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Title: Ulysses

Author: James Joyce

Release Date: August 1, 2008 [EBook #4300]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1

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Produced by Col Choat, and David Widger








ULYSSES


by James Joyce







Contents
— I —

— II —

— III —












— I —
Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather
on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. A yellow dressinggown, ungirdled, was
sustained gently behind him on the mild morning air. He held the bowl aloft and
intoned:
—Introibo ad altare Dei.
Halted, he peered down the dark winding stairs and called out coarsely:
—Come up, Kinch! Come up, you fearful jesuit!
Solemnly he came forward and mounted the round gunrest. He faced about and
blessed gravely thrice the tower, the surrounding land and the awaking
mountains. Then, catching sight of Stephen Dedalus, he bent towards him and made
rapid crosses in the air, gurgling in his throat and shaking his head. Stephen
Dedalus, displeased and sleepy, leaned his arms on the top of the staircase and
looked coldly at the shaking gurgling face that blessed him, equine in its
length, and at the light untonsured hair, grained and hued like pale oak.
Buck Mulligan peeped an instant under the mirror and then covered the bowl
smartly.
—Back to barracks! he said sternly.
He added in a preacher's tone:
—For this, O dearly beloved, is the genuine Christine: body and soul and blood
and ouns. Slow music, please. Shut your eyes, gents. One moment. A little
trouble about those white corpuscles. Silence, all.
He peered sideways up and gave a long slow whistle of call, then paused awhile
in rapt attention, his even white teeth glistening here and there with gold
points. Chrysostomos. Two strong shrill whistles answered through the calm.
—Thanks, old chap, he cried briskly. That will do nicely. Switch off the
current, will you?
He skipped off the gunrest and looked gravely at his watcher, gathering about
his legs the loose folds of his gown. The plump shadowed face and sullen oval
jowl recalled a prelate, patron of arts in the middle ages. A pleasant smile
broke quietly over his lips.
—The mockery of it! he said gaily. Your absurd name, an ancient Greek!
He pointed his finger in friendly jest and went over to the parapet, laughing to
himself. Stephen Dedalus stepped up, followed him wearily halfway and sat down
on the edge of the gunrest, watching him still as he propped his mirror on the
parapet, dipped the brush in the bowl and lathered cheeks and neck.
Buck Mulligan's gay voice went on.
—My name is absurd too: Malachi Mulligan, two dactyls. But it has a Hellenic
ring, hasn't it? Tripping and sunny like the buck himself. We must go to Athens.
Will you come if I can get the aunt to fork out twenty quid?
He laid the brush aside and, laughing with delight, cried:
—Will he come? The jejune jesuit!
Ceasing, he began to shave with care.
—Tell me, Mulligan, Stephen said quietly.
—Yes, my love?
—How long is Haines going to stay in this tower?
Buck Mulligan showed a shaven cheek over his right shoulder.
—God, isn't he dreadful? he said frankly. A ponderous Saxon. He thinks you're
not a gentleman. God, these bloody English! Bursting with money and indigestion.
Because he comes from Oxford. You know, Dedalus, you have the real Oxford
manner. He can't make you out. O, my name for you is the best: Kinch, the
knife-blade.
He shaved warily over his chin.
—He was raving all night about a black panther, Stephen said. Where is his
guncase?
—A woful lunatic! Mulligan said. Were you in a funk?
—I was, Stephen said with energy and growing fear. Out here in the dark with a
man I don't know raving and moaning to himself about shooting a black panther.
You saved men from drowning. I'm not a hero, however. If he stays on here I am
off.
Buck Mulligan frowned at the lather on his razorblade. He hopped down from his
perch and began to search his trouser pockets hastily.
—Scutter! he cried thickly.
He came over to the gunrest and, thrusting a hand into Stephen's upper pocket,
said:
—Lend us a loan of your noserag to wipe my razor.
Stephen suffered him to pull out and hold up on show by its corner a dirty
crumpled handkerchief. Buck Mulligan wiped the razorblade neatly. Then, gazing
over the handkerchief, he said:
—The bard's noserag! A new art colour for our Irish poets: snotgreen. You can
almost taste it, can't you?
He mounted to the parapet again and gazed out over Dublin bay, his fair oakpale
hair stirring slightly.
—God! he said quietly. Isn't the sea what Algy calls it: a great sweet mother?
The snotgreen sea. The scrotumtightening sea. Epi oinopa ponton. Ah, Dedalus,
the Greeks! I must teach you. You must read them in the original. Thalatta!
Thalatta! She is our great sweet mother. Come and look.
Stephen stood up and went over to the parapet. Leaning on it he looked down on
the water and on the mailboat clearing the harbourmouth of Kingstown.
—Our mighty mother! Buck Mulligan said.
He turned abruptly his grey searching eyes from the sea to Stephen's face.
—The aunt thinks you killed your mother, he said. That's why she won't let me
have anything to do with you.
—Someone killed her, Stephen said gloomily.
—You could have knelt down, damn it, Kinch, when your dying mother asked you,
Buck Mulligan said. I'm hyperborean as much as you. But to think of your mother
begging you with her last breath to kneel down and pray for her. And you
refused. There is something sinister in you...
He broke off and lathered again lightly his farther cheek. A tolerant smile
curled his lips.
—But a lovely mummer! he murmured to himself. Kinch, the loveliest mummer of
them all!
He shaved evenly and with care, in silence, seriously.
Stephen, an elbow rested on the jagged granite, leaned his palm against his brow
and gazed at the fraying edge of his shiny black coat-sleeve. Pain, that was not
yet the pain of love, fretted his heart. Silently, in a dream she had come to
him after her death, her wasted body within its loose brown graveclothes giving
off an odour of wax and rosewood, her breath, that had bent upon him, mute,
reproachful, a faint odour of wetted ashes. Across the threadbare cuffedge he
saw the sea hailed as a great sweet mother by the wellfed voice beside him. The
ring of bay and skyline held a dull green mass of liquid. A bowl of white china
had stood beside her deathbed holding the green sluggish bile which she had torn
up from her rotting liver by fits of loud groaning vomiting.
Buck Mulligan wiped again his razorblade.
—Ah, poor dogsbody! he said in a kind voice. I must give you a shirt and a few
noserags. How are the secondhand breeks?
—They fit well enough, Stephen answered.
Buck Mulligan attacked the hollow beneath his underlip.
—The mockery of it, he said contentedly. Secondleg they should be. God knows
what poxy bowsy left them off. I have a lovely pair with a hair stripe, grey.
You'll look spiffing in them. I'm not joking, Kinch. You look damn well when
you're dressed.
—Thanks, Stephen said. I can't wear them if they are grey.
—He can't wear them, Buck Mulligan told his face in the mirror. Etiquette is
etiquette. He kills his mother but he can't wear grey trousers.
He folded his razor neatly and with stroking palps of fingers felt the smooth
skin.
Stephen turned his gaze from the sea and to the plump face with its smokeblue
mobile eyes.
—That fellow I was with in the Ship last night, said Buck Mulligan, says you
have g.p.i. He's up in Dottyville with Connolly Norman. General paralysis of the
insane!
He swept the mirror a half circle in the air to flash the tidings abroad in
sunlight now radiant on the sea. His curling shaven lips laughed and the edges
of his white glittering teeth. Laughter seized all his strong wellknit trunk.
—Look at yourself, he said, you dreadful bard!
Stephen bent forward and peered at the mirror held out to him, cleft by a
crooked crack. Hair on end. As he and others see me. Who chose this face for me?
This dogsbody to rid of vermin. It asks me too.
—I pinched it out of the skivvy's room, Buck Mulligan said. It does her all
right. The aunt always keeps plainlooking servants for Malachi. Lead him not
into temptation. And her name is Ursula.
Laughing again, he brought the mirror away from Stephen's peering eyes.
—The rage of Caliban at not seeing his face in a mirror, he said. If Wilde were
only alive to see you!
Drawing back and pointing, Stephen said with bitterness:
—It is a symbol of Irish art. The cracked looking-glass of a servant.
Buck Mulligan suddenly linked his arm in Stephen's and walked with him round the
tower, his razor and mirror clacking in the pocket where he had thrust them.
—It's not fair to tease you like that, Kinch, is it? he said kindly. God knows
you have more spirit than any of them.
Parried again. He fears the lancet of my art as I fear that of his. The cold
steelpen.
—Cracked lookingglass of a servant! Tell that to the oxy chap downstairs and
touch him for a guinea. He's stinking with money and thinks you're not a
gentleman. His old fellow made his tin by selling jalap to Zulus or some bloody
swindle or other. God, Kinch, if you and I could only work together we might do
something for the island. Hellenise it.
Cranly's arm. His arm.
—And to think of your having to beg from these swine. I'm the only one that
knows what you are. Why don't you trust me more? What have you up your nose
against me? Is it Haines? If he makes any noise here I'll bring down Seymour and
we'll give him a ragging worse than they gave Clive Kempthorpe.
Young shouts of moneyed voices in Clive Kempthorpe's rooms. Palefaces: they hold
their ribs with laughter, one clasping another. O, I shall expire! Break the
news to her gently, Aubrey! I shall die! With slit ribbons of his shirt whipping
the air he hops and hobbles round the table, with trousers down at heels, chased
by Ades of Magdalen with the tailor's shears. A scared calf's face gilded with
marmalade. I don't want to be debagged! Don't you play the giddy ox with me!
Shouts from the open window startling evening in the quadrangle. A deaf
gardener, aproned, masked with Matthew Arnold's face, pushes his mower on the
sombre lawn watching narrowly the dancing motes of grasshalms.
To ourselves... new paganism... omphalos.
—Let him stay, Stephen said. There's nothing wrong with him except at night.
—Then what is it? Buck Mulligan asked impatiently. Cough it up. I'm quite frank
with you. What have you against me now?
They halted, looking towards the blunt cape of Bray Head that lay on the water
like the snout of a sleeping whale. Stephen freed his arm quietly.
—Do you wish me to tell you? he asked.
—Yes, what is it? Buck Mulligan answered. I don't remember anything.
He looked in Stephen's face as he spoke. A light wind passed his brow, fanning
softly his fair uncombed hair and stirring silver points of anxiety in his eyes.

Stephen, depressed by his own voice, said:
—Do you remember the first day I went to your house after my mother's death?
Buck Mulligan frowned quickly and said:
—What? Where? I can't remember anything. I remember only ideas and sensations.
Why? What happened in the name of God?
—You were making tea, Stephen said, and went across the landing to get more hot
water. Your mother and some visitor came out of the drawingroom. She asked you
who was in your room.
—Yes? Buck Mulligan said. What did I say? I forget.
—You said, Stephen answered, O, it's only Dedalus whose mother is beastly dead.
A flush which made him seem younger and more engaging rose to Buck Mulligan's
cheek.
—Did I say that? he asked. Well? What harm is that?
He shook his constraint from him nervously.
—And what is death, he asked, your mother's or yours or my own? You saw only
your mother die. I see them pop off every day in the Mater and Richmond and cut
up into tripes in the dissectingroom. It's a beastly thing and nothing else. It
simply doesn't matter. You wouldn't kneel down to pray for your mother on her
deathbed when she asked you. Why? Because you have the cursed jesuit strain in
you, only it's injected the wrong way. To me it's all a mockery and beastly. Her
cerebral lobes are not functioning. She calls the doctor sir Peter Teazle and
picks buttercups off the quilt. Humour her till it's over. You crossed her last
wish in death and yet you sulk with me because I don't whinge like some hired
mute from Lalouette's. Absurd! I suppose I did say it. I didn't mean to offend
the memory of your mother.
He had spoken himself into boldness. Stephen, shielding the gaping wounds which
the words had left in his heart, said very coldly:
—I am not thinking of the offence to my mother.
—Of what then? Buck Mulligan asked.
—Of the offence to me, Stephen answered.
Buck Mulligan swung round on his heel.
—O, an impossible person! he exclaimed.
He walked off quickly round the parapet. Stephen stood at his post, gazing over
the calm sea towards the headland. Sea and headland now grew dim. Pulses were
beating in his eyes, veiling their sight, and he felt the fever of his cheeks.
A voice within the tower called loudly:
—Are you up there, Mulligan?
—I'm coming, Buck Mulligan answered.
He turned towards Stephen and said:
—Look at the sea. What does it care about offences? Chuck Loyola, Kinch, and
come on down. The Sassenach wants his morning rashers.
His head halted again for a moment at the top of the staircase, level with the
roof:
—Don't mope over it all day, he said. I'm inconsequent. Give up the moody
brooding.
His head vanished but the drone of his descending voice boomed out of the
stairhead:
And no more turn aside and brood
Upon love's bitter mystery
For Fergus rules the brazen cars.
Woodshadows floated silently by through the morning peace from the stairhead
seaward where he gazed. Inshore and farther out the mirror of water whitened,
spurned by lightshod hurrying feet. White breast of the dim sea. The twining
stresses, two by two. A hand plucking the harpstrings, merging their twining
chords. Wavewhite wedded words shimmering on the dim tide.
A cloud began to cover the sun slowly, wholly, shadowing the bay in deeper
green. It lay beneath him, a bowl of bitter waters. Fergus' song: I sang it
alone in the house, holding down the long dark chords. Her door was open: she
wanted to hear my music. Silent with awe and pity I went to her bedside. She was
crying in her wretched bed. For those words, Stephen: love's bitter mystery.
Where now?
Her secrets: old featherfans, tasselled dancecards, powdered with musk, a gaud
of amber beads in her locked drawer. A birdcage hung in the sunny window of her
house when she was a girl. She heard old Royce sing in the pantomime of Turko
the Terrible and laughed with others when he sang:
I am the boy
That can enjoy
Invisibility.
Phantasmal mirth, folded away: muskperfumed.
And no more turn aside and brood.
Folded away in the memory of nature with her toys. Memories beset his brooding
brain. Her glass of water from the kitchen tap when she had approached the
sacrament. A cored apple, filled with brown sugar, roasting for her at the hob
on a dark autumn evening. Her shapely fingernails reddened by the blood of
squashed lice from the children's shirts.
In a dream, silently, she had come to him, her wasted body within its loose
graveclothes giving off an odour of wax and rosewood, her breath, bent over him
with mute secret words, a faint odour of wetted ashes.
Her glazing eyes, staring out of death, to shake and bend my soul. On me alone.
The ghostcandle to light her agony. Ghostly light on the tortured face. Her
hoarse loud breath rattling in horror, while all prayed on their knees. Her eyes
on me to strike me down. Liliata rutilantium te confessorum turma circumdet:
iubilantium te virginum chorus excipiat.
Ghoul! Chewer of corpses!
No, mother! Let me be and let me live.
—Kinch ahoy!
Buck Mulligan's voice sang from within the tower. It came nearer up the
staircase, calling again. Stephen, still trembling at his soul's cry, heard warm
running sunlight and in the air behind him friendly words.
—Dedalus, come down, like a good mosey. Breakfast is ready. Haines is
apologising for waking us last night. It's all right.
—I'm coming, Stephen said, turning.
—Do, for Jesus' sake, Buck Mulligan said. For my sake and for all our sakes.
His head disappeared and reappeared.
—I told him your symbol of Irish art. He says it's very clever. Touch him for a
quid, will you? A guinea, I mean.
—I get paid this morning, Stephen said.
—The school kip? Buck Mulligan said. How much? Four quid? Lend us one.
—If you want it, Stephen said.
—Four shining sovereigns, Buck Mulligan cried with delight. We'll have a
glorious drunk to astonish the druidy druids. Four omnipotent sovereigns.
He flung up his hands and tramped down the stone stairs, singing out of tune
with a Cockney accent:
O, won't we have a merry time,
Drinking whisky, beer and wine!
On coronation,
Coronation day!
O, won't we have a merry time
On coronation day!
Warm sunshine merrying over the sea. The nickel shavingbowl shone, forgotten, on
the parapet. Why should I bring it down? Or leave it there all day, forgotten
friendship?
He went over to it, held it in his hands awhile, feeling its coolness, smelling
the clammy slaver of the lather in which the brush was stuck. So I carried the
boat of incense then at Clongowes. I am another now and yet the same. A servant
too. A server of a servant.
In the gloomy domed livingroom of the tower Buck Mulligan's gowned form moved
briskly to and fro about the hearth, hiding and revealing its yellow glow. Two
shafts of soft daylight fell across the flagged floor from the high barbacans:
and at the meeting of their rays a cloud of coalsmoke and fumes of fried grease
floated, turning.
—We'll be choked, Buck Mulligan said. Haines, open that door, will you?
Stephen laid the shavingbowl on the locker. A tall figure rose from the hammock
where it had been sitting, went to the doorway and pulled open the inner doors.
—Have you the key? a voice asked.
—Dedalus has it, Buck Mulligan said. Janey Mack, I'm choked!
He howled, without looking up from the fire:
—Kinch!
—It's in the lock, Stephen said, coming forward.
The key scraped round harshly twice and, when the heavy door had been set ajar,
welcome light and bright air entered. Haines stood at the doorway, looking out.
Stephen haled his upended valise to the table and sat down to wait. Buck
Mulligan tossed the fry on to the dish beside him. Then he carried the dish and
a large teapot over to the table, set them down heavily and sighed with relief.
—I'm melting, he said, as the candle remarked when... But, hush! Not a word more
on that subject! Kinch, wake up! Bread, butter, honey. Haines, come in. The grub
is ready. Bless us, O Lord, and these thy gifts. Where's the sugar? O, jay,
there's no milk.
Stephen fetched the loaf and the pot of honey and the buttercooler from the
locker. Buck Mulligan sat down in a sudden pet.
—What sort of a kip is this? he said. I told her to come after eight.
—We can drink it black, Stephen said thirstily. There's a lemon in the locker.
—O, damn you and your Paris fads! Buck Mulligan said. I want Sandycove milk.
Haines came in from the doorway and said quietly:
—That woman is coming up with the milk.
—The blessings of God on you! Buck Mulligan cried, jumping up from his chair.
Sit down. Pour out the tea there. The sugar is in the bag. Here, I can't go
fumbling at the damned eggs.
He hacked through the fry on the dish and slapped it out on three plates,
saying:
—In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti.
Haines sat down to pour out the tea.
—I'm giving you two lumps each, he said. But, I say, Mulligan, you do make
strong tea, don't you?
Buck Mulligan, hewing thick slices from the loaf, said in an old woman's
wheedling voice:
—When I makes tea I makes tea, as old mother Grogan said. And when I makes water
I makes water.
—By Jove, it is tea, Haines said.
Buck Mulligan went on hewing and wheedling:
—So I do, Mrs Cahill, says she. Begob, ma'am, says Mrs Cahill, God send you
don't make them in the one pot.
He lunged towards his messmates in turn a thick slice of bread, impaled on his
knife.
—That's folk, he said very earnestly, for your book, Haines. Five lines of text
and ten pages of notes about the folk and the fishgods of Dundrum. Printed by
the weird sisters in the year of the big wind.
He turned to Stephen and asked in a fine puzzled voice, lifting his brows:
—Can you recall, brother, is mother Grogan's tea and water pot spoken of in the
Mabinogion or is it in the Upanishads?
—I doubt it, said Stephen gravely.
—Do you now? Buck Mulligan said in the same tone. Your reasons, pray?
—I fancy, Stephen said as he ate, it did not exist in or out of the Mabinogion.
Mother Grogan was, one imagines, a kinswoman of Mary Ann.
Buck Mulligan's face smiled with delight.
—Charming! he said in a finical sweet voice, showing his white teeth and
blinking his eyes pleasantly. Do you think she was? Quite charming!
Then, suddenly overclouding all his features, he growled in a hoarsened rasping
voice as he hewed again vigorously at the loaf:
—For old Mary Ann
She doesn't care a damn.
But, hising up her petticoats...
He crammed his mouth with fry and munched and droned.
The doorway was darkened by an entering form.
—The milk, sir!
—Come in, ma'am, Mulligan said. Kinch, get the jug.
An old woman came forward and stood by Stephen's elbow.
—That's a lovely morning, sir, she said. Glory be to God.
—To whom? Mulligan said, glancing at her. Ah, to be sure!
Stephen reached back and took the milkjug from the locker.
—The islanders, Mulligan said to Haines casually, speak frequently of the
collector of prepuces.
—How much, sir? asked the old woman.
—A quart, Stephen said.
He watched her pour into the measure and thence into the jug rich white milk,
not hers. Old shrunken paps. She poured again a measureful and a tilly. Old and
secret she had entered from a morning world, maybe a messenger. She praised the
goodness of the milk, pouring it out. Crouching by a patient cow at daybreak in
the lush field, a witch on her toadstool, her wrinkled fingers quick at the
squirting dugs. They lowed about her whom they knew, dewsilky cattle. Silk of
the kine and poor old woman, names given her in old times. A wandering crone,
lowly form of an immortal serving her conqueror and her gay betrayer, their
common cuckquean, a messenger from the secret morning. To serve or to upbraid,
whether he could not tell: but scorned to beg her favour.
—It is indeed, ma'am, Buck Mulligan said, pouring milk into their cups.
—Taste it, sir, she said.
He drank at her bidding.
—If we could live on good food like that, he said to her somewhat loudly, we
wouldn't have the country full of rotten teeth and rotten guts. Living in a
bogswamp, eating cheap food and the streets paved with dust, horsedung and
consumptives' spits.
—Are you a medical student, sir? the old woman asked.
—I am, ma'am, Buck Mulligan answered.
—Look at that now, she said.
Stephen listened in scornful silence. She bows her old head to a voice that
speaks to her loudly, her bonesetter, her medicineman: me she slights. To the
voice that will shrive and oil for the grave all there is of her but her woman's
unclean loins, of man's flesh made not in God's likeness, the serpent's prey.
And to the loud voice that now bids her be silent with wondering unsteady eyes.
—Do you understand what he says? Stephen asked her.
—Is it French you are talking, sir? the old woman said to Haines.
Haines spoke to her again a longer speech, confidently.
—Irish, Buck Mulligan said. Is there Gaelic on you?
—I thought it was Irish, she said, by the sound of it. Are you from the west,
sir?
—I am an Englishman, Haines answered.
—He's English, Buck Mulligan said, and he thinks we ought to speak Irish in
Ireland.
—Sure we ought to, the old woman said, and I'm ashamed I don't speak the
language myself. I'm told it's a grand language by them that knows.
—Grand is no name for it, said Buck Mulligan. Wonderful entirely. Fill us out
some more tea, Kinch. Would you like a cup, ma'am?
—No, thank you, sir, the old woman said, slipping the ring of the milkcan on her
forearm and about to go.
Haines said to her:
—Have you your bill? We had better pay her, Mulligan, hadn't we?
Stephen filled again the three cups.
—Bill, sir? she said, halting. Well, it's seven mornings a pint at twopence is
seven twos is a shilling and twopence over and these three mornings a quart at
fourpence is three quarts is a shilling. That's a shilling and one and two is
two and two, sir.
Buck Mulligan sighed and, having filled his mouth with a crust thickly buttered
on both sides, stretched forth his legs and began to search his trouser pockets.

