Public Domain Tales: Ulysses: Book Two

Public Domain Tales: Ulysses: Book Two is the one-hundred-and-sixteenth book in the Public Domain Tales series.
— II —
[ 4 ]
Mr Leopold Bloom ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls.
He liked thick giblet soup, nutty gizzards, a stuffed roast heart,
liverslices fried with crustcrumbs, fried hencods’ roes. Most of all he
liked grilled mutton kidneys which gave to his palate a fine tang of
faintly scented urine.
Kidneys were in his mind as he moved about the kitchen softly, righting
her breakfast things on the humpy tray. Gelid light and air were in the
kitchen but out of doors gentle summer morning everywhere. Made him
feel a bit peckish.
The coals were reddening.
Another slice of bread and butter: three, four: right. She didn’t like
her plate full. Right. He turned from the tray, lifted the kettle off
the hob and set it sideways on the fire. It sat there, dull and squat,
its spout stuck out. Cup of tea soon. Good. Mouth dry. The cat walked
stiffly round a leg of the table with tail on high.
—Mkgnao!
—O, there you are, Mr Bloom said, turning from the fire.
The cat mewed in answer and stalked again stiffly round a leg of the
table, mewing. Just how she stalks over my writingtable. Prr. Scratch
my head. Prr.
Mr Bloom watched curiously, kindly the lithe black form. Clean to see:
the gloss of her sleek hide, the white button under the butt of her
tail, the green flashing eyes. He bent down to her, his hands on his
knees.
—Milk for the pussens, he said.
—Mrkgnao! the cat cried.
They call them stupid. They understand what we say better than we
understand them. She understands all she wants to. Vindictive too.
Cruel. Her nature. Curious mice never squeal. Seem to like it. Wonder
what I look like to her. Height of a tower? No, she can jump me.
—Afraid of the chickens she is, he said mockingly. Afraid of the
chookchooks. I never saw such a stupid pussens as the pussens.
—Mrkrgnao! the cat said loudly.
She blinked up out of her avid shameclosing eyes, mewing plaintively
and long, showing him her milkwhite teeth. He watched the dark eyeslits
narrowing with greed till her eyes were green stones. Then he went to
the dresser, took the jug Hanlon’s milkman had just filled for him,
poured warmbubbled milk on a saucer and set it slowly on the floor.
—Gurrhr! she cried, running to lap.
He watched the bristles shining wirily in the weak light as she tipped
three times and licked lightly. Wonder is it true if you clip them they
can’t mouse after. Why? They shine in the dark, perhaps, the tips. Or
kind of feelers in the dark, perhaps.
He listened to her licking lap. Ham and eggs, no. No good eggs with
this drouth. Want pure fresh water. Thursday: not a good day either for
a mutton kidney at Buckley’s. Fried with butter, a shake of pepper.
Better a pork kidney at Dlugacz’s. While the kettle is boiling. She
lapped slower, then licking the saucer clean. Why are their tongues so
rough? To lap better, all porous holes. Nothing she can eat? He glanced
round him. No.
On quietly creaky boots he went up the staircase to the hall, paused by
the bedroom door. She might like something tasty. Thin bread and butter
she likes in the morning. Still perhaps: once in a way.
He said softly in the bare hall:
—I’m going round the corner. Be back in a minute.
And when he had heard his voice say it he added:
—You don’t want anything for breakfast?
A sleepy soft grunt answered:
—Mn.
No. She didn’t want anything. He heard then a warm heavy sigh, softer,
as she turned over and the loose brass quoits of the bedstead jingled.
Must get those settled really. Pity. All the way from Gibraltar.
Forgotten any little Spanish she knew. Wonder what her father gave for
it. Old style. Ah yes! of course. Bought it at the governor’s auction.
Got a short knock. Hard as nails at a bargain, old Tweedy. Yes, sir. At
Plevna that was. I rose from the ranks, sir, and I’m proud of it. Still
he had brains enough to make that corner in stamps. Now that was
farseeing.
His hand took his hat from the peg over his initialled heavy overcoat
and his lost property office secondhand waterproof. Stamps: stickyback
pictures. Daresay lots of officers are in the swim too. Course they do.
The sweated legend in the crown of his hat told him mutely: Plasto’s
high grade ha. He peeped quickly inside the leather headband. White
slip of paper. Quite safe.
On the doorstep he felt in his hip pocket for the latchkey. Not there.
In the trousers I left off. Must get it. Potato I have. Creaky
wardrobe. No use disturbing her. She turned over sleepily that time. He
pulled the halldoor to after him very quietly, more, till the footleaf
dropped gently over the threshold, a limp lid. Looked shut. All right
till I come back anyhow.
He crossed to the bright side, avoiding the loose cellarflap of number
seventyfive. The sun was nearing the steeple of George’s church. Be a
warm day I fancy. Specially in these black clothes feel it more. Black
conducts, reflects, (refracts is it?), the heat. But I couldn’t go in
that light suit. Make a picnic of it. His eyelids sank quietly often as
he walked in happy warmth. Boland’s breadvan delivering with trays our
daily but she prefers yesterday’s loaves turnovers crisp crowns hot.
Makes you feel young. Somewhere in the east: early morning: set off at
dawn. Travel round in front of the sun, steal a day’s march on him.
Keep it up for ever never grow a day older technically. Walk along a
strand, strange land, come to a city gate, sentry there, old ranker
too, old Tweedy’s big moustaches, leaning on a long kind of a spear.
Wander through awned streets. Turbaned faces going by. Dark caves of
carpet shops, big man, Turko the terrible, seated crosslegged, smoking
a coiled pipe. Cries of sellers in the streets. Drink water scented
with fennel, sherbet. Dander along all day. Might meet a robber or two.
Well, meet him. Getting on to sundown. The shadows of the mosques among
the pillars: priest with a scroll rolled up. A shiver of the trees,
signal, the evening wind. I pass on. Fading gold sky. A mother watches
me from her doorway. She calls her children home in their dark
language. High wall: beyond strings twanged. Night sky, moon, violet,
colour of Molly’s new garters. Strings. Listen. A girl playing one of
those instruments what do you call them: dulcimers. I pass.
Probably not a bit like it really. Kind of stuff you read: in the track
of the sun. Sunburst on the titlepage. He smiled, pleasing himself.
What Arthur Griffith said about the headpiece over the _Freeman_
leader: a homerule sun rising up in the northwest from the laneway
behind the bank of Ireland. He prolonged his pleased smile. Ikey touch
that: homerule sun rising up in the northwest.
He approached Larry O’Rourke’s. From the cellar grating floated up the
flabby gush of porter. Through the open doorway the bar squirted out
whiffs of ginger, teadust, biscuitmush. Good house, however: just the
end of the city traffic. For instance M’Auley’s down there: n. g. as
position. Of course if they ran a tramline along the North Circular
from the cattlemarket to the quays value would go up like a shot.
Baldhead over the blind. Cute old codger. No use canvassing him for an
ad. Still he knows his own business best. There he is, sure enough, my
bold Larry, leaning against the sugarbin in his shirtsleeves watching
the aproned curate swab up with mop and bucket. Simon Dedalus takes him
off to a tee with his eyes screwed up. Do you know what I’m going to
tell you? What’s that, Mr O’Rourke? Do you know what? The Russians,
they’d only be an eight o’clock breakfast for the Japanese.
Stop and say a word: about the funeral perhaps. Sad thing about poor
Dignam, Mr O’Rourke.
Turning into Dorset street he said freshly in greeting through the
doorway:
—Good day, Mr O’Rourke.
—Good day to you.
—Lovely weather, sir.
—’Tis all that.
Where do they get the money? Coming up redheaded curates from the
county Leitrim, rinsing empties and old man in the cellar. Then, lo and
behold, they blossom out as Adam Findlaters or Dan Tallons. Then think
of the competition. General thirst. Good puzzle would be cross Dublin
without passing a pub. Save it they can’t. Off the drunks perhaps. Put
down three and carry five. What is that, a bob here and there, dribs
and drabs. On the wholesale orders perhaps. Doing a double shuffle with
the town travellers. Square it you with the boss and we’ll split the
job, see?
How much would that tot to off the porter in the month? Say ten barrels
of stuff. Say he got ten per cent off. O more. Fifteen. He passed Saint
Joseph’s National school. Brats’ clamour. Windows open. Fresh air helps
memory. Or a lilt. Ahbeesee defeegee kelomen opeecue rustyouvee
doubleyou. Boys are they? Yes. Inishturk. Inishark. Inishboffin. At
their joggerfry. Mine. Slieve Bloom.
He halted before Dlugacz’s window, staring at the hanks of sausages,
polonies, black and white. Fifteen multiplied by. The figures whitened
in his mind, unsolved: displeased, he let them fade. The shiny links,
packed with forcemeat, fed his gaze and he breathed in tranquilly the
lukewarm breath of cooked spicy pigs’ blood.
A kidney oozed bloodgouts on the willowpatterned dish: the last. He
stood by the nextdoor girl at the counter. Would she buy it too,
calling the items from a slip in her hand? Chapped: washingsoda. And a
pound and a half of Denny’s sausages. His eyes rested on her vigorous
hips. Woods his name is. Wonder what he does. Wife is oldish. New
blood. No followers allowed. Strong pair of arms. Whacking a carpet on
the clothesline. She does whack it, by George. The way her crooked
skirt swings at each whack.
The ferreteyed porkbutcher folded the sausages he had snipped off with
blotchy fingers, sausagepink. Sound meat there: like a stallfed heifer.
He took a page up from the pile of cut sheets: the model farm at
Kinnereth on the lakeshore of Tiberias. Can become ideal winter
sanatorium. Moses Montefiore. I thought he was. Farmhouse, wall round
it, blurred cattle cropping. He held the page from him: interesting:
read it nearer, the title, the blurred cropping cattle, the page
rustling. A young white heifer. Those mornings in the cattlemarket, the
beasts lowing in their pens, branded sheep, flop and fall of dung, the
breeders in hobnailed boots trudging through the litter, slapping a
palm on a ripemeated hindquarter, there’s a prime one, unpeeled
switches in their hands. He held the page aslant patiently, bending his
senses and his will, his soft subject gaze at rest. The crooked skirt
swinging, whack by whack by whack.
The porkbutcher snapped two sheets from the pile, wrapped up her prime
sausages and made a red grimace.
—Now, my miss, he said.
She tendered a coin, smiling boldly, holding her thick wrist out.
—Thank you, my miss. And one shilling threepence change. For you,
please?
Mr Bloom pointed quickly. To catch up and walk behind her if she went
slowly, behind her moving hams. Pleasant to see first thing in the
morning. Hurry up, damn it. Make hay while the sun shines. She stood
outside the shop in sunlight and sauntered lazily to the right. He
sighed down his nose: they never understand. Sodachapped hands. Crusted
toenails too. Brown scapulars in tatters, defending her both ways. The
sting of disregard glowed to weak pleasure within his breast. For
another: a constable off duty cuddling her in Eccles’ Lane. They like
them sizeable. Prime sausage. O please, Mr Policeman, I’m lost in the
wood.
—Threepence, please.
His hand accepted the moist tender gland and slid it into a sidepocket.
Then it fetched up three coins from his trousers’ pocket and laid them
on the rubber prickles. They lay, were read quickly and quickly slid,
disc by disc, into the till.
—Thank you, sir. Another time.
A speck of eager fire from foxeyes thanked him. He withdrew his gaze
after an instant. No: better not: another time.
—Good morning, he said, moving away.
—Good morning, sir.
No sign. Gone. What matter?
He walked back along Dorset street, reading gravely. Agendath Netaim:
planters’ company. To purchase waste sandy tracts from Turkish
government and plant with eucalyptus trees. Excellent for shade, fuel
and construction. Orangegroves and immense melonfields north of Jaffa.
You pay eighty marks and they plant a dunam of land for you with
olives, oranges, almonds or citrons. Olives cheaper: oranges need
artificial irrigation. Every year you get a sending of the crop. Your
name entered for life as owner in the book of the union. Can pay ten
down and the balance in yearly instalments. Bleibtreustrasse 34,
Berlin, W. 15.
Nothing doing. Still an idea behind it.
He looked at the cattle, blurred in silver heat. Silverpowdered
olivetrees. Quiet long days: pruning, ripening. Olives are packed in
jars, eh? I have a few left from Andrews. Molly spitting them out.
Knows the taste of them now. Oranges in tissue paper packed in crates.
Citrons too. Wonder is poor Citron still in Saint Kevin’s parade. And
Mastiansky with the old cither. Pleasant evenings we had then. Molly in
Citron’s basketchair. Nice to hold, cool waxen fruit, hold in the hand,
lift it to the nostrils and smell the perfume. Like that, heavy, sweet,
wild perfume. Always the same, year after year. They fetched high
prices too, Moisel told me. Arbutus place: Pleasants street: pleasant
old times. Must be without a flaw, he said. Coming all that way: Spain,
Gibraltar, Mediterranean, the Levant. Crates lined up on the quayside
at Jaffa, chap ticking them off in a book, navvies handling them
barefoot in soiled dungarees. There’s whatdoyoucallhim out of. How do
you? Doesn’t see. Chap you know just to salute bit of a bore. His back
is like that Norwegian captain’s. Wonder if I’ll meet him today.
Watering cart. To provoke the rain. On earth as it is in heaven.
A cloud began to cover the sun slowly, wholly. Grey. Far.
No, not like that. A barren land, bare waste. Vulcanic lake, the dead
sea: no fish, weedless, sunk deep in the earth. No wind could lift
those waves, grey metal, poisonous foggy waters. Brimstone they called
it raining down: the cities of the plain: Sodom, Gomorrah, Edom. All
dead names. A dead sea in a dead land, grey and old. Old now. It bore
the oldest, the first race. A bent hag crossed from Cassidy’s,
clutching a naggin bottle by the neck. The oldest people. Wandered far
away over all the earth, captivity to captivity, multiplying, dying,
being born everywhere. It lay there now. Now it could bear no more.
Dead: an old woman’s: the grey sunken cunt of the world.
Desolation.
Grey horror seared his flesh. Folding the page into his pocket he
turned into Eccles street, hurrying homeward. Cold oils slid along his
veins, chilling his blood: age crusting him with a salt cloak. Well, I
am here now. Yes, I am here now. Morning mouth bad images. Got up wrong
side of the bed. Must begin again those Sandow’s exercises. On the
hands down. Blotchy brown brick houses. Number eighty still unlet. Why
is that? Valuation is only twentyeight. Towers, Battersby, North,
MacArthur: parlour windows plastered with bills. Plasters on a sore
eye. To smell the gentle smoke of tea, fume of the pan, sizzling
butter. Be near her ample bedwarmed flesh. Yes, yes.
Quick warm sunlight came running from Berkeley road, swiftly, in slim
sandals, along the brightening footpath. Runs, she runs to meet me, a
girl with gold hair on the wind.
Two letters and a card lay on the hallfloor. He stooped and gathered
them. Mrs Marion Bloom. His quickened heart slowed at once. Bold hand.
Mrs Marion.
—Poldy!
Entering the bedroom he halfclosed his eyes and walked through warm
yellow twilight towards her tousled head.
—Who are the letters for?
He looked at them. Mullingar. Milly.
—A letter for me from Milly, he said carefully, and a card to you. And
a letter for you.
He laid her card and letter on the twill bedspread near the curve of
her knees.
—Do you want the blind up?
Letting the blind up by gentle tugs halfway his backward eye saw her
glance at the letter and tuck it under her pillow.
—That do? he asked, turning.
She was reading the card, propped on her elbow.
—She got the things, she said.
He waited till she had laid the card aside and curled herself back
slowly with a snug sigh.
—Hurry up with that tea, she said. I’m parched.
—The kettle is boiling, he said.
But he delayed to clear the chair: her striped petticoat, tossed soiled
linen: and lifted all in an armful on to the foot of the bed.
As he went down the kitchen stairs she called:
—Poldy!
—What?
—Scald the teapot.
On the boil sure enough: a plume of steam from the spout. He scalded
and rinsed out the teapot and put in four full spoons of tea, tilting
the kettle then to let the water flow in. Having set it to draw he took
off the kettle, crushed the pan flat on the live coals and watched the
lump of butter slide and melt. While he unwrapped the kidney the cat
mewed hungrily against him. Give her too much meat she won’t mouse. Say
they won’t eat pork. Kosher. Here. He let the bloodsmeared paper fall
to her and dropped the kidney amid the sizzling butter sauce. Pepper.
He sprinkled it through his fingers ringwise from the chipped eggcup.
Then he slit open his letter, glancing down the page and over. Thanks:
new tam: Mr Coghlan: lough Owel picnic: young student: Blazes Boylan’s
seaside girls.
The tea was drawn. He filled his own moustachecup, sham crown Derby,
smiling. Silly Milly’s birthday gift. Only five she was then. No, wait:
four. I gave her the amberoid necklace she broke. Putting pieces of
folded brown paper in the letterbox for her. He smiled, pouring.
 O, Milly Bloom, you are my darling.
 You are my lookingglass from night to morning.
 I’d rather have you without a farthing
 Than Katey Keogh with her ass and garden.
Poor old professor Goodwin. Dreadful old case. Still he was a courteous
old chap. Oldfashioned way he used to bow Molly off the platform. And
the little mirror in his silk hat. The night Milly brought it into the
parlour. O, look what I found in professor Goodwin’s hat! All we
laughed. Sex breaking out even then. Pert little piece she was.
He prodded a fork into the kidney and slapped it over: then fitted the
teapot on the tray. Its hump bumped as he took it up. Everything on it?
Bread and butter, four, sugar, spoon, her cream. Yes. He carried it
upstairs, his thumb hooked in the teapot handle.
Nudging the door open with his knee he carried the tray in and set it
on the chair by the bedhead.
—What a time you were! she said.
She set the brasses jingling as she raised herself briskly, an elbow on
the pillow. He looked calmly down on her bulk and between her large
soft bubs, sloping within her nightdress like a shegoat’s udder. The
warmth of her couched body rose on the air, mingling with the fragrance
of the tea she poured.
A strip of torn envelope peeped from under the dimpled pillow. In the
act of going he stayed to straighten the bedspread.
—Who was the letter from? he asked.
Bold hand. Marion.
—O, Boylan, she said. He’s bringing the programme.
—What are you singing?
