this though the
- mystical finesse involved was a bit out of his sublunary depth still he
- felt bound to enter a demurrer on the head of simple, promptly
- rejoining:
- —Simple? I shouldn’t think that is the proper word. Of course, I grant
- you, to concede a point, you do knock across a simple soul once in a
- blue moon. But what I am anxious to arrive at is it is one thing for
- instance to invent those rays Röntgen did or the telescope like Edison,
- though I believe it was before his time Galileo was the man, I mean,
- and the same applies to the laws, for example, of a farreaching natural
- phenomenon such as electricity but it’s a horse of quite another colour
- to say you believe in the existence of a supernatural God.
- —O that, Stephen expostulated, has been proved conclusively by several
- of the bestknown passages in Holy Writ, apart from circumstantial
- evidence.
- On this knotty point however the views of the pair, poles apart as they
- were both in schooling and everything else with the marked difference
- in their respective ages, clashed.
- —Has been? the more experienced of the two objected, sticking to his
- original point with a smile of unbelief. I’m not so sure about that.
- That’s a matter for everyman’s opinion and, without dragging in the
- sectarian side of the business, I beg to differ with you _in toto_
- there. My belief is, to tell you the candid truth, that those bits were
- genuine forgeries all of them put in by monks most probably or it’s the
- big question of our national poet over again, who precisely wrote them
- like _Hamlet_ and Bacon, as, you who know your Shakespeare infinitely
- better than I, of course I needn’t tell you. Can’t you drink that
- coffee, by the way? Let me stir it. And take a piece of that bun. It’s
- like one of our skipper’s bricks disguised. Still no-one can give what
- he hasn’t got. Try a bit.
- —Couldn’t, Stephen contrived to get out, his mental organs for the
- moment refusing to dictate further.
- Faultfinding being a proverbially bad hat Mr Bloom thought well to stir
- or try to the clotted sugar from the bottom and reflected with
- something approaching acrimony on the Coffee Palace and its temperance
- (and lucrative) work. To be sure it was a legitimate object and beyond
- yea or nay did a world of good, shelters such as the present one they
- were in run on teetotal lines for vagrants at night, concerts, dramatic
- evenings and useful lectures (admittance free) by qualified men for the
- lower orders. On the other hand he had a distinct and painful
- recollection they paid his wife, Madam Marion Tweedy who had been
- prominently associated with it at one time, a very modest remuneration
- indeed for her pianoplaying. The idea, he was strongly inclined to
- believe, was to do good and net a profit, there being no competition to
- speak of. Sulphate of copper poison SO4 or something in some dried peas
- he remembered reading of in a cheap eatinghouse somewhere but he
- couldn’t remember when it was or where. Anyhow inspection, medical
- inspection, of all eatables seemed to him more than ever necessary
- which possibly accounted for the vogue of Dr Tibble’s Vi-Cocoa on
- account of the medical analysis involved.
- —Have a shot at it now, he ventured to say of the coffee after being
- stirred.
- Thus prevailed on to at any rate taste it Stephen lifted the heavy mug
- from the brown puddle it clopped out of when taken up by the handle and
- took a sip of the offending beverage.
- —Still it’s solid food, his good genius urged, I’m a stickler for solid
- food, his one and only reason being not gormandising in the least but
- regular meals as the _sine qua non_ for any kind of proper work, mental
- or manual. You ought to eat more solid food. You would feel a different
- man.
- —Liquids I can eat, Stephen said. But O, oblige me by taking away that
- knife. I can’t look at the point of it. It reminds me of Roman history.
- Mr Bloom promptly did as suggested and removed the incriminated
- article, a blunt hornhandled ordinary knife with nothing particularly
- Roman or antique about it to the lay eye, observing that the point was
- the least conspicuous point about it.
- —Our mutual friend’s stories are like himself, Mr Bloom _apropos_ of
- knives remarked to his _confidante sotto voce_. Do you think they are
- genuine? He could spin those yarns for hours on end all night long and
- lie like old boots. Look at him.
- Yet still though his eyes were thick with sleep and sea air life was
- full of a host of things and coincidences of a terrible nature and it
- was quite within the bounds of possibility that it was not an entire
- fabrication though at first blush there was not much inherent
- probability in all the spoof he got off his chest being strictly
- accurate gospel.
- He had been meantime taking stock of the individual in front of him and
- Sherlockholmesing him up ever since he clapped eyes on him. Though a
- wellpreserved man of no little stamina, if a trifle prone to baldness,
- there was something spurious in the cut of his jib that suggested a
- jail delivery and it required no violent stretch of imagination to
- associate such a weirdlooking specimen with the oakum and treadmill
- fraternity. He might even have done for his man supposing it was his
- own case he told, as people often did about others, namely, that he
- killed him himself and had served his four or five goodlooking years in
- durance vile to say nothing of the Antonio personage (no relation to
- the dramatic personage of identical name who sprang from the pen of our
- national poet) who expiated his crimes in the melodramatic manner above
- described. On the other hand he might be only bluffing, a pardonable
- weakness because meeting unmistakable mugs, Dublin residents, like
- those jarvies waiting news from abroad would tempt any ancient mariner
- who sailed the ocean seas to draw the long bow about the schooner
- _Hesperus_ and etcetera. And when all was said and done the lies a
- fellow told about himself couldn’t probably hold a proverbial candle to
- the wholesale whoppers other fellows coined about him.
- —Mind you, I’m not saying that it’s all a pure invention, he resumed.
- Analogous scenes are occasionally, if not often, met with. Giants,
- though that is rather a far cry, you see once in a way, Marcella the
- midget queen. In those waxworks in Henry street I myself saw some
- Aztecs, as they are called, sitting bowlegged, they couldn’t straighten
- their legs if you paid them because the muscles here, you see, he
- proceeded, indicating on his companion the brief outline of the sinews
- or whatever you like to call them behind the right knee, were utterly
- powerless from sitting that way so long cramped up, being adored as
- gods. There’s an example again of simple souls.
- However reverting to friend Sinbad and his horrifying adventures (who
- reminded him a bit of Ludwig, _alias_ Ledwidge, when he occupied the
- boards of the Gaiety when Michael Gunn was identified with the
- management in the _Flying Dutchman_, a stupendous success, and his host
- of admirers came in large numbers, everyone simply flocking to hear him
- though ships of any sort, phantom or the reverse, on the stage usually
- fell a bit flat as also did trains) there was nothing intrinsically
- incompatible about it, he conceded. On the contrary that stab in the
- back touch was quite in keeping with those italianos though candidly he
- was none the less free to admit those icecreamers and friers in the
- fish way not to mention the chip potato variety and so forth over in
- little Italy there near the Coombe were sober thrifty hardworking
- fellows except perhaps a bit too given to pothunting the harmless
- necessary animal of the feline persuasion of others at night so as to
- have a good old succulent tuckin with garlic _de rigueur_ off him or
- her next day on the quiet and, he added, on the cheap.
- —Spaniards, for instance, he continued, passionate temperaments like
- that, impetuous as Old Nick, are given to taking the law into their own
- hands and give you your quietus doublequick with those poignards they
- carry in the abdomen. It comes from the great heat, climate generally.
- My wife is, so to speak, Spanish, half that is. Point of fact she could
- actually claim Spanish nationality if she wanted, having been born in
- (technically) Spain, i.e. Gibraltar. She has the Spanish type. Quite
- dark, regular brunette, black. I for one certainly believe climate
- accounts for character. That’s why I asked you if you wrote your poetry
- in Italian.
- —The temperaments at the door, Stephen interposed with, were very
- passionate about ten shillings. _Roberto ruba roba sua_.
- —Quite so, Mr Bloom dittoed.
- —Then, Stephen said staring and rambling on to himself or some unknown
- listener somewhere, we have the impetuosity of Dante and the isosceles
- triangle miss Portinari he fell in love with and Leonardo and san
- Tommaso Mastino.
- —It’s in the blood, Mr Bloom acceded at once. All are washed in the
- blood of the sun. Coincidence I just happened to be in the Kildare
- street museum today, shortly prior to our meeting if I can so call it,
- and I was just looking at those antique statues there. The splendid
- proportions of hips, bosom. You simply don’t knock against those kind
- of women here. An exception here and there. Handsome yes, pretty in a
- way you find but what I’m talking about is the female form. Besides
- they have so little taste in dress, most of them, which greatly
- enhances a woman’s natural beauty, no matter what you say. Rumpled
- stockings, it may be, possibly is, a foible of mine but still it’s a
- thing I simply hate to see.
- Interest, however, was starting to flag somewhat all round and then the
- others got on to talking about accidents at sea, ships lost in a fog,
- collisions with icebergs, all that sort of thing. Shipahoy of course
- had his own say to say. He had doubled the cape a few odd times and
- weathered a monsoon, a kind of wind, in the China seas and through all
- those perils of the deep there was one thing, he declared, stood to him
- or words to that effect, a pious medal he had that saved him.
- So then after that they drifted on to the wreck off Daunt’s rock, wreck
- of that illfated Norwegian barque nobody could think of her name for
- the moment till the jarvey who had really quite a look of Henry
- Campbell remembered it _Palme_ on Booterstown strand. That was the talk
- of the town that year (Albert William Quill wrote a fine piece of
- original verse of distinctive merit on the topic for the Irish
- _Times_), breakers running over her and crowds and crowds on the shore
- in commotion petrified with horror. Then someone said something about
- the case of the s. s. _Lady Cairns_ of Swansea run into by the _Mona_
- which was on an opposite tack in rather muggyish weather and lost with
- all hands on deck. No aid was given. Her master, the _Mona_’s, said he
- was afraid his collision bulkhead would give way. She had no water, it
- appears, in her hold.
- At this stage an incident happened. It having become necessary for him
- to unfurl a reef the sailor vacated his seat.
- —Let me cross your bows mate, he said to his neighbour who was just
- gently dropping off into a peaceful doze.
- He made tracks heavily, slowly with a dumpy sort of a gait to the door,
- stepped heavily down the one step there was out of the shelter and bore
- due left. While he was in the act of getting his bearings Mr Bloom who
- noticed when he stood up that he had two flasks of presumably ship’s
- rum sticking one out of each pocket for the private consumption of his
- burning interior, saw him produce a bottle and uncork it or unscrew
- and, applying its nozzle to his lips, take a good old delectable swig
- out of it with a gurgling noise. The irrepressible Bloom, who also had
- a shrewd suspicion that the old stager went out on a manœuvre after the
- counterattraction in the shape of a female who however had disappeared
- to all intents and purposes, could by straining just perceive him, when
- duly refreshed by his rum puncheon exploit, gaping up at the piers and
- girders of the Loop line rather out of his depth as of course it was
- all radically altered since his last visit and greatly improved. Some
- person or persons invisible directed him to the male urinal erected by
- the cleansing committee all over the place for the purpose but after a
- brief space of time during which silence reigned supreme the sailor,
- evidently giving it a wide berth, eased himself closer at hand, the
- noise of his bilgewater some little time subsequently splashing on the
- ground where it apparently awoke a horse of the cabrank. A hoof scooped
- anyway for new foothold after sleep and harness jingled. Slightly
- disturbed in his sentrybox by the brazier of live coke the watcher of
- the corporation stones who, though now broken down and fast breaking
- up, was none other in stern reality than the Gumley aforesaid, now
- practically on the parish rates, given the temporary job by Pat Tobin
- in all human probability from dictates of humanity knowing him before
- shifted about and shuffled in his box before composing his limbs again
- in to the arms of Morpheus, a truly amazing piece of hard lines in its
- most virulent form on a fellow most respectably connected and
- familiarised with decent home comforts all his life who came in for a
- cool £ 100 a year at one time which of course the doublebarrelled ass
- proceeded to make general ducks and drakes of. And there he was at the
- end of his tether after having often painted the town tolerably pink
- without a beggarly stiver. He drank needless to be told and it pointed
- only once more a moral when he might quite easily be in a large way of
- business if—a big if, however—he had contrived to cure himself of his
- particular partiality.
- All meantime were loudly lamenting the falling off in Irish shipping,
- coastwise and foreign as well, which was all part and parcel of the
- same thing. A Palgrave Murphy boat was put off the ways at Alexandra
- basin, the only launch that year. Right enough the harbours were there
- only no ships ever called.
- There were wrecks and wreckers, the keeper said, who was evidently _au
- fait_.
- What he wanted to ascertain was why that ship ran bang against the only
- rock in Galway bay when the Galway harbour scheme was mooted by a Mr
- Worthington or some name like that, eh? Ask the then captain, he
- advised them, how much palmoil the British government gave him for that
- day’s work, Captain John Lever of the Lever Line.
- —Am I right, skipper? he queried of the sailor, now returning after his
- private potation and the rest of his exertions.
- That worthy picking up the scent of the fagend of the song or words
- growled in wouldbe music but with great vim some kind of chanty or
- other in seconds or thirds. Mr Bloom’s sharp ears heard him then
- expectorate the plug probably (which it was), so that he must have
- lodged it for the time being in his fist while he did the drinking and
- making water jobs and found it a bit sour after the liquid fire in
- question. Anyhow in he rolled after his successful
- libation-_cum_-potation, introducing an atmosphere of drink into the
- _soirée_, boisterously trolling, like a veritable son of a seacook:
- —The biscuits was as hard as brass
- And the beef as salt as Lot’s wife’s arse.
- O, Johnny Lever!
- Johnny Lever, O!
- After which effusion the redoubtable specimen duly arrived on the scene
- and regaining his seat he sank rather than sat heavily on the form
- provided. Skin-the-Goat, assuming he was he, evidently with an axe to
- grind, was airing his grievances in a forcible-feeble philippic anent
- the natural resources of Ireland or something of that sort which he
- described in his lengthy dissertation as the richest country bar none
- on the face of God’s earth, far and away superior to England, with coal
- in large quantities, six million pounds worth of pork exported every
- year, ten millions between butter and eggs and all the riches drained
- out of it by England levying taxes on the poor people that paid through
- the nose always and gobbling up the best meat in the market and a lot
- more surplus steam in the same vein. Their conversation accordingly
- became general and all agreed that that was a fact. You could grow any
- mortal thing in Irish soil, he stated, and there was that colonel
- Everard down there in Navan growing tobacco. Where would you find
- anywhere the like of Irish bacon? But a day of reckoning, he stated
- _crescendo_ with no uncertain voice, thoroughly monopolising all the
- conversation, was in store for mighty England, despite her power of
- pelf on account of her crimes. There would be a fall and the greatest
- fall in history. The Germans and the Japs were going to have their
- little lookin, he affirmed. The Boers were the beginning of the end.
- Brummagem England was toppling already and her downfall would be
- Ireland, her Achilles heel, which he explained to them about the
- vulnerable point of Achilles, the Greek hero, a point his auditors at
- once seized as he completely gripped their attention by showing the
- tendon referred to on his boot. His advice to every Irishman was: stay
- in the land of your birth and work for Ireland and live for Ireland.
- Ireland, Parnell said, could not spare a single one of her sons.
- Silence all round marked the termination of his _finale_. The
- impervious navigator heard these lurid tidings, undismayed.
- —Take a bit of doing, boss, retaliated that rough diamond palpably a
- bit peeved in response to the foregoing truism.
- To which cold douche referring to downfall and so on the keeper
- concurred but nevertheless held to his main view.
- —Who’s the best troops in the army? the grizzled old veteran irately
- interrogated. And the best jumpers and racers? And the best admirals
- and generals we’ve got? Tell me that.
- —The Irish, for choice, retorted the cabby like Campbell, facial
- blemishes apart.
- —That’s right, the old tarpaulin corroborated. The Irish catholic
- peasant. He’s the backbone of our empire. You know Jem Mullins?
- While allowing him his individual opinions as everyman the keeper added
- he cared nothing for any empire, ours or his, and considered no
- Irishman worthy of his salt that served it. Then they began to have a
- few irascible words when it waxed hotter, both, needless to say,
- appealing to the listeners who followed the passage of arms with
- interest so long as they didn’t indulge in recriminations and come to
- blows.
- From inside information extending over a series of years Mr Bloom was
- rather inclined to poohpooh the suggestion as egregious balderdash for,
- pending that consummation devoutly to be or not to be wished for, he
- was fully cognisant of the fact that their neighbours across the
- channel, unless they were much bigger fools than he took them for,
- rather concealed their strength than the opposite. It was quite on a
- par with the quixotic idea in certain quarters that in a hundred
- million years the coal seam of the sister island would be played out
- and if, as time went on, that turned out to be how the cat jumped all
- he could personally say on the matter was that as a host of
- contingencies, equally relevant to the issue, might occur ere then it
- was highly advisable in the interim to try to make the most of both
- countries even though poles apart. Another little interesting point,
- the amours of whores and chummies, to put it in common parlance,
- reminded him Irish soldiers had as often fought for England as against
- her, more so, in fact. And now, why? So the scene between the pair of
- them, the licensee of the place rumoured to be or have been Fitzharris,
- the famous invincible, and the other, obviously bogus, reminded him
- forcibly as being on all fours with the confidence trick, supposing,
- that is, it was prearranged as the lookeron, a student of the human
- soul if anything, the others seeing least of the game. And as for the
- lessee or keeper, who probably wasn’t the other person at all, he (B.)
- couldn’t help feeling and most properly it was better to give people
- like that the goby unless you were a blithering idiot altogether and
- refuse to have anything to do with them as a golden rule in private
- life and their felonsetting, there always being the offchance of a
- Dannyman coming forward and turning queen’s evidence or king’s now like
- Denis or Peter Carey, an idea he utterly repudiated. Quite apart from
- that he disliked those careers of wrongdoing and crime on principle.
- Yet, though such criminal propensities had never been an inmate of his
- bosom in any shape or form, he certainly did feel and no denying it
- (while inwardly remaining what he was) a certain kind of admiration for
- a man who had actually brandished a knife, cold steel, with the courage
- of his political convictions (though, personally, he would never be a
- party to any such thing), off the same bat as those love vendettas of
- the south, have her or swing for her, when the husband frequently,
- after some words passed between the two concerning her relations with
- the other lucky mortal (he having had the pair watched), inflicted
- fatal injuries on his adored one as a result of an alternative
- postnuptial _liaison_ by plunging his knife into her, until it just
- struck him that Fitz, nicknamed Skin-the-Goat, merely drove the car for
- the actual perpetrators of the outrage and so was not, if he was
- reliably informed, actually party to the ambush which, in point of
- fact, was the plea some legal luminary saved his skin on. In any case
- that was very ancient history by now and as for our friend, the pseudo
- Skin-the-etcetera, he had transparently outlived his welcome. He ought
- to have either died naturally or on the scaffold high. Like actresses,
- always farewell positively last performance then come up smiling again.
- Generous to a fault of course, temperamental, no economising or any
- idea of the sort, always snapping at the bone for the shadow. So
- similarly he had a very shrewd suspicion that Mr Johnny Lever got rid
- of some £. s. d. in the course of his perambulations round the docks in
- the congenial atmosphere of the _Old Ireland_ tavern, come back to Erin
- and so on. Then as for the other he had heard not so long before the
- same identical lingo as he told Stephen how he simply but effectually
- silenced the offender.
- —He took umbrage at something or other, that muchinjured but on the
- whole eventempered person declared, I let slip. He called me a jew and
- in a heated fashion offensively. So I without deviating from plain
- facts in the least told him his God, I mean Christ, was a jew too and
- all his family like me though in reality I’m not. That was one for him.
- A soft answer turns away wrath. He hadn’t a word to say for himself as
- everyone saw. Am I not right?
- He turned a long you are wrong gaze on Stephen of timorous dark pride
- at the soft impeachment with a glance also of entreaty for he seemed to
- glean in a kind of a way that it wasn’t all exactly.
- —_Ex quibus_, Stephen mumbled in a noncommittal accent, their two or
- four eyes conversing, _Christus_ or Bloom his name is or after all any
- other, _secundum carnem_.
- —Of course, Mr B. proceeded to stipulate, you must look at both sides
- of the question. It is hard to lay down any hard and fast rules as to
- right and wrong but room for improvement all round there certainly is
- though every country, they say, our own distressful included, has the
- government it deserves. But with a little goodwill all round. It’s all
- very fine to boast of mutual superiority but what about mutual
- equality. I resent violence and intolerance in any shape or form. It
- never reaches anything or stops anything. A revolution must come on the
- due instalments plan. It’s a patent absurdity on the face of it to hate
- people because they live round the corner and speak another vernacular,
- in the next house so to speak.
- —Memorable bloody bridge battle and seven minutes’ war, Stephen
- assented, between Skinner’s alley and Ormond market.
- Yes, Mr Bloom thoroughly agreed, entirely endorsing the remark, that
- was overwhelmingly right. And the whole world was full of that sort of
- thing.
- —You just took the words out of my mouth, he said. A hocuspocus of
- conflicting evidence that candidly you couldn’t remotely...
- All those wretched quarrels, in his humble opinion, stirring up bad
- blood, from some bump of combativeness or gland of some kind,
- erroneously supposed to be about a punctilio of honour and a flag, were
- very largely a question of the money question which was at the back of
- everything, greed and jealousy, people never knowing when to stop.
- —They accuse, remarked he audibly. He turned away from the others, who
- probably… and spoke nearer to, so as the others… in case they…
- —Jews, he softly imparted in an aside in Stephen’s ear, are accused of
- ruining. Not a vestige of truth in it, I can safely say. History, would
- you be surprised to learn, proves up to the hilt Spain decayed when the
- inquisition hounded the jews out and England prospered when Cromwell,
- an uncommonly able ruffian who in other respects has much to answer
- for, imported them. Why? Because they are imbued with the proper
- spirit. They are practical and are proved to be so. I don’t want to
- indulge in any because you know the standard works on the subject and
- then orthodox as you are. But in the economic, not touching religion,
- domain the priest spells poverty. Spain again, you saw in the war,
- compared with goahead America. Turks. It’s in the dogma. Because if
- they didn’t believe they’d go straight to heaven when they die they’d
- try to live better, at least so I think. That’s the juggle on which the
- p.p.’s raise the wind on false pretences. I’m, he resumed with dramatic
- force, as good an Irishman as that rude person I told you about at the
- outset and I want to see everyone, concluded he, all creeds and classes
- _pro rata_ having a comfortable tidysized income, in no niggard fashion
- either, something in the neighbourhood of £ 300 per annum. That’s the
- vital issue at stake and it’s feasible and would be provocative of
- friendlier intercourse between man and man. At least that’s my idea for
- what it’s worth. I call that patriotism. _Ubi patria_, as we learned a
- smattering of in our classical days in _Alma Mater, vita bene_. Where
- you can live well, the sense is, if you work.
- Over his untastable apology for a cup of coffee, listening to this
- synopsis of things in general, Stephen stared at nothing in particular.
- He could hear, of course, all kinds of words changing colour like those
- crabs about Ringsend in the morning burrowing quickly into all colours
- of different sorts of the same sand where they had a home somewhere
- beneath or seemed to. Then he looked up and saw the eyes that said or
- didn’t say the words the voice he heard said, if you work.
- —Count me out, he managed to remark, meaning work.
- The eyes were surprised at this observation because as he, the person
- who owned them pro tem. observed or rather his voice speaking did, all
- must work, have to, together.
- —I mean, of course, the other hastened to affirm, work in the widest
- possible sense. Also literary labour not merely for the kudos of the
- thing. Writing for the newspapers which is the readiest channel
- nowadays. That’s work too. Important work. After all, from the little I
- know of you, after all the money expended on your education you are
- entitled to recoup yourself and command your price. You have every bit
- as much right to live by your pen in pursuit of your philosophy as the
- peasant has. What? You both belong to Ireland, the brain and the brawn.
- Each is equally important.
- —You suspect, Stephen retorted with a sort of a half laugh, that I may
- be important because I belong to the _faubourg Saint Patrice_ called
- Ireland for short.
- —I would go a step farther, Mr Bloom insinuated.
- —But I suspect, Stephen interrupted, that Ireland must be important
- because it belongs to me.
- —What belongs, queried Mr Bloom bending, fancying he was perhaps under
- some misapprehension. Excuse me. Unfortunately, I didn’t catch the
- latter portion. What was it you...?
- Stephen, patently crosstempered, repeated and shoved aside his mug of
- coffee or whatever you like to call it none too politely, adding:
- —We can’t change the country. Let us change the subject.
- At this pertinent suggestion Mr Bloom, to change the subject, looked
- down but in a quandary, as he couldn’t tell exactly what construction
- to put on belongs to which sounded rather a far cry. The rebuke of some
- kind was clearer than the other part. Needless to say the fumes of his
- recent orgy spoke then with some asperity in a curious bitter way
- foreign to his sober state. Probably the homelife to which Mr B
- attached the utmost importance had not been all that was needful or he
- hadn’t been familiarised with the right sort of people. With a touch of
- fear for the young man beside him whom he furtively scrutinised with an
- air of some consternation remembering he had just come back from Paris,
- the eyes more especially reminding him forcibly of father and sister,
- failing to throw much light on the subject, however, he brought to mind
- instances of cultured fellows that promised so brilliantly nipped in
- the bud of premature decay and nobody to blame but themselves. For
- instance there was the case of O’Callaghan, for one, the halfcrazy
- faddist, respectably connected though of inadequate means, with his mad
- vagaries among whose other gay doings when rotto and making himself a
- nuisance to everybody all round he was in the habit of ostentatiously
- sporting in public a suit of brown paper (a fact). And then the usual
- _dénouement_ after the fun had gone on fast and furious he got landed
- into hot water and had to be spirited away by a few friends, after a
- strong hint to a blind horse from John Mallon of Lower Castle Yard, so
- as not to be made amenable under section two of the criminal law
- amendment act, certain names of those subpœnaed being handed in but not
- divulged for reasons which will occur to anyone with a pick of brains.
- Briefly, putting two and two together, six sixteen which he pointedly
- turned a deaf ear to, Antonio and so forth, jockeys and esthetes and
- the tattoo which was all the go in the seventies or thereabouts even in
- the house of lords because early in life the occupant of the throne,
- then heir apparent, the other members of the upper ten and other high
- personages simply following in the footsteps of the head of the state,
- he reflected about the errors of notorieties and crowned heads running
- counter to morality such as the Cornwall case a number of years before
- under their veneer in a way scarcely intended by nature, a thing good
- Mrs Grundy, as the law stands, was terribly down on though not for the
- reason they thought they were probably whatever it was except women
- chiefly who were always fiddling more or less at one another it being
- largely a matter of dress and all the rest of it. Ladies who like
- distinctive underclothing should, and every welltailored man must,
- trying to make the gap wider between them by innuendo and give more of
- a genuine filip to acts of impropriety between the two, she unbuttoned
- his and then he untied her, mind the pin, whereas savages in the
- cannibal islands, say, at ninety degrees in the shade not caring a
- continental. However, reverting to the original, there were on the
- other hand others who had forced their way to the top from the lowest
- rung by the aid of their bootstraps. Sheer force of natural genius,
- that. With brains, sir.
- For which and further reasons he felt it was his interest and duty even
- to wait on and profit by the unlookedfor occasion though why he could
- not exactly tell being as it was already several shillings to the bad
- having in fact let himself in for it. Still to cultivate the
- acquaintance of someone of no uncommon calibre who could provide food
- for reflection would amply repay any small. Intellectual stimulation,
- as such, was, he felt, from time to time a firstrate tonic for the
- mind. Added to which was the coincidence of meeting, discussion, dance,
- row, old salt of the here today and gone tomorrow type, night loafers,
- the whole galaxy of events, all went to make up a miniature cameo of
- the world we live in especially as the lives of the submerged tenth,
- viz. coalminers, divers, scavengers etc., were very much under the
- microscope lately. To improve the shining hour he wondered whether he
- might meet with anything approaching the same luck as Mr Philip Beaufoy
- if taken down in writing suppose he were to pen something out of the
- common groove (as he fully intended doing) at the rate of one guinea
- per column. _My Experiences_, let us say, _in a Cabman’s Shelter_.
- The pink edition extra sporting of the _Telegraph_ tell a graphic lie
- lay, as luck would have it, beside his elbow and as he was just
- puzzling again, far from satisfied, over a country belonging to him and
- the preceding rebus the vessel came from Bridgwater and the postcard
- was addressed A. Boudin find the captain’s age, his eyes went aimlessly
- over the respective captions which came under his special province the
- allembracing give us this day our daily press. First he got a bit of a
- start but it turned out to be only something about somebody named H. du
- Boyes, agent for typewriters or something like that. Great battle,
- Tokio. Lovemaking in Irish, £ 200 damages. Gordon Bennett. Emigration
- Swindle. Letter from His Grace. William ✠. Ascot meeting, the Gold Cup.
- Victory of outsider _Throwaway_ recalls Derby of ’92 when Capt.
- Marshall’s dark horse _Sir Hugo_ captured the blue ribband at long
- odds. New York disaster. Thousand lives lost. Foot and Mouth. Funeral
- of the late Mr Patrick Dignam.
- So to change the subject he read about Dignam R. I. P. which, he
- reflected, was anything but a gay sendoff. Or a change of address
- anyway.
- —_This morning_ (Hynes put it in of course) _the remains of the late Mr
- Patrick Dignam were removed from his residence, no 9 Newbridge Avenue,
- Sandymount, for interment in Glasnevin. The deceased gentleman was a
- most popular and genial personality in city life and his demise after a
- brief illness came as a great shock to citizens of all classes by whom
- he is deeply regretted. The obsequies, at which many friends of the
- deceased were present, were carried out_ (certainly Hynes wrote it with
- a nudge from Corny) _by Messrs H. J. O’Neill and Son, 164 North Strand
- Road. The mourners included: Patk. Dignam (son), Bernard Corrigan
- (brother-in-law), Jno. Henry Menton, solr, Martin Cunningham, John
- Power, eatondph 1/8 ador dorador douradora_ (must be where he called
- Monks the dayfather about Keyes’s ad) _Thomas Kernan, Simon Dedalus,
- Stephen Dedalus B. A., Edw. J. Lambert, Cornelius T. Kelleher, Joseph
- M’C Hynes, L. Boom, C P M’Coy,—M’Intosh and several others_.
- Nettled not a little by L. _Boom_ (as it incorrectly stated) and the
- line of bitched type but tickled to death simultaneously by C. P. M’Coy
- and Stephen Dedalus B. A. who were conspicuous, needless to say, by
- their total absence (to say nothing of M’Intosh) L. Boom pointed it out
- to his companion B. A. engaged in stifling another yawn, half
- nervousness, not forgetting the usual crop of nonsensical howlers of
- misprints.
- —Is that first epistle to the Hebrews, he asked as soon as his bottom
- jaw would let him, in? Text: open thy mouth and put thy foot in it.
- —It is. Really, Mr Bloom said (though first he fancied he alluded to
- the archbishop till he added about foot and mouth with which there
- could be no possible connection) overjoyed to set his mind at rest and
- a bit flabbergasted at Myles Crawford’s after all managing to. There.
- While the other was reading it on page two Boom (to give him for the
- nonce his new misnomer) whiled away a few odd leisure moments in fits
- and starts with the account of the third event at Ascot on page three,
- his side. Value 1000 sovs with 3000 sovs in specie added. For entire
- colts and fillies. Mr F. Alexander’s _Throwaway_, b. h. by
- _Rightaway-Thrale_, 5 yrs, 9 st 4 lbs (W. Lane) 1. Lord Howard de
- Walden’s _Zinfandel_ (M. Cannon) 2. Mr W. Bass’s _Sceptre_ 3. Betting 5
- to 4 on _Zinfandel_, 20 to 1 _Throwaway_ (off). _Sceptre_ a shade
- heavier. It was anybody’s race then the rank outsider drew to the fore,
- got long lead, beating Lord Howard de Walden’s chestnut colt and Mr W.
- Bass’s bay filly Sceptre on a 2 1/2 mile course. Winner trained by
- Braime so that Lenehan’s version of the business was all pure buncombe.
- Secured the verdict cleverly by a length. 1000 sovs with 3000 in
- specie. Also ran: J de Bremond’s (French horse Bantam Lyons was
- anxiously inquiring after not in yet but expected any minute) _Maximum
- II_. Different ways of bringing off a coup. Lovemaking damages. Though
- that halfbaked Lyons ran off at a tangent in his impetuosity to get
- left. Of course gambling eminently lent itself to that sort of thing
- though as the event turned out the poor fool hadn’t much reason to
- congratulate himself on his pick, the forlorn hope. Guesswork it
- reduced itself to eventually.
- —There was every indication they would arrive at that, he, Bloom, said.
- —Who? the other, whose hand by the way was hurt, said.
- One morning you would open the paper, the cabman affirmed, and read:
- _Return of Parnell_. He bet them what they liked. A Dublin fusilier was
- in that shelter one night and said he saw him in South Africa. Pride it
- was killed him. He ought to have done away with himself or lain low for
- a time after committee room no 15 until he was his old self again with
- no-one to point a finger at him. Then they would all to a man have gone
- down on their marrowbones to him to come back when he had recovered his
- senses. Dead he wasn’t. Simply absconded somewhere. The coffin they
- brought over was full of stones. He changed his name to De Wet, the
- Boer general. He made a mistake to fight the priests. And so forth and
- so on.
- All the same Bloom (properly so dubbed) was rather surprised at their
- memories for in nine cases out of ten it was a case of tarbarrels and
- not singly but in their thousands and then complete oblivion because it
- was twenty odd years. Highly unlikely of course there was even a shadow
- of truth in the stones and, even supposing, he thought a return highly
- inadvisable, all things considered. Something evidently riled them in
- his death. Either he petered out too tamely of acute pneumonia just
- when his various different political arrangements were nearing
- completion or whether it transpired he owed his death to his having
- neglected to change his boots and clothes after a wetting when a cold
- resulted and failing to consult a specialist he being confined to his
- room till he eventually died of it amid widespread regret before a
- fortnight was at an end or quite possibly they were distressed to find
- the job was taken out of their hands. Of course nobody being acquainted
- with his movements even before there was absolutely no clue as to his
- whereabouts which were decidedly of the _Alice, where art thou_ order
- even prior to his starting to go under several aliases such as Fox and
- Stewart so the remark which emanated from friend cabby might be within
- the bounds of possibility. Naturally then it would prey on his mind as
- a born leader of men which undoubtedly he was and a commanding figure,
- a sixfooter or at any rate five feet ten or eleven in his stockinged
- feet, whereas Messrs So and So who, though they weren’t even a patch on
- the former man, ruled the roost after their redeeming features were
- very few and far between. It certainly pointed a moral, the idol with
- feet of clay, and then seventytwo of his trusty henchmen rounding on
- him with mutual mudslinging. And the identical same with murderers. You
- had to come back. That haunting sense kind of drew you. To show the
- understudy in the title _rôle_ how to. He saw him once on the
- auspicious occasion when they broke up the type in the _Insuppressible_
- or was it _United Ireland_, a privilege he keenly appreciated, and, in
- point of fact, handed him his silk hat when it was knocked off and he
- said _Thank you_, excited as he undoubtedly was under his frigid
- exterior notwithstanding the little misadventure mentioned between the
- cup and the lip: what’s bred in the bone. Still as regards return. You
- were a lucky dog if they didn’t set the terrier at you directly you got
- back. Then a lot of shillyshally usually followed, Tom for and Dick and
- Harry against. And then, number one, you came up against the man in
- possession and had to produce your credentials like the claimant in the
- Tichborne case, Roger Charles Tichborne, _Bella_ was the boat’s name to
- the best of his recollection he, the heir, went down in as the evidence
- went to show and there was a tattoo mark too in Indian ink, lord Bellew
- was it, as he might very easily have picked up the details from some
- pal on board ship and then, when got up to tally with the description
- given, introduce himself with: _Excuse me, my name is So and So_ or
- some such commonplace remark. A more prudent course, as Bloom said to
- the not over effusive, in fact like the distinguished personage under
- discussion beside him, would have been to sound the lie of the land
- first.
- —That bitch, that English whore, did for him, the shebeen proprietor
- commented. She put the first nail in his coffin.
- —Fine lump of a woman all the same, the _soi-disant_ townclerk Henry
- Campbell remarked, and plenty of her. She loosened many a man’s thighs.
- I seen her picture in a barber’s. The husband was a captain or an
- officer.
- —Ay, Skin-the-Goat amusingly added, he was and a cottonball one.