—Pay up and look pleasant, Haines said to him, smiling.
Stephen filled a third cup, a spoonful of tea colouring faintly the thick rich
milk. Buck Mulligan brought up a florin, twisted it round in his fingers and
cried:
—A miracle!
He passed it along the table towards the old woman, saying:
—Ask nothing more of me, sweet. All I can give you I give.
Stephen laid the coin in her uneager hand.
—We'll owe twopence, he said.
—Time enough, sir, she said, taking the coin. Time enough. Good morning, sir.
She curtseyed and went out, followed by Buck Mulligan's tender chant:
—Heart of my heart, were it more,
More would be laid at your feet.
He turned to Stephen and said:
—Seriously, Dedalus. I'm stony. Hurry out to your school kip and bring us back
some money. Today the bards must drink and junket. Ireland expects that every
man this day will do his duty.
—That reminds me, Haines said, rising, that I have to visit your national
library today.
—Our swim first, Buck Mulligan said.
He turned to Stephen and asked blandly:
—Is this the day for your monthly wash, Kinch?
Then he said to Haines:
—The unclean bard makes a point of washing once a month.
—All Ireland is washed by the gulfstream, Stephen said as he let honey trickle
over a slice of the loaf.
Haines from the corner where he was knotting easily a scarf about the loose
collar of his tennis shirt spoke:
—I intend to make a collection of your sayings if you will let me.
Speaking to me. They wash and tub and scrub. Agenbite of inwit. Conscience. Yet
here's a spot.
—That one about the cracked lookingglass of a servant being the symbol of Irish
art is deuced good.
Buck Mulligan kicked Stephen's foot under the table and said with warmth of
tone:
—Wait till you hear him on Hamlet, Haines.
—Well, I mean it, Haines said, still speaking to Stephen. I was just thinking of
it when that poor old creature came in.
—Would I make any money by it? Stephen asked.
Haines laughed and, as he took his soft grey hat from the holdfast of the
hammock, said:
—I don't know, I'm sure.
He strolled out to the doorway. Buck Mulligan bent across to Stephen and said
with coarse vigour:
—You put your hoof in it now. What did you say that for?
—Well? Stephen said. The problem is to get money. From whom? From the milkwoman
or from him. It's a toss up, I think.
—I blow him out about you, Buck Mulligan said, and then you come along with your
lousy leer and your gloomy jesuit jibes.
—I see little hope, Stephen said, from her or from him.
Buck Mulligan sighed tragically and laid his hand on Stephen's arm.
—From me, Kinch, he said.
In a suddenly changed tone he added:
—To tell you the God's truth I think you're right. Damn all else they are good
for. Why don't you play them as I do? To hell with them all. Let us get out of
the kip.
He stood up, gravely ungirdled and disrobed himself of his gown, saying
resignedly:
—Mulligan is stripped of his garments.
He emptied his pockets on to the table.
—There's your snotrag, he said.
And putting on his stiff collar and rebellious tie he spoke to them, chiding
them, and to his dangling watchchain. His hands plunged and rummaged in his
trunk while he called for a clean handkerchief. God, we'll simply have to dress
the character. I want puce gloves and green boots. Contradiction. Do I
contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself. Mercurial Malachi. A
limp black missile flew out of his talking hands.
—And there's your Latin quarter hat, he said.
Stephen picked it up and put it on. Haines called to them from the doorway:
—Are you coming, you fellows?
—I'm ready, Buck Mulligan answered, going towards the door. Come out, Kinch. You
have eaten all we left, I suppose. Resigned he passed out with grave words and
gait, saying, wellnigh with sorrow:
—And going forth he met Butterly.
Stephen, taking his ashplant from its leaningplace, followed them out and, as
they went down the ladder, pulled to the slow iron door and locked it. He put
the huge key in his inner pocket.
At the foot of the ladder Buck Mulligan asked:
—Did you bring the key?
—I have it, Stephen said, preceding them.
He walked on. Behind him he heard Buck Mulligan club with his heavy bathtowel
the leader shoots of ferns or grasses.
—Down, sir! How dare you, sir!
Haines asked:
—Do you pay rent for this tower?
—Twelve quid, Buck Mulligan said.
—To the secretary of state for war, Stephen added over his shoulder.
They halted while Haines surveyed the tower and said at last:
—Rather bleak in wintertime, I should say. Martello you call it?
—Billy Pitt had them built, Buck Mulligan said, when the French were on the sea.
But ours is the omphalos.
—What is your idea of Hamlet? Haines asked Stephen.
—No, no, Buck Mulligan shouted in pain. I'm not equal to Thomas Aquinas and the
fiftyfive reasons he has made out to prop it up. Wait till I have a few pints in
me first.
He turned to Stephen, saying, as he pulled down neatly the peaks of his primrose
waistcoat:
—You couldn't manage it under three pints, Kinch, could you?
—It has waited so long, Stephen said listlessly, it can wait longer.
—You pique my curiosity, Haines said amiably. Is it some paradox?
—Pooh! Buck Mulligan said. We have grown out of Wilde and paradoxes. It's quite
simple. He proves by algebra that Hamlet's grandson is Shakespeare's grandfather
and that he himself is the ghost of his own father.
—What? Haines said, beginning to point at Stephen. He himself?
Buck Mulligan slung his towel stolewise round his neck and, bending in loose
laughter, said to Stephen's ear:
—O, shade of Kinch the elder! Japhet in search of a father!
—We're always tired in the morning, Stephen said to Haines. And it is rather
long to tell.
Buck Mulligan, walking forward again, raised his hands.
—The sacred pint alone can unbind the tongue of Dedalus, he said.
—I mean to say, Haines explained to Stephen as they followed, this tower and
these cliffs here remind me somehow of Elsinore. That beetles o'er his base into
the sea, isn't it?
Buck Mulligan turned suddenly for an instant towards Stephen but did not speak.
In the bright silent instant Stephen saw his own image in cheap dusty mourning
between their gay attires.
—It's a wonderful tale, Haines said, bringing them to halt again.
Eyes, pale as the sea the wind had freshened, paler, firm and prudent. The seas'
ruler, he gazed southward over the bay, empty save for the smokeplume of the
mailboat vague on the bright skyline and a sail tacking by the Muglins.
—I read a theological interpretation of it somewhere, he said bemused. The
Father and the Son idea. The Son striving to be atoned with the Father.
Buck Mulligan at once put on a blithe broadly smiling face. He looked at them,
his wellshaped mouth open happily, his eyes, from which he had suddenly
withdrawn all shrewd sense, blinking with mad gaiety. He moved a doll's head to
and fro, the brims of his Panama hat quivering, and began to chant in a quiet
happy foolish voice:
—I'm the queerest young fellow that ever you heard.
My mother's a jew, my father's a bird.
With Joseph the joiner I cannot agree.
So here's to disciples and Calvary.
He held up a forefinger of warning.
—If anyone thinks that I amn't divine
He'll get no free drinks when I'm making the wine
But have to drink water and wish it were plain
That i make when the wine becomes water again.
He tugged swiftly at Stephen's ashplant in farewell and, running forward to a
brow of the cliff, fluttered his hands at his sides like fins or wings of one
about to rise in the air, and chanted:
—Goodbye, now, goodbye! Write down all I said
And tell Tom, Dick and Harry I rose from the dead.
What's bred in the bone cannot fail me to fly
And Olivet's breezy... Goodbye, now, goodbye!
He capered before them down towards the fortyfoot hole, fluttering his winglike
hands, leaping nimbly, Mercury's hat quivering in the fresh wind that bore back
to them his brief birdsweet cries.
Haines, who had been laughing guardedly, walked on beside Stephen and said:
—We oughtn't to laugh, I suppose. He's rather blasphemous. I'm not a believer
myself, that is to say. Still his gaiety takes the harm out of it somehow,
doesn't it? What did he call it? Joseph the Joiner?
—The ballad of joking Jesus, Stephen answered.
—O, Haines said, you have heard it before?
—Three times a day, after meals, Stephen said drily.
—You're not a believer, are you? Haines asked. I mean, a believer in the narrow
sense of the word. Creation from nothing and miracles and a personal God.
—There's only one sense of the word, it seems to me, Stephen said.
Haines stopped to take out a smooth silver case in which twinkled a green stone.
He sprang it open with his thumb and offered it.
—Thank you, Stephen said, taking a cigarette.
Haines helped himself and snapped the case to. He put it back in his sidepocket
and took from his waistcoatpocket a nickel tinderbox, sprang it open too, and,
having lit his cigarette, held the flaming spunk towards Stephen in the shell of
his hands.
—Yes, of course, he said, as they went on again. Either you believe or you
don't, isn't it? Personally I couldn't stomach that idea of a personal God. You
don't stand for that, I suppose?
—You behold in me, Stephen said with grim displeasure, a horrible example of
free thought.
He walked on, waiting to be spoken to, trailing his ashplant by his side. Its
ferrule followed lightly on the path, squealing at his heels. My familiar, after
me, calling, Steeeeeeeeeeeephen! A wavering line along the path. They will walk
on it tonight, coming here in the dark. He wants that key. It is mine. I paid
the rent. Now I eat his salt bread. Give him the key too. All. He will ask for
it. That was in his eyes.
—After all, Haines began...
Stephen turned and saw that the cold gaze which had measured him was not all
unkind.
—After all, I should think you are able to free yourself. You are your own
master, it seems to me.
—I am a servant of two masters, Stephen said, an English and an Italian.
—Italian? Haines said.
A crazy queen, old and jealous. Kneel down before me.
—And a third, Stephen said, there is who wants me for odd jobs.
—Italian? Haines said again. What do you mean?
—The imperial British state, Stephen answered, his colour rising, and the holy
Roman catholic and apostolic church.
Haines detached from his underlip some fibres of tobacco before he spoke.
—I can quite understand that, he said calmly. An Irishman must think like that,
I daresay. We feel in England that we have treated you rather unfairly. It seems
history is to blame.
The proud potent titles clanged over Stephen's memory the triumph of their
brazen bells: et unam sanctam catholicam et apostolicam ecclesiam: the slow
growth and change of rite and dogma like his own rare thoughts, a chemistry of
stars. Symbol of the apostles in the mass for pope Marcellus, the voices
blended, singing alone loud in affirmation: and behind their chant the vigilant
angel of the church militant disarmed and menaced her heresiarchs. A horde of
heresies fleeing with mitres awry: Photius and the brood of mockers of whom
Mulligan was one, and Arius, warring his life long upon the consubstantiality of
the Son with the Father, and Valentine, spurning Christ's terrene body, and the
subtle African heresiarch Sabellius who held that the Father was Himself His own
Son. Words Mulligan had spoken a moment since in mockery to the stranger. Idle
mockery. The void awaits surely all them that weave the wind: a menace, a
disarming and a worsting from those embattled angels of the church, Michael's
host, who defend her ever in the hour of conflict with their lances and their
shields.
Hear, hear! Prolonged applause. Zut! Nom de Dieu!
—Of course I'm a Britisher, Haines's voice said, and I feel as one. I don't want
to see my country fall into the hands of German jews either. That's our national
problem, I'm afraid, just now.
Two men stood at the verge of the cliff, watching: businessman, boatman.
—She's making for Bullock harbour.
The boatman nodded towards the north of the bay with some disdain.
—There's five fathoms out there, he said. It'll be swept up that way when the
tide comes in about one. It's nine days today.
The man that was drowned. A sail veering about the blank bay waiting for a
swollen bundle to bob up, roll over to the sun a puffy face, saltwhite. Here I
am.
They followed the winding path down to the creek. Buck Mulligan stood on a
stone, in shirtsleeves, his unclipped tie rippling over his shoulder. A young
man clinging to a spur of rock near him, moved slowly frogwise his green legs in
the deep jelly of the water.
—Is the brother with you, Malachi?
—Down in Westmeath. With the Bannons.
—Still there? I got a card from Bannon. Says he found a sweet young thing down
there. Photo girl he calls her.
—Snapshot, eh? Brief exposure.
Buck Mulligan sat down to unlace his boots. An elderly man shot up near the spur
of rock a blowing red face. He scrambled up by the stones, water glistening on
his pate and on its garland of grey hair, water rilling over his chest and
paunch and spilling jets out of his black sagging loincloth.
Buck Mulligan made way for him to scramble past and, glancing at Haines and
Stephen, crossed himself piously with his thumbnail at brow and lips and
breastbone.
—Seymour's back in town, the young man said, grasping again his spur of rock.
Chucked medicine and going in for the army.
—Ah, go to God! Buck Mulligan said.
—Going over next week to stew. You know that red Carlisle girl, Lily?
—Yes.
—Spooning with him last night on the pier. The father is rotto with money.
—Is she up the pole?
—Better ask Seymour that.
—Seymour a bleeding officer! Buck Mulligan said.
He nodded to himself as he drew off his trousers and stood up, saying tritely:
—Redheaded women buck like goats.
He broke off in alarm, feeling his side under his flapping shirt.
—My twelfth rib is gone, he cried. I'm the Uebermensch. Toothless Kinch and I,
the supermen.
He struggled out of his shirt and flung it behind him to where his clothes lay.
—Are you going in here, Malachi?
—Yes. Make room in the bed.
The young man shoved himself backward through the water and reached the middle
of the creek in two long clean strokes. Haines sat down on a stone, smoking.
—Are you not coming in? Buck Mulligan asked.
—Later on, Haines said. Not on my breakfast.
Stephen turned away.
—I'm going, Mulligan, he said.
—Give us that key, Kinch, Buck Mulligan said, to keep my chemise flat.
Stephen handed him the key. Buck Mulligan laid it across his heaped clothes.
—And twopence, he said, for a pint. Throw it there.
Stephen threw two pennies on the soft heap. Dressing, undressing. Buck Mulligan
erect, with joined hands before him, said solemnly:
—He who stealeth from the poor lendeth to the Lord. Thus spake Zarathustra.
His plump body plunged.
—We'll see you again, Haines said, turning as Stephen walked up the path and
smiling at wild Irish.
Horn of a bull, hoof of a horse, smile of a Saxon.
—The Ship, Buck Mulligan cried. Half twelve.
—Good, Stephen said.
He walked along the upwardcurving path.
Liliata rutilantium.
Turma circumdet.
Iubilantium te virginum.
The priest's grey nimbus in a niche where he dressed discreetly. I will not
sleep here tonight. Home also I cannot go.
A voice, sweettoned and sustained, called to him from the sea. Turning the curve
he waved his hand. It called again. A sleek brown head, a seal's, far out on the
water, round.
Usurper.
—You, Cochrane, what city sent for him?
—Tarentum, sir.
—Very good. Well?
—There was a battle, sir.
—Very good. Where?
The boy's blank face asked the blank window.
Fabled by the daughters of memory. And yet it was in some way if not as memory
fabled it. A phrase, then, of impatience, thud of Blake's wings of excess. I
hear the ruin of all space, shattered glass and toppling masonry, and time one
livid final flame. What's left us then?
—I forget the place, sir. 279 B. C.
—Asculum, Stephen said, glancing at the name and date in the gorescarred book.
—Yes, sir. And he said: Another victory like that and we are done for.
That phrase the world had remembered. A dull ease of the mind. From a hill above
a corpsestrewn plain a general speaking to his officers, leaned upon his spear.
Any general to any officers. They lend ear.
—You, Armstrong, Stephen said. What was the end of Pyrrhus?
—End of Pyrrhus, sir?
—I know, sir. Ask me, sir, Comyn said.
—Wait. You, Armstrong. Do you know anything about Pyrrhus?
A bag of figrolls lay snugly in Armstrong's satchel. He curled them between his
palms at whiles and swallowed them softly. Crumbs adhered to the tissue of his
lips. A sweetened boy's breath. Welloff people, proud that their eldest son was
in the navy. Vico road, Dalkey.
—Pyrrhus, sir? Pyrrhus, a pier.
All laughed. Mirthless high malicious laughter. Armstrong looked round at his
classmates, silly glee in profile. In a moment they will laugh more loudly,
aware of my lack of rule and of the fees their papas pay.
—Tell me now, Stephen said, poking the boy's shoulder with the book, what is a
pier.
—A pier, sir, Armstrong said. A thing out in the water. A kind of a bridge.
Kingstown pier, sir.
Some laughed again: mirthless but with meaning. Two in the back bench whispered.
Yes. They knew: had never learned nor ever been innocent. All. With envy he
watched their faces: Edith, Ethel, Gerty, Lily. Their likes: their breaths, too,
sweetened with tea and jam, their bracelets tittering in the struggle.
—Kingstown pier, Stephen said. Yes, a disappointed bridge.
The words troubled their gaze.
—How, sir? Comyn asked. A bridge is across a river.
For Haines's chapbook. No-one here to hear. Tonight deftly amid wild drink and
talk, to pierce the polished mail of his mind. What then? A jester at the court
of his master, indulged and disesteemed, winning a clement master's praise. Why
had they chosen all that part? Not wholly for the smooth caress. For them too
history was a tale like any other too often heard, their land a pawnshop.
Had Pyrrhus not fallen by a beldam's hand in Argos or Julius Caesar not been
knifed to death. They are not to be thought away. Time has branded them and
fettered they are lodged in the room of the infinite possibilities they have
ousted. But can those have been possible seeing that they never were? Or was
that only possible which came to pass? Weave, weaver of the wind.
—Tell us a story, sir.
—O, do, sir. A ghoststory.
—Where do you begin in this? Stephen asked, opening another book.
--Weep no more, Comyn said.
—Go on then, Talbot.
—And the story, sir?
—After, Stephen said. Go on, Talbot.
A swarthy boy opened a book and propped it nimbly under the breastwork of his
satchel. He recited jerks of verse with odd glances at the text:
—Weep no more, woful shepherds, weep no more
For Lycidas, your sorrow, is not dead,
Sunk though he be beneath the watery floor...
It must be a movement then, an actuality of the possible as possible.
Aristotle's phrase formed itself within the gabbled verses and floated out into
the studious silence of the library of Saint Genevieve where he had read,
sheltered from the sin of Paris, night by night. By his elbow a delicate Siamese
conned a handbook of strategy. Fed and feeding brains about me: under glowlamps,
impaled, with faintly beating feelers: and in my mind's darkness a sloth of the
underworld, reluctant, shy of brightness, shifting her dragon scaly folds.
Thought is the thought of thought. Tranquil brightness. The soul is in a manner
all that is: the soul is the form of forms. Tranquility sudden, vast,
candescent: form of forms.
Talbot repeated:
—Through the dear might of Him that walked the waves,
Through the dear might...
—Turn over, Stephen said quietly. I don't see anything.
—What, sir? Talbot asked simply, bending forward.
His hand turned the page over. He leaned back and went on again, having just
remembered. Of him that walked the waves. Here also over these craven hearts his
shadow lies and on the scoffer's heart and lips and on mine. It lies upon their
eager faces who offered him a coin of the tribute. To Caesar what is Caesar's,
to God what is God's. A long look from dark eyes, a riddling sentence to be
woven and woven on the church's looms. Ay.
Riddle me, riddle me, randy ro.
My father gave me seeds to sow.
Talbot slid his closed book into his satchel.
—Have I heard all? Stephen asked.
—Yes, sir. Hockey at ten, sir.
—Half day, sir. Thursday.
—Who can answer a riddle? Stephen asked.
They bundled their books away, pencils clacking, pages rustling. Crowding
together they strapped and buckled their satchels, all gabbling gaily:
—A riddle, sir? Ask me, sir.
—O, ask me, sir.
—A hard one, sir.
—This is the riddle, Stephen said:
The cock crew,
The sky was blue:
The bells in heaven
Were striking eleven.
'Tis time for this poor soul
To go to heaven.
What is that?
—What, sir?
—Again, sir. We didn't hear.
Their eyes grew bigger as the lines were repeated. After a silence Cochrane
said:
—What is it, sir? We give it up.
Stephen, his throat itching, answered:
—The fox burying his grandmother under a hollybush.
He stood up and gave a shout of nervous laughter to which their cries echoed
dismay.
A stick struck the door and a voice in the corridor called:
—Hockey!
They broke asunder, sidling out of their benches, leaping them. Quickly they
were gone and from the lumberroom came the rattle of sticks and clamour of their
boots and tongues.
Sargent who alone had lingered came forward slowly, showing an open copybook.
His thick hair and scraggy neck gave witness of unreadiness and through his
misty glasses weak eyes looked up pleading. On his cheek, dull and bloodless, a
soft stain of ink lay, dateshaped, recent and damp as a snail's bed.
He held out his copybook. The word Sums was written on the headline. Beneath
were sloping figures and at the foot a crooked signature with blind loops and a
blot. Cyril Sargent: his name and seal.
—Mr Deasy told me to write them out all again, he said, and show them to you,
sir.
Stephen touched the edges of the book. Futility.
—Do you understand how to do them now? he asked.
—Numbers eleven to fifteen, Sargent answered. Mr Deasy said I was to copy them
off the board, sir.
—Can you do them yourself? Stephen asked.
—No, sir.
Ugly and futile: lean neck and thick hair and a stain of ink, a snail's bed. Yet
someone had loved him, borne him in her arms and in her heart. But for her the
race of the world would have trampled him underfoot, a squashed boneless snail.
She had loved his weak watery blood drained from her own. Was that then real?
The only true thing in life? His mother's prostrate body the fiery Columbanus in
holy zeal bestrode. She was no more: the trembling skeleton of a twig burnt in
the fire, an odour of rosewood and wetted ashes. She had saved him from being
trampled underfoot and had gone, scarcely having been. A poor soul gone to
heaven: and on a heath beneath winking stars a fox, red reek of rapine in his
fur, with merciless bright eyes scraped in the earth, listened, scraped up the
earth, listened, scraped and scraped.
Sitting at his side Stephen solved out the problem. He proves by algebra that
Shakespeare's ghost is Hamlet's grandfather. Sargent peered askance through his
slanted glasses. Hockeysticks rattled in the lumberroom: the hollow knock of a
ball and calls from the field.
Across the page the symbols moved in grave morrice, in the mummery of their
letters, wearing quaint caps of squares and cubes. Give hands, traverse, bow to
partner: so: imps of fancy of the Moors. Gone too from the world, Averroes and
Moses Maimonides, dark men in mien and movement, flashing in their mocking
mirrors the obscure soul of the world, a darkness shining in brightness which
brightness could not comprehend.
—Do you understand now? Can you work the second for yourself?
—Yes, sir.
In long shaky strokes Sargent copied the data. Waiting always for a word of help
his hand moved faithfully the unsteady symbols, a faint hue of shame flickering
behind his dull skin. Amor matris: subjective and objective genitive. With her
weak blood and wheysour milk she had fed him and hid from sight of others his
swaddling bands.
Like him was I, these sloping shoulders, this gracelessness. My childhood bends
beside me. Too far for me to lay a hand there once or lightly. Mine is far and
his secret as our eyes. Secrets, silent, stony sit in the dark palaces of both
our hearts: secrets weary of their tyranny: tyrants, willing to be dethroned.
The sum was done.
—It is very simple, Stephen said as he stood up.
—Yes, sir. Thanks, Sargent answered.
He dried the page with a sheet of thin blottingpaper and carried his copybook
back to his bench.
—You had better get your stick and go out to the others, Stephen said as he
followed towards the door the boy's graceless form.
—Yes, sir.
In the corridor his name was heard, called from the playfield.
—Sargent!
—Run on, Stephen said. Mr Deasy is calling you.
He stood in the porch and watched the laggard hurry towards the scrappy field
where sharp voices were in strife. They were sorted in teams and Mr Deasy came
away stepping over wisps of grass with gaitered feet. When he had reached the
schoolhouse voices again contending called to him. He turned his angry white
moustache.
—What is it now? he cried continually without listening.
—Cochrane and Halliday are on the same side, sir, Stephen said.
—Will you wait in my study for a moment, Mr Deasy said, till I restore order
here.
And as he stepped fussily back across the field his old man's voice cried
sternly:
—What is the matter? What is it now?
Their sharp voices cried about him on all sides: their many forms closed round
him, the garish sunshine bleaching the honey of his illdyed head.
Stale smoky air hung in the study with the smell of drab abraded leather of its
chairs. As on the first day he bargained with me here. As it was in the
beginning, is now. On the sideboard the tray of Stuart coins, base treasure of a
bog: and ever shall be. And snug in their spooncase of purple plush, faded, the
twelve apostles having preached to all the gentiles: world without end.
A hasty step over the stone porch and in the corridor. Blowing out his rare
moustache Mr Deasy halted at the table.
—First, our little financial settlement, he said.
He brought out of his coat a pocketbook bound by a leather thong. It slapped
open and he took from it two notes, one of joined halves, and laid them
carefully on the table.
—Two, he said, strapping and stowing his pocketbook away.
And now his strongroom for the gold. Stephen's embarrassed hand moved over the
shells heaped in the cold stone mortar: whelks and money cowries and leopard
shells: and this, whorled as an emir's turban, and this, the scallop of saint
James. An old pilgrim's hoard, dead treasure, hollow shells.
A sovereign fell, bright and new, on the soft pile of the tablecloth.
—Three, Mr Deasy said, turning his little savingsbox about in his hand. These
are handy things to have. See. This is for sovereigns. This is for shillings.
Sixpences, halfcrowns. And here crowns. See.
He shot from it two crowns and two shillings.
—Three twelve, he said. I think you'll find that's right.
—Thank you, sir, Stephen said, gathering the money together with shy haste and
putting it all in a pocket of his trousers.
—No thanks at all, Mr Deasy said. You have earned it.
Stephen's hand, free again, went back to the hollow shells. Symbols too of
beauty and of power. A lump in my pocket: symbols soiled by greed and misery.
—Don't carry it like that, Mr Deasy said. You'll pull it out somewhere and lose
it. You just buy one of these machines. You'll find them very handy.
Answer something.
—Mine would be often empty, Stephen said.
The same room and hour, the same wisdom: and I the same. Three times now. Three
nooses round me here. Well? I can break them in this instant if I will.
—Because you don't save, Mr Deasy said, pointing his finger. You don't know yet
what money is. Money is power. When you have lived as long as I have. I know, I
know. If youth but knew. But what does Shakespeare say? Put but money in thy
purse.
—Iago, Stephen murmured.
He lifted his gaze from the idle shells to the old man's stare.
—He knew what money was, Mr Deasy said. He made money. A poet, yes, but an
Englishman too. Do you know what is the pride of the English? Do you know what
is the proudest word you will ever hear from an Englishman's mouth?
The seas' ruler. His seacold eyes looked on the empty bay: it seems history is
to blame: on me and on my words, unhating.
—That on his empire, Stephen said, the sun never sets.
—Ba! Mr Deasy cried. That's not English. A French Celt said that. He tapped his
savingsbox against his thumbnail.
—I will tell you, he said solemnly, what is his proudest boast. I paid my way.
Good man, good man.
—I paid my way. I never borrowed a shilling in my life. Can you feel that? I owe
nothing. Can you?
Mulligan, nine pounds, three pairs of socks, one pair brogues, ties. Curran, ten
guineas. McCann, one guinea. Fred Ryan, two shillings. Temple, two lunches.
Russell, one guinea, Cousins, ten shillings, Bob Reynolds, half a guinea,
Koehler, three guineas, Mrs MacKernan, five weeks' board. The lump I have is
useless.
—For the moment, no, Stephen answered.
Mr Deasy laughed with rich delight, putting back his savingsbox.
—I knew you couldn't, he said joyously. But one day you must feel it. We are a
generous people but we must also be just.
—I fear those big words, Stephen said, which make us so unhappy.
Mr Deasy stared sternly for some moments over the mantelpiece at the shapely
bulk of a man in tartan filibegs: Albert Edward, prince of Wales.
—You think me an old fogey and an old tory, his thoughtful voice said. I saw
three generations since O'Connell's time. I remember the famine in '46. Do you
know that the orange lodges agitated for repeal of the union twenty years before
O'Connell did or before the prelates of your communion denounced him as a
demagogue? You fenians forget some things.
Glorious, pious and immortal memory. The lodge of Diamond in Armagh the splendid
behung with corpses of papishes. Hoarse, masked and armed, the planters'
covenant. The black north and true blue bible. Croppies lie down.
Stephen sketched a brief gesture.
—I have rebel blood in me too, Mr Deasy said. On the spindle side. But I am
descended from sir John Blackwood who voted for the union. We are all Irish, all
kings' sons.
—Alas, Stephen said.
—Per vias rectas, Mr Deasy said firmly, was his motto. He voted for it and put
on his topboots to ride to Dublin from the Ards of Down to do so.
Lal the ral the ra
The rocky road to Dublin.
A gruff squire on horseback with shiny topboots. Soft day, sir John! Soft day,
your honour!... Day!... Day!... Two topboots jog dangling on to Dublin. Lal the
ral the ra. Lal the ral the raddy.
—That reminds me, Mr Deasy said. You can do me a favour, Mr Dedalus, with some
of your literary friends. I have a letter here for the press. Sit down a moment.
I have just to copy the end.
He went to the desk near the window, pulled in his chair twice and read off some
words from the sheet on the drum of his typewriter.
—Sit down. Excuse me, he said over his shoulder, the dictates of common sense.
Just a moment.
He peered from under his shaggy brows at the manuscript by his elbow and,
muttering, began to prod the stiff buttons of the keyboard slowly, sometimes
blowing as he screwed up the drum to erase an error.
Stephen seated himself noiselessly before the princely presence. Framed around
the walls images of vanished horses stood in homage, their meek heads poised in
air: lord Hastings' Repulse, the duke of Westminster's Shotover, the duke of
Beaufort's Ceylon, prix de Paris, 1866. Elfin riders sat them, watchful of a
sign. He saw their speeds, backing king's colours, and shouted with the shouts
of vanished crowds.
—Full stop, Mr Deasy bade his keys. But prompt ventilation of this allimportant
question...
Where Cranly led me to get rich quick, hunting his winners among the mudsplashed
brakes, amid the bawls of bookies on their pitches and reek of the canteen, over
the motley slush. Fair Rebel! Fair Rebel! Even money the favourite: ten to one
the field. Dicers and thimbleriggers we hurried by after the hoofs, the vying
caps and jackets and past the meatfaced woman, a butcher's dame, nuzzling
thirstily her clove of orange.
Shouts rang shrill from the boys' playfield and a whirring whistle.
Again: a goal. I am among them, among their battling bodies in a medley, the
joust of life. You mean that knockkneed mother's darling who seems to be
slightly crawsick? Jousts. Time shocked rebounds, shock by shock. Jousts, slush
and uproar of battles, the frozen deathspew of the slain, a shout of spearspikes
baited with men's bloodied guts.
—Now then, Mr Deasy said, rising.
He came to the table, pinning together his sheets. Stephen stood up.
—I have put the matter into a nutshell, Mr Deasy said. It's about the foot and
mouth disease. Just look through it. There can be no two opinions on the matter.

May I trespass on your valuable space. That doctrine of laissez faire which so
often in our history. Our cattle trade. The way of all our old industries.
Liverpool ring which jockeyed the Galway harbour scheme. European conflagration.
Grain supplies through the narrow waters of the channel. The pluterperfect
imperturbability of the department of agriculture. Pardoned a classical
allusion. Cassandra. By a woman who was no better than she should be. To come to
the point at issue.
—I don't mince words, do I? Mr Deasy asked as Stephen read on.
Foot and mouth disease. Known as Koch's preparation. Serum and virus. Percentage
of salted horses. Rinderpest. Emperor's horses at Murzsteg, lower Austria.
Veterinary surgeons. Mr Henry Blackwood Price. Courteous offer a fair trial.
Dictates of common sense. Allimportant question. In every sense of the word take
the bull by the horns. Thanking you for the hospitality of your columns.
—I want that to be printed and read, Mr Deasy said. You will see at the next
outbreak they will put an embargo on Irish cattle. And it can be cured. It is
cured. My cousin, Blackwood Price, writes to me it is regularly treated and
cured in Austria by cattledoctors there. They offer to come over here. I am
trying to work up influence with the department. Now I'm going to try publicity.
I am surrounded by difficulties, by... intrigues by... backstairs influence
by...
He raised his forefinger and beat the air oldly before his voice spoke.
—Mark my words, Mr Dedalus, he said. England is in the hands of the jews. In all
the highest places: her finance, her press. And they are the signs of a nation's
decay. Wherever they gather they eat up the nation's vital strength. I have seen
it coming these years. As sure as we are standing here the jew merchants are
already at their work of destruction. Old England is dying.
He stepped swiftly off, his eyes coming to blue life as they passed a broad
sunbeam. He faced about and back again.
—Dying, he said again, if not dead by now.
The harlot's cry from street to street
Shall weave old England's windingsheet.
His eyes open wide in vision stared sternly across the sunbeam in which he
halted.
—A merchant, Stephen said, is one who buys cheap and sells dear, jew or gentile,
is he not?
—They sinned against the light, Mr Deasy said gravely. And you can see the
darkness in their eyes. And that is why they are wanderers on the earth to this
day.
On the steps of the Paris stock exchange the goldskinned men quoting prices on
their gemmed fingers. Gabble of geese. They swarmed loud, uncouth about the
temple, their heads thickplotting under maladroit silk hats. Not theirs: these
clothes, this speech, these gestures. Their full slow eyes belied the words, the
gestures eager and unoffending, but knew the rancours massed about them and knew
their zeal was vain. Vain patience to heap and hoard. Time surely would scatter
all. A hoard heaped by the roadside: plundered and passing on. Their eyes knew
their years of wandering and, patient, knew the dishonours of their flesh.
—Who has not? Stephen said.
—What do you mean? Mr Deasy asked.
He came forward a pace and stood by the table. His underjaw fell sideways open
uncertainly. Is this old wisdom? He waits to hear from me.
—History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.
From the playfield the boys raised a shout. A whirring whistle: goal. What if
that nightmare gave you a back kick?
—The ways of the Creator are not our ways, Mr Deasy said. All human history
moves towards one great goal, the manifestation of God.
Stephen jerked his thumb towards the window, saying:
—That is God.
Hooray! Ay! Whrrwhee!
—What? Mr Deasy asked.
—A shout in the street, Stephen answered, shrugging his shoulders.
Mr Deasy looked down and held for awhile the wings of his nose tweaked between
his fingers. Looking up again he set them free.
—I am happier than you are, he said. We have committed many errors and many
sins. A woman brought sin into the world. For a woman who was no better than she
should be, Helen, the runaway wife of Menelaus, ten years the Greeks made war on
Troy. A faithless wife first brought the strangers to our shore here,
MacMurrough's wife and her leman, O'Rourke, prince of Breffni. A woman too
brought Parnell low. Many errors, many failures but not the one sin. I am a
struggler now at the end of my days. But I will fight for the right till the
end.
For Ulster will fight
And Ulster will be right.
Stephen raised the sheets in his hand.
—Well, sir, he began...
—I foresee, Mr Deasy said, that you will not remain here very long at this work.
You were not born to be a teacher, I think. Perhaps I am wrong.
—A learner rather, Stephen said.
And here what will you learn more?
Mr Deasy shook his head.
—Who knows? he said. To learn one must be humble. But life is the great teacher.

