rightly. The chap that writes like
Synge.
Mr Best turned to him:
-- Haines missed you, he said. Did you meet him? He'll see you after at
the D. B. C. He's gone to Gill's to buy Hyde's Lovesongs of Connacht.
-- I came through the museum, Buck Mulligan said. Was he here?
-- The bard's fellowcountrymen, John Eglinton answered, are rather
tired perhaps of our brilliancies of theorising. I hear that an actress
played Hamlet for the fourhundredandeighth time last night in Dublin. Vining
held that the prince was a woman. Has no-one made him out to be an Irishman?
Judge Barton, I believe, is searching for some clues. He swears (His
Highness not His Lordship) by saint Patrick.
-- The most brilliant of all is that story of Wilde's, Mr Best said,
lifting his brilliant notebook. That Portrait of Mr W. H. where he proves
that the sonnets were written by a Willie Hughes, a man all hues.
-- For Willie Hughes, is it not? the quaker librarian asked.
Or Hughie Wills. Mr William Himself. W. H.: who am I?
-- I mean, for Willie Hughes, Mr Best said, amending his gloss easily.
Of course it's all paradox, don't you know, Hughes and hews and hues the
colour, but it's so typical the way he works it out. It's the very essence
of Wilde, don't you know. The light touch.
His glance touched their faces lightly as he smiled, a blond ephebe.
Tame essence of Wilde.
You're darned witty. Three drams of usquebaugh you drank with Dan
Deasy's ducats.
How much did I spend? O, a few shillings.
For a plump of pressmen. Humour wet and dry.
Wit. You would give your five wits for youth's proud livery he pranks
in. Lineaments of gratified desire.
There be many mo. Take her for me. In pairing time. Jove, a cool
ruttime send them. Yea, turtledove her.
Eve. Naked wheatbellied sin. A snake coils her, fang in's kiss.
-- Do you think it is only a paradox, the quaker librarian was asking.
The mocker is never taken seriously when he is most serious.
They talked seriously of mocker's seriousness.
Buck Mulligan's again heavy face eyed Stephen awhile. Then, his head
wagging, he came near, drew a folded telegram from his pocket. His mobile
lips read, smiling with new delight.
-- Telegram! he said. Wonderful inspiration! Telegram! A papal bull!
He sat on a corner of the unlit desk, reading aloud joyfully:
-- The sentimentalist is he who would enjoy without incurring the
immense debtorship for a thing done. Signed: Dedalus. Where did you launch
it from? The kips? No. College Green. Have you drunk the four quid? The aunt
is going to call on your unsubstantial father. Telegram! Malachi Mulligan,
the Ship, lower Abbey street. O, you peerless mummer! O, you priestified
kinchite!
Joyfully he thrust the message and envelope into a pocket but keened in
querulous brogue:
-- It's what I'm telling you, mister honey, it's queer and sick we
were, Haines and myself, the time himself brought it in. 'Twas murmur we did
for a gallus potion would rouse a friar, I'm thinking, and he limp with
leching. And we one hour and two hours and three hours in Connery's sitting
civil waiting for pints apiece.
He wailed!
-- And we to be there, mavrone, and you to be unbeknownst sending us
your conglomerations the way we to have our tongues out a yard long like the
drouthy clerics do be fainting for a pussful.
Stephen laughed. Quickly, warningfully Buck Mulligan bent down:
-- The tramper Synge is looking for you, he said, to murder you. He
heard you pissed on his halldoor in Glasthule. He's out in pampooties to
murder you.
-- Me! Stephen exclaimed. That was your contribution to literature.
Buck Mulligan gleefully bent back, laughing to the dark eavesdropping
ceiling.
-- Murder you! he laughed.
Harsh gargoyle face that warred against me over our mess of hash of
lights in rue Saint-AndrÉ-des-Arts. In words of words for words, palabras.
Oisin with Patrick. Faunman he met in Clamart woods, brandishing a
winebottle, C'est vendredi saint! Murthering Irish. His image, wandering, he
met. I mine. I met a fool i' the forest.
-- Mr Lyster, an attendant said from the door ajar.
-- ... in which everyone can find his own. So Mr Justice Madden in his
Diary of Master William Silence has found the hunting terms... Yes? What is
it?
-- There's a gentleman here, sir, the attendant said, coming forward
and offering a card. From the Freeman. He wants to see the files of the
Kilkenny People for last year.
-- Certainly, certainly, certainly. Is the gentleman?...
He took the eager card, glanced, not saw, laid down, unglanced, looked,
asked, creaked, asked:
-- Is he?... O there!
Brisk in a galliard he was off and out. In the daylit corridor he
talked with voluble pains of zeal, in duty bound, most fair, most kind, most
honest broadbrim.
-- This gentleman? Freeman's Journal? Kilkenny People? To be sure. Good
day, sir. Kilkenny... We have certainly...
A patient silhouette waited, listening.
-- All the leading provincial... Northern Whig, Cork Examiner
Enniscorthy Guardian, 1903... Will you please?... Evans, conduct this
gentleman... If you just follow the atten... Or please allow me... This
way... Please, sir...
Voluble, dutiful, he led the way to all the provincial papers, a bowing
dark figure following his hasty heels.
The door closed.
-- The sheeny! Buck Mulligan cried.
He jumped up and snatched the card.
-- What's his name? Ikey Moses? Bloom.
He rattled on.
-- Jehovah, collector of prepuces, is no more. I found him over in the
museum when I went to hail the foamborn Aphrodite. The Greek mouth that has
never been twisted in prayer. Every day we must do homage to her. Life of
life, thy lips enkindle.
Suddenly he turned to Stephen:
-- He knows you. He knows your old fellow. O, I fear me, he is Greeker
than the Greeks. His pale Galilean eyes were upon her mesial groove. Venus
Kallipyge. O, the thunder of those loins! The god pursuing the maiden hid.
We want to hear more, John Eglinton decided with Mr Best's approval. We
begin to be interested in Mrs S. Till now we had thought of her, if at all,
as a patient Griselda, a Penelope stayathome.
-- Antisthenes, pupil of Gorgias, Stephen said, took the palm of beauty
from Kyrios Menelaus' brooddam, Argive Helen, the wooden mare of Troy in
whom a score of heroes slept, and handed it to poor Penelope. Twenty years
he lived in London and, during part of that time, he drew a salary equal to
that of the lord chancellor of Ireland. His life was rich. His art, more
than the art of feudalism, as Walt Whitman called it, is the art of surfeit.
Hot herringpies, green mugs of sack, honeysauces, sugar of roses, marchpane,
gooseberried pigeons, ringocandies. Sir Walter Raleigh, when they arrested
him, had half a million francs on his back including a pair of fancy stays.
The gombeen woman Eliza Tudor had underlinen enough to vie with her of
Sheba. Twenty years he dallied there between conjugal love and its chaste
delights and scortatory love and its foul pleasures. You know Manningham's
story of the burgher's wife who bade Dick Burbage to her bed after she had
seen him in Richard III and how Shakespeare, overhearing, without more ado
about nothing, took the cow by the horns and, when Burbage came knocking at
the gate, answered from the capon's blankets: William the conqueror came
before Richard III. And the gay lakin, Mistress Fitten, mount and cry O, and
his dainty birdsnies, Lady Penelope Rich, a clean quality woman is suited
for a player, and the punks of the bankside, a penny a time.
Cours-la-Reine. Encore vingt sous. Nous ferons de petites cochonneries.
Minette? Tu veux?
-- The height of fine society. And sir William Davenant of Oxford's
mother with her cup of canary for every cockcanary.
Buck Mulligan, his pious eyes upturned, prayed:
-- Blessed Margaret Mary Anycock!
-- And Harry of six wives' daughter and other lady friends from
neighbour seats, as Lawn Tennyson, gentleman poet, sings. But all those
twenty years what do you suppose poor Penelope in Stratford was doing behind
the diamond panes?
Do and do. Thing done. In a rosery of Fetter Lane of Gerard, herbalist,
he walks, greyedauburn. An azured harebell like her veins. Lids of Juno's
eyes, violets. He walks. One life is all. One body. Do. But do. Afar, in a
reek of lust and squalor, hands are laid on whiteness.
Buck Mulligan rapped John Eglinton's desk sharply.
-- Whom do you suspect? he challenged.
-- Say that he is the spurned lover in the sonnets. Once spurned twice
spurned. But the court wanton spurned him for a lord, his dearmylove.
Love that dare not speak its name.
-- As an Englishman, you mean, John sturdy Eglinton put in, he loved a
lord.
Old wall where sudden lizards flash. At Charenton I watched them.
-- It seems so, Stephen said, when he wants to do for him, and for all
other and singular uneared wombs, the holy office an ostler does for the
stallion. Maybe, like Socrates, he had a midwife to mother as he had a shrew
to wife. But she, the giglot wanton, did not break a bedvow. Two deeds are
rank in that ghost's mind: a broken vow and the dullbrained yokel on whom
her favour has declined, deceased husband's brother. Sweet Ann I take it,
was hot in the blood. Once a wooer twice a wooer.
Stephen turned boldly in his chair.
-- The burden of proof is with you not with me, he said, frowning. If
you deny that in the fifth scene of Hamlet he has branded her with infamy,
tell me why there is no mention of her during the thirtyfour years between
the day she married him and the day she buried him. All those women saw
their men down and under: Mary, her goodman John, Ann, her poor
dear Willun, when he went and died on her, raging that he was the first
to go, Joan, her four brothers, Judith, her husband and all her sons, Susan,
her husband too, while Susan's daughter, Elizabeth, to use granddaddy's
words, wed her second, having killed her first.
O yes, mention there is. In the years when he was living richly in
royal London to pay a debt she had to borrow forty shillings from her
father's shepherd. Explain you then. Explain the swansong too wherein he has
commended her to posterity.
He faced their silence.
To whom thus Eglinton:
You mean the will.
That has been explained, I believe, by jurists.
She was entitled to her widow's dower
At common law. His legal knowledge was great
Our judges tell us.
Him Satan fleers,
Mocker:
And therefore he left out her name
>From the first draft but he did not leave out
The presents for his granddaughter, for his daughters,
For his sister, for his old cronies in Stratford
And in London. And therefore when he was urged,
As I believe, to name her
He left her his Secondbest
Bed.
Punkt
Leftherhis
Secondbest
Bestabed
Secabest
Leftabed.
Woa!
-- Pretty countryfolk had few chattels then, John Eglinton observed, as
they have still if our peasant plays are true to type.
-- He was a rich countrygentleman, Stephen said, with a coat of arms
and landed estate at Stratford and a house in Ireland yard, a capitalist
shareholder, a bill promoter, a tithefarmer. Why did he not leave her his
best bed if he wished her to snore away the rest of her nights in peace?
-- It is clear that there were two beds, a best and a secondbest, Mr
Secondbest Best said finely.
-- Separatio a mensa et a thalamo, bettered Buck Mulligan and was
smiled on.
-- Antiquity mentions famous beds, Second Eglinton puckered,
bedsmiling. Let me think.
-- Antiquity mentions that Stagyrite schoolurchin and bald heathen
sage, Stephen said, who when dying in exile frees and endows his slaves,
pays tribute to his elders, wills to be laid in earth near the bones of his
dead wife and bids his friends be kind to an old mistress (don't forget Nell
Gwynn Herpyllis) and let her live in his villa.
-- Do you mean he died so? Mr Best asked with slight concern. I mean...
