g from his knees.) No. Gone off. He'll come to all right.
BLOOM (Glances sharply at the man.) Leave him to me. I can easily...
SECOND WATCH Who are you? Do you know him?
PRIVATE CARR (Lurches towards the watch.) He insulted my lady friend.
BLOOM (Angrily.) You hit him without provocation. I'm a witness.
Constable, take his regimental number.
SECOND WATCH I don't want your instructions in the discharge of my
duty. PRIVATE COMPTON (Pulling his comrade.) Here, bugger off, Harry. Or
Bennett'll have you in the lockup.
PRIVATE CARR (Staggering as he is pulled away.) God fuck old Bennett!
He's a whitearsed bugger. I don't give a shit for him.
FIRST WATCH (Taking out his notebook.) What's his name?
BLOOM (Peering over the crowd.) I just see a car there. If you give me
a hand a second, sergeant.
FIRST WATCH Name and address.
(Corny Kelleher weepers round his hat, a death wreath in his hand,
appears among the bystanders.)
BLOOM (Quickly.) O, the very man! (He whispers.) Simon Dedalus' son. A
bit sprung. Get those policemen to move those loafers back.
SECOND WATCH Night, Mr Kelleher.
CORNY KELLEHER (To the watch, with drawling eye.) That's all right. I
know him. Won a bit on the races. Gold cup. Throwaway. (He laughs.) Twenty
to one. Do you follow me?
FIRST WATCH (Turns to the crowd.) Here, what are you all gaping at?
Move on out of that.
(The crowd disperses slowly, muttering, down the lane.)
CORNY KELLEHER Leave it to me, sergeant. That'll be all right. (He
laughs, shaking his head.) We were often as bad ourselves, ay or worse.
What? Eh, what?
FIRST WATCH (Laughs.) I suppose so.
CORNY KELLEHER (Nudges the second watch.) Come and wipe your name off
the slate. (He lilts, wagging his head.) With my tooraloom tooraloom
tooraloom tooraloom. What, eh, do you follow me?
SECOND WATCH (Genially.) Ah, sure we were too.
CORNY KELLEHER (Winking.) Boys will be boys. I've a car round there.
SECOND WATCH All right, Mr Kelleher. Good night.
CORNY KELLEHER I'll see to that.
BLOOM (Shakes hands with both of the watch in turn.) Thank you very
much gentlemen, thank you. (He mumbles confidentially.) We don't want any
scandal, you understand. Father is a well known, highly respected citizen.
Just a little wild oats, you understand.
FIRST WATCH O, I understand, sir.
SECOND WATCH That's all right, Sir.
FIRST WATCH It was only in case of corporal injuries I'd have had to
report it at the station.
BLOOM (Nods rapidly.) Naturally. Quite right. Only your bounden duty.
SECOND WATCH It's our duty.
CORNY KELLEHER Good night, men.
THE WATCH (Saluting together.) Night, gentlemen. (They move off with
slow heavy tread.)
BLOOM (Blows.) Providential you came on the scene. You have a car?.
CORNY KELLEHER (Laughs, pointing his thumb over his right shoulder to
the car brought up against the scaffolding.) Two commercials that were
standing fizz in Jammet's. Like princes, faith. One of them lost two quid on
the race. Drowning his grief and were on for a go with the jolly girls. So I
landed them up on Behan's car and down to nighttown.
BLOOM I was just going home by Gardiner street when I happened to...
CORNY KELLEHER (Laughs.) Sure they wanted me to join in with the mots.
No, by God, says I. Not for old stagers like myself and yourself. (He laughs
again and leers with lacklustre eye.) Thanks be to God we have it in the
house what, eh, do you follow me? Hah! hah! hah!
BLOOM (Tries to laugh.) He, he, he! Yes. Matter of fact I was just
visiting an old friend of mine there, Virag, you don't know him (poor fellow
he's laid up for the past week) and we had a liquor together and I was just
making my way home...
(The horse neighs.)
THE HORSE Hohohohohohoh! Hohohohome!
CORNY KELLEHER Sure it was Behan, our jarvey there, that told me after
we left the two commercials in Mrs Cohen's and I told him to pull up and got
off to see. (He laughs.) Sober hearsedrivers a specialty. Will I give him a
lift home? Where does he hang out? Somewhere in Cabra, what?
BLOOM No, in Sandycove, I believe, from what he let drop.
(Stephen, prone, breathes to the stars. Corny Kelleher asquint, drawls
at the horse. Bloom in gloom, looms down.)
CORNY KELLEHER (Scratches his nape.) Sandycove! (He bends down and
calls to Stephen.) Eh! (He calls again.) Eh! He's covered with shavings
anyhow. Take care they didn't lift anything off him.
BLOOM No, no, no. I have his money and his hat here and stick.
CORNY KELLEHER Ah well, he'll get over it. No bones broken. Well, I'll
shove along. (He laughs.) I've a rendezvous in the morning. Burying the
dead. Safe home!
THE HORSE (Neighs.) Hohohohohome.
BLOOM Good night. I'll just wait and take him along in a few...
(Corny Kelleher returns to the outside car and mounts it. The horse
harness jingles.)
CORNY KELLEHER (From the car, standing.) Night.
BLOOM Night.
(The jarvey chucks the reins and raises his whip encouragingly. The car
and horse back slowly, awkwardly and turn. Corny Kelleher on the sideseat
sways his head to and fro in sign of mirth at Blooms plight. The jarvey
joins in the mute pantomimic merriment nodding from the farther seat. Bloom
shakes his head in mute mirthful reply. With thumb and palm Corny Kelleher
reassures that the two bobbies will allow the sleep to continue for what
else is to be done. With a slow nod Bloom conveys his gratitude as that is
exactly what Stephen needs. The car jingles tooraloom round the corner of
the tooraloom lane. Corny Kelleher again reassuralooms with his hand. Bloom
with his hand assuralooms Corny Kelleher that he is reassuraloomtay. The
tinkling hoofs and jingling harness grow fainter with their
tooralooloolooloo lay. Bloom, holding in his hand Stephens hat festooned
with shavings and ashplant, stands irresolute. Then he bends to him and
shakes him by the shoulder.)
BLOOM Eh! Ho! (There is no answer he bends again.) Mr Dedalus! (There
is no answer.) The name if you call. Somnambulist. (He bends again and,
hesitating, brings his mouth near the face of the prostrate form.) Stephen!
(There is no answer. He calls again.) Stephen!
STEPHEN (Groans.) Who? Black panther vampire. (He sighs and stretches
himself then murmurs thickly with prolonged vowels.) Who... drive... Fergus
now. And pierce... wood's woven shade?...
(He turns on his left side, sighing, doubling himself together.)
BLOOM Poetry. Well educated. Pity. (He bends again and undoes the
buttons of Stephen's waistcoat.) To breathe. (He brushes the wood shavings
from Stephen's clothes with light hands and fingers.) One pound seven. Not
hurt anyhow. (He listens.) What!
(Murmurs.)
... shadows... the woods
... white breast... dim...
(He stretches out his arms, sighs again and curls his body. Bloom
holding his hat and ashplant stands erect. A dog barks in the distance.
Bloom tightens and loosens his grip on the ashplant. He looks down on
Stephen's face and form.)
BLOOM (Communes with the night.) Face reminds me of his poor mother. In
the shady wood. The deep white breast. Ferguson, I think I caught. A girl.
Some girl. Best thing could happen him... (He murmurs.)... swear that I will
always hail, ever conceal, never reveal, any part or parts, art or arts...
(He murmurs.) in the rough sands of the sea. a cabletow's length from the
shore... where the tide ebbs ... and flows...
(Silent, thoughtful, alert, he stands on guard, his fingers at his lips
in the attitude of secret master. Against the dark wall a figure appears
slowly, a fairy boy of eleven, a changeling, kidnapped, dressed in an Eton
suit with glass shoes and a little bronze helmet, holding a book in his
hand. He reads from right to left inaudibly, smiling, kissing the page.)
BLOOM (Wonderstruck, calls inaudibly.) Rudy!
RUDY (Gazes unseeing into Bloom's eyes and goes on reading, kissing,
smiling. He has a delicate mauveface. On his suit he has diamond and ruby
buttons. In his free left hand he holds a slim ivory cane with a violet
howknot. A white lambkin peeps out of his waistcoat pocket.)
Ulysses 16: Eumaeus
PREPARATORY TO ANYTHING ELSE MR BLOOM BRUSHED OFF THE GREATER bulk of
the shavings and handed Stephen the hat and ashplant and bucked him up
generally in orthodox Samaritan fashion, which he very badly needed. His
(Stephen's) mind was not exactly what you would call wandering but a bit
unsteady and on his expressed desire for some beverage to drink Mr Bloom, in
view of the hour it was and there being no pumps of Vartry water available
for their ablutions, let alone drinking purposes, hit upon an expedient by
suggesting, off the reel, the propriety of the cabman's shelter, as it was
called, hardly a stonesthrow away near Butt Bridge, where they might hit
upon some drinkables in the shape of a milk and soda or a mineral. But how
to get there was the rub. For the nonce he was rather nonplussed but
inasmuch as the duty plainly devolved upon him to take some measures on the
subject he pondered suitable ways and means during which Stephen repeatedly
yawned. So far as he could see he was rather pale in the face so that it
occurred to him as highly advisable to get a conveyance of some description
which would answer in their then condition, both of them being e. d. ed,
particularly Stephen, always assuming that there was such a thing to be
found. Accordingly, after a few such preliminaries, as, in spite of his
having forgotten to take up his rather soapsuddy handkerchief after it had
done yeoman service in the shaving line, brushing, they both walked together
along Beaver street, or, more properly, lane, as far as the farrier's and
the distinctly fetid atmosphere of the livery stables at the corner of
Montgomery street where they made tracks to the left from thence debouching
into Amiens Street round by the corner of Dan Bergin's. But, as he
confidently anticipated, there was not a sign of a Jehu plying for hire
anywhere to be seen except a fourwheeler, probably engaged by some fellows
inside on the spree, outside the North Star Hotel and there was no symptom
of its budging a quarter of an inch when Mr Bloom, who was anything but a
professional whistler, endeavoured to hail it by emitting a kind of a
whistle, holding his arms arched over his head, twice.