Stephen rustled the sheets again.
—As regards these, he began.
—Yes, Mr Deasy said. You have two copies there. If you can have them published
at once.
Telegraph. Irish Homestead.
—I will try, Stephen said, and let you know tomorrow. I know two editors
slightly.
—That will do, Mr Deasy said briskly. I wrote last night to Mr Field, M.P. There
is a meeting of the cattletraders' association today at the City Arms hotel. I
asked him to lay my letter before the meeting. You see if you can get it into
your two papers. What are they?
—The Evening Telegraph...
—That will do, Mr Deasy said. There is no time to lose. Now I have to answer
that letter from my cousin.
—Good morning, sir, Stephen said, putting the sheets in his pocket. Thank you.
—Not at all, Mr Deasy said as he searched the papers on his desk. I like to
break a lance with you, old as I am.
—Good morning, sir, Stephen said again, bowing to his bent back.
He went out by the open porch and down the gravel path under the trees, hearing
the cries of voices and crack of sticks from the playfield. The lions couchant
on the pillars as he passed out through the gate: toothless terrors. Still I
will help him in his fight. Mulligan will dub me a new name: the
bullockbefriending bard.
—Mr Dedalus!
Running after me. No more letters, I hope.
—Just one moment.
—Yes, sir, Stephen said, turning back at the gate.
Mr Deasy halted, breathing hard and swallowing his breath.
—I just wanted to say, he said. Ireland, they say, has the honour of being the
only country which never persecuted the jews. Do you know that? No. And do you
know why?
He frowned sternly on the bright air.
—Why, sir? Stephen asked, beginning to smile.
—Because she never let them in, Mr Deasy said solemnly.
A coughball of laughter leaped from his throat dragging after it a rattling
chain of phlegm. He turned back quickly, coughing, laughing, his lifted arms
waving to the air.
—She never let them in, he cried again through his laughter as he stamped on
gaitered feet over the gravel of the path. That's why.
On his wise shoulders through the checkerwork of leaves the sun flung spangles,
dancing coins.
Ineluctable modality of the visible: at least that if no more, thought through
my eyes. Signatures of all things I am here to read, seaspawn and seawrack, the
nearing tide, that rusty boot. Snotgreen, bluesilver, rust: coloured signs.
Limits of the diaphane. But he adds: in bodies. Then he was aware of them bodies
before of them coloured. How? By knocking his sconce against them, sure. Go
easy. Bald he was and a millionaire, maestro di color che sanno. Limit of the
diaphane in. Why in? Diaphane, adiaphane. If you can put your five fingers
through it it is a gate, if not a door. Shut your eyes and see.
Stephen closed his eyes to hear his boots crush crackling wrack and shells. You
are walking through it howsomever. I am, a stride at a time. A very short space
of time through very short times of space. Five, six: the nacheinander. Exactly:
and that is the ineluctable modality of the audible. Open your eyes. No. Jesus!
If I fell over a cliff that beetles o'er his base, fell through the
nebeneinander ineluctably! I am getting on nicely in the dark. My ash sword
hangs at my side. Tap with it: they do. My two feet in his boots are at the ends
of his legs, nebeneinander. Sounds solid: made by the mallet of Los Demiurgos.
Am I walking into eternity along Sandymount strand? Crush, crack, crick, crick.
Wild sea money. Dominie Deasy kens them a'. Won't you come to Sandymount,
Madeline the mare?
Rhythm begins, you see. I hear. Acatalectic tetrameter of iambs marching. No,
agallop: deline the mare.
Open your eyes now. I will. One moment. Has all vanished since? If I open and am
for ever in the black adiaphane. Basta! I will see if I can see.
See now. There all the time without you: and ever shall be, world without end.
They came down the steps from Leahy's terrace prudently, Frauenzimmer: and down
the shelving shore flabbily, their splayed feet sinking in the silted sand. Like
me, like Algy, coming down to our mighty mother. Number one swung lourdily her
midwife's bag, the other's gamp poked in the beach. From the liberties, out for
the day. Mrs Florence MacCabe, relict of the late Patk MacCabe, deeply lamented,
of Bride Street. One of her sisterhood lugged me squealing into life. Creation
from nothing. What has she in the bag? A misbirth with a trailing navelcord,
hushed in ruddy wool. The cords of all link back, strandentwining cable of all
flesh. That is why mystic monks. Will you be as gods? Gaze in your omphalos.
Hello! Kinch here. Put me on to Edenville. Aleph, alpha: nought, nought, one.
Spouse and helpmate of Adam Kadmon: Heva, naked Eve. She had no navel. Gaze.
Belly without blemish, bulging big, a buckler of taut vellum, no, whiteheaped
corn, orient and immortal, standing from everlasting to everlasting. Womb of
sin.
Wombed in sin darkness I was too, made not begotten. By them, the man with my
voice and my eyes and a ghostwoman with ashes on her breath. They clasped and
sundered, did the coupler's will. From before the ages He willed me and now may
not will me away or ever. A lex eterna stays about Him. Is that then the divine
substance wherein Father and Son are consubstantial? Where is poor dear Arius to
try conclusions? Warring his life long upon the
contransmagnificandjewbangtantiality. Illstarred heresiarch' In a Greek
watercloset he breathed his last: euthanasia. With beaded mitre and with
crozier, stalled upon his throne, widower of a widowed see, with upstiffed
omophorion, with clotted hinderparts.
Airs romped round him, nipping and eager airs. They are coming, waves. The
whitemaned seahorses, champing, brightwindbridled, the steeds of Mananaan.
I mustn't forget his letter for the press. And after? The Ship, half twelve. By
the way go easy with that money like a good young imbecile.
Yes, I must.
His pace slackened. Here. Am I going to aunt Sara's or not? My consubstantial
father's voice. Did you see anything of your artist brother Stephen lately? No?
Sure he's not down in Strasburg terrace with his aunt Sally? Couldn't he fly a
bit higher than that, eh? And and and and tell us, Stephen, how is uncle Si? O,
weeping God, the things I married into! De boys up in de hayloft. The drunken
little costdrawer and his brother, the cornet player. Highly respectable
gondoliers! And skeweyed Walter sirring his father, no less! Sir. Yes, sir. No,
sir. Jesus wept: and no wonder, by Christ!
I pull the wheezy bell of their shuttered cottage: and wait. They take me for a
dun, peer out from a coign of vantage.
—It's Stephen, sir.
—Let him in. Let Stephen in.
A bolt drawn back and Walter welcomes me.
—We thought you were someone else.
In his broad bed nuncle Richie, pillowed and blanketed, extends over the hillock
of his knees a sturdy forearm. Cleanchested. He has washed the upper moiety.
—Morrow, nephew.
He lays aside the lapboard whereon he drafts his bills of costs for the eyes of
master Goff and master Shapland Tandy, filing consents and common searches and a
writ of Duces Tecum. A bogoak frame over his bald head: Wilde's Requiescat. The
drone of his misleading whistle brings Walter back.
—Yes, sir?
—Malt for Richie and Stephen, tell mother. Where is she?
—Bathing Crissie, sir.
Papa's little bedpal. Lump of love.
—No, uncle Richie...
—Call me Richie. Damn your lithia water. It lowers. Whusky!
—Uncle Richie, really...
—Sit down or by the law Harry I'll knock you down.
Walter squints vainly for a chair.
—He has nothing to sit down on, sir.
—He has nowhere to put it, you mug. Bring in our chippendale chair. Would you
like a bite of something? None of your damned lawdeedaw airs here. The rich of a
rasher fried with a herring? Sure? So much the better. We have nothing in the
house but backache pills.
All'erta!
He drones bars of Ferrando's aria di sortita. The grandest number, Stephen, in
the whole opera. Listen.
His tuneful whistle sounds again, finely shaded, with rushes of the air, his
fists bigdrumming on his padded knees.
This wind is sweeter.
Houses of decay, mine, his and all. You told the Clongowes gentry you had an
uncle a judge and an uncle a general in the army. Come out of them, Stephen.
Beauty is not there. Nor in the stagnant bay of Marsh's library where you read
the fading prophecies of Joachim Abbas. For whom? The hundredheaded rabble of
the cathedral close. A hater of his kind ran from them to the wood of madness,
his mane foaming in the moon, his eyeballs stars. Houyhnhnm, horsenostrilled.
The oval equine faces, Temple, Buck Mulligan, Foxy Campbell, Lanternjaws. Abbas
father,—furious dean, what offence laid fire to their brains? Paff! Descende,
calve, ut ne amplius decalveris. A garland of grey hair on his comminated head
see him me clambering down to the footpace (descende!), clutching a monstrance,
basiliskeyed. Get down, baldpoll! A choir gives back menace and echo, assisting
about the altar's horns, the snorted Latin of jackpriests moving burly in their
albs, tonsured and oiled and gelded, fat with the fat of kidneys of wheat.
And at the same instant perhaps a priest round the corner is elevating it.
Dringdring! And two streets off another locking it into a pyx. Dringadring! And
in a ladychapel another taking housel all to his own cheek. Dringdring! Down,
up, forward, back. Dan Occam thought of that, invincible doctor. A misty English
morning the imp hypostasis tickled his brain. Bringing his host down and
kneeling he heard twine with his second bell the first bell in the transept (he
is lifting his) and, rising, heard (now I am lifting) their two bells (he is
kneeling) twang in diphthong.
Cousin Stephen, you will never be a saint. Isle of saints. You were awfully
holy, weren't you? You prayed to the Blessed Virgin that you might not have a
red nose. You prayed to the devil in Serpentine avenue that the fubsy widow in
front might lift her clothes still more from the wet street. O si, certo! Sell
your soul for that, do, dyed rags pinned round a squaw. More tell me, more
still!! On the top of the Howth tram alone crying to the rain: Naked women!
naked women! What about that, eh?
What about what? What else were they invented for?
Reading two pages apiece of seven books every night, eh? I was young. You bowed
to yourself in the mirror, stepping forward to applause earnestly, striking
face. Hurray for the Goddamned idiot! Hray! No-one saw: tell no-one. Books you
were going to write with letters for titles. Have you read his F? O yes, but I
prefer Q. Yes, but W is wonderful. O yes, W. Remember your epiphanies written on
green oval leaves, deeply deep, copies to be sent if you died to all the great
libraries of the world, including Alexandria? Someone was to read them there
after a few thousand years, a mahamanvantara. Pico della Mirandola like. Ay,
very like a whale. When one reads these strange pages of one long gone one feels
that one is at one with one who once...
The grainy sand had gone from under his feet. His boots trod again a damp
crackling mast, razorshells, squeaking pebbles, that on the unnumbered pebbles
beats, wood sieved by the shipworm, lost Armada. Unwholesome sandflats waited to
suck his treading soles, breathing upward sewage breath, a pocket of seaweed
smouldered in seafire under a midden of man's ashes. He coasted them, walking
warily. A porterbottle stood up, stogged to its waist, in the cakey sand dough.
A sentinel: isle of dreadful thirst. Broken hoops on the shore; at the land a
maze of dark cunning nets; farther away chalkscrawled backdoors and on the
higher beach a dryingline with two crucified shirts. Ringsend: wigwams of brown
steersmen and master mariners. Human shells.
He halted. I have passed the way to aunt Sara's. Am I not going there? Seems
not. No-one about. He turned northeast and crossed the firmer sand towards the
Pigeonhouse.
—Qui vous a mis dans cette fichue position?
—c'est le pigeon, Joseph.
Patrice, home on furlough, lapped warm milk with me in the bar MacMahon. Son of
the wild goose, Kevin Egan of Paris. My father's a bird, he lapped the sweet
lait chaud with pink young tongue, plump bunny's face. Lap, lapin. He hopes to
win in the gros lots. About the nature of women he read in Michelet. But he must
send me La Vie de Jesus by M. Leo Taxil. Lent it to his friend.
—C'est tordant, vous savez. Moi, je suis socialiste. Je ne crois pas en
l'existence de Dieu. Faut pas le dire a mon p-re.
—Il croit?
—Mon pere, oui.
Schluss. He laps.
My Latin quarter hat. God, we simply must dress the character. I want puce
gloves. You were a student, weren't you? Of what in the other devil's name?
Paysayenn. P. C. N., you know: physiques, chimiques et naturelles. Aha. Eating
your groatsworth of mou en civet, fleshpots of Egypt, elbowed by belching
cabmen. Just say in the most natural tone: when I was in Paris; boul' Mich', I
used to. Yes, used to carry punched tickets to prove an alibi if they arrested
you for murder somewhere. Justice. On the night of the seventeenth of February
1904 the prisoner was seen by two witnesses. Other fellow did it: other me. Hat,
tie, overcoat, nose. Lui, c'est moi. You seem to have enjoyed yourself.
Proudly walking. Whom were you trying to walk like? Forget: a dispossessed. With
mother's money order, eight shillings, the banging door of the post office
slammed in your face by the usher. Hunger toothache. Encore deux minutes. Look
clock. Must get. Ferme. Hired dog! Shoot him to bloody bits with a bang shotgun,
bits man spattered walls all brass buttons. Bits all khrrrrklak in place clack
back. Not hurt? O, that's all right. Shake hands. See what I meant, see? O,
that's all right. Shake a shake. O, that's all only all right.
You were going to do wonders, what? Missionary to Europe after fiery Columbanus.
Fiacre and Scotus on their creepystools in heaven spilt from their pintpots,
loudlatinlaughing: Euge! Euge! Pretending to speak broken English as you dragged
your valise, porter threepence, across the slimy pier at Newhaven. Comment? Rich
booty you brought back; Le Tutu, five tattered numbers of Pantalon Blanc et
Culotte Rouge; a blue French telegram, curiosity to show:
—Mother dying come home father.
The aunt thinks you killed your mother. That's why she won't.
Then here's a health to Mulligan's aunt
And I'll tell you the reason why.
She always kept things decent in
The Hannigan famileye.
His feet marched in sudden proud rhythm over the sand furrows, along by the
boulders of the south wall. He stared at them proudly, piled stone mammoth
skulls. Gold light on sea, on sand, on boulders. The sun is there, the slender
trees, the lemon houses.
Paris rawly waking, crude sunlight on her lemon streets. Moist pith of farls of
bread, the froggreen wormwood, her matin incense, court the air. Belluomo rises
from the bed of his wife's lover's wife, the kerchiefed housewife is astir, a
saucer of acetic acid in her hand. In Rodot's Yvonne and Madeleine newmake their
tumbled beauties, shattering with gold teeth chaussons of pastry, their mouths
yellowed with the pus of flan breton. Faces of Paris men go by, their
wellpleased pleasers, curled conquistadores.
Noon slumbers. Kevin Egan rolls gunpowder cigarettes through fingers smeared
with printer's ink, sipping his green fairy as Patrice his white. About us
gobblers fork spiced beans down their gullets. Un demi setier! A jet of coffee
steam from the burnished caldron. She serves me at his beck. Il est irlandais.
Hollandais? Non fromage. Deux irlandais, nous, Irlande, vous savez ah, oui! She
thought you wanted a cheese hollandais. Your postprandial, do you know that
word? Postprandial. There was a fellow I knew once in Barcelona, queer fellow,
used to call it his postprandial. Well: slainte! Around the slabbed tables the
tangle of wined breaths and grumbling gorges. His breath hangs over our
saucestained plates, the green fairy's fang thrusting between his lips. Of
Ireland, the Dalcassians, of hopes, conspiracies, of Arthur Griffith now, A E,
pimander, good shepherd of men. To yoke me as his yokefellow, our crimes our
common cause. You're your father's son. I know the voice. His fustian shirt,
sanguineflowered, trembles its Spanish tassels at his secrets. M. Drumont,
famous journalist, Drumont, know what he called queen Victoria? Old hag with the
yellow teeth. Vieille ogresse with the dents jaunes. Maud Gonne, beautiful
woman, La Patrie, M. Millevoye, Felix Faure, know how he died? Licentious men.
The froeken, bonne a tout faire, who rubs male nakedness in the bath at Upsala.
Moi faire, she said, Tous les messieurs. Not this Monsieur, I said. Most
licentious custom. Bath a most private thing. I wouldn't let my brother, not
even my own brother, most lascivious thing. Green eyes, I see you. Fang, I feel.
Lascivious people.
The blue fuse burns deadly between hands and burns clear. Loose tobaccoshreds
catch fire: a flame and acrid smoke light our corner. Raw facebones under his
peep of day boy's hat. How the head centre got away, authentic version. Got up
as a young bride, man, veil, orangeblossoms, drove out the road to Malahide.
Did, faith. Of lost leaders, the betrayed, wild escapes. Disguises, clutched at,
gone, not here.
Spurned lover. I was a strapping young gossoon at that time, I tell you. I'll
show you my likeness one day. I was, faith. Lover, for her love he prowled with
colonel Richard Burke, tanist of his sept, under the walls of Clerkenwell and,
crouching, saw a flame of vengeance hurl them upward in the fog. Shattered glass
and toppling masonry. In gay Paree he hides, Egan of Paris, unsought by any save
by me. Making his day's stations, the dingy printingcase, his three taverns, the
Montmartre lair he sleeps short night in, rue de la Goutte-d'Or, damascened with
flyblown faces of the gone. Loveless, landless, wifeless. She is quite nicey
comfy without her outcast man, madame in rue Git-le-Coeur, canary and two buck
lodgers. Peachy cheeks, a zebra skirt, frisky as a young thing's. Spurned and
undespairing. Tell Pat you saw me, won't you? I wanted to get poor Pat a job one
time. Mon fils, soldier of France. I taught him to sing The boys of Kilkenny are
stout roaring blades. Know that old lay? I taught Patrice that. Old Kilkenny:
saint Canice, Strongbow's castle on the Nore. Goes like this. O, O. He takes me,
Napper Tandy, by the hand.
O, O THE BOYS OF
KILKENNY...
Weak wasting hand on mine. They have forgotten Kevin Egan, not he them.
Remembering thee, O Sion.
He had come nearer the edge of the sea and wet sand slapped his boots. The new
air greeted him, harping in wild nerves, wind of wild air of seeds of
brightness. Here, I am not walking out to the Kish lightship, am I? He stood
suddenly, his feet beginning to sink slowly in the quaking soil. Turn back.
Turning, he scanned the shore south, his feet sinking again slowly in new
sockets. The cold domed room of the tower waits. Through the barbacans the
shafts of light are moving ever, slowly ever as my feet are sinking, creeping
duskward over the dial floor. Blue dusk, nightfall, deep blue night. In the
darkness of the dome they wait, their pushedback chairs, my obelisk valise,
around a board of abandoned platters. Who to clear it? He has the key. I will
not sleep there when this night comes. A shut door of a silent tower, entombing
their—blind bodies, the panthersahib and his pointer. Call: no answer. He lifted
his feet up from the suck and turned back by the mole of boulders. Take all,
keep all. My soul walks with me, form of forms. So in the moon's midwatches I
pace the path above the rocks, in sable silvered, hearing Elsinore's tempting
flood.
The flood is following me. I can watch it flow past from here. Get back then by
the Poolbeg road to the strand there. He climbed over the sedge and eely
oarweeds and sat on a stool of rock, resting his ashplant in a grike.
A bloated carcass of a dog lay lolled on bladderwrack. Before him the gunwale of
a boat, sunk in sand. Un coche ensablé Louis Veuillot called Gautier's prose.
These heavy sands are language tide and wind have silted here. And these, the
stoneheaps of dead builders, a warren of weasel rats. Hide gold there. Try it.
You have some. Sands and stones. Heavy of the past. Sir Lout's toys. Mind you
don't get one bang on the ear. I'm the bloody well gigant rolls all them bloody
well boulders, bones for my steppingstones. Feefawfum. I zmellz de bloodz odz an
Iridzman.
A point, live dog, grew into sight running across the sweep of sand. Lord, is he
going to attack me? Respect his liberty. You will not be master of others or
their slave. I have my stick. Sit tight. From farther away, walking shoreward
across from the crested tide, figures, two. The two maries. They have tucked it
safe mong the bulrushes. Peekaboo. I see you. No, the dog. He is running back to
them. Who?
Galleys of the Lochlanns ran here to beach, in quest of prey, their bloodbeaked
prows riding low on a molten pewter surf. Dane vikings, torcs of tomahawks
aglitter on their breasts when Malachi wore the collar of gold. A school of
turlehide whales stranded in hot noon, spouting, hobbling in the shallows. Then
from the starving cagework city a horde of jerkined dwarfs, my people, with
flayers' knives, running, scaling, hacking in green blubbery whalemeat. Famine,
plague and slaughters. Their blood is in me, their lusts my waves. I moved among
them on the frozen Liffey, that I, a changeling, among the spluttering resin
fires. I spoke to no-one: none to me.
The dog's bark ran towards him, stopped, ran back. Dog of my enemy. I just
simply stood pale, silent, bayed about. Terribilia meditans. A primrose doublet,
fortune's knave, smiled on my fear. For that are you pining, the bark of their
applause? Pretenders: live their lives. The Bruce's brother, Thomas Fitzgerald,
silken knight, Perkin Warbeck, York's false scion, in breeches of silk of
whiterose ivory, wonder of a day, and Lambert Simnel, with a tail of nans and
sutlers, a scullion crowned. All kings' sons. Paradise of pretenders then and
now. He saved men from drowning and you shake at a cur's yelping. But the
courtiers who mocked Guido in Or san Michele were in their own house. House
of... We don't want any of your medieval abstrusiosities. Would you do what he
did? A boat would be near, a lifebuoy. Natürlich, put there for you. Would you
or would you not? The man that was drowned nine days ago off Maiden's rock. They
are waiting for him now. The truth, spit it out. I would want to. I would try. I
am not a strong swimmer. Water cold soft. When I put my face into it in the
basin at Clongowes. Can't see! Who's behind me? Out quickly, quickly! Do you see
the tide flowing quickly in on all sides, sheeting the lows of sand quickly,
shellcocoacoloured? If I had land under my feet. I want his life still to be
his, mine to be mine. A drowning man. His human eyes scream to me out of horror
of his death. I... With him together down... I could not save her. Waters:
bitter death: lost.
A woman and a man. I see her skirties. Pinned up, I bet.
Their dog ambled about a bank of dwindling sand, trotting, sniffing on all
sides. Looking for something lost in a past life. Suddenly he made off like a
bounding hare, ears flung back, chasing the shadow of a lowskimming gull. The
man's shrieked whistle struck his limp ears. He turned, bounded back, came
nearer, trotted on twinkling shanks. On a field tenney a buck, trippant, proper,
unattired. At the lacefringe of the tide he halted with stiff forehoofs,
seawardpointed ears. His snout lifted barked at the wavenoise, herds of
seamorse. They serpented towards his feet, curling, unfurling many crests, every
ninth, breaking, plashing, from far, from farther out, waves and waves.
Cocklepickers. They waded a little way in the water and, stooping, soused their
bags and, lifting them again, waded out. The dog yelped running to them, reared
up and pawed them, dropping on all fours, again reared up at them with mute
bearish fawning. Unheeded he kept by them as they came towards the drier sand, a
rag of wolf's tongue redpanting from his jaws. His speckled body ambled ahead of
them and then loped off at a calf's gallop. The carcass lay on his path. He
stopped, sniffed, stalked round it, brother, nosing closer, went round it,
sniffling rapidly like a dog all over the dead dog's bedraggled fell. Dogskull,
dogsniff, eyes on the ground, moves to one great goal. Ah, poor dogsbody! Here
lies poor dogsbody's body.
—Tatters! Out of that, you mongrel!
The cry brought him skulking back to his master and a blunt bootless kick sent
him unscathed across a spit of sand, crouched in flight. He slunk back in a
curve. Doesn't see me. Along by the edge of the mole he lolloped, dawdled, smelt
a rock and from under a cocked hindleg pissed against it. He trotted forward
and, lifting again his hindleg, pissed quick short at an unsmelt rock. The
simple pleasures of the poor. His hindpaws then scattered the sand: then his
forepaws dabbled and delved. Something he buried there, his grandmother. He
rooted in the sand, dabbling, delving and stopped to listen to the air, scraped
up the sand again with a fury of his claws, soon ceasing, a pard, a panther, got
in spousebreach, vulturing the dead.
After he woke me last night same dream or was it? Wait. Open hallway. Street of
harlots. Remember. Haroun al Raschid. I am almosting it. That man led me, spoke.
I was not afraid. The melon he had he held against my face. Smiled: creamfruit
smell. That was the rule, said. In. Come. Red carpet spread. You will see who.
Shouldering their bags they trudged, the red Egyptians. His blued feet out of
turnedup trousers slapped the clammy sand, a dull brick muffler strangling his
unshaven neck. With woman steps she followed: the ruffian and his strolling
mort. Spoils slung at her back. Loose sand and shellgrit crusted her bare feet.
About her windraw face hair trailed. Behind her lord, his helpmate, bing awast
to Romeville. When night hides her body's flaws calling under her brown shawl
from an archway where dogs have mired. Her fancyman is treating two Royal
Dublins in O'Loughlin's of Blackpitts. Buss her, wap in rogues' rum lingo, for,
O, my dimber wapping dell! A shefiend's whiteness under her rancid rags.
Fumbally's lane that night: the tanyard smells.
White thy fambles, red thy gan
And thy quarrons dainty is.
Couch a hogshead with me then.
In the darkmans clip and kiss.
Morose delectation Aquinas tunbelly calls this, frate porcospino. Unfallen Adam
rode and not rutted. Call away let him: thy quarrons dainty is. Language no whit
worse than his. Monkwords, marybeads jabber on their girdles: roguewords, tough
nuggets patter in their pockets.
Passing now.
A side eye at my Hamlet hat. If I were suddenly naked here as I sit? I am not.
Across the sands of all the world, followed by the sun's flaming sword, to the
west, trekking to evening lands. She trudges, schlepps, trains, drags, trascines
her load. A tide westering, moondrawn, in her wake. Tides, myriadislanded,
within her, blood not mine, oinopa ponton, a winedark sea. Behold the handmaid
of the moon. In sleep the wet sign calls her hour, bids her rise. Bridebed,
childbed, bed of death, ghostcandled. Omnis caro ad te veniet. He comes, pale
vampire, through storm his eyes, his bat sails bloodying the sea, mouth to her
mouth's kiss.
Here. Put a pin in that chap, will you? My tablets. Mouth to her kiss.
No. Must be two of em. Glue em well. Mouth to her mouth's kiss.
His lips lipped and mouthed fleshless lips of air: mouth to her moomb. Oomb,
allwombing tomb. His mouth moulded issuing breath, unspeeched: ooeeehah: roar of
cataractic planets, globed, blazing, roaring wayawayawayawayaway. Paper. The
banknotes, blast them. Old Deasy's letter. Here. Thanking you for the
hospitality tear the blank end off. Turning his back to the sun he bent over far
to a table of rock and scribbled words. That's twice I forgot to take slips from
the library counter.
His shadow lay over the rocks as he bent, ending. Why not endless till the
farthest star? Darkly they are there behind this light, darkness shining in the
brightness, delta of Cassiopeia, worlds. Me sits there with his augur's rod of
ash, in borrowed sandals, by day beside a livid sea, unbeheld, in violet night
walking beneath a reign of uncouth stars. I throw this ended shadow from me,
manshape ineluctable, call it back. Endless, would it be mine, form of my form?
Who watches me here? Who ever anywhere will read these written words? Signs on a
white field. Somewhere to someone in your flutiest voice. The good bishop of
Cloyne took the veil of the temple out of his shovel hat: veil of space with
coloured emblems hatched on its field. Hold hard. Coloured on a flat: yes,
that's right. Flat I see, then think distance, near, far, flat I see, east,
back. Ah, see now! Falls back suddenly, frozen in stereoscope. Click does the
trick. You find my words dark. Darkness is in our souls do you not think?
Flutier. Our souls, shamewounded by our sins, cling to us yet more, a woman to
her lover clinging, the more the more.
She trusts me, her hand gentle, the longlashed eyes. Now where the blue hell am
I bringing her beyond the veil? Into the ineluctable modality of the ineluctable
visuality. She, she, she. What she? The virgin at Hodges Figgis' window on
Monday looking in for one of the alphabet books you were going to write. Keen
glance you gave her. Wrist through the braided jesse of her sunshade. She lives
in Leeson park with a grief and kickshaws, a lady of letters. Talk that to
someone else, Stevie: a pickmeup. Bet she wears those curse of God stays
suspenders and yellow stockings, darned with lumpy wool. Talk about apple
dumplings, piuttosto. Where are your wits?
Touch me. Soft eyes. Soft soft soft hand. I am lonely here. O, touch me soon,
now. What is that word known to all men? I am quiet here alone. Sad too. Touch,
touch me.
He lay back at full stretch over the sharp rocks, cramming the scribbled note
and pencil into a pock his hat. His hat down on his eyes. That is Kevin Egan's
movement I made, nodding for his nap, sabbath sleep. Et vidit Deus. Et erant
valde bona. Alo! Bonjour. Welcome as the flowers in May. Under its leaf he
watched through peacocktwittering lashes the southing sun. I am caught in this
burning scene. Pan's hour, the faunal noon. Among gumheavy serpentplants,
milkoozing fruits, where on the tawny waters leaves lie wide. Pain is far.
And no more turn aside and brood.
His gaze brooded on his broadtoed boots, a buck's castoffs, nebeneinander. He
counted the creases of rucked leather wherein another's foot had nested warm.
The foot that beat the ground in tripudium, foot I dislove. But you were
delighted when Esther Osvalt's shoe went on you: girl I knew in Paris. Tiens,
quel petit pied! Staunch friend, a brother soul: Wilde's love that dare not
speak its name. His arm: Cranly's arm. He now will leave me. And the blame? As I
am. As I am. All or not at all.
In long lassoes from the Cock lake the water flowed full, covering greengoldenly
lagoons of sand, rising, flowing. My ashplant will float away. I shall wait. No,
they will pass on, passing, chafing against the low rocks, swirling, passing.
Better get this job over quick. Listen: a fourworded wavespeech: seesoo, hrss,
rsseeiss, ooos. Vehement breath of waters amid seasnakes, rearing horses, rocks.
In cups of rocks it slops: flop, slop, slap: bounded in barrels. And, spent, its
speech ceases. It flows purling, widely flowing, floating foampool, flower
unfurling.
Under the upswelling tide he saw the writhing weeds lift languidly and sway
reluctant arms, hising up their petticoats, in whispering water swaying and
upturning coy silver fronds. Day by day: night by night: lifted, flooded and let
fall. Lord, they are weary; and, whispered to, they sigh. Saint Ambrose heard
it, sigh of leaves and waves, waiting, awaiting the fullness of their times,
diebus ac noctibus iniurias patiens ingemiscit. To no end gathered; vainly then
released, forthflowing, wending back: loom of the moon. Weary too in sight of
lovers, lascivious men, a naked woman shining in her courts, she draws a toil of
waters.
Five fathoms out there. Full fathom five thy father lies. At one, he said. Found
drowned. High water at Dublin bar. Driving before it a loose drift of rubble,
fanshoals of fishes, silly shells. A corpse rising saltwhite from the undertow,
bobbing a pace a pace a porpoise landward. There he is. Hook it quick. Pull.
Sunk though he be beneath the watery floor. We have him. Easy now.
Bag of corpsegas sopping in foul brine. A quiver of minnows, fat of a spongy
titbit, flash through the slits of his buttoned trouserfly. God becomes man
becomes fish becomes barnacle goose becomes featherbed mountain. Dead breaths I
living breathe, tread dead dust, devour a urinous offal from all dead. Hauled
stark over the gunwale he breathes upward the stench of his green grave, his
leprous nosehole snoring to the sun.
A seachange this, brown eyes saltblue. Seadeath, mildest of all deaths known to
man. Old Father Ocean. Prix de paris: beware of imitations. Just you give it a
fair trial. We enjoyed ourselves immensely.
Come. I thirst. Clouding over. No black clouds anywhere, are there?
Thunderstorm. Allbright he falls, proud lightning of the intellect, Lucifer,
dico, qui nescit occasum. No. My cockle hat and staff and hismy sandal shoon.
Where? To evening lands. Evening will find itself.
He took the hilt of his ashplant, lunging with it softly, dallying still. Yes,
evening will find itself in me, without me. All days make their end. By the way
next when is it Tuesday will be the longest day. Of all the glad new year,
mother, the rum tum tiddledy tum. Lawn Tennyson, gentleman poet. Già. For the
old hag with the yellow teeth. And Monsieur Drumont, gentleman journalist. Già.
My teeth are very bad. Why, I wonder. Feel. That one is going too. Shells. Ought
I go to a dentist, I wonder, with that money? That one. This. Toothless Kinch,
the superman. Why is that, I wonder, or does it mean something perhaps?
My handkerchief. He threw it. I remember. Did I not take it up?
His hand groped vainly in his pockets. No, I didn't. Better buy one.
He laid the dry snot picked from his nostril on a ledge of rock, carefully. For
the rest let look who will.
Behind. Perhaps there is someone.
He turned his face over a shoulder, rere regardant. Moving through the air high
spars of a threemaster, her sails brailed up on the crosstrees, homing,
upstream, silently moving, a silent ship. +