-- He died dead drunk, Buck Mulligan capped. A quart of ale is a dish
for a king. O, I must tell you what Dowden said!
-- What? asked Besteglinton.
William Shakespeare and company, limited. The people's William. For
terms apply: E. Dowden, Highfield house...
-- Lovely! Buck Mulligan suspired amorously. I asked him what he
thought of the charge of pederasty brought against the bard. He lifted his
hands and said: All we can say is that life ran very high in those days.
Lovely!
Catamite.
-- The sense of beauty leads us astray, said beautifulinsadness Best to
ugling Eglinton.
Steadfast John replied severe:
-- The doctor can tell us what those words mean. You can not eat your
cake and have it.
Sayest thou so? Will they wrest from us, from me the palm of beauty?
-- And the sense of property, Stephen said. He drew Shylock out of his
own long pocket. The son of a maltjobber and moneylender he was himself a
cornjobber and moneylender with ten tods of corn hoarded in the famine
riots. His borrowers are no doubt those divers of worship mentioned by
Chettle Falstaff who reported his uprightness of dealing. He sued a
fellowplayer for the price of a few bags of malt and exacted his pound of
flesh in interest for every money lent. How else could Aubrey's ostler and
callboy get rich quick? All events brought grist to his mill. Shylock chimes
with the jewbaiting that followed the hanging and quartering of the queen's
leech Lopez, his jew's heart being plucked forth while the sheeny was yet
alive: Hamlet and Macbeth with the coming to the throne of a Scotch
philosophaster with a turn for witchroasting. The lost armada is his jeer in
Love's Labour Lost. His pageants, the histories, sail fullbellied on a tide
of Mafeking enthusiasm. Warwickshire jesuits are tried and we have a
porter's theory of equivocation. The Sea Venture comes home from Bermudas
and the play Renan admired is written with Patsy Caliban, our American
cousin. The sugared sonnets follow Sidney's. As for fay Elizabeth, otherwise
carroty Bess, the gross virgin who inspired The Merry Wives of Windsor, let
some meinherr from Almany grope his life long for deephid meanings in the
depth of the buckbasket.
I think you're getting on very nicely. Just mix up a mixture of
theolologicophilolological. Mingo, minxi, mictum, mingere.
-- Prove that he was a jew, John Eglinton dared, expectantly. Your dean
of studies holds he was a holy Roman.
Sufflaminandus sum.
-- He was made in Germany, Stephen replied, as the champion French
polisher of Italian scandals.
-- A myriadminded man, Mr Best reminded. Coleridge called him
myriadminded.
Amplius. In societate humana hoc est maxime necessarium ut sit amicitia
inter multos.
-- Saint Thomas, Stephen began...
-- Ora pro nobis, Monk Mulligan groaned, sinking to a chair.
There he keened a wailing rune.
-- Pogue mahone! Asushla machree! It's destroyed we are from this day!
It's destroyed we are surely!
All smiled their smiles.
-- Saint Thomas, Stephen, smiling, said, whose gorbellied works I enjoy
reading in the original, writing of incest from a standpoint different from
that of the new Viennese school Mr Magee spoke of, likens it in his wise and
curious way to an avarice of the emotions. He means that the love so given
to one near in blood is covetously withheld from some stranger who, it may
be, hungers for it. Jews, whom christians tax with avarice, are of all races
the most given to inter-marriage. Accusations are made in anger. The
christian laws which built up the hoards of the jews (for whom, as for the
lollards, storm was shelter) bound their affections too with hoops of steel.
Whether these be sins or virtues old Nobodaddy will tell us at doomsday
leet. But a man who holds so tightly to what he calls his rights over what
he calls his debts will hold tightly also to what he calls his rights over
her whom he calls his wife. No sir smile neighbour shall covet his ox or his
wife or his manservant or his maidservant or his jackass.
-- Or his jennyass, Buck Mulligan antiphoned.
-- Gentle Will is being roughly handled, gentle Mr Best said gently.
-- Which Will? gagged sweetly Buck Mulligan. We are getting mixed.
-- The will to live, John Eglinton philosophised, for poor Ann, Will's
widow, is the will to die.
-- Requiescat! Stephen prayed.
What of all the will to do?
It has vanished long ago...
-- She lies laid out in stark stiffness in that secondbest bed, the
mobled queen, even though you prove that a bed in those days was as rare as
a motor car is now and that its carvings were the wonder of seven parishes.
In old age she takes up with gospellers (one stayed at New Place and drank a
quart of sack the town paid for but in which bed he slept it skills not to
ask) and heard she had a soul. She read or had read to her his chapbooks
preferring them to the Merry Wives and, loosing her nightly waters on the
jordan, she thought over Hooks and Eyes for Believers' Breeches and The most
Spiritual Snuffbox to Make the Most Devout Souls Sneeze. Venus had twisted
her lips in prayer. Agenbite of inwit: remorse of conscience. It is an age
of exhausted whoredom groping for its god.
-- History shows that to be true, inquit Eglintonus Chronolologos. The
ages succeed one another. But we have it on high authority that a man's
worst enemies shall be those of his own house and family. I feel that
Russell is right. What do we care for his wife and father? I should say that
only family poets have family lives. Falstaff was not a family man. I feel
that the fat knight is his supreme creation.
Lean, he lay back. Shy, deny thy kindred, the unco guid. Shy supping
with the godless, he sneaks the cup. A sire in Ultonian Antrim bade it him.
Visits him here on quarter days. Mr Magee, sir, there's a gentleman to see
you. Me? Says he's your father, sir. Give me my Wordsworth. Enter Magee Mor
Matthew, a rugged rough rugheaded kern, in strossers with a buttoned
codpiece, his nether stocks bemired with clauber of ten forests, a wand of
wilding in his hand.
Your own? He knows your old fellow. The widower.
Hurrying to her squalid deathlair from gay Paris on the quayside I
touched his hand. The voice, new warmth, speaking. Dr Bob Kenny is attending
her. The eyes that wish me well. But do not know me.
-- A father, Stephen said, battling against hopelessness, is a
necessary evil. He wrote the play in the months that followed his father's
death. If you hold that he, a greying man with two marriageable daughters,
with thirtyfive years of life, nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita, with
fifty of experience, is the beardless undergraduate from Wittenberg then you
must hold that his seventyyear old mother is the lustful queen. No. The
corpse of John Shakespeare does not walk the night. From hour to hour it
rots and rots. He rests, disarmed of fatherhood, having devised that
mystical estate upon his son. Boccaccio's Calandrino was the first and last
man who felt himself with child. Fatherhood, in the sense of conscious
begetting, is unknown to man. It is a mystical estate, an apostolic
succession, from only begetter to only begotten. On that mystery and not on
the madonna which the cunning Italian intellect flung to the mob of Europe
the church is founded and founded irremovably because founded, like the
world, macro- and microcosm, upon the void. Upon incertitude, upon
unlikelihood. Amor matris, subjective and objective genitive, may be the
only true thing in life. Paternity may be a legal fiction. Who is the father
of any son that any son should love him or he any son?
What the hell are you driving at?
I know. Shut up. Blast you! I have reasons.
Amplius. Adhuc. Iterum. Postea.
Are you condemned to do this?
-- They are sundered by a bodily shame so steadfast that the criminal
annals of the world, stained with all other incests and bestialities, hardly
record its breach. Sons with mothers, sires with daughters, lesbic sisters,
loves that dare not speak their name, nephews with grandmothers, jailbirds
with keyholes, queens with prize bulls. The sun unborn mars beauty: born, he
brings pain, divides affection, increases care. He is a male: his growth is
his father's decline, his youth his father's envy, his friend his father's
enemy.
In rue Monsieur-le-Prince I thought it.
-- What links them in nature? An instant of blind rut. Am I father? If
I were?
Shrunken uncertain hand.
-- Sabellius, the African, subtlest heresiarch of all the beasts of the
field, held that the Father was Himself His Own Son. The bulldog of Aquin,
with whom no word shall be impossible, refutes him. Well: if the father who
has not a son be not a father can the son who has not a father be a son?
When Rutlandbaconsouthamptonshakespeare or another poet of the same name in
the comedy of errors wrote Hamlet he was not the father of his own son
merely but, being no more a son, he was and felt himself the father of all
his race, the father of his own grandfather, the father of his unborn
grandson who, by the same token, never was born for nature, as Mr Magee
understands her, abhors perfection.
Eglintoneyes, quick with pleasure, looked up shybrightly. Gladly
glancing, a merry puritan, through the twisted eglantine.
Flatter. Rarely. But Flatter.
-- Himself his own father, Sonmulligan told himself. Wait. I am big
with child. I have an unborn child in my brain. Pallas Athena! A play! The
play's the thing! Let me parturiate!
He clasped his paunchbrow with both birthaiding hands.
-- As for his family, Stephen said, his mother's name lives in the
forest of Arden. Her death brought from him the scene with Volumnia in
Coriolanus. His boyson's death is the deathscene of young Arthur in King
John. Hamlet, the black prince, is Hamnet Shakespeare. Who the girls in The
Tempest, in Pericles, in Winter's Tale are we know. Who Cleopatra, fleshpot
of Egypt, and Cressid and Venus are we may guess. But there is another
member of his family who is recorded.
-- The plot thickens, John Eglinton said.
The quaker librarian, quaking, tiptoed in, quake, his mask, quake, with
haste, quake, quack.
Door closed. Cell. Day.
They list. Three. They.
I you he they.
Come, mess.
STEPHEN He had three brothers, Gilbert, Edmund, Richard. Gilbert in his
old age told some cavaliers he got a pass for nowt from Maister Gatherer one
time mass he did and he seen his brud Maister Wull the playwriter up in
Lunnon in a wrastling play wud a man on's back. The playhouse sausage filled
Gilbert's soul. He is nowhere: but an Edmund and a Richard are recorded in
the works of sweet William.
MAGEEGLINJOHN Names! What's in a name?
BEST That is my name, Richard, don't you know. I hope you are going to
say a good word for Richard, don't you know, for my sake.
(Laughter.)
BUCK MULLIGAN (Piano, diminuendo.)
Then outspoke medical Dick
To his comrade medical Davy...
STEPHEN In his trinity of black Wills, the villain shakebags, Iago,
Richard Crookback, Edmund in King Lear, two bear the wicked uncles' names.
Nay, that last play was written or being written while his brother Edmund
lay dying in Southwark.
BEST I hope Edmund is going to catch it. I don't want Richard, my name.
(Laughter.)
QUAKERLYSTER (A tempo.) But he that filches from me my good name...
STEPHEN (Stringendo.) He has hidden his own name, a fair name, William,
in the plays, a super here, a clown there, as a painter of old Italy set his
face in a dark corner of his canvas. He has revealed it in the sonnets where
there is Will in overplus. Like John O'Gaunt his name is dear to him, as
dear as the coat of arms he toadied for, on a bend sable a spear or steeled
argent, honorificabilitudinitatibus, dearer than his glory of greatest
shakescene in the country. What's in a name? That is what we ask ourselves
in childhood when we write the name that we are told is ours. A star, a
daystar, a firedrake rose at his birth. It shone by day in the heavens
alone, brighter than Venus in the night, and by night it shone over delta in
Cassiopeia, the recumbent constellation which is the signature of his
initial among the stars. His eyes watched it, lowlying on the horizon,
eastward of the bear, as he walked by the slumberous summer fields at
midnight, returning from Shottery and from her arms.