This was a quandary but, bringing commonsense to bear on it, evidently
there was nothing for it but put a good face on the matter and foot it which
they accordingly did. So, bevelling around by Mullet's and the Signal House,
which they shortly reached, they proceeded perforce in the direction of
Amiens street railway terminus, Mr Bloom being handicapped by the
circumstance that one of the back buttons of his trousers had, to vary the
timehonoured adage, gone the way of all buttons, though, entering thoroughly
into the spirit of the thing, he heroically made light of the mischance. So,
as neither of them were particularly pressed for time, as it happened, and
the temperature refreshing since it cleared up after the recent visitation
of Jupiter Pluvius, they dandered along past by where the empty vehicle was
waiting without a fare or a jarvey. As it so happened a Dublin United
Tramways Company's sandstrewer happening to be returning the elder man
recounted to his companion À propos of the incident his own truly miraculous
escape of some little while back. They passed the main entrance of the Great
Northern railway station, the starting point for Belfast, where of course
all traffic was suspended at that late hour, and, passing the back door of
the morgue (a not very enticing locality, not to say gruesome to a degree,
more especially at night), ultimately gained the Dock Tavern and in due
course turned into Store street, famous for its C division police station.
Between this point and the high, at present unlit, warehouses of Beresford
Place Stephen thought to think of Ibsen, associated with Baird's, the
stonecutter's, in his mind somehow in Talbot Place, first turning on the
right, while the other, who was acting as his fidus Achates, inhaled with
internal satisfaction the smell of James Rourke's city bakery, situated
quite close to where they were, the very palatable odour indeed of our daily
bread, of all commodities of the public the primary and most indispensable.
Bread, the staff of life, earn your bread, O tell me where is fancy bread?
At Rourke's the baker's, it is said.
En route, to his taciturn, and, not to put too fine a point on it, not
yet perfectly sober companion, Mr Bloom, who at all events, was in complete
possession of his faculties, never more so, in fact disgustingly sober,
spoke a word of caution re the dangers of nighttown, women of ill fame and
swell mobsmen, which, barely permissible once in a while, though not as a
habitual practice, was of the nature of a regular deathtrap for young
fellows of his age particularly if they had acquired drinking habits under
the influence of liquor unless you knew a little juijitsu for every
contingency as even a fellow on the broad of his back could administer a
nasty kick if you didn't look out. Highly providential was the appearance on
the scene of Corny Kelleher when Stephen was blissfully unconscious that,
but for that man in the gap turning up at the eleventh hour, the finis might
have been that he might have been a candidate for the accident ward, or,
failing that, the Bridewell and an appearance in the court next day before
Mr Tobias, or, he being the solicitor, rather old Wall, he meant to say, or
Malony which simply spelt ruin for a chap when it got bruited about. The
reason he mentioned the fact was that a lot of those policemen, whom he
cordially disliked, were admittedly unscrupulous in the service of the Crown
and, as Mr Bloom put it, recalling a case or two in the A Division in
Clanbrassil street, prepared to swear a hole through a ten gallon pot. Never
on the spot when wanted but in quiet parts of the City, Pembroke Road, for
example, the guardians of the law were well in evidence, the obvious reason
being they were paid to protect the upper classes. Another thing he
commented on was equipping soldiers with firearms or sidearms of any
description, liable to go off at any time, which was tantamount to inciting
them against civilians should by any chance they fall nut over anything. You
frittered away your time, he very sensibly maintained, and health and also
character besides which the squandermania of the thing, fast women of the
demimonde ran away with a lot of #. s. d. into the bargain and the greatest
danger of all was who you got drunk with though, touching the much vexed
question of stimulants, he relished a glass of choice old wine in season as
both nourishing and blood-making and possessing aperient virtues (notably a
good burgundy which he was a staunch believer in) still never beyond a
certain point where he invariably drew the line as it simply led to trouble
all round to say nothing of your being at the tender mercy of others
practically. Most of all he commented adversely on the desertion of Stephen
by all his pubhunting confrÈres but one, a most glaring piece of ratting on
the part of his brother medicos under all the circs.
-- And that one was Judas, said Stephen, who up to then had said
nothing whatsoever of any kind.
Discussing these and kindred topics they made a beeline across the back
of the Customhouse and passed under the Loop Line bridge when a brazier of
coke burning in front of a sentrybox, or something like one, attracted their
rather lagging footsteps. Stephen of his own accord stopped for no special
reason to look at the heap of barren cobblestones and by the light emanating
from the brazier he could just make out the darker figure of the corporation
watchman inside the gloom of the sentrybox. He began to remember that this
had happened, or had been mentioned as having happened, before but it cost
him no small effort before he remembered that he recognised in the sentry a
quondam friend of his father's Gumley. To avoid a meeting be drew nearer to
the pillars of the railway bridge.
-- Someone saluted you, Mr Bloom said.
A figure of middle height on the prowl, evidently, under the arches
saluted again, calling: Night! Stephen, of course, started rather dizzily
and stopped to return the compliment. Mr Bloom, actuated by motives of
inherent delicacy, inasmuch as he always believed in minding his own
business, moved off but nevertheless remained on the qui vive with just a
shade of anxiety though not funkyish in the least. Although unusual in the
Dublin area, he knew that it was not by any means unknown for desperadoes
who had next to nothing to live on to be about waylaying and generally
terrorising peaceable pedestrians by placing a pistol at their head in some
secluded spot outside the city proper, famished loiterers of the Thames
embankment category they might be hanging about there or simply marauders
ready to decamp with whatever boodle they could in one fell swoop at a
moments notice, your money or your life, leaving you there to point a moral,
gagged and garotted.
Stephen, that is when the accosting figure came to close quarters,
though he was not in any over sober state himself, recognised Corley's
breath redolent of rotten cornjuice. Lord John Corley, some called him, and
his genealogy came about in this wise. He was the eldest son of Inspector
Corley of the G Division, lately deceased, who had married a certain
Katherine Brophy, the daughter of a Louth farmer. His grandfather, Patrick
Michael Corley, of New Ross, had married the widow of a publican there whose
maiden name had been Katherine (also) Talbot. Rumour had it, though not
proved, that she descended from the house of the Lords Talbot de Malahide in
whose mansion, really an unquestionably fine residence of its kind and well
worth seeing, his mother or aunt or some relative had enjoyed the
distinction of being in service in the washkitchen. This, therefore, was the
reason why the still comparatively young though dissolute man who now
addressed Stephen was spoken of by some with facetious proclivities as Lord
John Corley.
Taking Stephen on one side he had the customary doleful ditty to tell.
Not as much as a farthing to purchase a night's lodgings. His friends had
all deserted him. Furthermore, he had a row with Lenehan and called him to
Stephen a mean bloody swab with a sprinkling of other uncalled-for
expressions. He was out of a job and implored of Stephen to tell him where
on God's earth he could get something, anything at all to do. No, it was the
daughter of the mother in the washkitchen that was fostersister to the heir
of the house or else they were connected through the mother in some way,
both occurrences happening at the same time if the whole thing wasn't a
complete fabrication from start to finish. Anyhow, he was ill in.
-- I wouldn't ask you, only, pursued he, on my solemn oath and God
knows I'm on the rocks.
-- There'll be a job tomorrow or the next day, Stephen told him, in a
boys' school at Dalkey for a gentleman usher. Mr Garret Deasy. Try it. You
may mention my name.
-- Ah, God, Corley replied, sure I couldn't teach in a school, man. I
was never one of your bright ones, he added with a half laugh. Got stuck
twice in the junior at the Christian Brothers.
-- I have no place to sleep myself, Stephen informed him.
Corley, at the first go-off, was inclined to suspect it was something
to do with Stephen being fired out of his digs for bringing in a bloody tart
off the street. There was a dosshouse in Marlborough street, Mrs Maloney's,
but it was only a tanner touch and full of undesirables but M'Conachie told
him you got a decent enough do in the Brazen Head over in Winetavern street
(which was distantly suggestive to the person addressed of friar Bacon) for
a bob. He was starving too though he hadn't said a word about it.
Though this sort of thing went on every other night or very near it
still Stephen's feelings got the better of him in a sense though he knew
that Corley's brandnew rigmarole, on a par with the others, was hardly
deserving of much credence. However, haud ignarus malorum miseris succurrere
disco, etcetera, as the Latin poet remarks, especially as luck would have it
he got paid his screw after every middle of the month on the sixteenth which
was the date of the month as a matter of fact though a good bit of the
wherewithal was demolished. But the cream of the joke was nothing would get
it Out of Corley's head that he was living in affluence and hadn't a thing
to do but hand out the needful - whereas. He put his hand in a pocket
anyhow, not with the idea of finding any food there, but thinking he might
lend him anything up to a bob or so in lieu so that he might endeavour at
all events and get sufficient to eat. But the result was in the negative
for, to his chagrin, he found his cash missing. A few broken biscuits were
all the result of his investigation. He tried his hardest to recollect for
the moment whether he had lost, as well he might have, or left, because in
that contingency it was not a pleasant lookout, very much the reverse, in
fact. He was altogether too fagged out to institute a thorough search though
he tried to recollect about biscuits he dimly remembered. Who now exactly
gave them, or where was, or did he buy? However, in another pocket he came
across what he surmised in the dark were pennies, erroneously, however, as
it turned out.
-- Those are halfcrowns, man, Corley corrected him.
And so in point of fact they turned out to be. Stephen lent him one of
them.
-- Thanks, Corley answered. You're a gentleman. I'll pay you back some
time. Who's that with you? I saw him a few times in the Bleeding Horse in
Camden street with Boylan the billsticker. You might put in a good word for
us to get me taken on there. I'd carry a sandwichboard only the girl in the
office told me they're full up for the next three weeks, man. God, you've to
book ahead, man, you'd think it was for the Carl Rosa. I don't give a shite
anyway so long as I get a job even as a crossing sweeper.
Subsequently, being not quite so down in the mouth after the
two-and-six he got, he informed Stephen about a fellow by the name of Bags
Comisky that he said Stephen knew well out of Fullam's, the shipchandler's
bookkeeper there, that used to be often round in Nagle's back with O'Mara
and a little chap with a stutter the name of Tighe. Anyhow, he was lagged
the night before last and fined ten bob for a drunk and disorderly and
refusing to go with the constable.