— II —
Mr Leopold Bloom ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls. He liked
thick giblet soup, nutty gizzards, a stuffed roast heart, liverslices fried with
crustcrumbs, fried hencods' roes. Most of all he liked grilled mutton kidneys
which gave to his palate a fine tang of faintly scented urine.
Kidneys were in his mind as he moved about the kitchen softly, righting her
breakfast things on the humpy tray. Gelid light and air were in the kitchen but
out of doors gentle summer morning everywhere. Made him feel a bit peckish.
The coals were reddening.
Another slice of bread and butter: three, four: right. She didn't like her plate
full. Right. He turned from the tray, lifted the kettle off the hob and set it
sideways on the fire. It sat there, dull and squat, its spout stuck out. Cup of
tea soon. Good. Mouth dry. The cat walked stiffly round a leg of the table with
tail on high.
—Mkgnao!
—O, there you are, Mr Bloom said, turning from the fire.
The cat mewed in answer and stalked again stiffly round a leg of the table,
mewing. Just how she stalks over my writingtable. Prr. Scratch my head. Prr.
Mr Bloom watched curiously, kindly the lithe black form. Clean to see: the gloss
of her sleek hide, the white button under the butt of her tail, the green
flashing eyes. He bent down to her, his hands on his knees.
—Milk for the pussens, he said.
—Mrkgnao! the cat cried.
They call them stupid. They understand what we say better than we understand
them. She understands all she wants to. Vindictive too. Cruel. Her nature.
Curious mice never squeal. Seem to like it. Wonder what I look like to her.
Height of a tower? No, she can jump me.
—Afraid of the chickens she is, he said mockingly. Afraid of the chookchooks. I
never saw such a stupid pussens as the pussens.
Cruel. Her nature. Curious mice never squeal. Seem to like it.
—Mrkrgnao! the cat said loudly.
She blinked up out of her avid shameclosing eyes, mewing plaintively and long,
showing him her milkwhite teeth. He watched the dark eyeslits narrowing with
greed till her eyes were green stones. Then he went to the dresser, took the jug
Hanlon's milkman had just filled for him, poured warmbubbled milk on a saucer
and set it slowly on the floor.
—Gurrhr! she cried, running to lap.
He watched the bristles shining wirily in the weak light as she tipped three
times and licked lightly. Wonder is it true if you clip them they can't mouse
after. Why? They shine in the dark, perhaps, the tips. Or kind of feelers in the
dark, perhaps.
He listened to her licking lap. Ham and eggs, no. No good eggs with this drouth.
Want pure fresh water. Thursday: not a good day either for a mutton kidney at
Buckley's. Fried with butter, a shake of pepper. Better a pork kidney at
Dlugacz's. While the kettle is boiling. She lapped slower, then licking the
saucer clean. Why are their tongues so rough? To lap better, all porous holes.
Nothing she can eat? He glanced round him. No.
On quietly creaky boots he went up the staircase to the hall, paused by the
bedroom door. She might like something tasty. Thin bread and butter she likes in
the morning. Still perhaps: once in a way.
He said softly in the bare hall:
—I'm going round the corner. Be back in a minute.
And when he had heard his voice say it he added:
—You don't want anything for breakfast?
A sleepy soft grunt answered:
—Mn.
No. She didn't want anything. He heard then a warm heavy sigh, softer, as she
turned over and the loose brass quoits of the bedstead jingled. Must get those
settled really. Pity. All the way from Gibraltar. Forgotten any little Spanish
she knew. Wonder what her father gave for it. Old style. Ah yes! of course.
Bought it at the governor's auction. Got a short knock. Hard as nails at a
bargain, old Tweedy. Yes, sir. At Plevna that was. I rose from the ranks, sir,
and I'm proud of it. Still he had brains enough to make that corner in stamps.
Now that was farseeing.
His hand took his hat from the peg over his initialled heavy overcoat and his
lost property office secondhand waterproof. Stamps: stickyback pictures. Daresay
lots of officers are in the swim too. Course they do. The sweated legend in the
crown of his hat told him mutely: Plasto's high grade ha. He peeped quickly
inside the leather headband. White slip of paper. Quite safe.
On the doorstep he felt in his hip pocket for the latchkey. Not there. In the
trousers I left off. Must get it. Potato I have. Creaky wardrobe. No use
disturbing her. She turned over sleepily that time. He pulled the halldoor to
after him very quietly, more, till the footleaf dropped gently over the
threshold, a limp lid. Looked shut. All right till I come back anyhow.
He crossed to the bright side, avoiding the loose cellarflap of number
seventyfive. The sun was nearing the steeple of George's church. Be a warm day I
fancy. Specially in these black clothes feel it more. Black conducts, reflects,
(refracts is it?), the heat. But I couldn't go in that light suit. Make a picnic
of it. His eyelids sank quietly often as he walked in happy warmth. Boland's
breadvan delivering with trays our daily but she prefers yesterday's loaves
turnovers crisp crowns hot. Makes you feel young. Somewhere in the east: early
morning: set off at dawn. Travel round in front of the sun, steal a day's march
on him. Keep it up for ever never grow a day older technically. Walk along a
strand, strange land, come to a city gate, sentry there, old ranker too, old
Tweedy's big moustaches, leaning on a long kind of a spear. Wander through awned
streets. Turbaned faces going by. Dark caves of carpet shops, big man, Turko the
terrible, seated crosslegged, smoking a coiled pipe. Cries of sellers in the
streets. Drink water scented with fennel, sherbet. Dander along all day. Might
meet a robber or two. Well, meet him. Getting on to sundown. The shadows of the
mosques among the pillars: priest with a scroll rolled up. A shiver of the
trees, signal, the evening wind. I pass on. Fading gold sky. A mother watches me
from her doorway. She calls her children home in their dark language. High wall:
beyond strings twanged. Night sky, moon, violet, colour of Molly's new garters.
Strings. Listen. A girl playing one of those instruments what do you call them:
dulcimers. I pass.
Probably not a bit like it really. Kind of stuff you read: in the track of the
sun. Sunburst on the titlepage. He smiled, pleasing himself. What Arthur
Griffith said about the headpiece over the Freeman leader: a homerule sun rising
up in the northwest from the laneway behind the bank of Ireland. He prolonged
his pleased smile. Ikey touch that: homerule sun rising up in the north-west.
He approached Larry O'Rourke's. From the cellar grating floated up the flabby
gush of porter. Through the open doorway the bar squirted out whiffs of ginger,
teadust, biscuitmush. Good house, however: just the end of the city traffic. For
instance M'Auley's down there: n. g. as position. Of course if they ran a
tramline along the North Circular from the cattlemarket to the quays value would
go up like a shot.
Baldhead over the blind. Cute old codger. No use canvassing him for an ad. Still
he knows his own business best. There he is, sure enough, my bold Larry, leaning
against the sugarbin in his shirtsleeves watching the aproned curate swab up
with mop and bucket. Simon Dedalus takes him off to a tee with his eyes screwed
up. Do you know what I'm going to tell you? What's that, Mr O'Rourke? Do you
know what? The Russians, they'd only be an eight o'clock breakfast for the
Japanese.
Stop and say a word: about the funeral perhaps. Sad thing about poor Dignam, Mr
O'Rourke.
Turning into Dorset street he said freshly in greeting through the doorway:
—Good day, Mr O'Rourke.
—Good day to you.
—Lovely weather, sir.
—'Tis all that.
Where do they get the money? Coming up redheaded curates from the county
Leitrim, rinsing empties and old man in the cellar. Then, lo and behold, they
blossom out as Adam Findlaters or Dan Tallons. Then thin of the competition.
General thirst. Good puzzle would be cross Dublin without passing a pub. Save it
they can't. Off the drunks perhaps. Put down three and carry five. What is that,
a bob here and there, dribs and drabs. On the wholesale orders perhaps. Doing a
double shuffle with the town travellers. Square it you with the boss and we'll
split the job, see?
How much would that tot to off the porter in the month? Say ten barrels of
stuff. Say he got ten per cent off. O more. Fifteen. He passed Saint Joseph's
National school. Brats' clamour. Windows open. Fresh air helps memory. Or a
lilt. Ahbeesee defeegee kelomen opeecue rustyouvee doubleyou. Boys are they?
Yes. Inishturk. Inishark. Inishboffin. At their joggerfry. Mine. Slieve Bloom.
He halted before Dlugacz's window, staring at the hanks of sausages, polonies,
black and white. Fifteen multiplied by. The figures whitened in his mind,
unsolved: displeased, he let them fade. The shiny links, packed with forcemeat,
fed his gaze and he breathed in tranquilly the lukewarm breath of cooked spicy
pigs' blood.
A kidney oozed bloodgouts on the willowpatterned dish: the last. He stood by the
nextdoor girl at the counter. Would she buy it too, calling the items from a
slip in her hand? Chapped: washingsoda. And a pound and a half of Denny's
sausages. His eyes rested on her vigorous hips. Woods his name is. Wonder what
he does. Wife is oldish. New blood. No followers allowed. Strong pair of arms.
Whacking a carpet on the clothesline. She does whack it, by George. The way her
crooked skirt swings at each whack.
The ferreteyed porkbutcher folded the sausages he had snipped off with blotchy
fingers, sausagepink. Sound meat there: like a stallfed heifer.
He took a page up from the pile of cut sheets: the model farm at Kinnereth on
the lakeshore of Tiberias. Can become ideal winter sanatorium. Moses Montefiore.
I thought he was. Farmhouse, wall round it, blurred cattle cropping. He held the
page from him: interesting: read it nearer, the title, the blurred cropping
cattle, the page rustling. A young white heifer. Those mornings in the
cattlemarket, the beasts lowing in their pens, branded sheep, flop and fall of
dung, the breeders in hobnailed boots trudging through the litter, slapping a
palm on a ripemeated hindquarter, there's a prime one, unpeeled switches in
their hands. He held the page aslant patiently, bending his senses and his will,
his soft subject gaze at rest. The crooked skirt swinging, whack by whack by
whack.
The porkbutcher snapped two sheets from the pile, wrapped up her prime sausages
and made a red grimace.
—Now, my miss, he said.
She tendered a coin, smiling boldly, holding her thick wrist out.
—Thank you, my miss. And one shilling threepence change. For you, please?
Mr Bloom pointed quickly. To catch up and walk behind her if she went slowly,
behind her moving hams. Pleasant to see first thing in the morning. Hurry up,
damn it. Make hay while the sun shines. She stood outside the shop in sunlight
and sauntered lazily to the right. He sighed down his nose: they never
understand. Sodachapped hands. Crusted toenails too. Brown scapulars in tatters,
defending her both ways. The sting of disregard glowed to weak pleasure within
his breast. For another: a constable off duty cuddling her in Eccles lane. They
like them sizeable. Prime sausage. O please, Mr Policeman, I'm lost in the wood.

—Threepence, please.
His hand accepted the moist tender gland and slid it into a sidepocket. Then it
fetched up three coins from his trousers' pocket and laid them on the rubber
prickles. They lay, were read quickly and quickly slid, disc by disc, into the
till.
—Thank you, sir. Another time.
A speck of eager fire from foxeyes thanked him. He withdrew his gaze after an
instant. No: better not: another time.
—Good morning, he said, moving away.
—Good morning, sir.
No sign. Gone. What matter?
He walked back along Dorset street, reading gravely. Agendath Netaim: planters'
company. To purchase waste sandy tracts from Turkish government and plant with
eucalyptus trees. Excellent for shade, fuel and construction. Orangegroves and
immense melonfields north of Jaffa. You pay eighty marks and they plant a dunam
of land for you with olives, oranges, almonds or citrons. Olives cheaper:
oranges need artificial irrigation. Every year you get a sending of the crop.
Your name entered for life as owner in the book of the union. Can pay ten down
and the balance in yearly instalments. Bleibtreustrasse 34, Berlin, W. 15.
Nothing doing. Still an idea behind it.
He looked at the cattle, blurred in silver heat. Silverpowdered olivetrees.
Quiet long days: pruning, ripening. Olives are packed in jars, eh? I have a few
left from Andrews. Molly spitting them out. Knows the taste of them now. Oranges
in tissue paper packed in crates. Citrons too. Wonder is poor Citron still in
Saint Kevin's parade. And Mastiansky with the old cither. Pleasant evenings we
had then. Molly in Citron's basketchair. Nice to hold, cool waxen fruit, hold in
the hand, lift it to the nostrils and smell the perfume. Like that, heavy,
sweet, wild perfume. Always the same, year after year. They fetched high prices
too, Moisel told me. Arbutus place: Pleasants street: pleasant old times. Must
be without a flaw, he said. Coming all that way: Spain, Gibraltar,
Mediterranean, the Levant. Crates lined up on the quayside at Jaffa, chap
ticking them off in a book, navvies handling them barefoot in soiled dungarees.
There's whatdoyoucallhim out of. How do you? Doesn't see. Chap you know just to
salute bit of a bore. His back is like that Norwegian captain's. Wonder if I'll
meet him today. Watering cart. To provoke the rain. On earth as it is in heaven.

A cloud began to cover the sun slowly, wholly. Grey. Far.
No, not like that. A barren land, bare waste. Vulcanic lake, the dead sea: no
fish, weedless, sunk deep in the earth. No wind could lift those waves, grey
metal, poisonous foggy waters. Brimstone they called it raining down: the cities
of the plain: Sodom, Gomorrah, Edom. All dead names. A dead sea in a dead land,
grey and old. Old now. It bore the oldest, the first race. A bent hag crossed
from Cassidy's, clutching a naggin bottle by the neck. The oldest people.
Wandered far away over all the earth, captivity to captivity, multiplying,
dying, being born everywhere. It lay there now. Now it could bear no more. Dead:
an old woman's: the grey sunken cunt of the world.
Desolation.
Grey horror seared his flesh. Folding the page into his pocket he turned into
Eccles street, hurrying homeward. Cold oils slid along his veins, chilling his
blood: age crusting him with a salt cloak. Well, I am here now. Yes, I am here
now. Morning mouth bad images. Got up wrong side of the bed. Must begin again
those Sandow's exercises. On the hands down. Blotchy brown brick houses. Number
eighty still unlet. Why is that? Valuation is only twenty-eight. Towers,
Battersby, North, MacArthur: parlour windows plastered with bills. Plasters on a
sore eye. To smell the gentle smoke of tea, fume of the pan, sizzling butter. Be
near her ample bedwarmed flesh. Yes, yes.
Quick warm sunlight came running from Berkeley road, swiftly, in slim sandals,
along the brightening footpath. Runs, she runs to meet me, a girl with gold hair
on the wind.
Two letters and a card lay on the hallfloor. He stooped and gathered them. Mrs
Marion Bloom. His quickened heart slowed at once. Bold hand. Mrs Marion.
—Poldy!
Entering the bedroom he halfclosed his eyes and walked through warm yellow
twilight towards her tousled head.
—Who are the letters for?
He looked at them. Mullingar. Milly.
—A letter for me from Milly, he said carefully, and a card to you. And a letter
for you.
He laid her card and letter on the twill bedspread near the curve of her knees.
—Do you want the blind up?
Letting the blind up by gentle tugs halfway his backward eye saw her glance at
the letter and tuck it under her pillow.
—That do? he asked, turning.
She was reading the card, propped on her elbow.
—She got the things, she said.
He waited till she had laid the card aside and curled herself back slowly with a
snug sigh.
—Hurry up with that tea, she said. I'm parched.
—The kettle is boiling, he said.
But he delayed to clear the chair: her striped petticoat, tossed soiled linen:
and lifted all in an armful on to the foot of the bed.
As he went down the kitchen stairs she called:
—Poldy!
—What?
—Scald the teapot.
On the boil sure enough: a plume of steam from the spout. He scalded and rinsed
out the teapot and put in four full spoons of tea, tilting the kettle then to
let the water flow in. Having set it to draw he took off the kettle, crushed the
pan flat on the live coals and watched the lump of butter slide and melt. While
he unwrapped the kidney the cat mewed hungrily against him. Give her too much
meat she won't mouse. Say they won't eat pork. Kosher. Here. He let the
bloodsmeared paper fall to her and dropped the kidney amid the sizzling butter
sauce. Pepper. He sprinkled it through his fingers ringwise from the chipped
eggcup.
Then he slit open his letter, glancing down the page and over. Thanks: new tam:
Mr Coghlan: lough Owel picnic: young student: Blazes Boylan's seaside girls.
The tea was drawn. He filled his own moustachecup, sham crown
Derby, smiling. Silly Milly's birthday gift. Only five she was then. No, wait:
four. I gave her the amberoid necklace she broke. Putting pieces of folded brown
paper in the letterbox for her. He smiled, pouring.
O, Milly Bloom, you are my darling.
You are my lookingglass from night to morning.
I'd rather have you without a farthing
Than Katey Keogh with her ass and garden.
Poor old professor Goodwin. Dreadful old case. Still he was a courteous old
chap. Oldfashioned way he used to bow Molly off the platform. And the little
mirror in his silk hat. The night Milly brought it into the parlour. O, look
what I found in professor Goodwin's hat! All we laughed. Sex breaking out even
then. Pert little piece she was.
He prodded a fork into the kidney and slapped it over: then fitted the teapot on
the tray. Its hump bumped as he took it up. Everything on it? Bread and butter,
four, sugar, spoon, her cream. Yes. He carried it upstairs, his thumb hooked in
the teapot handle.
Nudging the door open with his knee he carried the tray in and set it on the
chair by the bedhead.
—What a time you were! she said.
She set the brasses jingling as she raised herself briskly, an elbow on the
pillow. He looked calmly down on her bulk and between her large soft bubs,
sloping within her nightdress like a shegoat's udder. The warmth of her couched
body rose on the air, mingling with the fragrance of the tea she poured.
A strip of torn envelope peeped from under the dimpled pillow. In the act of
going he stayed to straighten the bedspread.
—Who was the letter from? he asked.
Bold hand. Marion.
—O, Boylan, she said. He's bringing the programme.
—What are you singing?
—La ci darem with J. C. Doyle, she said, and Love's Old Sweet Song.
Her full lips, drinking, smiled. Rather stale smell that incense leaves next
day. Like foul flowerwater.
—Would you like the window open a little?
She doubled a slice of bread into her mouth, asking:
—What time is the funeral?
—Eleven, I think, he answered. I didn't see the paper.
Following the pointing of her finger he took up a leg of her soiled drawers from
the bed. No? Then, a twisted grey garter looped round a stocking: rumpled, shiny
sole.
—No: that book.
Other stocking. Her petticoat.
—It must have fell down, she said.
He felt here and there. Voglio e non vorrei. Wonder if she pronounces that
right: voglio. Not in the bed. Must have slid down. He stooped and lifted the
valance. The book, fallen, sprawled against the bulge of the orangekeyed
chamberpot.
—Show here, she said. I put a mark in it. There's a word I wanted to ask you.
She swallowed a draught of tea from her cup held by nothandle and, having wiped
her fingertips smartly on the blanket, began to search the text with the hairpin
till she reached the word.
—Met him what? he asked.
—Here, she said. What does that mean?
He leaned downward and read near her polished thumbnail.
—Metempsychosis?
—Yes. Who's he when he's at home?
—Metempsychosis, he said, frowning. It's Greek: from the Greek. That means the
transmigration of souls.
—O, rocks! she said. Tell us in plain words.
He smiled, glancing askance at her mocking eyes. The same young eyes. The first
night after the charades. Dolphin's Barn. He turned over the smudged pages.
Ruby: the Pride of the Ring. Hello. Illustration. Fierce Italian with
carriagewhip. Must be Ruby pride of the on the floor naked. Sheet kindly lent.
The monster Maffei desisted and flung his victim from him with an oath. Cruelty
behind it all. Doped animals. Trapeze at Hengler's. Had to look the other way.
Mob gaping. Break your neck and we'll break our sides. Families of them. Bone
them young so they metamspychosis. That we live after death. Our souls. That a
man's soul after he dies. Dignam's soul...
—Did you finish it? he asked.
—Yes, she said. There's nothing smutty in it. Is she in love with the first
fellow all the time?
—Never read it. Do you want another?
—Yes. Get another of Paul de Kock's. Nice name he has.
She poured more tea into her cup, watching it flow sideways.
Must get that Capel street library book renewed or they'll write to Kearney, my
guarantor. Reincarnation: that's the word.
—Some people believe, he said, that we go on living in another body after death,
that we lived before. They call it reincarnation. That we all lived before on
the earth thousands of years ago or some other planet. They say we have
forgotten it. Some say they remember their past lives.
The sluggish cream wound curdling spirals through her tea. Bette remind her of
the word: metempsychosis. An example would be better. An example?
The Bath of the Nymph over the bed. Given away with the Easter number of Photo
Bits: Splendid masterpiece in art colours. Tea before you put milk in. Not
unlike her with her hair down: slimmer. Three and six I gave for the frame. She
said it would look nice over the bed. Naked nymphs: Greece: and for instance all
the people that lived then.
He turned the pages back.
—Metempsychosis, he said, is what the ancient Greeks called it. They used to
believe you could be changed into an animal or a tree, for instance. What they
called nymphs, for example.
Her spoon ceased to stir up the sugar. She gazed straight before her, inhaling
through her arched nostrils.
—There's a smell of burn, she said. Did you leave anything on the fire?
—The kidney! he cried suddenly.
He fitted the book roughly into his inner pocket and, stubbing his toes against
the broken commode, hurried out towards the smell, stepping hastily down the
stairs with a flurried stork's legs. Pungent smoke shot up in an angry jet from
a side of the pan. By prodding a prong of the fork under the kidney he detached
it and turned it turtle on its back. Only a little burnt. He tossed it off the
pan on to a plate and let the scanty brown gravy trickle over it.
Cup of tea now. He sat down, cut and buttered a slice of the loaf. He shore away
the burnt flesh and flung it to the cat. Then he put a forkful into his mouth,
chewing with discernment the toothsome pliant meat. Done to a turn. A mouthful
of tea. Then he cut away dies of bread, sopped one in the gravy and put it in
his mouth. What was that about some young student and a picnic? He creased out
the letter at his side, reading it slowly as he chewed, sopping another die of
bread in the gravy and raising it to his mouth.
Dearest Papli
Thanks ever so much for the lovely birthday present. It suits me splendid.
Everyone says I am quite the belle in my new tam. I got mummy's Iovely box of
creams and am writing. They are lovely. I am getting on swimming in the photo
business now. Mr Coghlan took one of me and Mrs. Will send when developed. We
did great biz yesterday. Fair day and all the beef to the heels were in. We are
going to lough Owel on Monday with a few friends to make a scrap picnic. Give my
love to mummy and to yourself a big kiss and thanks. I hear them at the piano
downstairs. There is to be a concert in the Greville Arms on Saturday. There is
a young student comes here some evenings named Bannon his cousins or something
are big swells and he sings Boylan's (I was on the pop of writing Blazes
Boylan's) song about those seaside girls. Tell him silly Milly sends my best
respects. I must now close with fondest love
Your fond daughter, MILLY.
P. S. Excuse bad writing am in hurry. Byby. M.
Fifteen yesterday. Curious, fifteenth of the month too. Her first birthday away
from home. Separation. Remember the summer morning she was born, running to
knock up Mrs Thornton in Denzille street. Jolly old woman. Lot of babies she
must have helped into the world. She knew from the first poor little Rudy
wouldn't live. Well, God is good, sir. She knew at once. He would be eleven now
if he had lived.
His vacant face stared pityingly at the postscript. Excuse bad writing. Hurry.
Piano downstairs. Coming out of her shell. Row with her in the XL Cafe about the
bracelet. Wouldn't eat her cakes or speak or look. Saucebox. He sopped other
dies of bread in the gravy and ate piece after piece of kidney. Twelve and six a
week. Not much. Still, she might do worse. Music hall stage. Young student. He
drank a draught of cooler tea to wash down his meal. Then he read the letter
again: twice.
O, well: she knows how to mind herself. But if not? No, nothing has happened. Of
course it might. Wait in any case till it does. A wild piece of goods. Her slim
legs running up the staircase. Destiny. Ripening now.
Vain: very.
He smiled with troubled affection at the kitchen window. Day I caught her in the
street pinching her cheeks to make them red. Anemic a little. Was given milk too
long. On the ERIN'S KING that day round the Kish. Damned old tub pitching about.
Not a bit funky. Her pale blue scarf loose in the wind with her hair. All
dimpled cheeks and curls, Your head it simply swirls.
Seaside girls. Torn envelope. Hands stuck in his trousers' pockets, jarvey off
for the day, singing. Friend of the family. Swurls, he says. Pier with lamps,
summer evening, band,
Those girls, those girls,
Those lovely seaside girls.
Milly too. Young kisses: the first. Far away now past. Mrs Marion. Reading,
lying back now, counting the strands of her hair, smiling, braiding.
A soft qualm, regret, flowed down his backbone, increasing. Will happen, yes.
Prevent. Useless: can't move. Girl's sweet light lips. Will happen too. He felt
the flowing qualm spread over him. Useless to move now. Lips kissed, kissing,
kissed. Full gluey woman's lips.
Better where she is down there: away. Occupy her. Wanted a dog to pass the time.
Might take a trip down there. August bank holiday, only two and six return. Six
weeks off, however. Might work a press pass. Or through M'Coy.
The cat, having cleaned all her fur, returned to the meatstained paper, nosed at
it and stalked to the door. She looked back at him, mewing. Wants to go out.
Wait before a door sometime it will open. Let her wait. Has the fidgets.
Electric. Thunder in the air. Was washing at her ear with her back to the fire
too.
He felt heavy, full: then a gentle loosening of his bowels. He stood up, undoing
the waistband of his trousers. The cat mewed to him.
—Miaow! he said in answer. Wait till I'm ready.
Heaviness: hot day coming. Too much trouble to fag up the stairs to the landing.