Both satisfied. I too.
Don't tell them he was nine years old when it was quenched.
And from her arms.
Wait to be wooed and won. Ay, meacock. Who will woo you?
Read the skies. Autontimerumenos. Bonus Stephanoumenos. Where's your
configuration? Stephen, Stephen, cut the bread even. S. D.: sua donna. GiÀ:
di lui. Gelindo risolve di non amar. S. D.
-- What is that, Mr Dedalus? the quaker librarian asked. Was it a
celestial phenomenon?
-- A star by night, Stephen said, a pillar of the cloud by day.
What more's to speak?
Stephen looked on his hat, his stick, his boots.
Stephanos, my crown. My sword. His boots are spoiling the shape of my
feet. Buy a pair. Holes in my socks. Handkerchief too.
-- You make good use of the name, John Eglinton allowed. Your own name
is strange enough. I suppose it explains your fantastical humour.
Me, Magee and Mulligan.
Fabulous artificer, the hawklike man. You flew. Whereto?
Newhaven-Dieppe, steerage passenger. Paris and back. Lapwing. Icarus. Pater,
ait. Seabedabbled, fallen, weltering. Lapwing you are. Lapwing he.
Mr Best's eagerquietly lifted his book to say:
-- That's very interesting because that brother motive, don't you know,
we find also in the old Irish myths. Just what you say. The three brothers
Shakespeare. In Grimm too, don't you know, the fairytales. The third brother
that marries the sleeping beauty and wins the best prize.
Best of Best brothers. Good, better, best.
The quaker librarian springhalted near.
-- I should like to know, he said, which brother you... I understand
you to suggest there was misconduct with one of the brothers... But perhaps
I am anticipating?
He caught himself in the act: looked at all: refrained.
An attendant from the doorway called:
-- Mr Lyster! Father Dineen wants...
-- O! Father Dineen! Directly.
Swiftly rectly creaking rectly rectly he was rectly gone.
John Eglinton touched the foil.
-- Come, he said. Let us hear what you have to say of Richard and
Edmund. You kept them for the last, didn't you?
-- In asking you to remember those two noble kinsmen nuncle Richie and
nuncle Edmund, Stephen answered, I feel I am asking too much perhaps. A
brother is as easily forgotten as an umbrella.
Lapwing.
Where is your brother? Apothecaries' hall. My whetstone. Him, then
Cranly, Mulligan: now these. Speech, speech. But act. Act speech. They mock
to try you. Act. Be acted on.
Lapwing.
I am tired of my voice, the voice of Esau. My kingdom for a drink.
On.
-- You will say those names were already in the chronicles from which
he took the stuff of his plays. Why did he take them rather than others?
Richard, a whoreson crookback, misbegotten, makes love to a widowed Ann
(what's in a name?), woos and wins her, a whoreson merry widow. Richard the
conqueror, third brother, came after William the conquered. The other four
acts of that play hang limply from that first. Of all his kings Richard is
the only king unshielded by Shakespeare's reverence, the angel of the world.
Why is the underplot of King Lear in which Edmund figures lifted out of
Sidney's Arcadia and spatchcocked on to a Celtic legend older than history?
-- That was Will's way, John Eglinton defended. We should not now
combine a Norse saga with an excerpt from a novel by George Meredith. Que
voulez-vous? Moore would say. He puts Bohemia on the seacoast and makes
Ulysses quote Aristotle.
-- Why? Stephen answered himself. Because the theme of the false or the
usurping or the adulterous brother or all three in one is to Shakespeare,
what the poor is not, always with him. The note of banishment, banishment
from the heart, banishment from home, sounds uninterruptedly from The Two
Gentlemen of Verona onward till Prospero breaks his staff, buries it certain
fathoms in the earth and drowns his book. It doubles itself in the middle of
his life, reflects itself in another, repeats itself, protasis, epitasis,
catastasis, catastrophe. It repeats itself again when he is near the grave,
when his married daughter Susan, chip of the old block, is accused of
adultery. But it was the original sin that darkened his understanding,
weakened his will and left in him a strong inclination to evil. The words
are those of my lords bishops of Maynooth: an original sin and, like
original sin, committed by another in whose sin he too has sinned. It is
between the lines of his last written words, it is petrified on his
tombstone under which her four bones are not to be laid. Age has not
withered it. Beauty and peace have not done it away. It is in infinite
variety everywhere in the world he has created, in Much Ado about Nothing,
twice in As you like It, in The Tempest, in Hamlet, in Measure for Measure,
and in all the other plays which I have not read.
He laughed to free his mind from his mind's bondage. Judge Eglinton
summed up.
-- The truth is midway, he affirmed. He is the ghost and the prince. He
is all in all.
-- He is, Stephen said. The boy of act one is the mature man of act
five. All in all. In Cymbeline, in Othello he is bawd and cuckold. He acts
and is acted on. Lover of an ideal or a perversion, like JosÉ he kills the
real Carmen. His unremitting intellect is the hornmad Iago ceaselessly
willing that the moor in him shall suffer.
-- Cuckoo! Cuckoo! Cuck Mulligan clucked lewdly. O word of fear!
Dark dome received, reverbed.
-- And what a character is Iago! undaunted John Eglinton exclaimed.
When all is said Dumas fils (or is it Dumas pÈre?) is right. After God
Shakespeare has created most.
-- Man delights him not nor woman neither, Stephen said. He returns
after a life of absence to that spot of earth where he was born, where he
has always been, man and boy, a silent witness and there, his journey of
life ended, he plants his mulberrytree in the earth. Then dies. The motion
is ended. Gravediggers bury Hamlet pÉre and Hamlet fils. A king and a prince
at last in death, with incidental music. And, what though murdered and
betrayed, bewept by all frail tender hearts for, Dane or Dubliner, sorrow
for the dead is the only husband from whom they refuse to be divorced. If
you like the epilogue look long on it: prosperous Prospero, the good man
rewarded, Lizzie, grandpa's lump of love, and nuncle Richie, the bad man
taken off by poetic justice to the place where the bad niggers go. Strong
curtain. He found in the world without as actual what was in his world
within as possible. Maeterlinck says: If Socrates leave his house today he
will find the sage seated on his doorstep. If Judas go forth tonight it is
to Judas his steps will tend. Every life is many days, day after day. We
walk through ourselves, meeting robbers, ghosts, giants, old men, young men,
wives, widows, brothers-in-love. But always meeting ourselves. The
playwright who wrote the folio of this world and wrote it badly (He gave us
light first and the sun two days later), the lord of things as they are whom
the most Roman of catholics call dio boia, hangman god, is doubtless all in
all in all of us, ostler and butcher, and would be bawd and cuckold too but
that in the economy of heaven, foretold by Hamlet, there are no more
marriages, glorified man, an androgynous angel, being a wife unto himself.
-- Eureka! Buck Mulligan cried. Eureka!
Suddenly happied he jumped up and reached in a stride John Eglinton's
desk.
-- May I? he said. The Lord has spoken to Malachi.
He began to scribble on a slip of paper.
Take some slips from the counter going out.
-- Those who are married, Mr Best, douce herald, said, all save one,
shall live. The rest shall keep as they are.
He laughed, unmarried, at Eglinton Johannes, of arts a bachelor.
Unwed, unfancied, ware of wiles, they fingerponder nightly each his
variorum edition of The Taming of the Shrew.
-- You are a delusion, said roundly John Eglinton to Stephen. You have
brought us all this way to show us a French triangle. Do you believe your
own theory?
-- No, Stephen said promptly.
-- Are you going to write it? Mr Best asked. You ought to make it a
dialogue, don't you know, like the Platonic dialogues Wilde wrote.
John Eclecticon doubly smiled.
-- Well, in that case, he said, I don't see why you should expect
payment for it since you don't believe it yourself. Dowden believes there is
some mystery in Hamlet but will say no more. Herr Bleibtreu, the man Piper
met in Berlin, who is working up that Rutland theory, believes that the
secret is hidden in the Stratford monument. He is going to visit the present
duke, Piper says, and prove to him that his ancestor wrote the plays. It
will come as a surprise to his grace. But he believes his theory.
I believe, O Lord, help my unbelief. That is, help me to believe or
help me to unbelieve? Who helps to believe? Egomen. Who to unbelieve? Other
chap.
-- You are the only contributor to Dana who asks for pieces of silver.
Then I don't know about the next number. Fred Ryan wants space for an
article on economics.
Fraidrine. Two pieces of silver he lent me. Tide you over. Economics.
-- For a guinea, Stephen said, you can publish this interview.
Buck Mulligan stood up from his laughing scribbling, laughing: and then
gravely said, honeying malice:
-- I called upon the bard Kinch at his summer residence in upper
Mecklenburgh street and found him deep in the study of the Summa contra
Gentiles in the company of two gonorrheal ladies, Fresh Nelly and Rosalie,
the coalquay whore.
He broke away.
-- Come, Kinch. Come, wandering &Aelig;ngus of the birds.
Come, Kinch, you have eaten all we left. Ay, I will serve you your orts
and offals.
Stephen rose.
Life is many days. This will end.
-- We shall see you tonight, John Eglinton said. Notre ami Moore says
Malachi Mulligan must be there.
Buck Mulligan flaunted his slip and panama.
-- Monsieur Moore, he said, lecturer on French letters to the youth of
Ireland. I'll be there. Come, Kinch, the bards must drink. Can you walk
straight?
Laughing he...
Swill till eleven. Irish nights' entertainment.
Lubber...
Stephen followed a lubber...
One day in the national library we had a discussion. Shakes. After his
lub back I followed. I gall his kibe.
Stephen, greeting, then all amort, followed a lubber jester, a
wellkempt head, newbarbered, out of the vaulted cell into a shattering
daylight of no thoughts.
What have I learned? Of them? Of me?
Walk like Haines now.
The constant readers' room. In the readers' book Cashe Boyle O'Connor
Fitzmaurice Tisdall Farrell parafes his polysyllables. Item: was Hamlet mad?
The quaker's pate godlily with a priesteen in booktalk.
-- O please do, sir... I shall be most pleased...
Amused Buck Mulligan mused in pleasant murmur with himself,
selfnodding:
-- A pleased bottom.
The turnstile.
Is that?... Blueribboned hat... Idly writing... What? Looked?...
The curving balustrade; smoothsliding Mincius.
Puck Mulligan, panamahelmeted, went step by step, iambing, trolling:
John Eglinton, my jo, John.
Why won't you wed a wife?
He sputtered to the air:
O, the chinless Chinaman! Chin Chon Eg Lin Ton. We went over to their
playbox, Haines and I, the plumbers' hall. Our players are creating a new
art for Europe like the Greeks or M. Maeterlinck. Abbey theatre! I smell the
public sweat of monks.
He spat blank.
Forgot: any more than he forgot the whipping lousy Lucy gave him. And
left the femme de trente ans. And why no other children born? And his first
child a girl?
Afterwit. Go back.
The dour recluse still there (he has his cake) and the douce youngling,
minion of pleasure, Phedo's toyable fair hair.
Eh... I just eh... wanted... I forgot... he...
-- Longworth and M'Curdy Atkinson were there...
I hardly hear the purlieu cry
Or a Tommy talk as I pass one by
Before my thoughts begin to run
On F. M'Curdy Atkinson,
The same that had the wooden leg
And that filibustering fillibeg
That never dared to slake his drouth,
Magee that had the chinless mouth.
Being afraid to marry on earth
They masturbated for all they were worth.