Mr Bloom in the meanwhile kept dodging about in the vicinity of the
cobblestones near the brazier of coke in front of the corporation watchman's
sentrybox, who, evidently a glutton for work, it struck him, was having a
quiet forty winks for all intents and purposes on his own private account
while Dublin slept. He threw an odd eye at the same time now and then at
Stephen's anything but immaculately attired interlocutor as if he had seen
that nobleman somewhere or other though where he was not in a position to
truthfully state nor had he the remotest idea when. Being a levelheaded
individual who could give points to not a few in point of shrewd
observation, he also remarked on his very dilapidated hat and slouchy
wearing apparel generally, testifying to a chronic impecuniosity. Probably
he was one of his hangerson but for the matter of that it was merely a
question of one preying on his next door neighbour all round, in every deep,
so to put it, a deeper depth and for the matter of that if the man in the
street chanced to be in the dock himself penal servitude, with or without
the option of a fine, would be a very rara avis altogether. In any case he
had a consummate amount of cool assurance intercepting people at that hour
of the night or morning. Pretty thick that was certainly.
The pair parted company and Stephen rejoined Mr Bloom, who, with his
practised eye, was not without perceiving that he had succumbed to the
blandiloquence of the other parasite. Alluding to the encounter he said,
laughingly, Stephen, that is:
-- He's down on his luck. He asked me to ask you to ask somebody named
Boylan, a billsticker, to give him a job as a sandwichman.
At this intelligence, in which he seemingly evinced little interest, Mr
Bloom gazed abstractedly for the space of a half a second or so in the
direction of a bucket dredger, rejoicing in the farfamed name of Eblana,
moored alongside Customhouse Quay and quite possibly Out of repair,
whereupon he observed evasively:
-- Everybody gets their own ration of luck, they say. Now you mention
it his face was familiar to me. But leaving that for the moment, how much
did you part with, he queried, if I am not too inquisitive?
-- Half-a-crown, Stephen responded. I daresay he needs it to sleep
somewhere.
-- Needs, Mr Bloom ejaculated, professing not the least surprise at the
intelligence, I can quite credit the assertion and I guarantee he invariably
does. Everyone according to his needs and everyone according to his deeds.
But talking about things in general, where, added he with a smile, will you
sleep yourself? Walking to Sandycove is Out of the question and, even
supposing you did, you won't get in after what occurred at Westland Row
station. Simply fag out there for nothing. I don't mean to presume to
dictate to you in the slightest degree but why did you leave your father's
house?
-- To seek misfortune, was Stephen's answer.
-- I met your respected father on a recent occasion, Mr Bloom
diplomatically returned. Today, in fact, or, to be strictly accurate, on
yesterday. Where does he live at present? I gathered in the course of
conversation that he had moved.
-- I believe he is in Dublin somewhere, Stephen answered unconcernedly.
Why?
-- A gifted man, Mr Bloom said of Mr Dedalus senior, in more respects
than one and a born raconteur if ever there was one. He takes great pride,
quite legitimately, Out of you. You could go back, perhaps, he hazarded,
still thinking of the very unpleasant scene at Westland Row terminus when it
was perfectly evident that the other two, Mulligan, that is, and that
English tourist friend of his, who eventually euchred their third companion,
were patently trying, as if the whole bally station belonged to them, to
give Stephen the slip in the confusion.
There was no response forthcoming to the suggestion, however, such as
it was, Stephen's mind's eye being too busily engaged in repicturing his
family hearth the last time he saw it, with his sister, Dilly, sitting by
the ingle, her hair hanging down, waiting for some weak Trinidad shell cocoa
that was in the sootcoated kettle to be done so that she and he could drink
it with the oatmeal water for milk after the Friday herrings they had eaten
at two a penny, with an egg apiece for Maggy, Boody and Katey, the cat
meanwhile under the mangle devouring a mess of eggshells and charred fish
heads and bones on a square of brown paper in accordance with the third
precept of the church to fast and abstain on the days commanded, it being
quarter tense or, if not, ember days or something like that.
-- No, Mr Bloom repeated again, I wouldn't personally repose much trust
in that boon companion of yours who contributes the humorous element, Dr
Mulligan, as a guide, philosopher, and friend, if I were in your shoes. He
knows which side his bread is buttered on though in all probability he never
realised what it is to be without regular meals. Of course you didn't notice
as much as I did but it wouldn't occasion me the least surprise to learn
that a pinch of tobacco or some narcotic was put in your drink for some
ulterior object.
He understood, however, from all he heard, that Dr Mulligan was a
versatile allround man, by no means confined to medicine only, who was
rapidly coming to the fore in his line and, if the report was verified, bade
fair to enjoy a flourishing practice in the not too distant future as a tony
medical practitioner drawing a handsome fee for his services in addition to
which professional status his rescue of that man from certain drowning by
artificial respiration and what they call first aid at Skerries, or Malahide
was it? was, he was bound to admit, an exceedingly plucky deed which he
could not too highly praise, so that frankly he was utterly at a loss to
fathom what earthly reason could be at the back of it except he put it down
to sheer cussedness or jealousy, pure and simple.
-- Except it simply amounts to one thing and he is what they call
picking your brains, he ventured to throw out.
The guarded glance of half solicitude, half curiosity, augmented by
friendliness, which he gave at Stephen's at present morose expression of
features did not throw a flood of light, none at all in fact, on the problem
as to whether he had let himself be badly bamboozled, to judge by two or
three low spirited remarks he let drop, or, the other way about, saw through
the affair, and, for some reason or other best known to himself, allowed
matters to more or less... Grinding poverty did have that effect and he more
than conjectured that, high educational abilities though he possessed, he
experienced no little difficulty in making both ends meet.
Adjacent to the men's public urinal he perceived an icecream car round
which a group of presumably Italians in heated altercation were getting rid
of voluble expressions in their vivacious language in a particularly
animated way, there being some little differences between the parties.
-- Putana madonna, che ci dia i quattrini! Ho ragione? Culo rotto!
-- Intendiamoci. Mezzo sovrano piÙ
-- Dice lui, pero.
-- Farabutto! Mortacci sui!
Mr Bloom and Stephen entered the cabman's shelter, an unpretentious
wooden structure, where, prior to then, he had rarely, if ever, been before;
the former having previously whispered to the latter a few hints anent the
keeper of it, said to be the once famous Skin-the-Goat, Fitzharris, the
invincible, though he wouldn't vouch for the actual facts, which quite
possibly there was not one vestige of truth in. A few moments later saw our
two noctambules safely seated in a discreet corner, only to be greeted by
stares from the decidedly miscellaneous collection of waifs and strays and
other nondescript specimens of the genus homo, already there engaged in
eating and drinking, diversified by conversation, for whom they seemingly
formed an object of marked curiosity.
-- Now touching a cup of coffee, Mr Bloom ventured to plausibly suggest
to break the ice, it occurs to me you ought to sample something in the shape
of solid food, say a roll of some description.
Accordingly his first act was with characteristic sangfroid to order
these commodities quietly. The hoi polloi of jarvies or stevedores, or
whatever they were, after a cursory examination, turned their eyes,
apparently dissatisfied, away, though one redbearded bibulous individual, a
portion of whose hair was greyish, a sailor, probably, still stared for some
appreciable time before transferring his rapt attention to the floor.
Mr Bloom, availing himself of the right of free speech, he having just
a bowing acquaintance with the language in dispute though, to be sure,
rather in a quandary over voglio, remarked to his protÉgÉ in an audible tone
of voice, apropos of the battle royal in the street which was still raging
fast and furious:
-- Beautiful language. I mean for singing purposes. Why do you not
write your poetry in that language? Bella Poetria! it is so melodious and
full. Belladonna voglio.
Stephen, who was trying his dead best to yawn, if he could, suffering
from dead lassitude generally, replied:
-- To fill the ear of a cow elephant. They were haggling over money.
-- Is that so? Mr Bloom asked. Of course, he subjoined pensively, at
the inward reflection of there being more languages to start with than were
absolutely necessary, it may be only the southern glamour that surrounds it.
The keeper of the shelter in the middle of this tÊte-À-tÊte put a
boiling swimming cup of a choice concoction labelled coffee on the table and
a rather antediluvian specimen of a bun, or so it seemed, after which he
beat a retreat to his counter. Mr Bloom determining to have a good square
look at him later on so as not to appear to... for which reason he
encouraged Stephen to proceed with his eyes while he did the honours by
surreptitiously pushing the cup of what was temporarily supposed to be
called coffee gradually nearer him.
-- Sounds are impostures, Stephen said after a pause of some little
time. Like names, Cicero, Podmore, Napoleon, Mr Goodbody, Jesus, Mr Doyle.
Shakespeares were as common as Murphies. What's in a name?
-- Yes, to be sure, Mr Bloom unaffectedly concurred. Of course. Our
name was changed too, he added, pushing the socalled roll across.
The redbearded sailor, who had his weather eye on the newcomers,
boarded Stephen, whom he had singled out for attention in particular,
squarely by asking:
-- And what might your name be?
Just in the nick of time Mr Bloom touched his companion's boot but
Stephen, apparently disregarding the warm pressure, from an unexpected
quarter, answered:
-- Dedalus.
The sailor stared at him heavily from a pair of drowsy baggy eyes,
rather bunged up from excessive use of boose, preferably good old Hollands
and water.
-- You know Simon Dedalus? he asked at length.
-- I've heard of him, Stephen said.
Mr Bloom was all at sea for a moment, seeing the others evidently
eavesdropping too.
-- He's Irish, the seaman bold affirmed, staring still in much the same
way and nodding. All Irish.
-- All too Irish, Stephen rejoined.
As for Mr Bloom he could neither make head or tail of the whole
business and he was just asking himself what possible connection when the
sailor, of his own accord, turned to the other Occupants of the shelter with
the remark: I seen him shoot two eggs off two bottles at fifty yards over
his shoulder. The left hand dead shot.
Though he was slightly hampered by an occasional stammer and his
gestures being also clumsy as it was still he did his best to explain.
-- Bottle Out there, say. Fifty yards measured. Eggs on the bottles.
Cocks his gun over his shoulder. Aims.
He turned his body half round, shut up his right eye completely, then
he screwed his features up some way sideways and glared out into the night
with an unprepossessing cast of countenance.
-- Pom, he then shouted once.
The entire audience waited, anticipating an additional detonation,
there being still a further egg.
-- Pom, he shouted twice.
Egg two evidently demolished, he nodded and winked, adding
bloodthirstily:
Buffalo Bill shoots to kill,
Never missed nor he never will.
A silence ensued till Mr Bloom for agreeableness' sake just felt like
asking him whether it was for a marksmanship competition like the Bisley.
-- Beg pardon, the sailor said.
-- Long ago? Mr Bloom pursued without flinching a hairsbreadth.
-- Why, the sailor replied, relaxing to a certain extent under the
magic influence of diamond cut diamond, it might be a matter of ten years.
He toured the wide world with Hengler's Royal Circus. I seen him do that in
Stockholm.