A paper. He liked to read at stool. Hope no ape comes knocking just as I'm.
In the tabledrawer he found an old number of Titbits. He folded it under his
armpit, went to the door and opened it. The cat went up in soft bounds. Ah,
wanted to go upstairs, curl up in a ball on the bed.
Listening, he heard her voice:
—Come, come, pussy. Come.
He went out through the backdoor into the garden: stood to listen towards the
next garden. No sound. Perhaps hanging clothes out to dry. The maid was in the
garden. Fine morning.
He bent down to regard a lean file of spearmint growing by the wall. Make a
summerhouse here. Scarlet runners. Virginia creepers. Want to manure the whole
place over, scabby soil. A coat of liver of sulphur. All soil like that without
dung. Household slops. Loam, what is this that is? The hens in the next garden:
their droppings are very good top dressing. Best of all though are the cattle,
especially when they are fed on those oilcakes. Mulch of dung. Best thing to
clean ladies' kid gloves. Dirty cleans. Ashes too. Reclaim the whole place. Grow
peas in that corner there. Lettuce. Always have fresh greens then. Still gardens
have their drawbacks. That bee or bluebottle here Whitmonday.
He walked on. Where is my hat, by the way? Must have put it back on the peg. Or
hanging up on the floor. Funny I don't remember that. Hallstand too full. Four
umbrellas, her raincloak. Picking up the letters. Drago's shopbell ringing.
Queer I was just thinking that moment. Brown brillantined hair over his collar.
Just had a wash and brushup. Wonder have I time for a bath this morning. Tara
street. Chap in the paybox there got away James Stephens, they say. O'Brien.
Deep voice that fellow Dlugacz has. Agendath what is it? Now, my miss.
Enthusiast.
He kicked open the crazy door of the jakes. Better be careful not to get these
trousers dirty for the funeral. He went in, bowing his head under the low
lintel. Leaving the door ajar, amid the stench of mouldy limewash and stale
cobwebs he undid his braces. Before sitting down he peered through a chink up at
the nextdoor windows. The king was in his countinghouse. Nobody.
Asquat on the cuckstool he folded out his paper, turning its pages over on his
bared knees. Something new and easy. No great hurry. Keep it a bit. Our prize
titbit: Matcham's Masterstroke. Written by Mr Philip Beaufoy, Playgoers' Club,
London. Payment at the rate of one guinea a column has been made to the writer.
Three and a half. Three pounds three. Three pounds, thirteen and six.
Quietly he read, restraining himself, the first column and, yielding but
resisting, began the second. Midway, his last resistance yielding, he allowed
his bowels to ease themselves quietly as he read, reading still patiently that
slight constipation of yesterday quite gone. Hope it's not too big bring on
piles again. No, just right. So. Ah! Costive. One tabloid of cascara sagrada.
Life might be so. It did not move or touch him but it was something quick and
neat. Print anything now. Silly season. He read on, seated calm above his own
rising smell. Neat certainly. Matcham often thinks of the masterstroke by which
he won the laughing witch who now. Begins and ends morally. Hand in hand. Smart.
He glanced back through what he had read and, while feeling his water flow
quietly, he envied kindly Mr Beaufoy who had written it and received payment of
three pounds, thirteen and six.
Might manage a sketch. By Mr and Mrs L. M. Bloom. Invent a story for some
proverb. Which? Time I used to try jotting down on my cuff what she said
dressing. Dislike dressing together. Nicked myself shaving. Biting her nether
lip, hooking the placket of her skirt. Timing her. 9.l5. Did Roberts pay you
yet? 9.20. What had Gretta Conroy on? 9.23. What possessed me to buy this comb?
9.24. I'm swelled after that cabbage. A speck of dust on the patent leather of
her boot.
Rubbing smartly in turn each welt against her stockinged calf. Morning after the
bazaar dance when May's band played Ponchielli's dance of the hours. Explain
that: morning hours, noon, then evening coming on, then night hours. Washing her
teeth. That was the first night. Her head dancing. Her fansticks clicking. Is
that Boylan well off? He has money. Why? I noticed he had a good rich smell off
his breath dancing. No use humming then. Allude to it. Strange kind of music
that last night. The mirror was in shadow. She rubbed her handglass briskly on
her woollen vest against her full wagging bub. Peering into it. Lines in her
eyes. It wouldn't pan out somehow.
Evening hours, girls in grey gauze. Night hours then: black with daggers and
eyemasks. Poetical idea: pink, then golden, then grey, then black. Still, true
to life also. Day: then the night.
He tore away half the prize story sharply and wiped himself with it. Then he
girded up his trousers, braced and buttoned himself. He pulled back the jerky
shaky door of the jakes and came forth from the gloom into the air.
In the bright light, lightened and cooled in limb, he eyed carefully his black
trousers: the ends, the knees, the houghs of the knees. What time is the
funeral? Better find out in the paper.
A creak and a dark whirr in the air high up. The bells of George's church. They
tolled the hour: loud dark iron.
Heigho! Heigho!
Heigho! Heigho!
Heigho! Heigho!
Quarter to. There again: the overtone following through the air, third.
Poor Dignam!
By lorries along sir John Rogerson's quay Mr Bloom walked soberly, past Windmill
lane, Leask's the linseed crusher, the postal telegraph office. Could have given
that address too. And past the sailors' home. He turned from the morning noises
of the quayside and walked through Lime street. By Brady's cottages a boy for
the skins lolled, his bucket of offal linked, smoking a chewed fagbutt. A
smaller girl with scars of eczema on her forehead eyed him, listlessly holding
her battered caskhoop. Tell him if he smokes he won't grow. O let him! His life
isn't such a bed of roses. Waiting outside pubs to bring da home. Come home to
ma, da. Slack hour: won't be many there. He crossed Townsend street, passed the
frowning face of Bethel. El, yes: house of: Aleph, Beth. And past Nichols' the
undertaker. At eleven it is. Time enough. Daresay Corny Kelleher bagged the job
for O'Neill's. Singing with his eyes shut. Corny. Met her once in the park. In
the dark. What a lark. Police tout. Her name and address she then told with my
tooraloom tooraloom tay. O, surely he bagged it. Bury him cheap in a
whatyoumaycall. With my tooraloom, tooraloom, tooraloom, tooraloom.
In Westland row he halted before the window of the Belfast and Oriental Tea
Company and read the legends of leadpapered packets: choice blend, finest
quality, family tea. Rather warm. Tea. Must get some from Tom Kernan. Couldn't
ask him at a funeral, though. While his eyes still read blandly he took off his
hat quietly inhaling his hairoil and sent his right hand with slow grace over
his brow and hair. Very warm morning. Under their dropped lids his eyes found
the tiny bow of the leather headband inside his high grade ha. Just there. His
right hand came down into the bowl of his hat. His fingers found quickly a card
behind the headband and transferred it to his waistcoat pocket.
So warm. His right hand once more more slowly went over his brow and hair. Then
he put on his hat again, relieved: and read again: choice blend, made of the
finest Ceylon brands. The far east. Lovely spot it must be: the garden of the
world, big lazy leaves to float about on, cactuses, flowery meads, snaky lianas
they call them. Wonder is it like that. Those Cinghalese lobbing about in the
sun in dolce far niente, not doing a hand's turn all day. Sleep six months out
of twelve. Too hot to quarrel. Influence of the climate. Lethargy. Flowers of
idleness. The air feeds most. Azotes. Hothouse in Botanic gardens. Sensitive
plants. Waterlilies. Petals too tired to. Sleeping sickness in the air. Walk on
roseleaves. Imagine trying to eat tripe and cowheel. Where was the chap I saw in
that picture somewhere? Ah yes, in the dead sea floating on his back, reading a
book with a parasol open. Couldn't sink if you tried: so thick with salt.
Because the weight of the water, no, the weight of the body in the water is
equal to the weight of the what? Or is it the volume is equal to the weight?
It's a law something like that. Vance in High school cracking his fingerjoints,
teaching. The college curriculum. Cracking curriculum. What is weight really
when you say the weight? Thirtytwo feet per second per second. Law of falling
bodies: per second per second. They all fall to the ground. The earth. It's the
force of gravity of the earth is the weight.
He turned away and sauntered across the road. How did she walk with her
sausages? Like that something. As he walked he took the folded Freeman from his
sidepocket, unfolded it, rolled it lengthwise in a baton and tapped it at each
sauntering step against his trouserleg. Careless air: just drop in to see. Per
second per second. Per second for every second it means. From the curbstone he
darted a keen glance through the door of the postoffice. Too late box. Post
here. No-one. In.
He handed the card through the brass grill.
—Are there any letters for me? he asked.
While the postmistress searched a pigeonhole he gazed at the recruiting poster
with soldiers of all arms on parade: and held the tip of his baton against his
nostrils, smelling freshprinted rag paper. No answer probably. Went too far last
time.
The postmistress handed him back through the grill his card with a letter. He
thanked her and glanced rapidly at the typed envelope.
Henry Flower Esq, c/o P. O. Westland Row, City.
Answered anyhow. He slipped card and letter into his sidepocket, reviewing again
the soldiers on parade. Where's old Tweedy's regiment? Castoff soldier. There:
bearskin cap and hackle plume. No, he's a grenadier. Pointed cuffs. There he is:
royal Dublin fusiliers. Redcoats. Too showy. That must be why the women go after
them. Uniform. Easier to enlist and drill. Maud Gonne's letter about taking them
off O'Connell street at night: disgrace to our Irish capital. Griffith's paper
is on the same tack now: an army rotten with venereal disease: overseas or
halfseasover empire. Half baked they look: hypnotised like. Eyes front. Mark
time. Table: able. Bed: ed. The King's own. Never see him dressed up as a
fireman or a bobby. A mason, yes.
He strolled out of the postoffice and turned to the right. Talk: as if that
would mend matters. His hand went into his pocket and a forefinger felt its way
under the flap of the envelope, ripping it open in jerks. Women will pay a lot
of heed, I don't think. His fingers drew forth the letter the letter and
crumpled the envelope in his pocket. Something pinned on: photo perhaps. Hair?
No.
M'Coy. Get rid of him quickly. Take me out of my way. Hate company when you.
—Hello, Bloom. Where are you off to?
—Hello, M'Coy. Nowhere in particular.
—How's the body?
—Fine. How are you?
—Just keeping alive, M'Coy said.
His eyes on the black tie and clothes he asked with low respect:
—Is there any... no trouble I hope? I see you're...
—O, no, Mr Bloom said. Poor Dignam, you know. The funeral is today.
—To be sure, poor fellow. So it is. What time?
A photo it isn't. A badge maybe.
—E... eleven, Mr Bloom answered.
—I must try to get out there, M'Coy said. Eleven, is it? I only heard it last
night. Who was telling me? Holohan. You know Hoppy?
—I know.
Mr Bloom gazed across the road at the outsider drawn up before the door of the
Grosvenor. The porter hoisted the valise up on the well. She stood still,
waiting, while the man, husband, brother, like her, searched his pockets for
change. Stylish kind of coat with that roll collar, warm for a day like this,
looks like blanketcloth. Careless stand of her with her hands in those patch
pockets. Like that haughty creature at the polo match. Women all for caste till
you touch the spot. Handsome is and handsome does. Reserved about to yield. The
honourable Mrs and Brutus is an honourable man. Possess her once take the starch
out of her.
—I was with Bob Doran, he's on one of his periodical bends, and what do you call
him Bantam Lyons. Just down there in Conway's we were.
Doran Lyons in Conway's. She raised a gloved hand to her hair. In came Hoppy.
Having a wet. Drawing back his head and gazing far from beneath his vailed
eyelids he saw the bright fawn skin shine in the glare, the braided drums.
Clearly I can see today. Moisture about gives long sight perhaps. Talking of one
thing or another. Lady's hand. Which side will she get up?
—And he said: Sad thing about our poor friend Paddy! What Paddy? I said. Poor
little Paddy Dignam, he said.
Off to the country: Broadstone probably. High brown boots with laces dangling.
Wellturned foot. What is he foostering over that change for? Sees me looking.
Eye out for other fellow always. Good fallback. Two strings to her bow.
—Why? I said. What's wrong with him? I said.
Proud: rich: silk stockings.
—Yes, Mr Bloom said.
He moved a little to the side of M'Coy's talking head. Getting up in a minute.
—What's wrong with him? He said. He's dead, he said. And, faith, he filled up.
Is it Paddy Dignam? I said. I couldn't believe it when I heard it. I was with
him no later than Friday last or Thursday was it in the Arch. Yes, he said. He's
gone. He died on Monday, poor fellow. Watch! Watch! Silk flash rich stockings
white. Watch!
A heavy tramcar honking its gong slewed between.
Lost it. Curse your noisy pugnose. Feels locked out of it. Paradise and the
peri. Always happening like that. The very moment. Girl in Eustace street
hallway Monday was it settling her garter. Her friend covering the display of
esprit de corps. Well, what are you gaping at?
—Yes, yes, Mr Bloom said after a dull sigh. Another gone.
—One of the best, M'Coy said.
The tram passed. They drove off towards the Loop Line bridge, her rich gloved
hand on the steel grip. Flicker, flicker: the laceflare of her hat in the sun:
flicker, flick.
—Wife well, I suppose? M'Coy's changed voice said.
—O, yes, Mr Bloom said. Tiptop, thanks.
He unrolled the newspaper baton idly and read idly:
What is home without Plumtree's Potted Meat? Incomplete With it an abode of
bliss.
—My missus has just got an engagement. At least it's not settled yet.
Valise tack again. By the way no harm. I'm off that, thanks.
Mr Bloom turned his largelidded eyes with unhasty friendliness.
—My wife too, he said. She's going to sing at a swagger affair in the Ulster
Hall, Belfast, on the twenty-fifth.
—That so? M'Coy said. Glad to hear that, old man. Who's getting it up?
Mrs Marion Bloom. Not up yet. Queen was in her bedroom eating bread and. No
book. Blackened court cards laid along her thigh by sevens. Dark lady and fair
man. Letter. Cat furry black ball. Torn strip of envelope.
Love's
Old
Sweet
Song
Comes lo-ove's old...
—It's a kind of a tour, don't you see, Mr Bloom said thoughtfully. Sweeeet song.
There's a committee formed. Part shares and part profits.
M'Coy nodded, picking at his moustache stubble.
—O, well, he said. That's good news.
He moved to go.
—Well, glad to see you looking fit, he said. Meet you knocking around.
—Yes, Mr Bloom said.
—Tell you what, M'Coy said. You might put down my name at the funeral, will you?
I'd like to go but I mightn't be able, you see. There's a drowning case at
Sandycove may turn up and then the coroner and myself would have to go down if
the body is found. You just shove in my name if I'm not there, will you?
—I'll do that, Mr Bloom said, moving to get off. That'll be all right.
—Right, M'Coy said brightly. Thanks, old man. I'd go if I possibly could. Well,
tolloll. Just C. P. M'Coy will do.
—That will be done, Mr Bloom answered firmly.
Didn't catch me napping that wheeze. The quick touch. Soft mark. I'd like my
job. Valise I have a particular fancy for. Leather. Capped corners, rivetted
edges, double action lever lock. Bob Cowley lent him his for the Wicklow regatta
concert last year and never heard tidings of it from that good day to this.
Mr Bloom, strolling towards Brunswick street, smiled. My missus has just got an.
Reedy freckled soprano. Cheeseparing nose. Nice enough in its way: for a little
ballad. No guts in it. You and me, don't you know: in the same boat.
Softsoaping. Give you the needle that would. Can't he hear the difference? Think
he's that way inclined a bit. Against my grain somehow. Thought that Belfast
would fetch him. I hope that smallpox up there doesn't get worse. Suppose she
wouldn't let herself be vaccinated again. Your wife and my wife.
Wonder is he pimping after me?
Mr Bloom stood at the corner, his eyes wandering over the multicoloured
hoardings. Cantrell and Cochrane's Ginger Ale (Aromatic). Clery's Summer Sale.
No, he's going on straight. Hello. Leah tonight. Mrs Bandmann Palmer. Like to
see her again in that. Hamlet she played last night. Male impersonator. Perhaps
he was a woman. Why Ophelia committed suicide. Poor papa! How he used to talk of
Kate Bateman in that. Outside the Adelphi in London waited all the afternoon to
get in. Year before I was born that was: sixtyfive. And Ristori in Vienna. What
is this the right name is? By Mosenthal it is. Rachel, is it? No. The scene he
was always talking about where the old blind Abraham recognises the voice and
puts his fingers on his face.
Nathan's voice! His son's voice! I hear the voice of Nathan who left his father
to die of grief and misery in my arms, who left the house of his father and left
the God of his father.
Every word is so deep, Leopold.
Poor papa! Poor man! I'm glad I didn't go into the room to look at his face.
That day! O, dear! O, dear! Ffoo! Well, perhaps it was best for him.
Mr Bloom went round the corner and passed the drooping nags of the hazard. No
use thinking of it any more. Nosebag time. Wish I hadn't met that M'Coy fellow.
He came nearer and heard a crunching of gilded oats, the gently champing teeth.
Their full buck eyes regarded him as he went by, amid the sweet oaten reek of
horsepiss. Their Eldorado. Poor jugginses! Damn all they know or care about
anything with their long noses stuck in nosebags. Too full for words. Still they
get their feed all right and their doss. Gelded too: a stump of black
guttapercha wagging limp between their haunches. Might be happy all the same
that way. Good poor brutes they look. Still their neigh can be very irritating.
He drew the letter from his pocket and folded it into the newspaper he carried.
Might just walk into her here. The lane is safer.
He passed the cabman's shelter. Curious the life of drifting cabbies. All
weathers, all places, time or setdown, no will of their own. Voglio e non. Like
to give them an odd cigarette. Sociable. Shout a few flying syllables as they
pass. He hummed:
La ci darem la mano
La la lala la la.
He turned into Cumberland street and, going on some paces, halted in the lee of
the station wall. No-one. Meade's timberyard. Piled balks. Ruins and tenements.
With careful tread he passed over a hopscotch court with its forgotten
pickeystone. Not a sinner. Near the timberyard a squatted child at marbles,
alone, shooting the taw with a cunnythumb. A wise tabby, a blinking sphinx,
watched from her warm sill. Pity to disturb them. Mohammed cut a piece out of
his mantle not to wake her. Open it. And once I played marbles when I went to
that old dame's school. She liked mignonette. Mrs Ellis's. And Mr? He opened the
letter within the newspaper.
A flower. I think it's a. A yellow flower with flattened petals. Not annoyed
then? What does she say?
Dear Henry
I got your last letter to me and thank you very much for it. I am sorry you did
not like my last letter. Why did you enclose the stamps? I am awfully angry with
you. I do wish I could punish you for that. I called you naughty boy because I
do not like that other world. Please tell me what is the real meaning of that
word? Are you not happy in your home you poor little naughty boy? I do wish I
could do something for you. Please tell me what you think of poor me. I often
think of the beautiful name you have. Dear Henry, when will we meet? I think of
you so often you have no idea. I have never felt myself so much drawn to a man
as you. I feel so bad about. Please write me a long letter and tell me more.
Remember if you do not I will punish you. So now you know what I will do to you,
you naughty boy, if you do not wrote. O how I long to meet you. Henry dear, do
not deny my request before my patience are exhausted. Then I will tell you all.
Goodbye now, naughty darling, I have such a bad headache. today. and write by
return to your longing
Martha
P. S. Do tell me what kind of perfume does your wife use. I want to know.
He tore the flower gravely from its pinhold smelt its almost no smell and placed
it in his heart pocket. Language of flowers. They like it because no-one can
hear. Or a poison bouquet to strike him down. Then walking slowly forward he
read the letter again, murmuring here and there a word. Angry tulips with you
darling manflower punish your cactus if you don't please poor forgetmenot how I
long violets to dear roses when we soon anemone meet all naughty nightstalk wife
Martha's perfume. Having read it all he took it from the newspaper and put it
back in his sidepocket.
Weak joy opened his lips. Changed since the first letter. Wonder did she wrote
it herself. Doing the indignant: a girl of good family like me, respectable
character. Could meet one Sunday after the rosary. Thank you: not having any.
Usual love scrimmage. Then running round corners. Bad as a row with Molly. Cigar
has a cooling effect. Narcotic. Go further next time. Naughty boy: punish:
afraid of words, of course. Brutal, why not? Try it anyhow. A bit at a time.
Fingering still the letter in his pocket he drew the pin out of it. Common pin,
eh? He threw it on the road. Out of her clothes somewhere: pinned together.
Queer the number of pins they always have. No roses without thorns.
Flat Dublin voices bawled in his head. Those two sluts that night in the Coombe,
linked together in the rain.
O, Mary lost the pin of her drawers.
She didn't know what to do
To keep it up
To keep it up.
It? Them. Such a bad headache. Has her roses probably. Or sitting all day
typing. Eyefocus bad for stomach nerves. What perfume does your wife use. Now
could you make out a thing like that?
To keep it up.
Martha, Mary. I saw that picture somewhere I forget now old master or faked for
money. He is sitting in their house, talking. Mysterious. Also the two sluts in
the Coombe would listen.
To keep it up.
Nice kind of evening feeling. No more wandering about. Just loll there: quiet
dusk: let everything rip. Forget. Tell about places you have been, strange
customs. The other one, jar on her head, was getting the supper: fruit, olives,
lovely cool water out of a well, stonecold like the hole in the wall at Ashtown.
Must carry a paper goblet next time I go to the trottingmatches. She listens
with big dark soft eyes. Tell her: more and more: all. Then a sigh: silence.
Long long long rest.
Going under the railway arch he took out the envelope, tore it swiftly in shreds
and scattered them towards the road. The shreds fluttered away, sank in the dank
air: a white flutter, then all sank.
Henry Flower. You could tear up a cheque for a hundred pounds in the same way.
Simple bit of paper. Lord Iveagh once cashed a sevenfigure cheque for a million
in the bank of Ireland. Shows you the money to be made out of porter. Still the
other brother lord Ardilaun has to change his shirt four times a day, they say.
Skin breeds lice or vermin. A million pounds, wait a moment. Twopence a pint,
fourpence a quart, eightpence a gallon of porter, no, one and fourpence a gallon
of porter. One and four into twenty: fifteen about. Yes, exactly. Fifteen
millions of barrels of porter.
What am I saying barrels? Gallons. About a million barrels all the same.
An incoming train clanked heavily above his head, coach after coach. Barrels
bumped in his head: dull porter slopped and churned inside. The bungholes sprang
open and a huge dull flood leaked out, flowing together, winding through
mudflats all over the level land, a lazy pooling swirl of liquor bearing along
wideleaved flowers of its froth.
He had reached the open backdoor of All Hallows. Stepping into the porch he
doffed his hat, took the card from his pocket and tucked it again behind the
leather headband. Damn it. I might have tried to work M'Coy for a pass to
Mullingar.
Same notice on the door. Sermon by the very reverend John Conmee S.J. on saint
Peter Claver S.J. and the African Mission. Prayers for the conversion of
Gladstone they had too when he was almost unconscious. The protestants are the
same. Convert Dr William J. Walsh D.D. to the true religion. Save China's
millions. Wonder how they explain it to the heathen Chinee. Prefer an ounce of
opium. Celestials. Rank heresy for them. Buddha their god lying on his side in
the museum. Taking it easy with hand under his cheek. Josssticks burning. Not
like Ecce Homo. Crown of thorns and cross. Clever idea Saint Patrick the
shamrock. Chopsticks? Conmee: Martin Cunningham knows him: distinguishedlooking.
Sorry I didn't work him about getting Molly into the choir instead of that
Father Farley who looked a fool but wasn't. They're taught that. He's not going
out in bluey specs with the sweat rolling off him to baptise blacks, is he? The
glasses would take their fancy, flashing. Like to see them sitting round in a
ring with blub lips, entranced, listening. Still life. Lap it up like milk, I
suppose.
The cold smell of sacred stone called him. He trod the worn steps, pushed the
swingdoor and entered softly by the rere.
Something going on: some sodality. Pity so empty. Nice discreet place to be next
some girl. Who is my neighbour? Jammed by the hour to slow music. That woman at
midnight mass. Seventh heaven. Women knelt in the benches with crimson halters
round their necks, heads bowed. A batch knelt at the altarrails. The priest went
along by them, murmuring, holding the thing in his hands. He stopped at each,
took out a communion, shook a drop or two (are they in water?) off it and put it
neatly into her mouth. Her hat and head sank. Then the next one. Her hat sank at
once. Then the next one: a small old woman. The priest bent down to put it into
her mouth, murmuring all the time. Latin. The next one. Shut your eyes and open
your mouth. What? Corpus: body. Corpse. Good idea the Latin. Stupefies them
first. Hospice for the dying. They don't seem to chew it: only swallow it down.
Rum idea: eating bits of a corpse. Why the cannibals cotton to it.
He stood aside watching their blind masks pass down the aisle, one by one, and
seek their places. He approached a bench and seated himself in its corner,
nursing his hat and newspaper. These pots we have to wear. We ought to have hats
modelled on our heads. They were about him here and there, with heads still
bowed in their crimson halters, waiting for it to melt in their stomachs.
Something like those mazzoth: it's that sort of bread: unleavened shewbread.
Look at them. Now I bet it makes them feel happy. Lollipop. It does. Yes, bread
of angels it's called. There's a big idea behind it, kind of kingdom of God is
within you feel. First communicants. Hokypoky penny a lump. Then feel all like
one family party, same in the theatre, all in the same swim. They do. I'm sure
of that. Not so lonely. In our confraternity. Then come out a bit spreeish. Let
off steam. Thing is if you really believe in it. Lourdes cure, waters of
oblivion, and the Knock apparition, statues bleeding. Old fellow asleep near
that confessionbox. Hence those snores. Blind faith. Safe in the arms of kingdom
come. Lulls all pain. Wake this time next year.
He saw the priest stow the communion cup away, well in, and kneel an instant
before it, showing a large grey bootsole from under the lace affair he had on.
Suppose he lost the pin of his. He wouldn't know what to do to. Bald spot
behind. Letters on his back: I.N.R.I? No: I.H.S. Molly told me one time I asked
her. I have sinned: or no: I have suffered, it is. And the other one? Iron nails
ran in.
Meet one Sunday after the rosary. Do not deny my request. Turn up with a veil
and black bag. Dusk and the light behind her. She might be here with a ribbon
round her neck and do the other thing all the same on the sly. Their character.
That fellow that turned queen's evidence on the invincibles he used to receive
the, Carey was his name, the communion every morning. This very church. Peter
Carey, yes. No, Peter Claver I am thinking of. Denis Carey. And just imagine
that. Wife and six children at home. And plotting that murder all the time.
Those crawthumpers, now that's a good name for them, there's always something
shiftylooking about them. They're not straight men of business either. O, no,
she's not here: the flower: no, no. By the way, did I tear up that envelope?
Yes: under the bridge.
The priest was rinsing out the chalice: then he tossed off the dregs smartly.
Wine. Makes it more aristocratic than for example if he drank what they are used
to Guinness's porter or some temperance beverage Wheatley's Dublin hop bitters
or Cantrell and Cochrane's ginger ale (aromatic). Doesn't give them any of it:
shew wine: only the other. Cold comfort. Pious fraud but quite right: otherwise
they'd have one old booser worse than another coming along, cadging for a drink.
Queer the whole atmosphere of the. Quite right. Perfectly right that is.
Mr Bloom looked back towards the choir. Not going to be any music. Pity. Who has
the organ here I wonder? Old Glynn he knew how to make that instrument talk, the
vibrato: fifty pounds a year they say he had in Gardiner street. Molly was in
fine voice that day, the Stabat Mater of Rossini. Father Bernard Vaughan's
sermon first. Christ or Pilate? Christ, but don't keep us all night over it.
Music they wanted. Footdrill stopped. Could hear a pin drop. I told her to pitch
her voice against that corner. I could feel the thrill in the air, the full, the
people looking up:
Quis est homo.
Some of that old sacred music splendid. Mercadante: seven last words. Mozart's
twelfth mass: Gloria in that. Those old popes keen on music, on art and statues
and pictures of all kinds. Palestrina for example too. They had a gay old time
while it lasted. Healthy too, chanting, regular hours, then brew liqueurs.
Benedictine. Green Chartreuse. Still, having eunuchs in their choir that was
coming it a bit thick. What kind of voice is it? Must be curious to hear after
their own strong basses. Connoisseurs. Suppose they wouldn't feel anything
after. Kind of a placid. No worry. Fall into flesh, don't they? Gluttons, tall,
long legs. Who knows? Eunuch. One way out of it.
He saw the priest bend down and kiss the altar and then face about and bless all
the people. All crossed themselves and stood up. Mr Bloom glanced about him and
then stood up, looking over the risen hats. Stand up at the gospel of course.
Then all settled down on their knees again and he sat back quietly in his bench.
The priest came down from the altar, holding the thing out from him, and he and
the massboy answered each other in Latin. Then the priest knelt down and began
to read off a card:
—O God, our refuge and our strength...
Mr Bloom put his face forward to catch the words. English. Throw them the bone.
I remember slightly. How long since your last mass? Glorious and immaculate
virgin. Joseph, her spouse. Peter and Paul. More interesting if you understood
what it was all about. Wonderful organisation certainly, goes like clockwork.
Confession. Everyone wants to. Then I will tell you all. Penance. Punish me,
please. Great weapon in their hands. More than doctor or solicitor. Woman dying
to. And I schschschschschsch. And did you chachachachacha? And why did you? Look
down at her ring to find an excuse. Whispering gallery walls have ears. Husband
learn to his surprise. God's little joke. Then out she comes. Repentance
skindeep. Lovely shame. Pray at an altar. Hail Mary and Holy Mary. Flowers,
incense, candles melting. Hide her blushes. Salvation army blatant imitation.
Reformed prostitute will address the meeting. How I found the Lord. Squareheaded
chaps those must be in Rome: they work the whole show. And don't they rake in
the money too? Bequests also: to the P.P. for the time being in his absolute
discretion. Masses for the repose of my soul to be said publicly with open
doors. Monasteries and convents. The priest in that Fermanagh will case in the
witnessbox. No browbeating him. He had his answer pat for everything. Liberty
and exaltation of our holy mother the church. The doctors of the church: they
mapped out the whole theology of it.
The priest prayed:
—Blessed Michael, archangel, defend us in the hour of conflict. Be our safeguard
against the wickedness and snares of the devil (may God restrain him, we humbly
pray!): and do thou, O prince of the heavenly host, by the power of God thrust
Satan down to hell and with him those other wicked spirits who wander through
the world for the ruin of souls.
The priest and the massboy stood up and walked off. All over. The women remained
behind: thanksgiving.
Better be shoving along. Brother Buzz. Come around with the plate perhaps. Pay
your Easter duty.
He stood up. Hello. Were those two buttons of my waistcoat open all the time?
Women enjoy it. Never tell you. But we. Excuse, miss, there's a (whh!) just a
(whh!) fluff. Or their skirt behind, placket unhooked. Glimpses of the moon.
Annoyed if you don't. Why didn't you tell me before. Still like you better
untidy. Good job it wasn't farther south. He passed, discreetly buttoning, down
the aisle and out through the main door into the light. He stood a moment
unseeing by the cold black marble bowl while before him and behind two
worshippers dipped furtive hands in the low tide of holy water. Trams: a car of
Prescott's dyeworks: a widow in her weeds. Notice because I'm in mourning
myself. He covered himself. How goes the time? Quarter past. Time enough yet.
Better get that lotion made up. Where is this? Ah yes, the last time. Sweny's in
Lincoln place. Chemists rarely move. Their green and gold beaconjars too heavy
to stir. Hamilton Long's, founded in the year of the flood. Huguenot churchyard
near there. Visit some day.
He walked southward along Westland row. But the recipe is in the other trousers.
O, and I forgot that latchkey too. Bore this funeral affair. O well, poor
fellow, it's not his fault. When was it I got it made up last? Wait. I changed a
sovereign I remember. First of the month it must have been or the second. O, he
can look it up in the prescriptions book.
The chemist turned back page after page. Sandy shrivelled smell he seems to
have. Shrunken skull. And old. Quest for the philosopher's stone. The
alchemists. Drugs age you after mental excitement. Lethargy then. Why? Reaction.
A lifetime in a night. Gradually changes your character. Living all the day
among herbs, ointments, disinfectants. All his alabaster lilypots. Mortar and
pestle. Aq. Dist. Fol. Laur. Te Virid. Smell almost cure you like the dentist's
doorbell. Doctor Whack. He ought to physic himself a bit. Electuary or emulsion.
The first fellow that picked an herb to cure himself had a bit of pluck.
Simples. Want to be careful. Enough stuff here to chloroform you. Test: turns
blue litmus paper red. Chloroform. Overdose of laudanum. Sleeping draughts.
Lovephiltres. Paragoric poppysyrup bad for cough. Clogs the pores or the phlegm.
Poisons the only cures. Remedy where you least expect it. Clever of nature.
—About a fortnight ago, sir?
—Yes, Mr Bloom said.
He waited by the counter, inhaling slowly the keen reek of drugs, the dusty dry
smell of sponges and loofahs. Lot of time taken up telling your aches and pains.

—Sweet almond oil and tincture of benzoin, Mr Bloom said, and then orangeflower
water...
It certainly did make her skin so delicate white like wax.
—And white wax also, he said.
Brings out the darkness of her eyes. Looking at me, the sheet up to her eyes,
Spanish, smelling herself, when I was fixing the links in my cuffs. Those homely
recipes are often the best: strawberries for the teeth: nettles and rainwater:
oatmeal they say steeped in buttermilk. Skinfood. One of the old queen's sons,
duke of Albany was it? had only one skin. Leopold, yes. Three we have. Warts,
bunions and pimples to make it worse. But you want a perfume too. What perfume
does your? Peau d'Espagne. That orangeflower water is so fresh. Nice smell these
soaps have. Pure curd soap. Time to get a bath round the corner. Hammam.
Turkish. Massage. Dirt gets rolled up in your navel. Nicer if a nice girl did
it. Also I think I. Yes I. Do it in the bath. Curious longing I. Water to water.
Combine business with pleasure. Pity no time for massage. Feel fresh then all
the day. Funeral be rather glum.
—Yes, sir, the chemist said. That was two and nine. Have you brought a bottle?
—No, Mr Bloom said. Make it up, please. I'll call later in the day and I'll take
one of these soaps. How much are they?
—Fourpence, sir.
Mr Bloom raised a cake to his nostrils. Sweet lemony wax.
—I'll take this one, he said. That makes three and a penny.
—Yes, sir, the chemist said. You can pay all together, sir, when you come back.
—Good, Mr Bloom said.
He strolled out of the shop, the newspaper baton under his armpit, the
coolwrappered soap in his left hand.
At his armpit Bantam Lyons' voice and hand said:
—Hello, Bloom. What's the best news? Is that today's? Show us a minute.
Shaved off his moustache again, by Jove! Long cold upper lip. To look younger.
He does look balmy. Younger than I am.
Bantam Lyons's yellow blacknailed fingers unrolled the baton. Wants a wash too.
Take off the rough dirt. Good morning, have you used Pears' soap? Dandruff on
his shoulders. Scalp wants oiling.
—I want to see about that French horse that's running today, Bantam Lyons said.
Where the bugger is it?
He rustled the pleated pages, jerking his chin on his high collar. Barber's
itch. Tight collar he'll lose his hair. Better leave him the paper and get shut
of him.
—You can keep it, Mr Bloom said.
—Ascot. Gold cup. Wait, Bantam Lyons muttered. Half a mo. Maximum the second.
—I was just going to throw it away, Mr Bloom said.
Bantam Lyons raised his eyes suddenly and leered weakly.
—What's that? his sharp voice said.
—I say you can keep it, Mr Bloom answered. I was going to throw it away that
moment.
Bantam Lyons doubted an instant, leering: then thrust the outspread sheets back
on Mr Bloom's arms.
—I'll risk it, he said. Here, thanks.
He sped off towards Conway's corner. God speed scut.
Mr Bloom folded the sheets again to a neat square and lodged the soap in it,
smiling. Silly lips of that chap. Betting. Regular hotbed of it lately.
Messenger boys stealing to put on sixpence. Raffle for large tender turkey. Your
Christmas dinner for threepence. Jack Fleming embezzling to gamble then smuggled
off to America. Keeps a hotel now. They never come back. Fleshpots of Egypt.
He walked cheerfully towards the mosque of the baths. Remind you of a mosque,
redbaked bricks, the minarets. College sports today I see. He eyed the horseshoe
poster over the gate of college park: cyclist doubled up like a cod in a pot.
Damn bad ad. Now if they had made it round like a wheel. Then the spokes:
sports, sports, sports: and the hub big: college. Something to catch the eye.
There's Hornblower standing at the porter's lodge. Keep him on hands: might take
a turn in there on the nod. How do you do, Mr Hornblower? How do you do, sir?
Heavenly weather really. If life was always like that. Cricket weather. Sit
around under sunshades. Over after over. Out. They can't play it here. Duck for
six wickets. Still Captain Culler broke a window in the Kildare street club with
a slog to square leg. Donnybrook fair more in their line. And the skulls we were
acracking when M'Carthy took the floor. Heatwave. Won't last. Always passing,
the stream of life, which in the stream of life we trace is dearer than them
all.
Enjoy a bath now: clean trough of water, cool enamel, the gentle tepid stream.
This is my body.
He foresaw his pale body reclined in it at full, naked, in a womb of warmth,
oiled by scented melting soap, softly laved. He saw his trunk and limbs
riprippled over and sustained, buoyed lightly upward, lemonyellow: his navel,
bud of flesh: and saw the dark tangled curls of his bush floating, floating hair
of the stream around the limp father of thousands, a languid floating flower.
Martin Cunningham, first, poked his silkhatted head into the creaking carriage
and, entering deftly, seated himself. Mr Power stepped in after him, curving his
height with care.
—Come on, Simon.
—After you, Mr Bloom said.
Mr Dedalus covered himself quickly and got in, saying:
Yes, yes.
—Are we all here now? Martin Cunningham asked. Come along, Bloom.
Mr Bloom entered and sat in the vacant place. He pulled the door to after him
and slammed it twice till it shut tight. He passed an arm through the armstrap
and looked seriously from the open carriagewindow at the lowered blinds of the
avenue. One dragged aside: an old woman peeping. Nose whiteflattened against the
pane. Thanking her stars she was passed over. Extraordinary the interest they
take in a corpse. Glad to see us go we give them such trouble coming. Job seems
to suit them. Huggermugger in corners. Slop about in slipperslappers for fear
he'd wake. Then getting it ready. Laying it out. Molly and Mrs Fleming making
the bed. Pull it more to your side. Our windingsheet. Never know who will touch
you dead. Wash and shampoo. I believe they clip the nails and the hair. Keep a
bit in an envelope. Grows all the same after. Unclean job.
All waited. Nothing was said. Stowing in the wreaths probably. I am sitting on
something hard. Ah, that soap: in my hip pocket. Better shift it out of that.
Wait for an opportunity.
All waited. Then wheels were heard from in front, turning: then nearer: then
horses' hoofs. A jolt. Their carriage began to move, creaking and swaying. Other
hoofs and creaking wheels started behind. The blinds of the avenue passed and
number nine with its craped knocker, door ajar. At walking pace.
They waited still, their knees jogging, till they had turned and were passing
along the tramtracks. Tritonville road. Quicker. The wheels rattled rolling over
the cobbled causeway and the crazy glasses shook rattling in the doorframes.
—What way is he taking us? Mr Power asked through both windows.
—Irishtown, Martin Cunningham said. Ringsend. Brunswick street.
Mr Dedalus nodded, looking out.
—That's a fine old custom, he said. I am glad to see it has not died out.
All watched awhile through their windows caps and hats lifted by passers.
Respect. The carriage swerved from the tramtrack to the smoother road past
Watery lane. Mr Bloom at gaze saw a lithe young man, clad in mourning, a wide
hat.
—There's a friend of yours gone by, Dedalus, he said.
—Who is that?
—Your son and heir.
—Where is he? Mr Dedalus said, stretching over across.
The carriage, passing the open drains and mounds of rippedup roadway before the
tenement houses, lurched round the corner and, swerving back to the tramtrack,
rolled on noisily with chattering wheels. Mr Dedalus fell back, saying:
—Was that Mulligan cad with him? His fidus Achates!
—No, Mr Bloom said. He was alone.
—Down with his aunt Sally, I suppose, Mr Dedalus said, the Goulding faction, the
drunken little costdrawer and Crissie, papa's little lump of dung, the wise
child that knows her own father.
Mr Bloom smiled joylessly on Ringsend road. Wallace Bros: the bottleworks:
Dodder bridge.
Richie Goulding and the legal bag. Goulding, Collis and Ward he calls the firm.
His jokes are getting a bit damp. Great card he was. Waltzing in Stamer street
with Ignatius Gallaher on a Sunday morning, the landlady's two hats pinned on
his head. Out on the rampage all night. Beginning to tell on him now: that
backache of his, I fear. Wife ironing his back. Thinks he'll cure it with pills.
All breadcrumbs they are. About six hundred per cent profit.
—He's in with a lowdown crowd, Mr Dedalus snarled. That Mulligan is a
contaminated bloody doubledyed ruffian by all accounts. His name stinks all over
Dublin. But with the help of God and His blessed mother I'll make it my business
to write a letter one of those days to his mother or his aunt or whatever she is
that will open her eye as wide as a gate. I'll tickle his catastrophe, believe
you me.
He cried above the clatter of the wheels:
—I won't have her bastard of a nephew ruin my son. A counterjumper's son.
Selling tapes in my cousin, Peter Paul M'Swiney's. Not likely.
He ceased. Mr Bloom glanced from his angry moustache to Mr Power's mild face and
Martin Cunningham's eyes and beard, gravely shaking. Noisy selfwilled man. Full
of his son. He is right. Something to hand on. If little Rudy had lived. See him
grow up. Hear his voice in the house. Walking beside Molly in an Eton suit. My
son. Me in his eyes. Strange feeling it would be. From me. Just a chance. Must
have been that morning in Raymond terrace she was at the window watching the two
dogs at it by the wall of the cease to do evil. And the sergeant grinning up.
She had that cream gown on with the rip she never stitched. Give us a touch,
Poldy. God, I'm dying for it. How life begins.
Got big then. Had to refuse the Greystones concert. My son inside her. I could
have helped him on in life. I could. Make him independent. Learn German too.
—Are we late? Mr Power asked.
—Ten minutes, Martin Cunningham said, looking at his watch.
Molly. Milly. Same thing watered down. Her tomboy oaths. O jumping Jupiter! Ye
gods and little fishes! Still, she's a dear girl. Soon be a woman. Mullingar.
Dearest Papli. Young student. Yes, yes: a woman too. Life, life.
The carriage heeled over and back, their four trunks swaying.
—Corny might have given us a more commodious yoke, Mr Power said.
—He might, Mr Dedalus said, if he hadn't that squint troubling him. Do you
follow me?
He closed his left eye. Martin Cunningham began to brush away crustcrumbs from
under his thighs.
—What is this, he said, in the name of God? Crumbs?
—Someone seems to have been making a picnic party here lately, Mr Power said.
All raised their thighs and eyed with disfavour the mildewed buttonless leather
of the seats. Mr Dedalus, twisting his nose, frowned downward and said:
—Unless I'm greatly mistaken. What do you think, Martin?
—It struck me too, Martin Cunningham said.
Mr Bloom set his thigh down. Glad I took that bath. Feel my feet quite clean.
But I wish Mrs Fleming had darned these socks better.
Mr Dedalus sighed resignedly.
—After all, he said, it's the most natural thing in the world.
—Did Tom Kernan turn up? Martin Cunningham asked, twirling the peak of his beard
gently.
—Yes, Mr Bloom answered. He's behind with Ned Lambert and Hynes.
—And Corny Kelleher himself? Mr Power asked.
—At the cemetery, Martin Cunningham said.
—I met M'Coy this morning, Mr Bloom said. He said he'd try to come.
The carriage halted short.
—What's wrong?
—We're stopped.
—Where are we?
Mr Bloom put his head out of the window.
—The grand canal, he said.
Gasworks. Whooping cough they say it cures. Good job Milly never got it. Poor
children! Doubles them up black and blue in convulsions. Shame really. Got off
lightly with illnesses compared. Only measles. Flaxseed tea. Scarlatina,
influenza epidemics. Canvassing for death. Don't miss this chance. Dogs' home
over there. Poor old Athos! Be good to Athos, Leopold, is my last wish. Thy will
be done. We obey them in the grave. A dying scrawl. He took it to heart, pined
away. Quiet brute. Old men's dogs usually are.
A raindrop spat on his hat. He drew back and saw an instant of shower spray dots
over the grey flags. Apart. Curious. Like through a colander. I thought it
would. My boots were creaking I remember now.
—The weather is changing, he said quietly.
—A pity it did not keep up fine, Martin Cunningham said.
—Wanted for the country, Mr Power said. There's the sun again coming out.
Mr Dedalus, peering through his glasses towards the veiled sun, hurled a mute
curse at the sky.
—It's as uncertain as a child's bottom, he said.
—We're off again.
The carriage turned again its stiff wheels and their trunks swayed gently.
Martin Cunningham twirled more quickly the peak of his beard.
—Tom Kernan was immense last night, he said. And Paddy Leonard taking him off to
his face.
—O, draw him out, Martin, Mr Power said eagerly. Wait till you hear him, Simon,
on Ben Dollard's singing of The Croppy Boy.
—Immense, Martin Cunningham said pompously. His singing of that simple ballad,
Martin, is the most trenchant rendering I ever heard in the whole course of my
experience.
—Trenchant, Mr Power said laughing. He's dead nuts on that. And the
retrospective arrangement.
—Did you read Dan Dawson's speech? Martin Cunningham asked.
—I did not then, Mr Dedalus said. Where is it?
—In the paper this morning.
Mr Bloom took the paper from his inside pocket. That book I must change for her.