- This gratuitous contribution of a humorous character occasioned a fair
- amount of laughter among his _entourage_. As regards Bloom he, without
- the faintest suspicion of a smile, merely gazed in the direction of the
- door and reflected upon the historic story which had aroused
- extraordinary interest at the time when the facts, to make matters
- worse, were made public with the usual affectionate letters that passed
- between them full of sweet nothings. First it was strictly Platonic
- till nature intervened and an attachment sprang up between them till
- bit by bit matters came to a climax and the matter became the talk of
- the town till the staggering blow came as a welcome intelligence to not
- a few evildisposed, however, who were resolved upon encompassing his
- downfall though the thing was public property all along though not to
- anything like the sensational extent that it subsequently blossomed
- into. Since their names were coupled, though, since he was her declared
- favourite, where was the particular necessity to proclaim it to the
- rank and file from the housetops, the fact, namely, that he had shared
- her bedroom which came out in the witnessbox on oath when a thrill went
- through the packed court literally electrifying everybody in the shape
- of witnesses swearing to having witnessed him on such and such a
- particular date in the act of scrambling out of an upstairs apartment
- with the assistance of a ladder in night apparel, having gained
- admittance in the same fashion, a fact the weeklies, addicted to the
- lubric a little, simply coined shoals of money out of. Whereas the
- simple fact of the case was it was simply a case of the husband not
- being up to the scratch, with nothing in common between them beyond the
- name, and then a real man arriving on the scene, strong to the verge of
- weakness, falling a victim to her siren charms and forgetting home
- ties, the usual sequel, to bask in the loved one’s smiles. The eternal
- question of the life connubial, needless to say, cropped up. Can real
- love, supposing there happens to be another chap in the case, exist
- between married folk? Poser. Though it was no concern of theirs
- absolutely if he regarded her with affection, carried away by a wave of
- folly. A magnificent specimen of manhood he was truly augmented
- obviously by gifts of a high order, as compared with the other military
- supernumerary that is (who was just the usual everyday _farewell, my
- gallant captain_ kind of an individual in the light dragoons, the 18th
- hussars to be accurate) and inflammable doubtless (the fallen leader,
- that is, not the other) in his own peculiar way which she of course,
- woman, quickly perceived as highly likely to carve his way to fame
- which he almost bid fair to do till the priests and ministers of the
- gospel as a whole, his erstwhile staunch adherents, and his beloved
- evicted tenants for whom he had done yeoman service in the rural parts
- of the country by taking up the cudgels on their behalf in a way that
- exceeded their most sanguine expectations, very effectually cooked his
- matrimonial goose, thereby heaping coals of fire on his head much in
- the same way as the fabled ass’s kick. Looking back now in a
- retrospective kind of arrangement all seemed a kind of dream. And then
- coming back was the worst thing you ever did because it went without
- saying you would feel out of place as things always moved with the
- times. Why, as he reflected, Irishtown strand, a locality he had not
- been in for quite a number of years looked different somehow since, as
- it happened, he went to reside on the north side. North or south,
- however, it was just the wellknown case of hot passion, pure and
- simple, upsetting the applecart with a vengeance and just bore out the
- very thing he was saying as she also was Spanish or half so, types that
- wouldn’t do things by halves, passionate abandon of the south, casting
- every shred of decency to the winds.
- —Just bears out what I was saying, he, with glowing bosom said to
- Stephen, about blood and the sun. And, if I don’t greatly mistake she
- was Spanish too.
- —The king of Spain’s daughter, Stephen answered, adding something or
- other rather muddled about farewell and adieu to you Spanish onions and
- the first land called the Deadman and from Ramhead to Scilly was so and
- so many.
- —Was she? Bloom ejaculated, surprised though not astonished by any
- means, I never heard that rumour before. Possible, especially there, it
- was as she lived there. So, Spain.
- Carefully avoiding a book in his pocket _Sweets of_, which reminded him
- by the by of that Capel street library book out of date, he took out
- his pocketbook and, turning over the various contents it contained
- rapidly finally he.
- —Do you consider, by the by, he said, thoughtfully selecting a faded
- photo which he laid on the table, that a Spanish type?
- Stephen, obviously addressed, looked down on the photo showing a large
- sized lady with her fleshy charms on evidence in an open fashion as she
- was in the full bloom of womanhood in evening dress cut ostentatiously
- low for the occasion to give a liberal display of bosom, with more than
- vision of breasts, her full lips parted and some perfect teeth,
- standing near, ostensibly with gravity, a piano on the rest of which
- was _In Old Madrid_, a ballad, pretty in its way, which was then all
- the vogue. Her (the lady’s) eyes, dark, large, looked at Stephen, about
- to smile about something to be admired, Lafayette of Westmoreland
- street, Dublin’s premier photographic artist, being responsible for the
- esthetic execution.
- —Mrs Bloom, my wife the _prima donna_ Madam Marion Tweedy, Bloom
- indicated. Taken a few years since. In or about ninety six. Very like
- her then.
- Beside the young man he looked also at the photo of the lady now his
- legal wife who, he intimated, was the accomplished daughter of Major
- Brian Tweedy and displayed at an early age remarkable proficiency as a
- singer having even made her bow to the public when her years numbered
- barely sweet sixteen. As for the face it was a speaking likeness in
- expression but it did not do justice to her figure which came in for a
- lot of notice usually and which did not come out to the best advantage
- in that getup. She could without difficulty, he said, have posed for
- the ensemble, not to dwell on certain opulent curves of the. He dwelt,
- being a bit of an artist in his spare time, on the female form in
- general developmentally because, as it so happened, no later than that
- afternoon he had seen those Grecian statues, perfectly developed as
- works of art, in the National Museum. Marble could give the original,
- shoulders, back, all the symmetry, all the rest. Yes, puritanisme, it
- does though, Saint Joseph’s sovereign thievery alors (Bandez!) Figne
- toi trop. Whereas no photo could because it simply wasn’t art in a
- word.
- The spirit moving him he would much have liked to follow Jack Tar’s
- good example and leave the likeness there for a very few minutes to
- speak for itself on the plea he so that the other could drink in the
- beauty for himself, her stage presence being, frankly, a treat in
- itself which the camera could not at all do justice to. But it was
- scarcely professional etiquette so. Though it was a warm pleasant sort
- of a night now yet wonderfully cool for the season considering, for
- sunshine after storm. And he did feel a kind of need there and then to
- follow suit like a kind of inward voice and satisfy a possible need by
- moving a motion. Nevertheless he sat tight just viewing the slightly
- soiled photo creased by opulent curves, none the worse for wear
- however, and looked away thoughtfully with the intention of not further
- increasing the other’s possible embarrassment while gauging her
- symmetry of heaving _embonpoint_. In fact the slight soiling was only
- an added charm like the case of linen slightly soiled, good as new,
- much better in fact with the starch out. Suppose she was gone when he?
- I looked for the lamp which she told me came into his mind but merely
- as a passing fancy of his because he then recollected the morning
- littered bed etcetera and the book about Ruby with met him pike hoses
- (_sic_) in it which must have fell down sufficiently appropriately
- beside the domestic chamberpot with apologies to Lindley Murray.
- The vicinity of the young man he certainly relished, educated,
- _distingué_ and impulsive into the bargain, far and away the pick of
- the bunch though you wouldn’t think he had it in him yet you would.
- Besides he said the picture was handsome which, say what you like, it
- was though at the moment she was distinctly stouter. And why not? An
- awful lot of makebelieve went on about that sort of thing involving a
- lifelong slur with the usual splash page of gutterpress about the same
- old matrimonial tangle alleging misconduct with professional golfer or
- the newest stage favourite instead of being honest and aboveboard about
- the whole business. How they were fated to meet and an attachment
- sprang up between the two so that their names were coupled in the
- public eye was told in court with letters containing the habitual mushy
- and compromising expressions leaving no loophole to show that they
- openly cohabited two or three times a week at some wellknown seaside
- hotel and relations, when the thing ran its normal course, became in
- due course intimate. Then the decree _nisi_ and the King’s proctor
- tries to show cause why and, he failing to quash it, _nisi_ was made
- absolute. But as for that the two misdemeanants, wrapped up as they
- largely were in one another, could safely afford to ignore it as they
- very largely did till the matter was put in the hands of a solicitor
- who filed a petition for the party wronged in due course. He, B,
- enjoyed the distinction of being close to Erin’s uncrowned king in the
- flesh when the thing occurred on the historic _fracas_ when the fallen
- leader’s, who notoriously stuck to his guns to the last drop even when
- clothed in the mantle of adultery, (leader’s) trusty henchmen to the
- number of ten or a dozen or possibly even more than that penetrated
- into the printing works of the _Insuppressible_ or no it was _United
- Ireland_ (a by no means by the by appropriate appellative) and broke up
- the typecases with hammers or something like that all on account of
- some scurrilous effusions from the facile pens of the O’Brienite
- scribes at the usual mudslinging occupation reflecting on the erstwhile
- tribune’s private morals. Though palpably a radically altered man he
- was still a commanding figure though carelessly garbed as usual with
- that look of settled purpose which went a long way with the
- shillyshallyers till they discovered to their vast discomfiture that
- their idol had feet of clay after placing him upon a pedestal which
- she, however, was the first to perceive. As those were particularly hot
- times in the general hullaballoo Bloom sustained a minor injury from a
- nasty prod of some chap’s elbow in the crowd that of course congregated
- lodging some place about the pit of the stomach, fortunately not of a
- grave character. His hat (Parnell’s) a silk one was inadvertently
- knocked off and, as a matter of strict history, Bloom was the man who
- picked it up in the crush after witnessing the occurrence meaning to
- return it to him (and return it to him he did with the utmost celerity)
- who panting and hatless and whose thoughts were miles away from his hat
- at the time all the same being a gentleman born with a stake in the
- country he, as a matter of fact, having gone into it more for the kudos
- of the thing than anything else, what’s bred in the bone instilled into
- him in infancy at his mother’s knee in the shape of knowing what good
- form was came out at once because he turned round to the donor and
- thanked him with perfect _aplomb_, saying: _Thank you, sir_, though in
- a very different tone of voice from the ornament of the legal
- profession whose headgear Bloom also set to rights earlier in the
- course of the day, history repeating itself with a difference, after
- the burial of a mutual friend when they had left him alone in his glory
- after the grim task of having committed his remains to the grave.
- On the other hand what incensed him more inwardly was the blatant jokes
- of the cabman and so on who passed it all off as a jest, laughing
- immoderately, pretending to understand everything, the why and the
- wherefore, and in reality not knowing their own minds, it being a case
- for the two parties themselves unless it ensued that the legitimate
- husband happened to be a party to it owing to some anonymous letter
- from the usual boy Jones, who happened to come across them at the
- crucial moment in a loving position locked in one another’s arms,
- drawing attention to their illicit proceedings and leading up to a
- domestic rumpus and the erring fair one begging forgiveness of her lord
- and master upon her knees and promising to sever the connection and not
- receive his visits any more if only the aggrieved husband would
- overlook the matter and let bygones be bygones with tears in her eyes
- though possibly with her tongue in her fair cheek at the same time as
- quite possibly there were several others. He personally, being of a
- sceptical bias, believed and didn’t make the smallest bones about
- saying so either that man or men in the plural were always hanging
- around on the waiting list about a lady, even supposing she was the
- best wife in the world and they got on fairly well together for the
- sake of argument, when, neglecting her duties, she chose to be tired of
- wedded life and was on for a little flutter in polite debauchery to
- press their attentions on her with improper intent, the upshot being
- that her affections centred on another, the cause of many _liaisons_
- between still attractive married women getting on for fair and forty
- and younger men, no doubt as several famous cases of feminine
- infatuation proved up to the hilt.
- It was a thousand pities a young fellow, blessed with an allowance of
- brains as his neighbour obviously was, should waste his valuable time
- with profligate women who might present him with a nice dose to last
- him his lifetime. In the nature of single blessedness he would one day
- take unto himself a wife when Miss Right came on the scene but in the
- interim ladies’ society was a _conditio sine qua non_ though he had the
- gravest possible doubts, not that he wanted in the smallest to pump
- Stephen about Miss Ferguson (who was very possibly the particular
- lodestar who brought him down to Irishtown so early in the morning), as
- to whether he would find much satisfaction basking in the boy and girl
- courtship idea and the company of smirking misses without a penny to
- their names bi or triweekly with the orthodox preliminary canter of
- complimentplaying and walking out leading up to fond lovers’ ways and
- flowers and chocs. To think of him house and homeless, rooked by some
- landlady worse than any stepmother, was really too bad at his age. The
- queer suddenly things he popped out with attracted the elder man who
- was several years the other’s senior or like his father but something
- substantial he certainly ought to eat even were it only an eggflip made
- on unadulterated maternal nutriment or, failing that, the homely Humpty
- Dumpty boiled.
- —At what o’clock did you dine? he questioned of the slim form and tired
- though unwrinkled face.
- —Some time yesterday, Stephen said.
- —Yesterday! exclaimed Bloom till he remembered it was already tomorrow
- Friday. Ah, you mean it’s after twelve!
- —The day before yesterday, Stephen said, improving on himself.
- Literally astounded at this piece of intelligence Bloom reflected.
- Though they didn’t see eye to eye in everything a certain analogy there
- somehow was as if both their minds were travelling, so to speak, in the
- one train of thought. At his age when dabbling in politics roughly some
- score of years previously when he had been a _quasi_ aspirant to
- parliamentary honours in the Buckshot Foster days he too recollected in
- retrospect (which was a source of keen satisfaction in itself) he had a
- sneaking regard for those same ultra ideas. For instance when the
- evicted tenants question, then at its first inception, bulked largely
- in people’s mind though, it goes without saying, not contributing a
- copper or pinning his faith absolutely to its dictums, some of which
- wouldn’t exactly hold water, he at the outset in principle at all
- events was in thorough sympathy with peasant possession as voicing the
- trend of modern opinion (a partiality, however, which, realising his
- mistake, he was subsequently partially cured of) and even was twitted
- with going a step farther than Michael Davitt in the striking views he
- at one time inculcated as a backtothelander, which was one reason he
- strongly resented the innuendo put upon him in so barefaced a fashion
- by our friend at the gathering of the clans in Barney Kiernan’s so that
- he, though often considerably misunderstood and the least pugnacious of
- mortals, be it repeated, departed from his customary habit to give him
- (metaphorically) one in the gizzard though, so far as politics
- themselves were concerned, he was only too conscious of the casualties
- invariably resulting from propaganda and displays of mutual animosity
- and the misery and suffering it entailed as a foregone conclusion on
- fine young fellows, chiefly, destruction of the fittest, in a word.
- Anyhow upon weighing up the pros and cons, getting on for one, as it
- was, it was high time to be retiring for the night. The crux was it was
- a bit risky to bring him home as eventualities might possibly ensue
- (somebody having a temper of her own sometimes) and spoil the hash
- altogether as on the night he misguidedly brought home a dog (breed
- unknown) with a lame paw (not that the cases were either identical or
- the reverse though he had hurt his hand too) to Ontario Terrace as he
- very distinctly remembered, having been there, so to speak. On the
- other hand it was altogether far and away too late for the Sandymount
- or Sandycove suggestion so that he was in some perplexity as to which
- of the two alternatives. Everything pointed to the fact that it behoved
- him to avail himself to the full of the opportunity, all things
- considered. His initial impression was he was a shade standoffish or
- not over effusive but it grew on him someway. For one thing he mightn’t
- what you call jump at the idea, if approached, and what mostly worried
- him was he didn’t know how to lead up to it or word it exactly,
- supposing he did entertain the proposal, as it would afford him very
- great personal pleasure if he would allow him to help to put coin in
- his way or some wardrobe, if found suitable. At all events he wound up
- by concluding, eschewing for the nonce hidebound precedent, a cup of
- Epps’s cocoa and a shakedown for the night plus the use of a rug or two
- and overcoat doubled into a pillow at least he would be in safe hands
- and as warm as a toast on a trivet he failed to perceive any very vast
- amount of harm in that always with the proviso no rumpus of any sort
- was kicked up. A move had to be made because that merry old soul, the
- grasswidower in question who appeared to be glued to the spot, didn’t
- appear in any particular hurry to wend his way home to his dearly
- beloved Queenstown and it was highly likely some sponger’s bawdyhouse
- of retired beauties where age was no bar off Sheriff street lower would
- be the best clue to that equivocal character’s whereabouts for a few
- days to come, alternately racking their feelings (the mermaids’) with
- sixchamber revolver anecdotes verging on the tropical calculated to
- freeze the marrow of anybody’s bones and mauling their largesized
- charms betweenwhiles with rough and tumble gusto to the accompaniment
- of large potations of potheen and the usual blarney about himself for
- as to who he in reality was let x equal my right name and address, as
- Mr Algebra remarks _passim_. At the same time he inwardly chuckled over
- his gentle repartee to the blood and ouns champion about his god being
- a jew. People could put up with being bitten by a wolf but what
- properly riled them was a bite from a sheep. The most vulnerable point
- too of tender Achilles. Your god was a jew. Because mostly they
- appeared to imagine he came from Carrick-on-Shannon or somewhereabouts
- in the county Sligo.
- —I propose, our hero eventually suggested after mature reflection while
- prudently pocketing her photo, as it’s rather stuffy here you just come
- home with me and talk things over. My diggings are quite close in the
- vicinity. You can’t drink that stuff. Do you like cocoa? Wait. I’ll
- just pay this lot.
- The best plan clearly being to clear out, the remainder being plain
- sailing, he beckoned, while prudently pocketing the photo, to the
- keeper of the shanty who didn’t seem to.
- —Yes, that’s the best, he assured Stephen to whom for the matter of
- that Brazen Head or him or anywhere else was all more or less.
- All kinds of Utopian plans were flashing through his (B’s) busy brain,
- education (the genuine article), literature, journalism, prize titbits,
- up to date billing, concert tours in English watering resorts packed
- with hydros and seaside theatres, turning money away, duets in Italian
- with the accent perfectly true to nature and a quantity of other
- things, no necessity, of course, to tell the world and his wife from
- the housetops about it, and a slice of luck. An opening was all was
- wanted. Because he more than suspected he had his father’s voice to
- bank his hopes on which it was quite on the cards he had so it would be
- just as well, by the way no harm, to trail the conversation in the
- direction of that particular red herring just to.
- The cabby read out of the paper he had got hold of that the former
- viceroy, earl Cadogan, had presided at the cabdrivers’ association
- dinner in London somewhere. Silence with a yawn or two accompanied this
- thrilling announcement. Then the old specimen in the corner who
- appeared to have some spark of vitality left read out that sir Anthony
- MacDonnell had left Euston for the chief secretary’s lodge or words to
- that effect. To which absorbing piece of intelligence echo answered
- why.
- —Give us a squint at that literature, grandfather, the ancient mariner
- put in, manifesting some natural impatience.
- —And welcome, answered the elderly party thus addressed.
- The sailor lugged out from a case he had a pair of greenish goggles
- which he very slowly hooked over his nose and both ears.
- —Are you bad in the eyes? the sympathetic personage like the townclerk
- queried.
- —Why, answered the seafarer with the tartan beard, who seemingly was a
- bit of a literary cove in his own small way, staring out of seagreen
- portholes as you might well describe them as, I uses goggles reading.
- Sand in the Red Sea done that. One time I could read a book in the
- dark, manner of speaking. _The Arabian Nights Entertainment_ was my
- favourite and _Red as a Rose is She._
- Hereupon he pawed the journal open and pored upon Lord only knows what,
- found drowned or the exploits of King Willow, Iremonger having made a
- hundred and something second wicket not out for Notts, during which
- time (completely regardless of Ire) the keeper was intensely occupied
- loosening an apparently new or secondhand boot which manifestly pinched
- him as he muttered against whoever it was sold it, all of them who were
- sufficiently awake enough to be picked out by their facial expressions,
- that is to say, either simply looking on glumly or passing a trivial
- remark.
- To cut a long story short Bloom, grasping the situation, was the first
- to rise from his seat so as not to outstay their welcome having first
- and foremost, being as good as his word that he would foot the bill for
- the occasion, taken the wise precaution to unobtrusively motion to mine
- host as a parting shot a scarcely perceptible sign when the others were
- not looking to the effect that the amount due was forthcoming, making a
- grand total of fourpence (the amount he deposited unobtrusively in four
- coppers, literally the last of the Mohicans), he having previously
- spotted on the printed pricelist for all who ran to read opposite him
- in unmistakable figures, coffee 2d, confectionery do, and honestly well
- worth twice the money once in a way, as Wetherup used to remark.
- —Come, he counselled to close the _séance_.
- Seeing that the ruse worked and the coast was clear they left the
- shelter or shanty together and the _élite_ society of oilskin and
- company whom nothing short of an earthquake would move out of their
- _dolce far niente_. Stephen, who confessed to still feeling poorly and
- fagged out, paused at the, for a moment, the door.
- —One thing I never understood, he said to be original on the spur of
- the moment. Why they put tables upside down at night, I mean chairs
- upside down, on the tables in cafés. To which impromptu the
- neverfailing Bloom replied without a moment’s hesitation, saying
- straight off:
- —To sweep the floor in the morning.
- So saying he skipped around, nimbly considering, frankly at the same
- time apologetic to get on his companion’s right, a habit of his, by the
- bye, his right side being, in classical idiom, his tender Achilles. The
- night air was certainly now a treat to breathe though Stephen was a bit
- weak on his pins.
- —It will (the air) do you good, Bloom said, meaning also the walk, in a
- moment. The only thing is to walk then you’ll feel a different man.
- Come. It’s not far. Lean on me.
- Accordingly he passed his left arm in Stephen’s right and led him on
- accordingly.
- —Yes, Stephen said uncertainly because he thought he felt a strange
- kind of flesh of a different man approach him, sinewless and wobbly and
- all that.
- Anyhow they passed the sentrybox with stones, brazier etc. where the
- municipal supernumerary, ex Gumley, was still to all intents and
- purposes wrapped in the arms of Murphy, as the adage has it, dreaming
- of fresh fields and pastures new. And _apropos_ of coffin of stones the
- analogy was not at all bad as it was in fact a stoning to death on the
- part of seventytwo out of eighty odd constituencies that ratted at the
- time of the split and chiefly the belauded peasant class, probably the
- selfsame evicted tenants he had put in their holdings.
- So they turned on to chatting about music, a form of art for which
- Bloom, as a pure amateur, possessed the greatest love, as they made
- tracks arm in arm across Beresford place. Wagnerian music, though
- confessedly grand in its way, was a bit too heavy for Bloom and hard to
- follow at the first go-off but the music of Mercadante’s _Huguenots_,
- Meyerbeer’s _Seven Last Words on the Cross_ and Mozart’s _Twelfth Mass_
- he simply revelled in, the _Gloria_ in that being, to his mind, the
- acme of first class music as such, literally knocking everything else
- into a cocked hat. He infinitely preferred the sacred music of the
- catholic church to anything the opposite shop could offer in that line
- such as those Moody and Sankey hymns or _Bid me to live and I will live
- thy protestant to be_. He also yielded to none in his admiration of
- Rossini’s _Stabat Mater_, a work simply abounding in immortal numbers,
- in which his wife, Madam Marion Tweedy, made a hit, a veritable
- sensation, he might safely say, greatly adding to her other laurels and
- putting the others totally in the shade, in the jesuit fathers’ church
- in upper Gardiner street, the sacred edifice being thronged to the
- doors to hear her with virtuosos, or _virtuosi_ rather. There was the
- unanimous opinion that there was none to come up to her and suffice it
- to say in a place of worship for music of a sacred character there was
- a generally voiced desire for an encore. On the whole though favouring
- preferably light opera of the _Don Giovanni_ description and _Martha_,
- a gem in its line, he had a _penchant_, though with only a surface
- knowledge, for the severe classical school such as Mendelssohn. And
- talking of that, taking it for granted he knew all about the old
- favourites, he mentioned _par excellence_ Lionel’s air in _Martha,
- M’appari_, which, curiously enough, he had heard or overheard, to be
- more accurate, on yesterday, a privilege he keenly appreciated, from
- the lips of Stephen’s respected father, sung to perfection, a study of
- the number, in fact, which made all the others take a back seat.
- Stephen, in reply to a politely put query, said he didn’t sing it but
- launched out into praises of Shakespeare’s songs, at least of in or
- about that period, the lutenist Dowland who lived in Fetter lane near
- Gerard the herbalist, who _anno ludendo hausi, Doulandus_, an
- instrument he was contemplating purchasing from Mr Arnold Dolmetsch,
- whom B. did not quite recall though the name certainly sounded
- familiar, for sixtyfive guineas and Farnaby and son with their _dux_
- and _comes_ conceits and Byrd (William) who played the virginals, he
- said, in the Queen’s chapel or anywhere else he found them and one
- Tomkins who made toys or airs and John Bull.
- On the roadway which they were approaching whilst still speaking beyond
- the swingchains a horse, dragging a sweeper, paced on the paven ground,
- brushing a long swathe of mire up so that with the noise Bloom was not
- perfectly certain whether he had caught aright the allusion to
- sixtyfive guineas and John Bull. He inquired if it was John Bull the
- political celebrity of that ilk, as it struck him, the two identical
- names, as a striking coincidence.
- By the chains the horse slowly swerved to turn, which perceiving,
- Bloom, who was keeping a sharp lookout as usual, plucked the other’s
- sleeve gently, jocosely remarking:
- —Our lives are in peril tonight. Beware of the steamroller.
- They thereupon stopped. Bloom looked at the head of a horse not worth
- anything like sixtyfive guineas, suddenly in evidence in the dark quite
- near so that it seemed new, a different grouping of bones and even
- flesh because palpably it was a fourwalker, a hipshaker, a
- blackbuttocker, a taildangler, a headhanger putting his hind foot
- foremost the while the lord of his creation sat on the perch, busy with
- his thoughts. But such a good poor brute he was sorry he hadn’t a lump
- of sugar but, as he wisely reflected, you could scarcely be prepared
- for every emergency that might crop up. He was just a big nervous
- foolish noodly kind of a horse, without a second care in the world. But
- even a dog, he reflected, take that mongrel in Barney Kiernan’s, of the
- same size, would be a holy horror to face. But it was no animal’s fault
- in particular if he was built that way like the camel, ship of the
- desert, distilling grapes into potheen in his hump. Nine tenths of them
- all could be caged or trained, nothing beyond the art of man barring
- the bees. Whale with a harpoon hairpin, alligator tickle the small of
- his back and he sees the joke, chalk a circle for a rooster, tiger my
- eagle eye. These timely reflections anent the brutes of the field
- occupied his mind somewhat distracted from Stephen’s words while the
- ship of the street was manœuvring and Stephen went on about the highly
- interesting old.
- —What’s this I was saying? Ah, yes! My wife, he intimated, plunging _in
- medias res_, would have the greatest of pleasure in making your
- acquaintance as she is passionately attached to music of any kind.
- He looked sideways in a friendly fashion at the sideface of Stephen,
- image of his mother, which was not quite the same as the usual handsome
- blackguard type they unquestionably had an insatiable hankering after
- as he was perhaps not that way built.
- Still, supposing he had his father’s gift as he more than suspected, it
- opened up new vistas in his mind such as Lady Fingall’s Irish
- industries, concert on the preceding Monday, and aristocracy in
- general.
- Exquisite variations he was now describing on an air _Youth here has
- End_ by Jans Pieter Sweelinck, a Dutchman of Amsterdam where the frows
- come from. Even more he liked an old German song of _Johannes Jeep_
- about the clear sea and the voices of sirens, sweet murderers of men,
- which boggled Bloom a bit:
- Von der Sirenen Listigkeit
- Tun die Poeten dichten.
- These opening bars he sang and translated _extempore_. Bloom, nodding,
- said he perfectly understood and begged him to go on by all means which
- he did.
- A phenomenally beautiful tenor voice like that, the rarest of boons,
- which Bloom appreciated at the very first note he got out, could
- easily, if properly handled by some recognised authority on voice
- production such as Barraclough and being able to read music into the
- bargain, command its own price where baritones were ten a penny and
- procure for its fortunate possessor in the near future an _entrée_ into
- fashionable houses in the best residential quarters of financial
- magnates in a large way of business and titled people where with his
- university degree of B. A. (a huge ad in its way) and gentlemanly
- bearing to all the more influence the good impression he would
- infallibly score a distinct success, being blessed with brains which
- also could be utilised for the purpose and other requisites, if his
- clothes were properly attended to so as to the better worm his way into
- their good graces as he, a youthful tyro in society’s sartorial
- niceties, hardly understood how a little thing like that could militate
- against you. It was in fact only a matter of months and he could easily
- foresee him participating in their musical and artistic
- _conversaziones_ during the festivities of the Christmas season, for
- choice, causing a slight flutter in the dovecotes of the fair sex and
- being made a lot of by ladies out for sensation, cases of which, as he
- happened to know, were on record—in fact, without giving the show away,
- he himself once upon a time, if he cared to, could easily have. Added
- to which of course would be the pecuniary emolument by no means to be
- sneezed at, going hand in hand with his tuition fees. Not, he
- parenthesised, that for the sake of filthy lucre he need necessarily
- embrace the lyric platform as a walk in life for any lengthy space of
- time. But a step in the required direction it was beyond yea or nay and
- both monetarily and mentally it contained no reflection on his dignity
- in the smallest and it often turned in uncommonly handy to be handed a
- cheque at a muchneeded moment when every little helped. Besides, though
- taste latterly had deteriorated to a degree, original music like that,
- different from the conventional rut, would rapidly have a great vogue
- as it would be a decided novelty for Dublin’s musical world after the
- usual hackneyed run of catchy tenor solos foisted on a confiding public
- by Ivan St Austell and Hilton St Just and their _genus omne_. Yes,
- beyond a shadow of a doubt he could with all the cards in his hand and
- he had a capital opening to make a name for himself and win a high
- place in the city’s esteem where he could command a stiff figure and,
- booking ahead, give a grand concert for the patrons of the King street
- house, given a backerup, if one were forthcoming to kick him upstairs,
- so to speak, a big _if_, however, with some impetus of the goahead sort
- to obviate the inevitable procrastination which often tripped up a too
- much fêted prince of good fellows. And it need not detract from the
- other by one iota as, being his own master, he would have heaps of time
- to practise literature in his spare moments when desirous of so doing
- without its clashing with his vocal career or containing anything
- derogatory whatsoever as it was a matter for himself alone. In fact, he
- had the ball at his feet and that was the very reason why the other,
- possessed of a remarkably sharp nose for smelling a rat of any sort,
- hung on to him at all.
- The horse was just then. And later on at a propitious opportunity he
- purposed (Bloom did), without anyway prying into his private affairs on
- the _fools step in where angels_ principle, advising him to sever his
- connection with a certain budding practitioner who, he noticed, was
- prone to disparage and even to a slight extent with some hilarious
- pretext when not present, deprecate him, or whatever you like to call
- it which in Bloom’s humble opinion threw a nasty sidelight on that side
- of a person’s character, no pun intended.
- The horse having reached the end of his tether, so to speak, halted
- and, rearing high a proud feathering tail, added his quota by letting
- fall on the floor which the brush would soon brush up and polish, three
- smoking globes of turds. Slowly three times, one after another, from a
- full crupper he mired. And humanely his driver waited till he (or she)
- had ended, patient in his scythed car.
- Side by side Bloom, profiting by the _contretemps_, with Stephen passed
- through the gap of the chains, divided by the upright, and, stepping
- over a strand of mire, went across towards Gardiner street lower,
- Stephen singing more boldly, but not loudly, the end of the ballad.
- Und alle Schiffe brücken.
- The driver never said a word, good, bad or indifferent, but merely
- watched the two figures, as he sat on his lowbacked car, both black,
- one full, one lean, walk towards the railway bridge, _to be married by
- Father Maher_. As they walked they at times stopped and walked again
- continuing their _tête à tête_ (which, of course, he was utterly out
- of) about sirens, enemies of man’s reason, mingled with a number of
- other topics of the same category, usurpers, historical cases of the
- kind while the man in the sweeper car or you might as well call it in
- the sleeper car who in any case couldn’t possibly hear because they
- were too far simply sat in his seat near the end of lower Gardiner
- street _and looked after their lowbacked car_.
- [ 17 ]
- What parallel courses did Bloom and Stephen follow returning?
- Starting united both at normal walking pace from Beresford place they
- followed in the order named Lower and Middle Gardiner streets and
- Mountjoy square, west: then, at reduced pace, each bearing left,
- Gardiner’s place by an inadvertence as far as the farther corner of
- Temple street: then, at reduced pace with interruptions of halt,
- bearing right, Temple street, north, as far as Hardwicke place.
- Approaching, disparate, at relaxed walking pace they crossed both the
- circus before George’s church diametrically, the chord in any circle
- being less than the arc which it subtends.
- Of what did the duumvirate deliberate during their itinerary?
- Music, literature, Ireland, Dublin, Paris, friendship, woman,
- prostitution, diet, the influence of gaslight or the light of arc and
- glowlamps on the growth of adjoining paraheliotropic trees, exposed
- corporation emergency dustbuckets, the Roman catholic church,
- ecclesiastical celibacy, the Irish nation, jesuit education, careers,
- the study of medicine, the past day, the maleficent influence of the
- presabbath, Stephen’s collapse.
- Did Bloom discover common factors of similarity between their
- respective like and unlike reactions to experience?
- Both were sensitive to artistic impressions, musical in preference to
- plastic or pictorial. Both preferred a continental to an insular manner
- of life, a cisatlantic to a transatlantic place of residence. Both
- indurated by early domestic training and an inherited tenacity of
- heterodox resistance professed their disbelief in many orthodox
- religious, national, social and ethical doctrines. Both admitted the
- alternately stimulating and obtunding influence of heterosexual
- magnetism.
- Were their views on some points divergent?
- Stephen dissented openly from Bloom’s views on the importance of
- dietary and civic selfhelp while Bloom dissented tacitly from Stephen’s
- views on the eternal affirmation of the spirit of man in literature.
- Bloom assented covertly to Stephen’s rectification of the anachronism
- involved in assigning the date of the conversion of the Irish nation to
- christianity from druidism by Patrick son of Calpornus, son of Potitus,
- son of Odyssus, sent by pope Celestine I in the year 432 in the reign
- of Leary to the year 260 or thereabouts in the reign of Cormac MacArt
- († 266 A.D.), suffocated by imperfect deglutition of aliment at Sletty
- and interred at Rossnaree. The collapse which Bloom ascribed to gastric
- inanition and certain chemical compounds of varying degrees of
- adulteration and alcoholic strength, accelerated by mental exertion and
- the velocity of rapid circular motion in a relaxing atmosphere, Stephen
- attributed to the reapparition of a matutinal cloud (perceived by both
- from two different points of observation Sandycove and Dublin) at first
- no bigger than a woman’s hand.
- Was there one point on which their views were equal and negative?
- The influence of gaslight or electric light on the growth of adjoining
- paraheliotropic trees.
- Had Bloom discussed similar subjects during nocturnal perambulations in
- the past?
- In 1884 with Owen Goldberg and Cecil Turnbull at night on public
- thoroughfares between Longwood avenue and Leonard’s corner and
- Leonard’s corner and Synge street and Synge street and Bloomfield
- avenue. In 1885 with Percy Apjohn in the evenings, reclined against the
- wall between Gibraltar villa and Bloomfield house in Crumlin, barony of
- Uppercross. In 1886 occasionally with casual acquaintances and
- prospective purchasers on doorsteps, in front parlours, in third class
- railway carriages of suburban lines. In 1888 frequently with major
- Brian Tweedy and his daughter Miss Marion Tweedy, together and
- separately on the lounge in Matthew Dillon’s house in Roundtown. Once
- in 1892 and once in 1893 with Julius (Juda) Mastiansky, on both
- occasions in the parlour of his (Bloom’s) house in Lombard street,
- west.
- What reflection concerning the irregular sequence of dates 1884, 1885,
- 1886, 1888, 1892, 1893, 1904 did Bloom make before their arrival at
- their destination?
- He reflected that the progressive extension of the field of individual
- development and experience was regressively accompanied by a
- restriction of the converse domain of interindividual relations.
- As in what ways?
- From inexistence to existence he came to many and was as one received:
- existence with existence he was with any as any with any: from
- existence to nonexistence gone he would be by all as none perceived.
- What act did Bloom make on their arrival at their destination?
- At the housesteps of the 4th of the equidifferent uneven numbers,
- number 7 Eccles street, he inserted his hand mechanically into the back
- pocket of his trousers to obtain his latchkey.
- Was it there?
- It was in the corresponding pocket of the trousers which he had worn on
- the day but one preceding.
- Why was he doubly irritated?
- Because he had forgotten and because he remembered that he had reminded
- himself twice not to forget.
- What were then the alternatives before the, premeditatedly
- (respectively) and inadvertently, keyless couple?
- To enter or not to enter. To knock or not to knock.
- Bloom’s decision?
- A stratagem. Resting his feet on the dwarf wall, he climbed over the
- area railings, compressed his hat on his head, grasped two points at
- the lower union of rails and stiles, lowered his body gradually by its
- length of five feet nine inches and a half to within two feet ten
- inches of the area pavement and allowed his body to move freely in
- space by separating himself from the railings and crouching in
- preparation for the impact of the fall.
- Did he fall?
- By his body’s known weight of eleven stone and four pounds in
- avoirdupois measure, as certified by the graduated machine for
- periodical selfweighing in the premises of Francis Froedman,
- pharmaceutical chemist of 19 Frederick street, north, on the last feast
- of the Ascension, to wit, the twelfth day of May of the bissextile year
- one thousand nine hundred and four of the christian era (jewish era
- five thousand six hundred and sixtyfour, mohammadan era one thousand
- three hundred and twentytwo), golden number 5, epact 13, solar cycle 9,
- dominical letters C B, Roman indiction 2, Julian period 6617, MCMIV.
- Did he rise uninjured by concussion?
- Regaining new stable equilibrium he rose uninjured though concussed by
- the impact, raised the latch of the area door by the exertion of force
- at its freely moving flange and by leverage of the first kind applied
- at its fulcrum, gained retarded access to the kitchen through the
- subadjacent scullery, ignited a lucifer match by friction, set free
- inflammable coal gas by turning on the ventcock, lit a high flame
- which, by regulating, he reduced to quiescent candescence and lit
- finally a portable candle.
- What discrete succession of images did Stephen meanwhile perceive?
- Reclined against the area railings he perceived through the transparent
- kitchen panes a man regulating a gasflame of 14 CP, a man lighting a
- candle of 1 CP, a man removing in turn each of his two boots, a man
- leaving the kitchen holding a candle.
- Did the man reappear elsewhere?
- After a lapse of four minutes the glimmer of his candle was discernible
- through the semitransparent semicircular glass fanlight over the
- halldoor. The halldoor turned gradually on its hinges. In the open
- space of the doorway the man reappeared without his hat, with his
- candle.
