orld 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 quay
walls, 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 bridge piers. 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 fishy flesh they have to,
all sea birds, 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 chestnut meal 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 kind 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. Fly by night. 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 ballast office 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 pikehoses she called it till I told her about
the transmigration. O rocks!
Mr Bloom smiled O rocks at two windows of the ballast office. 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 storing away number one Bass. Barrel of Bass.
See? it all works out.
A procession of whitesmocked men 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 show
cart with two smart girls sitting inside writing letters, copybooks,
envelopes, blotting paper. 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 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 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 self-covered 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, shoulder and hips. Just beginning to plump it out well. Rabbit
pie 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 supper room 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 herself 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?
-- Oh, 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. Pastile 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 heavy stringed 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 shop-fronts. 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 stick, umbrella, dustcoat. 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 forty-four 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 percent 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: wishwish.
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. Eating with a stopwatch,
thirtytwo chews to the minute. 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. Twilightsleep 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 after all of a sudden! Peaceful eyes. Weight off their
minds. 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 nyumyum. 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. Goose step. 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 into 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 horse policeman 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. Luck 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 mortar-boards.
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 plain clothes men are always courting slaveys.
Easily twig a man used to uniform. Square-pushing 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, get along with your great times coming. Barmaids too. Tobacco
shopgirls.
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. Want to 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. Shove us over those apricots, meaning
peaches. The not far distant day. Home Rule 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. 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 silver
ware in Walter Sexton's window opposite 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 Boulger 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. Wind and watery 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 field glasses. Or will I drop into old Harris's
and have a chat with young Sinclair? Well-mannered fellow. Probably at his
lunch. Must get those old glasses of mine set right. Grz 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 cloak
rooms. 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.
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 art 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 again to his side.
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, 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, quick breathing, slowlier walking, passed Adam court.
With a keep quiet relief, his eyes took note: this is street here
middle of the day 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 as
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? Twenty-eight 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,
silk, dames 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. Country bred 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. Tara. Must be washed
in rainwater. Meyerbeer. Tara: bom bom bom.
Pincushions. I'm a long time threatening to buy one. Stick 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, silk webs, 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, slop 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: 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. His gorge rose. Spaton sawdust, sweetish warmish
cigarette smoke, reek of plug, spilt beer, men's beery piss, the stale of
ferment.
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 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 ma 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 soup pot
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 Italian organgrinders crisp of
onions, mushrooms truffles. Pain to 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 wobble 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, smoking hot, 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?
-- Hellow, 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 mustered 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. Mighty 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 MacTrier. 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 hauched 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
boxing match 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 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 petty cash 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 numskull. 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. Dog's
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
doggy-bowwowsywowsy!
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 oyster old fish at table. Perhaps he young flesh
in bed. No. June has no ar no oysters. But there are people like 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, 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 sweet and sour
with spittle. Joy: I ate it: joy. Young life, her lips that gave me pouting.
Soft, warm, sticky grumjelly 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 woman 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.
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 has 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, 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's 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
cobble stones 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. Presscott'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 watering places? 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? Bird's 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 wall face 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 brilliantined 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 foreheads perhaps. Kind of sense of
volume. Weight. 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. Work basket I could buy 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 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 temperature when he touches her with 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 public house he slid his hand between waistcoat and
trousers and, pulling aside his shirt gently, felt a slack fold of his
belly. But I know it's whiteyellow. 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. Not see. Get on.
Making for the museum gate with long windy strides 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 for.
He thrust back quickly Agendath.
Afternoon she said.
I am looking for that. Yes, that. Try all pockets. Handker. Freeman.
Where did I ? Ah, yes. Trousers. Purse. Potato. Where did I ?
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! Yes. Gate.
Safe!
Ulysses 9: Scylla and Charybdis
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 Palisse, 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.
Godspeed. 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 mind 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 Ph&Aelig;acians.
>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:
-- PiÉce 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 palm. 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 caudlectures saved him from the
archons of Sinn Fein and their noggin 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 blonde 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. Argai, 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.
Good 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 Caesar 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 imo
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 it he has not loved the mother?
-- The art of being a grandfather, Mr Best gan murmur. L'art d'Être
grand...
-- 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 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 is 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 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 life 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! responded from the doorway.
Hast thou found me, O mine enemy?
Entr'acte.
A ribald face, sullen as a dean's, Buck Mulligan came forwards 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 Din verlachst wirst Du noch dienen.
Brodd 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.
He lifts 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 b