Jest on. Know thyself.
Halted below me, a quizzer looks at me. I halt.
-- Mournful mummer, Buck Mulligan moaned. Synge has left off wearing
black to be like nature. Only crows, priests and English coal are black.
A laugh tripped over his lips.
-- Longworth is awfully sick, he said, after what you wrote about that
old hake Gregory. O you inquisitional drunken jew jesuit! She gets you a job
on the paper and then you go and slate her drivel to Jaysus. Couldn't you do
the Yeats touch?
He went on and down, mopping, chanting with waving graceful arms:
-- The most beautiful book that has come out of our country in my time.
One thinks of Homer.
He stopped at the stairfoot.
-- I have conceived a play for the mummers, he said solemnly.
The pillared Moorish hall, shadows entwined. Gone the nine men's
morrice with caps of indices.
In sweetly varying voices Buck Mulligan read his tablet:
Everyman His own Wife
or
A Honeymoon in the Hand
(a national immorality in three orgasms)
by
Ballocky Mulligan
He turned a happy patch's smirk to Stephen, saying:
-- The disguise, I fear, is thin. But listen.
He read, marcato:
-- Characters:
TOBY TOSTOFF (a ruined Pole)
CRAB (a bushranger)
MEDICAL DICK
and (two birds with one stone)
MEDICAL DAVY
MOTHER GROGAN (a watercarrier)
FRESH NELLY
and
ROSALIE (the coalquay whore)
He laughed, lolling a to and fro head, walking on, followed by Stephen:
and mirthfully he told the shadows, souls of men:
-- O, the night in the Camden hall when the daughters of Erin had to
lift their skirts to step over you as you lay in your mulberrycoloured,
multicoloured, multitudinous vomit!
-- The most innocent son of Erin, Stephen said, for whom they ever
lifted them.
About to pass through the doorway, feeling one behind, he stood aside.
Part. The moment is now. Where then? If Socrates leave his house today,
if Judas go forth tonight. Why? That lies in space which I in time must come
to, ineluctably.
My will: his will that fronts me. Seas between.
A man passed out between them, bowing, greeting.
-- Good day again, Buck Mulligan said.
The portico.
Here I watched the birds for augury. &Aelig;ngus of the birds. They go,
they come. Last night I flew. Easily flew. Men wandered. Street of harlots
after. A creamfruit melon he held to me. In. You will see.
-- The wandering jew, Buck Mulligan whispered with clown's awe. Did you
see his eye? He looked upon you to lust after you. I fear thee, ancient
mariner. O, Kinch, thou art in peril. Get thee a breechpad.
Manner of Oxenford.
Day. Wheelbarrow sun over arch of bridge.
A dark back went before them. Step of a pard, down, out by the gateway,
under portcullis barbs.
They followed.
Offend me still. Speak on.
Kind air defined the coigns of houses in Kildare street. No birds.
Frail from the housetops two plumes of smoke ascended, pluming, and in a
flaw of softness softly were blown.
Cease to strive. Peace of the druid priests of Cymbeline, hierophantic:
from wide earth an altar.
Laud we the gods
And let our crooked smokes climb to their nostrils
>From our bless'd altars.
Ulysses 10: Wandering Rocks
THE SUPERIOR, THE VERY REVEREND JOHN CONMEE S. J, RESET HIS smooth
watch in his interior pocket as he came down the presbytery steps. Five to
three. Just nice time to walk to Artane. What was that boy's name again?
Dignam, yes. Vere dignum et justum est. Brother Swan was the person to see.
Mr Cunningham's letter. Yes. Oblige him, if possible. Good practical
catholic: useful at mission time.
A onelegged sailor, swinging himself onward by lazy jerks of his
crutches, growled some notes. He jerked short before the convent of the
sisters of charity and held out a peaked cap for aims towards the very
reverend John Conmee S. J. Father Conmee blessed him in the sun for his
purse held, he knew, one silver crown.
Father Conmee crossed to Mountjoy square. He thought, but not for long,
of soldiers and sailors, whose legs had been shot off by cannonballs, ending
their days in some pauper ward, and of cardinal Wolsey's words: If I had
served my God as I have served my king He would not have abandoned me in my
old days. He walked by the treeshade of sunnywinking leaves and towards him
came the wife of Mr David Sheehy M. P.
-- Very well, indeed, father. And you father?
Father Conmee was wonderfully well indeed. He would go to Buxton
probably for the waters. And her boys, were they getting on well at
Belvedere? Was that so? Father Conmee was very glad indeed to hear that. And
Mr Sheehy himself? Still in London. The house was still sitting, to be sure
it was. Beautiful weather it was, delightful indeed. Yes, it was very
probable that Father Bernard Vaughan would come again to preach. O, yes: a
very great success. A wonderful man really.
Father Conmee was very glad to see the wife of Mr David Sheehy M. P.
looking so well and he begged to be remembered to Mr David Sheehy M. P. Yes,
he would certainly call.
-- Good afternoon, Mrs Sheehy.
Father Conmee doffed his silk hat, as he took leave, at the jet beads
of her mantilla inkshining in the sun. And smiled yet again in going. He had
cleaned his teeth, he knew, with arecanut paste.
Father Conmee walked and, walking, smiled for he thought on Father
Bernard Vaughan's droll eyes and cockney voice.
-- Pilate! Wy don't you old back that owlin mob?
A zealous man, however. Really he was. And really did great good in his
way. Beyond a doubt. He loved Ireland, he said, and he loved the Irish. Of
good family too would one think it? Welsh, were they not?
O, lest he forget. That letter to father provincial.
Father Conmee stopped three little schoolboys at the corner of Mountjoy
square. Yes: they were from Belvedere. The little house: Aha. And were they
good boys at school? O. That was very good now. And what was his name? Jack
Sohan. And his name? Ger. Gallaher. And the other little man? His name was
Brunny Lynam. O, that was a very nice name to have.
Father Conmee gave a letter from his breast to master Brunny Lynam and
pointed to the red pillarbox at the corner of Fitzgibbon street.
-- But mind you don't post yourself into the box, little man, he said.
The boys sixeyed Father Conmee and laughed.
-- O, sir.
-- Well, let me see if you can post a letter, Father Conmee said.
Master Brunny Lynam ran across the road and put Father Conmee's letter
to father provincial into the mouth of the bright red letterbox, Father
Conmee smiled and nodded and smiled and walked along Mountjoy square east.
Mr Denis J. Maginni, professor of dancing, &c., in silk hat, slate
frockcoat with silk facings, white kerchief tie, tight lavender trousers,
canary gloves and pointed patent boots, walking with grave deportment most
respectfully took the curbstone as he passed lady Maxwell at the corner of
Dignam's court.
Was that not Mrs M'Guinness?
Mrs M'Guinness, stately, silverhaired, bowed to Father Conmee from the
farther footpath along which she smiled. And Father Conmee smiled and
saluted. How did she do?
A fine carriage she had. Like Mary, queen of Scots, something. And to
think that she was a pawnbroker. Well, now! Such a... what should he say?...
such a queenly mien.
Father Conmee walked down Great Charles street and glanced at the
shutup free church on his left. The reverend T. R. Green B. A. will (D. V.)
speak. The incumbent they called him. He felt it incumbent on him to say a
few words. But one should be charitable. Invincible ignorance. They acted
according to their lights.
Father Conmee turned the corner and walked along the North Circular
road. It was a wonder that there was not a tramline in such an important
thoroughfare. Surely, there ought to be.
A band of satchelled schoolboys crossed from Richmond street. All
raised untidy caps. Father Conmee greeted them more than once benignly.
Christian brother boys.
Father Conmee smelled incense on his right hand as he walked. Saint
Joseph's church, Portland row. For aged and virtuous females. Father Conmee
raised his hat to the Blessed Sacrament. Virtuous: but occasionally they
were also badtempered.
Near Aldborough house Father Conmee thought of that spendthrift
nobleman. And now it was an office or something.
Father Conmee began to walk along the North Strand road and was saluted
by Mr William Gallagher who stood in the doorway of his shop. Father Conmee
saluted Mr William Gallagher and perceived the odours that came from
baconflitches and ample cools of butter. He passed Grogan's the tobacconist
against which newsboards leaned and told of a dreadful catastrophe in New
York. In America those things were continually happening. Unfortunate people
to die like that, unprepared. Still, an act of perfect contrition.
Father Conmee went by Daniel Bergin's publichouse against the window of
which two unlabouring men lounged. They saluted him and were saluted.
Father Conmee passed H. J. O'Neill's funeral establishment where Corny
Kelleher totted figures in the daybook while he chewed a blade of hay. A
constable on his beat saluted Father Conmee and Father Conmee saluted the
constable. In Youkstetter's, the pork-butcher's, Father Conmee observed
pig's puddings, white and black and red, lying neatly curled in tubes.
Moored under the trees of Charleville Mall Father Conmee saw a turf
barge, a towhorse with pendent head, a bargeman with a hat of dirty straw
seated amidships, smoking and staring at a branch of poplar above him. It
was idyllic: and Father Conmee reflected on the providence of the Creator
who had made turf to be in bogs where men might dig it out and bring it to
town and hamlet to make fires in the houses of poor people.
On Newcomen bridge the very reverend John Conmee S. J. of saint Francis
Xavier's church, upper Gardiner street, stepped on to an outward bound tram.
Off an inward bound tram stepped the reverend Nicholas Dudley C. C. of
saint Agatha's church, north William street, on to Newcomen bridge.
At Newcomen bridge Father Conmee stepped into an outward bound tram for
he disliked to traverse on foot the dingy way past Mud Island.
Father Conmee sat in a corner of the tramcar, a blue ticket tucked with
care in the eye of one plump kid glove, while four shillings, a sixpence and
five pennies chuted from his other plump glovepalm into his purse. Passing
the ivy church he reflected that the ticket inspector usually made his visit
when one had carelessly thrown away the ticket. The solemnity of the
occupants of the car seemed to Father Conmee excessive for a journey so
short and cheap. Father Conmee liked cheerful decorum.
It was a peaceful day. The gentleman with the glasses opposite Father
Conmee had finished explaining and looked down. His wife, Father Conmee
supposed. A tiny yawn opened the mouth of the wife of the gentleman with the
glasses. She raised her small gloved fist, yawned ever so gently, tiptapping
her small gloved fist on her opening mouth and smiled tinily, sweetly.
Father Conmee perceived her perfume in the car. He perceived also that
the awkward man at the other side of her was sitting on the edge of the
seat.
Father Conmee at the altarrails placed the host with difficulty in the
mouth of the awkward old man who had the shaky head.
At Annesley bridge the tram halted and, when it was about to go, an old
woman rose suddenly from her place to alight. The conductor pulled the
bellstrap to stay the car for her. She passed out with her basket and a
market net: and Father Conmee saw the conductor help her and net and basket
down: and Father Conmee thought that, as she had nearly passed the end of
the penny fare, she was one of those good souls who had always to be told
twice bless you, my child, that they have been absolved, pray for me. But
they had so many worries in life, so many cares, poor creatures.
>From the hoardings Mr Eugene Stratton grinned with thick niggerlips at
Father Conmee.
Father Conmee thought of the souls of black and brown and yellow men
and of his sermon of saint Peter Claver S. J. and the African mission and of
the propagation of the faith and of the millions of black and brown and
yellow souls that had not received the baptism of water when their last hour
came like a thief in the night. That book by the Belgian jesuit, Le Nombre
des élus, seemed to Father Conmee a reasonable plea. Those were millions of
human souls created by God in His Own likeness to whom the faith had not (D.