- Did Stephen obey his sign?
- Yes, entering softly, he helped to close and chain the door and
- followed softly along the hallway the man’s back and listed feet and
- lighted candle past a lighted crevice of doorway on the left and
- carefully down a turning staircase of more than five steps into the
- kitchen of Bloom’s house.
- What did Bloom do?
- He extinguished the candle by a sharp expiration of breath upon its
- flame, drew two spoonseat deal chairs to the hearthstone, one for
- Stephen with its back to the area window, the other for himself when
- necessary, knelt on one knee, composed in the grate a pyre of crosslaid
- resintipped sticks and various coloured papers and irregular polygons
- of best Abram coal at twentyone shillings a ton from the yard of Messrs
- Flower and M’Donald of 14 D’Olier street, kindled it at three
- projecting points of paper with one ignited lucifer match, thereby
- releasing the potential energy contained in the fuel by allowing its
- carbon and hydrogen elements to enter into free union with the oxygen
- of the air.
- Of what similar apparitions did Stephen think?
- Of others elsewhere in other times who, kneeling on one knee or on two,
- had kindled fires for him, of Brother Michael in the infirmary of the
- college of the Society of Jesus at Clongowes Wood, Sallins, in the
- county of Kildare: of his father, Simon Dedalus, in an unfurnished room
- of his first residence in Dublin, number thirteen Fitzgibbon street: of
- his godmother Miss Kate Morkan in the house of her dying sister Miss
- Julia Morkan at 15 Usher’s Island: of his aunt Sara, wife of Richie
- (Richard) Goulding, in the kitchen of their lodgings at 62 Clanbrassil
- street: of his mother Mary, wife of Simon Dedalus, in the kitchen of
- number twelve North Richmond street on the morning of the feast of
- Saint Francis Xavier 1898: of the dean of studies, Father Butt, in the
- physics’ theatre of university College, 16 Stephen’s Green, north: of
- his sister Dilly (Delia) in his father’s house in Cabra.
- What did Stephen see on raising his gaze to the height of a yard from
- the fire towards the opposite wall?
- Under a row of five coiled spring housebells a curvilinear rope,
- stretched between two holdfasts athwart across the recess beside the
- chimney pier, from which hung four smallsized square handkerchiefs
- folded unattached consecutively in adjacent rectangles and one pair of
- ladies’ grey hose with Lisle suspender tops and feet in their habitual
- position clamped by three erect wooden pegs two at their outer
- extremities and the third at their point of junction.
- What did Bloom see on the range?
- On the right (smaller) hob a blue enamelled saucepan: on the left
- (larger) hob a black iron kettle.
- What did Bloom do at the range?
- He removed the saucepan to the left hob, rose and carried the iron
- kettle to the sink in order to tap the current by turning the faucet to
- let it flow.
- Did it flow?
- Yes. From Roundwood reservoir in county Wicklow of a cubic capacity of
- 2400 million gallons, percolating through a subterranean aqueduct of
- filter mains of single and double pipeage constructed at an initial
- plant cost of £ 5 per linear yard by way of the Dargle, Rathdown, Glen
- of the Downs and Callowhill to the 26 acre reservoir at Stillorgan, a
- distance of 22 statute miles, and thence, through a system of relieving
- tanks, by a gradient of 250 feet to the city boundary at Eustace
- bridge, upper Leeson street, though from prolonged summer drouth and
- daily supply of 12 1/2 million gallons the water had fallen below the
- sill of the overflow weir for which reason the borough surveyor and
- waterworks engineer, Mr Spencer Harty, C. E., on the instructions of
- the waterworks committee had prohibited the use of municipal water for
- purposes other than those of consumption (envisaging the possibility of
- recourse being had to the impotable water of the Grand and Royal canals
- as in 1893) particularly as the South Dublin Guardians, notwithstanding
- their ration of 15 gallons per day per pauper supplied through a 6 inch
- meter, had been convicted of a wastage of 20,000 gallons per night by a
- reading of their meter on the affirmation of the law agent of the
- corporation, Mr Ignatius Rice, solicitor, thereby acting to the
- detriment of another section of the public, selfsupporting taxpayers,
- solvent, sound.
- What in water did Bloom, waterlover, drawer of water, watercarrier,
- returning to the range, admire?
- Its universality: its democratic equality and constancy to its nature
- in seeking its own level: its vastness in the ocean of Mercator’s
- projection: its unplumbed profundity in the Sundam trench of the
- Pacific exceeding 8000 fathoms: the restlessness of its waves and
- surface particles visiting in turn all points of its seaboard: the
- independence of its units: the variability of states of sea: its
- hydrostatic quiescence in calm: its hydrokinetic turgidity in neap and
- spring tides: its subsidence after devastation: its sterility in the
- circumpolar icecaps, arctic and antarctic: its climatic and commercial
- significance: its preponderance of 3 to 1 over the dry land of the
- globe: its indisputable hegemony extending in square leagues over all
- the region below the subequatorial tropic of Capricorn: the
- multisecular stability of its primeval basin: its luteofulvous bed: its
- capacity to dissolve and hold in solution all soluble substances
- including millions of tons of the most precious metals: its slow
- erosions of peninsulas and islands, its persistent formation of
- homothetic islands, peninsulas and downwardtending promontories: its
- alluvial deposits: its weight and volume and density: its
- imperturbability in lagoons and highland tarns: its gradation of
- colours in the torrid and temperate and frigid zones: its vehicular
- ramifications in continental lakecontained streams and confluent
- oceanflowing rivers with their tributaries and transoceanic currents,
- gulfstream, north and south equatorial courses: its violence in
- seaquakes, waterspouts, Artesian wells, eruptions, torrents, eddies,
- freshets, spates, groundswells, watersheds, waterpartings, geysers,
- cataracts, whirlpools, maelstroms, inundations, deluges, cloudbursts:
- its vast circumterrestrial ahorizontal curve: its secrecy in springs
- and latent humidity, revealed by rhabdomantic or hygrometric
- instruments and exemplified by the well by the hole in the wall at
- Ashtown gate, saturation of air, distillation of dew: the simplicity of
- its composition, two constituent parts of hydrogen with one constituent
- part of oxygen: its healing virtues: its buoyancy in the waters of the
- Dead Sea: its persevering penetrativeness in runnels, gullies,
- inadequate dams, leaks on shipboard: its properties for cleansing,
- quenching thirst and fire, nourishing vegetation: its infallibility as
- paradigm and paragon: its metamorphoses as vapour, mist, cloud, rain,
- sleet, snow, hail: its strength in rigid hydrants: its variety of forms
- in loughs and bays and gulfs and bights and guts and lagoons and atolls
- and archipelagos and sounds and fjords and minches and tidal estuaries
- and arms of sea: its solidity in glaciers, icebergs, icefloes: its
- docility in working hydraulic millwheels, turbines, dynamos, electric
- power stations, bleachworks, tanneries, scutchmills: its utility in
- canals, rivers, if navigable, floating and graving docks: its
- potentiality derivable from harnessed tides or watercourses falling
- from level to level: its submarine fauna and flora (anacoustic,
- photophobe), numerically, if not literally, the inhabitants of the
- globe: its ubiquity as constituting 90
- % of the human body: the noxiousness of its effluvia in lacustrine
- % marshes,
- pestilential fens, faded flowerwater, stagnant pools in the waning
- moon.
- Having set the halffilled kettle on the now burning coals, why did he
- return to the stillflowing tap?
- To wash his soiled hands with a partially consumed tablet of
- Barrington’s lemonflavoured soap, to which paper still adhered, (bought
- thirteen hours previously for fourpence and still unpaid for), in fresh
- cold neverchanging everchanging water and dry them, face and hands, in
- a long redbordered holland cloth passed over a wooden revolving roller.
- What reason did Stephen give for declining Bloom’s offer?
- That he was hydrophobe, hating partial contact by immersion or total by
- submersion in cold water, (his last bath having taken place in the
- month of October of the preceding year), disliking the aqueous
- substances of glass and crystal, distrusting aquacities of thought and
- language.
- What impeded Bloom from giving Stephen counsels of hygiene and
- prophylactic to which should be added suggestions concerning a
- preliminary wetting of the head and contraction of the muscles with
- rapid splashing of the face and neck and thoracic and epigastric region
- in case of sea or river bathing, the parts of the human anatomy most
- sensitive to cold being the nape, stomach and thenar or sole of foot?
- The incompatibility of aquacity with the erratic originality of genius.
- What additional didactic counsels did he similarly repress?
- Dietary: concerning the respective percentage of protein and caloric
- energy in bacon, salt ling and butter, the absence of the former in the
- lastnamed and the abundance of the latter in the firstnamed.
- Which seemed to the host to be the predominant qualities of his guest?
- Confidence in himself, an equal and opposite power of abandonment and
- recuperation.
- What concomitant phenomenon took place in the vessel of liquid by the
- agency of fire?
- The phenomenon of ebullition. Fanned by a constant updraught of
- ventilation between the kitchen and the chimneyflue, ignition was
- communicated from the faggots of precombustible fuel to polyhedral
- masses of bituminous coal, containing in compressed mineral form the
- foliated fossilised decidua of primeval forests which had in turn
- derived their vegetative existence from the sun, primal source of heat
- (radiant), transmitted through omnipresent luminiferous diathermanous
- ether. Heat (convected), a mode of motion developed by such combustion,
- was constantly and increasingly conveyed from the source of
- calorification to the liquid contained in the vessel, being radiated
- through the uneven unpolished dark surface of the metal iron, in part
- reflected, in part absorbed, in part transmitted, gradually raising the
- temperature of the water from normal to boiling point, a rise in
- temperature expressible as the result of an expenditure of 72 thermal
- units needed to raise 1 pound of water from 50° to 212° Fahrenheit.
- What announced the accomplishment of this rise in temperature?
- A double falciform ejection of water vapour from under the kettlelid at
- both sides simultaneously.
- For what personal purpose could Bloom have applied the water so boiled?
- To shave himself.
- What advantages attended shaving by night?
- A softer beard: a softer brush if intentionally allowed to remain from
- shave to shave in its agglutinated lather: a softer skin if
- unexpectedly encountering female acquaintances in remote places at
- incustomary hours: quiet reflections upon the course of the day: a
- cleaner sensation when awaking after a fresher sleep since matutinal
- noises, premonitions and perturbations, a clattered milkcan, a
- postman’s double knock, a paper read, reread while lathering,
- relathering the same spot, a shock, a shoot, with thought of aught he
- sought though fraught with nought might cause a faster rate of shaving
- and a nick on which incision plaster with precision cut and humected
- and applied adhered: which was to be done.
- Why did absence of light disturb him less than presence of noise?
- Because of the surety of the sense of touch in his firm full masculine
- feminine passive active hand.
- What quality did it (his hand) possess but with what counteracting
- influence?
- The operative surgical quality but that he was reluctant to shed human
- blood even when the end justified the means, preferring, in their
- natural order, heliotherapy, psychophysicotherapeutics, osteopathic
- surgery.
- What lay under exposure on the lower, middle and upper shelves of the
- kitchen dresser, opened by Bloom?
- On the lower shelf five vertical breakfast plates, six horizontal
- breakfast saucers on which rested inverted breakfast cups, a
- moustachecup, uninverted, and saucer of Crown Derby, four white
- goldrimmed eggcups, an open shammy purse displaying coins, mostly
- copper, and a phial of aromatic (violet) comfits. On the middle shelf a
- chipped eggcup containing pepper, a drum of table salt, four
- conglomerated black olives in oleaginous paper, an empty pot of
- Plumtree’s potted meat, an oval wicker basket bedded with fibre and
- containing one Jersey pear, a halfempty bottle of William Gilbey and
- Co’s white invalid port, half disrobed of its swathe of coralpink
- tissue paper, a packet of Epps’s soluble cocoa, five ounces of Anne
- Lynch’s choice tea at 2/- per lb in a crinkled leadpaper bag, a
- cylindrical canister containing the best crystallised lump sugar, two
- onions, one, the larger, Spanish, entire, the other, smaller, Irish,
- bisected with augmented surface and more redolent, a jar of Irish Model
- Dairy’s cream, a jug of brown crockery containing a naggin and a
- quarter of soured adulterated milk, converted by heat into water,
- acidulous serum and semisolidified curds, which added to the quantity
- subtracted for Mr Bloom’s and Mrs Fleming’s breakfasts, made one
- imperial pint, the total quantity originally delivered, two cloves, a
- halfpenny and a small dish containing a slice of fresh ribsteak. On the
- upper shelf a battery of jamjars (empty) of various sizes and
- proveniences.
- What attracted his attention lying on the apron of the dresser?
- Four polygonal fragments of two lacerated scarlet betting tickets,
- numbered 8 87, 88 6.
- What reminiscences temporarily corrugated his brow?
- Reminiscences of coincidences, truth stranger than fiction,
- preindicative of the result of the Gold Cup flat handicap, the official
- and definitive result of which he had read in the _Evening Telegraph_,
- late pink edition, in the cabman’s shelter, at Butt bridge.
- Where had previous intimations of the result, effected or projected,
- been received by him?
- In Bernard Kiernan’s licensed premises 8, 9 and 10 little Britain
- street: in David Byrne’s licensed premises, 14 Duke street: in
- O’Connell street lower, outside Graham Lemon’s when a dark man had
- placed in his hand a throwaway (subsequently thrown away), advertising
- Elijah, restorer of the church in Zion: in Lincoln place outside the
- premises of F. W. Sweny and Co (Limited), dispensing chemists, when,
- when Frederick M. (Bantam) Lyons had rapidly and successively
- requested, perused and restituted the copy of the current issue of the
- _Freeman’s Journal_ and _National Press_ which he had been about to
- throw away (subsequently thrown away), he had proceeded towards the
- oriental edifice of the Turkish and Warm Baths, 11 Leinster street,
- with the light of inspiration shining in his countenance and bearing in
- his arms the secret of the race, graven in the language of prediction.
- What qualifying considerations allayed his perturbations?
- The difficulties of interpretation since the significance of any event
- followed its occurrence as variably as the acoustic report followed the
- electrical discharge and of counterestimating against an actual loss by
- failure to interpret the total sum of possible losses proceeding
- originally from a successful interpretation.
- His mood?
- He had not risked, he did not expect, he had not been disappointed, he
- was satisfied.
- What satisfied him?
- To have sustained no positive loss. To have brought a positive gain to
- others. Light to the gentiles.
- How did Bloom prepare a collation for a gentile?
- He poured into two teacups two level spoonfuls, four in all, of Epps’s
- soluble cocoa and proceeded according to the directions for use printed
- on the label, to each adding after sufficient time for infusion the
- prescribed ingredients for diffusion in the manner and in the quantity
- prescribed.
- What supererogatory marks of special hospitality did the host show his
- guest?
- Relinquishing his symposiarchal right to the moustache cup of imitation
- Crown Derby presented to him by his only daughter, Millicent (Milly),
- he substituted a cup identical with that of his guest and served
- extraordinarily to his guest and, in reduced measure, to himself the
- viscous cream ordinarily reserved for the breakfast of his wife Marion
- (Molly).
- Was the guest conscious of and did he acknowledge these marks of
- hospitality?
- His attention was directed to them by his host jocosely, and he
- accepted them seriously as they drank in jocoserious silence Epps’s
- massproduct, the creature cocoa.
- Were there marks of hospitality which he contemplated but suppressed,
- reserving them for another and for himself on future occasions to
- complete the act begun?
- The reparation of a fissure of the length of 1 1/2 inches in the right
- side of his guest’s jacket. A gift to his guest of one of the four
- lady’s handkerchiefs, if and when ascertained to be in a presentable
- condition.
- Who drank more quickly?
- Bloom, having the advantage of ten seconds at the initiation and
- taking, from the concave surface of a spoon along the handle of which a
- steady flow of heat was conducted, three sips to his opponent’s one,
- six to two, nine to three.
- What cerebration accompanied his frequentative act?
- Concluding by inspection but erroneously that his silent companion was
- engaged in mental composition he reflected on the pleasures derived
- from literature of instruction rather than of amusement as he himself
- had applied to the works of William Shakespeare more than once for the
- solution of difficult problems in imaginary or real life.
- Had he found their solution?
- In spite of careful and repeated reading of certain classical passages,
- aided by a glossary, he had derived imperfect conviction from the text,
- the answers not bearing in all points.
- What lines concluded his first piece of original verse written by him,
- potential poet, at the age of 11 in 1877 on the occasion of the
- offering of three prizes of 10/-, 5/- and 2/6 respectively for
- competition by the _Shamrock_, a weekly newspaper?
- An ambition to squint
- At my verses in print
- Makes me hope that for these you’ll find room.
- If you so condescend
- Then please place at the end
- The name of yours truly, L. Bloom.
- Did he find four separating forces between his temporary guest and him?
- Name, age, race, creed.
- What anagrams had he made on his name in youth?
- Leopold Bloom
- Ellpodbomool
- Molldopeloob
- Bollopedoom
- Old Ollebo, M. P.
- What acrostic upon the abbreviation of his first name had he (kinetic
- poet) sent to Miss Marion (Molly) Tweedy on the 14 February 1888?
- Poets oft have sung in rhyme
- Of music sweet their praise divine.
- Let them hymn it nine times nine.
- Dearer far than song or wine.
- You are mine. The world is mine.
- What had prevented him from completing a topical song (music by R. G.
- Johnston) on the events of the past, or fixtures for the actual, years,
- entitled _If Brian Boru could but come back and see old Dublin now_,
- commissioned by Michael Gunn, lessee of the Gaiety Theatre, 46, 47, 48,
- 49 South King street, and to be introduced into the sixth scene, the
- valley of diamonds, of the second edition (30 January 1893) of the
- grand annual Christmas pantomime _Sinbad the Sailor_ (produced by R.
- Shelton 26 December 1892, written by Greenleaf Whittier, scenery by
- George A. Jackson and Cecil Hicks, costumes by Mrs and Miss Whelan
- under the personal supervision of Mrs Michael Gunn, ballets by Jessie
- Noir, harlequinade by Thomas Otto) and sung by Nelly Bouverist,
- principal girl?
- Firstly, oscillation between events of imperial and of local interest,
- the anticipated diamond jubilee of Queen Victoria (born 1820, acceded
- 1837) and the posticipated opening of the new municipal fish market:
- secondly, apprehension of opposition from extreme circles on the
- questions of the respective visits of Their Royal Highnesses the duke
- and duchess of York (real) and of His Majesty King Brian Boru
- (imaginary): thirdly, a conflict between professional etiquette and
- professional emulation concerning the recent erections of the Grand
- Lyric Hall on Burgh Quay and the Theatre Royal in Hawkins street:
- fourthly, distraction resultant from compassion for Nelly Bouverist’s
- non-intellectual, non-political, non-topical expression of countenance
- and concupiscence caused by Nelly Bouverist’s revelations of white
- articles of non-intellectual, non-political, non-topical underclothing
- while she (Nelly Bouverist) was in the articles: fifthly, the
- difficulties of the selection of appropriate music and humorous
- allusions from _Everybody’s Book of Jokes_ (1000 pages and a laugh in
- every one): sixthly, the rhymes, homophonous and cacophonous,
- associated with the names of the new lord mayor, Daniel Tallon, the new
- high sheriff, Thomas Pile and the new solicitorgeneral, Dunbar Plunket
- Barton.
- What relation existed between their ages?
- 16 years before in 1888 when Bloom was of Stephen’s present age Stephen
- was 6. 16 years after in 1920 when Stephen would be of Bloom’s present
- age Bloom would be 54. In 1936 when Bloom would be 70 and Stephen 54
- their ages initially in the ratio of 16 to 0 would be as 17 1/2 to 13
- 1/2, the proportion increasing and the disparity diminishing according
- as arbitrary future years were added, for if the proportion existing in
- 1883 had continued immutable, conceiving that to be possible, till then
- 1904 when Stephen was 22 Bloom would be 374 and in 1920 when Stephen
- would be 38, as Bloom then was, Bloom would be 646 while in 1952 when
- Stephen would have attained the maximum postdiluvian age of 70 Bloom,
- being 1190 years alive having been born in the year 714, would have
- surpassed by 221 years the maximum antediluvian age, that of
- Methusalah, 969 years, while, if Stephen would continue to live until
- he would attain that age in the year 3072 A.D., Bloom would have been
- obliged to have been alive 83,300 years, having been obliged to have
- been born in the year 81,396 B.C.
- What events might nullify these calculations?
- The cessation of existence of both or either, the inauguration of a new
- era or calendar, the annihilation of the world and consequent
- extermination of the human species, inevitable but impredictable.
- How many previous encounters proved their preexisting acquaintance?
- Two. The first in the lilacgarden of Matthew Dillon’s house, Medina
- Villa, Kimmage road, Roundtown, in 1887, in the company of Stephen’s
- mother, Stephen being then of the age of 5 and reluctant to give his
- hand in salutation. The second in the coffeeroom of Breslin’s hotel on
- a rainy Sunday in the January of 1892, in the company of Stephen’s
- father and Stephen’s granduncle, Stephen being then 5 years older.
- Did Bloom accept the invitation to dinner given then by the son and
- afterwards seconded by the father?
- Very gratefully, with grateful appreciation, with sincere appreciative
- gratitude, in appreciatively grateful sincerity of regret, he declined.
- Did their conversation on the subject of these reminiscences reveal a
- third connecting link between them?
- Mrs Riordan (Dante), a widow of independent means, had resided in the
- house of Stephen’s parents from 1 September 1888 to 29 December 1891
- and had also resided during the years 1892, 1893 and 1894 in the City
- Arms Hotel owned by Elizabeth O’Dowd of 54 Prussia street where, during
- parts of the years 1893 and 1894, she had been a constant informant of
- Bloom who resided also in the same hotel, being at that time a clerk in
- the employment of Joseph Cuffe of 5 Smithfield for the superintendence
- of sales in the adjacent Dublin Cattle market on the North Circular
- road.
- Had he performed any special corporal work of mercy for her?
- He had sometimes propelled her on warm summer evenings, an infirm widow
- of independent, if limited, means, in her convalescent bathchair with
- slow revolutions of its wheels as far as the corner of the North
- Circular road opposite Mr Gavin Low’s place of business where she had
- remained for a certain time scanning through his onelensed binocular
- fieldglasses unrecognisable citizens on tramcars, roadster bicycles
- equipped with inflated pneumatic tyres, hackney carriages, tandems,
- private and hired landaus, dogcarts, ponytraps and brakes passing from
- the city to the Phoenix Park and _vice versa_.
- Why could he then support that his vigil with the greater equanimity?
- Because in middle youth he had often sat observing through a rondel of
- bossed glass of a multicoloured pane the spectacle offered with
- continual changes of the thoroughfare without, pedestrians, quadrupeds,
- velocipedes, vehicles, passing slowly, quickly, evenly, round and round
- and round the rim of a round and round precipitous globe.
- What distinct different memories had each of her now eight years
- deceased?
- The older, her bezique cards and counters, her Skye terrier, her
- suppositious wealth, her lapses of responsiveness and incipient
- catarrhal deafness: the younger, her lamp of colza oil before the
- statue of the Immaculate Conception, her green and maroon brushes for
- Charles Stewart Parnell and for Michael Davitt, her tissue papers.
- Were there no means still remaining to him to achieve the rejuvenation
- which these reminiscences divulged to a younger companion rendered the
- more desirable?
- The indoor exercises, formerly intermittently practised, subsequently
- abandoned, prescribed in Eugen Sandow’s _Physical Strength and How to
- Obtain It_ which, designed particularly for commercial men engaged in
- sedentary occupations, were to be made with mental concentration in
- front of a mirror so as to bring into play the various families of
- muscles and produce successively a pleasant rigidity, a more pleasant
- relaxation and the most pleasant repristination of juvenile agility.
- Had any special agility been his in earlier youth?
- Though ringweight lifting had been beyond his strength and the full
- circle gyration beyond his courage yet as a High school scholar he had
- excelled in his stable and protracted execution of the half lever
- movement on the parallel bars in consequence of his abnormally
- developed abdominal muscles.
- Did either openly allude to their racial difference?
- Neither.
- What, reduced to their simplest reciprocal form, were Bloom’s thoughts
- about Stephen’s thoughts about Bloom and about Stephen’s thoughts about
- Bloom’s thoughts about Stephen?
- He thought that he thought that he was a jew whereas he knew that he
- knew that he knew that he was not.
- What, the enclosures of reticence removed, were their respective
- parentages?
- Bloom, only born male transubstantial heir of Rudolf Virag
- (subsequently Rudolph Bloom) of Szombathely, Vienna, Budapest, Milan,
- London and Dublin and of Ellen Higgins, second daughter of Julius
- Higgins (born Karoly) and Fanny Higgins (born Hegarty). Stephen, eldest
- surviving male consubstantial heir of Simon Dedalus of Cork and Dublin
- and of Mary, daughter of Richard and Christina Goulding (born Grier).
- Had Bloom and Stephen been baptised, and where and by whom, cleric or
- layman?
- Bloom (three times), by the reverend Mr Gilmer Johnston M. A., alone,
- in the protestant church of Saint Nicholas Without, Coombe, by James
- O’Connor, Philip Gilligan and James Fitzpatrick, together, under a pump
- in the village of Swords, and by the reverend Charles Malone C. C., in
- the church of the Three Patrons, Rathgar. Stephen (once) by the
- reverend Charles Malone C. C., alone, in the church of the Three
- Patrons, Rathgar.
- Did they find their educational careers similar?
- Substituting Stephen for Bloom Stoom would have passed successively
- through a dame’s school and the high school. Substituting Bloom for
- Stephen Blephen would have passed successively through the preparatory,
- junior, middle and senior grades of the intermediate and through the
- matriculation, first arts, second arts and arts degree courses of the
- royal university.
- Why did Bloom refrain from stating that he had frequented the
- university of life?
- Because of his fluctuating incertitude as to whether this observation
- had or had not been already made by him to Stephen or by Stephen to
- him.
- What two temperaments did they individually represent?
- The scientific. The artistic.
- What proofs did Bloom adduce to prove that his tendency was towards
- applied, rather than towards pure, science?
- Certain possible inventions of which he had cogitated when reclining in
- a state of supine repletion to aid digestion, stimulated by his
- appreciation of the importance of inventions now common but once
- revolutionary, for example, the aeronautic parachute, the reflecting
- telescope, the spiral corkscrew, the safety pin, the mineral water
- siphon, the canal lock with winch and sluice, the suction pump.
- Were these inventions principally intended for an improved scheme of
- kindergarten?
- Yes, rendering obsolete popguns, elastic airbladders, games of hazard,
- catapults. They comprised astronomical kaleidoscopes exhibiting the
- twelve constellations of the zodiac from Aries to Pisces, miniature
- mechanical orreries, arithmetical gelatine lozenges, geometrical to
- correspond with zoological biscuits, globemap playing balls,
- historically costumed dolls.
- What also stimulated him in his cogitations?
- The financial success achieved by Ephraim Marks and Charles A. James,
- the former by his 1d bazaar at 42 George’s street, south, the latter at
- his 6 1/2d shop and world’s fancy fair and waxwork exhibition at 30
- Henry street, admission 2d, children 1d: and the infinite possibilities
- hitherto unexploited of the modern art of advertisement if condensed in
- triliteral monoideal symbols, vertically of maximum visibility
- (divined), horizontally of maximum legibility (deciphered) and of
- magnetising efficacy to arrest involuntary attention, to interest, to
- convince, to decide.
- Such as?
- K. 11. Kino’s 11/— Trousers.
- House of Keys. Alexander J. Keyes.
- Such as not?
- Look at this long candle. Calculate when it burns out and you receive
- gratis 1 pair of our special non-compo boots, guaranteed 1 candle
- power. Address: Barclay and Cook, 18 Talbot street.
- Bacilikil (Insect Powder).
- Veribest (Boot Blacking).
- Uwantit (Combined pocket twoblade penknife with corkscrew, nailfile and
- pipecleaner).
- Such as never?
- What is home without Plumtree’s Potted Meat?
- Incomplete.
- With it an abode of bliss.
- Manufactured by George Plumtree, 23 Merchants’ quay, Dublin, put up in
- 4 oz pots, and inserted by Councillor Joseph P. Nannetti, M. P.,
- Rotunda Ward, 19 Hardwicke street, under the obituary notices and
- anniversaries of deceases. The name on the label is Plumtree. A
- plumtree in a meatpot, registered trade mark. Beware of imitations.
- Peatmot. Trumplee. Moutpat. Plamtroo.
- Which example did he adduce to induce Stephen to deduce that
- originality, though producing its own reward, does not invariably
- conduce to success?
- His own ideated and rejected project of an illuminated showcart, drawn
- by a beast of burden, in which two smartly dressed girls were to be
- seated engaged in writing.
- What suggested scene was then constructed by Stephen?
- Solitary hotel in mountain pass. Autumn. Twilight. Fire lit. In dark
- corner young man seated. Young woman enters. Restless. Solitary. She
- sits. She goes to window. She stands. She sits. Twilight. She thinks.
- On solitary hotel paper she writes. She thinks. She writes. She sighs.
- Wheels and hoofs. She hurries out. He comes from his dark corner. He
- seizes solitary paper. He holds it towards fire. Twilight. He reads.
- Solitary.
- What?
- In sloping, upright and backhands: Queen’s Hotel, Queen’s Hotel,
- Queen’s Hotel. Queen’s Ho...
- What suggested scene was then reconstructed by Bloom?
- The Queen’s Hotel, Ennis, county Clare, where Rudolph Bloom (Rudolf
- Virag) died on the evening of the 27 June 1886, at some hour unstated,
- in consequence of an overdose of monkshood (aconite) selfadministered
- in the form of a neuralgic liniment composed of 2 parts of aconite
- liniment to 1 of chloroform liniment (purchased by him at 10.20 a.m. on
- the morning of 27 June 1886 at the medical hall of Francis Dennehy, 17
- Church street, Ennis) after having, though not in consequence of
- having, purchased at 3.15 p.m. on the afternoon of 27 June 1886 a new
- boater straw hat, extra smart (after having, though not in consequence
- of having, purchased at the hour and in the place aforesaid, the toxin
- aforesaid), at the general drapery store of James Cullen, 4 Main
- street, Ennis.
- Did he attribute this homonymity to information or coincidence or
- intuition?
- Coincidence.
- Did he depict the scene verbally for his guest to see?
- He preferred himself to see another’s face and listen to another’s
- words by which potential narration was realised and kinetic temperament
- relieved.
- Did he see only a second coincidence in the second scene narrated to
- him, described by the narrator as _A Pisgah Sight of Palestine_ or _The
- Parable of the Plums_?
- It, with the preceding scene and with others unnarrated but existent by
- implication, to which add essays on various subjects or moral apothegms
- (e.g. _My Favourite Hero_ or _Procrastination is the Thief of Time_)
- composed during schoolyears, seemed to him to contain in itself and in
- conjunction with the personal equation certain possibilities of
- financial, social, personal and sexual success, whether specially
- collected and selected as model pedagogic themes (of cent per cent
- merit) for the use of preparatory and junior grade students or
- contributed in printed form, following the precedent of Philip Beaufoy
- or Doctor Dick or Heblon’s _Studies in Blue_, to a publication of
- certified circulation and solvency or employed verbally as intellectual
- stimulation for sympathetic auditors, tacitly appreciative of
- successful narrative and confidently augurative of successful
- achievement, during the increasingly longer nights gradually following
- the summer solstice on the day but three following, videlicet, Tuesday,
- 21 June (S. Aloysius Gonzaga), sunrise 3.33 a.m., sunset 8.29 p.m.
- Which domestic problem as much as, if not more than, any other
- frequently engaged his mind?
- What to do with our wives.
- What had been his hypothetical singular solutions?
- Parlour games (dominos, halma, tiddledywinks, spilikins, cup and ball,
- nap, spoil five, bezique, twentyfive, beggar my neighbour, draughts,
- chess or backgammon): embroidery, darning or knitting for the
- policeaided clothing society: musical duets, mandoline and guitar,
- piano and flute, guitar and piano: legal scrivenery or envelope
- addressing: biweekly visits to variety entertainments: commercial
- activity as pleasantly commanding and pleasingly obeyed mistress
- proprietress in a cool dairy shop or warm cigar divan: the clandestine
- satisfaction of erotic irritation in masculine brothels, state
- inspected and medically controlled: social visits, at regular
- infrequent prevented intervals and with regular frequent preventive
- superintendence, to and from female acquaintances of recognised
- respectability in the vicinity: courses of evening instruction
- specially designed to render liberal instruction agreeable.
- What instances of deficient mental development in his wife inclined him
- in favour of the lastmentioned (ninth) solution?
- In disoccupied moments she had more than once covered a sheet of paper
- with signs and hieroglyphics which she stated were Greek and Irish and
- Hebrew characters. She had interrogated constantly at varying intervals
- as to the correct method of writing the capital initial of the name of
- a city in Canada, Quebec. She understood little of political
- complications, internal, or balance of power, external. In calculating
- the addenda of bills she frequently had recourse to digital aid. After
- completion of laconic epistolary compositions she abandoned the
- implement of calligraphy in the encaustic pigment, exposed to the
- corrosive action of copperas, green vitriol and nutgall. Unusual
- polysyllables of foreign origin she interpreted phonetically or by
- false analogy or by both: metempsychosis (met him pike hoses), _alias_
- (a mendacious person mentioned in sacred scripture).
- What compensated in the false balance of her intelligence for these and
- such deficiencies of judgment regarding persons, places and things?
- The false apparent parallelism of all perpendicular arms of all
- balances, proved true by construction. The counterbalance of her
- proficiency of judgment regarding one person, proved true by
- experiment.
- How had he attempted to remedy this state of comparative ignorance?
- Variously. By leaving in a conspicuous place a certain book open at a
- certain page: by assuming in her, when alluding explanatorily, latent
- knowledge: by open ridicule in her presence of some absent other’s
- ignorant lapse.
- With what success had he attempted direct instruction?
- She followed not all, a part of the whole, gave attention with interest
- comprehended with surprise, with care repeated, with greater difficulty
- remembered, forgot with ease, with misgiving reremembered, rerepeated
- with error.
- What system had proved more effective?
- Indirect suggestion implicating selfinterest.
- Example?
- She disliked umbrella with rain, he liked woman with umbrella, she
- disliked new hat with rain, he liked woman with new hat, he bought new
- hat with rain, she carried umbrella with new hat.
- Accepting the analogy implied in his guest’s parable which examples of
- postexilic eminence did he adduce?
- Three seekers of the pure truth, Moses of Egypt, Moses Maimonides,
- author of _More Nebukim_ (Guide of the Perplexed) and Moses Mendelssohn
- of such eminence that from Moses (of Egypt) to Moses (Mendelssohn)
- there arose none like Moses (Maimonides).
- What statement was made, under correction, by Bloom concerning a fourth
- seeker of pure truth, by name Aristotle, mentioned, with permission, by
- Stephen?
- That the seeker mentioned had been a pupil of a rabbinical philosopher,
- name uncertain.
- Were other anapocryphal illustrious sons of the law and children of a
- selected or rejected race mentioned?
- Felix Bartholdy Mendelssohn (composer), Baruch Spinoza (philosopher),
- Mendoza (pugilist), Ferdinand Lassalle (reformer, duellist).
- What fragments of verse from the ancient Hebrew and ancient Irish
- languages were cited with modulations of voice and translation of texts
- by guest to host and by host to guest?
- By Stephen: _suil, suil, suil arun, suil go siocair agus suil go cuin_
- (walk, walk, walk your way, walk in safety, walk with care).
- By Bloom: _Kifeloch, harimon rakatejch m’baad l’zamatejch_ (thy temple
- amid thy hair is as a slice of pomegranate).
- How was a glyphic comparison of the phonic symbols of both languages
- made in substantiation of the oral comparison?
- By juxtaposition. On the penultimate blank page of a book of inferior
- literary style, entituled _Sweets of Sin_ (produced by Bloom and so
- manipulated that its front cover came in contact with the surface of
- the table) with a pencil (supplied by Stephen) Stephen wrote the Irish
- characters for gee, eh, dee, em, simple and modified, and Bloom in turn
- wrote the Hebrew characters ghimel, aleph, daleth and (in the absence
- of mem) a substituted qoph, explaining their arithmetical values as
- ordinal and cardinal numbers, videlicet 3, 1, 4, and 100.
- Was the knowledge possessed by both of each of these languages, the
- extinct and the revived, theoretical or practical?
- Theoretical, being confined to certain grammatical rules of accidence
- and syntax and practically excluding vocabulary.
- What points of contact existed between these languages and between the
- peoples who spoke them?
- The presence of guttural sounds, diacritic aspirations, epenthetic and
- servile letters in both languages: their antiquity, both having been
- taught on the plain of Shinar 242 years after the deluge in the
- seminary instituted by Fenius Farsaigh, descendant of Noah, progenitor
- of Israel, and ascendant of Heber and Heremon, progenitors of Ireland:
- their archaeological, genealogical, hagiographical, exegetical,
- homiletic, toponomastic, historical and religious literatures
- comprising the works of rabbis and culdees, Torah, Talmud (Mischna and
- Ghemara), Massor, Pentateuch, Book of the Dun Cow, Book of Ballymote,
- Garland of Howth, Book of Kells: their dispersal, persecution, survival
- and revival: the isolation of their synagogical and ecclesiastical
- rites in ghetto (S. Mary’s Abbey) and masshouse (Adam and Eve’s
- tavern): the proscription of their national costumes in penal laws and
- jewish dress acts: the restoration in Chanah David of Zion and the
- possibility of Irish political autonomy or devolution.