—_Là ci darem_ with J. C. Doyle, she said, and _Love’s Old Sweet Song_.
Her full lips, drinking, smiled. Rather stale smell that incense leaves
next day. Like foul flowerwater.
—Would you like the window open a little?
She doubled a slice of bread into her mouth, asking:
—What time is the funeral?
—Eleven, I think, he answered. I didn’t see the paper.
Following the pointing of her finger he took up a leg of her soiled
drawers from the bed. No? Then, a twisted grey garter looped round a
stocking: rumpled, shiny sole.
—No: that book.
Other stocking. Her petticoat.
—It must have fell down, she said.
He felt here and there. _Voglio e non vorrei_. Wonder if she pronounces
that right: _voglio_. Not in the bed. Must have slid down. He stooped
and lifted the valance. The book, fallen, sprawled against the bulge of
the orangekeyed chamberpot.
—Show here, she said. I put a mark in it. There’s a word I wanted to
ask you.
She swallowed a draught of tea from her cup held by nothandle and,
having wiped her fingertips smartly on the blanket, began to search the
text with the hairpin till she reached the word.
—Met him what? he asked.
—Here, she said. What does that mean?
He leaned downward and read near her polished thumbnail.
—Metempsychosis?
—Yes. Who’s he when he’s at home?
—Metempsychosis, he said, frowning. It’s Greek: from the Greek. That
means the transmigration of souls.
—O, rocks! she said. Tell us in plain words.
He smiled, glancing askance at her mocking eyes. The same young eyes.
The first night after the charades. Dolphin’s Barn. He turned over the
smudged pages. _Ruby: the Pride of the Ring_. Hello. Illustration.
Fierce Italian with carriagewhip. Must be Ruby pride of the on the
floor naked. Sheet kindly lent. _The monster Maffei desisted and flung
his victim from him with an oath_. Cruelty behind it all. Doped
animals. Trapeze at Hengler’s. Had to look the other way. Mob gaping.
Break your neck and we’ll break our sides. Families of them. Bone them
young so they metamspychosis. That we live after death. Our souls. That
a man’s soul after he dies. Dignam’s soul...
—Did you finish it? he asked.
—Yes, she said. There’s nothing smutty in it. Is she in love with the
first fellow all the time?
—Never read it. Do you want another?
—Yes. Get another of Paul de Kock’s. Nice name he has.
She poured more tea into her cup, watching it flow sideways.
Must get that Capel street library book renewed or they’ll write to
Kearney, my guarantor. Reincarnation: that’s the word.
—Some people believe, he said, that we go on living in another body
after death, that we lived before. They call it reincarnation. That we
all lived before on the earth thousands of years ago or some other
planet. They say we have forgotten it. Some say they remember their
past lives.
The sluggish cream wound curdling spirals through her tea. Better
remind her of the word: metempsychosis. An example would be better. An
example?
The _Bath of the Nymph_ over the bed. Given away with the Easter number
of _Photo Bits_: Splendid masterpiece in art colours. Tea before you
put milk in. Not unlike her with her hair down: slimmer. Three and six
I gave for the frame. She said it would look nice over the bed. Naked
nymphs: Greece: and for instance all the people that lived then.
He turned the pages back.
—Metempsychosis, he said, is what the ancient Greeks called it. They
used to believe you could be changed into an animal or a tree, for
instance. What they called nymphs, for example.
Her spoon ceased to stir up the sugar. She gazed straight before her,
inhaling through her arched nostrils.
—There’s a smell of burn, she said. Did you leave anything on the fire?
—The kidney! he cried suddenly.
He fitted the book roughly into his inner pocket and, stubbing his toes
against the broken commode, hurried out towards the smell, stepping
hastily down the stairs with a flurried stork’s legs. Pungent smoke
shot up in an angry jet from a side of the pan. By prodding a prong of
the fork under the kidney he detached it and turned it turtle on its
back. Only a little burnt. He tossed it off the pan on to a plate and
let the scanty brown gravy trickle over it.
Cup of tea now. He sat down, cut and buttered a slice of the loaf. He
shore away the burnt flesh and flung it to the cat. Then he put a
forkful into his mouth, chewing with discernment the toothsome pliant
meat. Done to a turn. A mouthful of tea. Then he cut away dies of
bread, sopped one in the gravy and put it in his mouth. What was that
about some young student and a picnic? He creased out the letter at his
side, reading it slowly as he chewed, sopping another die of bread in
the gravy and raising it to his mouth.
Dearest Papli
Thanks ever so much for the lovely birthday present. It suits me
splendid. Everyone says I am quite the belle in my new tam. I got
mummy’s lovely box of creams and am writing. They are lovely. I am
getting on swimming in the photo business now. Mr Coghlan took one of
me and Mrs. Will send when developed. We did great biz yesterday. Fair
day and all the beef to the heels were in. We are going to lough Owel
on Monday with a few friends to make a scrap picnic. Give my love to
mummy and to yourself a big kiss and thanks. I hear them at the piano
downstairs. There is to be a concert in the Greville Arms on Saturday.
There is a young student comes here some evenings named Bannon his
cousins or something are big swells and he sings Boylan’s (I was on the
pop of writing Blazes Boylan’s) song about those seaside girls. Tell
him silly Milly sends my best respects. I must now close with fondest
love
 Your fond daughter
 Milly
P. S. Excuse bad writing am in hurry. Byby.
 M.
Fifteen yesterday. Curious, fifteenth of the month too. Her first
birthday away from home. Separation. Remember the summer morning she
was born, running to knock up Mrs Thornton in Denzille street. Jolly
old woman. Lot of babies she must have helped into the world. She knew
from the first poor little Rudy wouldn’t live. Well, God is good, sir.
She knew at once. He would be eleven now if he had lived.
His vacant face stared pityingly at the postscript. Excuse bad writing.
Hurry. Piano downstairs. Coming out of her shell. Row with her in the
XL Café about the bracelet. Wouldn’t eat her cakes or speak or look.
Saucebox. He sopped other dies of bread in the gravy and ate piece
after piece of kidney. Twelve and six a week. Not much. Still, she
might do worse. Music hall stage. Young student. He drank a draught of
cooler tea to wash down his meal. Then he read the letter again: twice.
O, well: she knows how to mind herself. But if not? No, nothing has
happened. Of course it might. Wait in any case till it does. A wild
piece of goods. Her slim legs running up the staircase. Destiny.
Ripening now. Vain: very.
He smiled with troubled affection at the kitchen window. Day I caught
her in the street pinching her cheeks to make them red. Anemic a
little. Was given milk too long. On the _Erin’s King_ that day round
the Kish. Damned old tub pitching about. Not a bit funky. Her pale blue
scarf loose in the wind with her hair.
 All dimpled cheeks and curls,
 Your head it simply swirls.
Seaside girls. Torn envelope. Hands stuck in his trousers’ pockets,
jarvey off for the day, singing. Friend of the family. Swurls, he says.
Pier with lamps, summer evening, band.
 Those girls, those girls,
 Those lovely seaside girls.
Milly too. Young kisses: the first. Far away now past. Mrs Marion.
Reading, lying back now, counting the strands of her hair, smiling,
braiding.
A soft qualm, regret, flowed down his backbone, increasing. Will
happen, yes. Prevent. Useless: can’t move. Girl’s sweet light lips.
Will happen too. He felt the flowing qualm spread over him. Useless to
move now. Lips kissed, kissing, kissed. Full gluey woman’s lips.
Better where she is down there: away. Occupy her. Wanted a dog to pass
the time. Might take a trip down there. August bank holiday, only two
and six return. Six weeks off, however. Might work a press pass. Or
through M’Coy.
The cat, having cleaned all her fur, returned to the meatstained paper,
nosed at it and stalked to the door. She looked back at him, mewing.
Wants to go out. Wait before a door sometime it will open. Let her
wait. Has the fidgets. Electric. Thunder in the air. Was washing at her
ear with her back to the fire too.
He felt heavy, full: then a gentle loosening of his bowels. He stood
up, undoing the waistband of his trousers. The cat mewed to him.
—Miaow! he said in answer. Wait till I’m ready.
Heaviness: hot day coming. Too much trouble to fag up the stairs to the
landing.
A paper. He liked to read at stool. Hope no ape comes knocking just as
I’m.
In the tabledrawer he found an old number of _Titbits_. He folded it
under his armpit, went to the door and opened it. The cat went up in
soft bounds. Ah, wanted to go upstairs, curl up in a ball on the bed.
Listening, he heard her voice:
—Come, come, pussy. Come.
He went out through the backdoor into the garden: stood to listen
towards the next garden. No sound. Perhaps hanging clothes out to dry.
The maid was in the garden. Fine morning.
He bent down to regard a lean file of spearmint growing by the wall.
Make a summerhouse here. Scarlet runners. Virginia creepers. Want to
manure the whole place over, scabby soil. A coat of liver of sulphur.
All soil like that without dung. Household slops. Loam, what is this
that is? The hens in the next garden: their droppings are very good top
dressing. Best of all though are the cattle, especially when they are
fed on those oilcakes. Mulch of dung. Best thing to clean ladies’ kid
gloves. Dirty cleans. Ashes too. Reclaim the whole place. Grow peas in
that corner there. Lettuce. Always have fresh greens then. Still
gardens have their drawbacks. That bee or bluebottle here Whitmonday.
He walked on. Where is my hat, by the way? Must have put it back on the
peg. Or hanging up on the floor. Funny I don’t remember that. Hallstand
too full. Four umbrellas, her raincloak. Picking up the letters.
Drago’s shopbell ringing. Queer I was just thinking that moment. Brown
brillantined hair over his collar. Just had a wash and brushup. Wonder
have I time for a bath this morning. Tara street. Chap in the paybox
there got away James Stephens, they say. O’Brien.
Deep voice that fellow Dlugacz has. Agendath what is it? Now, my miss.
Enthusiast.
He kicked open the crazy door of the jakes. Better be careful not to
get these trousers dirty for the funeral. He went in, bowing his head
under the low lintel. Leaving the door ajar, amid the stench of mouldy
limewash and stale cobwebs he undid his braces. Before sitting down he
peered through a chink up at the nextdoor windows. The king was in his
countinghouse. Nobody.
Asquat on the cuckstool he folded out his paper, turning its pages over
on his bared knees. Something new and easy. No great hurry. Keep it a
bit. Our prize titbit: _Matcham’s Masterstroke_. Written by Mr Philip
Beaufoy, Playgoers’ Club, London. Payment at the rate of one guinea a
column has been made to the writer. Three and a half. Three pounds
three. Three pounds, thirteen and six.
Quietly he read, restraining himself, the first column and, yielding
but resisting, began the second. Midway, his last resistance yielding,
he allowed his bowels to ease themselves quietly as he read, reading
still patiently that slight constipation of yesterday quite gone. Hope
it’s not too big bring on piles again. No, just right. So. Ah! Costive.
One tabloid of cascara sagrada. Life might be so. It did not move or
touch him but it was something quick and neat. Print anything now.
Silly season. He read on, seated calm above his own rising smell. Neat
certainly. _Matcham often thinks of the masterstroke by which he won
the laughing witch who now_. Begins and ends morally. _Hand in hand_.
Smart. He glanced back through what he had read and, while feeling his
water flow quietly, he envied kindly Mr Beaufoy who had written it and
received payment of three pounds, thirteen and six.
Might manage a sketch. By Mr and Mrs L. M. Bloom. Invent a story for
some proverb. Which? Time I used to try jotting down on my cuff what
she said dressing. Dislike dressing together. Nicked myself shaving.
Biting her nether lip, hooking the placket of her skirt. Timing her.
9.15. Did Roberts pay you yet? 9.20. What had Gretta Conroy on? 9.23.
What possessed me to buy this comb? 9.24. I’m swelled after that
cabbage. A speck of dust on the patent leather of her boot.
Rubbing smartly in turn each welt against her stockinged calf. Morning
after the bazaar dance when May’s band played Ponchielli’s dance of the
hours. Explain that: morning hours, noon, then evening coming on, then
night hours. Washing her teeth. That was the first night. Her head
dancing. Her fansticks clicking. Is that Boylan well off? He has money.
Why? I noticed he had a good rich smell off his breath dancing. No use
humming then. Allude to it. Strange kind of music that last night. The
mirror was in shadow. She rubbed her handglass briskly on her woollen
vest against her full wagging bub. Peering into it. Lines in her eyes.
It wouldn’t pan out somehow.
Evening hours, girls in grey gauze. Night hours then: black with
daggers and eyemasks. Poetical idea: pink, then golden, then grey, then
black. Still, true to life also. Day: then the night.
He tore away half the prize story sharply and wiped himself with it.
Then he girded up his trousers, braced and buttoned himself. He pulled
back the jerky shaky door of the jakes and came forth from the gloom
into the air.
In the bright light, lightened and cooled in limb, he eyed carefully
his black trousers: the ends, the knees, the houghs of the knees. What
time is the funeral? Better find out in the paper.
A creak and a dark whirr in the air high up. The bells of George’s
church. They tolled the hour: loud dark iron.
 Heigho! Heigho!
 Heigho! Heigho!
 Heigho! Heigho!
Quarter to. There again: the overtone following through the air. A
third.
Poor Dignam!
[ 5 ]
By lorries along sir John Rogerson’s quay Mr Bloom walked soberly, past
Windmill lane, Leask’s the linseed crusher, the postal telegraph
office. Could have given that address too. And past the sailors’ home.
He turned from the morning noises of the quayside and walked through
Lime street. By Brady’s cottages a boy for the skins lolled, his bucket
of offal linked, smoking a chewed fagbutt. A smaller girl with scars of
eczema on her forehead eyed him, listlessly holding her battered
caskhoop. Tell him if he smokes he won’t grow. O let him! His life
isn’t such a bed of roses. Waiting outside pubs to bring da home. Come
home to ma, da. Slack hour: won’t be many there. He crossed Townsend
street, passed the frowning face of Bethel. El, yes: house of: Aleph,
Beth. And past Nichols’ the undertaker. At eleven it is. Time enough.
Daresay Corny Kelleher bagged the job for O’Neill’s. Singing with his
eyes shut. Corny. Met her once in the park. In the dark. What a lark.
Police tout. Her name and address she then told with my tooraloom
tooraloom tay. O, surely he bagged it. Bury him cheap in a
whatyoumaycall. With my tooraloom, tooraloom, tooraloom, tooraloom.
In Westland row he halted before the window of the Belfast and Oriental
Tea Company and read the legends of leadpapered packets: choice blend,
finest quality, family tea. Rather warm. Tea. Must get some from Tom
Kernan. Couldn’t ask him at a funeral, though. While his eyes still
read blandly he took off his hat quietly inhaling his hairoil and sent
his right hand with slow grace over his brow and hair. Very warm
morning. Under their dropped lids his eyes found the tiny bow of the
leather headband inside his high grade ha. Just there. His right hand
came down into the bowl of his hat. His fingers found quickly a card
behind the headband and transferred it to his waistcoat pocket.
So warm. His right hand once more more slowly went over his brow and
hair. Then he put on his hat again, relieved: and read again: choice
blend, made of the finest Ceylon brands. The far east. Lovely spot it
must be: the garden of the world, big lazy leaves to float about on,
cactuses, flowery meads, snaky lianas they call them. Wonder is it like
that. Those Cinghalese lobbing about in the sun in _dolce far niente_,
not doing a hand’s turn all day. Sleep six months out of twelve. Too
hot to quarrel. Influence of the climate. Lethargy. Flowers of
idleness. The air feeds most. Azotes. Hothouse in Botanic gardens.
Sensitive plants. Waterlilies. Petals too tired to. Sleeping sickness
in the air. Walk on roseleaves. Imagine trying to eat tripe and
cowheel. Where was the chap I saw in that picture somewhere? Ah yes, in
the dead sea floating on his back, reading a book with a parasol open.
Couldn’t sink if you tried: so thick with salt. Because the weight of
the water, no, the weight of the body in the water is equal to the
weight of the what? Or is it the volume is equal to the weight? It’s a
law something like that. Vance in High school cracking his
fingerjoints, teaching. The college curriculum. Cracking curriculum.
What is weight really when you say the weight? Thirtytwo feet per
second per second. Law of falling bodies: per second per second. They
all fall to the ground. The earth. It’s the force of gravity of the
earth is the weight.
He turned away and sauntered across the road. How did she walk with her
sausages? Like that something. As he walked he took the folded
_Freeman_ from his sidepocket, unfolded it, rolled it lengthwise in a
baton and tapped it at each sauntering step against his trouserleg.
Careless air: just drop in to see. Per second per second. Per second
for every second it means. From the curbstone he darted a keen glance
through the door of the postoffice. Too late box. Post here. No-one.
In.
He handed the card through the brass grill.
—Are there any letters for me? he asked.
While the postmistress searched a pigeonhole he gazed at the recruiting
poster with soldiers of all arms on parade: and held the tip of his
baton against his nostrils, smelling freshprinted rag paper. No answer
probably. Went too far last time.
The postmistress handed him back through the grill his card with a
letter. He thanked her and glanced rapidly at the typed envelope.
Henry Flower Esq,
c/o P. O. Westland Row,
 City.
Answered anyhow. He slipped card and letter into his sidepocket,
reviewing again the soldiers on parade. Where’s old Tweedy’s regiment?
Castoff soldier. There: bearskin cap and hackle plume. No, he’s a
grenadier. Pointed cuffs. There he is: royal Dublin fusiliers.
Redcoats. Too showy. That must be why the women go after them. Uniform.
Easier to enlist and drill. Maud Gonne’s letter about taking them off
O’Connell street at night: disgrace to our Irish capital. Griffith’s
paper is on the same tack now: an army rotten with venereal disease:
overseas or halfseasover empire. Half baked they look: hypnotised like.
Eyes front. Mark time. Table: able. Bed: ed. The King’s own. Never see
him dressed up as a fireman or a bobby. A mason, yes.
He strolled out of the postoffice and turned to the right. Talk: as if
that would mend matters. His hand went into his pocket and a forefinger
felt its way under the flap of the envelope, ripping it open in jerks.
Women will pay a lot of heed, I don’t think. His fingers drew forth the
letter the letter and crumpled the envelope in his pocket. Something
pinned on: photo perhaps. Hair? No.
M’Coy. Get rid of him quickly. Take me out of my way. Hate company when
you.
—Hello, Bloom. Where are you off to?