V.) been brought. But they were God's souls created by God. It seemed to
Father Conmee a pity that they should all be lost, a waste, if one might
say.
At the Howth road stop Father Conmee alighted, was saluted by the
conductor and saluted in his turn.
The Malahide road was quiet. It pleased Father Conmee, road and name.
The joybells were ringing in gay Malahide. Lord Talbot de Malahide,
immediate hereditary lord admiral of Malahide and the seas adjoining. Then
came the call to arms and she was maid, wife and widow in one day. Those
were oldworldish days, loyal times in joyous townlands, old times in the
barony.
Father Conmee, walking, thought of his little book Old Times in the
Barony and of the book that might be written about jesuit houses and of Mary
Rochfort, daughter of lord Molesworth, first countess of Belvedere.
A listless lady, no more young, walked alone the shore of lough Ennel,
Mary, first countess of Belvedere, listlessly walking in the evening, not
startled when an otter plunged. Who could know the truth? Not the jealous
lord Belvedere and not her confessor if she had not committed adultery
fully, eiaculatio seminis inter vas naturale mulieris, with her husband's
brother? She would half confess if she had not all sinned as women did. Only
God knew and she and he, her husband's brother.
Father Conmee thought of that tyrannous incontinence, needed however
for men's race on earth, and of the ways of God which were not our ways.
Don John Conmee walked and moved in times of yore. He was humane and
honoured there. He bore in mind secrets confessed and he smiled at smiling
noble faces in a beeswaxed drawingroom, ceiled with full fruit clusters. And
the hands of a bride and of a bridegroom, noble to noble, were impalmed by
don John Conmee.
It was a charming day.
The lychgate of a field showed Father Conmee breadths of cabbages,
curtseying to him with ample underleaves. The sky showed him a flock of
small white clouds going slowly down the wind. Moutonner, the French said. A
homely and just word.
Father Conmee, reading his office, watched a flock of muttoning clouds
over Rathcoffey. His thinsocked ankles were tickled by the stubble of
Clongowes field. He walked there, reading in the evening, and heard the
cries of the boys' lines at their play, young cries in the quiet evening. He
was their rector: his reign was mild.
Father Conmee drew off his gloves and took his rededged breviary out.
An ivory bookmark told him the page.
Nones. He should have read that before lunch. But lady Maxwell had
come.
Father Conmee read in secret Pater and Ave and crossed his breast. Deus
in adiutorium.
He wamked calmly and read mutely the nones, walking and reading till he
came to Res in Beati immaculati: Principium verborum tuotum veritas: in
eternum omnia iudicia iustitu tu&Aelig;.
A flushed young man came from a gap of a hedge and after him came a
young woman with wild nodding daisies in her hand. The young man raised his
cap abruptly: the young woman abruptly bent and with slow care detached from
her light skirt a clinging twig.
Father Conmee blessed both gravely and turned a thin page of his
breviary. Sin: Principes persecuti sunt me gratis: et a verbis tuis
formidavit cor meum.
Corny Kelleher closed his long daybook and glanced with his drooping
eye at a pine coffinlid sentried in a corner. He pulled himself erect, went
to it and, spinning it on its axle, viewed its shape and brass furnishings.
Chewing his blade of hay he laid the coffinlid by and came to the doorway.
There he tilted his hatbrim to give shade to his eyes and leaned against the
doorcase, looking idly out.
Father John Conmee stepped into the Dollymount tram on Newcomen bridge.
Corny Kelleher locked his largefooted boots and gazed, his hat
downtilted, chewing his blade of hay.
Constable 57C, on his beat, stood to pass the time of day.
-- That's a fine day, Mr Kelleher.
-- Ay, Corny Kelleher said.
-- It's very close, the constable said.
Corny Kelleher sped a silent jet of hayjuice arching from his mouth
while a generous white arm from a window in Eccles street flung forth a
coin.
-- What's the best news? he asked.
-- I seen that particular party last evening, the constable said with
bated breath.
A onelegged sailor crutched himself round MacConnell's corner, skirting
Rabaiotti's icecream car, and jerked himself up Eccles street. Towards Larry
O'Rourke, in shirtsleeves in his doorway, he growled unamiably
-- For England...
He swung himself violently forward past Katey and Boody Dedalus, halted
and growled:
-- home and beauty.
J.J. O'Molloy's white careworn face was told that Mr Lambert was in the
warehouse with a visitor.
A stout lady stopped, took a copper coin from her purse and dropped it
into the cap held out to her. The sailor grumbled thanks and glanced sourly
at the unheeding windows, sank his head and swung himself forward four
strides.
He halted and growled angrily:
-- For England...
Two barefoot urchins, sucking long liquorice laces, halted near him,
gaping at his stump with their yellow-slobbered mouths.
He swung himself forward in vigorous jerks, halted, lifted his head
towards a window and bayed deeply:
-- home and beauty.
The gay sweet chirping whistling within went on a bar or two, ceased.
The blind of the window was drawn aside. A card Unfurnished Apartments
slipped from the sash and fell.
A plump bare generous arm shone, was seen, held forth from a white
petticoatbodice and taut shiftstraps. A woman's hand flung forth a coin over
the area railings. It fell on the path.
One of the urchins ran to it, picked it up and dropped it into the
minstrel's cap, saying:
-- There, sir.
Katey and Boody Dedalus shoved in the door of the closesteaming
kitchen.
-- Did you put in the books? Boody asked.
Maggy at the range rammed down a greyish mass beneath bubbling suds
twice with her potstick and wiped her brow.
-- They wouldn't give anything on them, she said.
Father Conmee walked through Clongowes fields, his thinsocked ankles
tickled by stubble.
-- Where did you try? Boody asked.
-- M'Guinness's.
Body stamped her foot and threw her satchel on the table.
-- Bad cess to her big face! she cried.
Katey went to the range and peered with squinting eyes.
-- What's in the pot? she asked.
-- Shirts, Maggy said.
Boody cried angrily:
-- Crickey, is there nothing for us to eat?
Katey, lifting the kettlelid in a pad of her stained skirt, asked:
-- And what's in this?
A heavy fume gushed in answer.
-- Peasoup, Maggy said.
-- Where did you get it? Katey asked.
-- Sister Mary Patrick, Maggy said.
The lacquey rang his bell.
-- Barang!
Boody sat down at the table and said hungrily:
-- Give us it here!
Maggy poured yellow thick soup from the kettle into a bowl. Katey,
sitting opposite Boody, said quietly, as her fingertip lifted to her mouth
random crumbs.
-- A good job we have that much. Where's Dilly?
-- Gone to meet father, Maggy said.
Boody, breaking big chunks of bread into the yellow soup, added:
-- Our father who art not in heaven.
Maggy, pouring yellow soup in Katey's bowl, exclaimed:
-- Boody! For shame!
A skiff, a crumpled throwaway, Elijah is coming, rode lightly down the
Liffey, under Loopline bridge, shooting the rapids where water chafed around
the bridgepiers, sailing eastward past hulls and anchorchains, between the
Customhouse old dock and George's quay.
The blonde girl in Thornton's bedded the wicker basket with rustling
fibre. Blazes Boylan handed her the bottle swathed in pink tissue paper and
a small jar.
-- Put these in first, will you? he said.
-- Yes, sir, the blond girl said, and the fruit on top.
-- That'll do, game ball, Blazes Boylan said.
She bestowed fat pears neatly, head by tail, and among them ripe
shamefaced peaches.
Blazes Boylan walked here and there in new tan shoes about the
fruitsmelling shop, lifting fruits, young juicy crinkled and plump red
tomatoes, sniffing smells.
H. E. L. Y.'S. filed before him, tallwhitehatted, past Tangier lane,
plodding towards their goal.
He turned suddenly from a chip of strawberries, drew a gold watch from
his fob and held it at its chain's length.
-- Can you send them by tram? Now?
A darkbacked figure under Merchants' arch scanned books on the hawker's
car.
-- Certainly, sir. Is it in the city?
-- O, yes, Blazes Boylan said. Ten minutes.
The blond girl handed him a docket and pencil.
-- Will you write the address, sir?
Blazes Boylan at the counter wrote and pushed the docket to her.
-- Send it at once, will you? he said. It's for an invalid.
-- Yes, sir. I will, sir.
Blazes Boylan rattled merry money in his trousers' pocket.
-- What's the damage? he asked.
The blond girl's slim fingers reckoned the fruits.
Blazes Boylan looked into the cut of her blouse. A young pullet. He
took a red carnation from the tall stemglass.
-- This for me? he asked gallantly.
The blond girl glanced sideways at him, got up regardless, with his tie
a bit crooked, blushing.
-- Yes, sir, she said.
Bending archly she reckoned again fat pears and blushing peaches.
Blazes Boylan looked in her blouse with more favour, the stalk of the
red flower between his smiling teeth.
-- May I say a word to your telephone, missy? he asked roguishly.
-- Ma! Almidano Artifoni said.
He gazed over Stephen's shoulder at Goldsmith's knobby poll.
Two carfuls of tourists passed slowly, their women sitting fore,
gripping frankly the handrests. Pale faces. Men's arms frankly round their
stunted forms. They looked from Trinity to the blind columned porch of the
bank of Ireland where pigeons roocoocooed.
-- Anch'io ho avuto di queste idee, Almidano Artifoni said, quand' ero
giovine come Lei. Eppoi mi sono convinto che il mondo È una bestia. è
peccato. Perche la sua voce... sarebbe un cespite di rendita, via. Invece,
Lei si sacrifica.
-- Sacrifizio incruento, Stephen said smiling, swaying his ashplant in
slow swingswong from its midpoint, lightly.
-- Speriamo, the round mustachioed face said pleasantly. Ma, dia retta
a me. Ci rifletta.
By the stern stone hand of Grattan, bidding halt, an Inchicore tram
unloaded straggling Highland soldiers of a band.
-- Ci riflettÒ, Stephen said, glancing down the solid trouser-leg.
-- Ma, sul serio, eh? Almidano Artifoni said.
His heavy hand took Stephen's firmly. Human eyes. They gazed curiously
an instant and turned quickly towards a Dalkey tram.
-- Eccolo, Almidano Artifoni said in friendly haste. Venga a trovarmi e
ci pensi. Addio, caro.
-- Arrivederla, maestro, Stephen said, raising his hat when his hand
was freed. E grazie.
-- Di che? Almidano Artifoni said. Scusi, eh? Tante belle cose!
Almidano Artifoni, holding up a baton of rolled music as a signal,
trotted on stout trousers after the Dalkey tram. In vain he trotted,
signalling in vain among the rout of bare-kneed gillies smuggling implements
of music through Trinity gates.
Miss Dunne hid the Capel street library copy of The Woman in White far
back in her drawer and rolled a sheet of gaudy notepaper into her
typewriter.
Too much mystery business in it. Is he in love with that one, Marion?
Change it and get another by Mary Cecil Haye.
The disk shot down the groove, wobbled a while, ceased and ogled them:
six.
Miss Dunne clicked on the keyboard:
-- 16 June 1904.
Five tallwhitehatted sandwichmen between Monypeny's corner and the slab
where Wolfe Tone's statue was not, eeled themselves turning H. E. L. Y.'S
and plodded back as they had come.