- What anthem did Bloom chant partially in anticipation of that multiple,
- ethnically irreducible consummation?
- Kolod balejwaw pnimah
- Nefesch, jehudi, homijah.
- Why was the chant arrested at the conclusion of this first distich?
- In consequence of defective mnemotechnic.
- How did the chanter compensate for this deficiency?
- By a periphrastic version of the general text.
- In what common study did their mutual reflections merge?
- The increasing simplification traceable from the Egyptian epigraphic
- hieroglyphs to the Greek and Roman alphabets and the anticipation of
- modern stenography and telegraphic code in the cuneiform inscriptions
- (Semitic) and the virgular quinquecostate ogham writing (Celtic).
- Did the guest comply with his host’s request?
- Doubly, by appending his signature in Irish and Roman characters.
- What was Stephen’s auditive sensation?
- He heard in a profound ancient male unfamiliar melody the accumulation
- of the past.
- What was Bloom’s visual sensation?
- He saw in a quick young male familiar form the predestination of a
- future.
- What were Stephen’s and Bloom’s quasisimultaneous volitional
- quasisensations of concealed identities?
- Visually, Stephen’s: The traditional figure of hypostasis, depicted by
- Johannes Damascenus, Lentulus Romanus and Epiphanius Monachus as
- leucodermic, sesquipedalian with winedark hair.
- Auditively, Bloom’s: The traditional accent of the ecstasy of
- catastrophe.
- What future careers had been possible for Bloom in the past and with
- what exemplars?
- In the church, Roman, Anglican or Nonconformist: exemplars, the very
- reverend John Conmee S. J., the reverend T. Salmon, D. D., provost of
- Trinity college, Dr Alexander J. Dowie. At the bar, English or Irish:
- exemplars, Seymour Bushe, K. C., Rufus Isaacs, K. C. On the stage,
- modern or Shakespearean: exemplars, Charles Wyndham, high comedian,
- Osmond Tearle († 1901), exponent of Shakespeare.
- Did the host encourage his guest to chant in a modulated voice a
- strange legend on an allied theme?
- Reassuringly, their place, where none could hear them talk, being
- secluded, reassured, the decocted beverages, allowing for subsolid
- residual sediment of a mechanical mixture, water plus sugar plus cream
- plus cocoa, having been consumed.
- Recite the first (major) part of this chanted legend.
- Little Harry Hughes and his schoolfellows all
- Went out for to play ball.
- And the very first ball little Harry Hughes played
- He drove it o’er the jew’s garden wall.
- And the very second ball little Harry Hughes played
- He broke the jew’s windows all.
- [Illustration]
- How did the son of Rudolph receive this first part?
- With unmixed feeling. Smiling, a jew, he heard with pleasure and saw
- the unbroken kitchen window.
- Recite the second part (minor) of the legend.
- Then out there came the jew’s daughter
- And she all dressed in green.
- “Come back, come back, you pretty little boy,
- And play your ball again.”
-
- I can’t come back and I won’t come back
- Without my schoolfellows all.
- For if my master he did hear
- He’d make it a sorry ball.”
- She took him by the lilywhite hand
- And led him along the hall
- Until she led him to a room
- Where none could hear him call.
- She took a penknife out of her pocket
- And cut off his little head.
- And now he’ll play his ball no more
- For he lies among the dead.
- [Illustration]
- How did the father of Millicent receive this second part?
- With mixed feelings. Unsmiling, he heard and saw with wonder a jew’s
- daughter, all dressed in green.
- Condense Stephen’s commentary.
- One of all, the least of all, is the victim predestined. Once by
- inadvertence twice by design he challenges his destiny. It comes when
- he is abandoned and challenges him reluctant and, as an apparition of
- hope and youth, holds him unresisting. It leads him to a strange
- habitation, to a secret infidel apartment, and there, implacable,
- immolates him, consenting.
- Why was the host (victim predestined) sad?
- He wished that a tale of a deed should be told of a deed not by him
- should by him not be told.
- Why was the host (reluctant, unresisting) still?
- In accordance with the law of the conservation of energy.
- Why was the host (secret infidel) silent?
- He weighed the possible evidences for and against ritual murder: the
- incitations of the hierarchy, the superstition of the populace, the
- propagation of rumour in continued fraction of veridicity, the envy of
- opulence, the influence of retaliation, the sporadic reappearance of
- atavistic delinquency, the mitigating circumstances of fanaticism,
- hypnotic suggestion and somnambulism.
- From which (if any) of these mental or physical disorders was he not
- totally immune?
- From hypnotic suggestion: once, waking, he had not recognised his
- sleeping apartment: more than once, waking, he had been for an
- indefinite time incapable of moving or uttering sounds. From
- somnambulism: once, sleeping, his body had risen, crouched and crawled
- in the direction of a heatless fire and, having attained its
- destination, there, curled, unheated, in night attire had lain,
- sleeping.
- Had this latter or any cognate phenomenon declared itself in any member
- of his family?
- Twice, in Holles street and in Ontario terrace, his daughter Millicent
- (Milly) at the ages of 6 and 8 years had uttered in sleep an
- exclamation of terror and had replied to the interrogations of two
- figures in night attire with a vacant mute expression.
- What other infantile memories had he of her?
- 15 June 1889. A querulous newborn female infant crying to cause and
- lessen congestion. A child renamed Padney Socks she shook with shocks
- her moneybox: counted his three free moneypenny buttons, one, tloo,
- tlee: a doll, a boy, a sailor she cast away: blond, born of two dark,
- she had blond ancestry, remote, a violation, Herr Hauptmann Hainau,
- Austrian army, proximate, a hallucination, lieutenant Mulvey, British
- navy.
- What endemic characteristics were present?
- Conversely the nasal and frontal formation was derived in a direct line
- of lineage which, though interrupted, would continue at distant
- intervals to more distant intervals to its most distant intervals.
- What memories had he of her adolescence?
- She relegated her hoop and skippingrope to a recess. On the duke’s
- lawn, entreated by an English visitor, she declined to permit him to
- make and take away her photographic image (objection not stated). On
- the South Circular road in the company of Elsa Potter, followed by an
- individual of sinister aspect, she went half way down Stamer street and
- turned abruptly back (reason of change not stated). On the vigil of the
- 15th anniversary of her birth she wrote a letter from Mullingar, county
- Westmeath, making a brief allusion to a local student (faculty and year
- not stated).
- Did that first division, portending a second division, afflict him?
- Less than he had imagined, more than he had hoped.
- What second departure was contemporaneously perceived by him similarly,
- if differently?
- A temporary departure of his cat.
- Why similarly, why differently?
- Similarly, because actuated by a secret purpose the quest of a new male
- (Mullingar student) or of a healing herb (valerian). Differently,
- because of different possible returns to the inhabitants or to the
- habitation.
- In other respects were their differences similar?
- In passivity, in economy, in the instinct of tradition, in
- unexpectedness.
- As?
- Inasmuch as leaning she sustained her blond hair for him to ribbon it
- for her (cf neckarching cat). Moreover, on the free surface of the lake
- in Stephen’s green amid inverted reflections of trees her uncommented
- spit, describing concentric circles of waterrings, indicated by the
- constancy of its permanence the locus of a somnolent prostrate fish (cf
- mousewatching cat). Again, in order to remember the date, combatants,
- issue and consequences of a famous military engagement she pulled a
- plait of her hair (cf earwashing cat). Furthermore, silly Milly, she
- dreamed of having had an unspoken unremembered conversation with a
- horse whose name had been Joseph to whom (which) she had offered a
- tumblerful of lemonade which it (he) had appeared to have accepted (cf
- hearthdreaming cat). Hence, in passivity, in economy, in the instinct
- of tradition, in unexpectedness, their differences were similar.
- In what way had he utilised gifts (1) an owl, 2) a clock, given as
- matrimonial auguries, to interest and to instruct her?
- As object lessons to explain: 1) the nature and habits of oviparous
- animals, the possibility of aerial flight, certain abnormalities of
- vision, the secular process of imbalsamation: 2) the principle of the
- pendulum, exemplified in bob, wheelgear and regulator, the translation
- in terms of human or social regulation of the various positions of
- clockwise moveable indicators on an unmoving dial, the exactitude of
- the recurrence per hour of an instant in each hour when the longer and
- the shorter indicator were at the same angle of inclination,
- _videlicet_, 5 5/11 minutes past each hour per hour in arithmetical
- progression.
- In what manners did she reciprocate?
- She remembered: on the 27th anniversary of his birth she presented to
- him a breakfast moustachecup of imitation Crown Derby porcelain ware.
- She provided: at quarter day or thereabouts if or when purchases had
- been made by him not for her she showed herself attentive to his
- necessities, anticipating his desires. She admired: a natural
- phenomenon having been explained by him to her she expressed the
- immediate desire to possess without gradual acquisition a fraction of
- his science, the moiety, the quarter, a thousandth part.
- What proposal did Bloom, diambulist, father of Milly, somnambulist,
- make to Stephen, noctambulist?
- To pass in repose the hours intervening between Thursday (proper) and
- Friday (normal) on an extemporised cubicle in the apartment immediately
- above the kitchen and immediately adjacent to the sleeping apartment of
- his host and hostess.
- What various advantages would or might have resulted from a
- prolongation of such an extemporisation?
- For the guest: security of domicile and seclusion of study. For the
- host: rejuvenation of intelligence, vicarious satisfaction. For the
- hostess: disintegration of obsession, acquisition of correct Italian
- pronunciation.
- Why might these several provisional contingencies between a guest and a
- hostess not necessarily preclude or be precluded by a permanent
- eventuality of reconciliatory union between a schoolfellow and a jew’s
- daughter?
- Because the way to daughter led through mother, the way to mother
- through daughter.
- To what inconsequent polysyllabic question of his host did the guest
- return a monosyllabic negative answer?
- If he had known the late Mrs Emily Sinico, accidentally killed at
- Sydney Parade railway station, 14 October 1903.
- What inchoate corollary statement was consequently suppressed by the
- host?
- A statement explanatory of his absence on the occasion of the interment
- of Mrs Mary Dedalus (born Goulding), 26 June 1903, vigil of the
- anniversary of the decease of Rudolph Bloom (born Virag).
- Was the proposal of asylum accepted?
- Promptly, inexplicably, with amicability, gratefully it was declined.
- What exchange of money took place between host and guest?
- The former returned to the latter, without interest, a sum of money (£
- 1-7-0), one pound seven shillings sterling, advanced by the latter to
- the former.
- What counterproposals were alternately advanced, accepted, modified,
- declined, restated in other terms, reaccepted, ratified, reconfirmed?
- To inaugurate a prearranged course of Italian instruction, place the
- residence of the instructed. To inaugurate a course of vocal
- instruction, place the residence of the instructress. To inaugurate a
- series of static, semistatic and peripatetic intellectual dialogues,
- places the residence of both speakers (if both speakers were resident
- in the same place), the _Ship_ hotel and tavern, 6 Lower Abbey street
- (W. and E. Connery, proprietors), the National Library of Ireland, 10
- Kildare street, the National Maternity Hospital, 29, 30 and 31 Holles
- street, a public garden, the vicinity of a place of worship, a
- conjunction of two or more public thoroughfares, the point of bisection
- of a right line drawn between their residences (if both speakers were
- resident in different places).
- What rendered problematic for Bloom the realisation of these mutually
- selfexcluding propositions?
- The irreparability of the past: once at a performance of Albert
- Hengler’s circus in the Rotunda, Rutland square, Dublin, an intuitive
- particoloured clown in quest of paternity had penetrated from the ring
- to a place in the auditorium where Bloom, solitary, was seated and had
- publicly declared to an exhilarated audience that he (Bloom) was his
- (the clown’s) papa. The imprevidibility of the future: once in the
- summer of 1898 he (Bloom) had marked a florin (2/-) with three notches
- on the milled edge and tendered it in payment of an account due to and
- received by J. and T. Davy, family grocers, 1 Charlemont Mall, Grand
- Canal, for circulation on the waters of civic finance, for possible,
- circuitous or direct, return.
- Was the clown Bloom’s son?
- No.
- Had Bloom’s coin returned?
- Never.
- Why would a recurrent frustration the more depress him?
- Because at the critical turningpoint of human existence he desired to
- amend many social conditions, the product of inequality and avarice and
- international animosity.
- He believed then that human life was infinitely perfectible,
- eliminating these conditions?
- There remained the generic conditions imposed by natural, as distinct
- from human law, as integral parts of the human whole: the necessity of
- destruction to procure alimentary sustenance: the painful character of
- the ultimate functions of separate existence, the agonies of birth and
- death: the monotonous menstruation of simian and (particularly) human
- females extending from the age of puberty to the menopause: inevitable
- accidents at sea, in mines and factories: certain very painful maladies
- and their resultant surgical operations, innate lunacy and congenital
- criminality, decimating epidemics: catastrophic cataclysms which make
- terror the basis of human mentality: seismic upheavals the epicentres
- of which are located in densely populated regions: the fact of vital
- growth, through convulsions of metamorphosis, from infancy through
- maturity to decay.
- Why did he desist from speculation?
- Because it was a task for a superior intelligence to substitute other
- more acceptable phenomena in the place of the less acceptable phenomena
- to be removed.
- Did Stephen participate in his dejection?
- He affirmed his significance as a conscious rational animal proceeding
- syllogistically from the known to the unknown and a conscious rational
- reagent between a micro and a macrocosm ineluctably constructed upon
- the incertitude of the void.
- Was this affirmation apprehended by Bloom?
- Not verbally. Substantially.
- What comforted his misapprehension?
- That as a competent keyless citizen he had proceeded energetically from
- the unknown to the known through the incertitude of the void.
- In what order of precedence, with what attendant ceremony was the
- exodus from the house of bondage to the wilderness of inhabitation
- effected?
- Lighted Candle in Stick borne by
- BLOOM
- Diaconal Hat on Ashplant borne by
- STEPHEN
- With what intonation _secreto_ of what commemorative psalm?
- The 113th, _modus peregrinus: In exitu Israël de Egypto: domus Jacob de
- populo barbaro_.
- What did each do at the door of egress?
- Bloom set the candlestick on the floor. Stephen put the hat on his
- head.
- For what creature was the door of egress a door of ingress?
- For a cat.
- What spectacle confronted them when they, first the host, then the
- guest, emerged silently, doubly dark, from obscurity by a passage from
- the rere of the house into the penumbra of the garden?
- The heaventree of stars hung with humid nightblue fruit.
- With what meditations did Bloom accompany his demonstration to his
- companion of various constellations?
- Meditations of evolution increasingly vaster: of the moon invisible in
- incipient lunation, approaching perigee: of the infinite lattiginous
- scintillating uncondensed milky way, discernible by daylight by an
- observer placed at the lower end of a cylindrical vertical shaft 5000
- ft deep sunk from the surface towards the centre of the earth: of
- Sirius (alpha in Canis Maior) 10 lightyears (57,000,000,000,000 miles)
- distant and in volume 900 times the dimension of our planet: of
- Arcturus: of the precession of equinoxes: of Orion with belt and
- sextuple sun theta and nebula in which 100 of our solar systems could
- be contained: of moribund and of nascent new stars such as Nova in
- 1901: of our system plunging towards the constellation of Hercules: of
- the parallax or parallactic drift of socalled fixed stars, in reality
- evermoving wanderers from immeasurably remote eons to infinitely remote
- futures in comparison with which the years, threescore and ten, of
- allotted human life formed a parenthesis of infinitesimal brevity.
- Were there obverse meditations of involution increasingly less vast?
- Of the eons of geological periods recorded in the stratifications of
- the earth: of the myriad minute entomological organic existences
- concealed in cavities of the earth, beneath removable stones, in hives
- and mounds, of microbes, germs, bacteria, bacilli, spermatozoa: of the
- incalculable trillions of billions of millions of imperceptible
- molecules contained by cohesion of molecular affinity in a single
- pinhead: of the universe of human serum constellated with red and white
- bodies, themselves universes of void space constellated with other
- bodies, each, in continuity, its universe of divisible component bodies
- of which each was again divisible in divisions of redivisible component
- bodies, dividends and divisors ever diminishing without actual division
- till, if the progress were carried far enough, nought nowhere was never
- reached.
- Why did he not elaborate these calculations to a more precise result?
- Because some years previously in 1886 when occupied with the problem of
- the quadrature of the circle he had learned of the existence of a
- number computed to a relative degree of accuracy to be of such
- magnitude and of so many places, e.g., the 9th power of the 9th power
- of 9, that, the result having been obtained, 33 closely printed volumes
- of 1000 pages each of innumerable quires and reams of India paper would
- have to be requisitioned in order to contain the complete tale of its
- printed integers of units, tens, hundreds, thousands, tens of
- thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions, tens of millions, hundreds
- of millions, billions, the nucleus of the nebula of every digit of
- every series containing succinctly the potentiality of being raised to
- the utmost kinetic elaboration of any power of any of its powers.
- Did he find the problems of the inhabitability of the planets and their
- satellites by a race, given in species, and of the possible social and
- moral redemption of said race by a redeemer, easier of solution?
- Of a different order of difficulty. Conscious that the human organism,
- normally capable of sustaining an atmospheric pressure of 19 tons, when
- elevated to a considerable altitude in the terrestrial atmosphere
- suffered with arithmetical progression of intensity, according as the
- line of demarcation between troposphere and stratosphere was
- approximated from nasal hemorrhage, impeded respiration and vertigo,
- when proposing this problem for solution, he had conjectured as a
- working hypothesis which could not be proved impossible that a more
- adaptable and differently anatomically constructed race of beings might
- subsist otherwise under Martian, Mercurial, Veneral, Jovian, Saturnian,
- Neptunian or Uranian sufficient and equivalent conditions, though an
- apogean humanity of beings created in varying forms with finite
- differences resulting similar to the whole and to one another would
- probably there as here remain inalterably and inalienably attached to
- vanities, to vanities of vanities and to all that is vanity.
- And the problem of possible redemption?
- The minor was proved by the major.
- Which various features of the constellations were in turn considered?
- The various colours significant of various degrees of vitality (white,
- yellow, crimson, vermilion, cinnabar): their degrees of brilliancy:
- their magnitudes revealed up to and including the 7th: their positions:
- the waggoner’s star: Walsingham way: the chariot of David: the annular
- cinctures of Saturn: the condensation of spiral nebulae into suns: the
- interdependent gyrations of double suns: the independent synchronous
- discoveries of Galileo, Simon Marius, Piazzi, Le Verrier, Herschel,
- Galle: the systematisations attempted by Bode and Kepler of cubes of
- distances and squares of times of revolution: the almost infinite
- compressibility of hirsute comets and their vast elliptical egressive
- and reentrant orbits from perihelion to aphelion: the sidereal origin
- of meteoric stones: the Libyan floods on Mars about the period of the
- birth of the younger astroscopist: the annual recurrence of meteoric
- showers about the period of the feast of S. Lawrence (martyr, 10
- August): the monthly recurrence known as the new moon with the old moon
- in her arms: the posited influence of celestial on human bodies: the
- appearance of a star (1st magnitude) of exceeding brilliancy dominating
- by night and day (a new luminous sun generated by the collision and
- amalgamation in incandescence of two nonluminous exsuns) about the
- period of the birth of William Shakespeare over delta in the recumbent
- neversetting constellation of Cassiopeia and of a star (2nd magnitude)
- of similar origin but of lesser brilliancy which had appeared in and
- disappeared from the constellation of the Corona Septentrionalis about
- the period of the birth of Leopold Bloom and of other stars of
- (presumably) similar origin which had (effectively or presumably)
- appeared in and disappeared from the constellation of Andromeda about
- the period of the birth of Stephen Dedalus, and in and from the
- constellation of Auriga some years after the birth and death of Rudolph
- Bloom, junior, and in and from other constellations some years before
- or after the birth or death of other persons: the attendant phenomena
- of eclipses, solar and lunar, from immersion to emersion, abatement of
- wind, transit of shadow, taciturnity of winged creatures, emergence of
- nocturnal or crepuscular animals, persistence of infernal light,
- obscurity of terrestrial waters, pallor of human beings.
- His (Bloom’s) logical conclusion, having weighed the matter and
- allowing for possible error?
- That it was not a heaventree, not a heavengrot, not a heavenbeast, not
- a heavenman. That it was a Utopia, there being no known method from the
- known to the unknown: an infinity renderable equally finite by the
- suppositious apposition of one or more bodies equally of the same and
- of different magnitudes: a mobility of illusory forms immobilised in
- space, remobilised in air: a past which possibly had ceased to exist as
- a present before its probable spectators had entered actual present
- existence.
- Was he more convinced of the esthetic value of the spectacle?
- Indubitably in consequence of the reiterated examples of poets in the
- delirium of the frenzy of attachment or in the abasement of rejection
- invoking ardent sympathetic constellations or the frigidity of the
- satellite of their planet.
- Did he then accept as an article of belief the theory of astrological
- influences upon sublunary disasters?
- It seemed to him as possible of proof as of confutation and the
- nomenclature employed in its selenographical charts as attributable to
- verifiable intuition as to fallacious analogy: the lake of dreams, the
- sea of rains, the gulf of dews, the ocean of fecundity.
- What special affinities appeared to him to exist between the moon and
- woman?
- Her antiquity in preceding and surviving successive tellurian
- generations: her nocturnal predominance: her satellitic dependence: her
- luminary reflection: her constancy under all her phases, rising and
- setting by her appointed times, waxing and waning: the forced
- invariability of her aspect: her indeterminate response to
- inaffirmative interrogation: her potency over effluent and refluent
- waters: her power to enamour, to mortify, to invest with beauty, to
- render insane, to incite to and aid delinquency: the tranquil
- inscrutability of her visage: the terribility of her isolated dominant
- implacable resplendent propinquity: her omens of tempest and of calm:
- the stimulation of her light, her motion and her presence: the
- admonition of her craters, her arid seas, her silence: her splendour,
- when visible: her attraction, when invisible.
- What visible luminous sign attracted Bloom’s, who attracted Stephen’s,
- gaze?
- In the second storey (rere) of his (Bloom’s) house the light of a
- paraffin oil lamp with oblique shade projected on a screen of roller
- blind supplied by Frank O’Hara, window blind, curtain pole and
- revolving shutter manufacturer, 16 Aungier street.
- How did he elucidate the mystery of an invisible attractive person, his
- wife Marion (Molly) Bloom, denoted by a visible splendid sign, a lamp?
- With indirect and direct verbal allusions or affirmations: with subdued
- affection and admiration: with description: with impediment: with
- suggestion.
- Both then were silent?
- Silent, each contemplating the other in both mirrors of the reciprocal
- flesh of theirhisnothis fellowfaces.
- Were they indefinitely inactive?
- At Stephen’s suggestion, at Bloom’s instigation both, first Stephen,
- then Bloom, in penumbra urinated, their sides contiguous, their organs
- of micturition reciprocally rendered invisible by manual
- circumposition, their gazes, first Bloom’s, then Stephen’s, elevated to
- the projected luminous and semiluminous shadow.
- Similarly?
- The trajectories of their, first sequent, then simultaneous, urinations
- were dissimilar: Bloom’s longer, less irruent, in the incomplete form
- of the bifurcated penultimate alphabetical letter, who in his ultimate
- year at High School (1880) had been capable of attaining the point of
- greatest altitude against the whole concurrent strength of the
- institution, 210 scholars: Stephen’s higher, more sibilant, who in the
- ultimate hours of the previous day had augmented by diuretic
- consumption an insistent vesical pressure.
- What different problems presented themselves to each concerning the
- invisible audible collateral organ of the other?
- To Bloom: the problems of irritability, tumescence, rigidity,
- reactivity, dimension, sanitariness, pilosity.
- To Stephen: the problem of the sacerdotal integrity of Jesus
- circumcised (1 January, holiday of obligation to hear mass and abstain
- from unnecessary servile work) and the problem as to whether the divine
- prepuce, the carnal bridal ring of the holy Roman catholic apostolic
- church, conserved in Calcata, were deserving of simple hyperduly or of
- the fourth degree of latria accorded to the abscission of such divine
- excrescences as hair and toenails.
- What celestial sign was by both simultaneously observed?
- A star precipitated with great apparent velocity across the firmament
- from Vega in the Lyre above the zenith beyond the stargroup of the
- Tress of Berenice towards the zodiacal sign of Leo.
- How did the centripetal remainer afford egress to the centrifugal
- departer?
- By inserting the barrel of an arruginated male key in the hole of an
- unstable female lock, obtaining a purchase on the bow of the key and
- turning its wards from right to left, withdrawing a bolt from its
- staple, pulling inward spasmodically an obsolescent unhinged door and
- revealing an aperture for free egress and free ingress.
- How did they take leave, one of the other, in separation?
- Standing perpendicular at the same door and on different sides of its
- base, the lines of their valedictory arms, meeting at any point and
- forming any angle less than the sum of two right angles.
- What sound accompanied the union of their tangent, the disunion of
- their (respectively) centrifugal and centripetal hands?
- The sound of the peal of the hour of the night by the chime of the
- bells in the church of Saint George.
- What echoes of that sound were by both and each heard?
- By Stephen:
- Liliata rutilantium. Turma circumdet.
- Iubilantium te virginum. Chorus excipiat.
- By Bloom:
- Heigho, heigho,
- Heigho, heigho.
- Where were the several members of the company which with Bloom that day
- at the bidding of that peal had travelled from Sandymount in the south
- to Glasnevin in the north?
- Martin Cunningham (in bed), Jack Power (in bed), Simon Dedalus (in
- bed), Ned Lambert (in bed), Tom Kernan (in bed), Joe Hynes (in bed),
- John Henry Menton (in bed), Bernard Corrigan (in bed), Patsy Dignam (in
- bed), Paddy Dignam (in the grave).
- Alone, what did Bloom hear?
- The double reverberation of retreating feet on the heavenborn earth,
- the double vibration of a jew’s harp in the resonant lane.
- Alone, what did Bloom feel?
- The cold of interstellar space, thousands of degrees below freezing
- point or the absolute zero of Fahrenheit, Centigrade or Réaumur: the
- incipient intimations of proximate dawn.
- Of what did bellchime and handtouch and footstep and lonechill remind
- him?
- Of companions now in various manners in different places defunct: Percy
- Apjohn (killed in action, Modder River), Philip Gilligan (phthisis,
- Jervis Street hospital), Matthew F. Kane (accidental drowning, Dublin
- Bay), Philip Moisel (pyemia, Heytesbury street), Michael Hart
- (phthisis, Mater Misericordiae hospital), Patrick Dignam (apoplexy,
- Sandymount).
- What prospect of what phenomena inclined him to remain?
- The disparition of three final stars, the diffusion of daybreak, the
- apparition of a new solar disk.
- Had he ever been a spectator of those phenomena?
- Once, in 1887, after a protracted performance of charades in the house
- of Luke Doyle, Kimmage, he had awaited with patience the apparition of
- the diurnal phenomenon, seated on a wall, his gaze turned in the
- direction of Mizrach, the east.
- He remembered the initial paraphenomena?
- More active air, a matutinal distant cock, ecclesiastical clocks at
- various points, avine music, the isolated tread of an early wayfarer,
- the visible diffusion of the light of an invisible luminous body, the
- first golden limb of the resurgent sun perceptible low on the horizon.
- Did he remain?
- With deep inspiration he returned, retraversing the garden, reentering
- the passage, reclosing the door. With brief suspiration he reassumed
- the candle, reascended the stairs, reapproached the door of the front
- room, hallfloor, and reentered.
- What suddenly arrested his ingress?
- The right temporal lobe of the hollow sphere of his cranium came into
- contact with a solid timber angle where, an infinitesimal but sensible
- fraction of a second later, a painful sensation was located in
- consequence of antecedent sensations transmitted and registered.
- Describe the alterations effected in the disposition of the articles of
- furniture.
- A sofa upholstered in prune plush had been translocated from opposite
- the door to the ingleside near the compactly furled Union Jack (an
- alteration which he had frequently intended to execute): the blue and
- white checker inlaid majolicatopped table had been placed opposite the
- door in the place vacated by the prune plush sofa: the walnut sideboard
- (a projecting angle of which had momentarily arrested his ingress) had
- been moved from its position beside the door to a more advantageous but
- more perilous position in front of the door: two chairs had been moved
- from right and left of the ingleside to the position originally
- occupied by the blue and white checker inlaid majolicatopped table.
- Describe them.
- One: a squat stuffed easychair, with stout arms extended and back
- slanted to the rere, which, repelled in recoil, had then upturned an
- irregular fringe of a rectangular rug and now displayed on its amply
- upholstered seat a centralised diffusing and diminishing
- discolouration. The other: a slender splayfoot chair of glossy cane
- curves, placed directly opposite the former, its frame from top to seat
- and from seat to base being varnished dark brown, its seat being a
- bright circle of white plaited rush.
- What significances attached to these two chairs?
- Significances of similitude, of posture, of symbolism, of
- circumstantial evidence, of testimonial supermanence.
- What occupied the position originally occupied by the sideboard?
- A vertical piano (Cadby) with exposed keyboard, its closed coffin
- supporting a pair of long yellow ladies’ gloves and an emerald ashtray
- containing four consumed matches, a partly consumed cigarette and two
- discoloured ends of cigarettes, its musicrest supporting the music in
- the key of G natural for voice and piano of _Love’s Old Sweet Song_
- (words by G. Clifton Bingham, composed by J. L. Molloy, sung by Madam
- Antoinette Sterling) open at the last page with the final indications
- _ad libitum, forte_, pedal, _animato_, sustained pedal, _ritirando_,
- close.
- With what sensations did Bloom contemplate in rotation these objects?
- With strain, elevating a candlestick: with pain, feeling on his right
- temple a contused tumescence: with attention, focussing his gaze on a
- large dull passive and a slender bright active: with solicitation,
- bending and downturning the upturned rugfringe: with amusement,
- remembering Dr Malachi Mulligan’s scheme of colour containing the
- gradation of green: with pleasure, repeating the words and antecedent
- act and perceiving through various channels of internal sensibility the
- consequent and concomitant tepid pleasant diffusion of gradual
- discolouration.
- His next proceeding?
- From an open box on the majolicatopped table he extracted a black
- diminutive cone, one inch in height, placed it on its circular base on
- a small tin plate, placed his candlestick on the right corner of the
- mantelpiece, produced from his waistcoat a folded page of prospectus
- (illustrated) entitled Agendath Netaim, unfolded the same, examined it
- superficially, rolled it into a thin cylinder, ignited it in the
- candleflame, applied it when ignited to the apex of the cone till the
- latter reached the stage of rutilance, placed the cylinder in the basin
- of the candlestick disposing its unconsumed part in such a manner as to
- facilitate total combustion.
- What followed this operation?
- The truncated conical crater summit of the diminutive volcano emitted a
- vertical and serpentine fume redolent of aromatic oriental incense.
- What homothetic objects, other than the candlestick, stood on the
- mantelpiece?
- A timepiece of striated Connemara marble, stopped at the hour of 4.46
- a.m. on the 21 March 1896, matrimonial gift of Matthew Dillon: a dwarf
- tree of glacial arborescence under a transparent bellshade, matrimonial
- gift of Luke and Caroline Doyle: an embalmed owl, matrimonial gift of
- Alderman John Hooper.
- What interchanges of looks took place between these three objects and
- Bloom?
- In the mirror of the giltbordered pierglass the undecorated back of the
- dwarf tree regarded the upright back of the embalmed owl. Before the
- mirror the matrimonial gift of Alderman John Hooper with a clear
- melancholy wise bright motionless compassionate gaze regarded Bloom
- while Bloom with obscure tranquil profound motionless compassionated
- gaze regarded the matrimonial gift of Luke and Caroline Doyle.
- What composite asymmetrical image in the mirror then attracted his
- attention?
- The image of a solitary (ipsorelative) mutable (aliorelative) man.
- Why solitary (ipsorelative)?
- Brothers and sisters had he none.
- Yet that man’s father was his grandfather’s son.
- Why mutable (aliorelative)?
- From infancy to maturity he had resembled his maternal procreatrix.
- From maturity to senility he would increasingly resemble his paternal
- procreator.
- What final visual impression was communicated to him by the mirror?
- The optical reflection of several inverted volumes improperly arranged
- and not in the order of their common letters with scintillating titles
- on the two bookshelves opposite.
- Catalogue these books.
- _Thom’s Dublin Post Office Directory_, 1886.
- Denis Florence M’Carthy’s _Poetical Works_ (copper beechleaf bookmark
- at p. 5).
- Shakespeare’s _Works_ (dark crimson morocco, goldtooled).
- _The Useful Ready Reckoner_ (brown cloth).
- _The Secret History of the Court of Charles II_ (red cloth, tooled
- binding).
- _The Child’s Guide_ (blue cloth).
- _The Beauties of Killarney_ (wrappers).
- _When We Were Boys_ by William O’Brien M. P. (green cloth, slightly
- faded, envelope bookmark at p. 217).
- _Thoughts from Spinoza_ (maroon leather).
- _The Story of the Heavens_ by Sir Robert Ball (blue cloth).
- Ellis’s _Three Trips to Madagascar_ (brown cloth, title obliterated).
- _The Stark-Munro Letters_ by A. Conan Doyle, property of the City of
- Dublin Public Library, 106 Capel street, lent 21 May (Whitsun Eve)
- 1904, due 4 June 1904, 13 days overdue (black cloth binding, bearing
- white letternumber ticket).
- _Voyages in China_ by “Viator” (recovered with brown paper, red ink
- title).
- _Philosophy of the Talmud_ (sewn pamphlet).
- Lockhart’s _Life of Napoleon_ (cover wanting, marginal annotations,
- minimising victories, aggrandising defeats of the protagonist).
- _Soll und Haben_ by Gustav Freytag (black boards, Gothic characters,
- cigarette coupon bookmark at p. 24).
- Hozier’s _History of the Russo-Turkish War_ (brown cloth, 2 volumes,
- with gummed label, Garrison Library, Governor’s Parade, Gibraltar, on
- verso of cover).
- _Laurence Bloomfield in Ireland_ by William Allingham (second edition,
- green cloth, gilt trefoil design, previous owner’s name on recto of
- flyleaf erased).
- _A Handbook of Astronomy_ (cover, brown leather, detached, 5 plates,
- antique letterpress long primer, author’s footnotes nonpareil, marginal
- clues brevier, captions small pica).
- _The Hidden Life of Christ_ (black boards).
- _In the Track of the Sun_ (yellow cloth, titlepage missing, recurrent
- title intestation).
- _Physical Strength and How to Obtain It_ by Eugen Sandow (red cloth).
- _Short but yet Plain Elements of Geometry_ written in French by F.
- Ignat. Pardies and rendered into Engliſh by John Harris D. D. London,
- printed for R. Knaplock at the Biſhop’s Head, MDCCXI, with dedicatory
- epiſtle to his worthy friend Charles Cox, eſquire, Member of Parliament
- for the burgh of Southwark and having ink calligraphed statement on the
- flyleaf certifying that the book was the property of Michael Gallagher,
- dated this 10th day of May 1822 and requeſting the perſon who should
- find it, if the book should be loſt or go aſtray, to reſtore it to
- Michael Gallagher, carpenter, Dufery Gate, Enniſcorthy, county Wicklow,
- the fineſt place in the world.
- What reflections occupied his mind during the process of reversion of
- the inverted volumes?
- The necessity of order, a place for everything and everything in its
- place: the deficient appreciation of literature possessed by females:
- the incongruity of an apple incuneated in a tumbler and of an umbrella
- inclined in a closestool: the insecurity of hiding any secret document
- behind, beneath or between the pages of a book.
- Which volume was the largest in bulk?
- Hozier’s _History of the Russo-Turkish War._
- What among other data did the second volume of the work in question
- contain?
- The name of a decisive battle (forgotten), frequently remembered by a
- decisive officer, major Brian Cooper Tweedy (remembered).
- Why, firstly and secondly, did he not consult the work in question?
- Firstly, in order to exercise mnemotechnic: secondly, because after an
- interval of amnesia, when, seated at the central table, about to
- consult the work in question, he remembered by mnemotechnic the name of
- the military engagement, Plevna.
- What caused him consolation in his sitting posture?
- The candour, nudity, pose, tranquility, youth, grace, sex, counsel of a
- statue erect in the centre of the table, an image of Narcissus
- purchased by auction from P. A. Wren, 9 Bachelor’s Walk.
- What caused him irritation in his sitting posture?
- Inhibitory pressure of collar (size 17) and waistcoat (5 buttons), two
- articles of clothing superfluous in the costume of mature males and
- inelastic to alterations of mass by expansion.
- How was the irritation allayed?
- He removed his collar, with contained black necktie and collapsible
- stud, from his neck to a position on the left of the table. He
- unbuttoned successively in reversed direction waistcoat, trousers,
- shirt and vest along the medial line of irregular incrispated black
- hairs extending in triangular convergence from the pelvic basin over
- the circumference of the abdomen and umbilicular fossicle along the
- medial line of nodes to the intersection of the sixth pectoral
- vertebrae, thence produced both ways at right angles and terminating in
- circles described about two equidistant points, right and left, on the
- summits of the mammary prominences. He unbraced successively each of
- six minus one braced trouser buttons, arranged in pairs, of which one
- incomplete.
- What involuntary actions followed?
- He compressed between 2 fingers the flesh circumjacent to a cicatrice
- in the left infracostal region below the diaphragm resulting from a
- sting inflicted 2 weeks and 3 days previously (23 May 1904) by a bee.