—Hello, M’Coy. Nowhere in particular.
—How’s the body?
—Fine. How are you?
—Just keeping alive, M’Coy said.
His eyes on the black tie and clothes he asked with low respect:
—Is there any... no trouble I hope? I see you’re...
—O, no, Mr Bloom said. Poor Dignam, you know. The funeral is today.
—To be sure, poor fellow. So it is. What time?
A photo it isn’t. A badge maybe.
—E...eleven, Mr Bloom answered.
—I must try to get out there, M’Coy said. Eleven, is it? I only heard
it last night. Who was telling me? Holohan. You know Hoppy?
—I know.
Mr Bloom gazed across the road at the outsider drawn up before the door
of the Grosvenor. The porter hoisted the valise up on the well. She
stood still, waiting, while the man, husband, brother, like her,
searched his pockets for change. Stylish kind of coat with that roll
collar, warm for a day like this, looks like blanketcloth. Careless
stand of her with her hands in those patch pockets. Like that haughty
creature at the polo match. Women all for caste till you touch the
spot. Handsome is and handsome does. Reserved about to yield. The
honourable Mrs and Brutus is an honourable man. Possess her once take
the starch out of her.
—I was with Bob Doran, he’s on one of his periodical bends, and what do
you call him Bantam Lyons. Just down there in Conway’s we were.
Doran Lyons in Conway’s. She raised a gloved hand to her hair. In came
Hoppy. Having a wet. Drawing back his head and gazing far from beneath
his vailed eyelids he saw the bright fawn skin shine in the glare, the
braided drums. Clearly I can see today. Moisture about gives long sight
perhaps. Talking of one thing or another. Lady’s hand. Which side will
she get up?
—And he said: _Sad thing about our poor friend Paddy! What Paddy?_ I
said. _Poor little Paddy Dignam_, he said.
Off to the country: Broadstone probably. High brown boots with laces
dangling. Wellturned foot. What is he foostering over that change for?
Sees me looking. Eye out for other fellow always. Good fallback. Two
strings to her bow.
—_Why?_ I said. _What’s wrong with him?_ I said.
Proud: rich: silk stockings.
—Yes, Mr Bloom said.
He moved a little to the side of M’Coy’s talking head. Getting up in a
minute.
—_What’s wrong with him_? He said. _He’s dead_, he said. And, faith, he
filled up. _Is it Paddy Dignam_? I said. I couldn’t believe it when I
heard it. I was with him no later than Friday last or Thursday was it
in the Arch. _Yes,_ he said. _He’s gone. He died on Monday, poor
fellow_.
Watch! Watch! Silk flash rich stockings white. Watch!
A heavy tramcar honking its gong slewed between.
Lost it. Curse your noisy pugnose. Feels locked out of it. Paradise and
the peri. Always happening like that. The very moment. Girl in Eustace
street hallway Monday was it settling her garter. Her friend covering
the display of. _Esprit de corps_. Well, what are you gaping at?
—Yes, yes, Mr Bloom said after a dull sigh. Another gone.
—One of the best, M’Coy said.
The tram passed. They drove off towards the Loop Line bridge, her rich
gloved hand on the steel grip. Flicker, flicker: the laceflare of her
hat in the sun: flicker, flick.
—Wife well, I suppose? M’Coy’s changed voice said.
—O, yes, Mr Bloom said. Tiptop, thanks.
He unrolled the newspaper baton idly and read idly:
 What is home without
 Plumtree’s Potted Meat?
 Incomplete.
 With it an abode of bliss.
—My missus has just got an engagement. At least it’s not settled yet.
Valise tack again. By the way no harm. I’m off that, thanks.
Mr Bloom turned his largelidded eyes with unhasty friendliness.
—My wife too, he said. She’s going to sing at a swagger affair in the
Ulster Hall, Belfast, on the twentyfifth.
—That so? M’Coy said. Glad to hear that, old man. Who’s getting it up?
Mrs Marion Bloom. Not up yet. Queen was in her bedroom eating bread
and. No book. Blackened court cards laid along her thigh by sevens.
Dark lady and fair man. Letter. Cat furry black ball. Torn strip of
envelope.
 Love’s
 Old
 Sweet
 Song
 Comes lo-ove’s old...
—It’s a kind of a tour, don’t you see, Mr Bloom said thoughtfully.
_Sweeeet song_. There’s a committee formed. Part shares and part
profits.
M’Coy nodded, picking at his moustache stubble.
—O, well, he said. That’s good news.
He moved to go.
—Well, glad to see you looking fit, he said. Meet you knocking around.
—Yes, Mr Bloom said.
—Tell you what, M’Coy said. You might put down my name at the funeral,
will you? I’d like to go but I mightn’t be able, you see. There’s a
drowning case at Sandycove may turn up and then the coroner and myself
would have to go down if the body is found. You just shove in my name
if I’m not there, will you?
—I’ll do that, Mr Bloom said, moving to get off. That’ll be all right.
—Right, M’Coy said brightly. Thanks, old man. I’d go if I possibly
could. Well, tolloll. Just C. P. M’Coy will do.
—That will be done, Mr Bloom answered firmly.
Didn’t catch me napping that wheeze. The quick touch. Soft mark. I’d
like my job. Valise I have a particular fancy for. Leather. Capped
corners, rivetted edges, double action lever lock. Bob Cowley lent him
his for the Wicklow regatta concert last year and never heard tidings
of it from that good day to this.
Mr Bloom, strolling towards Brunswick street, smiled. My missus has
just got an. Reedy freckled soprano. Cheeseparing nose. Nice enough in
its way: for a little ballad. No guts in it. You and me, don’t you
know: in the same boat. Softsoaping. Give you the needle that would.
Can’t he hear the difference? Think he’s that way inclined a bit.
Against my grain somehow. Thought that Belfast would fetch him. I hope
that smallpox up there doesn’t get worse. Suppose she wouldn’t let
herself be vaccinated again. Your wife and my wife.
Wonder is he pimping after me?
Mr Bloom stood at the corner, his eyes wandering over the multicoloured
hoardings. Cantrell and Cochrane’s Ginger Ale (Aromatic). Clery’s
Summer Sale. No, he’s going on straight. Hello. _Leah_ tonight. Mrs
Bandmann Palmer. Like to see her again in that. _Hamlet_ she played
last night. Male impersonator. Perhaps he was a woman. Why Ophelia
committed suicide. Poor papa! How he used to talk of Kate Bateman in
that. Outside the Adelphi in London waited all the afternoon to get in.
Year before I was born that was: sixtyfive. And Ristori in Vienna. What
is this the right name is? By Mosenthal it is. Rachel, is it? No. The
scene he was always talking about where the old blind Abraham
recognises the voice and puts his fingers on his face.
Nathan’s voice! His son’s voice! I hear the voice of Nathan who left
his father to die of grief and misery in my arms, who left the house of
his father and left the God of his father.
Every word is so deep, Leopold.
Poor papa! Poor man! I’m glad I didn’t go into the room to look at his
face. That day! O, dear! O, dear! Ffoo! Well, perhaps it was best for
him.
Mr Bloom went round the corner and passed the drooping nags of the
hazard. No use thinking of it any more. Nosebag time. Wish I hadn’t met
that M’Coy fellow.
He came nearer and heard a crunching of gilded oats, the gently
champing teeth. Their full buck eyes regarded him as he went by, amid
the sweet oaten reek of horsepiss. Their Eldorado. Poor jugginses! Damn
all they know or care about anything with their long noses stuck in
nosebags. Too full for words. Still they get their feed all right and
their doss. Gelded too: a stump of black guttapercha wagging limp
between their haunches. Might be happy all the same that way. Good poor
brutes they look. Still their neigh can be very irritating.
He drew the letter from his pocket and folded it into the newspaper he
carried. Might just walk into her here. The lane is safer.
He passed the cabman’s shelter. Curious the life of drifting cabbies.
All weathers, all places, time or setdown, no will of their own.
_Voglio e non_. Like to give them an odd cigarette. Sociable. Shout a
few flying syllables as they pass. He hummed:
 Là ci darem la mano
 La la lala la la.
He turned into Cumberland street and, going on some paces, halted in
the lee of the station wall. No-one. Meade’s timberyard. Piled balks.
Ruins and tenements. With careful tread he passed over a hopscotch
court with its forgotten pickeystone. Not a sinner. Near the timberyard
a squatted child at marbles, alone, shooting the taw with a cunnythumb.
A wise tabby, a blinking sphinx, watched from her warm sill. Pity to
disturb them. Mohammed cut a piece out of his mantle not to wake her.
Open it. And once I played marbles when I went to that old dame’s
school. She liked mignonette. Mrs Ellis’s. And Mr? He opened the letter
within the newspaper.
A flower. I think it’s a. A yellow flower with flattened petals. Not
annoyed then? What does she say?
Dear Henry
I got your last letter to me and thank you very much for it. I am sorry
you did not like my last letter. Why did you enclose the stamps? I am
awfully angry with you. I do wish I could punish you for that. I called
you naughty boy because I do not like that other world. Please tell me
what is the real meaning of that word? Are you not happy in your home
you poor little naughty boy? I do wish I could do something for you.
Please tell me what you think of poor me. I often think of the
beautiful name you have. Dear Henry, when will we meet? I think of you
so often you have no idea. I have never felt myself so much drawn to a
man as you. I feel so bad about. Please write me a long letter and tell
me more. Remember if you do not I will punish you. So now you know what
I will do to you, you naughty boy, if you do not wrote. O how I long to
meet you. Henry dear, do not deny my request before my patience are
exhausted. Then I will tell you all. Goodbye now, naughty darling, I
have such a bad headache. today. and write _by return_ to your longing
Martha
P. S. Do tell me what kind of perfume does your wife use. I want to
know.
He tore the flower gravely from its pinhold smelt its almost no smell
and placed it in his heart pocket. Language of flowers. They like it
because no-one can hear. Or a poison bouquet to strike him down. Then
walking slowly forward he read the letter again, murmuring here and
there a word. Angry tulips with you darling manflower punish your
cactus if you don’t please poor forgetmenot how I long violets to dear
roses when we soon anemone meet all naughty nightstalk wife Martha’s
perfume. Having read it all he took it from the newspaper and put it
back in his sidepocket.
Weak joy opened his lips. Changed since the first letter. Wonder did
she wrote it herself. Doing the indignant: a girl of good family like
me, respectable character. Could meet one Sunday after the rosary.
Thank you: not having any. Usual love scrimmage. Then running round
corners. Bad as a row with Molly. Cigar has a cooling effect. Narcotic.
Go further next time. Naughty boy: punish: afraid of words, of course.
Brutal, why not? Try it anyhow. A bit at a time.
Fingering still the letter in his pocket he drew the pin out of it.
Common pin, eh? He threw it on the road. Out of her clothes somewhere:
pinned together. Queer the number of pins they always have. No roses
without thorns.
Flat Dublin voices bawled in his head. Those two women that night in
the Coombe, linked together in the rain.
 O, Mairy lost the pin of her drawers.
 She didn’t know what to do
 To keep it up,
 To keep it up.
It? Them. Such a bad headache. Has her roses probably. Or sitting all
day typing. Eyefocus bad for stomach nerves. What perfume does your
wife use. Now could you make out a thing like that?
 To keep it up.
Martha, Mary. I saw that picture somewhere I forget now old master or
faked for money. He is sitting in their house, talking. Mysterious.
Also the two women in the Coombe would listen.
 To keep it up.
Nice kind of evening feeling. No more wandering about. Just loll there:
quiet dusk: let everything rip. Forget. Tell about places you have
been, strange customs. The other one, jar on her head, was getting the
supper: fruit, olives, lovely cool water out of a well, stonecold like
the hole in the wall at Ashtown. Must carry a paper goblet next time I
go to the trottingmatches. She listens with big dark soft eyes. Tell
her: more and more: all. Then a sigh: silence. Long long long rest.
Going under the railway arch he took out the envelope, tore it swiftly
in shreds and scattered them towards the road. The shreds fluttered
away, sank in the dank air: a white flutter, then all sank.
Henry Flower. You could tear up a cheque for a hundred pounds in the
same way. Simple bit of paper. Lord Iveagh once cashed a sevenfigure
cheque for a million in the bank of Ireland. Shows you the money to be
made out of porter. Still the other brother lord Ardilaun has to change
his shirt four times a day, they say. Skin breeds lice or vermin. A
million pounds, wait a moment. Twopence a pint, fourpence a quart,
eightpence a gallon of porter, no, one and fourpence a gallon of
porter. One and four into twenty: fifteen about. Yes, exactly. Fifteen
millions of barrels of porter.
What am I saying barrels? Gallons. About a million barrels all the
same.
An incoming train clanked heavily above his head, coach after coach.
Barrels bumped in his head: dull porter slopped and churned inside. The
bungholes sprang open and a huge dull flood leaked out, flowing
together, winding through mudflats all over the level land, a lazy
pooling swirl of liquor bearing along wideleaved flowers of its froth.
He had reached the open backdoor of All Hallows. Stepping into the
porch he doffed his hat, took the card from his pocket and tucked it
again behind the leather headband. Damn it. I might have tried to work
M’Coy for a pass to Mullingar.
Same notice on the door. Sermon by the very reverend John Conmee S. J.
on saint Peter Claver S. J. and the African Mission. Prayers for the
conversion of Gladstone they had too when he was almost unconscious.
The protestants are the same. Convert Dr William J. Walsh D.D. to the
true religion. Save China’s millions. Wonder how they explain it to the
heathen Chinee. Prefer an ounce of opium. Celestials. Rank heresy for
them. Buddha their god lying on his side in the museum. Taking it easy
with hand under his cheek. Josssticks burning. Not like Ecce Homo.
Crown of thorns and cross. Clever idea Saint Patrick the shamrock.
Chopsticks? Conmee: Martin Cunningham knows him: distinguishedlooking.
Sorry I didn’t work him about getting Molly into the choir instead of
that Father Farley who looked a fool but wasn’t. They’re taught that.
He’s not going out in bluey specs with the sweat rolling off him to
baptise blacks, is he? The glasses would take their fancy, flashing.
Like to see them sitting round in a ring with blub lips, entranced,
listening. Still life. Lap it up like milk, I suppose.
The cold smell of sacred stone called him. He trod the worn steps,
pushed the swingdoor and entered softly by the rere.
Something going on: some sodality. Pity so empty. Nice discreet place
to be next some girl. Who is my neighbour? Jammed by the hour to slow
music. That woman at midnight mass. Seventh heaven. Women knelt in the
benches with crimson halters round their necks, heads bowed. A batch
knelt at the altarrails. The priest went along by them, murmuring,
holding the thing in his hands. He stopped at each, took out a
communion, shook a drop or two (are they in water?) off it and put it
neatly into her mouth. Her hat and head sank. Then the next one. Her
hat sank at once. Then the next one: a small old woman. The priest bent
down to put it into her mouth, murmuring all the time. Latin. The next
one. Shut your eyes and open your mouth. What? _Corpus:_ body. Corpse.
Good idea the Latin. Stupefies them first. Hospice for the dying. They
don’t seem to chew it: only swallow it down. Rum idea: eating bits of a
corpse. Why the cannibals cotton to it.
He stood aside watching their blind masks pass down the aisle, one by
one, and seek their places. He approached a bench and seated himself in
its corner, nursing his hat and newspaper. These pots we have to wear.
We ought to have hats modelled on our heads. They were about him here
and there, with heads still bowed in their crimson halters, waiting for
it to melt in their stomachs. Something like those mazzoth: it’s that
sort of bread: unleavened shewbread. Look at them. Now I bet it makes
them feel happy. Lollipop. It does. Yes, bread of angels it’s called.
There’s a big idea behind it, kind of kingdom of God is within you
feel. First communicants. Hokypoky penny a lump. Then feel all like one
family party, same in the theatre, all in the same swim. They do. I’m
sure of that. Not so lonely. In our confraternity. Then come out a bit
spreeish. Let off steam. Thing is if you really believe in it. Lourdes
cure, waters of oblivion, and the Knock apparition, statues bleeding.
Old fellow asleep near that confessionbox. Hence those snores. Blind
faith. Safe in the arms of kingdom come. Lulls all pain. Wake this time
next year.
He saw the priest stow the communion cup away, well in, and kneel an
instant before it, showing a large grey bootsole from under the lace
affair he had on. Suppose he lost the pin of his. He wouldn’t know what
to do to. Bald spot behind. Letters on his back: I.N.R.I? No: I.H.S.
Molly told me one time I asked her. I have sinned: or no: I have
suffered, it is. And the other one? Iron nails ran in.
Meet one Sunday after the rosary. Do not deny my request. Turn up with
a veil and black bag. Dusk and the light behind her. She might be here
with a ribbon round her neck and do the other thing all the same on the
sly. Their character. That fellow that turned queen’s evidence on the
invincibles he used to receive the, Carey was his name, the communion
every morning. This very church. Peter Carey, yes. No, Peter Claver I
am thinking of. Denis Carey. And just imagine that. Wife and six
children at home. And plotting that murder all the time. Those
crawthumpers, now that’s a good name for them, there’s always something
shiftylooking about them. They’re not straight men of business either.
O, no, she’s not here: the flower: no, no. By the way, did I tear up
that envelope? Yes: under the bridge.
The priest was rinsing out the chalice: then he tossed off the dregs
smartly. Wine. Makes it more aristocratic than for example if he drank
what they are used to Guinness’s porter or some temperance beverage
Wheatley’s Dublin hop bitters or Cantrell and Cochrane’s ginger ale
(aromatic). Doesn’t give them any of it: shew wine: only the other.
Cold comfort. Pious fraud but quite right: otherwise they’d have one
old booser worse than another coming along, cadging for a drink. Queer
the whole atmosphere of the. Quite right. Perfectly right that is.
Mr Bloom looked back towards the choir. Not going to be any music.
Pity. Who has the organ here I wonder? Old Glynn he knew how to make
that instrument talk, the _vibrato_: fifty pounds a year they say he
had in Gardiner street. Molly was in fine voice that day, the _Stabat
Mater_ of Rossini. Father Bernard Vaughan’s sermon first. Christ or
Pilate? Christ, but don’t keep us all night over it. Music they wanted.
Footdrill stopped. Could hear a pin drop. I told her to pitch her voice
against that corner. I could feel the thrill in the air, the full, the
people looking up:
_Quis est homo._
Some of that old sacred music splendid. Mercadante: seven last words.