—No, no, Mr Dedalus said quickly. Later on please.
Mr Bloom's glance travelled down the edge of the paper, scanning the deaths:
Callan, Coleman, Dignam, Fawcett, Lowry, Naumann, Peake, what Peake is that? is
it the chap was in Crosbie and Alleyne's? no, Sexton, Urbright. Inked characters
fast fading on the frayed breaking paper. Thanks to the Little Flower. Sadly
missed. To the inexpressible grief of his. Aged 88 after a long and tedious
illness. Month's mind: Quinlan. On whose soul Sweet Jesus have mercy.
It is now a month since dear Henry fled To his home up above in the sky While
his family weeps and mourns his loss Hoping some day to meet him on high.
I tore up the envelope? Yes. Where did I put her letter after I read it in the
bath? He patted his waistcoatpocket. There all right. Dear Henry fled. Before my
patience are exhausted.
National school. Meade's yard. The hazard. Only two there now. Nodding. Full as
a tick. Too much bone in their skulls. The other trotting round with a fare. An
hour ago I was passing there. The jarvies raised their hats.
A pointsman's back straightened itself upright suddenly against a tramway
standard by Mr Bloom's window. Couldn't they invent something automatic so that
the wheel itself much handier? Well but that fellow would lose his job then?
Well but then another fellow would get a job making the new invention?
Antient concert rooms. Nothing on there. A man in a buff suit with a crape
armlet. Not much grief there. Quarter mourning. People in law perhaps.
They went past the bleak pulpit of saint Mark's, under the railway bridge, past
the Queen's theatre: in silence. Hoardings: Eugene Stratton, Mrs Bandmann
Palmer. Could I go to see LEAH tonight, I wonder. I said I. Or the Lily of
Killarney? Elster Grimes Opera Company. Big powerful change. Wet bright bills
for next week. Fun on the Bristol. Martin Cunningham could work a pass for the
Gaiety. Have to stand a drink or two. As broad as it's long.
He's coming in the afternoon. Her songs.
Plasto's. Sir Philip Crampton's memorial fountain bust. Who was he?
—How do you do? Martin Cunningham said, raising his palm to his brow in salute.
—He doesn't see us, Mr Power said. Yes, he does. How do you do?
—Who? Mr Dedalus asked.
—Blazes Boylan, Mr Power said. There he is airing his quiff.
Just that moment I was thinking.
Mr Dedalus bent across to salute. From the door of the Red Bank the white disc
of a straw hat flashed reply: spruce figure: passed.
Mr Bloom reviewed the nails of his left hand, then those of his right hand. The
nails, yes. Is there anything more in him that they she sees? Fascination. Worst
man in Dublin. That keeps him alive. They sometimes feel what a person is.
Instinct. But a type like that. My nails. I am just looking at them: well pared.
And after: thinking alone. Body getting a bit softy. I would notice that: from
remembering. What causes that? I suppose the skin can't contract quickly enough
when the flesh falls off. But the shape is there. The shape is there still.
Shoulders. Hips. Plump. Night of the dance dressing. Shift stuck between the
cheeks behind.
He clasped his hands between his knees and, satisfied, sent his vacant glance
over their faces.
Mr Power asked:
—How is the concert tour getting on, Bloom?
—O, very well, Mr Bloom said. I hear great accounts of it. It's a good idea, you
see...
—Are you going yourself?
—Well no, Mr Bloom said. In point of fact I have to go down to the county Clare
on some private business. You see the idea is to tour the chief towns. What you
lose on one you can make up on the other.
—Quite so, Martin Cunningham said. Mary Anderson is up there now.
Have you good artists?
—Louis Werner is touring her, Mr Bloom said. O yes, we'll have all topnobbers.
J. C. Doyle and John MacCormack I hope and. The best, in fact.
—And Madame, Mr Power said smiling. Last but not least.
Mr Bloom unclasped his hands in a gesture of soft politeness and clasped them.
Smith O'Brien. Someone has laid a bunch of flowers there. Woman. Must be his
deathday. For many happy returns. The carriage wheeling by Farrell's statue
united noiselessly their unresisting knees.
Oot: a dullgarbed old man from the curbstone tendered his wares, his mouth
opening: oot.
—Four bootlaces for a penny.
Wonder why he was struck off the rolls. Had his office in Hume street. Same
house as Molly's namesake, Tweedy, crown solicitor for Waterford. Has that silk
hat ever since. Relics of old decency. Mourning too. Terrible comedown, poor
wretch! Kicked about like snuff at a wake. O'Callaghan on his last legs.
And Madame. Twenty past eleven. Up. Mrs Fleming is in to clean. Doing her hair,
humming. voglio e non vorrei. No. vorrei e non. Looking at the tips of her hairs
to see if they are split. Mi trema un poco il. Beautiful on that tre her voice
is: weeping tone. A thrush. A throstle. There is a word throstle that expresses
that.
His eyes passed lightly over Mr Power's goodlooking face. Greyish over the ears.
Madame: smiling. I smiled back. A smile goes a long way. Only politeness
perhaps. Nice fellow. Who knows is that true about the woman he keeps? Not
pleasant for the wife. Yet they say, who was it told me, there is no carnal. You
would imagine that would get played out pretty quick. Yes, it was Crofton met
him one evening bringing her a pound of rumpsteak. What is this she was? Barmaid
in Jury's. Or the Moira, was it?
They passed under the hugecloaked Liberator's form.
Martin Cunningham nudged Mr Power.
—Of the tribe of Reuben, he said.
A tall blackbearded figure, bent on a stick, stumping round the corner of
Elvery's Elephant house, showed them a curved hand open on his spine.
—In all his pristine beauty, Mr Power said.
Mr Dedalus looked after the stumping figure and said mildly:
—The devil break the hasp of your back!
Mr Power, collapsing in laughter, shaded his face from the window as the
carriage passed Gray's statue.
—We have all been there, Martin Cunningham said broadly.
His eyes met Mr Bloom's eyes. He caressed his beard, adding:
—Well, nearly all of us.
Mr Bloom began to speak with sudden eagerness to his companions' faces.
—That's an awfully good one that's going the rounds about Reuben J and the son.
—About the boatman? Mr Power asked.
—Yes. Isn't it awfully good?
—What is that? Mr Dedalus asked. I didn't hear it.
—There was a girl in the case, Mr Bloom began, and he determined to send him to
the Isle of Man out of harm's way but when they were both ...
—What? Mr Dedalus asked. That confirmed bloody hobbledehoy is it?
—Yes, Mr Bloom said. They were both on the way to the boat and he tried to
drown...
—Drown Barabbas! Mr Dedalus cried. I wish to Christ he did!
Mr Power sent a long laugh down his shaded nostrils.
—No, Mr Bloom said, the son himself...
Martin Cunningham thwarted his speech rudely:
—Reuben and the son were piking it down the quay next the river on their way to
the Isle of Man boat and the young chiseller suddenly got loose and over the
wall with him into the Liffey.
—For God's sake! Mr Dedalus exclaimed in fright. Is he dead?
—Dead! Martin Cunningham cried. Not he! A boatman got a pole and fished him out
by the slack of the breeches and he was landed up to the father on the quay more
dead than alive. Half the town was there.
—Yes, Mr Bloom said. But the funny part is...
—And Reuben J, Martin Cunningham said, gave the boatman a florin for saving his
son's life.
A stifled sigh came from under Mr Power's hand.
—O, he did, Martin Cunningham affirmed. Like a hero. A silver florin.
—Isn't it awfully good? Mr Bloom said eagerly.
—One and eightpence too much, Mr Dedalus said drily.
Mr Power's choked laugh burst quietly in the carriage.
Nelson's pillar.
—Eight plums a penny! Eight for a penny!
—We had better look a little serious, Martin Cunningham said.
Mr Dedalus sighed.
—Ah then indeed, he said, poor little Paddy wouldn't grudge us a laugh. Many a
good one he told himself.
—The Lord forgive me! Mr Power said, wiping his wet eyes with his fingers. Poor
Paddy! I little thought a week ago when I saw him last and he was in his usual
health that I'd be driving after him like this. He's gone from us.
—As decent a little man as ever wore a hat, Mr Dedalus said. He went very
suddenly.
—Breakdown, Martin Cunningham said. Heart.
He tapped his chest sadly.
Blazing face: redhot. Too much John Barleycorn. Cure for a red nose. Drink like
the devil till it turns adelite. A lot of money he spent colouring it.
Mr Power gazed at the passing houses with rueful apprehension.
—He had a sudden death, poor fellow, he said.
—The best death, Mr Bloom said.
Their wide open eyes looked at him.
—No suffering, he said. A moment and all is over. Like dying in sleep.
No-one spoke.
Dead side of the street this. Dull business by day, land agents, temperance
hotel, Falconer's railway guide, civil service college, Gill's, catholic club,
the industrious blind. Why? Some reason. Sun or wind. At night too. Chummies and
slaveys. Under the patronage of the late Father Mathew. Foundation stone for
Parnell. Breakdown. Heart.
White horses with white frontlet plumes came round the Rotunda corner,
galloping. A tiny coffin flashed by. In a hurry to bury. A mourning coach.
Unmarried. Black for the married. Piebald for bachelors. Dun for a nun.
—Sad, Martin Cunningham said. A child.
A dwarf's face, mauve and wrinkled like little Rudy's was. Dwarf's body, weak as
putty, in a whitelined deal box. Burial friendly society pays. Penny a week for
a sod of turf. Our. Little. Beggar. Baby. Meant nothing. Mistake of nature. If
it's healthy it's from the mother. If not from the man. Better luck next time.
—Poor little thing, Mr Dedalus said. It's well out of it.
The carriage climbed more slowly the hill of Rutland square. Rattle his bones.
Over the stones. Only a pauper. Nobody owns.
—In the midst of life, Martin Cunningham said.
—But the worst of all, Mr Power said, is the man who takes his own life.
Martin Cunningham drew out his watch briskly, coughed and put it back.
—The greatest disgrace to have in the family, Mr Power added.
—Temporary insanity, of course, Martin Cunningham said decisively. We must take
a charitable view of it.
—They say a man who does it is a coward, Mr Dedalus said.
—It is not for us to judge, Martin Cunningham said.
Mr Bloom, about to speak, closed his lips again. Martin Cunningham's large eyes.
Looking away now. Sympathetic human man he is. Intelligent. Like Shakespeare's
face. Always a good word to say. They have no mercy on that here or infanticide.
Refuse christian burial. They used to drive a stake of wood through his heart in
the grave. As if it wasn't broken already. Yet sometimes they repent too late.
Found in the riverbed clutching rushes. He looked at me. And that awful drunkard
of a wife of his. Setting up house for her time after time and then pawning the
furniture on him every Saturday almost. Leading him the life of the damned. Wear
the heart out of a stone, that. Monday morning. Start afresh. Shoulder to the
wheel. Lord, she must have looked a sight that night Dedalus told me he was in
there. Drunk about the place and capering with Martin's umbrella.
And they call me the jewel of Asia,
Of Asia,
The Geisha.
He looked away from me. He knows. Rattle his bones.
That afternoon of the inquest. The redlabelled bottle on the table. The room in
the hotel with hunting pictures. Stuffy it was. Sunlight through the slats of
the Venetian blind. The coroner's sunlit ears, big and hairy. Boots giving
evidence. Thought he was asleep first. Then saw like yellow streaks on his face.
Had slipped down to the foot of the bed. Verdict: overdose. Death by
misadventure. The letter. For my son Leopold.
No more pain. Wake no more. Nobody owns.
The carriage rattled swiftly along Blessington street. Over the stones.
—We are going the pace, I think, Martin Cunningham said.
—God grant he doesn't upset us on the road, Mr Power said.
—I hope not, Martin Cunningham said. That will be a great race tomorrow in
Germany. The Gordon Bennett.
—Yes, by Jove, Mr Dedalus said. That will be worth seeing, faith.
As they turned into Berkeley street a streetorgan near the Basin sent over and
after them a rollicking rattling song of the halls. Has anybody here seen Kelly?
Kay ee double ell wy. Dead March from Saul. He's as bad as old Antonio. He left
me on my ownio. Pirouette! The Mater Misericordiae. Eccles street. My house down
there. Big place. Ward for incurables there. Very encouraging. Our Lady's
Hospice for the dying. Deadhouse handy underneath. Where old Mrs Riordan died.
They look terrible the women. Her feeding cup and rubbing her mouth with the
spoon. Then the screen round her bed for her to die. Nice young student that was
dressed that bite the bee gave me. He's gone over to the lying-in hospital they
told me. From one extreme to the other. The carriage galloped round a corner:
stopped.
—What's wrong now?
A divided drove of branded cattle passed the windows, lowing, slouching by on
padded hoofs, whisking their tails slowly on their clotted bony croups. Outside
them and through them ran raddled sheep bleating their fear.
—Emigrants, Mr Power said.
—Huuuh! the drover's voice cried, his switch sounding on their flanks.
Huuuh! out of that!
Thursday, of course. Tomorrow is killing day. Springers. Cuffe sold them about
twentyseven quid each. For Liverpool probably. Roastbeef for old England. They
buy up all the juicy ones. And then the fifth quarter lost: all that raw stuff,
hide, hair, horns. Comes to a big thing in a year. Dead meat trade. Byproducts
of the slaughterhouses for tanneries, soap, margarine. Wonder if that dodge
works now getting dicky meat off the train at Clonsilla.
The carriage moved on through the drove.
—I can't make out why the corporation doesn't run a tramline from the parkgate
to the quays, Mr Bloom said. All those animals could be taken in trucks down to
the boats.
—Instead of blocking up the thoroughfare, Martin Cunningham said. Quite right.
They ought to.
—Yes, Mr Bloom said, and another thing I often thought, is to have municipal
funeral trams like they have in Milan, you know. Run the line out to the
cemetery gates and have special trams, hearse and carriage and all. Don't you
see what I mean?
—O, that be damned for a story, Mr Dedalus said. Pullman car and saloon
diningroom.
—A poor lookout for Corny, Mr Power added.
—Why? Mr Bloom asked, turning to Mr Dedalus. Wouldn't it be more decent than
galloping two abreast?
—Well, there's something in that, Mr Dedalus granted.
—And, Martin Cunningham said, we wouldn't have scenes like that when the hearse
capsized round Dunphy's and upset the coffin on to the road.
—That was terrible, Mr Power's shocked face said, and the corpse fell about the
road. Terrible!
—First round Dunphy's, Mr Dedalus said, nodding. Gordon Bennett cup.
—Praises be to God! Martin Cunningham said piously.
Bom! Upset. A coffin bumped out on to the road. Burst open. Paddy Dignam shot
out and rolling over stiff in the dust in a brown habit too large for him. Red
face: grey now. Mouth fallen open. Asking what's up now. Quite right to close
it. Looks horrid open. Then the insides decompose quickly. Much better to close
up all the orifices. Yes, also. With wax. The sphincter loose. Seal up all.
—Dunphy's, Mr Power announced as the carriage turned right.
Dunphy's corner. Mourning coaches drawn up, drowning their grief. A pause by the
wayside. Tiptop position for a pub. Expect we'll pull up here on the way back to
drink his health. Pass round the consolation. Elixir of life.
But suppose now it did happen. Would he bleed if a nail say cut him in the
knocking about? He would and he wouldn't, I suppose. Depends on where. The
circulation stops. Still some might ooze out of an artery. It would be better to
bury them in red: a dark red.
In silence they drove along Phibsborough road. An empty hearse trotted by,
coming from the cemetery: looks relieved.
Crossguns bridge: the royal canal.
Water rushed roaring through the sluices. A man stood on his dropping barge,
between clamps of turf. On the towpath by the lock a slacktethered horse. Aboard
of the Bugabu.
Their eyes watched him. On the slow weedy waterway he had floated on his raft
coastward over Ireland drawn by a haulage rope past beds of reeds, over slime,
mudchoked bottles, carrion dogs. Athlone, Mullingar, Moyvalley, I could make a
walking tour to see Milly by the canal. Or cycle down. Hire some old crock,
safety. Wren had one the other day at the auction but a lady's. Developing
waterways. James M'Cann's hobby to row me o'er the ferry. Cheaper transit. By
easy stages. Houseboats. Camping out. Also hearses. To heaven by water. Perhaps
I will without writing. Come as a surprise, Leixlip, Clonsilla. Dropping down
lock by lock to Dublin. With turf from the midland bogs. Salute. He lifted his
brown straw hat, saluting Paddy Dignam.
They drove on past Brian Boroimhe house. Near it now.
—I wonder how is our friend Fogarty getting on, Mr Power said.
—Better ask Tom Kernan, Mr Dedalus said.
—How is that? Martin Cunningham said. Left him weeping, I suppose?
—Though lost to sight, Mr Dedalus said, to memory dear.
The carriage steered left for Finglas road.
The stonecutter's yard on the right. Last lap. Crowded on the spit of land
silent shapes appeared, white, sorrowful, holding out calm hands, knelt in
grief, pointing. Fragments of shapes, hewn. In white silence: appealing. The
best obtainable. Thos. H. Dennany, monumental builder and sculptor.
Passed.
On the curbstone before Jimmy Geary, the sexton's, an old tramp sat, grumbling,
emptying the dirt and stones out of his huge dustbrown yawning boot. After
life's journey.
Gloomy gardens then went by: one by one: gloomy houses.
Mr Power pointed.
—That is where Childs was murdered, he said. The last house.
—So it is, Mr Dedalus said. A gruesome case. Seymour Bushe got him off. Murdered
his brother. Or so they said.
—The crown had no evidence, Mr Power said.
—Only circumstantial, Martin Cunningham added. That's the maxim of the law.
Better for ninetynine guilty to escape than for one innocent person to be
wrongfully condemned.
They looked. Murderer's ground. It passed darkly. Shuttered, tenantless,
unweeded garden. Whole place gone to hell. Wrongfully condemned. Murder. The
murderer's image in the eye of the murdered. They love reading about it. Man's
head found in a garden. Her clothing consisted of. How she met her death. Recent
outrage. The weapon used. Murderer is still at large. Clues. A shoelace. The
body to be exhumed. Murder will out.
Cramped in this carriage. She mightn't like me to come that way without letting
her know. Must be careful about women. Catch them once with their pants down.
Never forgive you after. Fifteen.
The high railings of Prospect rippled past their gaze. Dark poplars, rare white
forms. Forms more frequent, white shapes thronged amid the trees, white forms
and fragments streaming by mutely, sustaining vain gestures on the air.
The felly harshed against the curbstone: stopped. Martin Cunningham put out his
arm and, wrenching back the handle, shoved the door open with his knee. He
stepped out. Mr Power and Mr Dedalus followed.
Change that soap now. Mr Bloom's hand unbuttoned his hip pocket swiftly and
transferred the paperstuck soap to his inner handkerchief pocket. He stepped out
of the carriage, replacing the newspaper his other hand still held.
Paltry funeral: coach and three carriages. It's all the same. Pallbearers, gold
reins, requiem mass, firing a volley. Pomp of death. Beyond the hind carriage a
hawker stood by his barrow of cakes and fruit. Simnel cakes those are, stuck
together: cakes for the dead. Dogbiscuits. Who ate them? Mourners coming out.
He followed his companions. Mr Kernan and Ned Lambert followed, Hynes walking
after them. Corny Kelleher stood by the opened hearse and took out the two
wreaths. He handed one to the boy.
Where is that child's funeral disappeared to?
A team of horses passed from Finglas with toiling plodding tread, dragging
through the funereal silence a creaking waggon on which lay a granite block. The
waggoner marching at their head saluted.
Coffin now. Got here before us, dead as he is. Horse looking round at it with
his plume skeowways. Dull eye: collar tight on his neck, pressing on a
bloodvessel or something. Do they know what they cart out here every day? Must
be twenty or thirty funerals every day. Then Mount Jerome for the protestants.
Funerals all over the world everywhere every minute. Shovelling them under by
the cartload doublequick. Thousands every hour. Too many in the world.
Mourners came out through the gates: woman and a girl. Leanjawed harpy, hard
woman at a bargain, her bonnet awry. Girl's face stained with dirt and tears,
holding the woman's arm, looking up at her for a sign to cry. Fish's face,
bloodless and livid.
The mutes shouldered the coffin and bore it in through the gates. So much dead
weight. Felt heavier myself stepping out of that bath. First the stiff: then the
friends of the stiff. Corny Kelleher and the boy followed with their wreaths.
Who is that beside them? Ah, the brother-in-law.
All walked after.
Martin Cunningham whispered:
—I was in mortal agony with you talking of suicide before Bloom.
—What? Mr Power whispered. How so?
—His father poisoned himself, Martin Cunningham whispered. Had the Queen's hotel
in Ennis. You heard him say he was going to Clare. Anniversary.
—O God! Mr Power whispered. First I heard of it. Poisoned himself?
He glanced behind him to where a face with dark thinking eyes followed towards
the cardinal's mausoleum. Speaking.
—Was he insured? Mr Bloom asked.
—I believe so, Mr Kernan answered. But the policy was heavily mortgaged. Martin
is trying to get the youngster into Artane.
—How many children did he leave?
—Five. Ned Lambert says he'll try to get one of the girls into Todd's.
—A sad case, Mr Bloom said gently. Five young children.
—A great blow to the poor wife, Mr Kernan added.
—Indeed yes, Mr Bloom agreed.
Has the laugh at him now.
He looked down at the boots he had blacked and polished. She had outlived him.
Lost her husband. More dead for her than for me. One must outlive the other.
Wise men say. There are more women than men in the world. Condole with her. Your
terrible loss. I hope you'll soon follow him. For Hindu widows only. She would
marry another. Him? No. Yet who knows after. Widowhood not the thing since the
old queen died. Drawn on a guncarriage. Victoria and Albert. Frogmore memorial
mourning. But in the end she put a few violets in her bonnet. Vain in her heart
of hearts. All for a shadow. Consort not even a king. Her son was the substance.
Something new to hope for not like the past she wanted back, waiting. It never
comes. One must go first: alone, under the ground: and lie no more in her warm
bed.
—How are you, Simon? Ned Lambert said softly, clasping hands. Haven't seen you
for a month of Sundays.
—Never better. How are all in Cork's own town?
—I was down there for the Cork park races on Easter Monday, Ned Lambert said.
Same old six and eightpence. Stopped with Dick Tivy.
—And how is Dick, the solid man?
—Nothing between himself and heaven, Ned Lambert answered.
—By the holy Paul! Mr Dedalus said in subdued wonder. Dick Tivy bald?
—Martin is going to get up a whip for the youngsters, Ned Lambert said, pointing
ahead. A few bob a skull. Just to keep them going till the insurance is cleared
up.
—Yes, yes, Mr Dedalus said dubiously. Is that the eldest boy in front?
—Yes, Ned Lambert said, with the wife's brother. John Henry Menton is behind. He
put down his name for a quid.
—I'll engage he did, Mr Dedalus said. I often told poor Paddy he ought to mind
that job. John Henry is not the worst in the world.
—How did he lose it? Ned Lambert asked. Liquor, what?
—Many a good man's fault, Mr Dedalus said with a sigh.
They halted about the door of the mortuary chapel. Mr Bloom stood behind the boy
with the wreath looking down at his sleekcombed hair and at the slender furrowed
neck inside his brandnew collar. Poor boy! Was he there when the father? Both
unconscious. Lighten up at the last moment and recognise for the last time. All
he might have done. I owe three shillings to O'Grady. Would he understand? The
mutes bore the coffin into the chapel. Which end is his head?
After a moment he followed the others in, blinking in the screened light. The
coffin lay on its bier before the chancel, four tall yellow candles at its
corners. Always in front of us. Corny Kelleher, laying a wreath at each fore
corner, beckoned to the boy to kneel. The mourners knelt here and there in
prayingdesks. Mr Bloom stood behind near the font and, when all had knelt,
dropped carefully his unfolded newspaper from his pocket and knelt his right
knee upon it. He fitted his black hat gently on his left knee and, holding its
brim, bent over piously.
A server bearing a brass bucket with something in it came out through a door.
The whitesmocked priest came after him, tidying his stole with one hand,
balancing with the other a little book against his toad's belly. Who'll read the
book? I, said the rook.
They halted by the bier and the priest began to read out of his book with a
fluent croak.
Father Coffey. I knew his name was like a coffin. Domine-namine. Bully about the
muzzle he looks. Bosses the show. Muscular christian. Woe betide anyone that
looks crooked at him: priest. Thou art Peter. Burst sideways like a sheep in
clover Dedalus says he will. With a belly on him like a poisoned pup. Most
amusing expressions that man finds. Hhhn: burst sideways.
—Non intres in judicium cum servo tuo, Domine.
Makes them feel more important to be prayed over in Latin. Requiem mass. Crape
weepers. Blackedged notepaper. Your name on the altarlist. Chilly place this.
Want to feed well, sitting in there all the morning in the gloom kicking his
heels waiting for the next please. Eyes of a toad too. What swells him up that
way? Molly gets swelled after cabbage. Air of the place maybe. Looks full up of
bad gas. Must be an infernal lot of bad gas round the place. Butchers, for
instance: they get like raw beefsteaks. Who was telling me? Mervyn Browne. Down
in the vaults of saint Werburgh's lovely old organ hundred and fifty they have
to bore a hole in the coffins sometimes to let out the bad gas and burn it. Out
it rushes: blue. One whiff of that and you're a goner.
My kneecap is hurting me. Ow. That's better.
The priest took a stick with a knob at the end of it out of the boy's bucket and
shook it over the coffin. Then he walked to the other end and shook it again.
Then he came back and put it back in the bucket. As you were before you rested.
It's all written down: he has to do it.
—Et ne nos inducas in tentationem.
The server piped the answers in the treble. I often thought it would be better
to have boy servants. Up to fifteen or so. After that, of course ...
Holy water that was, I expect. Shaking sleep out of it. He must be fed up with
that job, shaking that thing over all the corpses they trot up. What harm if he
could see what he was shaking it over. Every mortal day a fresh batch:
middleaged men, old women, children, women dead in childbirth, men with beards,
baldheaded businessmen, consumptive girls with little sparrows' breasts. All the
year round he prayed the same thing over them all and shook water on top of
them: sleep. On Dignam now.
—In paradisum.
Said he was going to paradise or is in paradise. Says that over everybody.
Tiresome kind of a job. But he has to say something.
The priest closed his book and went off, followed by the server. Corny Kelleher
opened the sidedoors and the gravediggers came in, hoisted the coffin again,
carried it out and shoved it on their cart. Corny Kelleher gave one wreath to
the boy and one to the brother-in-law. All followed them out of the sidedoors
into the mild grey air. Mr Bloom came last folding his paper again into his
pocket. He gazed gravely at the ground till the coffincart wheeled off to the
left. The metal wheels ground the gravel with a sharp grating cry and the pack
of blunt boots followed the trundled barrow along a lane of sepulchres.
The ree the ra the ree the ra the roo. Lord, I mustn't lilt here.
—The O'Connell circle, Mr Dedalus said about him.
Mr Power's soft eyes went up to the apex of the lofty cone.
—He's at rest, he said, in the middle of his people, old Dan O'. But his heart
is buried in Rome. How many broken hearts are buried here, Simon!
—Her grave is over there, Jack, Mr Dedalus said. I'll soon be stretched beside
her. Let Him take me whenever He likes.
Breaking down, he began to weep to himself quietly, stumbling a little in his
walk. Mr Power took his arm.
—She's better where she is, he said kindly.
—I suppose so, Mr Dedalus said with a weak gasp. I suppose she is in heaven if
there is a heaven.
Corny Kelleher stepped aside from his rank and allowed the mourners to plod by.
—Sad occasions, Mr Kernan began politely.
Mr Bloom closed his eyes and sadly twice bowed his head.
—The others are putting on their hats, Mr Kernan said. I suppose we can do so
too. We are the last. This cemetery is a treacherous place.
They covered their heads.
—The reverend gentleman read the service too quickly, don't you think? Mr Kernan
said with reproof.
Mr Bloom nodded gravely looking in the quick bloodshot eyes. Secret eyes,
secretsearching. Mason, I think: not sure. Beside him again. We are the last. In
the same boat. Hope he'll say something else.
Mr Kernan added:
—The service of the Irish church used in Mount Jerome is simpler, more
impressive I must say.
Mr Bloom gave prudent assent. The language of course was another thing.
Mr Kernan said with solemnity:
—I am the resurrection and the life. That touches a man's inmost heart.
—It does, Mr Bloom said.
Your heart perhaps but what price the fellow in the six feet by two with his
toes to the daisies? No touching that. Seat of the affections. Broken heart. A
pump after all, pumping thousands of gallons of blood every day. One fine day it
gets bunged up: and there you are. Lots of them lying around here: lungs,
hearts, livers. Old rusty pumps: damn the thing else. The resurrection and the
life. Once you are dead you are dead. That last day idea. Knocking them all up
out of their graves. Come forth, Lazarus! And he came fifth and lost the job.
Get up! Last day! Then every fellow mousing around for his liver and his lights
and the rest of his traps. Find damn all of himself that morning. Pennyweight of
powder in a skull. Twelve grammes one pennyweight. Troy measure.
Corny Kelleher fell into step at their side.
—Everything went off A1, he said. What?
He looked on them from his drawling eye. Policeman's shoulders. With your
tooraloom tooraloom.
—As it should be, Mr Kernan said.
—What? Eh? Corny Kelleher said.
Mr Kernan assured him.
—Who is that chap behind with Tom Kernan? John Henry Menton asked. I know his
face.
Ned Lambert glanced back.
—Bloom, he said, Madame Marion Tweedy that was, is, I mean, the soprano. She's
his wife.
—O, to be sure, John Henry Menton said. I haven't seen her for some time. He was
a finelooking woman. I danced with her, wait, fifteen seventeen golden years
ago, at Mat Dillon's in Roundtown. And a good armful she was.
He looked behind through the others.
—What is he? he asked. What does he do? Wasn't he in the stationery line? I fell
foul of him one evening, I remember, at bowls.
Ned Lambert smiled.
—Yes, he was, he said, in Wisdom Hely's. A traveller for blottingpaper.
—In God's name, John Henry Menton said, what did she marry a coon like that for?
She had plenty of game in her then.
—Has still, Ned Lambert said. He does some canvassing for ads.
John Henry Menton's large eyes stared ahead.
The barrow turned into a side lane. A portly man, ambushed among the grasses,
raised his hat in homage. The gravediggers touched their caps.
—John O'Connell, Mr Power said pleased. He never forgets a friend.
Mr O'Connell shook all their hands in silence. Mr Dedalus said:
—I am come to pay you another visit.
—My dear Simon, the caretaker answered in a low voice. I don't want your custom
at all.
Saluting Ned Lambert and John Henry Menton he walked on at Martin Cunningham's
side puzzling two long keys at his back.
—Did you hear that one, he asked them, about Mulcahy from the Coombe?
—I did not, Martin Cunningham said.
They bent their silk hats in concert and Hynes inclined his ear. The caretaker
hung his thumbs in the loops of his gold watchchain and spoke in a discreet tone
to their vacant smiles.
—They tell the story, he said, that two drunks came out here one foggy evening
to look for the grave of a friend of theirs. They asked for Mulcahy from the
Coombe and were told where he was buried. After traipsing about in the fog they
found the grave sure enough. One of the drunks spelt out the name: Terence
Mulcahy. The other drunk was blinking up at a statue of Our Saviour the widow
had got put up.
The caretaker blinked up at one of the sepulchres they passed. He resumed:
—And, after blinking up at the sacred figure, Not a bloody bit like the man,
says he. That's not Mulcahy, says he, whoever done it.
Rewarded by smiles he fell back and spoke with Corny Kelleher, accepting the
dockets given him, turning them over and scanning them as he walked.
—That's all done with a purpose, Martin Cunningham explained to Hynes.
—I know, Hynes said. I know that.
—To cheer a fellow up, Martin Cunningham said. It's pure goodheartedness: damn
the thing else.
Mr Bloom admired the caretaker's prosperous bulk. All want to be on good terms
with him. Decent fellow, John O'Connell, real good sort. Keys: like Keyes's ad:
no fear of anyone getting out. No passout checks. Habeas corpus. I must see
about that ad after the funeral. Did I write Ballsbridge on the envelope I took
to cover when she disturbed me writing to Martha? Hope it's not chucked in the
dead letter office. Be the better of a shave. Grey sprouting beard. That's the
first sign when the hairs come out grey. And temper getting cross. Silver
threads among the grey. Fancy being his wife. Wonder he had the gumption to
propose to any girl. Come out and live in the graveyard. Dangle that before her.
It might thrill her first. Courting death... Shades of night hovering here with
all the dead stretched about. The shadows of the tombs when churchyards yawn and
Daniel O'Connell must be a descendant I suppose who is this used to say he was a
queer breedy man great catholic all the same like a big giant in the dark. Will
o' the wisp. Gas of graves. Want to keep her mind off it to conceive at all.
Women especially are so touchy. Tell her a ghost story in bed to make her sleep.
Have you ever seen a ghost? Well, I have. It was a pitchdark night. The clock
was on the stroke of twelve. Still they'd kiss all right if properly keyed up.
Whores in Turkish graveyards. Learn anything if taken young. You might pick up a
young widow here. Men like that. Love among the tombstones. Romeo. Spice of
pleasure. In the midst of death we are in life. Both ends meet. Tantalising for
the poor dead. Smell of grilled beefsteaks to the starving. Gnawing their
vitals. Desire to grig people. Molly wanting to do it at the window. Eight
children he has anyway.
He has seen a fair share go under in his time, lying around him field after
field. Holy fields. More room if they buried them standing. Sitting or kneeling
you couldn't. Standing? His head might come up some day above ground in a
landslip with his hand pointing. All honeycombed the ground must be: oblong
cells. And very neat he keeps it too: trim grass and edgings. His garden Major
Gamble calls Mount Jerome. Well, so it is. Ought to be flowers of sleep. Chinese
cemeteries with giant poppies growing produce the best opium Mastiansky told me.
The Botanic Gardens are just over there. It's the blood sinking in the earth
gives new life. Same idea those jews they said killed the christian boy. Every
man his price. Well preserved fat corpse, gentleman, epicure, invaluable for
fruit garden. A bargain. By carcass of William Wilkinson, auditor and
accountant, lately deceased, three pounds thirteen and six. With thanks.
I daresay the soil would be quite fat with corpsemanure, bones, flesh, nails.
Charnelhouses. Dreadful. Turning green and pink decomposing. Rot quick in damp
earth. The lean old ones tougher. Then a kind of a tallowy kind of a cheesy.
Then begin to get black, black treacle oozing out of them. Then dried up.
Deathmoths. Of course the cells or whatever they are go on living. Changing
about. Live for ever practically. Nothing to feed on feed on themselves.
But they must breed a devil of a lot of maggots. Soil must be simply swirling
with them. Your head it simply swurls. Those pretty little seaside gurls. He
looks cheerful enough over it. Gives him a sense of power seeing all the others
go under first. Wonder how he looks at life. Cracking his jokes too: warms the
cockles of his heart. The one about the bulletin. Spurgeon went to heaven 4 a.m.
this morning. 11 p.m. (closing time). Not arrived yet. Peter. The dead
themselves the men anyhow would like to hear an odd joke or the women to know
what's in fashion. A juicy pear or ladies' punch, hot, strong and sweet. Keep
out the damp. You must laugh sometimes so better do it that way. Gravediggers in
Hamlet. Shows the profound knowledge of the human heart. Daren't joke about the
dead for two years at least. De mortuis nil nisi prius. Go out of mourning
first. Hard to imagine his funeral. Seems a sort of a joke. Read your own
obituary notice they say you live longer. Gives you second wind. New lease of
life.
—How many have-you for tomorrow? the caretaker asked.
—Two, Corny Kelleher said. Half ten and eleven.
The caretaker put the papers in his pocket. The barrow had ceased to trundle.
The mourners split and moved to each side of the hole, stepping with care round
the graves. The gravediggers bore the coffin and set its nose on the brink,
looping the bands round it.
Burying him. We come to bury Caesar. His ides of March or June. He doesn't know
who is here nor care. Now who is that lankylooking galoot over there in the
macintosh? Now who is he I'd like to know? Now I'd give a trifle to know who he
is. Always someone turns up you never dreamt of. A fellow could live on his
lonesome all his life. Yes, he could. Still he'd have to get someone to sod him
after he died though he could dig his own grave. We all do. Only man buries. No,
ants too. First thing strikes anybody. Bury the dead. Say Robinson Crusoe was
true to life. Well then Friday buried him. Every Friday buries a Thursday if you
come to look at it.
O, poor Robinson Crusoe!
How could you possibly do so?
Poor Dignam! His last lie on the earth in his box. When you think of them all it
does seem a waste of wood. All gnawed through. They could invent a handsome bier
with a kind of panel sliding, let it down that way. Ay but they might object to
be buried out of another fellow's. They're so particular. Lay me in my native
earth. Bit of clay from the holy land. Only a mother and deadborn child ever
buried in the one coffin. I see what it means. I see. To protect him as long as
possible even in the earth. The Irishman's house is his coffin. Embalming in
catacombs, mummies the same idea.
Mr Bloom stood far back, his hat in his hand, counting the bared heads. Twelve.
I'm thirteen. No. The chap in the macintosh is thirteen. Death's number. Where
the deuce did he pop out of? He wasn't in the chapel, that I'll swear. Silly
superstition that about thirteen.
Nice soft tweed Ned Lambert has in that suit. Tinge of purple. I had one like
that when we lived in Lombard street west. Dressy fellow he was once. Used to
change three suits in the day. Must get that grey suit of mine turned by Mesias.
Hello. It's dyed. His wife I forgot he's not married or his landlady ought to
have picked out those threads for him.
The coffin dived out of sight, eased down by the men straddled on the
gravetrestles. They struggled up and out: and all uncovered. Twenty.
Pause.
If we were all suddenly somebody else.
Far away a donkey brayed. Rain. No such ass. Never see a dead one, they say.
Shame of death. They hide. Also poor papa went away.
Gentle sweet air blew round the bared heads in a whisper. Whisper. The boy by
the gravehead held his wreath with both hands staring quietly in the black open
space. Mr Bloom moved behind the portly kindly caretaker. Wellcut frockcoat.
Weighing them up perhaps to see which will go next. Well, it is a long rest.
Feel no more. It's the moment you feel. Must be damned unpleasant. Can't believe
it at first. Mistake must be: someone else. Try the house opposite. Wait, I
wanted to. I haven't yet. Then darkened deathchamber. Light they want.
Whispering around you. Would you like to see a priest? Then rambling and
wandering. Delirium all you hid all your life. The death struggle. His sleep is
not natural. Press his lower eyelid. Watching is his nose pointed is his jaw
sinking are the soles of his feet yellow. Pull the pillow away and finish it off
on the floor since he's doomed. Devil in that picture of sinner's death showing
him a woman. Dying to embrace her in his shirt. Last act of Lucia. Shall i
nevermore behold thee? Bam! He expires. Gone at last. People talk about you a
bit: forget you. Don't forget to pray for him. Remember him in your prayers.
Even Parnell. Ivy day dying out. Then they follow: dropping into a hole, one
after the other.
We are praying now for the repose of his soul. Hoping you're well and not in
hell. Nice change of air. Out of the fryingpan of life into the fire of
purgatory.
Does he ever think of the hole waiting for himself? They say you do when you
shiver in the sun. Someone walking over it. Callboy's warning. Near you. Mine
over there towards Finglas, the plot I bought. Mamma, poor mamma, and little
Rudy.
The gravediggers took up their spades and flung heavy clods of clay in on the
coffin. Mr Bloom turned away his face. And if he was alive all the time? Whew!
By jingo, that would be awful! No, no: he is dead, of course. Of course he is
dead. Monday he died. They ought to have some law to pierce the heart and make
sure or an electric clock or a telephone in the coffin and some kind of a canvas
airhole. Flag of distress. Three days. Rather long to keep them in summer. Just
as well to get shut of them as soon as you are sure there's no.
The clay fell softer. Begin to be forgotten. Out of sight, out of mind.
The caretaker moved away a few paces and put on his hat. Had enough of it. The
mourners took heart of grace, one by one, covering themselves without show. Mr
Bloom put on his hat and saw the portly figure make its way deftly through the
maze of graves. Quietly, sure of his ground, he traversed the dismal fields.
Hynes jotting down something in his notebook. Ah, the names. But he knows them
all. No: coming to me.
—I am just taking the names, Hynes said below his breath. What is your christian
name? I'm not sure.
—L, Mr Bloom said. Leopold. And you might put down M'Coy's name too. He asked me
to.
—Charley, Hynes said writing. I know. He was on the Freeman once.
So he was before he got the job in the morgue under Louis Byrne. Good idea a
postmortem for doctors. Find out what they imagine they know. He died of a
Tuesday. Got the run. Levanted with the cash of a few ads. Charley, you're my
darling. That was why he asked me to. O well, does no harm. I saw to that,
M'Coy. Thanks, old chap: much obliged. Leave him under an obligation: costs
nothing.
—And tell us, Hynes said, do you know that fellow in the, fellow was over there
in the...
He looked around.
—Macintosh. Yes, I saw him, Mr Bloom said. Where is he now?
—M'Intosh, Hynes said scribbling. I don't know who he is. Is that his name?
He moved away, looking about him.
—No, Mr Bloom began, turning and stopping. I say, Hynes!
Didn't hear. What? Where has he disappeared to? Not a sign. Well of all the. Has
anybody here seen? Kay ee double ell. Become invisible. Good Lord, what became
of him?
A seventh gravedigger came beside Mr Bloom to take up an idle spade.
—O, excuse me!
He stepped aside nimbly.
Clay, brown, damp, began to be seen in the hole. It rose. Nearly over. A mound
of damp clods rose more, rose, and the gravediggers rested their spades. All
uncovered again for a few instants. The boy propped his wreath against a corner:
the brother-in-law his on a lump. The gravediggers put on their caps and carried
their earthy spades towards the barrow. Then knocked the blades lightly on the
turf: clean. One bent to pluck from the haft a long tuft of grass. One, leaving
his mates, walked slowly on with shouldered weapon, its blade blueglancing.
Silently at the gravehead another coiled the coffinband. His navelcord. The
brother-in-law, turning away, placed something in his free hand. Thanks in
silence. Sorry, sir: trouble. Headshake. I know that. For yourselves just.
The mourners moved away slowly without aim, by devious paths, staying at whiles
to read a name on a tomb.
—Let us go round by the chief's grave, Hynes said. We have time.
—Let us, Mr Power said.
They turned to the right, following their slow thoughts. With awe Mr Power's
blank voice spoke:
—Some say he is not in that grave at all. That the coffin was filled with
stones. That one day he will come again.
Hynes shook his head.
—Parnell will never come again, he said. He's there, all that was mortal of him.
Peace to his ashes.
Mr Bloom walked unheeded along his grove by saddened angels, crosses, broken
pillars, family vaults, stone hopes praying with upcast eyes, old Ireland's
hearts and hands. More sensible to spend the money on some charity for the
living. Pray for the repose of the soul of. Does anybody really? Plant him and
have done with him. Like down a coalshoot. Then lump them together to save time.
All souls' day. Twentyseventh I'll be at his grave. Ten shillings for the
gardener. He keeps it free of weeds. Old man himself. Bent down double with his
shears clipping. Near death's door. Who passed away. Who departed this life. As
if they did it of their own accord. Got the shove, all of them. Who kicked the
bucket. More interesting if they told you what they were. So and So,
wheelwright. I travelled for cork lino. I paid five shillings in the pound. Or a
woman's with her saucepan. I cooked good Irish stew. Eulogy in a country
churchyard it ought to be that poem of whose is it Wordsworth or Thomas
Campbell. Entered into rest the protestants put it. Old Dr Murren's. The great
physician called him home. Well it's God's acre for them. Nice country
residence. Newly plastered and painted. Ideal spot to have a quiet smoke and
read the Church Times. Marriage ads they never try to beautify. Rusty wreaths
hung on knobs, garlands of bronzefoil. Better value that for the money. Still,
the flowers are more poetical. The other gets rather tiresome, never withering.
Expresses nothing. Immortelles.
A bird sat tamely perched on a poplar branch. Like stuffed. Like the wedding
present alderman Hooper gave us. Hoo! Not a budge out of him. Knows there are no
catapults to let fly at him. Dead animal even sadder. Silly-Milly burying the
little dead bird in the kitchen matchbox, a daisychain and bits of broken
chainies on the grave.
The Sacred Heart that is: showing it. Heart on his sleeve. Ought to be sideways
and red it should be painted like a real heart. Ireland was dedicated to it or
whatever that. Seems anything but pleased. Why this infliction? Would birds come
then and peck like the boy with the basket of fruit but he said no because they
ought to have been afraid of the boy. Apollo that was.
How many! All these here once walked round Dublin. Faithful departed. As you are
now so once were we.
Besides how could you remember everybody? Eyes, walk, voice. Well, the voice,
yes: gramophone. Have a gramophone in every grave or keep it in the house. After
dinner on a Sunday. Put on poor old greatgrandfather. Kraahraark!
Hellohellohello amawfullyglad kraark awfullygladaseeagain hellohello amawf
krpthsth. Remind you of the voice like the photograph reminds you of the face.
Otherwise you couldn't remember the face after fifteen years, say. For instance
who? For instance some fellow that died when I was in Wisdom Hely's.
Rtststr! A rattle of pebbles. Wait. Stop!
He looked down intently into a stone crypt. Some animal. Wait. There he goes.
An obese grey rat toddled along the side of the crypt, moving the pebbles. An
old stager: greatgrandfather: he knows the ropes. The grey alive crushed itself
in under the plinth, wriggled itself in under it. Good hidingplace for treasure.