- He scratched imprecisely with his right hand, though insensible of
- prurition, various points and surfaces of his partly exposed, wholly
- abluted skin. He inserted his left hand into the left lower pocket of
- his waistcoat and extracted and replaced a silver coin (1 shilling),
- placed there (presumably) on the occasion (17 October 1903) of the
- interment of Mrs Emily Sinico, Sydney Parade.
- Compile the budget for 16 June 1904.
- Debit
- £. s. d.
- 1 Pork kidney 0—0—3
- 1 Copy Freeman’s Journal 0—0—1
- 1 Bath and Gratification 0—1—6
- Tramfare 0—0—1
- 1 In Memoriam Patrick Dignam 0—5—0
- 2 Banbury cakes 0—0—1
- 1 Lunch 0—0—7
- 1 Renewal fee for book 0—1—0
- 1 Packet Notepaper and Envelopes 0—0—2
- 1 Dinner and Gratification 0—2—0
- 1 Postal Order and Stamp 0—2—8
- Tramfare 0—0—1
- 1 Pig’s Foot 0—0—4
- 1 Sheep’s Trotter 0—0—3
- 1 Cake Fry’s Plain Chocolate 0—0—1
- 1 Square Soda Bread 0—0—4
- 1 Coffee and Bun 0—0—4
- Loan (Stephen Dedalus) refunded 1—7—0
- BALANCE 0—16—6
- —————
- 2—19—3
- Credit
- £. s. d.
- Cash in hand 0—4—9
- Commission recd. Freeman’s Journal 1—7—6
- Loan (Stephen Dedalus) 1—7—0
- —————
- 2—19—3
- Did the process of divestiture continue?
- Did the process of divestiture continue?
- Sensible of a benignant persistent ache in his footsoles he extended
- his foot to one side and observed the creases, protuberances and
- salient points caused by foot pressure in the course of walking
- repeatedly in several different directions, then, inclined, he disnoded
- the laceknots, unhooked and loosened the laces, took off each of his
- two boots for the second time, detached the partially moistened right
- sock through the fore part of which the nail of his great toe had again
- effracted, raised his right foot and, having unhooked a purple elastic
- sock suspender, took off his right sock, placed his unclothed right
- foot on the margin of the seat of his chair, picked at and gently
- lacerated the protruding part of the great toenail, raised the part
- lacerated to his nostrils and inhaled the odour of the quick, then,
- with satisfaction, threw away the lacerated ungual fragment.
- Why with satisfaction?
- Because the odour inhaled corresponded to other odours inhaled of other
- ungual fragments, picked and lacerated by Master Bloom, pupil of Mrs
- Ellis’s juvenile school, patiently each night in the act of brief
- genuflection and nocturnal prayer and ambitious meditation.
- In what ultimate ambition had all concurrent and consecutive ambitions
- now coalesced?
- Not to inherit by right of primogeniture, gavelkind or borough English,
- or possess in perpetuity an extensive demesne of a sufficient number of
- acres, roods and perches, statute land measure (valuation £ 42), of
- grazing turbary surrounding a baronial hall with gatelodge and carriage
- drive nor, on the other hand, a terracehouse or semidetached villa,
- described as _Rus in Urbe_ or _Qui si sana_, but to purchase by private
- treaty in fee simple a thatched bungalowshaped 2 storey dwellinghouse
- of southerly aspect, surmounted by vane and lightning conductor,
- connected with the earth, with porch covered by parasitic plants (ivy
- or Virginia creeper), halldoor, olive green, with smart carriage finish
- and neat doorbrasses, stucco front with gilt tracery at eaves and
- gable, rising, if possible, upon a gentle eminence with agreeable
- prospect from balcony with stone pillar parapet over unoccupied and
- unoccupyable interjacent pastures and standing in 5 or 6 acres of its
- own ground, at such a distance from the nearest public thoroughfare as
- to render its houselights visible at night above and through a quickset
- hornbeam hedge of topiary cutting, situate at a given point not less
- than 1 statute mile from the periphery of the metropolis, within a time
- limit of not more than 15 minutes from tram or train line (e.g.,
- Dundrum, south, or Sutton, north, both localities equally reported by
- trial to resemble the terrestrial poles in being favourable climates
- for phthisical subjects), the premises to be held under feefarm grant,
- lease 999 years, the messuage to consist of 1 drawingroom with
- baywindow (2 lancets), thermometer affixed, 1 sittingroom, 4 bedrooms,
- 2 servants’ rooms, tiled kitchen with close range and scullery, lounge
- hall fitted with linen wallpresses, fumed oak sectional bookcase
- containing the Encyclopaedia Britannica and New Century Dictionary,
- transverse obsolete medieval and oriental weapons, dinner gong,
- alabaster lamp, bowl pendant, vulcanite automatic telephone receiver
- with adjacent directory, handtufted Axminster carpet with cream ground
- and trellis border, loo table with pillar and claw legs, hearth with
- massive firebrasses and ormolu mantel chronometer clock, guaranteed
- timekeeper with cathedral chime, barometer with hygrographic chart,
- comfortable lounge settees and corner fitments, upholstered in ruby
- plush with good springing and sunk centre, three banner Japanese screen
- and cuspidors (club style, rich winecoloured leather, gloss renewable
- with a minimum of labour by use of linseed oil and vinegar) and
- pyramidically prismatic central chandelier lustre, bentwood perch with
- fingertame parrot (expurgated language), embossed mural paper at 10/-
- per dozen with transverse swags of carmine floral design and top crown
- frieze, staircase, three continuous flights at successive right angles,
- of varnished cleargrained oak, treads and risers, newel, balusters and
- handrail, with steppedup panel dado, dressed with camphorated wax:
- bathroom, hot and cold supply, reclining and shower: water closet on
- mezzanine provided with opaque singlepane oblong window, tipup seat,
- bracket lamp, brass tierod and brace, armrests, footstool and artistic
- oleograph on inner face of door: ditto, plain: servants’ apartments
- with separate sanitary and hygienic necessaries for cook, general and
- betweenmaid (salary, rising by biennial unearned increments of £ 2,
- with comprehensive fidelity insurance, annual bonus (£ 1) and retiring
- allowance (based on the 65 system) after 30 years’ service), pantry,
- buttery, larder, refrigerator, outoffices, coal and wood cellarage with
- winebin (still and sparkling vintages) for distinguished guests, if
- entertained to dinner (evening dress), carbon monoxide gas supply
- throughout.
- What additional attractions might the grounds contain?
- As addenda, a tennis and fives court, a shrubbery, a glass summerhouse
- with tropical palms, equipped in the best botanical manner, a rockery
- with waterspray, a beehive arranged on humane principles, oval
- flowerbeds in rectangular grassplots set with eccentric ellipses of
- scarlet and chrome tulips, blue scillas, crocuses, polyanthus, sweet
- William, sweet pea, lily of the valley (bulbs obtainable from sir James
- W. Mackey (Limited) wholesale and retail seed and bulb merchants and
- nurserymen, agents for chemical manures, 23 Sackville street, upper),
- an orchard, kitchen garden and vinery, protected against illegal
- trespassers by glasstopped mural enclosures, a lumbershed with padlock
- for various inventoried implements.
- As?
- Eeltraps, lobsterpots, fishingrods, hatchet, steelyard, grindstone,
- clodcrusher, swatheturner, carriagesack, telescope ladder, 10 tooth
- rake, washing clogs, haytedder, tumbling rake, billhook, paintpot,
- brush, hoe and so on.
- What improvements might be subsequently introduced?
- A rabbitry and fowlrun, a dovecote, a botanical conservatory, 2
- hammocks (lady’s and gentleman’s), a sundial shaded and sheltered by
- laburnum or lilac trees, an exotically harmonically accorded Japanese
- tinkle gatebell affixed to left lateral gatepost, a capacious
- waterbutt, a lawnmower with side delivery and grassbox, a lawnsprinkler
- with hydraulic hose.
- What facilities of transit were desirable?
- When citybound frequent connection by train or tram from their
- respective intermediate station or terminal. When countrybound
- velocipedes, a chainless freewheel roadster cycle with side basketcar
- attached, or draught conveyance, a donkey with wicker trap or smart
- phaeton with good working solidungular cob (roan gelding, 14 h).
- What might be the name of this erigible or erected residence?
- Bloom Cottage. Saint Leopold’s. Flowerville.
- Could Bloom of 7 Eccles street foresee Bloom of Flowerville?
- In loose allwool garments with Harris tweed cap, price 8/6, and useful
- garden boots with elastic gussets and wateringcan, planting aligned
- young firtrees, syringing, pruning, staking, sowing hayseed, trundling
- a weedladen wheelbarrow without excessive fatigue at sunset amid the
- scent of newmown hay, ameliorating the soil, multiplying wisdom,
- achieving longevity.
- What syllabus of intellectual pursuits was simultaneously possible?
- Snapshot photography, comparative study of religions, folklore relative
- to various amatory and superstitious practices, contemplation of the
- celestial constellations.
- What lighter recreations?
- Outdoor: garden and fieldwork, cycling on level macadamised causeways,
- ascents of moderately high hills, natation in secluded fresh water and
- unmolested river boating in secure wherry or light curricle with kedge
- anchor on reaches free from weirs and rapids (period of estivation),
- vespertinal perambulation or equestrian circumprocession with
- inspection of sterile landscape and contrastingly agreeable cottagers’
- fires of smoking peat turves (period of hibernation). Indoor:
- discussion in tepid security of unsolved historical and criminal
- problems: lecture of unexpurgated exotic erotic masterpieces: house
- carpentry with toolbox containing hammer, awl, nails, screws, tintacks,
- gimlet, tweezers, bullnose plane and turnscrew.
- Might he become a gentleman farmer of field produce and live stock?
- Not impossibly, with 1 or 2 stripper cows, 1 pike of upland hay and
- requisite farming implements, e.g., an end-to-end churn, a turnip
- pulper etc.
- What would be his civic functions and social status among the county
- families and landed gentry?
- Arranged successively in ascending powers of hierarchical order, that
- of gardener, groundsman, cultivator, breeder, and at the zenith of his
- career, resident magistrate or justice of the peace with a family crest
- and coat of arms and appropriate classical motto _(Semper paratus_),
- duly recorded in the court directory (Bloom, Leopold P., M. P., P. C.,
- K. P., L. L. D. (_honoris causa_), Bloomville, Dundrum) and mentioned
- in court and fashionable intelligence (Mr and Mrs Leopold Bloom have
- left Kingstown for England).
- What course of action did he outline for himself in such capacity?
- A course that lay between undue clemency and excessive rigour: the
- dispensation in a heterogeneous society of arbitrary classes,
- incessantly rearranged in terms of greater and lesser social
- inequality, of unbiassed homogeneous indisputable justice, tempered
- with mitigants of the widest possible latitude but exactable to the
- uttermost farthing with confiscation of estate, real and personal, to
- the crown. Loyal to the highest constituted power in the land, actuated
- by an innate love of rectitude his aims would be the strict maintenance
- of public order, the repression of many abuses though not of all
- simultaneously (every measure of reform or retrenchment being a
- preliminary solution to be contained by fluxion in the final solution),
- the upholding of the letter of the law (common, statute and law
- merchant) against all traversers in covin and trespassers acting in
- contravention of bylaws and regulations, all resuscitators (by trespass
- and petty larceny of kindlings) of venville rights, obsolete by
- desuetude, all orotund instigators of international persecution, all
- perpetuators of international animosities, all menial molestors of
- domestic conviviality, all recalcitrant violators of domestic
- connubiality.
- Prove that he had loved rectitude from his earliest youth.
- To Master Percy Apjohn at High School in 1880 he had divulged his
- disbelief in the tenets of the Irish (protestant) church (to which his
- father Rudolf Virag (later Rudolph Bloom) had been converted from the
- Israelitic faith and communion in 1865 by the Society for promoting
- Christianity among the jews) subsequently abjured by him in favour of
- Roman catholicism at the epoch of and with a view to his matrimony in
- 1888. To Daniel Magrane and Francis Wade in 1882 during a juvenile
- friendship (terminated by the premature emigration of the former) he
- had advocated during nocturnal perambulations the political theory of
- colonial (e.g. Canadian) expansion and the evolutionary theories of
- Charles Darwin, expounded in _The Descent of Man_ and _The Origin of
- Species_. In 1885 he had publicly expressed his adherence to the
- collective and national economic programme advocated by James Fintan
- Lalor, John Fisher Murray, John Mitchel, J. F. X. O’Brien and others,
- the agrarian policy of Michael Davitt, the constitutional agitation of
- Charles Stewart Parnell (M. P. for Cork City), the programme of peace,
- retrenchment and reform of William Ewart Gladstone (M. P. for
- Midlothian, N. B.) and, in support of his political convictions, had
- climbed up into a secure position amid the ramifications of a tree on
- Northumberland road to see the entrance (2 February 1888) into the
- capital of a demonstrative torchlight procession of 20,000
- torchbearers, divided into 120 trade corporations, bearing 2000 torches
- in escort of the marquess of Ripon and (honest) John Morley.
- How much and how did he propose to pay for this country residence?
- As per prospectus of the Industrious Foreign Acclimatised Nationalised
- Friendly Stateaided Building Society (incorporated 1874), a maximum of
- £ 60 per annum, being 1/6 of an assured income, derived from giltedged
- securities, representing at 5 % simple interest on capital of £ 1200
- (estimate of price at 20 years’ purchase), of which 1/3 to be paid on
- acquisition and the balance in the form of annual rent, viz. £ 800 plus
- 2 1/2 % interest on the same, repayable quarterly in equal annual
- instalments until extinction by amortisation of loan advanced for
- purchase within a period of 20 years, amounting to an annual rental of
- £ 64, headrent included, the titledeeds to remain in possession of the
- lender or lenders with a saving clause envisaging forced sale,
- foreclosure and mutual compensation in the event of protracted failure
- to pay the terms assigned, otherwise the messuage to become the
- absolute property of the tenant occupier upon expiry of the period of
- years stipulated.
- What rapid but insecure means to opulence might facilitate immediate
- purchase?
- A private wireless telegraph which would transmit by dot and dash
- system the result of a national equine handicap (flat or steeplechase)
- of 1 or more miles and furlongs won by an outsider at odds of 50 to 1
- at 3 hr 8 m p.m. at Ascot (Greenwich time), the message being received
- and available for betting purposes in Dublin at 2.59 p.m. (Dunsink
- time). The unexpected discovery of an object of great monetary value
- (precious stone, valuable adhesive or impressed postage stamps (7
- schilling, mauve, imperforate, Hamburg, 1866: 4 pence, rose, blue
- paper, perforate, Great Britain, 1855: 1 franc, stone, official,
- rouletted, diagonal surcharge, Luxemburg, 1878), antique dynastical
- ring, unique relic) in unusual repositories or by unusual means: from
- the air (dropped by an eagle in flight), by fire (amid the carbonised
- remains of an incendiated edifice), in the sea (amid flotsam, jetsam,
- lagan and derelict), on earth (in the gizzard of a comestible fowl). A
- Spanish prisoner’s donation of a distant treasure of valuables or
- specie or bullion lodged with a solvent banking corporation 100 years
- previously at 5% compound interest of the collective worth of £
- 5,000,000 stg (five million pounds sterling). A contract with an
- inconsiderate contractee for the delivery of 32 consignments of some
- given commodity in consideration of cash payment on delivery per
- delivery at the initial rate of 1/4d to be increased constantly in the
- geometrical progression of 2 (1/4d, 1/2d, 1d, 2d, 4d, 8d, 1s 4d, 2s 8d
- to 32 terms). A prepared scheme based on a study of the laws of
- probability to break the bank at Monte Carlo. A solution of the secular
- problem of the quadrature of the circle, government premium £ 1,000,000
- sterling.
- Was vast wealth acquirable through industrial channels?
- The reclamation of dunams of waste arenary soil, proposed in the
- prospectus of Agendath Netaim, Bleibtreustrasse, Berlin, W. 15, by the
- cultivation of orange plantations and melonfields and reafforestation.
- The utilisation of waste paper, fells of sewer rodents, human excrement
- possessing chemical properties, in view of the vast production of the
- first, vast number of the second and immense quantity of the third,
- every normal human being of average vitality and appetite producing
- annually, cancelling byproducts of water, a sum total of 80 lbs. (mixed
- animal and vegetable diet), to be multiplied by 4,386,035, the total
- population of Ireland according to census returns of 1901.
- Were there schemes of wider scope?
- A scheme to be formulated and submitted for approval to the harbour
- commissioners for the exploitation of white coal (hydraulic power),
- obtained by hydroelectric plant at peak of tide at Dublin bar or at
- head of water at Poulaphouca or Powerscourt or catchment basins of main
- streams for the economic production of 500,000 W. H. P. of electricity.
- A scheme to enclose the peninsular delta of the North Bull at
- Dollymount and erect on the space of the foreland, used for golf links
- and rifle ranges, an asphalted esplanade with casinos, booths, shooting
- galleries, hotels, boardinghouses, readingrooms, establishments for
- mixed bathing. A scheme for the use of dogvans and goatvans for the
- delivery of early morning milk. A scheme for the development of Irish
- tourist traffic in and around Dublin by means of petrolpropelled
- riverboats, plying in the fluvial fairway between Island bridge and
- Ringsend, charabancs, narrow gauge local railways, and pleasure
- steamers for coastwise navigation (10/- per person per day, guide
- (trilingual) included). A scheme for the repristination of passenger
- and goods traffics over Irish waterways, when freed from weedbeds. A
- scheme to connect by tramline the Cattle Market (North Circular road
- and Prussia street) with the quays (Sheriff street, lower, and East
- Wall), parallel with the Link line railway laid (in conjunction with
- the Great Southern and Western railway line) between the cattle park,
- Liffey junction, and terminus of Midland Great Western Railway 43 to 45
- North Wall, in proximity to the terminal stations or Dublin branches of
- Great Central Railway, Midland Railway of England, City of Dublin Steam
- Packet Company, Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway Company, Dublin and
- Glasgow Steam Packet Company, Glasgow, Dublin and Londonderry Steam
- Packet Company (Laird line), British and Irish Steam Packet Company,
- Dublin and Morecambe Steamers, London and North Western Railway
- Company, Dublin Port and Docks Board Landing Sheds and transit sheds of
- Palgrave, Murphy and Company, steamship owners, agents for steamers
- from Mediterranean, Spain, Portugal, France, Belgium and Holland and
- for Liverpool Underwriters’ Association, the cost of acquired rolling
- stock for animal transport and of additional mileage operated by the
- Dublin United Tramways Company, limited, to be covered by graziers’
- fees.
- Positing what protasis would the contraction for such several schemes
- become a natural and necessary apodosis?
- Given a guarantee equal to the sum sought, the support, by deed of gift
- and transfer vouchers during donor’s lifetime or by bequest after
- donor’s painless extinction, of eminent financiers (Blum Pasha,
- Rothschild, Guggenheim, Hirsch, Montefiore, Morgan, Rockefeller)
- possessing fortunes in 6 figures, amassed during a successful life, and
- joining capital with opportunity the thing required was done.
- What eventuality would render him independent of such wealth?
- The independent discovery of a goldseam of inexhaustible ore.
- For what reason did he meditate on schemes so difficult of realisation?
- It was one of his axioms that similar meditations or the automatic
- relation to himself of a narrative concerning himself or tranquil
- recollection of the past when practised habitually before retiring for
- the night alleviated fatigue and produced as a result sound repose and
- renovated vitality.
- His justifications?
- As a physicist he had learned that of the 70 years of complete human
- life at least 2/7, viz. 20 years are passed in sleep. As a philosopher
- he knew that at the termination of any allotted life only an
- infinitesimal part of any person’s desires has been realised. As a
- physiologist he believed in the artificial placation of malignant
- agencies chiefly operative during somnolence.
- What did he fear?
- The committal of homicide or suicide during sleep by an aberration of
- the light of reason, the incommensurable categorical intelligence
- situated in the cerebral convolutions.
- What were habitually his final meditations?
- Of some one sole unique advertisement to cause passers to stop in
- wonder, a poster novelty, with all extraneous accretions excluded,
- reduced to its simplest and most efficient terms not exceeding the span
- of casual vision and congruous with the velocity of modern life.
- What did the first drawer unlocked contain?
- A Vere Foster’s handwriting copybook, property of Milly (Millicent)
- Bloom, certain pages of which bore diagram drawings, marked _Papli_,
- which showed a large globular head with 5 hairs erect, 2 eyes in
- profile, the trunk full front with 3 large buttons, 1 triangular foot:
- 2 fading photographs of queen Alexandra of England and of Maud
- Branscombe, actress and professional beauty: a Yuletide card, bearing
- on it a pictorial representation of a parasitic plant, the legend
- _Mizpah_, the date Xmas 1892, the name of the senders: from Mr + Mrs M.
- Comerford, the versicle: _May this Yuletide bring to thee, Joy and
- peace and welcome glee_: a butt of red partly liquefied sealing wax,
- obtained from the stores department of Messrs Hely’s, Ltd., 89, 90, and
- 91 Dame street: a box containing the remainder of a gross of gilt “J”
- pennibs, obtained from same department of same firm: an old sandglass
- which rolled containing sand which rolled: a sealed prophecy (never
- unsealed) written by Leopold Bloom in 1886 concerning the consequences
- of the passing into law of William Ewart Gladstone’s Home Rule bill of
- 1886 (never passed into law): a bazaar ticket, No 2004, of S. Kevin’s
- Charity Fair, price 6d, 100 prizes: an infantile epistle, dated, small
- em monday, reading: capital pee Papli comma capital aitch How are you
- note of interrogation capital eye I am very well full stop new
- paragraph signature with flourishes capital em Milly no stop: a cameo
- brooch, property of Ellen Bloom (born Higgins), deceased: a cameo
- scarfpin, property of Rudolph Bloom (born Virag), deceased: 3
- typewritten letters, addressee, Henry Flower, c/o. P. O. Westland Row,
- addresser, Martha Clifford, c/o. P. O. Dolphin’s Barn: the
- transliterated name and address of the addresser of the 3 letters in
- reversed alphabetic boustrophedonic punctated quadrilinear cryptogram
- (vowels suppressed) N. IGS./WI. UU. OX/W. OKS. MH/Y. IM: a press
- cutting from an English weekly periodical _Modern Society_, subject
- corporal chastisement in girls’ schools: a pink ribbon which had
- festooned an Easter egg in the year 1899: two partly uncoiled rubber
- preservatives with reserve pockets, purchased by post from Box 32, P.
- O., Charing Cross, London, W. C.: 1 pack of 1 dozen creamlaid envelopes
- and feintruled notepaper, watermarked, now reduced by 3: some assorted
- Austrian-Hungarian coins: 2 coupons of the Royal and Privileged
- Hungarian Lottery: a lowpower magnifying glass: 2 erotic photocards
- showing a) buccal coition between nude senorita (rere presentation,
- superior position) and nude torero (fore presentation, inferior
- position) b) anal violation by male religious (fully clothed, eyes
- abject) of female religious (partly clothed, eyes direct), purchased by
- post from Box 32, P. O., Charing Cross, London, W. C.: a press cutting
- of recipe for renovation of old tan boots: a 1d adhesive stamp,
- lavender, of the reign of Queen Victoria: a chart of the measurements
- of Leopold Bloom compiled before, during and after 2 months’
- consecutive use of Sandow-Whiteley’s pulley exerciser (men’s 15/-,
- athlete’s 20/-) viz. chest 28 in and 29 1/2 in, biceps 9 in and 10 in,
- forearm 8 1/2 in and 9 in, thigh 10 in and 12 in, calf 11 in and 12 in:
- 1 prospectus of The Wonderworker, the world’s greatest remedy for
- rectal complaints, direct from Wonderworker, Coventry House, South
- Place, London E C, addressed (erroneously) to Mrs L. Bloom with brief
- accompanying note commencing (erroneously): Dear Madam.
- Quote the textual terms in which the prospectus claimed advantages for
- this thaumaturgic remedy.
- It heals and soothes while you sleep, in case of trouble in breaking
- wind, assists nature in the most formidable way, insuring instant
- relief in discharge of gases, keeping parts clean and free natural
- action, an initial outlay of 7/6 making a new man of you and life worth
- living. Ladies find Wonderworker especially useful, a pleasant surprise
- when they note delightful result like a cool drink of fresh spring
- water on a sultry summer’s day. Recommend it to your lady and gentlemen
- friends, lasts a lifetime. Insert long round end. Wonderworker.
- Were there testimonials?
- Numerous. From clergyman, British naval officer, wellknown author, city
- man, hospital nurse, lady, mother of five, absentminded beggar.
- How did absentminded beggar’s concluding testimonial conclude?
- What a pity the government did not supply our men with wonderworkers
- during the South African campaign! What a relief it would have been!
- What object did Bloom add to this collection of objects?
- A 4th typewritten letter received by Henry Flower (let H. F. be L. B.)
- from Martha Clifford (find M. C.).
- What pleasant reflection accompanied this action?
- The reflection that, apart from the letter in question, his magnetic
- face, form and address had been favourably received during the course
- of the preceding day by a wife (Mrs Josephine Breen, born Josie
- Powell), a nurse, Miss Callan (Christian name unknown), a maid,
- Gertrude (Gerty, family name unknown).
- What possibility suggested itself?
- The possibility of exercising virile power of fascination in the not
- immediate future after an expensive repast in a private apartment in
- the company of an elegant courtesan, of corporal beauty, moderately
- mercenary, variously instructed, a lady by origin.
- What did the 2nd drawer contain?
- Documents: the birth certificate of Leopold Paula Bloom: an endowment
- assurance policy of £ 500 in the Scottish Widows’ Assurance Society,
- intestated Millicent (Milly) Bloom, coming into force at 25 years as
- with profit policy of £ 430, £ 462-10-0 and £ 500 at 60 years or death,
- 65 years or death and death, respectively, or with profit policy
- (paidup) of £ 299-10-0 together with cash payment of £ 133-10-0, at
- option: a bank passbook issued by the Ulster Bank, College Green branch
- showing statement of a/c for halfyear ending 31 December 1903, balance
- in depositor’s favour: £ 18-14-6 (eighteen pounds, fourteen shillings
- and sixpence, sterling), net personalty: certificate of possession of £
- 900, Canadian 4% (inscribed) government stock (free of stamp duty):
- dockets of the Catholic Cemeteries’ (Glasnevin) Committee, relative to
- a graveplot purchased: a local press cutting concerning change of name
- by deedpoll.
- Quote the textual terms of this notice.
- I, Rudolph Virag, now resident at no 52 Clanbrassil street, Dublin,
- formerly of Szombathely in the kingdom of Hungary, hereby give notice
- that I have assumed and intend henceforth upon all occasions and at all
- times to be known by the name of Rudolph Bloom.
- What other objects relative to Rudolph Bloom (born Virag) were in the
- 2nd drawer?
- An indistinct daguerreotype of Rudolf Virag and his father Leopold
- Virag executed in the year 1852 in the portrait atelier of their
- (respectively) 1st and 2nd cousin, Stefan Virag of Szesfehervar,
- Hungary. An ancient haggadah book in which a pair of hornrimmed convex
- spectacles inserted marked the passage of thanksgiving in the ritual
- prayers for Pessach (Passover): a photocard of the Queen’s Hotel,
- Ennis, proprietor, Rudolph Bloom: an envelope addressed: _To My Dear
- Son Leopold_.
- What fractions of phrases did the lecture of those five whole words
- evoke?
- Tomorrow will be a week that I received... it is no use Leopold to be
- ... with your dear mother... that is not more to stand... to her... all
- for me is out... be kind to Athos, Leopold... my dear son... always...
- of me... _das Herz... Gott... dein_...
- What reminiscences of a human subject suffering from progressive
- melancholia did these objects evoke in Bloom?
- An old man, widower, unkempt of hair, in bed, with head covered,
- sighing: an infirm dog, Athos: aconite, resorted to by increasing doses
- of grains and scruples as a palliative of recrudescent neuralgia: the
- face in death of a septuagenarian, suicide by poison.
- Why did Bloom experience a sentiment of remorse?
- Because in immature impatience he had treated with disrespect certain
- beliefs and practices.
- As?
- The prohibition of the use of fleshmeat and milk at one meal: the
- hebdomadary symposium of incoordinately abstract, perfervidly concrete
- mercantile coexreligionist excompatriots: the circumcision of male
- infants: the supernatural character of Judaic scripture: the
- ineffability of the tetragrammaton: the sanctity of the sabbath.
- How did these beliefs and practices now appear to him?
- Not more rational than they had then appeared, not less rational than
- other beliefs and practices now appeared.
- What first reminiscence had he of Rudolph Bloom (deceased)?
- Rudolph Bloom (deceased) narrated to his son Leopold Bloom (aged 6) a
- retrospective arrangement of migrations and settlements in and between
- Dublin, London, Florence, Milan, Vienna, Budapest, Szombathely with
- statements of satisfaction (his grandfather having seen Maria Theresia,
- empress of Austria, queen of Hungary), with commercial advice (having
- taken care of pence, the pounds having taken care of themselves).
- Leopold Bloom (aged 6) had accompanied these narrations by constant
- consultation of a geographical map of Europe (political) and by
- suggestions for the establishment of affiliated business premises in
- the various centres mentioned.
- Had time equally but differently obliterated the memory of these
- migrations in narrator and listener?
- In narrator by the access of years and in consequence of the use of
- narcotic toxin: in listener by the access of years and in consequence
- of the action of distraction upon vicarious experiences.
- What idiosyncracies of the narrator were concomitant products of
- amnesia?
- Occasionally he ate without having previously removed his hat.
- Occasionally he drank voraciously the juice of gooseberry fool from an
- inclined plate. Occasionally he removed from his lips the traces of
- food by means of a lacerated envelope or other accessible fragment of
- paper.
- What two phenomena of senescence were more frequent?
- The myopic digital calculation of coins, eructation consequent upon
- repletion.
- What object offered partial consolation for these reminiscences?
- The endowment policy, the bank passbook, the certificate of the
- possession of scrip.
- Reduce Bloom by cross multiplication of reverses of fortune, from which
- these supports protected him, and by elimination of all positive values
- to a negligible negative irrational unreal quantity.
- Successively, in descending helotic order: Poverty: that of the outdoor
- hawker of imitation jewellery, the dun for the recovery of bad and
- doubtful debts, the poor rate and deputy cess collector. Mendicancy:
- that of the fraudulent bankrupt with negligible assets paying 1/4d in
- the £, sandwichman, distributor of throwaways, nocturnal vagrant,
- insinuating sycophant, maimed sailor, blind stripling, superannuated
- bailiff’s man, marfeast, lickplate, spoilsport, pickthank, eccentric
- public laughingstock seated on bench of public park under discarded
- perforated umbrella. Destitution: the inmate of Old Man’s House (Royal
- Hospital), Kilmainham, the inmate of Simpson’s Hospital for reduced but
- respectable men permanently disabled by gout or want of sight. Nadir of
- misery: the aged impotent disfranchised ratesupported moribund lunatic
- pauper.
- With which attendant indignities?
- The unsympathetic indifference of previously amiable females, the
- contempt of muscular males, the acceptance of fragments of bread, the
- simulated ignorance of casual acquaintances, the latration of
- illegitimate unlicensed vagabond dogs, the infantile discharge of
- decomposed vegetable missiles, worth little or nothing, nothing or less
- than nothing.
- By what could such a situation be precluded?
- By decease (change of state): by departure (change of place).
- Which preferably?
- The latter, by the line of least resistance.
- What considerations rendered departure not entirely undesirable?
- Constant cohabitation impeding mutual toleration of personal defects.
- The habit of independent purchase increasingly cultivated. The
- necessity to counteract by impermanent sojourn the permanence of
- arrest.
- What considerations rendered departure not irrational?
- The parties concerned, uniting, had increased and multiplied, which
- being done, offspring produced and educed to maturity, the parties, if
- not disunited were obliged to reunite for increase and multiplication,
- which was absurd, to form by reunion the original couple of uniting
- parties, which was impossible.
- What considerations rendered departure desirable?
- The attractive character of certain localities in Ireland and abroad,
- as represented in general geographical maps of polychrome design or in
- special ordnance survey charts by employment of scale numerals and
- hachures.
- In Ireland?
- The cliffs of Moher, the windy wilds of Connemara, lough Neagh with
- submerged petrified city, the Giant’s Causeway, Fort Camden and Fort
- Carlisle, the Golden Vale of Tipperary, the islands of Aran, the
- pastures of royal Meath, Brigid’s elm in Kildare, the Queen’s Island
- shipyard in Belfast, the Salmon Leap, the lakes of Killarney.
- Abroad?
- Ceylon (with spicegardens supplying tea to Thomas Kernan, agent for
- Pulbrook, Robertson and Co, 2 Mincing Lane, London, E. C., 5 Dame
- street, Dublin), Jerusalem, the holy city (with mosque of Omar and gate
- of Damascus, goal of aspiration), the straits of Gibraltar (the unique
- birthplace of Marion Tweedy), the Parthenon (containing statues of nude
- Grecian divinities), the Wall street money market (which controlled
- international finance), the Plaza de Toros at La Linea, Spain (where
- O’Hara of the Camerons had slain the bull), Niagara (over which no
- human being had passed with impunity), the land of the Eskimos (eaters
- of soap), the forbidden country of Thibet (from which no traveller
- returns), the bay of Naples (to see which was to die), the Dead Sea.
- Under what guidance, following what signs?
- At sea, septentrional, by night the polestar, located at the point of
- intersection of the right line from beta to alpha in Ursa Maior
- produced and divided externally at omega and the hypotenuse of the
- rightangled triangle formed by the line alpha omega so produced and the
- line alpha delta of Ursa Maior. On land, meridional, a bispherical
- moon, revealed in imperfect varying phases of lunation through the
- posterior interstice of the imperfectly occluded skirt of a carnose
- negligent perambulating female, a pillar of the cloud by day.
- What public advertisement would divulge the occultation of the
- departed?
- £ 5 reward, lost, stolen or strayed from his residence 7 Eccles street,
- missing gent about 40, answering to the name of Bloom, Leopold (Poldy),
- height 5 ft 9 1/2 inches, full build, olive complexion, may have since
- grown a beard, when last seen was wearing a black suit. Above sum will
- be paid for information leading to his discovery.
- What universal binomial denominations would be his as entity and
- nonentity?
- Assumed by any or known to none. Everyman or Noman.
- What tributes his?
- Honour and gifts of strangers, the friends of Everyman. A nymph
- immortal, beauty, the bride of Noman.
- Would the departed never nowhere nohow reappear?
- Ever he would wander, selfcompelled, to the extreme limit of his
- cometary orbit, beyond the fixed stars and variable suns and telescopic
- planets, astronomical waifs and strays, to the extreme boundary of
- space, passing from land to land, among peoples, amid events. Somewhere
- imperceptibly he would hear and somehow reluctantly, suncompelled, obey
- the summons of recall. Whence, disappearing from the constellation of
- the Northern Crown he would somehow reappear reborn above delta in the
- constellation of Cassiopeia and after incalculable eons of
- peregrination return an estranged avenger, a wreaker of justice on
- malefactors, a dark crusader, a sleeper awakened, with financial
- resources (by supposition) surpassing those of Rothschild or the silver
- king.
- What would render such return irrational?
- An unsatisfactory equation between an exodus and return in time through
- reversible space and an exodus and return in space through irreversible
- time.
- What play of forces, inducing inertia, rendered departure undesirable?
- The lateness of the hour, rendering procrastinatory: the obscurity of
- the night, rendering invisible: the uncertainty of thoroughfares,
- rendering perilous: the necessity for repose, obviating movement: the
- proximity of an occupied bed, obviating research: the anticipation of
- warmth (human) tempered with coolness (linen), obviating desire and
- rendering desirable: the statue of Narcissus, sound without echo,
- desired desire.
- What advantages were possessed by an occupied, as distinct from an
- unoccupied bed?
- The removal of nocturnal solitude, the superior quality of human
- (mature female) to inhuman (hotwaterjar) calefaction, the stimulation
- of matutinal contact, the economy of mangling done on the premises in
- the case of trousers accurately folded and placed lengthwise between
- the spring mattress (striped) and the woollen mattress (biscuit
- section).
- What past consecutive causes, before rising preapprehended, of
- accumulated fatigue did Bloom, before rising, silently recapitulate?
- The preparation of breakfast (burnt offering): intestinal congestion
- and premeditative defecation (holy of holies): the bath (rite of John):
- the funeral (rite of Samuel): the advertisement of Alexander Keyes
- (Urim and Thummim): the unsubstantial lunch (rite of Melchisedek): the
- visit to museum and national library (holy place): the bookhunt along
- Bedford row, Merchants’ Arch, Wellington Quay (Simchath Torah): the
- music in the Ormond Hotel (Shira Shirim): the altercation with a
- truculent troglodyte in Bernard Kiernan’s premises (holocaust): a blank
- period of time including a cardrive, a visit to a house of mourning, a
- leavetaking (wilderness): the eroticism produced by feminine
- exhibitionism (rite of Onan): the prolonged delivery of Mrs Mina
- Purefoy (heave offering): the visit to the disorderly house of Mrs
- Bella Cohen, 82 Tyrone street, lower, and subsequent brawl and chance
- medley in Beaver street (Armageddon): nocturnal perambulation to and
- from the cabman’s shelter, Butt Bridge (atonement).
- What selfimposed enigma did Bloom about to rise in order to go so as to
- conclude lest he should not conclude involuntarily apprehend?