Then she stared at the large poster of Marie Kendall, charming
soubrette, and, listlessly lolling, scribbled on the jotter sixteens and
capital esses. Mustard hair and dauby cheeks. She's not nicelooking, is she?
The way she is holding up her bit of a skirt. Wonder will that fellow be at
the band tonight. If I could get that dressmaker to make a concertina skirt
like Susy Nagle's. They kick out grand. Shannon and all the boatclub swells
never took his eyes off her. Hope to goodness he won't keep me here till
seven.
The telephone rang rudely by her ear.
-- Hello. Yes, sir. No, sir. Yes, sir. I'll ring them up after five.
Only those two, sir, for Belfast and Liverpool. All right, sir. Then I can
go after six if you're not back. A quarter after. Yes, sir. Twentyseven and
six. I'll tell him. Yes: one, seven, six.
She scribbled three figures on an envelope.
-- Mr Boylan l Hello! That gentleman from Sport was in looking for you.
Mr Lenehan, yes. He said he'll be in the Ormond at four. No, sir. Yes, sir.
I'll ring them up after five.
Two pink faces turned in the flare of the tiny torch.
-- Who's that? Ned Lambert asked. Is that Crotty?
-- Ringabella and Crosshaven, a voice replied, groping for foothold.
-- Hello, Jack, is that yourself? Ned Lambert said, raising in salute
his pliant lath among the flickering arches. Come on. Mind your steps there.
The vesta in the clergyman's uplifted hand consumed itself In a long
soft flame and was let fall. At their feet its red speck died: and mouldy
air closed round them.
-- How interesting! a refined accent said in the gloom.
-- Yes, sir, Ned Lambert said heartily. We are standing in the historic
council chamber of saint Mary's abbey where silken Thomas proclaimed himself
a rebel in 1534. This is the most historic spot in all Dublin. O'Madden
Burke is going to write something about it one of these days. The old bank
of Ireland was over the way till the time of the union and the original
jews' temple was here too before they built their synagogue over in Adelaide
road. You were never here before, Jack, were you?
-- No, Ned.
-- He rode down through Dame walk, the refined accent said, if my
memory serves me. The mansion of the Kildares was in Thomas court.
-- That's right, Ned Lambert said. That's quite right, sir.
-- If you will be so kind then, the clergyman said, the next time to
allow me perhaps .
-- Certainly, Ned Lambert said. Bring the camera whenever you like.
I'll get those bags cleared away from the windows. You can take it from here
or from here.
In the still faint light he moved about, tapping with his lath the
piled seedbags and points of vantage on the floor.
>From a long face a beard and gaze hung on a chessboard.
-- I'm deeply obliged, Mr Lambert, the clergyman said. I won't trespass
on your valuable time...
-- You're welcome, sir, Ned Lambert said. Drop in whenever you like.
Next week, say. Can you see?
-- Yes, yes. Good afternoon, Mr Lambert. Very pleased to have met you.
-- Pleasure is mine, sir, Ned Lambert answered.
He followed his guest to the outlet and then whirled his lath away
among the pillars. With J.J. O'Molloy he came forth slowly into Mary's abbey
where draymen were loading floats with sacks of carob and palmnut meal,
O'Connor, Wexford.
He stood to read the card in his hand.
-- The reverend Hugh C. Love, Rathcoffey. Present address: Saint
Michael's, Sallins. Nice young chap he is. He's writing a book about the
Fitzgeralds he told me. He's well up in history, faith.
The young woman with slow care detached from her light skirt a clinging
twig.
-- I thought you were at a new gunpowder plot, J.J. O'Molloy said.
Ned Lambert cracked his fingers in the air.
-- God, he cried. I forgot to tell him that one about the earl of
Kildare after he set fire to Cashel cathedral. You know that one? I'm bloody
sorry I did it, says he, but I declare to God I thought the archbishop was
inside. He mightn't like it, though. What? God, I'll tell him anyhow. That
was the great earl, the Fitzgerald Mor. Hot members they were all of them,
the Geraldines.
The horses he passed started nervously under their slack harness. He
slapped a piebald haunch quivering near him and cried:
-- Woa, sonny!
He turned to J.J. O'Molloy and asked:
-- Well, Jack. What is it? What's the trouble? Wait a while. Holdhard.
With gaping mouth and head far back he stood still and, after an
instant, sneezed loudly.
-- Chow! he said. Blast you!
-- The dust from those sacks, J.J. O'Molloy said politely.
-- No, Ned Lambert gasped, I caught a... cold night before ... blast
your soul... night before last... and there was a hell of a lot of
draught...
He held his handkerchief ready for the coming...
-- I was... this morning... poor little... what do you call him...
Chow!... Mother of Moses!
Tom Rochford took the top disk from the pile he clasped against his
claret waistcoat.
-- See? he said. Say it's turn six. In here, see. Turn Now On.
He slid it into the left slot for them. It shot down the groove,
wobbled a while, ceased, ogling them: six.
Lawyers of the past, haughty, pleading, beheld pass from the
consolidated taxing office to Nisi Prius court Richie Goulding carrying the
costbag of Goulding, Collis and Ward and heard rustling from the admiralty
division of King's bench to the court of appeal an elderly female with false
teeth smiling incredulously and a black silk skirt of great amplitude.
-- See? he said. See now the last one I put in is over here. Turns
Over. The impact. Leverage, see?
He showed them the rising column of disks on the right.
-- Smart idea, Nosey Flynn said, snuffling. So a fellow coming in late
can see what turn is on and what turns are over.
-- See? Tom Rochford said.
He slid in a disk for himself: and watched it shoot, wobble, ogle,
stop: four. Turn Now On.
-- I'll see him now in the Ormond, Lenehan said, and sound him. One
good turn deserves another.
-- Do, Tom Rochford said. Tell him I'm Boylan with impatience.
-- Goodnight, M'Coy said abruptly, when you two begin.
Nosey Flynn stooped towards the lever, snuffling at it.
-- But how does it work here, Tommy? he asked.
-- Tooraloo, Lenehan said, see you later.
He followed M'Coy out across the tiny square of Crampton court.
-- He's a hero, he said simply.
-- I know, M'Coy said. The drain, you mean.
-- Drain? Lenehan said. It was down a manhole.
They passed Dan Lowry's musichall where Marie Kendall, charming
soubrette, smiled on them from a poster a dauby smile.
Going down the path of Sycamore street beside the Empire musichall
Lenehan showed M'Coy how the whole thing was. One of those manholes like a
bloody gaspipe and there was the poor devil stuck down in it half choked
with sewer gas. Down went Tom Rochford anyhow, booky's vest and all, with
the rope round him. And be damned but he got the rope round the poor devil
and the two were hauled up.
-- The act of a hero, he said.
At the Dolphin they halted to allow the ambulance car to gallop past
them for Jervis street.
-- This way, he said, walking to the right. I want to pop into Lynam's
to see Sceptre's starting price. What's the time by your gold watch and
chain?
M'Coy peered into Marcus Tertius Moses' sombre office, then at
O'Neill's clock.
-- After three, he said. Who's riding her?
-- O. Madden, Lenehan said. And a game filly she is.
While he waited in Temple bar M'Coy dodged a banana peel with gentle
pushes of his toe from the path to the gutter. Fellow might damn easy get a
nasty fall there coming along tight in the dark.
The gates of the drive opened wide to give egress to the vice-regal
cavalcade.
-- Even money, Lenehan said returning. I knocked against Bantam Lyons
in there going to back a bloody horse someone gave him that hasn't an
earthly. Through here.
They went up the steps and under Merchants' arch. A dark-backed figure
scanned books on the hawker's cart.
-- There he is, Lenehan said.
-- Wonder what he is buying, M'Coy said, glancing behind.
-- Leopoldo or the Bloom is on the Rye, Lenehan said.
-- He's dead nuts on sales, M'Coy said. I was with him one day and he
bought a book from an old one in Liffey street for two bob. There were fine
plates in it worth double the money, the stars and the moon and comets with
long tails. Astronomy it was about.
Lenehan laughed.
-- I'll tell you a damn good one about comets' tails, he said. Come
over in the sun.
They crossed to the metal bridge and went along Wellington quay by the
river wall.
Master Patrick Aloysius Dignam came out of Mangan's, late Fehrenbach's,
carrying a pound and a half of porksteaks.
-- There was a big spread out at Glencree reformatory, Lenehan said
eagerly. The annual dinner you know. Boiled shirt affair. The lord mayor was
there, Val Dillon it was, and sir Charles Cameron and Dan Dawson spoke and
there was music. Bartell D'Arcy sang and Benjamin Dollard.
-- I know, M'Coy broke in. My missus sang there once.
-- Did she? Lenehan said.
A card Unfurnished Apartments reappeared on the windowsash of number 7
Eccles street.
He checked his tale a moment but broke out in a wheezy laugh.
-- But wait till I tell you, he said. Delahunt of Camden street had the
catering and yours truly was chief bottlewasher. Bloom and the wife were
there. Lashings of stuff we put up: port wine and sherry and curaÇao to
which we did ample justice. Fast and furious it was. After liquids came
solids. Cold joints galore and mince pies.
-- I know, M'Coy said. The year the missus was there...
Lenehan linked his arm warmly.
-- But wait till I tell you, he said. We had a midnight lunch too after
all the jollification and when we sallied forth it was blue o'clock the
morning after the night before. Coming home it was a gorgeous winter's night
on the Featherbed Mountain. Bloom and Chris Callinan were on one side of the
car and I was with the wife on the other. We started singing glees and
duets: Lo, the early beam of morning. She was well primed with a good load
of Delahunt's port under her bellyband. Every jolt the bloody car gave I had
her bumping up against me. Hell's delights! She has a fine pair, God bless
her. Like that.
He held his caved hands a cubit from him, frowning:
-- I was tucking the rug under her and settling her boa all the time.
Know what I mean?
His hands moulded ample curves of air. He shut his eyes tight in
delight, his body shrinking, and blew a sweet chirp from his lips.
-- The lad stood to attention anyhow, he said with a sigh. She's a
gamey mare and no mistake. Bloom was pointing out all the stars and the
comets in the heavens to Chris Callinan and the jarvey: the great bear and
Hercules and the dragon and the whole jingbang lot. But, by God, I was lost,
so to speak, in the milky way. He knows them all, faith. At last she spotted
a weeny weeshy one miles away. And what star is that, Poldy? says she. By
God, she had Bloom cornered. That one, is it? says Chris Callinan, sure
that's only what you might call a pinprick. By God, he wasn't far wide of
the mark.
Lenehan stopped and leaned on the riverwall, panting with soft
laughter.
-- I'm weak, he gasped.
M'Coy's white face smiled about it at instants and grew grave. Lenehan
walked on again. He lifted his yachtingcap and scratched his hindhead
rapidly. He glanced sideways in the sunlight at M'Coy.
-- He's a cultured allroundman, Bloom is, he said seriously. He's not
one of your common or garden... you know... There's a touch of the artist
about old Bloom.
Mr Bloom turned over idly pages of The Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk,
then of Aristotle's Masterpiece. Crooked botched print. Plates: infants
cuddled in a ball in bloodred wombs like livers of slaughtered cows. Lots of
them like that at this moment all over the world. All butting with their
skulls to get out of it. Child born every minute somewhere. Mrs Purefoy.
He laid both books aside and glanced at the third: Tales of the Ghetto
by Leopold von Sacher Masoch.
-- That I had, he said, pushing it by.