-- Curious coincidence, Mr Bloom confided to Stephen unobtrusively.
-- Murphy's my name, the sailor continued, W. B. Murphy, of Carrigaloe.
Know where that is?
-- Queenstown Harbour, Stephen replied.
-- That's right, the sailor said. Fort Camden and Fort Carlisle. That's
where I hails from. My little woman's down there. She's waiting for me, I
know. For England, home and beauty. She's my own true wife I haven't seen
for seven years now, sailing about.
Mr Bloom could easily picture his advent on this scene - the homecoming
to the mariner's roadside shieling after having diddled Davy Jones - a rainy
night with a blind moon. Across the world for a wife. Quite a number of
stories there were on that particular Alice Ben Bolt topic, Enoch Arden and
Rip van Winkle and does anybody hereabouts remember Caoc O'Leary, a
favourite and most trying declamation piece, by the way, of poor John Casey
and a bit of perfect poetry in its own small way? Never about the runaway
wife coming back, however much devoted to the absentee. The face at the
window! Judge of his astonishment when he finally did breast the tape and
the awful truth dawned upon him anent his better half, wrecked in his
affections. You little expected me but I've come to stay and make a fresh
start. There she sits, a grass widow, at the selfsame fireside. Believes me
dead. Rocked in the cradle of the deep. And there sits uncle Chubb or
Tomkin, as the case might be, the publican of the Crown and Anchor, in
shirtsleeves, eating rumpsteak and onions. No chair for father. Boo! The
wind! Her brandnew arrival is on her knee, post mortem child. With a high
ro! and a randy ro! and my galloping tearing tandy O! Bow to the inevitable.
Grin and bear it. I remain with much love your brokenhearted husband, W. B.
Murphy.
The sailor, who scarcely seemed to be a Dublin resident, turned to one
of the jarvies with the request:
-- You don't happen to have such a thing as a spare chaw about you, do
you?
The jarvey addressed, as it happened, had not but the keeper took a die
of plug from his good jacket hanging on a nail and the desired object was
passed from hand to hand.
-- Thank you, the sailor said.
He deposited the quid in his gob and, chewing, and with some slow
stammers, proceeded:
-- We come up this morning eleven o'clock. The threemaster Rosevean
from Bridgwater with bricks. I shipped to get over. Paid off this afternoon.
There's my discharge. See? W. B. Murphy, A. B. S.
In confirmation of which statement he extricated from an inside pocket
and handed to his neighbours a not very clean looking folded document.
-- You must have seen a fair share of the world, the keeper remarked,
leaning on the counter.
-- Why, the sailor answered, upon reflection upon it, I've
circumnavigated a bit since I first joined on. I was in the Red Sea. I was
in China and North America and South America. I seen icebergs plenty,
growlers. I was in Stockholm and the Black Sea, the Dardanelles, under
Captain Dalton the best bloody man that ever scuttled a ship. I seen Russia.
Gospodi pomilooy. That's how the Russians prays.
-- You seen queer sights, don't be talking, put in a jarvey.
-- Why, the sailor said, shifting his partially chewed plug, I seen
queer things too, ups and downs. I seen a crocodile bite the fluke of an
anchor same as I chew that quid.
He took out of his mouth the pulpy quid and, lodging it between his
teeth, bit ferociously.
-- Khaan! Like that. And I seen maneaters in Peru that eats corpses and
the livers of horses. Look here. Here they are. A friend of mine sent me.
He fumbled out a picture postcard from his inside pocket, which seemed
to be in its way a species of repository, and pushed it along the table. The
printed matter on it stated: Choza de Indios. Beni, Bolivia.
All focused their attention on the scene exhibited, at a group of
savage women in striped loincloths, squatted, blinking, suckling, frowning,
sleeping, amid a swarm of infants (there must have been quite a score of
them) outside some primitive shanties of osier.
-- Chews coca all day long, the communicative tarpaulin added. Stomachs
like breadgraters. Cuts off their diddies when they can't bear no more
children. See them there stark ballocknaked eating a dead horse's liver raw.
His postcard proved a centre of attraction for Messrs the greenhorns
for several minutes, if not more.
-- Know how to keep them off? he inquired genially.
Nobody volunteering a statement, he winked, saying:
-- Glass. That boggles 'em. Glass.
Mr Bloom, without evincing surprise, unostentatiously turned over the
card to peruse the partially obliterated address and postmark. It ran as
follows: Tarjeta Postal. SeÑor A. Boudin, Galeria Becche, Santiago, Chile.
There was no message evidently, as he took particular notice. Though not an
implicit believer in the lurid story narrated (or the eggsniping transaction
for that matter despite William Tell and the Lazarillo-Don Cesar de Bazan
incident depicted in Maritana on which occasion the former's ball passed
through the latter's hat), having detected a discrepancy between his name
(assuming he was the person he represented himself to be and not sailing
under false colours after having boxed the compass on the strict q.t.
somewhere) and the fictitious addressee of the missive which made him
nourish some suspicions of our friend's bona fides, nevertheless it reminded
him in a way of a longcherished plan he meant to one day realise some
Wednesday or Saturday of travelling to London via long sea not to say that
he had ever travelled extensively to any great extent but he was at heart a
born adventurer though by a trick of fate he had consistently remained a
landlubber except you call going to Holyhead which was his longest. Martin
Cunningham frequently said he would work a pass through Egan but some deuced
hitch or other eternally cropped up with the net result that the scheme fell
through. But even suppose it did come to planking down the needful and
breaking Boyd's heart it was not so dear, purse permitting, a few guineas at
the outside, considering the fare to Mullingar where he figured on going was
five and six there and back. The trip would benefit health on account of the
bracing ozone and be in every way thoroughly pleasurable, especially for a
chap whose liver was out of order, seeing the different places along the
route, Plymouth, Falmouth, Southampton and so on, culminating in an
instructive tour of the sights of the great metropolis, the spectacle of our
modern Babylon where doubtless he would see the greatest improvement tower,
abbey, wealth of Park Lane to renew acquaintance with. Another thing just
struck him as a by no means bad notion was he might have a gaze around on
the spot to see about trying to make arrangements about a concert tour of
summer music embracing the most prominent pleasure resorts, Margate with
mixed bathing and firstrate hydros and spas, Eastbourne, Scarborough,
Margate and so on, beautiful Bournemouth, the Channel islands and similar
bijou spots, which might prove highly remunerative. Not, of course, with a
hole and corner scratch company or local ladies on the job, witness Mrs C.
P. M'Coy type - lend me your valise and I'll post you the ticket. No,
something top notch, an all star Irish cast, the Tweedy-Flower grand opera
company with its own legal consort as leading lady as a sort of counterblast
to the Elster Grimes and Moody-Manners, perfectly simple matter and he was
quite sanguine of success, providing puffs in the local papers could be
managed by some fellow with a bit of bounce who could pull the indispensable
wires and thus combine business with pleasure. But who? That was the rub.
Also, without being actually positive, it struck him a great field was
to be opened up in the line of opening up new routes to keep pace with the
times apropos of the Fishguard-Rosslare route which, it was mooted, was once
more on the tapis in the Circumlocution departments with the usual quantity
of red tape and dillydallying of effete fogeydom and dunderheads generally.
A great opportunity there certainly was for push and enterprise to meet the
travelling needs of the public at large, the average man, i.e. Brown,
Robinson and Co.
It was a subject of regret and absurd as well on the face of it and no
small blame to our vaunted society that the man in the street, when the
system really needed toning up, for a matter of a couple of paltry pounds,
was debarred from seeing more of the world they lived in instead of being
always cooped up since my old stick-in-the-mud took me for a wife. After
all, hang it, they had their eleven and more humdrum months of it and
merited a radical change of venue after the grind of city life in the
summertime, for choice, when Dame Nature is at her spectacular best,
constituting nothing short of a new lease of life. There were equally
excellent opportunities for vacationists in the home island, delightful
sylvan spots for rejuvenation, offering a plethora of attractions as well as
a bracing tonic for the system in and around Dublin and its picturesque
environs, even, Poulaphouca, to which there was a steam tram, but also
farther away from the madding crowd, in Wicklow, rightly termed the garden
of Ireland, an ideal neighbourhood for elderly wheelmen, so long as it
didn't come down, and in the wilds of Donegal, where if report spoke true,
the coup d'il was exceedingly grand, though the lastnamed locality was
not easily getatable so that the influx of visitors was not as yet all that
it might be considering the signal benefits to be derived from it, while
Howth with its historic associations and otherwise, Silken Thomas, Grace
O'Malley, George IV, rhododendrons several hundred feet above sealevel was a
favourite haunt with all sorts and conditions of men, especially in the
spring when young men s fancy, though it had its own toll of deaths by
falling off the cliffs by design or accidentally, usually, by the way, on
their left leg, it being only about three quarters of an hour's run from the
pillar. Because of course uptodate tourist travelling was as yet merely in
its infancy, so to speak, and the accommodation left much to be desired.
Interesting to fathom, it seemed to him, from a motive of curiosity pure and
simple, was whether it was the traffic that created the route or vice-versa
or the two sides in fact. He turned back the other side of the card picture
and passed it along to Stephen.
-- I seen a Chinese one time, related the doughty narrator, that had
little pills like putty and he put them in the water and they opened, and
every pill was something different. One was a ship, another was a house,
another was a flower. Cooks rats in your soup, he appetisingly added, the
Chinese does.
Possibly perceiving an expression of dubiosity on their faces, the
globetrotter went on adhering to his adventures.
-- And I seen a man killed in Trieste by an Italian chap. Knife in his
back. Knife like that.
Whilst speaking he produced a dangerous looking clasp knife, quite in
keeping with his character, and held it in the striking position.
-- In a knockingshop it was count of a tryon between two smugglers.
Fellow hid behind a door, come up behind him. Like that. Prepare to meet
your God, says he. Chuck! It went into his back up to the butt.
His heavy glance, drowsily roaming about, kind of defied their further
questions even should they by any chance want to. That's a good bit of
steel, repeated he, examining his formidable stiletto.
After which harrowing dÉnouement sufficient to appal the stoutest he
snapped the blade to and stowed the weapon in question away as before in his
chamber of horrors, otherwise pocket.
-- They're great for the cold steel, somebody who was evidently quite
in the dark said for the benefit of them all. That was why they thought the
park murders of the invincibles was done by foreigners on account of them
using knives.