- The cause of a brief sharp unforeseen heard loud lone crack emitted by
- the insentient material of a strainveined timber table.
- What selfinvolved enigma did Bloom risen, going, gathering
- multicoloured multiform multitudinous garments, voluntarily
- apprehending, not comprehend?
- Who was M’Intosh?
- What selfevident enigma pondered with desultory constancy during 30
- years did Bloom now, having effected natural obscurity by the
- extinction of artificial light, silently suddenly comprehend?
- Where was Moses when the candle went out?
- What imperfections in a perfect day did Bloom, walking, charged with
- collected articles of recently disvested male wearing apparel,
- silently, successively, enumerate?
- A provisional failure to obtain renewal of an advertisement: to obtain
- a certain quantity of tea from Thomas Kernan (agent for Pulbrook,
- Robertson and Co, 5 Dame Street, Dublin, and 2 Mincing Lane, London E.
- C.): to certify the presence or absence of posterior rectal orifice in
- the case of Hellenic female divinities: to obtain admission (gratuitous
- or paid) to the performance of _Leah_ by Mrs Bandmann Palmer at the
- Gaiety Theatre, 46, 47, 48, 49 South King street.
- What impression of an absent face did Bloom, arrested, silently recall?
- The face of her father, the late Major Brian Cooper Tweedy, Royal
- Dublin Fusiliers, of Gibraltar and Rehoboth, Dolphin’s Barn.
- What recurrent impressions of the same were possible by hypothesis?
- Retreating, at the terminus of the Great Northern Railway, Amiens
- street, with constant uniform acceleration, along parallel lines
- meeting at infinity, if produced: along parallel lines, reproduced from
- infinity, with constant uniform retardation, at the terminus of the
- Great Northern Railway, Amiens street, returning.
- What miscellaneous effects of female personal wearing apparel were
- perceived by him?
- A pair of new inodorous halfsilk black ladies’ hose, a pair of new
- violet garters, a pair of outsize ladies’ drawers of India mull, cut on
- generous lines, redolent of opoponax, jessamine and Muratti’s Turkish
- cigarettes and containing a long bright steel safety pin, folded
- curvilinear, a camisole of batiste with thin lace border, an accordion
- underskirt of blue silk moirette, all these objects being disposed
- irregularly on the top of a rectangular trunk, quadruple battened,
- having capped corners, with multicoloured labels, initialled on its
- fore side in white lettering B. C. T. (Brian Cooper Tweedy).
- What impersonal objects were perceived?
- A commode, one leg fractured, totally covered by square cretonne
- cutting, apple design, on which rested a lady’s black straw hat.
- Orangekeyed ware, bought of Henry Price, basket, fancy goods, chinaware
- and ironmongery manufacturer, 21, 22, 23 Moore street, disposed
- irregularly on the washstand and floor and consisting of basin,
- soapdish and brushtray (on the washstand, together), pitcher and night
- article (on the floor, separate).
- Bloom’s acts?
- He deposited the articles of clothing on a chair, removed his remaining
- articles of clothing, took from beneath the bolster at the head of the
- bed a folded long white nightshirt, inserted his head and arms into the
- proper apertures of the nightshirt, removed a pillow from the head to
- the foot of the bed, prepared the bedlinen accordingly and entered the
- bed.
- How?
- With circumspection, as invariably when entering an abode (his own or
- not his own): with solicitude, the snakespiral springs of the mattress
- being old, the brass quoits and pendent viper radii loose and tremulous
- under stress and strain: prudently, as entering a lair or ambush of
- lust or adders: lightly, the less to disturb: reverently, the bed of
- conception and of birth, of consummation of marriage and of breach of
- marriage, of sleep and of death.
- What did his limbs, when gradually extended, encounter?
- New clean bedlinen, additional odours, the presence of a human form,
- female, hers, the imprint of a human form, male, not his, some crumbs,
- some flakes of potted meat, recooked, which he removed.
- If he had smiled why would he have smiled?
- To reflect that each one who enters imagines himself to be the first to
- enter whereas he is always the last term of a preceding series even if
- the first term of a succeeding one, each imagining himself to be first,
- last, only and alone whereas he is neither first nor last nor only nor
- alone in a series originating in and repeated to infinity.
- What preceding series?
- Assuming Mulvey to be the first term of his series, Penrose, Bartell
- d’Arcy, professor Goodwin, Julius Mastiansky, John Henry Menton, Father
- Bernard Corrigan, a farmer at the Royal Dublin Society’s Horse Show,
- Maggot O’Reilly, Matthew Dillon, Valentine Blake Dillon (Lord Mayor of
- Dublin), Christopher Callinan, Lenehan, an Italian organgrinder, an
- unknown gentleman in the Gaiety Theatre, Benjamin Dollard, Simon
- Dedalus, Andrew (Pisser) Burke, Joseph Cuffe, Wisdom Hely, Alderman
- John Hooper, Dr Francis Brady, Father Sebastian of Mount Argus, a
- bootblack at the General Post Office, Hugh E. (Blazes) Boylan and so
- each and so on to no last term.
- What were his reflections concerning the last member of this series and
- late occupant of the bed?
- Reflections on his vigour (a bounder), corporal proportion (a
- billsticker), commercial ability (a bester), impressionability (a
- boaster).
- Why for the observer impressionability in addition to vigour, corporal
- proportion and commercial ability?
- Because he had observed with augmenting frequency in the preceding
- members of the same series the same concupiscence, inflammably
- transmitted, first with alarm, then with understanding, then with
- desire, finally with fatigue, with alternating symptoms of epicene
- comprehension and apprehension.
- With what antagonistic sentiments were his subsequent reflections
- affected?
- Envy, jealousy, abnegation, equanimity.
- Envy?
- Of a bodily and mental male organism specially adapted for the
- superincumbent posture of energetic human copulation and energetic
- piston and cylinder movement necessary for the complete satisfaction of
- a constant but not acute concupiscence resident in a bodily and mental
- female organism, passive but not obtuse.
- Jealousy?
- Because a nature full and volatile in its free state, was alternately
- the agent and reagent of attraction. Because attraction between
- agent(s) and reagent(s) at all instants varied, with inverse proportion
- of increase and decrease, with incessant circular extension and radial
- reentrance. Because the controlled contemplation of the fluctuation of
- attraction produced, if desired, a fluctuation of pleasure.
- Abnegation?
- In virtue of a) acquaintance initiated in September 1903 in the
- establishment of George Mesias, merchant tailor and outfitter, 5 Eden
- Quay, b) hospitality extended and received in kind, reciprocated and
- reappropriated in person, c) comparative youth subject to impulses of
- ambition and magnanimity, colleagual altruism and amorous egoism, d)
- extraracial attraction, intraracial inhibition, supraracial
- prerogative, e) an imminent provincial musical tour, common current
- expenses, net proceeds divided.
- Equanimity?
- As as natural as any and every natural act of a nature expressed or
- understood executed in natured nature by natural creatures in
- accordance with his, her and their natured natures, of dissimilar
- similarity. As not so calamitous as a cataclysmic annihilation of the
- planet in consequence of a collision with a dark sun. As less
- reprehensible than theft, highway robbery, cruelty to children and
- animals, obtaining money under false pretences, forgery, embezzlement,
- misappropriation of public money, betrayal of public trust,
- malingering, mayhem, corruption of minors, criminal libel, blackmail,
- contempt of court, arson, treason, felony, mutiny on the high seas,
- trespass, burglary, jailbreaking, practice of unnatural vice, desertion
- from armed forces in the field, perjury, poaching, usury, intelligence
- with the king’s enemies, impersonation, criminal assault, manslaughter,
- wilful and premeditated murder. As not more abnormal than all other
- parallel processes of adaptation to altered conditions of existence,
- resulting in a reciprocal equilibrium between the bodily organism and
- its attendant circumstances, foods, beverages, acquired habits,
- indulged inclinations, significant disease. As more than inevitable,
- irreparable.
- Why more abnegation than jealousy, less envy than equanimity?
- From outrage (matrimony) to outrage (adultery) there arose nought but
- outrage (copulation) yet the matrimonial violator of the matrimonially
- violated had not been outraged by the adulterous violator of the
- adulterously violated.
- What retribution, if any?
- Assassination, never, as two wrongs did not make one right. Duel by
- combat, no. Divorce, not now. Exposure by mechanical artifice
- (automatic bed) or individual testimony (concealed ocular witnesses),
- not yet. Suit for damages by legal influence or simulation of assault
- with evidence of injuries sustained (selfinflicted), not impossibly.
- Hushmoney by moral influence, possibly. If any, positively, connivance,
- introduction of emulation (material, a prosperous rival agency of
- publicity: moral, a successful rival agent of intimacy), depreciation,
- alienation, humiliation, separation protecting the one separated from
- the other, protecting the separator from both.
- By what reflections did he, a conscious reactor against the void of
- incertitude, justify to himself his sentiments?
- The preordained frangibility of the hymen: the presupposed
- intangibility of the thing in itself: the incongruity and disproportion
- between the selfprolonging tension of the thing proposed to be done and
- the selfabbreviating relaxation of the thing done: the fallaciously
- inferred debility of the female: the muscularity of the male: the
- variations of ethical codes: the natural grammatical transition by
- inversion involving no alteration of sense of an aorist preterite
- proposition (parsed as masculine subject, monosyllabic onomatopoeic
- transitive verb with direct feminine object) from the active voice into
- its correlative aorist preterite proposition (parsed as feminine
- subject, auxiliary verb and quasimonosyllabic onomatopoeic past
- participle with complementary masculine agent) in the passive voice:
- the continued product of seminators by generation: the continual
- production of semen by distillation: the futility of triumph or protest
- or vindication: the inanity of extolled virtue: the lethargy of
- nescient matter: the apathy of the stars.
- In what final satisfaction did these antagonistic sentiments and
- reflections, reduced to their simplest forms, converge?
- Satisfaction at the ubiquity in eastern and western terrestrial
- hemispheres, in all habitable lands and islands explored or unexplored
- (the land of the midnight sun, the islands of the blessed, the isles of
- Greece, the land of promise), of adipose anterior and posterior female
- hemispheres, redolent of milk and honey and of excretory sanguine and
- seminal warmth, reminiscent of secular families of curves of amplitude,
- insusceptible of moods of impression or of contrarieties of expression,
- expressive of mute immutable mature animality.
- The visible signs of antesatisfaction?
- An approximate erection: a solicitous adversion: a gradual elevation: a
- tentative revelation: a silent contemplation.
- Then?
- He kissed the plump mellow yellow smellow melons of her rump, on each
- plump melonous hemisphere, in their mellow yellow furrow, with obscure
- prolonged provocative melonsmellonous osculation.
- The visible signs of postsatisfaction?
- A silent contemplation: a tentative velation: a gradual abasement: a
- solicitous aversion: a proximate erection.
- What followed this silent action?
- Somnolent invocation, less somnolent recognition, incipient excitation,
- catechetical interrogation.
- With what modifications did the narrator reply to this interrogation?
- Negative: he omitted to mention the clandestine correspondence between
- Martha Clifford and Henry Flower, the public altercation at, in and in
- the vicinity of the licensed premises of Bernard Kiernan and Co,
- Limited, 8, 9 and 10 Little Britain street, the erotic provocation and
- response thereto caused by the exhibitionism of Gertrude (Gerty),
- surname unknown. Positive: he included mention of a performance by Mrs
- Bandmann Palmer of _Leah_ at the Gaiety Theatre, 46, 47, 48, 49 South
- King street, an invitation to supper at Wynn’s (Murphy’s) Hotel, 35, 36
- and 37 Lower Abbey street, a volume of peccaminous pornographical
- tendency entituled _Sweets of Sin_, anonymous author a gentleman of
- fashion, a temporary concussion caused by a falsely calculated movement
- in the course of a postcenal gymnastic display, the victim (since
- completely recovered) being Stephen Dedalus, professor and author,
- eldest surviving son of Simon Dedalus, of no fixed occupation, an
- aeronautical feat executed by him (narrator) in the presence of a
- witness, the professor and author aforesaid, with promptitude of
- decision and gymnastic flexibility.
- Was the narration otherwise unaltered by modifications?
- Absolutely.
- Which event or person emerged as the salient point of his narration?
- Stephen Dedalus, professor and author.
- What limitations of activity and inhibitions of conjugal rights were
- perceived by listener and narrator concerning themselves during the
- course of this intermittent and increasingly more laconic narration?
- By the listener a limitation of fertility inasmuch as marriage had been
- celebrated 1 calendar month after the 18th anniversary of her birth (8
- September 1870), viz. 8 October, and consummated on the same date with
- female issue born 15 June 1889, having been anticipatorily consummated
- on the 10 September of the same year and complete carnal intercourse,
- with ejaculation of semen within the natural female organ, having last
- taken place 5 weeks previous, viz. 27 November 1893, to the birth on 29
- December 1893 of second (and only male) issue, deceased 9 January 1894,
- aged 11 days, there remained a period of 10 years, 5 months and 18 days
- during which carnal intercourse had been incomplete, without
- ejaculation of semen within the natural female organ. By the narrator a
- limitation of activity, mental and corporal, inasmuch as complete
- mental intercourse between himself and the listener had not taken place
- since the consummation of puberty, indicated by catamenic hemorrhage,
- of the female issue of narrator and listener, 15 September 1903, there
- remained a period of 9 months and 1 day during which, in consequence of
- a preestablished natural comprehension in incomprehension between the
- consummated females (listener and issue), complete corporal liberty of
- action had been circumscribed.
- How?
- By various reiterated feminine interrogation concerning the masculine
- destination whither, the place where, the time at which, the duration
- for which, the object with which in the case of temporary absences,
- projected or effected.
- What moved visibly above the listener’s and the narrator’s invisible
- thoughts?
- The upcast reflection of a lamp and shade, an inconstant series of
- concentric circles of varying gradations of light and shadow.
- In what directions did listener and narrator lie?
- Listener, S. E. by E.: Narrator, N. W. by W.: on the 53rd parallel of
- latitude, N., and 6th meridian of longitude, W.: at an angle of 45° to
- the terrestrial equator.
- In what state of rest or motion?
- At rest relatively to themselves and to each other. In motion being
- each and both carried westward, forward and rereward respectively, by
- the proper perpetual motion of the earth through everchanging tracks of
- neverchanging space.
- In what posture?
- Listener: reclined semilaterally, left, left hand under head, right leg
- extended in a straight line and resting on left leg, flexed, in the
- attitude of Gea-Tellus, fulfilled, recumbent, big with seed. Narrator:
- reclined laterally, left, with right and left legs flexed, the index
- finger and thumb of the right hand resting on the bridge of the nose,
- in the attitude depicted in a snapshot photograph made by Percy Apjohn,
- the childman weary, the manchild in the womb.
- Womb? Weary?
- He rests. He has travelled.
- With?
- Sinbad the Sailor and Tinbad the Tailor and Jinbad the Jailer and
- Whinbad the Whaler and Ninbad the Nailer and Finbad the Failer and
- Binbad the Bailer and Pinbad the Pailer and Minbad the Mailer and
- Hinbad the Hailer and Rinbad the Railer and Dinbad the Kailer and
- Vinbad the Quailer and Linbad the Yailer and Xinbad the Phthailer.
- When?
- Going to dark bed there was a square round Sinbad the Sailor roc’s
- auk’s egg in the night of the bed of all the auks of the rocs of
- Darkinbad the Brightdayler.
- Where?
- •
- [ 18 ]
- Yes because he never did a thing like that before as ask to get his
- breakfast in bed with a couple of eggs since the _City Arms_ hotel when
- he used to be pretending to be laid up with a sick voice doing his
- highness to make himself interesting for that old faggot Mrs Riordan
- that he thought he had a great leg of and she never left us a farthing
- all for masses for herself and her soul greatest miser ever was
- actually afraid to lay out 4d for her methylated spirit telling me all
- her ailments she had too much old chat in her about politics and
- earthquakes and the end of the world let us have a bit of fun first God
- help the world if all the women were her sort down on bathingsuits and
- lownecks of course nobody wanted her to wear them I suppose she was
- pious because no man would look at her twice I hope Ill never be like
- her a wonder she didnt want us to cover our faces but she was a
- welleducated woman certainly and her gabby talk about Mr Riordan here
- and Mr Riordan there I suppose he was glad to get shut of her and her
- dog smelling my fur and always edging to get up under my petticoats
- especially then still I like that in him polite to old women like that
- and waiters and beggars too hes not proud out of nothing but not always
- if ever he got anything really serious the matter with him its much
- better for them to go into a hospital where everything is clean but I
- suppose Id have to dring it into him for a month yes and then wed have
- a hospital nurse next thing on the carpet have him staying there till
- they throw him out or a nun maybe like the smutty photo he has shes as
- much a nun as Im not yes because theyre so weak and puling when theyre
- sick they want a woman to get well if his nose bleeds youd think it was
- O tragic and that dyinglooking one off the south circular when he
- sprained his foot at the choir party at the sugarloaf Mountain the day
- I wore that dress Miss Stack bringing him flowers the worst old ones
- she could find at the bottom of the basket anything at all to get into
- a mans bedroom with her old maids voice trying to imagine he was dying
- on account of her to never see thy face again though he looked more
- like a man with his beard a bit grown in the bed father was the same
- besides I hate bandaging and dosing when he cut his toe with the razor
- paring his corns afraid hed get bloodpoisoning but if it was a thing I
- was sick then wed see what attention only of course the woman hides it
- not to give all the trouble they do yes he came somewhere Im sure by
- his appetite anyway love its not or hed be off his feed thinking of her
- so either it was one of those night women if it was down there he was
- really and the hotel story he made up a pack of lies to hide it
- planning it Hynes kept me who did I meet ah yes I met do you remember
- Menton and who else who let me see that big babbyface I saw him and he
- not long married flirting with a young girl at Pooles Myriorama and
- turned my back on him when he slinked out looking quite conscious what
- harm but he had the impudence to make up to me one time well done to
- him mouth almighty and his boiled eyes of all the big stupoes I ever
- met and thats called a solicitor only for I hate having a long wrangle
- in bed or else if its not that its some little bitch or other he got in
- with somewhere or picked up on the sly if they only knew him as well as
- I do yes because the day before yesterday he was scribbling something a
- letter when I came into the front room to show him Dignams death in the
- paper as if something told me and he covered it up with the
- blottingpaper pretending to be thinking about business so very probably
- that was it to somebody who thinks she has a softy in him because all
- men get a bit like that at his age especially getting on to forty he is
- now so as to wheedle any money she can out of him no fool like an old
- fool and then the usual kissing my bottom was to hide it not that I
- care two straws now who he does it with or knew before that way though
- Id like to find out so long as I dont have the two of them under my
- nose all the time like that slut that Mary we had in Ontario terrace
- padding out her false bottom to excite him bad enough to get the smell
- of those painted women off him once or twice I had a suspicion by
- getting him to come near me when I found the long hair on his coat
- without that one when I went into the kitchen pretending he was
- drinking water 1 woman is not enough for them it was all his fault of
- course ruining servants then proposing that she could eat at our table
- on Christmas day if you please O no thank you not in my house stealing
- my potatoes and the oysters 2/6 per doz going out to see her aunt if
- you please common robbery so it was but I was sure he had something on
- with that one it takes me to find out a thing like that he said you
- have no proof it was her proof O yes her aunt was very fond of oysters
- but I told her what I thought of her suggesting me to go out to be
- alone with her I wouldnt lower myself to spy on them the garters I
- found in her room the Friday she was out that was enough for me a
- little bit too much her face swelled up on her with temper when I gave
- her her weeks notice I saw to that better do without them altogether do
- out the rooms myself quicker only for the damn cooking and throwing out
- the dirt I gave it to him anyhow either she or me leaves the house I
- couldnt even touch him if I thought he was with a dirty barefaced liar
- and sloven like that one denying it up to my face and singing about the
- place in the W C too because she knew she was too well off yes because
- he couldnt possibly do without it that long so he must do it somewhere
- and the last time he came on my bottom when was it the night Boylan
- gave my hand a great squeeze going along by the Tolka in my hand there
- steals another I just pressed the back of his like that with my thumb
- to squeeze back singing the young May moon shes beaming love because he
- has an idea about him and me hes not such a fool he said Im dining out
- and going to the Gaiety though Im not going to give him the
- satisfaction in any case God knows hes a change in a way not to be
- always and ever wearing the same old hat unless I paid some nicelooking
- boy to do it since I cant do it myself a young boy would like me Id
- confuse him a little alone with him if we were Id let him see my
- garters the new ones and make him turn red looking at him seduce him I
- know what boys feel with that down on their cheek doing that frigging
- drawing out the thing by the hour question and answer would you do this
- that and the other with the coalman yes with a bishop yes I would
- because I told him about some dean or bishop was sitting beside me in
- the jews temples gardens when I was knitting that woollen thing a
- stranger to Dublin what place was it and so on about the monuments and
- he tired me out with statues encouraging him making him worse than he
- is who is in your mind now tell me who are you thinking of who is it
- tell me his name who tell me who the german Emperor is it yes imagine
- Im him think of him can you feel him trying to make a whore of me what
- he never will he ought to give it up now at this age of his life simply
- ruination for any woman and no satisfaction in it pretending to like it
- till he comes and then finish it off myself anyway and it makes your
- lips pale anyhow its done now once and for all with all the talk of the
- world about it people make its only the first time after that its just
- the ordinary do it and think no more about it why cant you kiss a man
- without going and marrying him first you sometimes love to wildly when
- you feel that way so nice all over you you cant help yourself I wish
- some man or other would take me sometime when hes there and kiss me in
- his arms theres nothing like a kiss long and hot down to your soul
- almost paralyses you then I hate that confession when I used to go to
- Father Corrigan he touched me father and what harm if he did where and
- I said on the canal bank like a fool but whereabouts on your person my
- child on the leg behind high up was it yes rather high up was it where
- you sit down yes O Lord couldnt he say bottom right out and have done
- with it what has that got to do with it and did you whatever way he put
- it I forget no father and I always think of the real father what did he
- want to know for when I already confessed it to God he had a nice fat
- hand the palm moist always I wouldnt mind feeling it neither would he
- Id say by the bullneck in his horsecollar I wonder did he know me in
- the box I could see his face he couldnt see mine of course hed never
- turn or let on still his eyes were red when his father died theyre lost
- for a woman of course must be terrible when a man cries let alone them
- Id like to be embraced by one in his vestments and the smell of incense
- off him like the pope besides theres no danger with a priest if youre
- married hes too careful about himself then give something to H H the
- pope for a penance I wonder was he satisfied with me one thing I didnt
- like his slapping me behind going away so familiarly in the hall though
- I laughed Im not a horse or an ass am I I suppose he was thinking of
- his fathers I wonder is he awake thinking of me or dreaming am I in it
- who gave him that flower he said he bought he smelt of some kind of
- drink not whisky or stout or perhaps the sweety kind of paste they
- stick their bills up with some liqueur Id like to sip those richlooking
- green and yellow expensive drinks those stagedoor johnnies drink with
- the opera hats I tasted once with my finger dipped out of that American
- that had the squirrel talking stamps with father he had all he could do
- to keep himself from falling asleep after the last time after we took
- the port and potted meat it had a fine salty taste yes because I felt
- lovely and tired myself and fell asleep as sound as a top the moment I
- popped straight into bed till that thunder woke me up God be merciful
- to us I thought the heavens were coming down about us to punish us when
- I blessed myself and said a Hail Mary like those awful thunderbolts in
- Gibraltar as if the world was coming to an end and then they come and
- tell you theres no God what could you do if it was running and rushing
- about nothing only make an act of contrition the candle I lit that
- evening in Whitefriars street chapel for the month of May see it
- brought its luck though hed scoff if he heard because he never goes to
- church mass or meeting he says your soul you have no soul inside only
- grey matter because he doesnt know what it is to have one yes when I
- lit the lamp because he must have come 3 or 4 times with that
- tremendous big red brute of a thing he has I thought the vein or
- whatever the dickens they call it was going to burst though his nose is
- not so big after I took off all my things with the blinds down after my
- hours dressing and perfuming and combing it like iron or some kind of a
- thick crowbar standing all the time he must have eaten oysters I think
- a few dozen he was in great singing voice no I never in all my life
- felt anyone had one the size of that to make you feel full up he must
- have eaten a whole sheep after whats the idea making us like that with
- a big hole in the middle of us or like a Stallion driving it up into
- you because thats all they want out of you with that determined vicious
- look in his eye I had to halfshut my eyes still he hasnt such a
- tremendous amount of spunk in him when I made him pull out and do it on
- me considering how big it is so much the better in case any of it wasnt
- washed out properly the last time I let him finish it in me nice
- invention they made for women for him to get all the pleasure but if
- someone gave them a touch of it themselves theyd know what I went
- through with Milly nobody would believe cutting her teeth too and Mina
- Purefoys husband give us a swing out of your whiskers filling her up
- with a child or twins once a year as regular as the clock always with a
- smell of children off her the one they called budgers or something like
- a nigger with a shock of hair on it Jesusjack the child is a black the
- last time I was there a squad of them falling over one another and
- bawling you couldnt hear your ears supposed to be healthy not satisfied
- till they have us swollen out like elephants or I dont know what
- supposing I risked having another not off him though still if he was
- married Im sure hed have a fine strong child but I dont know Poldy has
- more spunk in him yes thatd be awfully jolly I suppose it was meeting
- Josie Powell and the funeral and thinking about me and Boylan set him
- off well he can think what he likes now if thatll do him any good I
- know they were spooning a bit when I came on the scene he was dancing
- and sitting out with her the night of Georgina Simpsons housewarming
- and then he wanted to ram it down my neck it was on account of not
- liking to see her a wallflower that was why we had the standup row over
- politics he began it not me when he said about Our Lord being a
- carpenter at last he made me cry of course a woman is so sensitive
- about everything I was fuming with myself after for giving in only for
- I knew he was gone on me and the first socialist he said He was he
- annoyed me so much I couldnt put him into a temper still he knows a lot
- of mixedup things especially about the body and the inside I often
- wanted to study up that myself what we have inside us in that family
- physician I could always hear his voice talking when the room was
- crowded and watch him after that I pretended I had a coolness on with
- her over him because he used to be a bit on the jealous side whenever
- he asked who are you going to and I said over to Floey and he made me
- the present of Byrons poems and the three pairs of gloves so that
- finished that I could quite easily get him to make it up any time I
- know how Id even supposing he got in with her again and was going out
- to see her somewhere Id know if he refused to eat the onions I know
- plenty of ways ask him to tuck down the collar of my blouse or touch
- him with my veil and gloves on going out 1 kiss then would send them
- all spinning however alright well see then let him go to her she of
- course would only be too delighted to pretend shes mad in love with him
- that I wouldnt so much mind Id just go to her and ask her do you love
- him and look her square in the eyes she couldnt fool me but he might
- imagine he was and make a declaration to her with his plabbery kind of
- a manner like he did to me though I had the devils own job to get it
- out of him though I liked him for that it showed he could hold in and
- wasnt to be got for the asking he was on the pop of asking me too the
- night in the kitchen I was rolling the potato cake theres something I
- want to say to you only for I put him off letting on I was in a temper
- with my hands and arms full of pasty flour in any case I let out too
- much the night before talking of dreams so I didnt want to let him know
- more than was good for him she used to be always embracing me Josie
- whenever he was there meaning him of course glauming me over and when I
- said I washed up and down as far as possible asking me and did you wash
- possible the women are always egging on to that putting it on thick
- when hes there they know by his sly eye blinking a bit putting on the
- indifferent when they come out with something the kind he is what
- spoils him I dont wonder in the least because he was very handsome at
- that time trying to look like Lord Byron I said I liked though he was
- too beautiful for a man and he was a little before we got engaged
- afterwards though she didnt like it so much the day I was in fits of
- laughing with the giggles I couldnt stop about all my hairpins falling
- out one after another with the mass of hair I had youre always in great
- humour she said yes because it grigged her because she knew what it
- meant because I used to tell her a good bit of what went on between us
- not all but just enough to make her mouth water but that wasnt my fault
- she didnt darken the door much after we were married I wonder what shes
- got like now after living with that dotty husband of hers she had her
- face beginning to look drawn and run down the last time I saw her she
- must have been just after a row with him because I saw on the moment
- she was edging to draw down a conversation about husbands and talk
- about him to run him down what was it she told me O yes that sometimes
- he used to go to bed with his muddy boots on when the maggot takes him
- just imagine having to get into bed with a thing like that that might
- murder you any moment what a man well its not the one way everyone goes
- mad Poldy anyhow whatever he does always wipes his feet on the mat when
- he comes in wet or shine and always blacks his own boots too and he
- always takes off his hat when he comes up in the street like then and
- now hes going about in his slippers to look for £ 10000 for a postcard
- U p up O sweetheart May wouldnt a thing like that simply bore you stiff
- to extinction actually too stupid even to take his boots off now what
- could you make of a man like that Id rather die 20 times over than
- marry another of their sex of course hed never find another woman like
- me to put up with him the way I do know me come sleep with me yes and
- he knows that too at the bottom of his heart take that Mrs Maybrick
- that poisoned her husband for what I wonder in love with some other man
- yes it was found out on her wasnt she the downright villain to go and
- do a thing like that of course some men can be dreadfully aggravating
- drive you mad and always the worst word in the world what do they ask
- us to marry them for if were so bad as all that comes to yes because
- they cant get on without us white Arsenic she put in his tea off
- flypaper wasnt it I wonder why they call it that if I asked him hed say
- its from the Greek leave us as wise as we were before she must have
- been madly in love with the other fellow to run the chance of being
- hanged O she didnt care if that was her nature what could she do
- besides theyre not brutes enough to go and hang a woman surely are they
- theyre all so different Boylan talking about the shape of my foot he
- noticed at once even before he was introduced when I was in the D B C
- with Poldy laughing and trying to listen I was waggling my foot we both
- ordered 2 teas and plain bread and butter I saw him looking with his
- two old maids of sisters when I stood up and asked the girl where it
- was what do I care with it dropping out of me and that black closed
- breeches he made me buy takes you half an hour to let them down wetting
- all myself always with some brandnew fad every other week such a long
- one I did I forgot my suede gloves on the seat behind that I never got
- after some robber of a woman and he wanted me to put it in the Irish
- times lost in the ladies lavatory D B C Dame street finder return to
- Mrs Marion Bloom and I saw his eyes on my feet going out through the
- turning door he was looking when I looked back and I went there for tea
- 2 days after in the hope but he wasnt now how did that excite him
- because I was crossing them when we were in the other room first he
- meant the shoes that are too tight to walk in my hand is nice like that
- if I only had a ring with the stone for my month a nice aquamarine Ill
- stick him for one and a gold bracelet I dont like my foot so much still
- I made him spend once with my foot the night after Goodwins botchup of
- a concert so cold and windy it was well we had that rum in the house to
- mull and the fire wasnt black out when he asked to take off my
- stockings lying on the hearthrug in Lombard street west and another
- time it was my muddy boots hed like me to walk in all the horses dung I
- could find but of course hes not natural like the rest of the world
- that I what did he say I could give 9 points in 10 to Katty Lanner and
- beat her what does that mean I asked him I forget what he said because
- the stoppress edition just passed and the man with the curly hair in
- the Lucan dairy thats so polite I think I saw his face before somewhere
- I noticed him when I was tasting the butter so I took my time Bartell
- DArcy too that he used to make fun of when he commenced kissing me on
- the choir stairs after I sang Gounods _Ave Maria_ what are we waiting
- for O my heart kiss me straight on the brow and part which is my brown
- part he was pretty hot for all his tinny voice too my low notes he was
- always raving about if you can believe him I liked the way he used his
- mouth singing then he said wasnt it terrible to do that there in a
- place like that I dont see anything so terrible about it Ill tell him
- about that some day not now and surprise him ay and Ill take him there
- and show him the very place too we did it so now there you are like it
- or lump it he thinks nothing can happen without him knowing he hadnt an
- idea about my mother till we were engaged otherwise hed never have got
- me so cheap as he did he was 10 times worse himself anyhow begging me
- to give him a tiny bit cut off my drawers that was the evening coming
- along Kenilworth square he kissed me in the eye of my glove and I had
- to take it off asking me questions is it permitted to enquire the shape
- of my bedroom so I let him keep it as if I forgot it to think of me
- when I saw him slip it into his pocket of course hes mad on the subject
- of drawers thats plain to be seen always skeezing at those brazenfaced
- things on the bicycles with their skirts blowing up to their navels
- even when Milly and I were out with him at the open air fete that one
- in the cream muslin standing right against the sun so he could see
- every atom she had on when he saw me from behind following in the rain
- I saw him before he saw me however standing at the corner of the
- Harolds cross road with a new raincoat on him with the muffler in the
- Zingari colours to show off his complexion and the brown hat looking
- slyboots as usual what was he doing there where hed no business they
- can go and get whatever they like from anything at all with a skirt on
- it and were not to ask any questions but they want to know where were
- you where are you going I could feel him coming along skulking after me
- his eyes on my neck he had been keeping away from the house he felt it
- was getting too warm for him so I halfturned and stopped then he
- pestered me to say yes till I took off my glove slowly watching him he
- said my openwork sleeves were too cold for the rain anything for an
- excuse to put his hand anear me drawers drawers the whole blessed time
- till I promised to give him the pair off my doll to carry about in his
- waistcoat pocket _O Maria Santisima_ he did look a big fool dreeping in
- the rain splendid set of teeth he had made me hungry to look at them
- and beseeched of me to lift the orange petticoat I had on with the
- sunray pleats that there was nobody he said hed kneel down in the wet
- if I didnt so persevering he would too and ruin his new raincoat you
- never know what freak theyd take alone with you theyre so savage for it
- if anyone was passing so I lifted them a bit and touched his trousers
- outside the way I used to Gardner after with my ring hand to keep him
- from doing worse where it was too public I was dying to find out was he
- circumcised he was shaking like a jelly all over they want to do
- everything too quick take all the pleasure out of it and father waiting
- all the time for his dinner he told me to say I left my purse in the
- butchers and had to go back for it what a Deceiver then he wrote me
- that letter with all those words in it how could he have the face to
- any woman after his company manners making it so awkward after when we
- met asking me have I offended you with my eyelids down of course he saw
- I wasnt he had a few brains not like that other fool Henny Doyle he was
- always breaking or tearing something in the charades I hate an unlucky
- man and if I knew what it meant of course I had to say no for form sake
- dont understand you I said and wasnt it natural so it is of course it
- used to be written up with a picture of a womans on that wall in
- Gibraltar with that word I couldnt find anywhere only for children
- seeing it too young then writing every morning a letter sometimes twice
- a day I liked the way he made love then he knew the way to take a woman
- when he sent me the 8 big poppies because mine was the 8th then I wrote
- the night he kissed my heart at Dolphins barn I couldnt describe it
- simply it makes you feel like nothing on earth but he never knew how to
- embrace well like Gardner I hope hell come on Monday as he said at the
- same time four I hate people who come at all hours answer the door you
- think its the vegetables then its somebody and you all undressed or the
- door of the filthy sloppy kitchen blows open the day old frostyface
- Goodwin called about the concert in Lombard street and I just after
- dinner all flushed and tossed with boiling old stew dont look at me
- professor I had to say Im a fright yes but he was a real old gent in
- his way it was impossible to be more respectful nobody to say youre out
- you have to peep out through the blind like the messengerboy today I
- thought it was a putoff first him sending the port and the peaches
- first and I was just beginning to yawn with nerves thinking he was
- trying to make a fool of me when I knew his tattarrattat at the door he
- must have been a bit late because it was 1/4 after 3 when I saw the 2
- Dedalus girls coming from school I never know the time even that watch
- he gave me never seems to go properly Id want to get it looked after
- when I threw the penny to that lame sailor for England home and beauty
- when I was whistling there is a charming girl I love and I hadnt even
- put on my clean shift or powdered myself or a thing then this day week
- were to go to Belfast just as well he has to go to Ennis his fathers
- anniversary the 27th it wouldnt be pleasant if he did suppose our rooms
- at the hotel were beside each other and any fooling went on in the new
- bed I couldnt tell him to stop and not bother me with him in the next
- room or perhaps some protestant clergyman with a cough knocking on the
- wall then hed never believe the next day we didnt do something its all
- very well a husband but you cant fool a lover after me telling him we
- never did anything of course he didnt believe me no its better hes
- going where he is besides something always happens with him the time
- going to the Mallow concert at Maryborough ordering boiling soup for
- the two of us then the bell rang out he walks down the platform with
- the soup splashing about taking spoonfuls of it hadnt he the nerve and
- the waiter after him making a holy show of us screeching and confusion
- for the engine to start but he wouldnt pay till he finished it the two
- gentlemen in the 3rd class carriage said he was quite right so he was
- too hes so pigheaded sometimes when he gets a thing into his head a
- good job he was able to open the carriage door with his knife or theyd
- have taken us on to Cork I suppose that was done out of revenge on him
- O I love jaunting in a train or a car with lovely soft cushions I
- wonder will he take a 1st class for me he might want to do it in the
- train by tipping the guard well O I suppose therell be the usual idiots
- of men gaping at us with their eyes as stupid as ever they can possibly
- be that was an exceptional man that common workman that left us alone
- in the carriage that day going to Howth Id like to find out something
- about him 1 or 2 tunnels perhaps then you have to look out of the
- window all the nicer then coming back suppose I never came back what
- would they say eloped with him that gets you on on the stage the last
- concert I sang at where its over a year ago when was it St Teresas hall
- Clarendon St little chits of missies they have now singing Kathleen
- Kearney and her like on account of father being in the army and my
- singing the absentminded beggar and wearing a brooch for Lord Roberts
- when I had the map of it all and Poldy not Irish enough was it him
- managed it this time I wouldnt put it past him like he got me on to
- sing in the _Stabat Mater_ by going around saying he was putting Lead
- Kindly Light to music I put him up to that till the jesuits found out
- he was a freemason thumping the piano lead Thou me on copied from some
- old opera yes and he was going about with some of them Sinner Fein
- lately or whatever they call themselves talking his usual trash and
- nonsense he says that little man he showed me without the neck is very
- intelligent the coming man Griffiths is he well he doesnt look it thats
- all I can say still it must have been him he knew there was a boycott I