Mozart’s twelfth mass: _Gloria_ in that. Those old popes keen on music,
on art and statues and pictures of all kinds. Palestrina for example
too. They had a gay old time while it lasted. Healthy too, chanting,
regular hours, then brew liqueurs. Benedictine. Green Chartreuse.
Still, having eunuchs in their choir that was coming it a bit thick.
What kind of voice is it? Must be curious to hear after their own
strong basses. Connoisseurs. Suppose they wouldn’t feel anything after.
Kind of a placid. No worry. Fall into flesh, don’t they? Gluttons,
tall, long legs. Who knows? Eunuch. One way out of it.
He saw the priest bend down and kiss the altar and then face about and
bless all the people. All crossed themselves and stood up. Mr Bloom
glanced about him and then stood up, looking over the risen hats. Stand
up at the gospel of course. Then all settled down on their knees again
and he sat back quietly in his bench. The priest came down from the
altar, holding the thing out from him, and he and the massboy answered
each other in Latin. Then the priest knelt down and began to read off a
card:
—O God, our refuge and our strength...
Mr Bloom put his face forward to catch the words. English. Throw them
the bone. I remember slightly. How long since your last mass? Glorious
and immaculate virgin. Joseph, her spouse. Peter and Paul. More
interesting if you understood what it was all about. Wonderful
organisation certainly, goes like clockwork. Confession. Everyone wants
to. Then I will tell you all. Penance. Punish me, please. Great weapon
in their hands. More than doctor or solicitor. Woman dying to. And I
schschschschschsch. And did you chachachachacha? And why did you? Look
down at her ring to find an excuse. Whispering gallery walls have ears.
Husband learn to his surprise. God’s little joke. Then out she comes.
Repentance skindeep. Lovely shame. Pray at an altar. Hail Mary and Holy
Mary. Flowers, incense, candles melting. Hide her blushes. Salvation
army blatant imitation. Reformed prostitute will address the meeting.
How I found the Lord. Squareheaded chaps those must be in Rome: they
work the whole show. And don’t they rake in the money too? Bequests
also: to the P.P. for the time being in his absolute discretion. Masses
for the repose of my soul to be said publicly with open doors.
Monasteries and convents. The priest in that Fermanagh will case in the
witnessbox. No browbeating him. He had his answer pat for everything.
Liberty and exaltation of our holy mother the church. The doctors of
the church: they mapped out the whole theology of it.
The priest prayed:
—Blessed Michael, archangel, defend us in the hour of conflict. Be our
safeguard against the wickedness and snares of the devil (may God
restrain him, we humbly pray!): and do thou, O prince of the heavenly
host, by the power of God thrust Satan down to hell and with him those
other wicked spirits who wander through the world for the ruin of
souls.
The priest and the massboy stood up and walked off. All over. The women
remained behind: thanksgiving.
Better be shoving along. Brother Buzz. Come around with the plate
perhaps. Pay your Easter duty.
He stood up. Hello. Were those two buttons of my waistcoat open all the
time? Women enjoy it. Never tell you. But we. Excuse, miss, there’s a
(whh!) just a (whh!) fluff. Or their skirt behind, placket unhooked.
Glimpses of the moon. Annoyed if you don’t. Why didn’t you tell me
before. Still like you better untidy. Good job it wasn’t farther south.
He passed, discreetly buttoning, down the aisle and out through the
main door into the light. He stood a moment unseeing by the cold black
marble bowl while before him and behind two worshippers dipped furtive
hands in the low tide of holy water. Trams: a car of Prescott’s
dyeworks: a widow in her weeds. Notice because I’m in mourning myself.
He covered himself. How goes the time? Quarter past. Time enough yet.
Better get that lotion made up. Where is this? Ah yes, the last time.
Sweny’s in Lincoln place. Chemists rarely move. Their green and gold
beaconjars too heavy to stir. Hamilton Long’s, founded in the year of
the flood. Huguenot churchyard near there. Visit some day.
He walked southward along Westland row. But the recipe is in the other
trousers. O, and I forgot that latchkey too. Bore this funeral affair.
O well, poor fellow, it’s not his fault. When was it I got it made up
last? Wait. I changed a sovereign I remember. First of the month it
must have been or the second. O, he can look it up in the prescriptions
book.
The chemist turned back page after page. Sandy shrivelled smell he
seems to have. Shrunken skull. And old. Quest for the philosopher’s
stone. The alchemists. Drugs age you after mental excitement. Lethargy
then. Why? Reaction. A lifetime in a night. Gradually changes your
character. Living all the day among herbs, ointments, disinfectants.
All his alabaster lilypots. Mortar and pestle. Aq. Dist. Fol. Laur. Te
Virid. Smell almost cure you like the dentist’s doorbell. Doctor Whack.
He ought to physic himself a bit. Electuary or emulsion. The first
fellow that picked an herb to cure himself had a bit of pluck. Simples.
Want to be careful. Enough stuff here to chloroform you. Test: turns
blue litmus paper red. Chloroform. Overdose of laudanum. Sleeping
draughts. Lovephiltres. Paragoric poppysyrup bad for cough. Clogs the
pores or the phlegm. Poisons the only cures. Remedy where you least
expect it. Clever of nature.
—About a fortnight ago, sir?
—Yes, Mr Bloom said.
He waited by the counter, inhaling slowly the keen reek of drugs, the
dusty dry smell of sponges and loofahs. Lot of time taken up telling
your aches and pains.
—Sweet almond oil and tincture of benzoin, Mr Bloom said, and then
orangeflower water...
It certainly did make her skin so delicate white like wax.
—And white wax also, he said.
Brings out the darkness of her eyes. Looking at me, the sheet up to her
eyes, Spanish, smelling herself, when I was fixing the links in my
cuffs. Those homely recipes are often the best: strawberries for the
teeth: nettles and rainwater: oatmeal they say steeped in buttermilk.
Skinfood. One of the old queen’s sons, duke of Albany was it? had only
one skin. Leopold, yes. Three we have. Warts, bunions and pimples to
make it worse. But you want a perfume too. What perfume does your?
_Peau d’Espagne_. That orangeflower water is so fresh. Nice smell these
soaps have. Pure curd soap. Time to get a bath round the corner.
Hammam. Turkish. Massage. Dirt gets rolled up in your navel. Nicer if a
nice girl did it. Also I think I. Yes I. Do it in the bath. Curious
longing I. Water to water. Combine business with pleasure. Pity no time
for massage. Feel fresh then all the day. Funeral be rather glum.
—Yes, sir, the chemist said. That was two and nine. Have you brought a
bottle?
—No, Mr Bloom said. Make it up, please. I’ll call later in the day and
I’ll take one of these soaps. How much are they?
—Fourpence, sir.
Mr Bloom raised a cake to his nostrils. Sweet lemony wax.
—I’ll take this one, he said. That makes three and a penny.
—Yes, sir, the chemist said. You can pay all together, sir, when you
come back.
—Good, Mr Bloom said.
He strolled out of the shop, the newspaper baton under his armpit, the
coolwrappered soap in his left hand.
At his armpit Bantam Lyons’ voice and hand said:
—Hello, Bloom. What’s the best news? Is that today’s? Show us a minute.
Shaved off his moustache again, by Jove! Long cold upper lip. To look
younger. He does look balmy. Younger than I am.
Bantam Lyons’s yellow blacknailed fingers unrolled the baton. Wants a
wash too. Take off the rough dirt. Good morning, have you used Pears’
soap? Dandruff on his shoulders. Scalp wants oiling.
—I want to see about that French horse that’s running today, Bantam
Lyons said. Where the bugger is it?
He rustled the pleated pages, jerking his chin on his high collar.
Barber’s itch. Tight collar he’ll lose his hair. Better leave him the
paper and get shut of him.
—You can keep it, Mr Bloom said.
—Ascot. Gold cup. Wait, Bantam Lyons muttered. Half a mo. Maximum the
second.
—I was just going to throw it away, Mr Bloom said.
Bantam Lyons raised his eyes suddenly and leered weakly.
—What’s that? his sharp voice said.
—I say you can keep it, Mr Bloom answered. I was going to throw it away
that moment.
Bantam Lyons doubted an instant, leering: then thrust the outspread
sheets back on Mr Bloom’s arms.
—I’ll risk it, he said. Here, thanks.
He sped off towards Conway’s corner. God speed scut.
Mr Bloom folded the sheets again to a neat square and lodged the soap
in it, smiling. Silly lips of that chap. Betting. Regular hotbed of it
lately. Messenger boys stealing to put on sixpence. Raffle for large
tender turkey. Your Christmas dinner for threepence. Jack Fleming
embezzling to gamble then smuggled off to America. Keeps a hotel now.
They never come back. Fleshpots of Egypt.
He walked cheerfully towards the mosque of the baths. Remind you of a
mosque, redbaked bricks, the minarets. College sports today I see. He
eyed the horseshoe poster over the gate of college park: cyclist
doubled up like a cod in a pot. Damn bad ad. Now if they had made it
round like a wheel. Then the spokes: sports, sports, sports: and the
hub big: college. Something to catch the eye.
There’s Hornblower standing at the porter’s lodge. Keep him on hands:
might take a turn in there on the nod. How do you do, Mr Hornblower?
How do you do, sir?
Heavenly weather really. If life was always like that. Cricket weather.
Sit around under sunshades. Over after over. Out. They can’t play it
here. Duck for six wickets. Still Captain Culler broke a window in the
Kildare street club with a slog to square leg. Donnybrook fair more in
their line. And the skulls we were acracking when M’Carthy took the
floor. Heatwave. Won’t last. Always passing, the stream of life, which
in the stream of life we trace is dearer than them all.
Enjoy a bath now: clean trough of water, cool enamel, the gentle tepid
stream. This is my body.
He foresaw his pale body reclined in it at full, naked, in a womb of
warmth, oiled by scented melting soap, softly laved. He saw his trunk
and limbs riprippled over and sustained, buoyed lightly upward,
lemonyellow: his navel, bud of flesh: and saw the dark tangled curls of
his bush floating, floating hair of the stream around the limp father
of thousands, a languid floating flower.
[ 6 ]
Martin Cunningham, first, poked his silkhatted head into the creaking
carriage and, entering deftly, seated himself. Mr Power stepped in
after him, curving his height with care.
—Come on, Simon.
—After you, Mr Bloom said.
Mr Dedalus covered himself quickly and got in, saying:
—Yes, yes.
—Are we all here now? Martin Cunningham asked. Come along, Bloom.
Mr Bloom entered and sat in the vacant place. He pulled the door to
after him and slammed it twice till it shut tight. He passed an arm
through the armstrap and looked seriously from the open carriagewindow
at the lowered blinds of the avenue. One dragged aside: an old woman
peeping. Nose whiteflattened against the pane. Thanking her stars she
was passed over. Extraordinary the interest they take in a corpse. Glad
to see us go we give them such trouble coming. Job seems to suit them.
Huggermugger in corners. Slop about in slipperslappers for fear he’d
wake. Then getting it ready. Laying it out. Molly and Mrs Fleming
making the bed. Pull it more to your side. Our windingsheet. Never know
who will touch you dead. Wash and shampoo. I believe they clip the
nails and the hair. Keep a bit in an envelope. Grows all the same
after. Unclean job.
All waited. Nothing was said. Stowing in the wreaths probably. I am
sitting on something hard. Ah, that soap: in my hip pocket. Better
shift it out of that. Wait for an opportunity.
All waited. Then wheels were heard from in front, turning: then nearer:
then horses’ hoofs. A jolt. Their carriage began to move, creaking and
swaying. Other hoofs and creaking wheels started behind. The blinds of
the avenue passed and number nine with its craped knocker, door ajar.
At walking pace.
They waited still, their knees jogging, till they had turned and were
passing along the tramtracks. Tritonville road. Quicker. The wheels
rattled rolling over the cobbled causeway and the crazy glasses shook
rattling in the doorframes.
—What way is he taking us? Mr Power asked through both windows.
—Irishtown, Martin Cunningham said. Ringsend. Brunswick street.
Mr Dedalus nodded, looking out.
—That’s a fine old custom, he said. I am glad to see it has not died
out.
All watched awhile through their windows caps and hats lifted by
passers. Respect. The carriage swerved from the tramtrack to the
smoother road past Watery lane. Mr Bloom at gaze saw a lithe young man,
clad in mourning, a wide hat.
—There’s a friend of yours gone by, Dedalus, he said.
—Who is that?
—Your son and heir.
—Where is he? Mr Dedalus said, stretching over across.
The carriage, passing the open drains and mounds of rippedup roadway
before the tenement houses, lurched round the corner and, swerving back
to the tramtrack, rolled on noisily with chattering wheels. Mr Dedalus
fell back, saying:
—Was that Mulligan cad with him? His _fidus Achates_!
—No, Mr Bloom said. He was alone.
—Down with his aunt Sally, I suppose, Mr Dedalus said, the Goulding
faction, the drunken little costdrawer and Crissie, papa’s little lump
of dung, the wise child that knows her own father.
Mr Bloom smiled joylessly on Ringsend road. Wallace Bros: the
bottleworks: Dodder bridge.
Richie Goulding and the legal bag. Goulding, Collis and Ward he calls
the firm. His jokes are getting a bit damp. Great card he was. Waltzing
in Stamer street with Ignatius Gallaher on a Sunday morning, the
landlady’s two hats pinned on his head. Out on the rampage all night.
Beginning to tell on him now: that backache of his, I fear. Wife
ironing his back. Thinks he’ll cure it with pills. All breadcrumbs they
are. About six hundred per cent profit.
—He’s in with a lowdown crowd, Mr Dedalus snarled. That Mulligan is a
contaminated bloody doubledyed ruffian by all accounts. His name stinks
all over Dublin. But with the help of God and His blessed mother I’ll
make it my business to write a letter one of those days to his mother
or his aunt or whatever she is that will open her eye as wide as a
gate. I’ll tickle his catastrophe, believe you me.
He cried above the clatter of the wheels:
—I won’t have her bastard of a nephew ruin my son. A counterjumper’s
son. Selling tapes in my cousin, Peter Paul M’Swiney’s. Not likely.
He ceased. Mr Bloom glanced from his angry moustache to Mr Power’s mild
face and Martin Cunningham’s eyes and beard, gravely shaking. Noisy
selfwilled man. Full of his son. He is right. Something to hand on. If
little Rudy had lived. See him grow up. Hear his voice in the house.
Walking beside Molly in an Eton suit. My son. Me in his eyes. Strange
feeling it would be. From me. Just a chance. Must have been that
morning in Raymond terrace she was at the window watching the two dogs
at it by the wall of the cease to do evil. And the sergeant grinning
up. She had that cream gown on with the rip she never stitched. Give us
a touch, Poldy. God, I’m dying for it. How life begins.
Got big then. Had to refuse the Greystones concert. My son inside her.
I could have helped him on in life. I could. Make him independent.
Learn German too.
—Are we late? Mr Power asked.
—Ten minutes, Martin Cunningham said, looking at his watch.
Molly. Milly. Same thing watered down. Her tomboy oaths. O jumping
Jupiter! Ye gods and little fishes! Still, she’s a dear girl. Soon be a
woman. Mullingar. Dearest Papli. Young student. Yes, yes: a woman too.
Life, life.
The carriage heeled over and back, their four trunks swaying.
—Corny might have given us a more commodious yoke, Mr Power said.
—He might, Mr Dedalus said, if he hadn’t that squint troubling him. Do
you follow me?
He closed his left eye. Martin Cunningham began to brush away
crustcrumbs from under his thighs.
—What is this, he said, in the name of God? Crumbs?
—Someone seems to have been making a picnic party here lately, Mr Power
said.
All raised their thighs and eyed with disfavour the mildewed buttonless
leather of the seats. Mr Dedalus, twisting his nose, frowned downward
and said:
—Unless I’m greatly mistaken. What do you think, Martin?
—It struck me too, Martin Cunningham said.
Mr Bloom set his thigh down. Glad I took that bath. Feel my feet quite
clean. But I wish Mrs Fleming had darned these socks better.
Mr Dedalus sighed resignedly.
—After all, he said, it’s the most natural thing in the world.
—Did Tom Kernan turn up? Martin Cunningham asked, twirling the peak of
his beard gently.
—Yes, Mr Bloom answered. He’s behind with Ned Lambert and Hynes.
—And Corny Kelleher himself? Mr Power asked.
—At the cemetery, Martin Cunningham said.
—I met M’Coy this morning, Mr Bloom said. He said he’d try to come.
The carriage halted short.
—What’s wrong?
—We’re stopped.
—Where are we?
Mr Bloom put his head out of the window.
—The grand canal, he said.
Gasworks. Whooping cough they say it cures. Good job Milly never got
it. Poor children! Doubles them up black and blue in convulsions. Shame
really. Got off lightly with illnesses compared. Only measles. Flaxseed
tea. Scarlatina, influenza epidemics. Canvassing for death. Don’t miss
this chance. Dogs’ home over there. Poor old Athos! Be good to Athos,
Leopold, is my last wish. Thy will be done. We obey them in the grave.
A dying scrawl. He took it to heart, pined away. Quiet brute. Old men’s
dogs usually are.
A raindrop spat on his hat. He drew back and saw an instant of shower
spray dots over the grey flags. Apart. Curious. Like through a
colander. I thought it would. My boots were creaking I remember now.
—The weather is changing, he said quietly.
—A pity it did not keep up fine, Martin Cunningham said.
—Wanted for the country, Mr Power said. There’s the sun again coming
out.
Mr Dedalus, peering through his glasses towards the veiled sun, hurled
a mute curse at the sky.
—It’s as uncertain as a child’s bottom, he said.
—We’re off again.
The carriage turned again its stiff wheels and their trunks swayed
gently. Martin Cunningham twirled more quickly the peak of his beard.
—Tom Kernan was immense last night, he said. And Paddy Leonard taking
him off to his face.
—O, draw him out, Martin, Mr Power said eagerly. Wait till you hear
him, Simon, on Ben Dollard’s singing of _The Croppy Boy_.
—Immense, Martin Cunningham said pompously. _His singing of that simple
ballad, Martin, is the most trenchant rendering I ever heard in the
whole course of my experience._
—Trenchant, Mr Power said laughing. He’s dead nuts on that. And the
retrospective arrangement.