At this remark, passed obviously in the spirit of where ignorance is
bliss, Mr Bloom and Stephen, each in his own particular way, both
instinctively exchanged meaning glances, in a religious silence of the
strictly entre nous variety however, towards where Skin-the-Goat, alias the
keeper, was drawing spurts of liquid from his boiler affair. His inscrutable
face, which was really a work of art, a perfect study in itself, beggaring
description, conveyed the impression that he didn't understand one jot of
what was going on. Funny very.
There ensued a somewhat lengthy pause. One man was reading by fits and
starts a stained by coffee evening journal; another, the card with the
natives choza de; another, the seaman's discharge. Mr Bloom, so far as he
was personally concerned, was just pondering in pensive mood. He vividly
recollected when the occurrence alluded to took place as well as yesterday,
some score of years previously, in the days of the land troubles when it
took the civilised world by storm, figuratively speaking, early in the
eighties, eightyone to be correct, when he was just turned fifteen.
-- Ay, boss, the sailor broke in. Give us back them papers.
The request being complied with, he clawed them up with a scrape.
-- Have you seen the Rock of Gibraltar? Mr Bloom inquired.
The sailor grimaced, chewing, in a way that might be read as yes, ay,
or no.
-- Ah, you've touched there too, Mr Bloom said, Europa point, thinking
he had, in the hope that the rover might possibly by some reminiscences but
he failed to do so, simply letting spurt a jet of spew into the sawdust, and
shook his head with a sort of lazy scorn.
-- What year would that be about? Mr Bloom interpolated. Can you recall
the boats?
Our soi-disant sailor munched heavily awhile, hungrily, before
answering.
-- I'm tired of all them rocks in the sea, he said, and boats and
ships. Salt junk all the time.
Tired, seemingly, he ceased. His questioner, perceiving that he was not
likely to get a great deal of change out of such a wily old customer, fell
to woolgathering on the enormous dimensions of the water about the globe.
Suffice it to say that, as a casual glance at the map revealed, it covered
fully three fourths of it and he fully realised accordingly what it meant,
to rule the waves. On more than one occasion - a dozen at the lowest - near
the North Bull at Dollymount he had remarked a superannuated old salt,
evidently derelict, seated habitually near the not particularly redolent sea
on the wall, staring quite obliviously at it and it at him, dreaming of
fresh woods and pastures new as someone somewhere sings. And it left him
wondering why. Possibly he had tried to find out the secret for himself,
floundering up and down the antipodes and all that sort of thing and over
and under - well, not exactly under, tempting the fates. And the odds were
twenty to nil there was really no secret about it at all. Nevertheless,
without going into the minutiae of the business, the eloquent fact remained
that the sea was there in all its glory and in the natural course of things
somebody or other had to sail on it and fly in the face of providence though
it merely went to show how people usually contrived to load that sort of
onus on to the other fellow like the hell idea and the lottery and
insurance, which were run on identically the same lines so that for that
very reason, if no other, lifeboat Sunday was a very laudable institution to
which the public at large, no matter where living, inland or seaside,-is the
case might be, having it brought home to them like that, should extend its
gratitude also to the harbourmasters and coastguard service who had to man
the rigging and push off and out amid the elements, whatever the season,
when duty called Ireland expects that every man and so on, and sometimes had
a terrible time of it in the wintertime not forgetting the Irish lights,
Kish and others, liable to capsize at any moment rounding which he once with
his daughter had experienced some remarkably choppy, not to say stormy,
weather.
-- There was a fellow sailed with me in the Rover, the old seadog,
himself a rover, proceeded. Went ashore and took up a soft job as
gentleman's valet at six quid a month. Them are his trousers I've on me and
he gave me an oilskin and that jackknife. I'm game for that job, shaving and
brushup. I hate roaming about. There's my son now, Danny, run off to sea and
his mother got him took in a draper's in Cork where he could be drawing easy
money.
-- What age is he? queried one hearer who, by the way, seen from the
side, bore a distant resemblance to Henry Campbell, the townclerk, away from
the carking cares of office, unwashed, of course, and in a seedy getup and a
strong suspicion of nosepaint about the nasal appendage.
-- Why, the sailor answered with a slow puzzled utterance. My son
Danny? He'd be about eighteen now, way I figure it.
The Skibbereen father hereupon tore open his grey or unclean anyhow
shirt with his two hands and scratched away at his chest on which was to be
seen an image tattooed in blue Chinese ink, intended to represent an anchor.
-- There was lice in that bunk in Bridgwater, he remarked. Sure as
nuts. I must get a wash tomorrow or next day. It's them black lads I objects
to. I hate those buggers. Sucks your blood dry, they does.
Seeing they were all looking at his chest, he accommodatingly dragged
his shirt more open so that, on top of the time honoured symbol of the
mariner's hope and rest, they had a full view of the figure 16 and a young
man's sideface looking frowningly rather.
-- Tattoo, the exhibitor explained. That was done when we were lying
becalmed off Odessa in the Black Sea under Captain Dalton Fellow the name of
Antonio done that. There he is himself, a Greek.
-- Did it hurt much doing it? one asked the sailor.
That worthy, however, was busily engaged in collecting round the
someway in his. Squeezing or...
-- See here, he said, showing Antonio. There he is, cursing the mate.
And there he is now, he added. The same fellow, pulling the skin with his
fingers, some special knack evidently, and he laughing at a yarn.
And in point of fact the young man named Antonio's livid face did
actually look like forced smiling and the curious effect excited the
unreserved admiration of everybody, including Skin-the-Goat who this time
stretched over.
-- Ay, ay, sighed the sailor, looking down on his manly chest. He's
gone too. Ate by sharks after. Ay, ay.
He let go of the skin so that the profile resumed the normal expression
of before.
-- Neat bit of work, longshoreman one said.
-- And what's the number for? loafer number two queried.
-- Eaten alive? a third asked the sailor.
-- Ay, ay, sighed again the latter personage, more cheerily this time,
with some sort of a half smile, for a brief duration only, in the direction
of the questioner about the number. A Greek he was.
And then he added, with rather gallowsbird humour, considering his
alleged end:
-- As bad as old Antonio,
For he left me on my ownio.
The face of a streetwalker, glazed and haggard under a black straw hat,
peered askew round the door of the shelter, palpably reconnoitring on her
own with the object of bringing more grist to her mill. Mr Bloom, scarcely
knowing which way to look, turned away on the moment, flusterfied but
outwardly calm, and picking up from the table the pink sheet of the Abbey
street organ which the jarvey, if such he was, had laid aside, he picked it
up and looked at the pink of the paper though why pink? His reason for so
doing was he recognised on the moment round the door the same face he had
caught a fleeting glimpse of that afternoon on Ormond Quay, the partially
idiotic female, namely, of the lane, who knew the lady in the brown costume
does be with you (Mrs B.), and begged the chance of his washing. Also why
washing, which seemed rather vague than not?
Your washing. Still, candour compelled him to admit that he had washed
his wife's undergarments when soiled in Holles Street and women would and
did too a man's similar garments initialled with Bewley and Draper's marking
ink (hers were, that is) if they really loved him, that is to say. Love me,
love my dirty shirt. Still, just then, being on tenterhooks, he desired the
female's room more than her company so it came as a genuine relief when the
keeper made her a rude sign to take herself off. Round the side of the
Evening Telegraph he just caught a fleeting glimpse of her face round the
side of the door with a kind of demented glassy grin showing that she was
not exactly all there, viewing with evident amusement the group of gazers
round Skipper Murphy's nautical chest and then there was no more of her.
-- The gunboat, the keeper said.
-- It beats me, Mr Bloom confided to Stephen, medically I am speaking,
how a wretched creature like that from the Lock Hospital, reeking with
disease, can be barefaced enough to solicit or how any man in his sober
senses, if he values his health in the least. Unfortunate creature! Of
course, I suppose some man is ultimately responsible for her condition.
Still no matter what the cause is from...
Stephen had not noticed her and shrugged his shoulders, merely
remarking:
-- In this country people sell much more than she ever had and do a
roaring trade. Fear not them that sell the body but have not power to buy
the soul. She is a bad merchant. She buys dear and sells cheap.
The elder man, though not by any manner of means an old maid or a
prude, said that it was nothing short of a crying scandal that ought to be
put a stop to instanter to say that women of that stamp (quite apart from
any oldmaidish squeamishness on the subject), a necessary evil, were not
licensed and medically inspected by the proper authorities, a thing he could
truthfully state he, as a paterfamilias, was a stalwart advocate of from the
very first start. Whoever embarked on a policy of that sort, he said, and
ventilated the matter thoroughly would confer a lasting boon on everybody
concerned.
-- You, as a good catholic, he observed, talking of body and soul,
believe in the soul. Or do you mean the intelligence, the brainpower as
such, as distinct from any outside object, the table, let us say, that cup?
I believe in that myself because it has been explained by competent men as
the convolutions of the grey matter. Otherwise we would never have such
inventions as X rays, for instance. Do you?
Thus cornered, Stephen had to make a superhuman effort of memory to try
and concentrate and remember before he could say:
-- They tell me on the best authority it is a simple substance and
therefore incorruptible. It would be immortal, I understand, but for the
possibility of its annihilation by its First Cause, Who, from all I can
hear, is quite capable of adding that to the number of His other practical
jokes, corruptio per se and corruptio per accidens both being excluded by
court etiquette.
Mr Bloom thoroughly acquiesced in the general gist of this though the
mystical finesse involved was a bit out of his sublunary depth still he felt
bound to enter a demurrer on the head of simple, promptly rejoining:
-- Simple? I shouldn't think that is the proper word. Of course, I
grant you, to concede a point, you do knock across a simple soul once in a
blue moon. But what I am anxious to arrive at is it is one thing for
instance to invent those rays RÖntgen did, Or the telescope like Edison,
though I believe it was before his time, Galileo was the man I mean. The
same applies to the laws, for example, of a farreaching natural phenomenon
such as electricity but it's a horse of quite another colour to say you
believe in the existence of a supernatural God.
-- O, that, Stephen expostulated, has been proved conclusively by
several of the best known passages in Holy Writ, apart from circumstantial
evidence. On this knotty point, however, the views of the pair, poles apart
as they were, both in schooling and everything else, with the marked
difference in their respective ages, clashed.
-- Has been? the more experienced of the two objected, sticking to his
original point. I'm not so sure about that. That's a matter of every man's
opinion and, without dragging in the sectarian side of the business, I beg
to differ with you in toto there. My belief is, to tell you the candid
truth, that those bits were genuine forgeries all of them put in by monks
most probably or it's the big question of our national poet over again, who
precisely wrote them, like Hamlet and Bacon, as you who know your
Shakespeare infinitely better than I, of course I needn't tell you. Can't
you drink that coffee, by the way? Let me stir it and take a piece of that
bun. It's like one of our skipper's bricks disguised. Still, no one can give
what he hasn't got. Try a bit.