Who lives there? Are laid the remains of Robert Emery. Robert Emmet was buried
here by torchlight, wasn't he? Making his rounds.
Tail gone now.
One of those chaps would make short work of a fellow. Pick the bones clean no
matter who it was. Ordinary meat for them. A corpse is meat gone bad. Well and
what's cheese? Corpse of milk. I read in that Voyages in China that the Chinese
say a white man smells like a corpse. Cremation better. Priests dead against it.
Devilling for the other firm. Wholesale burners and Dutch oven dealers. Time of
the plague. Quicklime feverpits to eat them. Lethal chamber. Ashes to ashes. Or
bury at sea. Where is that Parsee tower of silence? Eaten by birds. Earth, fire,
water. Drowning they say is the pleasantest. See your whole life in a flash. But
being brought back to life no. Can't bury in the air however. Out of a flying
machine. Wonder does the news go about whenever a fresh one is let down.
Underground communication. We learned that from them. Wouldn't be surprised.
Regular square feed for them. Flies come before he's well dead. Got wind of
Dignam. They wouldn't care about the smell of it. Saltwhite crumbling mush of
corpse: smell, taste like raw white turnips.
The gates glimmered in front: still open. Back to the world again. Enough of
this place. Brings you a bit nearer every time. Last time I was here was Mrs
Sinico's funeral. Poor papa too. The love that kills. And even scraping up the
earth at night with a lantern like that case I read of to get at fresh buried
females or even putrefied with running gravesores. Give you the creeps after a
bit. I will appear to you after death. You will see my ghost after death. My
ghost will haunt you after death. There is another world after death named hell.
I do not like that other world she wrote. No more do I. Plenty to see and hear
and feel yet. Feel live warm beings near you. Let them sleep in their maggoty
beds. They are not going to get me this innings. Warm beds: warm fullblooded
life.
Martin Cunningham emerged from a sidepath, talking gravely.
Solicitor, I think. I know his face. Menton, John Henry, solicitor, commissioner
for oaths and affidavits. Dignam used to be in his office. Mat Dillon's long
ago. Jolly Mat. Convivial evenings. Cold fowl, cigars, the Tantalus glasses.
Heart of gold really. Yes, Menton. Got his rag out that evening on the
bowlinggreen because I sailed inside him. Pure fluke of mine: the bias. Why he
took such a rooted dislike to me. Hate at first sight. Molly and Floey Dillon
linked under the lilactree, laughing. Fellow always like that, mortified if
women are by.
Got a dinge in the side of his hat. Carriage probably.
—Excuse me, sir, Mr Bloom said beside them.
They stopped.
—Your hat is a little crushed, Mr Bloom said pointing.
John Henry Menton stared at him for an instant without moving.
—There, Martin Cunningham helped, pointing also. John Henry Menton took off his
hat, bulged out the dinge and smoothed the nap with care on his coatsleeve. He
clapped the hat on his head again.
—It's all right now, Martin Cunningham said.
John Henry Menton jerked his head down in acknowledgment.
—Thank you, he said shortly.
They walked on towards the gates. Mr Bloom, chapfallen, drew behind a few paces
so as not to overhear. Martin laying down the law. Martin could wind a sappyhead
like that round his little finger, without his seeing it.
Oyster eyes. Never mind. Be sorry after perhaps when it dawns on him. Get the
pull over him that way.
Thank you. How grand we are this morning!
IN THE HEART OF THE HIBERNIAN METROPOLIS
Before Nelson's pillar trams slowed, shunted, changed trolley, started for
Blackrock, Kingstown and Dalkey, Clonskea, Rathgar and Terenure, Palmerston Park
and upper Rathmines, Sandymount Green, Rathmines, Ringsend and Sandymount Tower,
Harold's Cross. The hoarse Dublin United Tramway Company's timekeeper bawled
them off:
—Rathgar and Terenure!
—Come on, Sandymount Green!
Right and left parallel clanging ringing a doubledecker and a singledeck moved
from their railheads, swerved to the down line, glided parallel.
—Start, Palmerston Park!
THE WEARER OF THE CROWN
Under the porch of the general post office shoeblacks called and polished.
Parked in North Prince's street His Majesty's vermilion mailcars, bearing on
their sides the royal initials, E. R., received loudly flung sacks of letters,
postcards, lettercards, parcels, insured and paid, for local, provincial,
British and overseas delivery.
GENTLEMEN OF THE PRESS
Grossbooted draymen rolled barrels dullthudding out of Prince's stores and
bumped them up on the brewery float. On the brewery float bumped dullthudding
barrels rolled by grossbooted draymen out of Prince's stores.
—There it is, Red Murray said. Alexander Keyes.
—Just cut it out, will you? Mr Bloom said, and I'll take it round to the
Telegraph office.
The door of Ruttledge's office creaked again. Davy Stephens, minute in a large
capecoat, a small felt hat crowning his ringlets, passed out with a roll of
papers under his cape, a king's courier.
Red Murray's long shears sliced out the advertisement from the newspaper in four
clean strokes. Scissors and paste.
—I'll go through the printingworks, Mr Bloom said, taking the cut square.
—Of course, if he wants a par, Red Murray said earnestly, a pen behind his ear,
we can do him one.
—Right, Mr Bloom said with a nod. I'll rub that in.
We.
WILLIAM BRAYDEN, ESQUIRE, OF OAKLANDS, SANDYMOUNT
Red Murray touched Mr Bloom's arm with the shears and whispered:
—Brayden.
Mr Bloom turned and saw the liveried porter raise his lettered cap as a stately
figure entered between the newsboards of the Weekly Freeman and National Press
and the Freeman's Journal and National Press. Dullthudding Guinness's barrels.
It passed statelily up the staircase, steered by an umbrella, a solemn
beardframed face. The broadcloth back ascended each step: back. All his brains
are in the nape of his neck, Simon Dedalus says. Welts of flesh behind on him.
Fat folds of neck, fat, neck, fat, neck.
—Don't you think his face is like Our Saviour? Red Murray whispered.
The door of Ruttledge's office whispered: ee: cree. They always build one door
opposite another for the wind to. Way in. Way out.
Our Saviour: beardframed oval face: talking in the dusk. Mary, Martha. Steered
by an umbrella sword to the footlights: Mario the tenor.
—Or like Mario, Mr Bloom said.
—Yes, Red Murray agreed. But Mario was said to be the picture of Our Saviour.
Jesusmario with rougy cheeks, doublet and spindle legs. Hand on his heart. In
Martha.
Co-ome thou lost one,
Co-ome thou dear one!
THE CROZIER AND THE PEN
—His grace phoned down twice this morning, Red Murray said gravely.
They watched the knees, legs, boots vanish. Neck.
A telegram boy stepped in nimbly, threw an envelope on the counter and stepped
off posthaste with a word:
—Freeman!
Mr Bloom said slowly:
—Well, he is one of our saviours also.
A meek smile accompanied him as he lifted the counterflap, as he passed in
through a sidedoor and along the warm dark stairs and passage, along the now
reverberating boards. But will he save the circulation? Thumping. Thumping.
He pushed in the glass swingdoor and entered, stepping over strewn packing
paper. Through a lane of clanking drums he made his way towards Nannetti's
reading closet.
WITH UNFEIGNED REGRET IT IS WE ANNOUNCE THE DISSOLUTION OF A MOST RESPECTED
DUBLIN BURGESS
Hynes here too: account of the funeral probably. Thumping. Thump. This morning
the remains of the late Mr Patrick Dignam. Machines. Smash a man to atoms if
they got him caught. Rule the world today. His machineries are pegging away too.
Like these, got out of hand: fermenting. Working away, tearing away. And that
old grey rat tearing to get in.
HOW A GREAT DAILY ORGAN IS TURNED OUT
Mr Bloom halted behind the foreman's spare body, admiring a glossy crown.
Strange he never saw his real country. Ireland my country. Member for College
green. He boomed that workaday worker tack for all it was worth. It's the ads
and side features sell a weekly, not the stale news in the official gazette.
Queen Anne is dead. Published by authority in the year one thousand and. Demesne
situate in the townland of Rosenallis, barony of Tinnahinch. To all whom it may
concern schedule pursuant to statute showing return of number of mules and
jennets exported from Ballina. Nature notes. Cartoons. Phil Blake's weekly Pat
and Bull story. Uncle Toby's page for tiny tots. Country bumpkin's queries. Dear
Mr Editor, what is a good cure for flatulence? I'd like that part. Learn a lot
teaching others. The personal note. M. A. P. Mainly all pictures. Shapely
bathers on golden strand. World's biggest balloon. Double marriage of sisters
celebrated. Two bridegrooms laughing heartily at each other. Cuprani too,
printer. More Irish than the Irish.
The machines clanked in threefour time. Thump, thump, thump. Now if he got
paralysed there and no-one knew how to stop them they'd clank on and on the
same, print it over and over and up and back. Monkeydoodle the whole thing. Want
a cool head.
—Well, get it into the evening edition, councillor, Hynes said.
Soon be calling him my lord mayor. Long John is backing him, they say.
The foreman, without answering, scribbled press on a corner of the sheet and
made a sign to a typesetter. He handed the sheet silently over the dirty glass
screen.
—Right: thanks, Hynes said moving off.
Mr Bloom stood in his way.
—If you want to draw the cashier is just going to lunch, he said, pointing
backward with his thumb.
—Did you? Hynes asked.
—Mm, Mr Bloom said. Look sharp and you'll catch him.
—Thanks, old man, Hynes said. I'll tap him too.
He hurried on eagerly towards the Freeman's Journal.
Three bob I lent him in Meagher's. Three weeks. Third hint.
WE SEE THE CANVASSER AT WORK
Mr Bloom laid his cutting on Mr Nannetti's desk.
—Excuse me, councillor, he said. This ad, you see. Keyes, you remember?
Mr Nannetti considered the cutting awhile and nodded.
—He wants it in for July, Mr Bloom said.
The foreman moved his pencil towards it.
—But wait, Mr Bloom said. He wants it changed. Keyes, you see. He wants two keys
at the top.
Hell of a racket they make. He doesn't hear it. Nannan. Iron nerves. Maybe he
understands what I.
The foreman turned round to hear patiently and, lifting an elbow, began to
scratch slowly in the armpit of his alpaca jacket.
—Like that, Mr Bloom said, crossing his forefingers at the top.
Let him take that in first.
Mr Bloom, glancing sideways up from the cross he had made, saw the foreman's
sallow face, think he has a touch of jaundice, and beyond the obedient reels
feeding in huge webs of paper. Clank it. Clank it. Miles of it unreeled. What
becomes of it after? O, wrap up meat, parcels: various uses, thousand and one
things.
Slipping his words deftly into the pauses of the clanking he drew swiftly on the
scarred woodwork.
HOUSE OF KEY(E)S
—Like that, see. Two crossed keys here. A circle. Then here the name. Alexander
Keyes, tea, wine and spirit merchant. So on.
Better not teach him his own business.
—You know yourself, councillor, just what he wants. Then round the top in
leaded: the house of keys. You see? Do you think that's a good idea?
The foreman moved his scratching hand to his lower ribs and scratched there
quietly.
—The idea, Mr Bloom said, is the house of keys. You know, councillor, the Manx
parliament. Innuendo of home rule. Tourists, you know, from the isle of Man.
Catches the eye, you see. Can you do that?
I could ask him perhaps about how to pronounce that voglio. But then if he
didn't know only make it awkward for him. Better not.
—We can do that, the foreman said. Have you the design?
—I can get it, Mr Bloom said. It was in a Kilkenny paper. He has a house there
too. I'll just run out and ask him. Well, you can do that and just a little par
calling attention. You know the usual. Highclass licensed premises. Longfelt
want. So on.
The foreman thought for an instant.
—We can do that, he said. Let him give us a three months' renewal.
A typesetter brought him a limp galleypage. He began to check it silently. Mr
Bloom stood by, hearing the loud throbs of cranks, watching the silent
typesetters at their cases.
ORTHOGRAPHICAL
Want to be sure of his spelling. Proof fever. Martin Cunningham forgot to give
us his spellingbee conundrum this morning. It is amusing to view the unpar one
ar alleled embarra two ars is it? double ess ment of a harassed pedlar while
gauging au the symmetry with a y of a peeled pear under a cemetery wall. Silly,
isn't it? Cemetery put in of course on account of the symmetry.
I should have said when he clapped on his topper. Thank you. I ought to have
said something about an old hat or something. No. I could have said. Looks as
good as new now. See his phiz then.
Sllt. The nethermost deck of the first machine jogged forward its flyboard with
sllt the first batch of quirefolded papers. Sllt. Almost human the way it sllt
to call attention. Doing its level best to speak. That door too sllt creaking,
asking to be shut. Everything speaks in its own way. Sllt.
NOTED CHURCHMAN AN OCCASIONAL CONTRIBUTOR
The foreman handed back the galleypage suddenly, saying:
—Wait. Where's the archbishop's letter? It's to be repeated in the Telegraph.
Where's what's his name?
He looked about him round his loud unanswering machines.
—Monks, sir? a voice asked from the castingbox.
—Ay. Where's Monks?
—Monks!
Mr Bloom took up his cutting. Time to get out.
—Then I'll get the design, Mr Nannetti, he said, and you'll give it a good place
I know.
—Monks!
—Yes, sir.
Three months' renewal. Want to get some wind off my chest first. Try it anyhow.
Rub in August: good idea: horseshow month. Ballsbridge. Tourists over for the
show.
A DAYFATHER
He walked on through the caseroom passing an old man, bowed, spectacled,
aproned. Old Monks, the dayfather. Queer lot of stuff he must have put through
his hands in his time: obituary notices, pubs' ads, speeches, divorce suits,
found drowned. Nearing the end of his tether now. Sober serious man with a bit
in the savingsbank I'd say. Wife a good cook and washer. Daughter working the
machine in the parlour. Plain Jane, no damn nonsense. AND IT WAS THE FEAST OF
THE PASSOVER
He stayed in his walk to watch a typesetter neatly distributing type. Reads it
backwards first. Quickly he does it. Must require some practice that. mangiD
kcirtaP. Poor papa with his hagadah book, reading backwards with his finger to
me. Pessach. Next year in Jerusalem. Dear, O dear! All that long business about
that brought us out of the land of Egypt and into the house of bondage Alleluia.
Shema Israel Adonai Elohenu. No, that's the other. Then the twelve brothers,
Jacob's sons. And then the lamb and the cat and the dog and the stick and the
water and the butcher. And then the angel of death kills the butcher and he
kills the ox and the dog kills the cat. Sounds a bit silly till you come to look
into it well. Justice it means but it's everybody eating everyone else. That's
what life is after all. How quickly he does that job. Practice makes perfect.
Seems to see with his fingers.
Mr Bloom passed on out of the clanking noises through the gallery on to the
landing. Now am I going to tram it out all the way and then catch him out
perhaps. Better phone him up first. Number? Yes. Same as Citron's house.
Twentyeight. Twentyeight double four.
ONLY ONCE MORE THAT SOAP
He went down the house staircase. Who the deuce scrawled all over those walls
with matches? Looks as if they did it for a bet. Heavy greasy smell there always
is in those works. Lukewarm glue in Thom's next door when I was there.
He took out his handkerchief to dab his nose. Citronlemon? Ah, the soap I put
there. Lose it out of that pocket. Putting back his handkerchief he took out the
soap and stowed it away, buttoned, into the hip pocket of his trousers.
What perfume does your wife use? I could go home still: tram: something I
forgot. Just to see: before: dressing. No. Here. No.
A sudden screech of laughter came from the Evening Telegraph office. Know who
that is. What's up? Pop in a minute to phone. Ned Lambert it is.
He entered softly.
ERIN, GREEN GEM OF THE SILVER SEA
—The ghost walks, professor MacHugh murmured softly, biscuitfully to the dusty
windowpane.
Mr Dedalus, staring from the empty fireplace at Ned Lambert's quizzing face,
asked of it sourly:
—Agonising Christ, wouldn't it give you a heartburn on your arse?
Ned Lambert, seated on the table, read on:
—Or again, note the meanderings of some purling rill as it babbles on its way,
tho' quarrelling with the stony obstacles, to the tumbling waters of Neptune's
blue domain, 'mid mossy banks, fanned by gentlest zephyrs, played on by the
glorious sunlight or 'neath the shadows cast o'er its pensive bosom by the
overarching leafage of the giants of the forest. What about that, Simon? he
asked over the fringe of his newspaper. How's that for high?
—Changing his drink, Mr Dedalus said.
Ned Lambert, laughing, struck the newspaper on his knees, repeating:
—The pensive bosom and the overarsing leafage. O boys! O boys!
—And Xenophon looked upon Marathon, Mr Dedalus said, looking again on the
fireplace and to the window, and Marathon looked on the sea.
—That will do, professor MacHugh cried from the window. I don't want to hear any
more of the stuff.
He ate off the crescent of water biscuit he had been nibbling and, hungered,
made ready to nibble the biscuit in his other hand.
High falutin stuff. Bladderbags. Ned Lambert is taking a day off I see. Rather
upsets a man's day, a funeral does. He has influence they say. Old Chatterton,
the vicechancellor, is his granduncle or his greatgranduncle. Close on ninety
they say. Subleader for his death written this long time perhaps. Living to
spite them. Might go first himself. Johnny, make room for your uncle. The right
honourable Hedges Eyre Chatterton. Daresay he writes him an odd shaky cheque or
two on gale days. Windfall when he kicks out. Alleluia.
—Just another spasm, Ned Lambert said.
—What is it? Mr Bloom asked.
—A recently discovered fragment of Cicero, professor MacHugh answered with pomp
of tone. Our lovely land. SHORT BUT TO THE POINT
—Whose land? Mr Bloom said simply.
—Most pertinent question, the professor said between his chews. With an accent
on the whose.
—Dan Dawson's land Mr Dedalus said.
—Is it his speech last night? Mr Bloom asked.
Ned Lambert nodded.
—But listen to this, he said.
The doorknob hit Mr Bloom in the small of the back as the door was pushed in.
—Excuse me, J. J. O'Molloy said, entering.
Mr Bloom moved nimbly aside.
—I beg yours, he said.
—Good day, Jack.
—Come in. Come in.
—Good day.
—How are you, Dedalus?
—Well. And yourself?
J. J. O'Molloy shook his head.
SAD
Cleverest fellow at the junior bar he used to be. Decline, poor chap. That
hectic flush spells finis for a man. Touch and go with him. What's in the wind,
I wonder. Money worry.
—Or again if we but climb the serried mountain peaks.
—You're looking extra.
—Is the editor to be seen? J. J. O'Molloy asked, looking towards the inner door.