—Did you read Dan Dawson’s speech? Martin Cunningham asked.
—I did not then, Mr Dedalus said. Where is it?
—In the paper this morning.
Mr Bloom took the paper from his inside pocket. That book I must change
for her.
—No, no, Mr Dedalus said quickly. Later on please.
Mr Bloom’s glance travelled down the edge of the paper, scanning the
deaths: Callan, Coleman, Dignam, Fawcett, Lowry, Naumann, Peake, what
Peake is that? is it the chap was in Crosbie and Alleyne’s? no, Sexton,
Urbright. Inked characters fast fading on the frayed breaking paper.
Thanks to the Little Flower. Sadly missed. To the inexpressible grief
of his. Aged 88 after a long and tedious illness. Month’s mind:
Quinlan. On whose soul Sweet Jesus have mercy.
 It is now a month since dear Henry fled
 To his home up above in the sky
 While his family weeps and mourns his loss
 Hoping some day to meet him on high.
I tore up the envelope? Yes. Where did I put her letter after I read it
in the bath? He patted his waistcoatpocket. There all right. Dear Henry
fled. Before my patience are exhausted.
National school. Meade’s yard. The hazard. Only two there now. Nodding.
Full as a tick. Too much bone in their skulls. The other trotting round
with a fare. An hour ago I was passing there. The jarvies raised their
hats.
A pointsman’s back straightened itself upright suddenly against a
tramway standard by Mr Bloom’s window. Couldn’t they invent something
automatic so that the wheel itself much handier? Well but that fellow
would lose his job then? Well but then another fellow would get a job
making the new invention?
Antient concert rooms. Nothing on there. A man in a buff suit with a
crape armlet. Not much grief there. Quarter mourning. People in law
perhaps.
They went past the bleak pulpit of saint Mark’s, under the railway
bridge, past the Queen’s theatre: in silence. Hoardings: Eugene
Stratton, Mrs Bandmann Palmer. Could I go to see _Leah_ tonight, I
wonder. I said I. Or the _Lily of Killarney_? Elster Grimes Opera
Company. Big powerful change. Wet bright bills for next week. _Fun on
the Bristol_. Martin Cunningham could work a pass for the Gaiety. Have
to stand a drink or two. As broad as it’s long.
He’s coming in the afternoon. Her songs.
Plasto’s. Sir Philip Crampton’s memorial fountain bust. Who was he?
—How do you do? Martin Cunningham said, raising his palm to his brow in
salute.
—He doesn’t see us, Mr Power said. Yes, he does. How do you do?
—Who? Mr Dedalus asked.
—Blazes Boylan, Mr Power said. There he is airing his quiff.
Just that moment I was thinking.
Mr Dedalus bent across to salute. From the door of the Red Bank the
white disc of a straw hat flashed reply: spruce figure: passed.
Mr Bloom reviewed the nails of his left hand, then those of his right
hand. The nails, yes. Is there anything more in him that they she sees?
Fascination. Worst man in Dublin. That keeps him alive. They sometimes
feel what a person is. Instinct. But a type like that. My nails. I am
just looking at them: well pared. And after: thinking alone. Body
getting a bit softy. I would notice that: from remembering. What causes
that? I suppose the skin can’t contract quickly enough when the flesh
falls off. But the shape is there. The shape is there still. Shoulders.
Hips. Plump. Night of the dance dressing. Shift stuck between the
cheeks behind.
He clasped his hands between his knees and, satisfied, sent his vacant
glance over their faces.
Mr Power asked:
—How is the concert tour getting on, Bloom?
—O, very well, Mr Bloom said. I hear great accounts of it. It’s a good
idea, you see...
—Are you going yourself?
—Well no, Mr Bloom said. In point of fact I have to go down to the
county Clare on some private business. You see the idea is to tour the
chief towns. What you lose on one you can make up on the other.
—Quite so, Martin Cunningham said. Mary Anderson is up there now.
Have you good artists?
—Louis Werner is touring her, Mr Bloom said. O yes, we’ll have all
topnobbers. J. C. Doyle and John MacCormack I hope and. The best, in
fact.
—And _Madame_, Mr Power said smiling. Last but not least.
Mr Bloom unclasped his hands in a gesture of soft politeness and
clasped them. Smith O’Brien. Someone has laid a bunch of flowers there.
Woman. Must be his deathday. For many happy returns. The carriage
wheeling by Farrell’s statue united noiselessly their unresisting
knees.
Oot: a dullgarbed old man from the curbstone tendered his wares, his
mouth opening: oot.
—Four bootlaces for a penny.
Wonder why he was struck off the rolls. Had his office in Hume street.
Same house as Molly’s namesake, Tweedy, crown solicitor for Waterford.
Has that silk hat ever since. Relics of old decency. Mourning too.
Terrible comedown, poor wretch! Kicked about like snuff at a wake.
O’Callaghan on his last legs.
And _Madame_. Twenty past eleven. Up. Mrs Fleming is in to clean. Doing
her hair, humming: _voglio e non vorrei_. No: _vorrei e non_. Looking
at the tips of her hairs to see if they are split. _Mi trema un poco
il_. Beautiful on that _tre_ her voice is: weeping tone. A thrush. A
throstle. There is a word throstle that expresses that.
His eyes passed lightly over Mr Power’s goodlooking face. Greyish over
the ears. _Madame_: smiling. I smiled back. A smile goes a long way.
Only politeness perhaps. Nice fellow. Who knows is that true about the
woman he keeps? Not pleasant for the wife. Yet they say, who was it
told me, there is no carnal. You would imagine that would get played
out pretty quick. Yes, it was Crofton met him one evening bringing her
a pound of rumpsteak. What is this she was? Barmaid in Jury’s. Or the
Moira, was it?
They passed under the hugecloaked Liberator’s form.
Martin Cunningham nudged Mr Power.
—Of the tribe of Reuben, he said.
A tall blackbearded figure, bent on a stick, stumping round the corner
of Elvery’s Elephant house, showed them a curved hand open on his
spine.
—In all his pristine beauty, Mr Power said.
Mr Dedalus looked after the stumping figure and said mildly:
—The devil break the hasp of your back!
Mr Power, collapsing in laughter, shaded his face from the window as
the carriage passed Gray’s statue.
—We have all been there, Martin Cunningham said broadly.
His eyes met Mr Bloom’s eyes. He caressed his beard, adding:
—Well, nearly all of us.
Mr Bloom began to speak with sudden eagerness to his companions’ faces.
—That’s an awfully good one that’s going the rounds about Reuben J and
the son.
—About the boatman? Mr Power asked.
—Yes. Isn’t it awfully good?
—What is that? Mr Dedalus asked. I didn’t hear it.
—There was a girl in the case, Mr Bloom began, and he determined to
send him to the Isle of Man out of harm’s way but when they were
both.....
—What? Mr Dedalus asked. That confirmed bloody hobbledehoy is it?
—Yes, Mr Bloom said. They were both on the way to the boat and he tried
to drown.....
—Drown Barabbas! Mr Dedalus cried. I wish to Christ he did!
Mr Power sent a long laugh down his shaded nostrils.
—No, Mr Bloom said, the son himself.....
Martin Cunningham thwarted his speech rudely:
—Reuben J and the son were piking it down the quay next the river on
their way to the Isle of Man boat and the young chiseller suddenly got
loose and over the wall with him into the Liffey.
—For God’s sake! Mr Dedalus exclaimed in fright. Is he dead?
—Dead! Martin Cunningham cried. Not he! A boatman got a pole and fished
him out by the slack of the breeches and he was landed up to the father
on the quay more dead than alive. Half the town was there.
—Yes, Mr Bloom said. But the funny part is.....
—And Reuben J, Martin Cunningham said, gave the boatman a florin for
saving his son’s life.
A stifled sigh came from under Mr Power’s hand.
—O, he did, Martin Cunningham affirmed. Like a hero. A silver florin.
—Isn’t it awfully good? Mr Bloom said eagerly.
—One and eightpence too much, Mr Dedalus said drily.
Mr Power’s choked laugh burst quietly in the carriage.
Nelson’s pillar.
—Eight plums a penny! Eight for a penny!
—We had better look a little serious, Martin Cunningham said.
Mr Dedalus sighed.
—Ah then indeed, he said, poor little Paddy wouldn’t grudge us a laugh.
Many a good one he told himself.
—The Lord forgive me! Mr Power said, wiping his wet eyes with his
fingers. Poor Paddy! I little thought a week ago when I saw him last
and he was in his usual health that I’d be driving after him like this.
He’s gone from us.
—As decent a little man as ever wore a hat, Mr Dedalus said. He went
very suddenly.
—Breakdown, Martin Cunningham said. Heart.
He tapped his chest sadly.
Blazing face: redhot. Too much John Barleycorn. Cure for a red nose.
Drink like the devil till it turns adelite. A lot of money he spent
colouring it.
Mr Power gazed at the passing houses with rueful apprehension.
—He had a sudden death, poor fellow, he said.
—The best death, Mr Bloom said.
Their wide open eyes looked at him.
—No suffering, he said. A moment and all is over. Like dying in sleep.
No-one spoke.
Dead side of the street this. Dull business by day, land agents,
temperance hotel, Falconer’s railway guide, civil service college,
Gill’s, catholic club, the industrious blind. Why? Some reason. Sun or
wind. At night too. Chummies and slaveys. Under the patronage of the
late Father Mathew. Foundation stone for Parnell. Breakdown. Heart.
White horses with white frontlet plumes came round the Rotunda corner,
galloping. A tiny coffin flashed by. In a hurry to bury. A mourning
coach. Unmarried. Black for the married. Piebald for bachelors. Dun for
a nun.
—Sad, Martin Cunningham said. A child.
A dwarf’s face, mauve and wrinkled like little Rudy’s was. Dwarf’s
body, weak as putty, in a whitelined deal box. Burial friendly society
pays. Penny a week for a sod of turf. Our. Little. Beggar. Baby. Meant
nothing. Mistake of nature. If it’s healthy it’s from the mother. If
not from the man. Better luck next time.
—Poor little thing, Mr Dedalus said. It’s well out of it.
The carriage climbed more slowly the hill of Rutland square. Rattle his
bones. Over the stones. Only a pauper. Nobody owns.
—In the midst of life, Martin Cunningham said.
—But the worst of all, Mr Power said, is the man who takes his own
life.
Martin Cunningham drew out his watch briskly, coughed and put it back.
—The greatest disgrace to have in the family, Mr Power added.
—Temporary insanity, of course, Martin Cunningham said decisively. We
must take a charitable view of it.
—They say a man who does it is a coward, Mr Dedalus said.
—It is not for us to judge, Martin Cunningham said.
Mr Bloom, about to speak, closed his lips again. Martin Cunningham’s
large eyes. Looking away now. Sympathetic human man he is. Intelligent.
Like Shakespeare’s face. Always a good word to say. They have no mercy
on that here or infanticide. Refuse christian burial. They used to
drive a stake of wood through his heart in the grave. As if it wasn’t
broken already. Yet sometimes they repent too late. Found in the
riverbed clutching rushes. He looked at me. And that awful drunkard of
a wife of his. Setting up house for her time after time and then
pawning the furniture on him every Saturday almost. Leading him the
life of the damned. Wear the heart out of a stone, that. Monday
morning. Start afresh. Shoulder to the wheel. Lord, she must have
looked a sight that night Dedalus told me he was in there. Drunk about
the place and capering with Martin’s umbrella.
 And they call me the jewel of Asia,
 Of Asia,
 The geisha.
He looked away from me. He knows. Rattle his bones.
That afternoon of the inquest. The redlabelled bottle on the table. The
room in the hotel with hunting pictures. Stuffy it was. Sunlight
through the slats of the Venetian blind. The coroner’s sunlit ears, big
and hairy. Boots giving evidence. Thought he was asleep first. Then saw
like yellow streaks on his face. Had slipped down to the foot of the
bed. Verdict: overdose. Death by misadventure. The letter. For my son
Leopold.
No more pain. Wake no more. Nobody owns.
The carriage rattled swiftly along Blessington street. Over the stones.
—We are going the pace, I think, Martin Cunningham said.
—God grant he doesn’t upset us on the road, Mr Power said.
—I hope not, Martin Cunningham said. That will be a great race tomorrow
in Germany. The Gordon Bennett.
—Yes, by Jove, Mr Dedalus said. That will be worth seeing, faith.
As they turned into Berkeley street a streetorgan near the Basin sent
over and after them a rollicking rattling song of the halls. Has
anybody here seen Kelly? Kay ee double ell wy. Dead March from _Saul._
He’s as bad as old Antonio. He left me on my ownio. Pirouette! The
_Mater Misericordiae_. Eccles street. My house down there. Big place.
Ward for incurables there. Very encouraging. Our Lady’s Hospice for the
dying. Deadhouse handy underneath. Where old Mrs Riordan died. They
look terrible the women. Her feeding cup and rubbing her mouth with the
spoon. Then the screen round her bed for her to die. Nice young student
that was dressed that bite the bee gave me. He’s gone over to the
lying-in hospital they told me. From one extreme to the other.
The carriage galloped round a corner: stopped.
—What’s wrong now?
A divided drove of branded cattle passed the windows, lowing, slouching
by on padded hoofs, whisking their tails slowly on their clotted bony
croups. Outside them and through them ran raddled sheep bleating their
fear.
—Emigrants, Mr Power said.
—Huuuh! the drover’s voice cried, his switch sounding on their flanks.
Huuuh! out of that!
Thursday, of course. Tomorrow is killing day. Springers. Cuffe sold
them about twentyseven quid each. For Liverpool probably. Roastbeef for
old England. They buy up all the juicy ones. And then the fifth quarter
lost: all that raw stuff, hide, hair, horns. Comes to a big thing in a
year. Dead meat trade. Byproducts of the slaughterhouses for tanneries,
soap, margarine. Wonder if that dodge works now getting dicky meat off
the train at Clonsilla.
The carriage moved on through the drove.
—I can’t make out why the corporation doesn’t run a tramline from the
parkgate to the quays, Mr Bloom said. All those animals could be taken
in trucks down to the boats.
—Instead of blocking up the thoroughfare, Martin Cunningham said. Quite
right. They ought to.
—Yes, Mr Bloom said, and another thing I often thought, is to have
municipal funeral trams like they have in Milan, you know. Run the line
out to the cemetery gates and have special trams, hearse and carriage
and all. Don’t you see what I mean?
—O, that be damned for a story, Mr Dedalus said. Pullman car and saloon
diningroom.
—A poor lookout for Corny, Mr Power added.
—Why? Mr Bloom asked, turning to Mr Dedalus. Wouldn’t it be more decent
than galloping two abreast?
—Well, there’s something in that, Mr Dedalus granted.
—And, Martin Cunningham said, we wouldn’t have scenes like that when
the hearse capsized round Dunphy’s and upset the coffin on to the road.
—That was terrible, Mr Power’s shocked face said, and the corpse fell
about the road. Terrible!
—First round Dunphy’s, Mr Dedalus said, nodding. Gordon Bennett cup.
—Praises be to God! Martin Cunningham said piously.
Bom! Upset. A coffin bumped out on to the road. Burst open. Paddy
Dignam shot out and rolling over stiff in the dust in a brown habit too
large for him. Red face: grey now. Mouth fallen open. Asking what’s up
now. Quite right to close it. Looks horrid open. Then the insides
decompose quickly. Much better to close up all the orifices. Yes, also.
With wax. The sphincter loose. Seal up all.
—Dunphy’s, Mr Power announced as the carriage turned right.
Dunphy’s corner. Mourning coaches drawn up, drowning their grief. A
pause by the wayside. Tiptop position for a pub. Expect we’ll pull up
here on the way back to drink his health. Pass round the consolation.
Elixir of life.
But suppose now it did happen. Would he bleed if a nail say cut him in
the knocking about? He would and he wouldn’t, I suppose. Depends on
where. The circulation stops. Still some might ooze out of an artery.
It would be better to bury them in red: a dark red.
In silence they drove along Phibsborough road. An empty hearse trotted
by, coming from the cemetery: looks relieved.
Crossguns bridge: the royal canal.
Water rushed roaring through the sluices. A man stood on his dropping
barge, between clamps of turf. On the towpath by the lock a
slacktethered horse. Aboard of the _Bugabu._
Their eyes watched him. On the slow weedy waterway he had floated on
his raft coastward over Ireland drawn by a haulage rope past beds of
reeds, over slime, mudchoked bottles, carrion dogs. Athlone, Mullingar,
Moyvalley, I could make a walking tour to see Milly by the canal. Or
cycle down. Hire some old crock, safety. Wren had one the other day at
the auction but a lady’s. Developing waterways. James M’Cann’s hobby to
row me o’er the ferry. Cheaper transit. By easy stages. Houseboats.
Camping out. Also hearses. To heaven by water. Perhaps I will without
writing. Come as a surprise, Leixlip, Clonsilla. Dropping down lock by
lock to Dublin. With turf from the midland bogs. Salute. He lifted his
brown straw hat, saluting Paddy Dignam.
They drove on past Brian Boroimhe house. Near it now.
—I wonder how is our friend Fogarty getting on, Mr Power said.
—Better ask Tom Kernan, Mr Dedalus said.
—How is that? Martin Cunningham said. Left him weeping, I suppose?
—Though lost to sight, Mr Dedalus said, to memory dear.
The carriage steered left for Finglas road.
The stonecutter’s yard on the right. Last lap. Crowded on the spit of
land silent shapes appeared, white, sorrowful, holding out calm hands,
knelt in grief, pointing. Fragments of shapes, hewn. In white silence:
appealing. The best obtainable. Thos. H. Dennany, monumental builder
and sculptor.
Passed.
On the curbstone before Jimmy Geary, the sexton’s, an old tramp sat,
grumbling, emptying the dirt and stones out of his huge dustbrown
yawning boot. After life’s journey.
Gloomy gardens then went by: one by one: gloomy houses.
Mr Power pointed.
—That is where Childs was murdered, he said. The last house.
—So it is, Mr Dedalus said. A gruesome case. Seymour Bushe got him off.
Murdered his brother. Or so they said.
—The crown had no evidence, Mr Power said.
—Only circumstantial, Martin Cunningham added. That’s the maxim of the
law. Better for ninetynine guilty to escape than for one innocent
person to be wrongfully condemned.