-- Couldn't, Stephen contrived to get out, his mental organs for the
moment refusing to dictate further.
Faultfinding being a proverbially bad hat, Mr Bloom thought well to
stir, or try to, the clotted sugar from the bottom and reflected with
something approaching acrimony on the Coffee Palace and its temperance (and
lucrative) work. To be sure it was a legitimate object and beyond yea or nay
did a world of good. Shelters such as the present one they were in run on
teetotal lines for vagrants at night, concerts, dramatic evenings, and
useful lectures (admittance free) by qualified men for the lower orders. On
the other hand, he had a distinct and painful recollection they paid his
wife, Madam Marion Tweedy who had been prominently associated with it at one
time, a very modest remuneration indeed for her pianoplaying. The idea, he
was strongly inclined to believe, was to do good and net a profit, there
being no competition to speak of. Sulphate of copper poison, SO4 or
something in some dried peas he remembered reading of in a cheap eatinghouse
somewhere but he couldn't remember when it was or where. Anyhow, inspection,
medical inspection, of all eatables, seemed to him more than ever necessary
which possibly accounted for the vogue of Dr Tibble's Vi-Cocoa on account of
the medical analysis involved.
-- Have a shot at it now, he ventured to say of the coffee after being
stirred.
Thus prevailed on to at any rate taste it, Stephen lifted the heavy mug
from the brown puddle - it clopped out of it when taken up - by the handle
and took a sip of the offending beverage.
-- Still, it's solid food, his good genius urged, I'm a stickler for
solid food, his one and only reason being not gormandising in the least but
regular meals as the sine qua non for any kind of proper work, mental or
manual. You ought to eat more solid food. You would feel a different man.
-- Liquids I can eat, Stephen said. But oblige me by taking away that
knife. I can't look at the point of it. It reminds me of Roman history.
Mr Bloom promptly did as suggested and removed the incriminated
article, a blunt hornhandled ordinary knife with nothing particularly Roman
or antique about it to the lay eye, observing that the point was the least
conspicuous point about it.
-- Our mutual friend's stories are like himself, Mr Bloom, apropos of
knives, remarked to his confidente sotto voce. Do you think they are
genuine? He could spin those yarns for hours on end all night long and lie
like old boots. Look at him.
Yet still, though his eyes were thick with sleep and sea air, life was
full of a host of things and coincidences of a terrible nature and it was
quite within the bounds of possibility that it was not an entire fabrication
though at first blush there was not much inherent probability in all the
spoof he got off his chest being strictly accurate gospel.
He had been meantime taking stock of the individual in front of him and
Sherlockholmesing him up, ever since he clapped eyes on him. Though a
wellpreserved man of no little stamina, if a trifle prone to baldness, there
was something spurious in the cut of his jib that suggested a jail delivery
and it required no violent stretch of imagination to associate such a
weirdlooking specimen with the oakum and treadmill fraternity. He might even
have done for his man, supposing it was his own case he told, as people
often did about others, namely, that he killed him himself and had served
his four or five goodlooking years in durance vile to say nothing of the
Antonio personage (no relation to the dramatic personage of identical name
who sprang from the pen Of our national poet) who expiated his crimes in the
melodramatic manner above described. On the other hand he might be only
bluffing, a pardonable weakness, because meeting unmistakable mugs, Dublin
residents, like those jarvies waiting news from abroad, would tempt any
ancient mariner who sailed the ocean seas to draw the long bow about the
schooner Hesperus and etcetera. And when all was said and done, the lies a
fellow told about himself couldn't probably hold a proverbial candle to the
wholesale whoppers other fellows coined about him.
Mind you, I'm not saying that it's all a pure invention, he resumed.
Analogous scenes are occasionally, if not often, met with. Giants, though,
that is rather a far cry you see once in a way. Marcella, the midget queen.
In those waxworks in Henry street I myself saw some Aztecs, as they are
called, sitting bowlegged. They couldn't straighten their legs if you paid
them because the muscles here, you see, he proceeded, indicating on his
companion the brief outline, the sinews, or whatever you like to call them,
behind the right knee, were utterly powerless from sitting that way so long
cramped up, being adored as gods. There's an example again of simple souls.
However, reverting to friend Sinbad and his horrifying adventures (who
reminded him a bit of Ludwig, alias Ledwidge, when he occupied the boards of
the Gaiety when Michael Gunn was identified with the management in the
Flying Dutchman, a stupendous success, and his host of admirers came in
large numbers, everyone simply flocking to hear him though ships of any
sort, phantom or the reverse, on the stage usually fell a bit flat as also
did trains), there was nothing intrinsically incompatible about it, he
conceded. On the contrary, that stab in the back touch was quite in keeping
with those Italianos, though candidly he was none the less free to admit
those ice creamers and friers in the fish way, not to mention the chip
potato variety and so forth, over in little Italy there, near the Coombe,
were sober thrifty hardworking fellows except perhaps a bit too given to
pothunting the harmless necessary animal of the feline persuasion of others
at night so as to have a good old succulent tuck in with garlic de rigueur
off him or her next day on the quiet and, he added, on the cheap.
-- Spaniards, for instance, he continued, passionate temperaments like
that, impetuous as Old Nick, are given to taking the law into their own
hands and give you your quietus double quick with those poignards they carry
in the abdomen. It comes from the great heat, climate generally. My wife is,
so to speak, Spanish, half, that is. Point of fact she could actually claim
Spanish nationality if she wanted, having been born in (technically) Spain,
i.e. Gibraltar. She has the Spanish type. Quite dark, regular brunette,
black. I, for one, certainly believe climate accounts for character. That's
why I asked you if you wrote your poetry in Italian.
-- The temperaments at the door, Stephen interposed with, were very
passionate about ten shillings. Roberto ruba roba sua.
-- Quite so, Mr Bloom dittoed.
-- Then, Stephen said, staring and rambling on to himself or some
unknown listener somewhere, we have the impetuosity of Dante and the
isosceles triangle, Miss Portinari, he fell in love with and Leonardo and
san Tommaso Mastino.
-- It's in the blood, Mr Bloom acceded at once. All are washed in the
blood of the sun. Coincidence, I just happened to be in the Kildare street
Museum today, shortly prior to our meeting, if I can so call it, and I was
just looking at those antique statues there. The splendid proportions of
hips, bosom. You simply don't knock against those kind of women here. An
exception here and there. Handsome, yes, pretty in a way you find, but what
I'm talking about is the female form. Besides, they have so little taste in
dress, most of them, which greatly enhances a woman's natural beauty, no
matter what you say. Rumpled stockings - it may be, possibly is, a foible of
mine, but still it's a thing I simply hate to see.
Interest, however, was starting to flag somewhat all round and the
others got on to talking about accidents at sea, ships lost in a fog,
collisions with icebergs, all that sort of thing. Shipahoy, of course, had
his own say to say. He had doubled the Cape a few odd times and weathered a
monsoon, a kind of wind, in the China seas and through all those perils of
the deep there was one thing, he declared, stood to him, or words to that
effect, a pious medal he had that saved him.
So then after that they drifted on to the wreck of Daunt's rock, wreck
of that illfated Norwegian barque - nobody could think of her name for the
moment till the jarvey who had really quite a look of Henry Campbell
remembered it, Palme, on Booterstown Strand, that was the talk of the town
that year (Albert William Quill wrote a fine piece of original verse of
distinctive merit on the topic for the Irish Times) breakers running over
her and crowds and crowds on the shore in commotion petrified with horror.
Then someone said something about the case of the s. s. Lady Cairns of
Swansea, run into by the Mona, which was on an Opposite tack, in rather
muggyish weather and lost with all hands on deck. No aid was given. Her
master, the Mona's, said he was afraid his collision bulkhead would give
way. She had no water, it appears, in her hold.
At this stage an incident happened. It having become necessary for him
to unfurl a reef, the sailor vacated his seat.
-- Let me cross your bows, mate, he said to his neighbour, who was just
gently dropping off into a peaceful dose.
He made tracks heavily, slowly, with a dumpy sort of a gait to the
door, stepped heavily down the one step there was out of the shelter and
bore due left. While he was in the act of getting his bearings, Mr Bloom,
who noticed when he stood up that he had two flasks of presumably ship's rum
sticking one out of each pocket for the private consumption of his burning
interior, saw him produce a bottle and uncork it, or unscrew, and, applying
its nozzle to his lips, take a good old delectable swig out of it with a
gurgling noise. The irrepressible Bloom, who also had a shrewd suspicion
that the old stager went out on a manoeuvre after the counterattraction in
the shape of a female, who, however, had disappeared to all intents and
purposes, could, by straining, just perceive him, when duly refreshed by his
rum puncheon exploit, gazing up at the piers and girders of the Loop Line,
rather out of his depth, as of course it was all radically altered since his
last visit and greatly improved. Some person or persons invisible directed
him to the male urinal erected by the cleansing committee all over the place
for the purpose but, after a brief space of time during which silence
reigned supreme, the sailor, evidently giving it a wide berth, eased himself
close at hand, the noise of his bilge-water some little time subsequently
splashing on the ground where it apparently woke a horse of the cabrank.
A hoof scooped anyway for new foothold after sleep and harness jingled.
Slightly disturbed in his sentrybox by the brasier of live coke, the watcher
of the corporation, who, though now broken down and fast breaking up, was
none other in stern reality than the Gumley aforesaid, now practically on
the parish rates, given the temporary job by Pat Tobin in all human
probability, from dictates of humanity, knowing him before - shifted about
and shuffled in his box before composing his limbs again in the arms of
Morpheus. A truly amazing piece of hard times in its most virulent form on a
fellow most respectably connected and familiarised with decent home comforts
all his life who came in for a cool #100 a year at one time which of course
the double-barrelled ass proceeded to make general ducks and drakes of. And
there he was at the end of his tether after having often painted the town
tolerably pink, without a beggarly stiver. He drank, needless to be told,
and it pointed only once more a moral when he might quite easily be in a
large way of business if - a big if, however - he had contrived to cure
himself of his particular partiality.
All, meantime, were loudly lamenting the falling off in Irish shipping,
coastwise and foreign as well, which was all part and parcel of the same
thing. A Palgrave Murphy boat was put off the ways at Alexandra Basin, the
only launch that year. Right enough the harbours were there only no ships
ever called.