The shopman let two volumes fall on the counter.
-- Them are two good ones, he said.
Onions of his breath came across the counter out of his ruined mouth.
He bent to make a bundle of the other books, hugged them against his
unbuttoned waistcoat and bore them off behind the dingy curtain.
On O'Connell bridge many persons observed the grave deportment and gay
apparel of Mr Denis J. Maginni, professor of dancing &c.
Mr Bloom, alone, looked at the titles. Fair Tyrants by James Lovebirch.
Know the kind that is. Had it? Yes.
He opened it. Thought so.
A woman's voice behind the dingy curtain. Listen: The man.
No: she wouldn't like that much. Got her it once.
He read the other title: Sweets of Sin. More in her line. Let us see.
He read where his finger opened.
-- All the dollarbills her husband gave her were spent in the stores on
wondrous gowns and costliest frillies. For him! For Raoul!
Yes. This. Here. Try.
-- Her mouth glued on his in a luscious voluptuous kiss while his hands
felt for the opulent curves inside her dÉshabillÉ.
Yes. Take this. The end.
-- You are late, he spoke hoarsely, eyeing her with a suspicious glare.
The beautiful woman threw off her sabletrimmed wrap, displaying her queenly
shoulders and heaving embonpoint. An imperceptible smile played round her
perfect lips as she turned to him calmly.
Mr Bloom read again: The beautiful woman.
Warmth showered gently over him, cowing his flesh. Flesh yielded amid
rumpled clothes. Whites of eyes swooning up. His nostrils arched themselves
for prey. Melting breast ointments (For him! For Raoul!). Armpits' oniony
sweat. Fishgluey slime (her heaving embonpoint!). Feel! Press! Crushed!
Sulphur dung of lions!
Young! Young!
An elderly female, no more young, left the building of the courts of
chancery, king's bench, exchequer and common pleas, having heard in the lord
chancellor's court the case in lunacy of Potterton, in the admiralty
division the summons, exparte motion, of the owners of the Lady Cairns
versus the owners of the barque Mona, in the court of appeal reservation of
judgment in the case of Harvey versus the Ocean Accident and Guarantee
Corporation.
Phlegmy coughs shook the air of the bookshop, bulging out the dingy
curtains. The shopman's uncombed grey head came out and his unshaven
reddened face, coughing. He raked his throat rudely, spat phlegm on the
floor. He put his boot on what he had spat, wiping his sole along it and
bent, showing a rawskinned crown, scantily haired.
Mr Bloom beheld it.
Mastering his troubled breath, he said:
-- I'll take this one.
The shopman lifted eyes bleared with old rheum.
-- Sweets of Sin, he said, tapping on it. That's a good one.
The lacquey by the door of Dillon's auctionrooms shook his handbell
twice again and viewed himself in the chalked mirror of the cabinet.
Dilly Dedalus, listening by the curbstone, heard the beats of the bell,
the cries of the auctioneer within. Four and nine. Those lovely curtains.
Five shillings. Cosy curtains. Selling new at two guineas. Any advance on
five shillings? Going for five shillings.
The lacquey lifted his handbell and shook it:
-- Barang!
Bang of the lastlap bell spurred the halfmile wheelmen to their sprint.
J. A. Jackson, W. E. Wylie, A. Munro and H. T. Gahan, their stretched necks
wagging, negotiated the curve by the College Library.
Mr Dedalus, tugging a long moustache, came round from Williams's row.
He halted near his daughter.
-- It's time for you, she said.
-- Stand up straight for the love of the Lord Jesus, Mr Dedalus said.
Are you trying to imitate your uncle John the cornetplayer, head upon
shoulders? Melancholy God!
Dilly shrugged her shoulders. Mr Dedalus placed his hands on them and
held them back.
-- Stand up straight, girl, he said. You'll get curvature of the spine.
Do you know what you look like?
He let his head sink suddenly down and forward, hunching his shoulders
and dropping his underjaw.
-- Give it up, father, Dilly said. All the people are looking at you.
Mr Dedalus drew himself upright and tugged again at his moustache.
-- Did you get any money? Dilly asked.
-- Where would I get money? Mr Dedalus said. There is no-one in Dublin
would lend me fourpence.
-- You got some, Dilly said, looking in his eyes.
-- How do you know that? Mr Dedalus asked, his tongue in his cheek.
Mr Kernan, pleased with the order he had booked, walked boldly along
James's street.
-- I know you did, Dilly answered. Were you in the Scotch house now?
-- I was not then, Mr Dedalus said, smiling. Was it the little nuns
taught you to be so saucy? Here.
He handed her a shilling.
-- See if you can do anything with that, he said.
-- I suppose you got five, Dilly said. Give me more than that.
-- Wait awhile, Mr Dedalus said threateningly. You're like the rest of
them, are you? An insolent pack of little bitches since your poor mother
died. But wait awhile. You'll all get a short shrift and a long day from me.
Low blackguardism! I'm going to get rid of you. Wouldn't care if I was
stretched out stiff. He's dead. The man upstairs is dead.
He left her and walked on. Dilly followed quickly and pulled his coat.
-- Well, what is it? he said, stopping.
The lacquey rang his bell behind their backs.
-- Barang!
-- Curse your bloody blatant soul, Mr Dedalus cried, turning on him.
The lacquey, aware of comment, shook the lolling clapper of his bell
but feebly:
-- Bang!
Mr Dedalus stared at him.
-- Watch him, he said. It's instructive. I wonder will he allow us to
talk.
-- You got more than that, father, Dilly said.
-- I'm going to show you a little trick, Mr Dedalus said. I'll leave
you all where Jesus left the jews. Look, that's all I have. I got two
shillings from Jack Power and I spent twopence for a shave for the funeral.
He drew forth a handful of copper coins nervously.
-- Can't you look for some money somewhere? Dilly said.
Mr Dedalus thought and nodded.
-- I will, he said gravely. I looked all along the gutter in O'Connell
street. I'll try this one now.
-- You're very funny, Dilly said, grinning.
-- Here, Mr Dedalus said, handing her two pennies. Get a glass of milk
for yourself and a bun or a something. I'll be home shortly.
He put the other coins in his pocket and started to walk on.
The viceregal cavalcade passed, greeted by obsequious policemen, out of
Parkgate.
-- I'm sure you have another shilling, Dilly said.
The lacquey banged loudly.
Mr Dedalus amid the din walked off, murmuring to himself with a pursing
mincing mouth:
-- The little nuns! Nice little things! O, sure they wouldn't do
anything! O, sure they wouldn't really! Is it little sister Monica!
>From the sundial towards James's Gate walked Mr Kernan pleased with
the order he had booked for Pulbrook Robertson boldly along James's street,
past Shackleton's offices. Got round him all right. How do you do, Mr
Crimmins? First rate, sir. I was afraid you might be up in your other
establishment in Pimlico. How are things going? Just keeping alive. Lovely
weather we are having. Yes, indeed. Good for the country. Those farmers are
always grumbling. I'll just take a thimbleful of your best gin, Mr Crimmins.
A small gin, sir. Yes, sir. Terrible affair that General Slocum explosion.
Terrible, terrible! A thousand casualties. And heartrending scenes. Men
trampling down women and children. Most brutal thing. What do they say was
the cause? Spontaneous combustion: most scandalous revelation. Not a single
lifeboat would float and the firehose all burst. What I can't understand is
how the inspectors ever allowed a boat like that... Now you are talking
straight, Mr Crimmins. You know why? Palmoil. Is that a fact? Without a
doubt. Well now, look at that. And America they say is the land of the free.
I thought we were bad here.
I smiled at him. America, I said, quietly, just like that. What is it?
The sweepings of every country including our own. Isn't that true? That's a
fact.
Graft, my dear sir. Well, of course, where there's money going there's
always someone to pick it up.
Saw him looking at my frockcoat. Dress does it. Nothing like a dressy
appearance. Bowls them over.
-- Hello, Simon, Father Cowley said. How are things?
-- Hello, Bob, old man, Mr Dedalus answered stopping.
Mr Kernan halted and preened himself before the sloping mirror of Peter
Kennedy, hairdresser. Stylish coat, beyond a doubt. Scott of Dawson street.
Well worth the half sovereign I gave Neary for it. Never built under three
guineas. Fits me down to the ground. Some Kildare street club toff had it
probably. John Mulligan, the manager of the Hibernian bank, gave me a very
sharp eye yesterday on Carlisle bridge as if he remembered me.
Aham! Must dress the character for those fellows. Knight of the road.
Gentleman. And now, Mr Crimmins, may we have the honour of your custom
again, sir. The cup that cheers but not inebriates, as the old saying has
it.
North wall and sir John Rogerson's quay, with hulls and anchorchains,
sailing westward, sailed by a skiff, a crumpled throwaway, rocked on the
ferry-wash, Elijah is coming.
Mr Kernan glanced in farewell at his image. High colour, of course.
Grizzled moustache. Returned Indian officer. Bravely he bore his stumpy body
forward on spatted feet, squaring his shoulders. Is that Lambert's brother
over the way, Sam? What? Yes. He's as like it as damn it. No. The windscreen
of that motorcar in the sun there. Just a flash like that. Damn like him.
Aham! Hot spirit of juniper juice warmed his vitals and his breath.
Good drop of gin, that was. His frocktails winked in bright sunshine to his
fat strut.
Down there Emmet was hanged, drawn and quartered. Greasy black rope.
Dogs licking the blood off the street when the lord lieutenant's wife drove
by in her noddy.
Let me see. Is he buried in saint Michan's? Or no, there was a midnight
burial in Glasnevin. Corpse brought in through a secret door in the wall.
Dignam is there now. Went out in a puff. Well, well. Better turn down here.
Make a detour.
Mr Kernan turned and walked down the slope of Watling street by the
corner of Guinness's visitors' waitingroom. Outside the Dublin Distillers
Company's stores an outside car without fare or jarvey stood, the reins
knotted to the wheel. Damn dangerous thing. Some Tipperary bosthoon
endangering the lives of the citizens. Runaway horse.
Denis Breen with his tomes, weary of having waited an hour in John
Henry Menton's office, led his wife over O'Connell bridge, bound for the
office of Messrs Collis and Ward.
Mr Kernan approached Island street.
Times of the troubles. Must ask Ned Lambert to lend me those
reminiscences of sir Jonah Barrington. When you look back on it all now in a
kind of retrospective arrangement. Gaming at Daly's. No cardsharping then.
One of those fellows got his hand nailed to the table by a dagger. Somewhere
here Lord Edward Fitzgerald escaped from major Sirr. Stables behind Moira
house.
Damn good gin that was.
Fine dashing young nobleman. Good stock, of course. That ruffian, that
sham squire, with his violet gloves, gave him away. Course they were on the
wrong side. They rose in dark and evil days. Fine poem that is: Ingram. They
were gentlemen. Ben Dollard does sing that ballad touchingly. Masterly
rendition.
At the siege of Ross did my father fall.
A cavalcade in easy trot along Pembroke quay passed, outriders leaping,
leaping in their, in their saddles. Frockcoats. Cream sunshades.
Mr Kernan hurried forward, blowing pursily.
His Excellency! Too bad! Just missed that by a hair. Damn it! What a
pity!
Stephen Dedalus watched through the webbed window the lapidary's
fingers prove a timedulled chain. Dust webbed the window and the showtrays.
Dust darkened the toiling fingers with their vulture nails. Dust slept on
dull coils of bronze and silver, lozenges of cinnabar, on rubies, leprous
and winedark stones.