They looked. Murderer’s ground. It passed darkly. Shuttered,
tenantless, unweeded garden. Whole place gone to hell. Wrongfully
condemned. Murder. The murderer’s image in the eye of the murdered.
They love reading about it. Man’s head found in a garden. Her clothing
consisted of. How she met her death. Recent outrage. The weapon used.
Murderer is still at large. Clues. A shoelace. The body to be exhumed.
Murder will out.
Cramped in this carriage. She mightn’t like me to come that way without
letting her know. Must be careful about women. Catch them once with
their pants down. Never forgive you after. Fifteen.
The high railings of Prospect rippled past their gaze. Dark poplars,
rare white forms. Forms more frequent, white shapes thronged amid the
trees, white forms and fragments streaming by mutely, sustaining vain
gestures on the air.
The felly harshed against the curbstone: stopped. Martin Cunningham put
out his arm and, wrenching back the handle, shoved the door open with
his knee. He stepped out. Mr Power and Mr Dedalus followed.
Change that soap now. Mr Bloom’s hand unbuttoned his hip pocket swiftly
and transferred the paperstuck soap to his inner handkerchief pocket.
He stepped out of the carriage, replacing the newspaper his other hand
still held.
Paltry funeral: coach and three carriages. It’s all the same.
Pallbearers, gold reins, requiem mass, firing a volley. Pomp of death.
Beyond the hind carriage a hawker stood by his barrow of cakes and
fruit. Simnel cakes those are, stuck together: cakes for the dead.
Dogbiscuits. Who ate them? Mourners coming out.
He followed his companions. Mr Kernan and Ned Lambert followed, Hynes
walking after them. Corny Kelleher stood by the opened hearse and took
out the two wreaths. He handed one to the boy.
Where is that child’s funeral disappeared to?
A team of horses passed from Finglas with toiling plodding tread,
dragging through the funereal silence a creaking waggon on which lay a
granite block. The waggoner marching at their head saluted.
Coffin now. Got here before us, dead as he is. Horse looking round at
it with his plume skeowways. Dull eye: collar tight on his neck,
pressing on a bloodvessel or something. Do they know what they cart out
here every day? Must be twenty or thirty funerals every day. Then Mount
Jerome for the protestants. Funerals all over the world everywhere
every minute. Shovelling them under by the cartload doublequick.
Thousands every hour. Too many in the world.
Mourners came out through the gates: woman and a girl. Leanjawed harpy,
hard woman at a bargain, her bonnet awry. Girl’s face stained with dirt
and tears, holding the woman’s arm, looking up at her for a sign to
cry. Fish’s face, bloodless and livid.
The mutes shouldered the coffin and bore it in through the gates. So
much dead weight. Felt heavier myself stepping out of that bath. First
the stiff: then the friends of the stiff. Corny Kelleher and the boy
followed with their wreaths. Who is that beside them? Ah, the
brother-in-law.
All walked after.
Martin Cunningham whispered:
—I was in mortal agony with you talking of suicide before Bloom.
—What? Mr Power whispered. How so?
—His father poisoned himself, Martin Cunningham whispered. Had the
Queen’s hotel in Ennis. You heard him say he was going to Clare.
Anniversary.
—O God! Mr Power whispered. First I heard of it. Poisoned himself?
He glanced behind him to where a face with dark thinking eyes followed
towards the cardinal’s mausoleum. Speaking.
—Was he insured? Mr Bloom asked.
—I believe so, Mr Kernan answered. But the policy was heavily
mortgaged. Martin is trying to get the youngster into Artane.
—How many children did he leave?
—Five. Ned Lambert says he’ll try to get one of the girls into Todd’s.
—A sad case, Mr Bloom said gently. Five young children.
—A great blow to the poor wife, Mr Kernan added.
—Indeed yes, Mr Bloom agreed.
Has the laugh at him now.
He looked down at the boots he had blacked and polished. She had
outlived him. Lost her husband. More dead for her than for me. One must
outlive the other. Wise men say. There are more women than men in the
world. Condole with her. Your terrible loss. I hope you’ll soon follow
him. For Hindu widows only. She would marry another. Him? No. Yet who
knows after. Widowhood not the thing since the old queen died. Drawn on
a guncarriage. Victoria and Albert. Frogmore memorial mourning. But in
the end she put a few violets in her bonnet. Vain in her heart of
hearts. All for a shadow. Consort not even a king. Her son was the
substance. Something new to hope for not like the past she wanted back,
waiting. It never comes. One must go first: alone, under the ground:
and lie no more in her warm bed.
—How are you, Simon? Ned Lambert said softly, clasping hands. Haven’t
seen you for a month of Sundays.
—Never better. How are all in Cork’s own town?
—I was down there for the Cork park races on Easter Monday, Ned Lambert
said. Same old six and eightpence. Stopped with Dick Tivy.
—And how is Dick, the solid man?
—Nothing between himself and heaven, Ned Lambert answered.
—By the holy Paul! Mr Dedalus said in subdued wonder. Dick Tivy bald?
—Martin is going to get up a whip for the youngsters, Ned Lambert said,
pointing ahead. A few bob a skull. Just to keep them going till the
insurance is cleared up.
—Yes, yes, Mr Dedalus said dubiously. Is that the eldest boy in front?
—Yes, Ned Lambert said, with the wife’s brother. John Henry Menton is
behind. He put down his name for a quid.
—I’ll engage he did, Mr Dedalus said. I often told poor Paddy he ought
to mind that job. John Henry is not the worst in the world.
—How did he lose it? Ned Lambert asked. Liquor, what?
—Many a good man’s fault, Mr Dedalus said with a sigh.
They halted about the door of the mortuary chapel. Mr Bloom stood
behind the boy with the wreath looking down at his sleekcombed hair and
at the slender furrowed neck inside his brandnew collar. Poor boy! Was
he there when the father? Both unconscious. Lighten up at the last
moment and recognise for the last time. All he might have done. I owe
three shillings to O’Grady. Would he understand? The mutes bore the
coffin into the chapel. Which end is his head?
After a moment he followed the others in, blinking in the screened
light. The coffin lay on its bier before the chancel, four tall yellow
candles at its corners. Always in front of us. Corny Kelleher, laying a
wreath at each fore corner, beckoned to the boy to kneel. The mourners
knelt here and there in prayingdesks. Mr Bloom stood behind near the
font and, when all had knelt, dropped carefully his unfolded newspaper
from his pocket and knelt his right knee upon it. He fitted his black
hat gently on his left knee and, holding its brim, bent over piously.
A server bearing a brass bucket with something in it came out through a
door. The whitesmocked priest came after him, tidying his stole with
one hand, balancing with the other a little book against his toad’s
belly. Who’ll read the book? I, said the rook.
They halted by the bier and the priest began to read out of his book
with a fluent croak.
Father Coffey. I knew his name was like a coffin. _Dominenamine._ Bully
about the muzzle he looks. Bosses the show. Muscular christian. Woe
betide anyone that looks crooked at him: priest. Thou art Peter. Burst
sideways like a sheep in clover Dedalus says he will. With a belly on
him like a poisoned pup. Most amusing expressions that man finds. Hhhn:
burst sideways.
_—Non intres in judicium cum servo tuo, Domine._
Makes them feel more important to be prayed over in Latin. Requiem
mass. Crape weepers. Blackedged notepaper. Your name on the altarlist.
Chilly place this. Want to feed well, sitting in there all the morning
in the gloom kicking his heels waiting for the next please. Eyes of a
toad too. What swells him up that way? Molly gets swelled after
cabbage. Air of the place maybe. Looks full up of bad gas. Must be an
infernal lot of bad gas round the place. Butchers, for instance: they
get like raw beefsteaks. Who was telling me? Mervyn Browne. Down in the
vaults of saint Werburgh’s lovely old organ hundred and fifty they have
to bore a hole in the coffins sometimes to let out the bad gas and burn
it. Out it rushes: blue. One whiff of that and you’re a goner.
My kneecap is hurting me. Ow. That’s better.
The priest took a stick with a knob at the end of it out of the boy’s
bucket and shook it over the coffin. Then he walked to the other end
and shook it again. Then he came back and put it back in the bucket. As
you were before you rested. It’s all written down: he has to do it.
_—Et ne nos inducas in tentationem._
The server piped the answers in the treble. I often thought it would be
better to have boy servants. Up to fifteen or so. After that, of course
...
Holy water that was, I expect. Shaking sleep out of it. He must be fed
up with that job, shaking that thing over all the corpses they trot up.
What harm if he could see what he was shaking it over. Every mortal day
a fresh batch: middleaged men, old women, children, women dead in
childbirth, men with beards, baldheaded businessmen, consumptive girls
with little sparrows’ breasts. All the year round he prayed the same
thing over them all and shook water on top of them: sleep. On Dignam
now.
_—In paradisum._
Said he was going to paradise or is in paradise. Says that over
everybody. Tiresome kind of a job. But he has to say something.
The priest closed his book and went off, followed by the server. Corny
Kelleher opened the sidedoors and the gravediggers came in, hoisted the
coffin again, carried it out and shoved it on their cart. Corny
Kelleher gave one wreath to the boy and one to the brother-in-law. All
followed them out of the sidedoors into the mild grey air. Mr Bloom
came last folding his paper again into his pocket. He gazed gravely at
the ground till the coffincart wheeled off to the left. The metal
wheels ground the gravel with a sharp grating cry and the pack of blunt
boots followed the trundled barrow along a lane of sepulchres.
The ree the ra the ree the ra the roo. Lord, I mustn’t lilt here.
—The O’Connell circle, Mr Dedalus said about him.
Mr Power’s soft eyes went up to the apex of the lofty cone.
—He’s at rest, he said, in the middle of his people, old Dan O’. But
his heart is buried in Rome. How many broken hearts are buried here,
Simon!
—Her grave is over there, Jack, Mr Dedalus said. I’ll soon be stretched
beside her. Let Him take me whenever He likes.
Breaking down, he began to weep to himself quietly, stumbling a little
in his walk. Mr Power took his arm.
—She’s better where she is, he said kindly.
—I suppose so, Mr Dedalus said with a weak gasp. I suppose she is in
heaven if there is a heaven.
Corny Kelleher stepped aside from his rank and allowed the mourners to
plod by.
—Sad occasions, Mr Kernan began politely.
Mr Bloom closed his eyes and sadly twice bowed his head.
—The others are putting on their hats, Mr Kernan said. I suppose we can
do so too. We are the last. This cemetery is a treacherous place.
They covered their heads.
—The reverend gentleman read the service too quickly, don’t you think?
Mr Kernan said with reproof.
Mr Bloom nodded gravely looking in the quick bloodshot eyes. Secret
eyes, secretsearching. Mason, I think: not sure. Beside him again. We
are the last. In the same boat. Hope he’ll say something else.
Mr Kernan added:
—The service of the Irish church used in Mount Jerome is simpler, more
impressive I must say.
Mr Bloom gave prudent assent. The language of course was another thing.
Mr Kernan said with solemnity:
—_I am the resurrection and the life_. That touches a man’s inmost
heart.
—It does, Mr Bloom said.
Your heart perhaps but what price the fellow in the six feet by two
with his toes to the daisies? No touching that. Seat of the affections.
Broken heart. A pump after all, pumping thousands of gallons of blood
every day. One fine day it gets bunged up: and there you are. Lots of
them lying around here: lungs, hearts, livers. Old rusty pumps: damn
the thing else. The resurrection and the life. Once you are dead you
are dead. That last day idea. Knocking them all up out of their graves.
Come forth, Lazarus! And he came fifth and lost the job. Get up! Last
day! Then every fellow mousing around for his liver and his lights and
the rest of his traps. Find damn all of himself that morning.
Pennyweight of powder in a skull. Twelve grammes one pennyweight. Troy
measure.
Corny Kelleher fell into step at their side.
—Everything went off A1, he said. What?
He looked on them from his drawling eye. Policeman’s shoulders. With
your tooraloom tooraloom.
—As it should be, Mr Kernan said.
—What? Eh? Corny Kelleher said.
Mr Kernan assured him.
—Who is that chap behind with Tom Kernan? John Henry Menton asked. I
know his face.
Ned Lambert glanced back.
—Bloom, he said, Madame Marion Tweedy that was, is, I mean, the
soprano. She’s his wife.
—O, to be sure, John Henry Menton said. I haven’t seen her for some
time. She was a finelooking woman. I danced with her, wait, fifteen
seventeen golden years ago, at Mat Dillon’s in Roundtown. And a good
armful she was.
He looked behind through the others.
—What is he? he asked. What does he do? Wasn’t he in the stationery
line? I fell foul of him one evening, I remember, at bowls.
Ned Lambert smiled.
—Yes, he was, he said, in Wisdom Hely’s. A traveller for blottingpaper.
—In God’s name, John Henry Menton said, what did she marry a coon like
that for? She had plenty of game in her then.
—Has still, Ned Lambert said. He does some canvassing for ads.
John Henry Menton’s large eyes stared ahead.
The barrow turned into a side lane. A portly man, ambushed among the
grasses, raised his hat in homage. The gravediggers touched their caps.
—John O’Connell, Mr Power said pleased. He never forgets a friend.
Mr O’Connell shook all their hands in silence. Mr Dedalus said:
—I am come to pay you another visit.
—My dear Simon, the caretaker answered in a low voice. I don’t want
your custom at all.
Saluting Ned Lambert and John Henry Menton he walked on at Martin
Cunningham’s side puzzling two long keys at his back.
—Did you hear that one, he asked them, about Mulcahy from the Coombe?
—I did not, Martin Cunningham said.
They bent their silk hats in concert and Hynes inclined his ear. The
caretaker hung his thumbs in the loops of his gold watchchain and spoke
in a discreet tone to their vacant smiles.
—They tell the story, he said, that two drunks came out here one foggy
evening to look for the grave of a friend of theirs. They asked for
Mulcahy from the Coombe and were told where he was buried. After
traipsing about in the fog they found the grave sure enough. One of the
drunks spelt out the name: Terence Mulcahy. The other drunk was
blinking up at a statue of Our Saviour the widow had got put up.
The caretaker blinked up at one of the sepulchres they passed. He
resumed:
—And, after blinking up at the sacred figure, _Not a bloody bit like
the man_, says he. _That’s not Mulcahy_, says he, _whoever done it_.
Rewarded by smiles he fell back and spoke with Corny Kelleher,
accepting the dockets given him, turning them over and scanning them as
he walked.
—That’s all done with a purpose, Martin Cunningham explained to Hynes.
—I know, Hynes said. I know that.
—To cheer a fellow up, Martin Cunningham said. It’s pure
goodheartedness: damn the thing else.
Mr Bloom admired the caretaker’s prosperous bulk. All want to be on
good terms with him. Decent fellow, John O’Connell, real good sort.
Keys: like Keyes’s ad: no fear of anyone getting out. No passout
checks. _Habeas corpus_. I must see about that ad after the funeral.
Did I write Ballsbridge on the envelope I took to cover when she
disturbed me writing to Martha? Hope it’s not chucked in the dead
letter office. Be the better of a shave. Grey sprouting beard. That’s
the first sign when the hairs come out grey. And temper getting cross.
Silver threads among the grey. Fancy being his wife. Wonder he had the
gumption to propose to any girl. Come out and live in the graveyard.
Dangle that before her. It might thrill her first. Courting death.
Shades of night hovering here with all the dead stretched about. The
shadows of the tombs when churchyards yawn and Daniel O’Connell must be
a descendant I suppose who is this used to say he was a queer breedy
man great catholic all the same like a big giant in the dark. Will o’
the wisp. Gas of graves. Want to keep her mind off it to conceive at
all. Women especially are so touchy. Tell her a ghost story in bed to
make her sleep. Have you ever seen a ghost? Well, I have. It was a
pitchdark night. The clock was on the stroke of twelve. Still they’d
kiss all right if properly keyed up. Whores in Turkish graveyards.
Learn anything if taken young. You might pick up a young widow here.
Men like that. Love among the tombstones. Romeo. Spice of pleasure. In
the midst of death we are in life. Both ends meet. Tantalising for the
poor dead. Smell of grilled beefsteaks to the starving. Gnawing their
vitals. Desire to grig people. Molly wanting to do it at the window.
Eight children he has anyway.
He has seen a fair share go under in his time, lying around him field
after field. Holy fields. More room if they buried them standing.
Sitting or kneeling you couldn’t. Standing? His head might come up some
day above ground in a landslip with his hand pointing. All honeycombed
the ground must be: oblong cells. And very neat he keeps it too: trim
grass and edgings. His garden Major Gamble calls Mount Jerome. Well, so
it is. Ought to be flowers of sleep. Chinese cemeteries with giant
poppies growing produce the best opium Mastiansky told me. The Botanic
Gardens are just over there. It’s the blood sinking in the earth gives
new life. Same idea those jews they said killed the christian boy.
Every man his price. Well preserved fat corpse, gentleman, epicure,
invaluable for fruit garden. A bargain. By carcass of William
Wilkinson, auditor and accountant, lately deceased, three pounds
thirteen and six. With thanks.
I daresay the soil would be quite fat with corpsemanure, bones, flesh,
nails. Charnelhouses. Dreadful. Turning green and pink decomposing. Rot
quick in damp earth. The lean old ones tougher. Then a kind of a
tallowy kind of a cheesy. Then begin to get black, black treacle oozing
out of them. Then dried up. Deathmoths. Of course the cells or whatever
they are go on living. Changing about. Live for ever practically.
Nothing to feed on feed on themselves.
But they must breed a devil of a lot of maggots. Soil must be simply
swirling with them. Your head it simply swurls. Those pretty little
seaside gurls. He looks cheerful enough over it. Gives him a sense of
power seeing all the others go under first. Wonder how he looks at
life. Cracking his jokes too: warms the cockles of his heart. The one
about the bulletin. Spurgeon went to heaven 4 a.m. this morning. 11
p.m. (closing time). Not arrived yet. Peter. The dead themselves the
men anyhow would like to hear an odd joke or the women to know what’s
in fashion. A juicy pear or ladies’ punch, hot, strong and sweet. Keep
out the damp. You must laugh sometimes so better do it that way.
Gravediggers in _Hamlet_. Shows the profound knowledge of the human
heart. Daren’t joke about the dead for two years at least. _De mortuis
nil nisi prius_. Go out of mourning first. Hard to imagine his funeral.
Seems a sort of a joke. Read your own obituary notice they say you live
longer. Gives you second wind. New lease of life.