There were wrecks and wrecks, the keeper said, who was evidently au
fait.
What he wanted to ascertain was why that ship ran bang against the only
rock in Galway Bay when the Galway Harbour scheme was mooted by a Mr
Worthington or some name like that, eh? Ask her captain, he advised them,
how much palmoil the British Government gave him for that day's work.
Captain John Lever of the Lever line.
-- Am I right, skipper? he queried of the sailor now returning after
his private potation and the rest of his exertions.
That worthy, picking up the scent of the fagend of the song or words,
growled in wouldbe music, but with great vim, some Kind of chanty or other
in seconds or thirds. Mr Bloom's sharp ears heard him then expectorate the
plug probably (which it was), so that he must have lodged it for the time
being in his fist while he did the drinking and making water jobs and found
it a bit sour after the liquid fire in question. Anyhow in he rolled after
his successful libation-cum-potation, introducing an atmosphere of drink
into the soirÉe, boisterously trolling, like a veritable son of a seacook:
-- The biscuits was as hard as brass,
And the beef as salt as Lot's wife's arse.
O Johnny Lever!
Johnny Lever, O!
After which effusion the redoubtable specimen duly arrived on the scene
and, regaining his seat, he sank rather than sat heavily on the form
provided.
Skin-the-Goat, assuming he was he, evidently with an axe to grind, was
airing his grievances in a forcible-feeble philippic anent the natural
resources of Ireland, or something of that sort, which he described in his
lengthy dissertation as the richest country bar none on the face of God's
earth, far and away superior to England, with coal in large quantities, six
million pounds' worth of pork exported every year, ten millions between
butter and eggs, and all the riches drained out of it by England levying
taxes on the poor people that paid through the nose always, and gobbling up
the best meat in the market, and a lot more surplus steam in the same vein.
Their conversation accordingly became general and all agreed that that was a
fact. You could grow any mortal thing in Irish soil, he stated, and there
was Colonel Everard down there in Cavan growing tobacco. Where would you
find anywhere the like of Irish bacon? But a day of reckoning, he stated
crescendo with no uncertain voice - thoroughly monopolising all the
conversation - was in store for mighty England, despite her power of pelf on
account of her crimes. There would be a fall and the greatest fall in
history. The Germans and the Japs were going to have their little lookin, he
affirmed. The Boers were the beginning of the end. Brummagem England was
toppling already and her downfall would be Ireland, her Achilles heel, which
he explained to them about the vulnerable point of Achilles, the Greek hero
- a point his auditors at once seized as he completely gripped their
attention by showing the tendon referred to on his boot. His advice to every
Irishman was: stay in the land of your birth and work for Ireland and live
for Ireland. Ireland, Parnell said, could not spare a single one of her
sons.
Silence all round marked the termination of his finale. The impervious
navigator heard these lurid tidings undismayed.
-- Take a bit of doing, boss, retaliated that rough diamond palpably a
bit peeved in response to the foregoing truism.
To which cold douche, referring to downfall and so on, the keeper
concurred but nevertheless held to his main view.
-- Who's the best troops in the army? the grizzled old veteran irately
interrogated. And the best jumpers and racers? And the best admirals and
generals we've got? Tell me that.
-- The Irish for choice, retorted the cabby like Campbell, facial
blemishes apart.
-- That's right, the old tarpaulin corroborated. The Irish catholic
peasant. He's the backbone of our empire. You know Jem Mullins?
While allowing him his individual opinions, as every man, the keeper
added he cared nothing for any empire, ours or his, and considered no
Irishman worthy of his salt that served it. Then they began to have a few
irascible words, when it waxed hotter, both, needless to say, appealing to
the listeners who followed the passage of arms with interest so long as they
didn't indulge in recriminations and come to blows.
>From inside information extending over a series of years Mr Bloom was
rather inclined to poohpooh the suggestion as egregious balderdash for,
pending that consummation devoutly to be or not to be wished for, he was
fully cognisant of the fact that their neighbours across the channel, unless
they were much bigger fools than he took them for, rather concealed their
strength than the opposite. It was quite on a par with the quixotic idea in
certain quarters that in a hundred million years the coal seam of the sister
island would be played out and if, as time went On, that turned Out to be
how the cat jumped all he could personally say on the matter was that as a
host of contingencies, equally relevant to the issue, might occur ere then
it was highly advisable in the interim to try to make the most of both
countries, even though poles apart. Another little interesting point, the
amours of whores and chummies, to put it in common parlance, reminded him
Irish soldiers had as often fought for England as against her, more so, in
fact. And now, why? So the scene between the pair of them, the licensee of
the place, rumoured to be or have been Fitzharris, the famous invincible,
and the other, obviously bogus, reminded him forcibly as being on all fours
with the confidence trick, supposing, that is, it was prearranged, as the
lookeron, a student of the human soul, if anything, the others seeing least
of the game. And as for the lessee or keeper, who probably wasn't the other
person at all, he (Bloom) couldn't help feeling, and most properly, it was
better to give people like that the goby unless you were a blithering idiot
altogether and refuse to have anything to do with them as a golden rule in
private life and their felonsetting, there always being the offchance of a
Dannyman coming forward and turning queen's evidence - or king's now - like
Denis or Peter Carey, an idea he utterly repudiated. Quite apart from that,
he disliked those careers of wrongdoing and crime on principle. Yet, though
such criminal propensities had never been an inmate of his bosom in any
shape or form, he certainly did feel, and no denying it (while inwardly
remaining what he was), a certain kind of admiration for a man who had
actually brandished a knife, cold steel, with the courage of his political
convictions though, personally, he would never be a party to any such thing,
off the same bat as those love vendettas of the south - have her or swing
for her - when the husband frequently, after some words passed between the
two concerning her relations with the other lucky mortal (the man having had
the pair watched), inflicted fatal injuries on
his adored one as a result of an alternative postnuptial liaison by
plunging his knife into her until it just struck him that Fitz, nicknamed
Skin-the-Goat, merely drove the car for the actual perpetrators of the
outrage and so was not, if he was reliably informed, actually party to the
ambush which, in point of fact, was the plea some legal luminary saved his
skin on. In any case that was very ancient history by now and as for our
friend, the pseudo Skin-the-etcetera, he had transparently outlived his
welcome. He ought to have either died naturally or on the scaffold high.
Like actresses, always farewell - positively last performance then come up
smiling again. Generous to a fault, of course, temperamental, no economising
or any idea of the sort, always snapping at the bone for the shadow. So
similarly he had a very shrewd suspicion that Mr Johnny Lever got rid of
some #. s. d. in the course of his perambulations round the docks in the
congenial atmosphere of the Old Ireland tavern, come back to Erin and so on.
Then as for the others, he had heard not so long before the same identical
lingo, as he told Stephen how he simply but effectually silenced the
offender.
He took umbrage at something or other, that much injured but on the
whole eventempered person declared, I let slip. He called me a jew, and in a
heated fashion, offensively. So I, without deviating from plain facts in the
least, told him his God, I mean Christ, was a jew too, and all his family,
like me, though in reality I'm not. That was one for him. A soft answer
turns away wrath. He hadn't a word to say for himself as everyone saw. Am I
not right?
He turned a long you are wrong gaze on Stephen of timorous dark pride
at the soft impeachment, with a glance also of entreaty for he seemed to
glean in a kind of a way that it wasn't all exactly .
-- Ex quibus, Stephen mumbled in a noncommittal accent, their two or
four eyes conversing, Christus or Bloom his name is, or, after all, any
other, secundum carnem.
-- Of course, Mr Bloom proceeded to stipulate, you must look at both
sides of the question. It is hard to lay down any hard and fast rules as to
right and wrong but room for improvement all round there certainly is though
every country, they say, our own distressful included, has the government it
deserves. But with a little goodwill all round. It's all very fine to boast
of mutual superiority but what about mutual equality? I resent violence or
intolerance in any shape or form. It never reaches anything or stops
anything. A revolution must come on the due instalments plan. It's a patent
absurdity on the face of it to hate people because they live round the
corner and speak another vernacular, so to speak.
-- Memorable bloody bridge battle and seven minutes' war, Stephen
assented, between Skinner's alley and Ormond market.
-- Yes, Mr Bloom thoroughly agreed, entirely endorsing the remark, that
was overwhelmingly right and the whole world was overwhelmingly full of that
sort of thing.
-- You just took the words out of my mouth, he said. A hocuspocus of
conflicting evidence that candidly you couldn't remotely.
All those wretched quarrels, in his humble opinion, stirring up bad
blood - bump of combativeness or gland of some kind, erroneously supposed to
be about a punctilio of honour and a flag - were very largely a question of
the money question which was at the back of everything, greed and jealousy,
people never knowing when to stop.
-- They accuse - remarked he audibly. He turned away from the others,
who probably... and spoke nearer to, so as the others... in case they...
-- Jews, he softly imparted in an aside in Stephen's ear, are accused
of ruining. Not a vestige of truth in it, I can safely say. History - would
you be surprised to learn? - proves up to' the hilt Spain decayed when the
Inquisition hounded the jews out and England prospered when Cromwell, an
uncommonly able ruffian, who, in other respects, has much to answer for,
imported them. Why? Because they are practical and are proved to be so. I
don't want to indulge in any... because you know the standard works on the
subject, and then, orthodox as you are... But in the economic, not touching
religion, domain, the priest spells poverty. Spain again, you saw in the
war, compared with goahead America. Turks, it's in the dogma. Because if
they didn't believe they'd go straight to heaven when they die they'd try to
live better - at least, so I think. That's the juggle on which the p.p.'s
raise the wind on false pretences. I'm, he resumed, with dramatic force, as
good an Irishman as that rude person I told you about at the outset and I
want to see everyone, concluded he, all creeds and classes pro rata having a
comfortable tidysized income, in no niggard fashion either, something in the
neighbourhood of #300 per annum That's the vital issue at stake and it's
feasible and would be provocative of friendlier intercourse between man and
man. At least that's my idea for what it's worth. I call that patriotism.
Ubi patria, as we learned a small smattering of in our classical day in Alma
Mater, vita bene. Where you can live well, the sense is, if you work.
Over his untasteable apology for a cup of coffee, listening to this
synopsis of things in general, Stephen stared at nothing in particular. He
could hear, of course, all kinds of words changing colour like those crabs
about Ringsend in the morning, burrowing quickly into all colours of
different sorts of the same sand where they had a home somewhere beneath or
seemed to. Then he looked up and saw the eyes that said or didn't say the
words the voice he heard said - if you work.
-- Count me out, he managed to remark, meaning to work.