—Very much so, professor MacHugh said. To be seen and heard. He's in his sanctum
with Lenehan.
J. J. O'Molloy strolled to the sloping desk and began to turn back the pink
pages of the file.
Practice dwindling. A mighthavebeen. Losing heart. Gambling. Debts of honour.
Reaping the whirlwind. Used to get good retainers from D. and T. Fitzgerald.
Their wigs to show the grey matter. Brains on their sleeve like the statue in
Glasnevin. Believe he does some literary work for the Express with Gabriel
Conroy. Wellread fellow. Myles Crawford began on the Independent. Funny the way
those newspaper men veer about when they get wind of a new opening.
Weathercocks. Hot and cold in the same breath. Wouldn't know which to believe.
One story good till you hear the next. Go for one another baldheaded in the
papers and then all blows over. Hail fellow well met the next moment.
—Ah, listen to this for God' sake, Ned Lambert pleaded. Or again if we but climb
the serried mountain peaks...
—Bombast! the professor broke in testily. Enough of the inflated windbag!
—Peaks, Ned Lambert went on, towering high on high, to bathe our souls, as it
were...
—Bathe his lips, Mr Dedalus said. Blessed and eternal God! Yes? Is he taking
anything for it?
—As 'twere, in the peerless panorama of Ireland's portfolio, unmatched, despite
their wellpraised prototypes in other vaunted prize regions, for very beauty, of
bosky grove and undulating plain and luscious pastureland of vernal green,
steeped in the transcendent translucent glow of our mild mysterious Irish
twilight...
HIS NATIVE DORIC
—The moon, professor MacHugh said. He forgot Hamlet.
—That mantles the vista far and wide and wait till the glowing orb of the moon
shine forth to irradiate her silver effulgence...
—O! Mr Dedalus cried, giving vent to a hopeless groan. Shite and onions! That'll
do, Ned. Life is too short.
He took off his silk hat and, blowing out impatiently his bushy moustache,
welshcombed his hair with raking fingers.
Ned Lambert tossed the newspaper aside, chuckling with delight. An instant after
a hoarse bark of laughter burst over professor MacHugh's unshaven
blackspectacled face.
—Doughy Daw! he cried.
WHAT WETHERUP SAID
All very fine to jeer at it now in cold print but it goes down like hot cake
that stuff. He was in the bakery line too, wasn't he? Why they call him Doughy
Daw. Feathered his nest well anyhow. Daughter engaged to that chap in the inland
revenue office with the motor. Hooked that nicely. Entertainments. Open house.
Big blowout. Wetherup always said that. Get a grip of them by the stomach.
The inner door was opened violently and a scarlet beaked face, crested by a comb
of feathery hair, thrust itself in. The bold blue eyes stared about them and the
harsh voice asked:
—What is it?
—And here comes the sham squire himself! professor MacHugh said grandly.
—Getonouthat, you bloody old pedagogue! the editor said in recognition.
—Come, Ned, Mr Dedalus said, putting on his hat. I must get a drink after that.
—Drink! the editor cried. No drinks served before mass.
—Quite right too, Mr Dedalus said, going out. Come on, Ned.
Ned Lambert sidled down from the table. The editor's blue eyes roved towards Mr
Bloom's face, shadowed by a smile.
—Will you join us, Myles? Ned Lambert asked.
MEMORABLE BATTLES RECALLED
—North Cork militia! the editor cried, striding to the mantelpiece. We won every
time! North Cork and Spanish officers!
—Where was that, Myles? Ned Lambert asked with a reflective glance at his
toecaps.
—In Ohio! the editor shouted.
—So it was, begad, Ned Lambert agreed.
Passing out he whispered to J. J. O'Molloy:
—Incipient jigs. Sad case.
—Ohio! the editor crowed in high treble from his uplifted scarlet face. My Ohio!

—A perfect cretic! the professor said. Long, short and long.
O, HARP EOLIAN!
He took a reel of dental floss from his waistcoat pocket and, breaking off a
piece, twanged it smartly between two and two of his resonant unwashed teeth.
—Bingbang, bangbang.
Mr Bloom, seeing the coast clear, made for the inner door.
—Just a moment, Mr Crawford, he said. I just want to phone about an ad.
He went in.
—What about that leader this evening? professor MacHugh asked, coming to the
editor and laying a firm hand on his shoulder.
—That'll be all right, Myles Crawford said more calmly. Never you fret. Hello,
Jack. That's all right.
—Good day, Myles, J. J. O'Molloy said, letting the pages he held slip limply
back on the file. Is that Canada swindle case on today?
The telephone whirred inside.
—Twentyeight... No, twenty... Double four... Yes.
SPOT THE WINNER
Lenehan came out of the inner office with SPORT'S tissues.
—Who wants a dead cert for the Gold cup? he asked. Sceptre with O. Madden up.
He tossed the tissues on to the table.
Screams of newsboys barefoot in the hall rushed near and the door was flung
open.
—Hush, Lenehan said. I hear feetstoops.
Professor MacHugh strode across the room and seized the cringing urchin by the
collar as the others scampered out of the hall and down the steps. The tissues
rustled up in the draught, floated softly in the air blue scrawls and under the
table came to earth.
—It wasn't me, sir. It was the big fellow shoved me, sir.
—Throw him out and shut the door, the editor said. There's a hurricane blowing.
Lenehan began to paw the tissues up from the floor, grunting as he stooped
twice.
—Waiting for the racing special, sir, the newsboy said. It was Pat Farrell
shoved me, sir.
He pointed to two faces peering in round the doorframe.
—Him, sir.
—Out of this with you, professor MacHugh said gruffly.
He hustled the boy out and banged the door to.
J. J. O'Molloy turned the files crackingly over, murmuring, seeking:
—Continued on page six, column four.
—Yes, Evening Telegraph here, Mr Bloom phoned from the inner office. Is the
boss...? Yes, Telegraph... To where? Aha! Which auction rooms ?... Aha! I see...
Right. I'll catch him.
A COLLISION ENSUES
The bell whirred again as he rang off. He came in quickly and bumped against
Lenehan who was struggling up with the second tissue.
—Pardon, monsieur, Lenehan said, clutching him for an instant and making a
grimace.
—My fault, Mr Bloom said, suffering his grip. Are you hurt? I'm in a hurry.
—Knee, Lenehan said.
He made a comic face and whined, rubbing his knee:
—The accumulation of the anno Domini.
—Sorry, Mr Bloom said.
He went to the door and, holding it ajar, paused. J. J. O'Molloy slapped the
heavy pages over. The noise of two shrill voices, a mouthorgan, echoed in the
bare hallway from the newsboys squatted on the doorsteps:
—We are the boys of Wexford
Who fought with heart and hand.
EXIT BLOOM
—I'm just running round to Bachelor's walk, Mr Bloom said, about this ad of
Keyes's. Want to fix it up. They tell me he's round there in Dillon's.
He looked indecisively for a moment at their faces. The editor who, leaning
against the mantelshelf, had propped his head on his hand, suddenly stretched
forth an arm amply.
—Begone! he said. The world is before you.
—Back in no time, Mr Bloom said, hurrying out.
J. J. O'Molloy took the tissues from Lenehan's hand and read them, blowing them
apart gently, without comment.
—He'll get that advertisement, the professor said, staring through his
blackrimmed spectacles over the crossblind. Look at the young scamps after him.
—Show. Where? Lenehan cried, running to the window.
A STREET CORTEGE
Both smiled over the crossblind at the file of capering newsboys in Mr Bloom's
wake, the last zigzagging white on the breeze a mocking kite, a tail of white
bowknots.
—Look at the young guttersnipe behind him hue and cry, Lenehan said, and you'll
kick. O, my rib risible! Taking off his flat spaugs and the walk. Small nines.
Steal upon larks.
He began to mazurka in swift caricature across the floor on sliding feet past
the fireplace to J. J. O'Molloy who placed the tissues in his receiving hands.
—What's that? Myles Crawford said with a start. Where are the other two gone?
—Who? the professor said, turning. They're gone round to the Oval for a drink.
Paddy Hooper is there with Jack Hall. Came over last night.
—Come on then, Myles Crawford said. Where's my hat?
He walked jerkily into the office behind, parting the vent of his jacket,
jingling his keys in his back pocket. They jingled then in the air and against
the wood as he locked his desk drawer.
—He's pretty well on, professor MacHugh said in a low voice.
—Seems to be, J. J. O'Molloy said, taking out a cigarettecase in murmuring
meditation, but it is not always as it seems. Who has the most matches?
THE CALUMET OF PEACE
He offered a cigarette to the professor and took one himself. Lenehan promptly
struck a match for them and lit their cigarettes in turn. J. J. O'Molloy opened
his case again and offered it.
—Thanky vous, Lenehan said, helping himself.
The editor came from the inner office, a straw hat awry on his brow. He
declaimed in song, pointing sternly at professor MacHugh:
—'Twas rank and fame that tempted thee, 'Twas empire charmed thy heart.
The professor grinned, locking his long lips.
—Eh? You bloody old Roman empire? Myles Crawford said.
He took a cigarette from the open case. Lenehan, lighting it for him with quick
grace, said:
—Silence for my brandnew riddle!
—Imperium romanum, J. J. O'Molloy said gently. It sounds nobler than British or
Brixton. The word reminds one somehow of fat in the fire.
Myles Crawford blew his first puff violently towards the ceiling.
—That's it, he said. We are the fat. You and I are the fat in the fire. We
haven't got the chance of a snowball in hell.
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
—Wait a moment, professor MacHugh said, raising two quiet claws. We mustn't be
led away by words, by sounds of words. We think of Rome, imperial, imperious,
imperative.
He extended elocutionary arms from frayed stained shirtcuffs, pausing:
—What was their civilisation? Vast, I allow: but vile. Cloacae: sewers. The Jews
in the wilderness and on the mountaintop said: It is meet to be here. Let us
build an altar to Jehovah. The Roman, like the Englishman who follows in his
footsteps, brought to every new shore on which he set his foot (on our shore he
never set it) only his cloacal obsession. He gazed about him in his toga and he
said: It is meet to be here. Let us construct a watercloset.
—Which they accordingly did do, Lenehan said. Our old ancient ancestors, as we
read in the first chapter of Guinness's, were partial to the running stream.
—They were nature's gentlemen, J. J. O'Molloy murmured. But we have also Roman
law.
—And Pontius Pilate is its prophet, professor MacHugh responded.
—Do you know that story about chief baron Palles? J. J. O'Molloy asked. It was
at the royal university dinner. Everything was going swimmingly ...
—First my riddle, Lenehan said. Are you ready?
Mr O'Madden Burke, tall in copious grey of Donegal tweed, came in from the
hallway. Stephen Dedalus, behind him, uncovered as he entered.
—Entrez, mes enfants! Lenehan cried.
—I escort a suppliant, Mr O'Madden Burke said melodiously. Youth led by
Experience visits Notoriety.
—How do you do? the editor said, holding out a hand. Come in. Your governor is
just gone.???
Lenehan said to all:
—Silence! What opera resembles a railwayline? Reflect, ponder, excogitate,
reply.
Stephen handed over the typed sheets, pointing to the title and signature.
—Who? the editor asked.
Bit torn off.
—Mr Garrett Deasy, Stephen said.
—That old pelters, the editor said. Who tore it? Was he short taken?
On swift sail flaming
From storm and south
He comes, pale vampire,
Mouth to my mouth.
—Good day, Stephen, the professor said, coming to peer over their shoulders.
Foot and mouth? Are you turned...?
Bullockbefriending bard.
SHINDY IN WELLKNOWN RESTAURANT
—Good day, sir, Stephen answered blushing. The letter is not mine. Mr Garrett
Deasy asked me to...
—O, I know him, Myles Crawford said, and I knew his wife too. The bloodiest old
tartar God ever made. By Jesus, she had the foot and mouth disease and no
mistake! The night she threw the soup in the waiter's face in the Star and
Garter. Oho!
A woman brought sin into the world. For Helen, the runaway wife of Menelaus, ten
years the Greeks. O'Rourke, prince of Breffni.
—Is he a widower? Stephen asked.
—Ay, a grass one, Myles Crawford said, his eye running down the typescript.
Emperor's horses. Habsburg. An Irishman saved his life on the ramparts of
Vienna. Don't you forget! Maximilian Karl O'Donnell, graf von Tirconnell in
Ireland. Sent his heir over to make the king an Austrian fieldmarshal now. Going
to be trouble there one day. Wild geese. O yes, every time. Don't you forget
that!
—The moot point is did he forget it, J. J. O'Molloy said quietly, turning a
horseshoe paperweight. Saving princes is a thank you job.
Professor MacHugh turned on him.
—And if not? he said.
—I'll tell you how it was, Myles Crawford began. A Hungarian it was one day...
LOST CAUSES
NOBLE MARQUESS MENTIONED
—We were always loyal to lost causes, the professor said. Success for us is the
death of the intellect and of the imagination. We were never loyal to the
successful. We serve them. I teach the blatant Latin language. I speak the
tongue of a race the acme of whose mentality is the maxim: time is money.
Material domination. Dominus! Lord! Where is the spirituality? Lord Jesus? Lord
Salisbury? A sofa in a westend club. But the Greek!
KYRIE ELEISON!
A smile of light brightened his darkrimmed eyes, lengthened his long lips.
—The Greek! he said again. Kyrios! Shining word! The vowels the Semite and the
Saxon know not. Kyrie! The radiance of the intellect. I ought to profess Greek,
the language of the mind. Kyrie eleison! The closetmaker and the cloacamaker
will never be lords of our spirit. We are liege subjects of the catholic
chivalry of Europe that foundered at Trafalgar and of the empire of the spirit,
not an imperium, that went under with the Athenian fleets at Aegospotami. Yes,
yes. They went under. Pyrrhus, misled by an oracle, made a last attempt to
retrieve the fortunes of Greece. Loyal to a lost cause.
He strode away from them towards the window.
—They went forth to battle, Mr O'Madden Burke said greyly, but they always fell.

—Boohoo! Lenehan wept with a little noise. Owing to a brick received in the
latter half of the matinée. Poor, poor, poor Pyrrhus!
He whispered then near Stephen's ear:
LENEHAN'S LIMERICK
There's a ponderous pundit MacHugh
Who wears goggles of ebony hue.
As he mostly sees double
To wear them why trouble?
I can't see the Joe Miller. Can you?
In mourning for Sallust, Mulligan says. Whose mother is beastly dead.
Myles Crawford crammed the sheets into a sidepocket.
—That'll be all right, he said. I'll read the rest after. That'll be all right.
Lenehan extended his hands in protest.
—But my riddle! he said. What opera is like a railwayline?
—Opera? Mr O'Madden Burke's sphinx face reriddled.
Lenehan announced gladly:
—The Rose of Castile. See the wheeze? Rows of cast steel. Gee!
He poked Mr O'Madden Burke mildly in the spleen. Mr O'Madden Burke fell back
with grace on his umbrella, feigning a gasp.
—Help! he sighed. I feel a strong weakness.
Lenehan, rising to tiptoe, fanned his face rapidly with the rustling tissues.
The professor, returning by way of the files, swept his hand across Stephen's
and Mr O'Madden Burke's loose ties.
—Paris, past and present, he said. You look like communards.
—Like fellows who had blown up the Bastile, J. J. O'Molloy said in quiet
mockery. Or was it you shot the lord lieutenant of Finland between you? You look
as though you had done the deed. General Bobrikoff.
OMNIUM GATHERUM
—We were only thinking about it, Stephen said.
—All the talents, Myles Crawford said. Law, the classics...
—The turf, Lenehan put in.
—Literature, the press.
—If Bloom were here, the professor said. The gentle art of advertisement.
—And Madam Bloom, Mr O'Madden Burke added. The vocal muse. Dublin's prime
favourite.
Lenehan gave a loud cough.
—Ahem! he said very softly. O, for a fresh of breath air! I caught a cold in the
park. The gate was open.
YOU CAN DO IT!
The editor laid a nervous hand on Stephen's shoulder.
—I want you to write something for me, he said. Something with a bite in it. You
can do it. I see it in your face. In the lexicon of youth ...
See it in your face. See it in your eye. Lazy idle little schemer.
—Foot and mouth disease! the editor cried in scornful invective. Great
nationalist meeting in Borris-in-Ossory. All balls! Bulldosing the public! Give
them something with a bite in it. Put us all into it, damn its soul. Father, Son
and Holy Ghost and Jakes M'Carthy.
—We can all supply mental pabulum, Mr O'Madden Burke said.
Stephen raised his eyes to the bold unheeding stare.
—He wants you for the pressgang, J. J. O'Molloy said.
THE GREAT GALLAHER
—You can do it, Myles Crawford repeated, clenching his hand in emphasis. Wait a
minute. We'll paralyse Europe as Ignatius Gallaher used to say when he was on
the shaughraun, doing billiardmarking in the Clarence. Gallaher, that was a
pressman for you. That was a pen. You know how he made his mark? I'll tell you.
That was the smartest piece of journalism ever known. That was in eightyone,
sixth of May, time of the invincibles, murder in the Phoenix park, before you
were born, I suppose. I'll show you.
He pushed past them to the files.
—Look at here, he said turning. The New York World cabled for a special.
Remember that time?
Professor MacHugh nodded.
—New York World, the editor said, excitedly pushing back his straw hat. Where it
took place. Tim Kelly, or Kavanagh I mean. Joe Brady and the rest of them. Where
Skin-the-Goat drove the car. Whole route, see?
—Skin-the-Goat, Mr O'Madden Burke said. Fitzharris. He has that cabman's
shelter, they say, down there at Butt bridge. Holohan told me. You know Holohan?

—Hop and carry one, is it? Myles Crawford said.
—And poor Gumley is down there too, so he told me, minding stones for the
corporation. A night watchman.
Stephen turned in surprise.
—Gumley? he said. You don't say so? A friend of my father's, is it?
—Never mind Gumley, Myles Crawford cried angrily. Let Gumley mind the stones,
see they don't run away. Look at here. What did Ignatius Gallaher do? I'll tell
you. Inspiration of genius. Cabled right away. Have you Weekly Freeman of 17
March? Right. Have you got that?
He flung back pages of the files and stuck his finger on a point.
—Take page four, advertisement for Bransome's coffee, let us say. Have you got
that? Right.
The telephone whirred.
A DISTANT VOICE
—I'll answer it, the professor said, going.
—B is parkgate. Good.
His finger leaped and struck point after point, vibrating.
—T is viceregal lodge. C is where murder took place. K is Knockmaroon gate.
The loose flesh of his neck shook like a cock's wattles. An illstarched dicky
jutted up and with a rude gesture he thrust it back into his waistcoat.
—Hello? Evening Telegraph here... Hello?... Who's there?... Yes... Yes... Yes.
—F to P is the route Skin-the-Goat drove the car for an alibi, Inchicore,
Roundtown, Windy Arbour, Palmerston Park, Ranelagh. F.A.B.P. Got that? X is
Davy's publichouse in upper Leeson street.
The professor came to the inner door.
—Bloom is at the telephone, he said.
—Tell him go to hell, the editor said promptly. X is Davy's publichouse, see?
CLEVER, VERY
—Clever, Lenehan said. Very.
—Gave it to them on a hot plate, Myles Crawford said, the whole bloody history.
Nightmare from which you will never awake.
—I saw it, the editor said proudly. I was present. Dick Adams, the besthearted
bloody Corkman the Lord ever put the breath of life in, and myself.
Lenehan bowed to a shape of air, announcing:
—Madam, I'm Adam. And Able was I ere I saw Elba.
—History! Myles Crawford cried. The Old Woman of Prince's street was there
first. There was weeping and gnashing of teeth over that. Out of an
advertisement. Gregor Grey made the design for it. That gave him the leg up.
Then Paddy Hooper worked Tay Pay who took him on to the Star. Now he's got in
with Blumenfeld. That's press. That's talent. Pyatt! He was all their daddies!
—The father of scare journalism, Lenehan confirmed, and the brother-in-law of
Chris Callinan.
—Hello?... Are you there?... Yes, he's here still. Come across yourself.
—Where do you find a pressman like that now, eh? the editor cried. He flung the
pages down.
—Clamn dever, Lenehan said to Mr O'Madden Burke.
—Very smart, Mr O'Madden Burke said.
Professor MacHugh came from the inner office.
—Talking about the invincibles, he said, did you see that some hawkers were up
before the recorder?
—O yes, J. J. O'Molloy said eagerly. Lady Dudley was walking home through the
park to see all the trees that were blown down by that cyclone last year and
thought she'd buy a view of Dublin. And it turned out to be a commemoration
postcard of Joe Brady or Number One or Skin-the-Goat. Right outside the
viceregal lodge, imagine!
—They're only in the hook and eye department, Myles Crawford said. Psha! Press
and the bar! Where have you a man now at the bar like those fellows, like
Whiteside, like Isaac Butt, like silvertongued O'Hagan. Eh? Ah, bloody nonsense.
Psha! Only in the halfpenny place.
His mouth continued to twitch unspeaking in nervous curls of disdain.
Would anyone wish that mouth for her kiss? How do you know? Why did you write it
then?
RHYMES AND REASONS
Mouth, south. Is the mouth south someway? Or the south a mouth? Must be some.
South, pout, out, shout, drouth. Rhymes: two men dressed the same, looking the
same, two by two.
........................ la tua pace
.................. che parlar ti piace
.... mentreché il vento, come fa, si tace.
He saw them three by three, approaching girls, in green, in rose, in russet,
entwining, per l'aer perso, in mauve, in purple, quella pacifica oriafiamma,
gold of oriflamme, di rimirar fe piu ardenti. But I old men, penitent,
leadenfooted, underdarkneath the night: mouth south: tomb womb.
—Speak up for yourself, Mr O'Madden Burke said.
SUFFICIENT FOR THE DAY...
J. J. O'Molloy, smiling palely, took up the gage.
—My dear Myles, he said, flinging his cigarette aside, you put a false
construction on my words. I hold no brief, as at present advised, for the third
profession qua profession but your Cork legs are running away with you. Why not
bring in Henry Grattan and Flood and Demosthenes and Edmund Burke? Ignatius
Gallaher we all know and his Chapelizod boss, Harmsworth of the farthing press,
and his American cousin of the Bowery guttersheet not to mention Paddy Kelly's
Budget, Pue's Occurrences and our watchful friend The Skibbereen Eagle. Why
bring in a master of forensic eloquence like Whiteside? Sufficient for the day
is the newspaper thereof. LINKS WITH BYGONE DAYS OF YORE
—Grattan and Flood wrote for this very paper, the editor cried in his face.
Irish volunteers. Where are you now? Established 1763. Dr Lucas. Who have you
now like John Philpot Curran? Psha!
—Well, J. J. O'Molloy said, Bushe K.C., for example.
—Bushe? the editor said. Well, yes: Bushe, yes. He has a strain of it in his
blood. Kendal Bushe or I mean Seymour Bushe.
—He would have been on the bench long ago, the professor said, only for ... But
no matter.
J. J. O'Molloy turned to Stephen and said quietly and slowly:
—One of the most polished periods I think I ever listened to in my life fell
from the lips of Seymour Bushe. It was in that case of fratricide, the Childs
murder case. Bushe defended him. And in the porches of mine ear did pour.
By the way how did he find that out? He died in his sleep. Or the other story,
beast with two backs?
—What was that? the professor asked.
ITALIA, MAGISTRA ARTIUM
—He spoke on the law of evidence, J. J. O'Molloy said, of Roman justice as
contrasted with the earlier Mosaic code, the lex talionis. And he cited the
Moses of Michelangelo in the vatican.
—Ha.
—A few wellchosen words, Lenehan prefaced. Silence!
Pause. J. J. O'Molloy took out his cigarettecase.
False lull. Something quite ordinary.
Messenger took out his matchbox thoughtfully and lit his cigar.
I have often thought since on looking back over that strange time that it was
that small act, trivial in itself, that striking of that match, that determined
the whole aftercourse of both our lives. A POLISHED PERIOD
J. J. O'Molloy resumed, moulding his words:
—He said of it: that stony effigy in frozen music, horned and terrible, of the
human form divine, that eternal symbol of wisdom and of prophecy which, if aught
that the imagination or the hand of sculptor has wrought in marble of
soultransfigured and of soultransfiguring deserves to live, deserves to live.
His slim hand with a wave graced echo and fall.
—Fine! Myles Crawford said at once.
—The divine afflatus, Mr O'Madden Burke said.
—You like it? J. J. O'Molloy asked Stephen.
Stephen, his blood wooed by grace of language and gesture, blushed. He took a
cigarette from the case. J. J. O'Molloy offered his case to Myles Crawford.
Lenehan lit their cigarettes as before and took his trophy, saying:
—Muchibus thankibus.
A MAN OF HIGH MORALE
—Professor Magennis was speaking to me about you, J. J. O'Molloy said to
Stephen. What do you think really of that hermetic crowd, the opal hush poets:
A. E. the mastermystic? That Blavatsky woman started it. She was a nice old bag
of tricks. A. E. has been telling some yankee interviewer that you came to him
in the small hours of the morning to ask him about planes of consciousness.
Magennis thinks you must have been pulling A. E.'s leg. He is a man of the very
highest morale, Magennis.
Speaking about me. What did he say? What did he say? What did he say about me?
Don't ask.
—No, thanks, professor MacHugh said, waving the cigarettecase aside. Wait a
moment. Let me say one thing. The finest display of oratory I ever heard was a
speech made by John F Taylor at the college historical society. Mr Justice
Fitzgibbon, the present lord justice of appeal, had spoken and the paper under
debate was an essay (new for those days), advocating the revival of the Irish
tongue.
He turned towards Myles Crawford and said:
—You know Gerald Fitzgibbon. Then you can imagine the style of his discourse.
—He is sitting with Tim Healy, J. J. O'Molloy said, rumour has it, on the
Trinity college estates commission.
—He is sitting with a sweet thing, Myles Crawford said, in a child's frock. Go
on. Well?
—It was the speech, mark you, the professor said, of a finished orator, full of
courteous haughtiness and pouring in chastened diction I will not say the vials
of his wrath but pouring the proud man's contumely upon the new movement. It was
then a new movement. We were weak, therefore worthless.
He closed his long thin lips an instant but, eager to be on, raised an
outspanned hand to his spectacles and, with trembling thumb and ringfinger
touching lightly the black rims, steadied them to a new focus.
IMPROMPTU
In ferial tone he addressed J. J. O'Molloy:
—Taylor had come there, you must know, from a sickbed. That he had prepared his
speech I do not believe for there was not even one shorthandwriter in the hall.
His dark lean face had a growth of shaggy beard round it. He wore a loose white
silk neckcloth and altogether he looked (though he was not) a dying man.
His gaze turned at once but slowly from J. J. O'Molloy's towards Stephen's face
and then bent at once to the ground, seeking. His unglazed linen collar appeared
behind his bent head, soiled by his withering hair. Still seeking, he said:
—When Fitzgibbon's speech had ended John F Taylor rose to reply. Briefly, as
well as I can bring them to mind, his words were these.
He raised his head firmly. His eyes bethought themselves once more. Witless
shellfish swam in the gross lenses to and fro, seeking outlet.
He began:
—Mr Chairman, ladies and gentlemen: Great was my admiration in listening to the
remarks addressed to the youth of Ireland a moment since by my learned friend.
It seemed to me that I had been transported into a country far away from t