- hate the mention of their politics after the war that Pretoria and
- Ladysmith and Bloemfontein where Gardner lieut Stanley G 8th Bn 2nd
- East Lancs Rgt of enteric fever he was a lovely fellow in khaki and
- just the right height over me Im sure he was brave too he said I was
- lovely the evening we kissed goodbye at the canal lock my Irish beauty
- he was pale with excitement about going away or wed be seen from the
- road he couldnt stand properly and I so hot as I never felt they could
- have made their peace in the beginning or old oom Paul and the rest of
- the other old Krugers go and fight it out between them instead of
- dragging on for years killing any finelooking men there were with their
- fever if he was even decently shot it wouldnt have been so bad I love
- to see a regiment pass in review the first time I saw the Spanish
- cavalry at La Roque it was lovely after looking across the bay from
- Algeciras all the lights of the rock like fireflies or those sham
- battles on the 15 acres the Black Watch with their kilts in time at the
- march past the 10th hussars the prince of Wales own or the lancers O
- the lancers theyre grand or the Dublins that won Tugela his father made
- his money over selling the horses for the cavalry well he could buy me
- a nice present up in Belfast after what I gave him theyve lovely linen
- up there or one of those nice kimono things I must buy a mothball like
- I had before to keep in the drawer with them it would be exciting going
- round with him shopping buying those things in a new city better leave
- this ring behind want to keep turning and turning to get it over the
- knuckle there or they might bell it round the town in their papers or
- tell the police on me but theyd think were married O let them all go
- and smother themselves for the fat lot I care he has plenty of money
- and hes not a marrying man so somebody better get it out of him if I
- could find out whether he likes me I looked a bit washy of course when
- I looked close in the handglass powdering a mirror never gives you the
- expression besides scrooching down on me like that all the time with
- his big hipbones hes heavy too with his hairy chest for this heat
- always having to lie down for them better for him put it into me from
- behind the way Mrs Mastiansky told me her husband made her like the
- dogs do it and stick out her tongue as far as ever she could and he so
- quiet and mild with his tingating cither can you ever be up to men the
- way it takes them lovely stuff in that blue suit he had on and stylish
- tie and socks with the skyblue silk things on them hes certainly
- welloff I know by the cut his clothes have and his heavy watch but he
- was like a perfect devil for a few minutes after he came back with the
- stoppress tearing up the tickets and swearing blazes because he lost 20
- quid he said he lost over that outsider that won and half he put on for
- me on account of Lenehans tip cursing him to the lowest pits that
- sponger he was making free with me after the Glencree dinner coming
- back that long joult over the featherbed mountain after the lord Mayor
- looking at me with his dirty eyes Val Dillon that big heathen I first
- noticed him at dessert when I was cracking the nuts with my teeth I
- wished I could have picked every morsel of that chicken out of my
- fingers it was so tasty and browned and as tender as anything only for
- I didnt want to eat everything on my plate those forks and fishslicers
- were hallmarked silver too I wish I had some I could easily have
- slipped a couple into my muff when I was playing with them then always
- hanging out of them for money in a restaurant for the bit you put down
- your throat we have to be thankful for our mangy cup of tea itself as a
- great compliment to be noticed the way the world is divided in any case
- if its going to go on I want at least two other good chemises for one
- thing and but I dont know what kind of drawers he likes none at all I
- think didnt he say yes and half the girls in Gibraltar never wore them
- either naked as God made them that Andalusian singing her Manola she
- didnt make much secret of what she hadnt yes and the second pair of
- silkette stockings is laddered after one days wear I could have brought
- them back to Lewers this morning and kicked up a row and made that one
- change them only not to upset myself and run the risk of walking into
- him and ruining the whole thing and one of those kidfitting corsets Id
- want advertised cheap in the Gentlewoman with elastic gores on the hips
- he saved the one I have but thats no good what did they say they give a
- delightful figure line 11/6 obviating that unsightly broad appearance
- across the lower back to reduce flesh my belly is a bit too big Ill
- have to knock off the stout at dinner or am I getting too fond of it
- the last they sent from ORourkes was as flat as a pancake he makes his
- money easy Larry they call him the old mangy parcel he sent at Xmas a
- cottage cake and a bottle of hogwash he tried to palm off as claret
- that he couldnt get anyone to drink God spare his spit for fear hed die
- of the drouth or I must do a few breathing exercises I wonder is that
- antifat any good might overdo it the thin ones are not so much the
- fashion now garters that much I have the violet pair I wore today thats
- all he bought me out of the cheque he got on the first O no there was
- the face lotion I finished the last of yesterday that made my skin like
- new I told him over and over again get that made up in the same place
- and dont forget it God only knows whether he did after all I said to
- him Ill know by the bottle anyway if not I suppose Ill only have to
- wash in my piss like beeftea or chickensoup with some of that opoponax
- and violet I thought it was beginning to look coarse or old a bit the
- skin underneath is much finer where it peeled off there on my finger
- after the burn its a pity it isnt all like that and the four paltry
- handkerchiefs about 6/- in all sure you cant get on in this world
- without style all going in food and rent when I get it Ill lash it
- around I tell you in fine style I always want to throw a handful of tea
- into the pot measuring and mincing if I buy a pair of old brogues
- itself do you like those new shoes yes were they Ive no clothes at all
- the brown costume and the skirt and jacket and the one at the cleaners
- 3 whats that for any woman cutting up this old hat and patching up the
- other the men wont look at you and women try to walk on you because
- they know youve no man then with all the things getting dearer every
- day for the 4 years more I have of life up to 35 no Im what am I at all
- Ill be 33 in September will I what O well look at that Mrs Galbraith
- shes much older than me I saw her when I was out last week her beautys
- on the wane she was a lovely woman magnificent head of hair on her down
- to her waist tossing it back like that like Kitty OShea in Grantham
- street 1st thing I did every morning to look across see her combing it
- as if she loved it and was full of it pity I only got to know her the
- day before we left and that Mrs Langtry the jersey lily the prince of
- Wales was in love with I suppose hes like the first man going the roads
- only for the name of a king theyre all made the one way only a black
- mans Id like to try a beauty up to what was she 45 there was some funny
- story about the jealous old husband what was it at all and an oyster
- knife he went no he made her wear a kind of a tin thing round her and
- the prince of Wales yes he had the oyster knife cant be true a thing
- like that like some of those books he brings me the works of Master
- Francois Somebody supposed to be a priest about a child born out of her
- ear because her bumgut fell out a nice word for any priest to write and
- her a—e as if any fool wouldnt know what that meant I hate that
- pretending of all things with that old blackguards face on him anybody
- can see its not true and that Ruby and Fair Tyrants he brought me that
- twice I remember when I came to page 50 the part about where she hangs
- him up out of a hook with a cord flagellate sure theres nothing for a
- woman in that all invention made up about he drinking the champagne out
- of her slipper after the ball was over like the infant Jesus in the
- crib at Inchicore in the Blessed Virgins arms sure no woman could have
- a child that big taken out of her and I thought first it came out of
- her side because how could she go to the chamber when she wanted to and
- she a rich lady of course she felt honoured H R H he was in Gibraltar
- the year I was born I bet he found lilies there too where he planted
- the tree he planted more than that in his time he might have planted me
- too if hed come a bit sooner then I wouldnt be here as I am he ought to
- chuck that Freeman with the paltry few shillings he knocks out of it
- and go into an office or something where hed get regular pay or a bank
- where they could put him up on a throne to count the money all the day
- of course he prefers plottering about the house so you cant stir with
- him any side whats your programme today I wish hed even smoke a pipe
- like father to get the smell of a man or pretending to be mooching
- about for advertisements when he could have been in Mr Cuffes still
- only for what he did then sending me to try and patch it up I could
- have got him promoted there to be the manager he gave me a great mirada
- once or twice first he was as stiff as the mischief really and truly
- Mrs Bloom only I felt rotten simply with the old rubbishy dress that I
- lost the leads out of the tails with no cut in it but theyre coming
- into fashion again I bought it simply to please him I knew it was no
- good by the finish pity I changed my mind of going to Todd and Burns as
- I said and not Lees it was just like the shop itself rummage sale a lot
- of trash I hate those rich shops get on your nerves nothing kills me
- altogether only he thinks he knows a great lot about a womans dress and
- cooking mathering everything he can scour off the shelves into it if I
- went by his advices every blessed hat I put on does that suit me yes
- take that thats alright the one like a weddingcake standing up miles
- off my head he said suited me or the dishcover one coming down on my
- backside on pins and needles about the shopgirl in that place in
- Grafton street I had the misfortune to bring him into and she as
- insolent as ever she could be with her smirk saying Im afraid were
- giving you too much trouble what shes there for but I stared it out of
- her yes he was awfully stiff and no wonder but he changed the second
- time he looked Poldy pigheaded as usual like the soup but I could see
- him looking very hard at my chest when he stood up to open the door for
- me it was nice of him to show me out in any case Im extremely sorry Mrs
- Bloom believe me without making it too marked the first time after him
- being insulted and me being supposed to be his wife I just half smiled
- I know my chest was out that way at the door when he said Im extremely
- sorry and Im sure you were
- yes I think he made them a bit firmer sucking them like that so long he
- made me thirsty titties he calls them I had to laugh yes this one
- anyhow stiff the nipple gets for the least thing Ill get him to keep
- that up and Ill take those eggs beaten up with marsala fatten them out
- for him what are all those veins and things curious the way its made 2
- the same in case of twins theyre supposed to represent beauty placed up
- there like those statues in the museum one of them pretending to hide
- it with her hand are they so beautiful of course compared with what a
- man looks like with his two bags full and his other thing hanging down
- out of him or sticking up at you like a hatrack no wonder they hide it
- with a cabbageleaf that disgusting Cameron highlander behind the meat
- market or that other wretch with the red head behind the tree where the
- statue of the fish used to be when I was passing pretending he was
- pissing standing out for me to see it with his babyclothes up to one
- side the Queens own they were a nice lot its well the Surreys relieved
- them theyre always trying to show it to you every time nearly I passed
- outside the mens greenhouse near the Harcourt street station just to
- try some fellow or other trying to catch my eye as if it was 1 of the 7
- wonders of the world O and the stink of those rotten places the night
- coming home with Poldy after the Comerfords party oranges and lemonade
- to make you feel nice and watery I went into 1 of them it was so biting
- cold I couldnt keep it when was that 93 the canal was frozen yes it was
- a few months after a pity a couple of the Camerons werent there to see
- me squatting in the mens place meadero I tried to draw a picture of it
- before I tore it up like a sausage or something I wonder theyre not
- afraid going about of getting a kick or a bang of something there the
- woman is beauty of course thats admitted when he said I could pose for
- a picture naked to some rich fellow in Holles street when he lost the
- job in Helys and I was selling the clothes and strumming in the coffee
- palace would I be like that bath of the nymph with my hair down yes
- only shes younger or Im a little like that dirty bitch in that Spanish
- photo he has nymphs used they go about like that I asked him about her
- and that word met something with hoses in it and he came out with some
- jawbreakers about the incarnation he never can explain a thing simply
- the way a body can understand then he goes and burns the bottom out of
- the pan all for his Kidney this one not so much theres the mark of his
- teeth still where he tried to bite the nipple I had to scream out arent
- they fearful trying to hurt you I had a great breast of milk with Milly
- enough for two what was the reason of that he said I could have got a
- pound a week as a wet nurse all swelled out the morning that delicate
- looking student that stopped in no 28 with the Citrons Penrose nearly
- caught me washing through the window only for I snapped up the towel to
- my face that was his studenting hurt me they used to weaning her till
- he got doctor Brady to give me the belladonna prescription I had to get
- him to suck them they were so hard he said it was sweeter and thicker
- than cows then he wanted to milk me into the tea well hes beyond
- everything I declare somebody ought to put him in the budget if I only
- could remember the one half of the things and write a book out of it
- the works of Master Poldy yes and its so much smoother the skin much an
- hour he was at them Im sure by the clock like some kind of a big infant
- I had at me they want everything in their mouth all the pleasure those
- men get out of a woman I can feel his mouth O Lord I must stretch
- myself I wished he was here or somebody to let myself go with and come
- again like that I feel all fire inside me or if I could dream it when
- he made me spend the 2nd time tickling me behind with his finger I was
- coming for about 5 minutes with my legs round him I had to hug him
- after O Lord I wanted to shout out all sorts of things fuck or shit or
- anything at all only not to look ugly or those lines from the strain
- who knows the way hed take it you want to feel your way with a man
- theyre not all like him thank God some of them want you to be so nice
- about it I noticed the contrast he does it and doesnt talk I gave my
- eyes that look with my hair a bit loose from the tumbling and my tongue
- between my lips up to him the savage brute Thursday Friday one Saturday
- two Sunday three O Lord I cant wait till Monday
- frseeeeeeeefronnnng train somewhere whistling the strength those
- engines have in them like big giants and the water rolling all over and
- out of them all sides like the end of Loves old sweeeetsonnnng the poor
- men that have to be out all the night from their wives and families in
- those roasting engines stifling it was today Im glad I burned the half
- of those old Freemans and Photo Bits leaving things like that lying
- about hes getting very careless and threw the rest of them up in the W
- C I’ll get him to cut them tomorrow for me instead of having them there
- for the next year to get a few pence for them have him asking wheres
- last Januarys paper and all those old overcoats I bundled out of the
- hall making the place hotter than it is that rain was lovely and
- refreshing just after my beauty sleep I thought it was going to get
- like Gibraltar my goodness the heat there before the levanter came on
- black as night and the glare of the rock standing up in it like a big
- giant compared with their 3 Rock mountain they think is so great with
- the red sentries here and there the poplars and they all whitehot and
- the smell of the rainwater in those tanks watching the sun all the time
- weltering down on you faded all that lovely frock fathers friend Mrs
- Stanhope sent me from the B Marche paris what a shame my dearest
- Doggerina she wrote on it she was very nice whats this her other name
- was just a p c to tell you I sent the little present have just had a
- jolly warm bath and feel a very clean dog now enjoyed it wogger she
- called him wogger wd give anything to be back in Gib and hear you sing
- Waiting and in old Madrid Concone is the name of those exercises he
- bought me one of those new some word I couldnt make out shawls amusing
- things but tear for the least thing still there lovely I think dont you
- will always think of the lovely teas we had together scrumptious
- currant scones and raspberry wafers I adore well now dearest Doggerina
- be sure and write soon kind she left out regards to your father also
- Captain Grove with love yrs affly Hester x x x x x she didnt look a bit
- married just like a girl he was years older than her wogger he was
- awfully fond of me when he held down the wire with his foot for me to
- step over at the bullfight at La Linea when that matador Gomez was
- given the bulls ear these clothes we have to wear whoever invented them
- expecting you to walk up Killiney hill then for example at that picnic
- all staysed up you cant do a blessed thing in them in a crowd run or
- jump out of the way thats why I was afraid when that other ferocious
- old Bull began to charge the banderilleros with the sashes and the 2
- things in their hats and the brutes of men shouting bravo toro sure the
- women were as bad in their nice white mantillas ripping all the whole
- insides out of those poor horses I never heard of such a thing in all
- my life yes he used to break his heart at me taking off the dog barking
- in bell lane poor brute and it sick what became of them ever I suppose
- theyre dead long ago the 2 of them its like all through a mist makes
- you feel so old I made the scones of course I had everything all to
- myself then a girl Hester we used to compare our hair mine was thicker
- than hers she showed me how to settle it at the back when I put it up
- and whats this else how to make a knot on a thread with the one hand we
- were like cousins what age was I then the night of the storm I slept in
- her bed she had her arms round me then we were fighting in the morning
- with the pillow what fun he was watching me whenever he got an
- opportunity at the band on the Alameda esplanade when I was with father
- and Captain Grove I looked up at the church first and then at the
- windows then down and our eyes met I felt something go through me like
- all needles my eyes were dancing I remember after when I looked at
- myself in the glass hardly recognised myself the change he was
- attractive to a girl in spite of his being a little bald intelligent
- looking disappointed and gay at the same time he was like Thomas in the
- shadow of Ashlydyat I had a splendid skin from the sun and the
- excitement like a rose I didnt get a wink of sleep it wouldnt have been
- nice on account of her but I could have stopped it in time she gave me
- the Moonstone to read that was the first I read of Wilkie Collins East
- Lynne I read and the shadow of Ashlydyat Mrs Henry Wood Henry Dunbar by
- that other woman I lent him afterwards with Mulveys photo in it so as
- he see I wasnt without and Lord Lytton Eugene Aram Molly bawn she gave
- me by Mrs Hungerford on account of the name I dont like books with a
- Molly in them like that one he brought me about the one from Flanders a
- whore always shoplifting anything she could cloth and stuff and yards
- of it O this blanket is too heavy on me thats better I havent even one
- decent nightdress this thing gets all rolled under me besides him and
- his fooling thats better I used to be weltering then in the heat my
- shift drenched with the sweat stuck in the cheeks of my bottom on the
- chair when I stood up they were so fattish and firm when I got up on
- the sofa cushions to see with my clothes up and the bugs tons of them
- at night and the mosquito nets I couldnt read a line Lord how long ago
- it seems centuries of course they never came back and she didnt put her
- address right on it either she may have noticed her wogger people were
- always going away and we never I remember that day with the waves and
- the boats with their high heads rocking and the smell of ship those
- Officers uniforms on shore leave made me seasick he didnt say anything
- he was very serious I had the high buttoned boots on and my skirt was
- blowing she kissed me six or seven times didnt I cry yes I believe I
- did or near it my lips were taittering when I said goodbye she had a
- Gorgeous wrap of some special kind of blue colour on her for the voyage
- made very peculiarly to one side like and it was extremely pretty it
- got as dull as the devil after they went I was almost planning to run
- away mad out of it somewhere were never easy where we are father or
- aunt or marriage waiting always waiting to guiiiide him toooo me
- waiting nor speeeed his flying feet their damn guns bursting and
- booming all over the shop especially the Queens birthday and throwing
- everything down in all directions if you didnt open the windows when
- general Ulysses Grant whoever he was or did supposed to be some great
- fellow landed off the ship and old Sprague the consul that was there
- from before the flood dressed up poor man and he in mourning for the
- son then the same old bugles for reveille in the morning and drums
- rolling and the unfortunate poor devils of soldiers walking about with
- messtins smelling the place more than the old longbearded jews in their
- jellibees and levites assembly and sound clear and gunfire for the men
- to cross the lines and the warden marching with his keys to lock the
- gates and the bagpipes and only captain Groves and father talking about
- Rorkes drift and Plevna and sir Garnet Wolseley and Gordon at Khartoum
- lighting their pipes for them everytime they went out drunken old devil
- with his grog on the windowsill catch him leaving any of it picking his
- nose trying to think of some other dirty story to tell up in a corner
- but he never forgot himself when I was there sending me out of the room
- on some blind excuse paying his compliments the Bushmills whisky
- talking of course but hed do the same to the next woman that came along
- I suppose he died of galloping drink ages ago the days like years not a
- letter from a living soul except the odd few I posted to myself with
- bits of paper in them so bored sometimes I could fight with my nails
- listening to that old Arab with the one eye and his heass of an
- instrument singing his heah heah aheah all my compriment on your
- hotchapotch of your heass as bad as now with the hands hanging off me
- looking out of the window if there was a nice fellow even in the
- opposite house that medical in Holles street the nurse was after when I
- put on my gloves and hat at the window to show I was going out not a
- notion what I meant arent they thick never understand what you say even
- youd want to print it up on a big poster for them not even if you shake
- hands twice with the left he didnt recognise me either when I half
- frowned at him outside Westland row chapel where does their great
- intelligence come in Id like to know grey matter they have it all in
- their tail if you ask me those country gougers up in the City Arms
- intelligence they had a damn sight less than the bulls and cows they
- were selling the meat and the coalmans bell that noisy bugger trying to
- swindle me with the wrong bill he took out of his hat what a pair of
- paws and pots and pans and kettles to mend any broken bottles for a
- poor man today and no visitors or post ever except his cheques or some
- advertisement like that wonderworker they sent him addressed dear Madam
- only his letter and the card from Milly this morning see she wrote a
- letter to him who did I get the last letter from O Mrs Dwenn now what
- possessed her to write from Canada after so many years to know the
- recipe I had for pisto madrileno Floey Dillon since she wrote to say
- she was married to a very rich architect if Im to believe all I hear
- with a villa and eight rooms her father was an awfully nice man he was
- near seventy always goodhumoured well now Miss Tweedy or Miss Gillespie
- theres the piannyer that was a solid silver coffee service he had too
- on the mahogany sideboard then dying so far away I hate people that
- have always their poor story to tell everybody has their own troubles
- that poor Nancy Blake died a month ago of acute neumonia well I didnt
- know her so well as all that she was Floeys friend more than mine poor
- Nancy its a bother having to answer he always tells me the wrong things
- and no stops to say like making a speech your sad bereavement
- symph̸athy I always make that mistake and new̸phew with 2 double yous
- in I hope hell write me a longer letter the next time if its a thing he
- really likes me O thanks be to the great God I got somebody to give me
- what I badly wanted to put some heart up into me youve no chances at
- all in this place like you used long ago I wish somebody would write me
- a loveletter his wasnt much and I told him he could write what he liked
- yours ever Hugh Boylan in old Madrid stuff silly women believe love is
- sighing I am dying still if he wrote it I suppose thered be some truth
- in it true or no it fills up your whole day and life always something
- to think about every moment and see it all round you like a new world I
- could write the answer in bed to let him imagine me short just a few
- words not those long crossed letters Atty Dillon used to write to the
- fellow that was something in the four courts that jilted her after out
- of the ladies letterwriter when I told her to say a few simple words he
- could twist how he liked not acting with precipat precipitancy with
- equal candour the greatest earthly happiness answer to a gentlemans
- proposal affirmatively my goodness theres nothing else its all very
- fine for them but as for being a woman as soon as youre old they might
- as well throw you out in the bottom of the ashpit.
- Mulveys was the first when I was in bed that morning and Mrs Rubio
- brought it in with the coffee she stood there standing when I asked her
- to hand me and I pointing at them I couldnt think of the word a hairpin
- to open it with ah horquilla disobliging old thing and it staring her
- in the face with her switch of false hair on her and vain about her
- appearance ugly as she was near 80 or a 100 her face a mass of wrinkles
- with all her religion domineering because she never could get over the
- Atlantic fleet coming in half the ships of the world and the Union Jack
- flying with all her carabineros because 4 drunken English sailors took
- all the rock from them and because I didnt run into mass often enough
- in Santa Maria to please her with her shawl up on her except when there
- was a marriage on with all her miracles of the saints and her black
- blessed virgin with the silver dress and the sun dancing 3 times on
- Easter Sunday morning and when the priest was going by with the bell
- bringing the vatican to the dying blessing herself for his Majestad an
- admirer he signed it I near jumped out of my skin I wanted to pick him
- up when I saw him following me along the Calle Real in the shop window
- then he tipped me just in passing but I never thought hed write making
- an appointment I had it inside my petticoat bodice all day reading it
- up in every hole and corner while father was up at the drill
- instructing to find out by the handwriting or the language of stamps
- singing I remember shall I wear a white rose and I wanted to put on the
- old stupid clock to near the time he was the first man kissed me under
- the Moorish wall my sweetheart when a boy it never entered my head what
- kissing meant till he put his tongue in my mouth his mouth was
- sweetlike young I put my knee up to him a few times to learn the way
- what did I tell him I was engaged for for fun to the son of a Spanish
- nobleman named Don Miguel de la Flora and he believed me that I was to
- be married to him in 3 years time theres many a true word spoken in
- jest there is a flower that bloometh a few things I told him true about
- myself just for him to be imagining the Spanish girls he didnt like I
- suppose one of them wouldnt have him I got him excited he crushed all
- the flowers on my bosom he brought me he couldnt count the pesetas and
- the perragordas till I taught him Cappoquin he came from he said on the
- black water but it was too short then the day before he left May yes it
- was May when the infant king of Spain was born Im always like that in
- the spring Id like a new fellow every year up on the tiptop under the
- rockgun near OHaras tower I told him it was struck by lightning and all
- about the old Barbary apes they sent to Clapham without a tail
- careering all over the show on each others back Mrs Rubio said she was
- a regular old rock scorpion robbing the chickens out of Inces farm and
- throw stones at you if you went anear he was looking at me I had that
- white blouse on open in the front to encourage him as much as I could
- without too openly they were just beginning to be plump I said I was
- tired we lay over the firtree cove a wild place I suppose it must be
- the highest rock in existence the galleries and casemates and those
- frightful rocks and Saint Michaels cave with the icicles or whatever
- they call them hanging down and ladders all the mud plotching my boots
- Im sure thats the way down the monkeys go under the sea to Africa when
- they die the ships out far like chips that was the Malta boat passing
- yes the sea and the sky you could do what you liked lie there for ever
- he caressed them outside they love doing that its the roundness there I
- was leaning over him with my white ricestraw hat to take the newness
- out of it the left side of my face the best my blouse open for his last
- day transparent kind of shirt he had I could see his chest pink he
- wanted to touch mine with his for a moment but I wouldnt let him he was
- awfully put out first for fear you never know consumption or leave me
- with a child embarazada that old servant Ines told me that one drop
- even if it got into you at all after I tried with the Banana but I was
- afraid it might break and get lost up in me somewhere because they once
- took something down out of a woman that was up there for years covered
- with limesalts theyre all mad to get in there where they come out of
- youd think they could never go far enough up and then theyre done with
- you in a way till the next time yes because theres a wonderful feeling
- there so tender all the time how did we finish it off yes O yes I
- pulled him off into my handkerchief pretending not to be excited but I
- opened my legs I wouldnt let him touch me inside my petticoat because I
- had a skirt opening up the side I tormented the life out of him first
- tickling him I loved rousing that dog in the hotel rrrsssstt
- awokwokawok his eyes shut and a bird flying below us he was shy all the
- same I liked him like that moaning I made him blush a little when I got
- over him that way when I unbuttoned him and took his out and drew back
- the skin it had a kind of eye in it theyre all Buttons men down the
- middle on the wrong side of them Molly darling he called me what was
- his name Jack Joe Harry Mulvey was it yes I think a lieutenant he was
- rather fair he had a laughing kind of a voice so I went round to the
- whatyoucallit everything was whatyoucallit moustache had he he said hed
- come back Lord its just like yesterday to me and if I was married hed
- do it to me and I promised him yes faithfully Id let him block me now
- flying perhaps hes dead or killed or a captain or admiral its nearly 20
- years if I said firtree cove he would if he came up behind me and put
- his hands over my eyes to guess who I might recognise him hes young
- still about 40 perhaps hes married some girl on the black water and is
- quite changed they all do they havent half the character a woman has
- she little knows what I did with her beloved husband before he ever
- dreamt of her in broad daylight too in the sight of the whole world you
- might say they could have put an article about it in the Chronicle I
- was a bit wild after when I blew out the old bag the biscuits were in
- from Benady Bros and exploded it Lord what a bang all the woodcocks and
- pigeons screaming coming back the same way that we went over middle
- hill round by the old guardhouse and the jews burialplace pretending to
- read out the Hebrew on them I wanted to fire his pistol he said he
- hadnt one he didnt know what to make of me with his peak cap on that he
- always wore crooked as often as I settled it straight H M S Calypso
- swinging my hat that old Bishop that spoke off the altar his long
- preach about womans higher functions about girls now riding the bicycle
- and wearing peak caps and the new woman bloomers God send him sense and
- me more money I suppose theyre called after him I never thought that
- would be my name Bloom when I used to write it in print to see how it
- looked on a visiting card or practising for the butcher and oblige M
- Bloom youre looking blooming Josie used to say after I married him well
- its better than Breen or Briggs does brig or those awful names with
- bottom in them Mrs Ramsbottom or some other kind of a bottom Mulvey I
- wouldnt go mad about either or suppose I divorced him Mrs Boylan my
- mother whoever she was might have given me a nicer name the Lord knows
- after the lovely one she had Lunita Laredo the fun we had running along
- Williss road to Europa point twisting in and out all round the other
- side of Jersey they were shaking and dancing about in my blouse like
- Millys little ones now when she runs up the stairs I loved looking down
- at them I was jumping up at the pepper trees and the white poplars
- pulling the leaves off and throwing them at him he went to India he was
- to write the voyages those men have to make to the ends of the world
- and back its the least they might get a squeeze or two at a woman while
- they can going out to be drowned or blown up somewhere I went up
- Windmill hill to the flats that Sunday morning with captain Rubios that
- was dead spyglass like the sentry had he said hed have one or two from
- on board I wore that frock from the B Marche paris and the coral
- necklace the straits shining I could see over to Morocco almost the bay
- of Tangier white and the Atlas mountain with snow on it and the straits
- like a river so clear Harry Molly darling I was thinking of him on the
- sea all the time after at mass when my petticoat began to slip down at
- the elevation weeks and weeks I kept the handkerchief under my pillow
- for the smell of him there was no decent perfume to be got in that
- Gibraltar only that cheap peau dEspagne that faded and left a stink on
- you more than anything else I wanted to give him a memento he gave me
- that clumsy Claddagh ring for luck that I gave Gardner going to south
- Africa where those Boers killed him with their war and fever but they
- were well beaten all the same as if it brought its bad luck with it
- like an opal or pearl still it must have been pure 18 carrot gold
- because it was very heavy but what could you get in a place like that
- the sandfrog shower from Africa and that derelict ship that came up to
- the harbour Marie the Marie whatyoucallit no he hadnt a moustache that
- was Gardner yes I can see his face cleanshaven
- Frseeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeefrong that train again weeping tone once in the
- dear deaead days beyondre call close my eyes breath my lips forward
- kiss sad look eyes open piano ere oer the world the mists began I hate
- that istsbeg comes loves sweet sooooooooooong Ill let that out full
- when I get in front of the footlights again Kathleen Kearney and her
- lot of squealers Miss This Miss That Miss Theother lot of sparrowfarts
- skitting around talking about politics they know as much about as my
- backside anything in the world to make themselves someway interesting
- Irish homemade beauties soldiers daughter am I ay and whose are you
- bootmakers and publicans I beg your pardon coach I thought you were a
- wheelbarrow theyd die down dead off their feet if ever they got a
- chance of walking down the Alameda on an officers arm like me on the
- bandnight my eyes flash my bust that they havent passion God help their
- poor head I knew more about men and life when I was 15 than theyll all
- know at 50 they dont know how to sing a song like that Gardner said no
- man could look at my mouth and teeth smiling like that and not think of
- it I was afraid he mightnt like my accent first he so English all
- father left me in spite of his stamps Ive my mothers eyes and figure
- anyhow he always said theyre so snotty about themselves some of those
- cads he wasnt a bit like that he was dead gone on my lips let them get
- a husband first thats fit to be looked at and a daughter like mine or
- see if they can excite a swell with money that can pick and choose
- whoever he wants like Boylan to do it 4 or 5 times locked in each
- others arms or the voice either I could have been a prima donna only I
- married him comes looooves old deep down chin back not too much make it
- double My Ladys Bower is too long for an encore about the moated grange
- at twilight and vaunted rooms yes Ill sing Winds that blow from the
- south that he gave after the choirstairs performance Ill change that
- lace on my black dress to show off my bubs and Ill yes by God Ill get
- that big fan mended make them burst with envy my hole is itching me
- always when I think of him I feel I want to I feel some wind in me
- better go easy not wake him have him at it again slobbering after
- washing every bit of myself back belly and sides if we had even a bath
- itself or my own room anyway I wish hed sleep in some bed by himself
- with his cold feet on me give us room even to let a fart God or do the
- least thing better yes hold them like that a bit on my side piano
- quietly sweeeee theres that train far away pianissimo eeeee one more
- song
- that was a relief wherever you be let your wind go free who knows if
- that pork chop I took with my cup of tea after was quite good with the
- heat I couldnt smell anything off it Im sure that queerlooking man in
- the porkbutchers is a great rogue I hope that lamp is not smoking fill
- my nose up with smuts better than having him leaving the gas on all
- night I couldnt rest easy in my bed in Gibraltar even getting up to see
- why am I so damned nervous about that though I like it in the winter
- its more company O Lord it was rotten cold too that winter when I was
- only about ten was I yes I had the big doll with all the funny clothes
- dressing her up and undressing that icy wind skeeting across from those
- mountains the something Nevada sierra nevada standing at the fire with
- the little bit of a short shift I had up to heat myself I loved dancing
- about in it then make a race back into bed Im sure that fellow opposite
- used to be there the whole time watching with the lights out in the
- summer and I in my skin hopping around I used to love myself then
- stripped at the washstand dabbing and creaming only when it came to the
- chamber performance I put out the light too so then there were 2 of us
- goodbye to my sleep for this night anyhow I hope hes not going to get
- in with those medicals leading him astray to imagine hes young again
- coming in at 4 in the morning it must be if not more still he had the
- manners not to wake me what do they find to gabber about all night
- squandering money and getting drunker and drunker couldnt they drink
- water then he starts giving us his orders for eggs and tea and Findon
- haddy and hot buttered toast I suppose well have him sitting up like
- the king of the country pumping the wrong end of the spoon up and down
- in his egg wherever he learned that from and I love to hear him falling
- up the stairs of a morning with the cups rattling on the tray and then
- play with the cat she rubs up against you for her own sake I wonder has
- she fleas shes as bad as a woman always licking and lecking but I hate
- their claws I wonder do they see anything that we cant staring like
- that when she sits at the top of the stairs so long and listening as I
- wait always what a robber too that lovely fresh plaice I bought I think
- Ill get a bit of fish tomorrow or today is it Friday yes I will with
- some blancmange with black currant jam like long ago not those 2 lb
- pots of mixed plum and apple from the London and Newcastle Williams and
- Woods goes twice as far only for the bones I hate those eels cod yes
- Ill get a nice piece of cod Im always getting enough for 3 forgetting
- anyway Im sick of that everlasting butchers meat from Buckleys loin
- chops and leg beef and rib steak and scrag of mutton and calfs pluck
- the very name is enough or a picnic suppose we all gave 5/- each and or
- let him pay it and invite some other woman for him who Mrs Fleming and
- drove out to the furry glen or the strawberry beds wed have him
- examining all the horses toenails first like he does with the letters
- no not with Boylan there yes with some cold veal and ham mixed
- sandwiches there are little houses down at the bottom of the banks
- there on purpose but its as hot as blazes he says not a bank holiday
- anyhow I hate those ruck of Mary Ann coalboxes out for the day Whit
- Monday is a cursed day too no wonder that bee bit him better the
- seaside but Id never again in this life get into a boat with him after
- him at Bray telling the boatman he knew how to row if anyone asked
- could he ride the steeplechase for the gold cup hed say yes then it
- came on to get rough the old thing crookeding about and the weight all
- down my side telling me pull the right reins now pull the left and the
- tide all swamping in floods in through the bottom and his oar slipping
- out of the stirrup its a mercy we werent all drowned he can swim of
- course me no theres no danger whatsoever keep yourself calm in his
- flannel trousers Id like to have tattered them down off him before all
- the people and give him what that one calls flagellate till he was
- black and blue do him all the good in the world only for that longnosed
- chap I dont know who he is with that other beauty Burke out of the City
- Arms hotel was there spying around as usual on the slip always where he
- wasnt wanted if there was a row on youd vomit a better face there was
- no love lost between us thats 1 consolation I wonder what kind is that
- book he brought me Sweets of Sin by a gentleman of fashion some other
- Mr de Kock I suppose the people gave him that nickname going about with
- his tube from one woman to another I couldnt even change my new white
- shoes all ruined with the saltwater and the hat I had with that feather
- all blowy and tossed on me how annoying and provoking because the smell
- of the sea excited me of course the sardines and the bream in Catalan
- bay round the back of the rock they were fine all silver in the
- fishermens baskets old Luigi near a hundred they said came from Genoa
- and the tall old chap with the earrings I dont like a man you have to
- climb up to to get at I suppose theyre all dead and rotten long ago
- besides I dont like being alone in this big barracks of a place at
- night I suppose Ill have to put up with it I never brought a bit of
- salt in even when we moved in the confusion musical academy he was
- going to make on the first floor drawingroom with a brassplate or
- Blooms private hotel he suggested go and ruin himself altogether the
- way his father did down in Ennis like all the things he told father he
- was going to do and me but I saw through him telling me all the lovely
- places we could go for the honeymoon Venice by moonlight with the
- gondolas and the lake of Como he had a picture cut out of some paper of
- and mandolines and lanterns O how nice I said whatever I liked he was
- going to do immediately if not sooner will you be my man will you carry
- my can he ought to get a leather medal with a putty rim for all the
- plans he invents then leaving us here all day youd never know what old
- beggar at the door for a crust with his long story might be a tramp and
- put his foot in the way to prevent me shutting it like that picture of
- that hardened criminal he was called in Lloyds Weekly news 20 years in
- jail then he comes out and murders an old woman for her money imagine
- his poor wife or mother or whoever she is such a face youd run miles
- away from I couldnt rest easy till I bolted all the doors and windows
- to make sure but its worse again being locked up like in a prison or a
- madhouse they ought to be all shot or the cat of nine tails a big brute
- like that that would attack a poor old woman to murder her in her bed
- Id cut them off him so I would not that hed be much use still better