—How many have you for tomorrow? the caretaker asked.
—Two, Corny Kelleher said. Half ten and eleven.
The caretaker put the papers in his pocket. The barrow had ceased to
trundle. The mourners split and moved to each side of the hole,
stepping with care round the graves. The gravediggers bore the coffin
and set its nose on the brink, looping the bands round it.
Burying him. We come to bury Cæsar. His ides of March or June. He
doesn’t know who is here nor care. Now who is that lankylooking galoot
over there in the macintosh? Now who is he I’d like to know? Now I’d
give a trifle to know who he is. Always someone turns up you never
dreamt of. A fellow could live on his lonesome all his life. Yes, he
could. Still he’d have to get someone to sod him after he died though
he could dig his own grave. We all do. Only man buries. No, ants too.
First thing strikes anybody. Bury the dead. Say Robinson Crusoe was
true to life. Well then Friday buried him. Every Friday buries a
Thursday if you come to look at it.
 O, poor Robinson Crusoe!
 How could you possibly do so?
Poor Dignam! His last lie on the earth in his box. When you think of
them all it does seem a waste of wood. All gnawed through. They could
invent a handsome bier with a kind of panel sliding, let it down that
way. Ay but they might object to be buried out of another fellow’s.
They’re so particular. Lay me in my native earth. Bit of clay from the
holy land. Only a mother and deadborn child ever buried in the one
coffin. I see what it means. I see. To protect him as long as possible
even in the earth. The Irishman’s house is his coffin. Embalming in
catacombs, mummies the same idea.
Mr Bloom stood far back, his hat in his hand, counting the bared heads.
Twelve. I’m thirteen. No. The chap in the macintosh is thirteen.
Death’s number. Where the deuce did he pop out of? He wasn’t in the
chapel, that I’ll swear. Silly superstition that about thirteen.
Nice soft tweed Ned Lambert has in that suit. Tinge of purple. I had
one like that when we lived in Lombard street west. Dressy fellow he
was once. Used to change three suits in the day. Must get that grey
suit of mine turned by Mesias. Hello. It’s dyed. His wife I forgot he’s
not married or his landlady ought to have picked out those threads for
him.
The coffin dived out of sight, eased down by the men straddled on the
gravetrestles. They struggled up and out: and all uncovered. Twenty.
Pause.
If we were all suddenly somebody else.
Far away a donkey brayed. Rain. No such ass. Never see a dead one, they
say. Shame of death. They hide. Also poor papa went away.
Gentle sweet air blew round the bared heads in a whisper. Whisper. The
boy by the gravehead held his wreath with both hands staring quietly in
the black open space. Mr Bloom moved behind the portly kindly
caretaker. Wellcut frockcoat. Weighing them up perhaps to see which
will go next. Well, it is a long rest. Feel no more. It’s the moment
you feel. Must be damned unpleasant. Can’t believe it at first. Mistake
must be: someone else. Try the house opposite. Wait, I wanted to. I
haven’t yet. Then darkened deathchamber. Light they want. Whispering
around you. Would you like to see a priest? Then rambling and
wandering. Delirium all you hid all your life. The death struggle. His
sleep is not natural. Press his lower eyelid. Watching is his nose
pointed is his jaw sinking are the soles of his feet yellow. Pull the
pillow away and finish it off on the floor since he’s doomed. Devil in
that picture of sinner’s death showing him a woman. Dying to embrace
her in his shirt. Last act of _Lucia. Shall I nevermore behold thee_?
Bam! He expires. Gone at last. People talk about you a bit: forget you.
Don’t forget to pray for him. Remember him in your prayers. Even
Parnell. Ivy day dying out. Then they follow: dropping into a hole, one
after the other.
We are praying now for the repose of his soul. Hoping you’re well and
not in hell. Nice change of air. Out of the fryingpan of life into the
fire of purgatory.
Does he ever think of the hole waiting for himself? They say you do
when you shiver in the sun. Someone walking over it. Callboy’s warning.
Near you. Mine over there towards Finglas, the plot I bought. Mamma,
poor mamma, and little Rudy.
The gravediggers took up their spades and flung heavy clods of clay in
on the coffin. Mr Bloom turned away his face. And if he was alive all
the time? Whew! By jingo, that would be awful! No, no: he is dead, of
course. Of course he is dead. Monday he died. They ought to have some
law to pierce the heart and make sure or an electric clock or a
telephone in the coffin and some kind of a canvas airhole. Flag of
distress. Three days. Rather long to keep them in summer. Just as well
to get shut of them as soon as you are sure there’s no.
The clay fell softer. Begin to be forgotten. Out of sight, out of mind.
The caretaker moved away a few paces and put on his hat. Had enough of
it. The mourners took heart of grace, one by one, covering themselves
without show. Mr Bloom put on his hat and saw the portly figure make
its way deftly through the maze of graves. Quietly, sure of his ground,
he traversed the dismal fields.
Hynes jotting down something in his notebook. Ah, the names. But he
knows them all. No: coming to me.
—I am just taking the names, Hynes said below his breath. What is your
christian name? I’m not sure.
—L, Mr Bloom said. Leopold. And you might put down M’Coy’s name too. He
asked me to.
—Charley, Hynes said writing. I know. He was on the _Freeman_ once.
So he was before he got the job in the morgue under Louis Byrne. Good
idea a postmortem for doctors. Find out what they imagine they know. He
died of a Tuesday. Got the run. Levanted with the cash of a few ads.
Charley, you’re my darling. That was why he asked me to. O well, does
no harm. I saw to that, M’Coy. Thanks, old chap: much obliged. Leave
him under an obligation: costs nothing.
—And tell us, Hynes said, do you know that fellow in the, fellow was
over there in the...
He looked around.
—Macintosh. Yes, I saw him, Mr Bloom said. Where is he now?
—M’Intosh, Hynes said scribbling. I don’t know who he is. Is that his
name?
He moved away, looking about him.
—No, Mr Bloom began, turning and stopping. I say, Hynes!
Didn’t hear. What? Where has he disappeared to? Not a sign. Well of all
the. Has anybody here seen? Kay ee double ell. Become invisible. Good
Lord, what became of him?
A seventh gravedigger came beside Mr Bloom to take up an idle spade.
—O, excuse me!
He stepped aside nimbly.
Clay, brown, damp, began to be seen in the hole. It rose. Nearly over.
A mound of damp clods rose more, rose, and the gravediggers rested
their spades. All uncovered again for a few instants. The boy propped
his wreath against a corner: the brother-in-law his on a lump. The
gravediggers put on their caps and carried their earthy spades towards
the barrow. Then knocked the blades lightly on the turf: clean. One
bent to pluck from the haft a long tuft of grass. One, leaving his
mates, walked slowly on with shouldered weapon, its blade blueglancing.
Silently at the gravehead another coiled the coffinband. His navelcord.
The brother-in-law, turning away, placed something in his free hand.
Thanks in silence. Sorry, sir: trouble. Headshake. I know that. For
yourselves just.
The mourners moved away slowly without aim, by devious paths, staying
at whiles to read a name on a tomb.
—Let us go round by the chief’s grave, Hynes said. We have time.
—Let us, Mr Power said.
They turned to the right, following their slow thoughts. With awe Mr
Power’s blank voice spoke:
—Some say he is not in that grave at all. That the coffin was filled
with stones. That one day he will come again.
Hynes shook his head.
—Parnell will never come again, he said. He’s there, all that was
mortal of him. Peace to his ashes.
Mr Bloom walked unheeded along his grove by saddened angels, crosses,
broken pillars, family vaults, stone hopes praying with upcast eyes,
old Ireland’s hearts and hands. More sensible to spend the money on
some charity for the living. Pray for the repose of the soul of. Does
anybody really? Plant him and have done with him. Like down a
coalshoot. Then lump them together to save time. All souls’ day.
Twentyseventh I’ll be at his grave. Ten shillings for the gardener. He
keeps it free of weeds. Old man himself. Bent down double with his
shears clipping. Near death’s door. Who passed away. Who departed this
life. As if they did it of their own accord. Got the shove, all of
them. Who kicked the bucket. More interesting if they told you what
they were. So and So, wheelwright. I travelled for cork lino. I paid
five shillings in the pound. Or a woman’s with her saucepan. I cooked
good Irish stew. Eulogy in a country churchyard it ought to be that
poem of whose is it Wordsworth or Thomas Campbell. Entered into rest
the protestants put it. Old Dr Murren’s. The great physician called him
home. Well it’s God’s acre for them. Nice country residence. Newly
plastered and painted. Ideal spot to have a quiet smoke and read the
_Church Times._ Marriage ads they never try to beautify. Rusty wreaths
hung on knobs, garlands of bronzefoil. Better value that for the money.
Still, the flowers are more poetical. The other gets rather tiresome,
never withering. Expresses nothing. Immortelles.
A bird sat tamely perched on a poplar branch. Like stuffed. Like the
wedding present alderman Hooper gave us. Hoo! Not a budge out of him.
Knows there are no catapults to let fly at him. Dead animal even
sadder. Silly-Milly burying the little dead bird in the kitchen
matchbox, a daisychain and bits of broken chainies on the grave.
The Sacred Heart that is: showing it. Heart on his sleeve. Ought to be
sideways and red it should be painted like a real heart. Ireland was
dedicated to it or whatever that. Seems anything but pleased. Why this
infliction? Would birds come then and peck like the boy with the basket
of fruit but he said no because they ought to have been afraid of the
boy. Apollo that was.
How many! All these here once walked round Dublin. Faithful departed.
As you are now so once were we.
Besides how could you remember everybody? Eyes, walk, voice. Well, the
voice, yes: gramophone. Have a gramophone in every grave or keep it in
the house. After dinner on a Sunday. Put on poor old greatgrandfather.
Kraahraark! Hellohellohello amawfullyglad kraark awfullygladaseeagain
hellohello amawf krpthsth. Remind you of the voice like the photograph
reminds you of the face. Otherwise you couldn’t remember the face after
fifteen years, say. For instance who? For instance some fellow that
died when I was in Wisdom Hely’s.
Rtststr! A rattle of pebbles. Wait. Stop!
He looked down intently into a stone crypt. Some animal. Wait. There he
goes.
An obese grey rat toddled along the side of the crypt, moving the
pebbles. An old stager: greatgrandfather: he knows the ropes. The grey
alive crushed itself in under the plinth, wriggled itself in under it.
Good hidingplace for treasure.
Who lives there? Are laid the remains of Robert Emery. Robert Emmet was
buried here by torchlight, wasn’t he? Making his rounds.
Tail gone now.
One of those chaps would make short work of a fellow. Pick the bones
clean no matter who it was. Ordinary meat for them. A corpse is meat
gone bad. Well and what’s cheese? Corpse of milk. I read in that
_Voyages in China_ that the Chinese say a white man smells like a
corpse. Cremation better. Priests dead against it. Devilling for the
other firm. Wholesale burners and Dutch oven dealers. Time of the
plague. Quicklime feverpits to eat them. Lethal chamber. Ashes to
ashes. Or bury at sea. Where is that Parsee tower of silence? Eaten by
birds. Earth, fire, water. Drowning they say is the pleasantest. See
your whole life in a flash. But being brought back to life no. Can’t
bury in the air however. Out of a flying machine. Wonder does the news
go about whenever a fresh one is let down. Underground communication.
We learned that from them. Wouldn’t be surprised. Regular square feed
for them. Flies come before he’s well dead. Got wind of Dignam. They
wouldn’t care about the smell of it. Saltwhite crumbling mush of
corpse: smell, taste like raw white turnips.
The gates glimmered in front: still open. Back to the world again.
Enough of this place. Brings you a bit nearer every time. Last time I
was here was Mrs Sinico’s funeral. Poor papa too. The love that kills.
And even scraping up the earth at night with a lantern like that case I
read of to get at fresh buried females or even putrefied with running
gravesores. Give you the creeps after a bit. I will appear to you after
death. You will see my ghost after death. My ghost will haunt you after
death. There is another world after death named hell. I do not like
that other world she wrote. No more do I. Plenty to see and hear and
feel yet. Feel live warm beings near you. Let them sleep in their
maggoty beds. They are not going to get me this innings. Warm beds:
warm fullblooded life.
Martin Cunningham emerged from a sidepath, talking gravely.
Solicitor, I think. I know his face. Menton, John Henry, solicitor,
commissioner for oaths and affidavits. Dignam used to be in his office.
Mat Dillon’s long ago. Jolly Mat. Convivial evenings. Cold fowl,
cigars, the Tantalus glasses. Heart of gold really. Yes, Menton. Got
his rag out that evening on the bowlinggreen because I sailed inside
him. Pure fluke of mine: the bias. Why he took such a rooted dislike to
me. Hate at first sight. Molly and Floey Dillon linked under the
lilactree, laughing. Fellow always like that, mortified if women are
by.
Got a dinge in the side of his hat. Carriage probably.
—Excuse me, sir, Mr Bloom said beside them.
They stopped.
—Your hat is a little crushed, Mr Bloom said pointing.
John Henry Menton stared at him for an instant without moving.
—There, Martin Cunningham helped, pointing also.
John Henry Menton took off his hat, bulged out the dinge and smoothed
the nap with care on his coatsleeve. He clapped the hat on his head
again.
—It’s all right now, Martin Cunningham said.
John Henry Menton jerked his head down in acknowledgment.
—Thank you, he said shortly.
They walked on towards the gates. Mr Bloom, chapfallen, drew behind a
few paces so as not to overhear. Martin laying down the law. Martin
could wind a sappyhead like that round his little finger, without his
seeing it.
Oyster eyes. Never mind. Be sorry after perhaps when it dawns on him.
Get the pull over him that way.
Thank you. How grand we are this morning!
[ 7 ]
IN THE HEART OF THE HIBERNIAN METROPOLIS
Before Nelson’s pillar trams slowed, shunted, changed trolley, started
for Blackrock, Kingstown and Dalkey, Clonskea, Rathgar and Terenure,
Palmerston Park and upper Rathmines, Sandymount Green, Rathmines,
Ringsend and Sandymount Tower, Harold’s Cross. The hoarse Dublin United
Tramway Company’s timekeeper bawled them off:
—Rathgar and Terenure!
—Come on, Sandymount Green!
Right and left parallel clanging ringing a doubledecker and a
singledeck moved from their railheads, swerved to the down line, glided
parallel.
—Start, Palmerston Park!
THE WEARER OF THE CROWN
Under the porch of the general post office shoeblacks called and
polished. Parked in North Prince’s street His Majesty’s vermilion
mailcars, bearing on their sides the royal initials, E. R., received
loudly flung sacks of letters, postcards, lettercards, parcels, insured
and paid, for local, provincial, British and overseas delivery.
GENTLEMEN OF THE PRESS
Grossbooted draymen rolled barrels dullthudding out of Prince’s stores
and bumped them up on the brewery float. On the brewery float bumped
dullthudding barrels rolled by grossbooted draymen out of Prince’s
stores.
—There it is, Red Murray said. Alexander Keyes.
—Just cut it out, will you? Mr Bloom said, and I’ll take it round to
the _Telegraph_ office.
The door of Ruttledge’s office creaked again. Davy Stephens, minute in
a large capecoat, a small felt hat crowning his ringlets, passed out
with a roll of papers under his cape, a king’s courier.
Red Murray’s long shears sliced out the advertisement from the
newspaper in four clean strokes. Scissors and paste.
—I’ll go through the printingworks, Mr Bloom said, taking the cut
square.
—Of course, if he wants a par, Red Murray said earnestly, a pen behind
his ear, we can do him one.
—Right, Mr Bloom said with a nod. I’ll rub that in.
We.
WILLIAM BRAYDEN, ESQUIRE, OF OAKLANDS, SANDYMOUNT
Red Murray touched Mr Bloom’s arm with the shears and whispered:
—Brayden.
Mr Bloom turned and saw the liveried porter raise his lettered cap as a
stately figure entered between the newsboards of the _Weekly Freeman
and National Press_ and the _Freeman’s Journal and National Press_.
Dullthudding Guinness’s barrels. It passed statelily up the staircase,
steered by an umbrella, a solemn beardframed face. The broadcloth back
ascended each step: back. All his brains are in the nape of his neck,
Simon Dedalus says. Welts of flesh behind on him. Fat folds of neck,
fat, neck, fat, neck.
—Don’t you think his face is like Our Saviour? Red Murray whispered.
The door of Ruttledge’s office whispered: ee: cree. They always build
one door opposite another for the wind to. Way in. Way out.
Our Saviour: beardframed oval face: talking in the dusk. Mary, Martha.
Steered by an umbrella sword to the footlights: Mario the tenor.
—Or like Mario, Mr Bloom said.
—Yes, Red Murray agreed. But Mario was said to be the picture of Our
Saviour.
Jesusmario with rougy cheeks, doublet and spindle legs. Hand on his
heart. In _Martha._
 Co-ome thou lost one,
 Co-ome thou dear one!
THE CROZIER AND THE PEN
—His grace phoned down twice this morning, Red Murray said gravely.
They watched the knees, legs, boots vanish. Neck.
A telegram boy stepped in nimbly, threw an envelope on the counter and
stepped off posthaste with a word:
_—Freeman!_
Mr Bloom said slowly:
—Well, he is one of our saviours also.
A meek smile accompanied him as he lifted the counterflap, as he passed
in through a sidedoor and along the warm dark stairs and passage, along
the now reverberating boards. But will he save the circulation?
Thumping. Thumping.
He pushed in the glass swingdoor and entered, stepping over strewn
packing paper. Through a lane of clanking drums he made his way towards
Nannetti’s reading closet.
WITH UNFEIGNED REGRET IT IS WE ANNOUNCE THE DISSOLUTION OF A MOST
RESPECTED DUBLIN BURGESS
Hynes here too: account of the funeral probably. Thumping. Thump. This
morning the remains of the late Mr Patrick Dignam. Machines. Smash a
man to atoms if they got him caught. Rule the world today. His
machineries are pegging away too. Like these, got out of hand:
fermenting. Working away, tearing away. And that old grey rat tearing
to get in.
HOW A GREAT DAILY ORGAN IS TURNED OUT
Mr Bloom halted behind the foreman’s spare body, admiring a glossy
crown.