The eyes were surprised at this observation, because as he, the person
who owned them pro. tem. observed, or rather, his voice speaking did: All
must work, have to, together.
-- I mean, of course, the other hastened to affirm, work in the widest
possible sense. Also literary labour, not merely for the kudos of the thing.
Writing for the newspapers which is the readiest channel nowadays. That's
work too. Important work. After all, from the little I know of you, after
all the money expended on your education, you are entitled to recoup
yourself and command your price. You have every bit as much right to live by
your pen in pursuit of your philosophy as the peasant has. What? You both
belong to Ireland, the brain and the brawn. Each is equally important.
-- You suspect, Stephen retorted with a sort of a half laugh, that I
may be important because I belong to the faubourg Saint Patrice called
Ireland for short.
-- I would go a step farther, Mr Bloom insinuated.
-- But I suspect, Stephen interrupted, that Ireland must be important
because it belongs to me.
-- What belongs? queried Mr Bloom, bending, fancying he was perhaps
under some misapprehension. Excuse me. Unfortunately I didn't catch the
latter portion. What was it you?...
Stephen, patently crosstempered, repeated and shoved aside his mug of
coffee, Or whatever you like to call it, none too politely, adding:
-- We can't change the country. Let us change the subject.
At this pertinent suggestion, Mr Bloom, to change the subject, looked
down, but in a quandary, as he couldn't tell exactly what construction to
put on belongs to which sounded rather a far cry. The rebuke of some kind
was clearer than the other part. Needless to say, the fumes of his recent
orgy spoke then with some asperity in a curious bitter way, foreign to his
sober state. Probably the home life, to which Mr Bloom attached the utmost
importance, had not been all that was needful or he hadn't been familiarised
with the right sort of people. With a touch of fear for the young man beside
him, whom he furtively scrutinised with an air of some consternation
remembering he had just come back from Paris, the eyes more especially
reminding him forcibly of father and sister, failing to throw much light on
the subject, however, he brought to mind instances of cultured fellows that
promised so brilliantly, nipped in the bud of premature decay, and nobody to
blame but themselves. For instance, there was the case of O'Callaghan, for
one, the half crazy faddist, respectably connected, though of inadequate
means, with his mad vagaries, among whose other gay doings when rotto and
making himself a nuisance to everybody all round he was in the habit of
ostentatiously sporting in public a suit of brown paper (a fact). And then
the usual dÉnouement after the fun had gone on fast and furious he got
landed into hot water and had to be spirited away by a few friends, after a
strong hint to a blind horse from John Mallon of Lower Castle Yard, so as
not to be made amenable under section two of the Criminal Law Amendment Act,
certain names of those subpoenaed being handed in but not divulged, for
reasons which will occur to anyone with a pick of brains. Briefly, putting
two and two together, six sixteen, which he pointedly turned a deaf ear to,
Antonio and so forth, jockeys and esthetes and the tattoo which was all the
go in the seventies or thereabouts, even In the House of Lords, because
early in life the occupant of the throne, then heir apparent, the other
members of the upper ten and other high personages simply following in the
footsteps of the head of the state, he reflected about the errors of
notorieties and crowned heads running counter to morality such as the
Cornwall case a number of years before under their veneer in a way scarcely
intended by nature, a thing good Mrs Grundy as the law stands was terribly
down on, though not for the reason they thought they were probably, whatever
it was, except women chiefly, who were always fiddling more or less at one
another, it being largely a matter of dress and all the rest of it. Ladies
who like distinctive underclothing should, and every well tailored man must,
trying to make the gap wider between them by innuendo and give more of a
genuine fillip to acts of impropriety between the two, she unbuttoned his
and then he untied her, mind the pin, whereas savages in the cannibal
islands, say, at ninety degrees in the shade not caring a continental.
However, reverting to the original, there were on the other hand others who
had forced their way to the top from the lowest rung by the aid of their
bootstraps. Sheer force of natural genius, that. With brains, sir.
For which and further reasons he felt it was interest and duty even to
wait on and profit by the unlooked for occasion, though why, he could not
exactly tell, being, as it was, already several shillings to the bad,
having, in fact, let himself in for it. Still, to cultivate the acquaintance
of someone of no uncommon calibre who could provide food for reflection
would amply repay any small... Intellectual stimulation as such was, he
felt, from time to time a firstrate tonic for the mind. Added to which was
the coincidence of meeting, discussion, dance, row, old salt, of the here
today and gone tomorrow type, night loafers, the whole galaxy of events, all
went to make up a miniature cameo of the world we live in, especially as the
lives of the submerged tenth, viz., coalminers, divers, scavengers, etc.,
were very much under the microscope lately. To improve the shining hour he
wondered whether he might meet with anything approaching the same luck as Mr
Philip Beaufoy if taken down in writing. Suppose he were to pen something
out of the common groove (as he fully intended doing) at the rate of one
guinea per column, My Experiences, let us say, in a Cabman's Shelter.
The pink edition, extra sporting, of the Telegraph, tell a graphic lie,
lay, as luck would have it, beside his elbow and as he was just puzzling
again, far from satisfied, over a country belonging to him and the preceding
rebus the vessel came from Bridgwater and the postcard was addressed to A.
Boudin, find the captain's age, his eyes went aimlessly over the respective
captions which came under his special province, the allembracing give us
this day our daily press. First he got a bit of a start but it turned out to
be only something about somebody named H. du Boyes, agent for typewriters or
something like that. Great battle Tokio. Lovemaking in Irish #200 damages.
Gordon Bennett. Emigration swindle. Letter from His Grace William. Ascot
Throwaway recalls Derby of '92 when Captain Marshall's dark horse, Sir Hugo
, captured the blue riband at long odds. New York disaster, thousand lives
lost. Foot and Mouth. Funeral of the late Mr Patrick Dignam.
So to change the subject he read about Dignam, R.I.P., which, he
reflected, was anything but a gay sendoff.
-- This morning (Hynes put it in, of course), the remains of the late
Mr Patrick Dignam were removed from his residence, no 9 Newbridge Avenue,
Sandymount, for internment in Clasnevin. The deceased gentleman was a most
popular and genial personality in city life and his demise, after a brief
illness, came as great shock to citizens of all classes by whom he is deeply
regretted. The obsequies, at which many friends of the deceased were
present, were carried out (certainly Hynes wrote it with a nudge from Corny)
by Messrs. H. J. O'Neill & Son, 164 North Strand road. The mourners
included: Patk. Dignam (son), Bernard Corrigan (motherinlaw), John Henry
Menton, solr., Martin Cunningham, John Power eatondph 1/8 ador dorador
douradora (must be where he called Monks the dayfather about Keyes's ad),
Thomas Kernan, Simon Dedalus, Stephen Dedalus, B. A., Edward J. Lambert,
Cornelius Kelleher, Joseph M'C. Hynes, L. Boom, C. P. M'Coy, - M'Intosh, and
several others.
Nettled not a little by L. Boom (as it incorrectly stated) and the line
of bitched type, but tickled to death simultaneously by C. P. M'Coy and
Stephen Dedalus, B. A., who were conspicuous, needless to say, by their
total absence (to say nothing of M'Intosh), L. Boom pointed it out to his
companion B. A., engaged in stifling another yawn, half nervousness, not
forgetting the usual crop of nonsensical howlers of misprints.
-- Is that first epistle to the Hebrews, he asked, as soon as his
bottom jaw would let him, in? Text: open thy mouth and put thy foot in it.
-- It is, really, Mr Bloom said (though first he fancied he alluded to
the archbishop till he added about foot and mouth with which there could be
no possible connection) overjoyed to set his mind at rest and a bit
flabbergasted at Myles Crawford's after all managing the thing, there.
While the other was reading it on page two Boom (to give him for the
nonce his new misnomer) whiled away a few odd leisure moments in fits and
starts with the account of the third event at Ascot on page three, his
sidevalue 1,000 sovs., with 3,000 sovs. In specie added for entire colts and
fillies, Mr F. Alexander's Throwaway, b.h. by Rightaway, 5 yrs, 9 st 4 lbs,
Thrale (W. Lane) 1. Lord Howard de Walden's Zinfandel (M. Cannon) 2. Mr W.
Bass's Sceptre, 3. Betting 5 to 4 on Zinfandel, 20 to 1 Throwaway (off).
Throwaway and Zinfandel stood close order. It was anybody's race then the
rank outsider drew to the fore got long lead, beating lord Howard de
Walden's chestnut colt and Mr W. Bass's bay filly Sceptre on a 2 1/2 mile
course. Winner trained by Braine so that Lenehan's version of the business
was all pure buncombe. Secured the verdict cleverly by a length. 1,000
sovs., with 3,000 in specie. Also ran J. de Bremond's (French horse Bantam
Lyons was anxiously inquiring after not in yet but expected any minute)
Maximum II. Different ways of bringing off a coup. Lovemaking damages.
Though that halfbaked Lyons ran off at a tangent in his impetuosity to get
left. Of course, gambling eminently lent itself to that sort of thing
though, as the event turned out, the poor fool hadn't much reason to
congratulate himself on his pick, the forlorn hope. Guesswork it reduced
itself to eventually.
-- There was every indication they would arrive at that, Mr Bloom said.
-- Who? the other, whose hand by the way was hurt, said.
One morning you would open the paper, the cabman affirmed, and read,
Return of Parnell. He bet them what they liked. A Dublin fusilier was in
that shelter one night and said he saw him in South Africa. Pride it was
killed him. He ought to have done away with himself or lain low for a time
after Committee Room No. 15 until he was his old self again with no-one to
point a finger at him. Then they would all to a man have gone down on their
marrowbones to him to come back when he had recovered his senses. Dead he
wasn't. Simply absconded somewhere. The coffin they brought over was full of
stones. He changed his name to De Wet, the Boer general. He made a mistake
to fight the priests. And so forth and so on.
All the same Bloom (properly so dubbed) was rather surprised at their
memories for in nine cases out of ten it was a case of tarbarrels, and not
singly but in their thousands, and then complete oblivion because it was
twenty odd years. Highly unlikely, of course, there was even a shadow of
truth in the stories and, even supposing, he thought a return highly
inadvisable, all things considered. Something evidently riled them in his
death. Either he petered out too tamely of acute pneumonia just when his
various different political arrangements were nearing completion or whether
it transpired he owed his death to his having neglected to change his boots
and clothes after a wetting when a cold resulted and failing to consult a
specialist he being confined to his room till he eventually died of it amid
widespread regret before a fortnight was at an end or quite possibly they
wer