Born all in the dark wormy earth, cold specks of fire, evil lights
shining in the darkness. Where fallen archangels flung the stars of their
brows. Muddy swinesnouts, hands, root and root, gripe and wrest them.
She dances in a foul gloom where gum burns with garlic. A sailorman,
rustbearded, sips from a beaker rum and eyes her. A long and seafed silent
rut. She dances, capers, wagging her sowish haunches and her hips, on her
gross belly flapping a ruby egg.
Old Russell with a smeared shammy rag burnished again his gem, turned
it and held it at the point of his Moses' beard. Grandfather ape gloating on
a stolen hoard.
And you who wrest old images from the burial earth! The brainsick words
of sophists: Antisthenes. A lore of drugs. Orient and immortal wheat
standing from everlasting to everlasting.
Two old women fresh from their whiff of the briny trudged through
Irishtown along London bridge road, one with a sanded umbrella, one with a
midwife's bag in which eleven cockles rolled.
The whirr of flapping leathern bands and hum of dynamos from the
powerhouse urged Stephen to be on. Beingless beings. Stop! Throb always
without you and the throb always within. Your heart you sing of. I between
them. Where? Between two roaring worlds where they swirl, I. Shatter them,
one and both. But stun myself too in the blow. Shatter me you who can. Bawd
and butcher, were the words. I say! Not yet awhile. A look around.
Yes, quite true. Very large and wonderful and keeps famous time. You
say right, sir. A Monday morning, 'twas so, indeed.
Stephen went down Bedford row, the handle of the ash clacking against
his shoulderblade. In Clohissey's window a faded 1860 print of Heenan boxing
Sayers held his eye. Staring backers with square hats stood round the roped
prizering. The heavyweights in light loincloths proposed gently each to
other his bulbous fists. And they are throbbing: heroes' hearts.
He turned and halted by the slanted bookcart.
-- Twopence each, the huckster said. Four for sixpence.
Tattered pages. The Irish Beekeeper. Life and Miracles of the CurÉ of
Ars. Pocket Guide to Killarney.
I might find here one of my pawned schoolprizes. Stephano Dedalo,
alumno optimo, palmam ferenti.
Father Conmee, having read his little hours, walked through the hamlet
of Donnycarney, murmuring vespers.
Binding too good probably, what is this? Eighth and ninth book of
Moses. Secret of all secrets. Seal of King David. Thumbed pages: read and
read. Who has passed here before me? How to soften chapped hands. Recipe for
white wine vinegar. How to win a woman's love. For me this. Say the
following talisman three times with hands folded:
-- Se et yilo nebrakada femininum! Amor me solo! Sanktus! Amen.
Who wrote this? Charms and invocations of the most blessed abbot Peter
Salanka to all true believers divulged. As good as any other abbot's charms,
as mumbling Joachim's. Down, baldynoddle, or we'll wool your wool.
-- What are you doing here, Stephen.
Dilly's high shoulders and shabby dress.
Shut the book quick. Don't let see.
-- What are you doing? Stephen said.
A Stuart face of nonesuch Charles, lank locks falling at its sides. It
glowed as she crouched feeding the fire with broken boots. I told her of
Paris. Late lieabed under a quilt of old overcoats, fingering a pinchbeck
bracelet, Dan Kelly's token. Nebrakada femininum.
-- What have you there? Stephen asked.
-- I bought it from the other cart for a penny, Dilly said, laughing
nervously. Is it any good?
My eyes they say she has. Do others see me so? Quick, far and daring.
Shadow of my mind.
He took the coverless book from her hand. Chardenal's French primer.
-- What did you buy that for? he asked. To learn French?
She nodded, reddening and closing tight her lips.
Show no surprise. Quite natural.
-- Here, Stephen said. It's all right. Mind Maggy doesn't pawn it on
you. I suppose all my books are gone.
-- Some, Dilly said. We had to.
She is drowning. Agenbite. Save her. Agenbite. All against us. She will
drown me with her, eyes and hair. Lank coils of seaweed hair around me, my
heart, my soul. Salt green death.
We.
Agenbite of inwit. Inwit's agenbite.
Misery! Misery!
-- Hello, Simon, Father Cowley said. How are things?
-- Hello, Bob, old man, Mr Dedalus answered, stopping.
They clasped hands loudly outside Reddy and Daughter's. Father Cowley
brushed his moustache often downward with a scooping hand.
-- What's the best news? Mr Dedalus said.
-- Why then not much, Father Cowley said. I'm barricaded up, Simon,
with two men prowling around the house trying to effect an entrance.
-- Jolly, Mr Dedalus said. Who is it?
-- O, Father Cowley said. A certain gombeen man of our acquaintance.
-- With a broken back, is it? Mr Dedalus asked.
-- The same, Simon, Father Cowley answered. Reuben of that ilk. I'm
just waiting for Ben Dollard. He's going to say a word to Long John to get
him to take those two men off. All I want is a little time.
He looked with vague hope up and down the quay, a big apple bulging in
his neck.
-- I know, Mr Dedalus said, nodding. Poor old bockedy Ben! He's always
doing a good turn for someone. Hold hard!
He put on his glasses and gazed towards the metal bridge an instant.
-- There he is, by God, he said, arse and pockets.
Ben Dollard's loose blue cutaway and square hat above large slops
crossed the quay in full gait from the metal bridge. He came towards them at
an amble, scratching actively behind his coattails.
As he came near Mr Dedalus greeted:
-- Hold that fellow with the bad trousers.
-- Hold him now, Ben Dollard said.
Mr Dedalus eyed with cold wandering scorn various points of Ben
Dollard's figure. Then, turning to Father Cowley with a nod, he muttered
sneeringly:
-- That's a pretty garment, isn't it, for a summer's day?
-- Why, God eternally curse your soul, Ben Dollard growled furiously, I
threw out more clothes in my time than you ever saw.
He stood beside them beaming on them first and on his roomy clothes
from points of which Mr Dedalus flicked fluff, saying:
-- They were made for a man in his health, Ben, anyhow.
-- Bad luck to the jewman that made them, Ben Dollard said. Thanks be
to God he's not paid yet.
-- And how is that basso profondo, Benjamin? Father Cowley asked.
Cashel Boyle O'Connor Fitzmaurice Tisdall Farrell, murmuring,
glasseyed, strode past the Kildare street club.
Ben Dollard frowned and, making suddenly a chanter's mouth, gave forth
a deep note.
-- Aw! he said.
-- That's the style, Mr Dedalus said, nodding to its drone.
-- What about that? Ben Dollard said. Not too dusty? What? He turned to
both.
-- That'll do, Father Cowley said, nodding also.
The reverend Hugh C. Love walked from the old Chapterhouse of saint
Mary's abbey past James and Charles Kennedy's, rectifiers, attended by
Geraldines tall and personable, towards the Tholsel beyond the Ford of
Hurdles.
Ben Dollard with a heavy list towards the shopfronts led them forward,
his joyful fingers in the air.
-- Come along with me to the subsheriff's office, he said. I want to
show you the new beauty Rock has for a bailiff. He's a cross between
Lobengula and Lynchehaun. He's well worth seeing, mind you. Come along. I
saw John Henry Menton casually in the Bodega just now and it will cost me a
fall if I don't... wait awhile... We're on the right lay, Bob, believe you
me.
-- For a few days tell him, Father Cowley said anxiously.
Ben Dollard halted and stared, his loud orifice open, a dangling button
of his coat wagging brightbacked from its thread as he wiped away the heavy
shraums that clogged his eyes to hear aright.
-- What few days? he boomed. Hasn't your landlord distrained for rent?
-- He has, Father Cowley said.
-- Then our friend's writ is not worth the paper it's printed on, Ben
Dollard said. The landlord has the prior claim. I gave him all the
particulars. 29 Windsor avenue. Love is the name?
-- That's right, Father Cowley said. The reverend Mr Love. He's a
minister in the country somewhere. But are you sure of that?
-- You can tell Barabbas from me, Ben Dollard said, that he can put
that writ where Jacko put the nuts.
He led Father Cowley boldly forward linked to his bulk.
-- Filberts I believe they were, Mr Dedalus said, as he dropped his
glasses on his coatfront, following them.
-- The youngster will be all right, Martin Cunningham said, as they
passed out of the Castleyard gate.
The policeman touched his forehead.
-- God bless you, Martin Cunningham said, cheerily.
He signed to the waiting jarvey who chucked at the reins and set on
towards Lord Edward street.
Bronze by gold, Miss Kennedy's head by Miss Douce's head, appeared
above the crossblind of the Ormond hotel.
Yes, Martin Cunningham said, fingering his beard. I wrote to Father
Conmee and laid the whole case before him.
-- You could try our friend, Mr Power suggested backward.
-- Boyd? Martin Cunningham said shortly. Touch me not.
John Wyse Nolan, lagging behind, reading the list, came after them
quickly down Cork hill.
On the steps of the City hall Councillor Nannetti, descending, hailed
Alderman Cowley and Councillor Abraham Lyon ascending.
The castle car wheeled empty into upper Exchange street.
-- Look here Martin, John Wyse Nolan said, overtaking them at the Mail
office. I see Bloom put his name down for five shillings.
-- Quite right, Martin Cunningham said, taking the list. And put down
the five shillings too.
-- Without a second word either, Mr Power said.
-- Strange but true, Martin Cunningham added.
John Wyse Nolan opened wide eyes.
-- I'll say there is much kindness in the jew, he quoted elegantly.
They went down Parliament street.
-- There's Jimmy Henry, Mr Power said, just heading for Kavanagh's.
-- Righto, Martin Cunningham said. Here goes.
Outside la Maison Claire Blazes Boylan waylaid Jack Mooney's
brother-in-law, humpy, tight, making for the liberties.
John Wyse Nolan fell back with Mr Power, while Martin Cunningham took
the elbow of a dapper little man in a shower of hail suit who walked
uncertainly with hasty steps past Micky Anderson's watches.
-- The assistant town clerk's corns are giving him some trouble, John
Wyse Nolan told Mr Power.
They followed round the corner towards James Kavanagh's winerooms. The
empty castle car fronted them at rest in Essex gate. Martin Cunningham,
speaking always, showed often the list at which Jimmy Henry did not glance.
-- And Long John Fanning is here too, John Wyse Nolan said, as large as
life.
The tall form of Long John Fanning filled the doorway where he stood.
-- Good day, Mr Subsheriff, Martin Cunningham said, as all halted and
greeted.
Long John Fanning made no way for them. He removed his large Henry Clay
decisively and his large fierce eyes scowled intelligently over all their
faces.
-- Are the conscript fathers pursuing their peaceful deliberations? he
said, with rich acrid utterance to the assistant town clerk.
Hell open to christians they were having, Jimmy Henry said pettishly,
about their damned Irish language. Where was the marshal, he wanted to know,
to keep order in the council chamber. And old Barlow the macebearer laid up
with asthma, no mace on the table, nothing in order, no quorum even and
Hutchinson, the lord mayor, in Llandudno and little Lorcan Sherlock doing
locum tenens for him. Damned Irish language, of our forefathers.
Long John Fanning blew a plume of smoke from his lips.
Martin Cunningham spoke by turns, twirling the peak of his beard, to
the assistant town clerk and the subsheriff, while John Wyse Nolan held his
peace.
-- What Dignam was that? Long John Fanning asked.
Jimmy Henry made a grima