- than nothing the night I was sure I heard burglars in the kitchen and
- he went down in his shirt with a candle and a poker as if he was
- looking for a mouse as white as a sheet frightened out of his wits
- making as much noise as he possibly could for the burglars benefit
- there isnt much to steal indeed the Lord knows still its the feeling
- especially now with Milly away such an idea for him to send the girl
- down there to learn to take photographs on account of his grandfather
- instead of sending her to Skerrys academy where shed have to learn not
- like me getting all at school only hed do a thing like that all the
- same on account of me and Boylan thats why he did it Im certain the way
- he plots and plans everything out I couldnt turn round with her in the
- place lately unless I bolted the door first gave me the fidgets coming
- in without knocking first when I put the chair against the door just as
- I was washing myself there below with the glove get on your nerves then
- doing the loglady all day put her in a glasscase with two at a time to
- look at her if he knew she broke off the hand off that little gimcrack
- statue with her roughness and carelessness before she left that I got
- that little Italian boy to mend so that you cant see the join for 2
- shillings wouldnt even teem the potatoes for you of course shes right
- not to ruin her hands I noticed he was always talking to her lately at
- the table explaining things in the paper and she pretending to
- understand sly of course that comes from his side of the house he cant
- say I pretend things can he Im too honest as a matter of fact and
- helping her into her coat but if there was anything wrong with her its
- me shed tell not him I suppose he thinks Im finished out and laid on
- the shelf well Im not no nor anything like it well see well see now
- shes well on for flirting too with Tom Devans two sons imitating me
- whistling with those romps of Murray girls calling for her can Milly
- come out please shes in great demand to pick what they can out of her
- round in Nelson street riding Harry Devans bicycle at night its as well
- he sent her where she is she was just getting out of bounds wanting to
- go on the skatingrink and smoking their cigarettes through their nose I
- smelt it off her dress when I was biting off the thread of the button I
- sewed on to the bottom of her jacket she couldnt hide much from me I
- tell you only I oughtnt to have stitched it and it on her it brings a
- parting and the last plumpudding too split in 2 halves see it comes out
- no matter what they say her tongue is a bit too long for my taste your
- blouse is open too low she says to me the pan calling the kettle
- blackbottom and I had to tell her not to cock her legs up like that on
- show on the windowsill before all the people passing they all look at
- her like me when I was her age of course any old rag looks well on you
- then a great touchmenot too in her own way at the Only Way in the
- Theatre royal take your foot away out of that I hate people touching me
- afraid of her life Id crush her skirt with the pleats a lot of that
- touching must go on in theatres in the crush in the dark theyre always
- trying to wiggle up to you that fellow in the pit at the Gaiety for
- Beerbohm Tree in Trilby the last time Ill ever go there to be squashed
- like that for any Trilby or her barebum every two minutes tipping me
- there and looking away hes a bit daft I think I saw him after trying to
- get near two stylishdressed ladies outside Switzers window at the same
- little game I recognised him on the moment the face and everything but
- he didnt remember me yes and she didnt even want me to kiss her at the
- Broadstone going away well I hope shell get someone to dance attendance
- on her the way I did when she was down with the mumps and her glands
- swollen wheres this and wheres that of course she cant feel anything
- deep yet I never came properly till I was what 22 or so it went into
- the wrong place always only the usual girls nonsense and giggling that
- Conny Connolly writing to her in white ink on black paper sealed with
- sealingwax though she clapped when the curtain came down because he
- looked so handsome then we had Martin Harvey for breakfast dinner and
- supper I thought to myself afterwards it must be real love if a man
- gives up his life for her that way for nothing I suppose there are a
- few men like that left its hard to believe in it though unless it
- really happened to me the majority of them with not a particle of love
- in their natures to find two people like that nowadays full up of each
- other that would feel the same way as you do theyre usually a bit
- foolish in the head his father must have been a bit queer to go and
- poison himself after her still poor old man I suppose he felt lost shes
- always making love to my things too the few old rags I have wanting to
- put her hair up at 15 my powder too only ruin her skin on her shes time
- enough for that all her life after of course shes restless knowing shes
- pretty with her lips so red a pity they wont stay that way I was too
- but theres no use going to the fair with the thing answering me like a
- fishwoman when I asked to go for a half a stone of potatoes the day we
- met Mrs Joe Gallaher at the trottingmatches and she pretended not to
- see us in her trap with Friery the solicitor we werent grand enough
- till I gave her 2 damn fine cracks across the ear for herself take that
- now for answering me like that and that for your impudence she had me
- that exasperated of course contradicting I was badtempered too because
- how was it there was a weed in the tea or I didnt sleep the night
- before cheese I ate was it and I told her over and over again not to
- leave knives crossed like that because she has nobody to command her as
- she said herself well if he doesnt correct her faith I will that was
- the last time she turned on the teartap I was just like that myself
- they darent order me about the place its his fault of course having the
- two of us slaving here instead of getting in a woman long ago am I ever
- going to have a proper servant again of course then shed see him coming
- Id have to let her know or shed revenge it arent they a nuisance that
- old Mrs Fleming you have to be walking round after her putting the
- things into her hands sneezing and farting into the pots well of course
- shes old she cant help it a good job I found that rotten old smelly
- dishcloth that got lost behind the dresser I knew there was something
- and opened the area window to let out the smell bringing in his friends
- to entertain them like the night he walked home with a dog if you
- please that might have been mad especially Simon Dedalus son his father
- such a criticiser with his glasses up with his tall hat on him at the
- cricket match and a great big hole in his sock one thing laughing at
- the other and his son that got all those prizes for whatever he won
- them in the intermediate imagine climbing over the railings if anybody
- saw him that knew us I wonder he didnt tear a big hole in his grand
- funeral trousers as if the one nature gave wasnt enough for anybody
- hawking him down into the dirty old kitchen now is he right in his head
- I ask pity it wasnt washing day my old pair of drawers might have been
- hanging up too on the line on exhibition for all hed ever care with the
- ironmould mark the stupid old bundle burned on them he might think was
- something else and she never even rendered down the fat I told her and
- now shes going such as she was on account of her paralysed husband
- getting worse theres always something wrong with them disease or they
- have to go under an operation or if its not that its drink and he beats
- her Ill have to hunt around again for someone every day I get up theres
- some new thing on sweet God sweet God well when Im stretched out dead
- in my grave I suppose Ill have some peace I want to get up a minute if
- Im let wait O Jesus wait yes that thing has come on me yes now wouldnt
- that afflict you of course all the poking and rooting and ploughing he
- had up in me now what am I to do Friday Saturday Sunday wouldnt that
- pester the soul out of a body unless he likes it some men do God knows
- theres always something wrong with us 5 days every 3 or 4 weeks usual
- monthly auction isnt it simply sickening that night it came on me like
- that the one and only time we were in a box that Michael Gunn gave him
- to see Mrs Kendal and her husband at the Gaiety something he did about
- insurance for him in Drimmies I was fit to be tied though I wouldnt
- give in with that gentleman of fashion staring down at me with his
- glasses and him the other side of me talking about Spinoza and his soul
- thats dead I suppose millions of years ago I smiled the best I could
- all in a swamp leaning forward as if I was interested having to sit it
- out then to the last tag I wont forget that wife of Scarli in a hurry
- supposed to be a fast play about adultery that idiot in the gallery
- hissing the woman adulteress he shouted I suppose he went and had a
- woman in the next lane running round all the back ways after to make up
- for it I wish he had what I had then hed boo I bet the cat itself is
- better off than us have we too much blood up in us or what O patience
- above its pouring out of me like the sea anyhow he didnt make me
- pregnant as big as he is I dont want to ruin the clean sheets I just
- put on I suppose the clean linen I wore brought it on too damn it damn
- it and they always want to see a stain on the bed to know youre a
- virgin for them all thats troubling them theyre such fools too you
- could be a widow or divorced 40 times over a daub of red ink would do
- or blackberry juice no thats too purply O Jamesy let me up out of this
- pooh sweets of sin whoever suggested that business for women what
- between clothes and cooking and children this damned old bed too
- jingling like the dickens I suppose they could hear us away over the
- other side of the park till I suggested to put the quilt on the floor
- with the pillow under my bottom I wonder is it nicer in the day I think
- it is easy I think Ill cut all this hair off me there scalding me I
- might look like a young girl wouldnt he get the great suckin the next
- time he turned up my clothes on me Id give anything to see his face
- wheres the chamber gone easy Ive a holy horror of its breaking under me
- after that old commode I wonder was I too heavy sitting on his knee I
- made him sit on the easychair purposely when I took off only my blouse
- and skirt first in the other room he was so busy where he oughtnt to be
- he never felt me I hope my breath was sweet after those kissing comfits
- easy God I remember one time I could scout it out straight whistling
- like a man almost easy O Lord how noisy I hope theyre bubbles on it for
- a wad of money from some fellow Ill have to perfume it in the morning
- dont forget I bet he never saw a better pair of thighs than that look
- how white they are the smoothest place is right there between this bit
- here how soft like a peach easy God I wouldnt mind being a man and get
- up on a lovely woman O Lord what a row youre making like the jersey
- lily easy easy O how the waters come down at Lahore
- who knows is there anything the matter with my insides or have I
- something growing in me getting that thing like that every week when
- was it last I Whit Monday yes its only about 3 weeks I ought to go to
- the doctor only it would be like before I married him when I had that
- white thing coming from me and Floey made me go to that dry old stick
- Dr Collins for womens diseases on Pembroke road your vagina he called
- it I suppose thats how he got all the gilt mirrors and carpets getting
- round those rich ones off Stephens green running up to him for every
- little fiddlefaddle her vagina and her cochinchina theyve money of
- course so theyre all right I wouldnt marry him not if he was the last
- man in the world besides theres something queer about their children
- always smelling around those filthy bitches all sides asking me if what
- I did had an offensive odour what did he want me to do but the one
- thing gold maybe what a question if I smathered it all over his wrinkly
- old face for him with all my compriments I suppose hed know then and
- could you pass it easily pass what I thought he was talking about the
- rock of Gibraltar the way he put it thats a very nice invention too by
- the way only I like letting myself down after in the hole as far as I
- can squeeze and pull the chain then to flush it nice cool pins and
- needles still theres something in it I suppose I always used to know by
- Millys when she was a child whether she had worms or not still all the
- same paying him for that how much is that doctor one guinea please and
- asking me had I frequent omissions where do those old fellows get all
- the words they have omissions with his shortsighted eyes on me cocked
- sideways I wouldnt trust him too far to give me chloroform or God knows
- what else still I liked him when he sat down to write the thing out
- frowning so severe his nose intelligent like that you be damned you
- lying strap O anything no matter who except an idiot he was clever
- enough to spot that of course that was all thinking of him and his mad
- crazy letters my Precious one everything connected with your glorious
- Body everything underlined that comes from it is a thing of beauty and
- of joy for ever something he got out of some nonsensical book that he
- had me always at myself 4 and 5 times a day sometimes and I said I
- hadnt are you sure O yes I said I am quite sure in a way that shut him
- up I knew what was coming next only natural weakness it was he excited
- me I dont know how the first night ever we met when I was living in
- Rehoboth terrace we stood staring at one another for about 10 minutes
- as if we met somewhere I suppose on account of my being jewess looking
- after my mother he used to amuse me the things he said with the half
- sloothering smile on him and all the Doyles said he was going to stand
- for a member of Parliament O wasnt I the born fool to believe all his
- blather about home rule and the land league sending me that long strool
- of a song out of the Huguenots to sing in French to be more classy O
- beau pays de la Touraine that I never even sang once explaining and
- rigmaroling about religion and persecution he wont let you enjoy
- anything naturally then might he as a great favour the very 1st
- opportunity he got a chance in Brighton square running into my bedroom
- pretending the ink got on his hands to wash it off with the Albion milk
- and sulphur soap I used to use and the gelatine still round it O I
- laughed myself sick at him that day I better not make an alnight
- sitting on this affair they ought to make chambers a natural size so
- that a woman could sit on it properly he kneels down to do it I suppose
- there isnt in all creation another man with the habits he has look at
- the way hes sleeping at the foot of the bed how can he without a hard
- bolster its well he doesnt kick or he might knock out all my teeth
- breathing with his hand on his nose like that Indian god he took me to
- show one wet Sunday in the museum in Kildare street all yellow in a
- pinafore lying on his side on his hand with his ten toes sticking out
- that he said was a bigger religion than the jews and Our Lords both put
- together all over Asia imitating him as hes always imitating everybody
- I suppose he used to sleep at the foot of the bed too with his big
- square feet up in his wifes mouth damn this stinking thing anyway
- wheres this those napkins are ah yes I know I hope the old press doesnt
- creak ah I knew it would hes sleeping hard had a good time somewhere
- still she must have given him great value for his money of course he
- has to pay for it from her O this nuisance of a thing I hope theyll
- have something better for us in the other world tying ourselves up God
- help us thats all right for tonight now the lumpy old jingly bed always
- reminds me of old Cohen I suppose he scratched himself in it often
- enough and he thinks father bought it from Lord Napier that I used to
- admire when I was a little girl because I told him easy piano O I like
- my bed God here we are as bad as ever after 16 years how many houses
- were we in at all Raymond terrace and Ontario terrace and Lombard
- street and Holles street and he goes about whistling every time were on
- the run again his huguenots or the frogs march pretending to help the
- men with our 4 sticks of furniture and then the City Arms hotel worse
- and worse says Warden Daly that charming place on the landing always
- somebody inside praying then leaving all their stinks after them always
- know who was in there last every time were just getting on right
- something happens or he puts his big foot in it Thoms and Helys and Mr
- Cuffes and Drimmies either hes going to be run into prison over his old
- lottery tickets that was to be all our salvations or he goes and gives
- impudence well have him coming home with the sack soon out of the
- Freeman too like the rest on account of those Sinner Fein or the
- freemasons then well see if the little man he showed me dribbling along
- in the wet all by himself round by Coadys lane will give him much
- consolation that he says is so capable and sincerely Irish he is indeed
- judging by the sincerity of the trousers I saw on him wait theres
- Georges church bells wait 3 quarters the hour wait two oclock well
- thats a nice hour of the night for him to be coming home at to anybody
- climbing down into the area if anybody saw him Ill knock him off that
- little habit tomorrow first Ill look at his shirt to see or Ill see if
- he has that French letter still in his pocketbook I suppose he thinks I
- dont know deceitful men all their 20 pockets arent enough for their
- lies then why should we tell them even if its the truth they dont
- believe you then tucked up in bed like those babies in the Aristocrats
- Masterpiece he brought me another time as if we hadnt enough of that in
- real life without some old Aristocrat or whatever his name is
- disgusting you more with those rotten pictures children with two heads
- and no legs thats the kind of villainy theyre always dreaming about
- with not another thing in their empty heads they ought to get slow
- poison the half of them then tea and toast for him buttered on both
- sides and newlaid eggs I suppose Im nothing any more when I wouldnt let
- him lick me in Holles street one night man man tyrant as ever for the
- one thing he slept on the floor half the night naked the way the jews
- used when somebody dies belonged to them and wouldnt eat any breakfast
- or speak a word wanting to be petted so I thought I stood out enough
- for one time and let him he does it all wrong too thinking only of his
- own pleasure his tongue is too flat or I dont know what he forgets that
- wethen I dont Ill make him do it again if he doesnt mind himself and
- lock him down to sleep in the coalcellar with the blackbeetles I wonder
- was it her Josie off her head with my castoffs hes such a born liar too
- no hed never have the courage with a married woman thats why he wants
- me and Boylan though as for her Denis as she calls him that
- forlornlooking spectacle you couldnt call him a husband yes its some
- little bitch hes got in with even when I was with him with Milly at the
- College races that Hornblower with the childs bonnet on the top of his
- nob let us into by the back way he was throwing his sheeps eyes at
- those two doing skirt duty up and down I tried to wink at him first no
- use of course and thats the way his money goes this is the fruits of Mr
- Paddy Dignam yes they were all in great style at the grand funeral in
- the paper Boylan brought in if they saw a real officers funeral thatd
- be something reversed arms muffled drums the poor horse walking behind
- in black L Boom and Tom Kernan that drunken little barrelly man that
- bit his tongue off falling down the mens W C drunk in some place or
- other and Martin Cunningham and the two Dedaluses and Fanny MCoys
- husband white head of cabbage skinny thing with a turn in her eye
- trying to sing my songs shed want to be born all over again and her old
- green dress with the lowneck as she cant attract them any other way
- like dabbling on a rainy day I see it all now plainly and they call
- that friendship killing and then burying one another and they all with
- their wives and families at home more especially Jack Power keeping
- that barmaid he does of course his wife is always sick or going to be
- sick or just getting better of it and hes a goodlooking man still
- though hes getting a bit grey over the ears theyre a nice lot all of
- them well theyre not going to get my husband again into their clutches
- if I can help it making fun of him then behind his back I know well
- when he goes on with his idiotics because he has sense enough not to
- squander every penny piece he earns down their gullets and looks after
- his wife and family goodfornothings poor Paddy Dignam all the same Im
- sorry in a way for him what are his wife and 5 children going to do
- unless he was insured comical little teetotum always stuck up in some
- pub corner and her or her son waiting Bill Bailey wont you please come
- home her widows weeds wont improve her appearance theyre awfully
- becoming though if youre goodlooking what men wasnt he yes he was at
- the Glencree dinner and Ben Dollard base barreltone the night he
- borrowed the swallowtail to sing out of in Holles street squeezed and
- squashed into them and grinning all over his big Dolly face like a
- wellwhipped childs botty didnt he look a balmy ballocks sure enough
- that must have been a spectacle on the stage imagine paying 5/- in the
- preserved seats for that to see him trotting off in his trowlers and
- Simon Dedalus too he was always turning up half screwed singing the
- second verse first the old love is the new was one of his so sweetly
- sang the maiden on the hawthorn bough he was always on for flirtyfying
- too when I sang Maritana with him at Freddy Mayers private opera he had
- a delicious glorious voice Phoebe dearest goodbye sweetheart
- _sweet_heart he always sang it not like Bartell DArcy sweet _tart_
- goodbye of course he had the gift of the voice so there was no art in
- it all over you like a warm showerbath O Maritana wildwood flower we
- sang splendidly though it was a bit too high for my register even
- transposed and he was married at the time to May Goulding but then hed
- say or do something to knock the good out of it hes a widower now I
- wonder what sort is his son he says hes an author and going to be a
- university professor of Italian and Im to take lessons what is he
- driving at now showing him my photo its not good of me I ought to have
- got it taken in drapery that never looks out of fashion still I look
- young in it I wonder he didnt make him a present of it altogether and
- me too after all why not I saw him driving down to the Kingsbridge
- station with his father and mother I was in mourning thats 11 years ago
- now yes hed be 11 though what was the good in going into mourning for
- what was neither one thing nor the other the first cry was enough for
- me I heard the deathwatch too ticking in the wall of course he insisted
- hed go into mourning for the cat I suppose hes a man now by this time
- he was an innocent boy then and a darling little fellow in his lord
- Fauntleroy suit and curly hair like a prince on the stage when I saw
- him at Mat Dillons he liked me too I remember they all do wait by God
- yes wait yes hold on he was on the cards this morning when I laid out
- the deck union with a young stranger neither dark nor fair you met
- before I thought it meant him but hes no chicken nor a stranger either
- besides my face was turned the other way what was the 7th card after
- that the 10 of spades for a journey by land then there was a letter on
- its way and scandals too the 3 queens and the 8 of diamonds for a rise
- in society yes wait it all came out and 2 red 8s for new garments look
- at that and didnt I dream something too yes there was something about
- poetry in it I hope he hasnt long greasy hair hanging into his eyes or
- standing up like a red Indian what do they go about like that for only
- getting themselves and their poetry laughed at I always liked poetry
- when I was a girl first I thought he was a poet like lord Byron and not
- an ounce of it in his composition I thought he was quite different I
- wonder is he too young hes about wait 88 I was married 88 Milly is 15
- yesterday 89 what age was he then at Dillons 5 or 6 about 88 I suppose
- hes 20 or more Im not too old for him if hes 23 or 24 I hope hes not
- that stuckup university student sort no otherwise he wouldnt go sitting
- down in the old kitchen with him taking Eppss cocoa and talking of
- course he pretended to understand it all probably he told him he was
- out of Trinity college hes very young to be a professor I hope hes not
- a professor like Goodwin was he was a potent professor of John Jameson
- they all write about some woman in their poetry well I suppose he wont
- find many like me where softly sighs of love the light guitar where
- poetry is in the air the blue sea and the moon shining so beautifully
- coming back on the nightboat from Tarifa the lighthouse at Europa point
- the guitar that fellow played was so expressive will I ever go back
- there again all new faces two glancing eyes a lattice hid Ill sing that
- for him theyre my eyes if hes anything of a poet two eyes as darkly
- bright as loves own star arent those beautiful words as loves young
- star itll be a change the Lord knows to have an intelligent person to
- talk to about yourself not always listening to him and Billy Prescotts
- ad and Keyess ad and Tom the Devils ad then if anything goes wrong in
- their business we have to suffer Im sure hes very distinguished Id like
- to meet a man like that God not those other ruck besides hes young
- those fine young men I could see down in Margate strand bathingplace
- from the side of the rock standing up in the sun naked like a God or
- something and then plunging into the sea with them why arent all men
- like that thered be some consolation for a woman like that lovely
- little statue he bought I could look at him all day long curly head and
- his shoulders his finger up for you to listen theres real beauty and
- poetry for you I often felt I wanted to kiss him all over also his
- lovely young cock there so simple I wouldnt mind taking him in my mouth
- if nobody was looking as if it was asking you to suck it so clean and
- white he looks with his boyish face I would too in 1/2 a minute even if
- some of it went down what its only like gruel or the dew theres no
- danger besides hed be so clean compared with those pigs of men I
- suppose never dream of washing it from 1 years end to the other the
- most of them only thats what gives the women the moustaches Im sure
- itll be grand if I can only get in with a handsome young poet at my age
- Ill throw them the 1st thing in the morning till I see if the wishcard
- comes out or Ill try pairing the lady herself and see if he comes out
- Ill read and study all I can find or learn a bit off by heart if I knew
- who he likes so he wont think me stupid if he thinks all women are the
- same and I can teach him the other part Ill make him feel all over him
- till he half faints under me then hell write about me lover and
- mistress publicly too with our 2 photographs in all the papers when he
- becomes famous O but then what am I going to do about him though
- no thats no way for him has he no manners nor no refinement nor no
- nothing in his nature slapping us behind like that on my bottom because
- I didnt call him Hugh the ignoramus that doesnt know poetry from a
- cabbage thats what you get for not keeping them in their proper place
- pulling off his shoes and trousers there on the chair before me so
- barefaced without even asking permission and standing out that vulgar
- way in the half of a shirt they wear to be admired like a priest or a
- butcher or those old hypocrites in the time of Julius Caesar of course
- hes right enough in his way to pass the time as a joke sure you might
- as well be in bed with what with a lion God Im sure hed have something
- better to say for himself an old Lion would O well I suppose its
- because they were so plump and tempting in my short petticoat he
- couldnt resist they excite myself sometimes its well for men all the
- amount of pleasure they get off a womans body were so round and white
- for them always I wished I was one myself for a change just to try with
- that thing they have swelling up on you so hard and at the same time so
- soft when you touch it my uncle John has a thing long I heard those
- cornerboys saying passing the comer of Marrowbone lane my aunt Mary has
- a thing hairy because it was dark and they knew a girl was passing it
- didnt make me blush why should it either its only nature and he puts
- his thing long into my aunt Marys hairy etcetera and turns out to be
- you put the handle in a sweepingbrush men again all over they can pick
- and choose what they please a married woman or a fast widow or a girl
- for their different tastes like those houses round behind Irish street
- no but were to be always chained up theyre not going to be chaining me
- up no damn fear once I start I tell you for their stupid husbands
- jealousy why cant we all remain friends over it instead of quarrelling
- her husband found it out what they did together well naturally and if
- he did can he undo it hes coronado anyway whatever he does and then he
- going to the other mad extreme about the wife in Fair Tyrants of course
- the man never even casts a 2nd thought on the husband or wife either
- its the woman he wants and he gets her what else were we given all
- those desires for Id like to know I cant help it if Im young still can
- I its a wonder Im not an old shrivelled hag before my time living with
- him so cold never embracing me except sometimes when hes asleep the
- wrong end of me not knowing I suppose who he has any man thatd kiss a
- womans bottom Id throw my hat at him after that hed kiss anything
- unnatural where we havent 1 atom of any kind of expression in us all of
- us the same 2 lumps of lard before ever Id do that to a man pfooh the
- dirty brutes the mere thought is enough I kiss the feet of you senorita
- theres some sense in that didnt he kiss our halldoor yes he did what a
- madman nobody understands his cracked ideas but me still of course a
- woman wants to be embraced 20 times a day almost to make her look young
- no matter by who so long as to be in love or loved by somebody if the
- fellow you want isnt there sometimes by the Lord God I was thinking
- would I go around by the quays there some dark evening where nobodyd
- know me and pick up a sailor off the sea thatd be hot on for it and not
- care a pin whose I was only do it off up in a gate somewhere or one of
- those wildlooking gipsies in Rathfarnham had their camp pitched near
- the Bloomfield laundry to try and steal our things if they could I only
- sent mine there a few times for the name model laundry sending me back
- over and over some old ones odd stockings that blackguardlooking fellow
- with the fine eyes peeling a switch attack me in the dark and ride me
- up against the wall without a word or a murderer anybody what they do
- themselves the fine gentlemen in their silk hats that K C lives up
- somewhere this way coming out of Hardwicke lane the night he gave us
- the fish supper on account of winning over the boxing match of course
- it was for me he gave it I knew him by his gaiters and the walk and
- when I turned round a minute after just to see there was a woman after
- coming out of it too some filthy prostitute then he goes home to his
- wife after that only I suppose the half of those sailors are rotten
- again with disease O move over your big carcass out of that for the
- love of Mike listen to him the winds that waft my sighs to thee so well
- he may sleep and sigh the great Suggester Don Poldo de la Flora if he
- knew how he came out on the cards this morning hed have something to
- sigh for a dark man in some perplexity between 2 7s too in prison for
- Lord knows what he does that I dont know and Im to be slooching around
- down in the kitchen to get his lordship his breakfast while hes rolled
- up like a mummy will I indeed did you ever see me running Id just like
- to see myself at it show them attention and they treat you like dirt I
- dont care what anybody says itd be much better for the world to be
- governed by the women in it you wouldnt see women going and killing one
- another and slaughtering when do you ever see women rolling around
- drunk like they do or gambling every penny they have and losing it on
- horses yes because a woman whatever she does she knows where to stop
- sure they wouldnt be in the world at all only for us they dont know
- what it is to be a woman and a mother how could they where would they
- all of them be if they hadnt all a mother to look after them what I
- never had thats why I suppose hes running wild now out at night away
- from his books and studies and not living at home on account of the
- usual rowy house I suppose well its a poor case that those that have a
- fine son like that theyre not satisfied and I none was he not able to
- make one it wasnt my fault we came together when I was watching the two
- dogs up in her behind in the middle of the naked street that
- disheartened me altogether I suppose I oughtnt to have buried him in
- that little woolly jacket I knitted crying as I was but give it to some
- poor child but I knew well Id never have another our 1st death too it
- was we were never the same since O Im not going to think myself into
- the glooms about that any more I wonder why he wouldnt stay the night I
- felt all the time it was somebody strange he brought in instead of
- roving around the city meeting God knows who nightwalkers and
- pickpockets his poor mother wouldnt like that if she was alive ruining
- himself for life perhaps still its a lovely hour so silent I used to
- love coming home after dances the air of the night they have friends
- they can talk to weve none either he wants what he wont get or its some
- woman ready to stick her knife in you I hate that in women no wonder
- they treat us the way they do we are a dreadful lot of bitches I
- suppose its all the troubles we have makes us so snappy Im not like
- that he could easy have slept in there on the sofa in the other room I
- suppose he was as shy as a boy he being so young hardly 20 of me in the
- next room hed have heard me on the chamber arrah what harm Dedalus I
- wonder its like those names in Gibraltar Delapaz Delagracia they had
- the devils queer names there father Vilaplana of Santa Maria that gave
- me the rosary Rosales y OReilly in the Calle las Siete Revueltas and
- Pisimbo and Mrs Opisso in Governor street O what a name Id go and drown
- myself in the first river if I had a name like her O my and all the
- bits of streets Paradise ramp and Bedlam ramp and Rodgers ramp and
- Crutchetts ramp and the devils gap steps well small blame to me if I am
- a harumscarum I know I am a bit I declare to God I dont feel a day
- older than then I wonder could I get my tongue round any of the Spanish
- como esta usted muy bien gracias y usted see I havent forgotten it all
- I thought I had only for the grammar a noun is the name of any person
- place or thing pity I never tried to read that novel cantankerous Mrs
- Rubio lent me by Valera with the questions in it all upside down the
- two ways I always knew wed go away in the end I can tell him the
- Spanish and he tell me the Italian then hell see Im not so ignorant
- what a pity he didnt stay Im sure the poor fellow was dead tired and
- wanted a good sleep badly I could have brought him in his breakfast in
- bed with a bit of toast so long as I didnt do it on the knife for bad
- luck or if the woman was going her rounds with the watercress and
- something nice and tasty there are a few olives in the kitchen he might
- like I never could bear the look of them in Abrines I could do the
- criada the room looks all right since I changed it the other way you
- see something was telling me all the time Id have to introduce myself
- not knowing me from Adam very funny wouldnt it Im his wife or pretend
- we were in Spain with him half awake without a Gods notion where he is
- dos huevos estrellados senor Lord the cracked things come into my head
- sometimes itd be great fun supposing he stayed with us why not theres
- the room upstairs empty and Millys bed in the back room he could do his
- writing and studies at the table in there for all the scribbling he
- does at it and if he wants to read in bed in the morning like me as hes
- making the breakfast for 1 he can make it for 2 Im sure Im not going to
- take in lodgers off the street for him if he takes a gesabo of a house
- like this Id love to have a long talk with an intelligent welleducated
- person Id have to get a nice pair of red slippers like those Turks with
- the fez used to sell or yellow and a nice semitransparent morning gown
- that I badly want or a peachblossom dressing jacket like the one long
- ago in Walpoles only 8/6 or 18/6 Ill just give him one more chance Ill
- get up early in the morning Im sick of Cohens old bed in any case I
- might go over to the markets to see all the vegetables and cabbages and
- tomatoes and carrots and all kinds of splendid fruits all coming in
- lovely and fresh who knows whod be the 1st man Id meet theyre out
- looking for it in the morning Mamy Dillon used to say they are and the
- night too that was her massgoing Id love a big juicy pear now to melt
- in your mouth like when I used to be in the longing way then Ill throw
- him up his eggs and tea in the moustachecup she gave him to make his
- mouth bigger I suppose hed like my nice cream too I know what Ill do
- Ill go about rather gay not too much singing a bit now and then mi fa
- pieta Masetto then Ill start dressing myself to go out presto non son
- piu forte Ill put on my best shift and drawers let him have a good
- eyeful out of that to make his micky stand for him Ill let him know if
- thats what he wanted that his wife is fucked yes and damn well fucked
- too up to my neck nearly not by him 5 or 6 times handrunning theres the
- mark of his spunk on the clean sheet I wouldnt bother to even iron it
- out that ought to satisfy him if you dont believe me feel my belly
- unless I made him stand there and put him into me Ive a mind to tell
- him every scrap and make him do it out in front of me serve him right
- its all his own fault if I am an adulteress as the thing in the gallery
- said O much about it if thats all the harm ever we did in this vale of
- tears God knows its not much doesnt everybody only they hide it I
- suppose thats what a woman is supposed to be there for or He wouldnt
- have made us the way He did so attractive to men then if he wants to
- kiss my bottom Ill drag open my drawers and bulge it right out in his
- face as large as life he can stick his tongue 7 miles up my hole as hes
- there my brown part then Ill tell him I want £ 1 or perhaps 30/- Ill
- tell him I want to buy underclothes then if he gives me that well he
- wont be too bad I dont want to soak it all out of him like other women
- do I could often have written out a fine cheque for myself and write
- his name on it for a couple of pounds a few times he forgot to lock it
- up besides he wont spend it Ill let him do it off on me behind provided
- he doesnt smear all my good drawers O I suppose that cant be helped Ill
- do the indifferent 1 or 2 questions Ill know by the answers when hes
- like that he cant keep a thing back I know every turn in him Ill
- tighten my bottom well and let out a few smutty words smellrump or lick
- my shit or the first mad thing comes into my head then Ill suggest
- about yes O wait now sonny my turn is coming Ill be quite gay and
- friendly over it O but I was forgetting this bloody pest of a thing
- pfooh you wouldnt know which to laugh or cry were such a mixture of
- plum and apple no Ill have to wear the old things so much the better
- itll be more pointed hell never know whether he did it or not there
- thats good enough for you any old thing at all then Ill wipe him off me
- just like a business his omission then Ill go out Ill have him eying up
- at the ceiling where is she gone now make him want me thats the only
- way a quarter after what an unearthly hour I suppose theyre just
- getting up in China now combing out their pigtails for the day well
- soon have the nuns ringing the angelus theyve nobody coming in to spoil
- their sleep except an odd priest or two for his night office or the
- alarmclock next door at cockshout clattering the brains out of itself
- let me see if I can doze off 1 2 3 4 5 what kind of flowers are those
- they invented like the stars the wallpaper in Lombard street was much
- nicer the apron he gave me was like that something only I only wore it
- twice better lower this lamp and try again so as I can get up early Ill
- go to Lambes there beside Findlaters and get them to send us some
- flowers to put about the place in case he brings him home tomorrow
- today I mean no no Fridays an unlucky day first I want to do the place
- up someway the dust grows in it I think while Im asleep then we can
- have music and cigarettes I can accompany him first I must clean the
- keys of the piano with milk whatll I wear shall I wear a white rose or
- those fairy cakes in Liptons I love the smell of a rich big shop at 7
- 1/2d a lb or the other ones with the cherries in them and the pinky
- sugar 11d a couple of lbs of those a nice plant for the middle of the
- table Id get that cheaper in wait wheres this I saw them not long ago I
- love flowers Id love to have the whole place swimming in roses God of
- heaven theres nothing like nature the wild mountains then the sea and
- the waves rushing then the beautiful country with the fields of oats
- and wheat and all kinds of things and all the fine cattle going about
- that would do your heart good to see rivers and lakes and flowers all
- sorts of shapes and smells and colours springing up even out of the
- ditches primroses and violets nature it is as for them saying theres no
- God I wouldnt give a snap of my two fingers for all their learning why
- dont they go and create something I often asked him atheists or
- whatever they call themselves go and wash the cobbles off themselves
- first then they go howling for the priest and they dying and why why
- because theyre afraid of hell on account of their bad conscience ah yes
- I know them well who was the first person in the universe before there
- was anybody that made it all who ah that they dont know neither do I so
- there you are they might as well try to stop the sun from rising
- tomorrow the sun shines for you he said the day we were lying among the
- rhododendrons on Howth head in the grey tweed suit and his straw hat
- the day I got him to propose to me yes first I gave him the bit of
- seedcake out of my mouth and it was leapyear like now yes 16 years ago
- my God after that long kiss I near lost my breath yes he said I was a
- flower of the mountain yes so we are flowers all a womans body yes that
- was one true thing he said in his life and the sun shines for you today
- yes that was why I liked him because I saw he understood or felt what a
- woman is and I knew I could always get round him and I gave him all the
- pleasure I could leading him on till he asked me to say yes and I
- wouldnt answer first only looked out over the sea and the sky I was
- thinking of so many things he didnt know of Mulvey and Mr Stanhope and
- Hester and father and old captain Groves and the sailors playing all
- birds fly and I say stoop and washing up dishes they called it on the
- pier and the sentry in front of the governors house with the thing
- round his white helmet poor devil half roasted and the Spanish girls
- laughing in their shawls and their tall combs and the auctions in the
- morning the Greeks and the jews and the Arabs and the devil knows who
- else from all the ends of Europe and Duke street and the fowl market
- all clucking outside Larby Sharons and the poor donkeys slipping half
- asleep and the vague fellows in the cloaks asleep in the shade on the
- steps and the big wheels of the carts of the bulls and the old castle
- thousands of years old yes and those handsome Moors all in white and
- turbans like kings asking you to sit down in their little bit of a shop
- and Ronda with the old windows of the posadas 2 glancing eyes a lattice
- hid for her lover to kiss the iron and the wineshops half open at night
- and the castanets and the night we missed the boat at Algeciras the
- watchman going about serene with his lamp and O that awful deepdown
- torrent O and the sea the sea crimson sometimes like fire and the
- glorious sunsets and the figtrees in the Alameda gardens yes and all
- the queer little streets and the pink and blue and yellow houses and
- the rosegardens and the jessamine and geraniums and cactuses and
- Gibraltar as a girl where I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put
- the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a
- red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well
- as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again
- yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and
- first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could
- feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and
- yes I said yes I will Yes.
- Trieste-Zurich-Paris
- 1914-1921
- End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Ulysses, by James Joyce
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