Strange he never saw his real country. Ireland my country. Member for
College green. He boomed that workaday worker tack for all it was
worth. It’s the ads and side features sell a weekly, not the stale news
in the official gazette. Queen Anne is dead. Published by authority in
the year one thousand and. Demesne situate in the townland of
Rosenallis, barony of Tinnahinch. To all whom it may concern schedule
pursuant to statute showing return of number of mules and jennets
exported from Ballina. Nature notes. Cartoons. Phil Blake’s weekly Pat
and Bull story. Uncle Toby’s page for tiny tots. Country bumpkin’s
queries. Dear Mr Editor, what is a good cure for flatulence? I’d like
that part. Learn a lot teaching others. The personal note. M. A. P.
Mainly all pictures. Shapely bathers on golden strand. World’s biggest
balloon. Double marriage of sisters celebrated. Two bridegrooms
laughing heartily at each other. Cuprani too, printer. More Irish than
the Irish.
The machines clanked in threefour time. Thump, thump, thump. Now if he
got paralysed there and no-one knew how to stop them they’d clank on
and on the same, print it over and over and up and back. Monkeydoodle
the whole thing. Want a cool head.
—Well, get it into the evening edition, councillor, Hynes said.
Soon be calling him my lord mayor. Long John is backing him, they say.
The foreman, without answering, scribbled press on a corner of the
sheet and made a sign to a typesetter. He handed the sheet silently
over the dirty glass screen.
—Right: thanks, Hynes said moving off.
Mr Bloom stood in his way.
—If you want to draw the cashier is just going to lunch, he said,
pointing backward with his thumb.
—Did you? Hynes asked.
—Mm, Mr Bloom said. Look sharp and you’ll catch him.
—Thanks, old man, Hynes said. I’ll tap him too.
He hurried on eagerly towards the _Freeman’s Journal_.
Three bob I lent him in Meagher’s. Three weeks. Third hint.
WE SEE THE CANVASSER AT WORK
Mr Bloom laid his cutting on Mr Nannetti’s desk.
—Excuse me, councillor, he said. This ad, you see. Keyes, you remember?
Mr Nannetti considered the cutting awhile and nodded.
—He wants it in for July, Mr Bloom said.
The foreman moved his pencil towards it.
—But wait, Mr Bloom said. He wants it changed. Keyes, you see. He wants
two keys at the top.
Hell of a racket they make. He doesn’t hear it. Nannan. Iron nerves.
Maybe he understands what I.
The foreman turned round to hear patiently and, lifting an elbow, began
to scratch slowly in the armpit of his alpaca jacket.
—Like that, Mr Bloom said, crossing his forefingers at the top.
Let him take that in first.
Mr Bloom, glancing sideways up from the cross he had made, saw the
foreman’s sallow face, think he has a touch of jaundice, and beyond the
obedient reels feeding in huge webs of paper. Clank it. Clank it. Miles
of it unreeled. What becomes of it after? O, wrap up meat, parcels:
various uses, thousand and one things.
Slipping his words deftly into the pauses of the clanking he drew
swiftly on the scarred woodwork.
HOUSE OF KEY(E)S
—Like that, see. Two crossed keys here. A circle. Then here the name.
Alexander Keyes, tea, wine and spirit merchant. So on.
Better not teach him his own business.
—You know yourself, councillor, just what he wants. Then round the top
in leaded: the house of keys. You see? Do you think that’s a good idea?
The foreman moved his scratching hand to his lower ribs and scratched
there quietly.
—The idea, Mr Bloom said, is the house of keys. You know, councillor,
the Manx parliament. Innuendo of home rule. Tourists, you know, from
the isle of Man. Catches the eye, you see. Can you do that?
I could ask him perhaps about how to pronounce that _voglio._ But then
if he didn’t know only make it awkward for him. Better not.
—We can do that, the foreman said. Have you the design?
—I can get it, Mr Bloom said. It was in a Kilkenny paper. He has a
house there too. I’ll just run out and ask him. Well, you can do that
and just a little par calling attention. You know the usual. Highclass
licensed premises. Longfelt want. So on.
The foreman thought for an instant.
—We can do that, he said. Let him give us a three months’ renewal.
A typesetter brought him a limp galleypage. He began to check it
silently. Mr Bloom stood by, hearing the loud throbs of cranks,
watching the silent typesetters at their cases.
ORTHOGRAPHICAL
Want to be sure of his spelling. Proof fever. Martin Cunningham forgot
to give us his spellingbee conundrum this morning. It is amusing to
view the unpar one ar alleled embarra two ars is it? double ess ment of
a harassed pedlar while gauging au the symmetry with a y of a peeled
pear under a cemetery wall. Silly, isn’t it? Cemetery put in of course
on account of the symmetry.
I should have said when he clapped on his topper. Thank you. I ought to
have said something about an old hat or something. No. I could have
said. Looks as good as new now. See his phiz then.
Sllt. The nethermost deck of the first machine jogged forward its
flyboard with sllt the first batch of quirefolded papers. Sllt. Almost
human the way it sllt to call attention. Doing its level best to speak.
That door too sllt creaking, asking to be shut. Everything speaks in
its own way. Sllt.
NOTED CHURCHMAN AN OCCASIONAL CONTRIBUTOR
The foreman handed back the galleypage suddenly, saying:
—Wait. Where’s the archbishop’s letter? It’s to be repeated in the
_Telegraph._ Where’s what’s his name?
He looked about him round his loud unanswering machines.
—Monks, sir? a voice asked from the castingbox.
—Ay. Where’s Monks?
—Monks!
Mr Bloom took up his cutting. Time to get out.
—Then I’ll get the design, Mr Nannetti, he said, and you’ll give it a
good place I know.
—Monks!
—Yes, sir.
Three months’ renewal. Want to get some wind off my chest first. Try it
anyhow. Rub in August: good idea: horseshow month. Ballsbridge.
Tourists over for the show.
A DAYFATHER
He walked on through the caseroom passing an old man, bowed,
spectacled, aproned. Old Monks, the dayfather. Queer lot of stuff he
must have put through his hands in his time: obituary notices, pubs’
ads, speeches, divorce suits, found drowned. Nearing the end of his
tether now. Sober serious man with a bit in the savingsbank I’d say.
Wife a good cook and washer. Daughter working the machine in the
parlour. Plain Jane, no damn nonsense.
AND IT WAS THE FEAST OF THE PASSOVER
He stayed in his walk to watch a typesetter neatly distributing type.
Reads it backwards first. Quickly he does it. Must require some
practice that. mangiD kcirtaP. Poor papa with his hagadah book, reading
backwards with his finger to me. Pessach. Next year in Jerusalem. Dear,
O dear! All that long business about that brought us out of the land of
Egypt and into the house of bondage _alleluia. Shema Israel Adonai
Elohenu_. No, that’s the other. Then the twelve brothers, Jacob’s sons.
And then the lamb and the cat and the dog and the stick and the water
and the butcher. And then the angel of death kills the butcher and he
kills the ox and the dog kills the cat. Sounds a bit silly till you
come to look into it well. Justice it means but it’s everybody eating
everyone else. That’s what life is after all. How quickly he does that
job. Practice makes perfect. Seems to see with his fingers.
Mr Bloom passed on out of the clanking noises through the gallery on to
the landing. Now am I going to tram it out all the way and then catch
him out perhaps. Better phone him up first. Number? Yes. Same as
Citron’s house. Twentyeight. Twentyeight double four.
ONLY ONCE MORE THAT SOAP
He went down the house staircase. Who the deuce scrawled all over those
walls with matches? Looks as if they did it for a bet. Heavy greasy
smell there always is in those works. Lukewarm glue in Thom’s next door
when I was there.
He took out his handkerchief to dab his nose. Citronlemon? Ah, the soap
I put there. Lose it out of that pocket. Putting back his handkerchief
he took out the soap and stowed it away, buttoned, into the hip pocket
of his trousers.
What perfume does your wife use? I could go home still: tram: something
I forgot. Just to see: before: dressing. No. Here. No.
A sudden screech of laughter came from the _Evening Telegraph_ office.
Know who that is. What’s up? Pop in a minute to phone. Ned Lambert it
is.
He entered softly.
ERIN, GREEN GEM OF THE SILVER SEA
—The ghost walks, professor MacHugh murmured softly, biscuitfully to
the dusty windowpane.
Mr Dedalus, staring from the empty fireplace at Ned Lambert’s quizzing
face, asked of it sourly:
—Agonising Christ, wouldn’t it give you a heartburn on your arse?
Ned Lambert, seated on the table, read on:
—_Or again, note the meanderings of some purling rill as it babbles on
its way, tho’ quarrelling with the stony obstacles, to the tumbling
waters of Neptune’s blue domain, ’mid mossy banks, fanned by gentlest
zephyrs, played on by the glorious sunlight or ’neath the shadows cast
o’er its pensive bosom by the overarching leafage of the giants of the
forest_. What about that, Simon? he asked over the fringe of his
newspaper. How’s that for high?
—Changing his drink, Mr Dedalus said.
Ned Lambert, laughing, struck the newspaper on his knees, repeating:
—_The pensive bosom and the overarsing leafage_. O boys! O boys!
—And Xenophon looked upon Marathon, Mr Dedalus said, looking again on
the fireplace and to the window, and Marathon looked on the sea.
—That will do, professor MacHugh cried from the window. I don’t want to
hear any more of the stuff.
He ate off the crescent of water biscuit he had been nibbling and,
hungered, made ready to nibble the biscuit in his other hand.
High falutin stuff. Bladderbags. Ned Lambert is taking a day off I see.
Rather upsets a man’s day, a funeral does. He has influence they say.
Old Chatterton, the vicechancellor, is his granduncle or his
greatgranduncle. Close on ninety they say. Subleader for his death
written this long time perhaps. Living to spite them. Might go first
himself. Johnny, make room for your uncle. The right honourable Hedges
Eyre Chatterton. Daresay he writes him an odd shaky cheque or two on
gale days. Windfall when he kicks out. Alleluia.
—Just another spasm, Ned Lambert said.
—What is it? Mr Bloom asked.
—A recently discovered fragment of Cicero, professor MacHugh answered
with pomp of tone. _Our lovely land_.
SHORT BUT TO THE POINT
—Whose land? Mr Bloom said simply.
—Most pertinent question, the professor said between his chews. With an
accent on the whose.
—Dan Dawson’s land Mr Dedalus said.
—Is it his speech last night? Mr Bloom asked.
Ned Lambert nodded.
—But listen to this, he said.
The doorknob hit Mr Bloom in the small of the back as the door was
pushed in.
—Excuse me, J. J. O’Molloy said, entering.
Mr Bloom moved nimbly aside.
—I beg yours, he said.
—Good day, Jack.
—Come in. Come in.
—Good day.
—How are you, Dedalus?
—Well. And yourself?
J. J. O’Molloy shook his head.
SAD
Cleverest fellow at the junior bar he used to be. Decline, poor chap.
That hectic flush spells finis for a man. Touch and go with him. What’s
in the wind, I wonder. Money worry.
—_Or again if we but climb the serried mountain peaks._
—You’re looking extra.
—Is the editor to be seen? J. J. O’Molloy asked, looking towards the
inner door.
—Very much so, professor MacHugh said. To be seen and heard. He’s in
his sanctum with Lenehan.
J. J. O’Molloy strolled to the sloping desk and began to turn back the
pink pages of the file.
Practice dwindling. A mighthavebeen. Losing heart. Gambling. Debts of
honour. Reaping the whirlwind. Used to get good retainers from D. and
T. Fitzgerald. Their wigs to show the grey matter. Brains on their
sleeve like the statue in Glasnevin. Believe he does some literary work
for the _Express_ with Gabriel Conroy. Wellread fellow. Myles Crawford
began on the _Independent._ Funny the way those newspaper men veer
about when they get wind of a new opening. Weathercocks. Hot and cold
in the same breath. Wouldn’t know which to believe. One story good till
you hear the next. Go for one another baldheaded in the papers and then
all blows over. Hail fellow well met the next moment.
—Ah, listen to this for God’ sake, Ned Lambert pleaded. _Or again if we
but climb the serried mountain peaks..._
—Bombast! the professor broke in testily. Enough of the inflated
windbag!
—_Peaks_, Ned Lambert went on, _towering high on high, to bathe our
souls, as it were..._
—Bathe his lips, Mr Dedalus said. Blessed and eternal God! Yes? Is he
taking anything for it?
_—As ’twere, in the peerless panorama of Ireland’s portfolio,
unmatched, despite their wellpraised prototypes in other vaunted prize
regions, for very beauty, of bosky grove and undulating plain and
luscious pastureland of vernal green, steeped in the transcendent
translucent glow of our mild mysterious Irish twilight..._
HIS NATIVE DORIC
—The moon, professor MacHugh said. He forgot Hamlet.
_—That mantles the vista far and wide and wait till the glowing orb of
the moon shine forth to irradiate her silver effulgence..._
—O! Mr Dedalus cried, giving vent to a hopeless groan. Shite and
onions! That’ll do, Ned. Life is too short.
He took off his silk hat and, blowing out impatiently his bushy
moustache, welshcombed his hair with raking fingers.
Ned Lambert tossed the newspaper aside, chuckling with delight. An
instant after a hoarse bark of laughter burst over professor MacHugh’s
unshaven blackspectacled face.
—Doughy Daw! he cried.
WHAT WETHERUP SAID
All very fine to jeer at it now in cold print but it goes down like hot
cake that stuff. He was in the bakery line too, wasn’t he? Why they
call him Doughy Daw. Feathered his nest well anyhow. Daughter engaged
to that chap in the inland revenue office with the motor. Hooked that
nicely. Entertainments. Open house. Big blowout. Wetherup always said
that. Get a grip of them by the stomach.
The inner door was opened violently and a scarlet beaked face, crested
by a comb of feathery hair, thrust itself in. The bold blue eyes stared
about them and the harsh voice asked:
—What is it?
—And here comes the sham squire himself! professor MacHugh said
grandly.
—Getonouthat, you bloody old pedagogue! the editor said in recognition.
—Come, Ned, Mr Dedalus said, putting on his hat. I must get a drink
after that.
—Drink! the editor cried. No drinks served before mass.
—Quite right too, Mr Dedalus said, going out. Come on, Ned.
Ned Lambert sidled down from the table. The editor’s blue eyes roved
towards Mr Bloom’s face, shadowed by a smile.
—Will you join us, Myles? Ned Lambert asked.
MEMORABLE BATTLES RECALLED
—North Cork militia! the editor cried, striding to the mantelpiece. We
won every time! North Cork and Spanish officers!
—Where was that, Myles? Ned Lambert asked with a reflective glance at
his toecaps.
—In Ohio! the editor shouted.
—So it was, begad, Ned Lambert agreed.
Passing out he whispered to J. J. O’Molloy:
—Incipient jigs. Sad case.
—Ohio! the editor crowed in high treble from his uplifted scarlet face.
My Ohio!
—A perfect cretic! the professor said. Long, short and long.
O, HARP EOLIAN!
He took a reel of dental floss from his waistcoat pocket and, breaking
off a piece, twanged it smartly between two and two of his resonant
unwashed teeth.
—Bingbang, bangbang.
Mr Bloom, seeing the coast clear, made for the inner door.
—Just a moment, Mr Crawford, he said. I just want to phone about an ad.
He went in.
—What about that leader this evening? professor MacHugh asked, coming
to the editor and laying a firm hand on his shoulder.
—That’ll be all right, Myles Crawford said more calmly. Never you fret.
Hello, Jack. That’s all right.
—Good day, Myles, J. J. O’Molloy said, letting the pages he held slip
limply back on the file. Is that Canada swindle case on today?
The telephone whirred inside.
—Twentyeight... No, twenty... Double four... Yes.
SPOT THE WINNER
Lenehan came out of the inner office with _Sport_’s tissues.
—Who wants a dead cert for the Gold cup? he asked. Sceptre with O.
Madden up.
He tossed the tissues on to the table.
Screams of newsboys barefoot in the hall rushed near and the door was
flung open.
—Hush, Lenehan said. I hear feetstoops.
Professor MacHugh strode across the room and seized the cringing urchin
by the collar as the others scampered out of the hall and down the
steps. The tissues rustled up in the draught, floated softly in the air
blue scrawls and under the table came to earth.
—It wasn’t me, sir. It was the big fellow shoved me, sir.
—Throw him out and shut the door, the editor said. There’s a hurricane
blowing.
Lenehan began to paw the tissues up from the floor, grunting as he
stooped twice.
—Waiting for the racing special, sir, the newsboy said. It was Pat
Farrell shoved me, sir.
He pointed to two faces peering in round the doorframe.
—Him, sir.
—Out of this with you, professor MacHugh said gruffly.
He hustled the boy out and banged the door to.
J. J. O’Molloy turned the files crackingly over, murmuring, seeking:
—Continued on page six, column four.
—Yes, _Evening Telegraph_ here, Mr Bloom phoned from the inner office.
Is the boss...? Yes, _Telegraph_... To where? Aha! Which auction
rooms?... Aha! I see... Right. I’ll catch him.
A COLLISION ENSUES
The bell whirred again as he rang off. He came in quickly and bumped
against Lenehan who was struggling up with the second tissue.
—_Pardon, monsieur_, Lenehan said, clutching him for an instant and
making a grimace.
—My fault, Mr Bloom said, suffering his grip. Are you hurt? I’m in a
hurry.
—Knee, Lenehan said.
He made a comic face and whined, rubbing his knee:
—The accumulation of the _anno Domini_.
—Sorry, Mr Bloom said.
He went to the door and, holding it ajar, paused. J. J. O’Molloy
slapped the heavy pages over. The noise of two shrill voices, a
mouthorgan, echoed in the bare hallway from the newsboys squatted on
the doorsteps:
 We are the boys of Wexford
 Who fought with heart and hand.
EXIT BLOOM
—I’m just running round to Bachelor’s walk, Mr Bloom said, about this
ad of Keyes’s. Want to fix it up. They tell me he’s round there in
Dillon’s.
He looked indecisively for a moment at their faces. The editor who,
leaning against the mantelshelf, had propped his head on his hand,
suddenly stretched forth an arm amply.
—Begone! he said. The world is before you.
—Back in no time, Mr Bloom said, hurrying out.
J. J. O’Molloy took the tissues from Lenehan’s hand and read them,
blowing them apart gently, without comment.
—He’ll get that advertisement, the professor said, staring through his
blackrimmed spectacles over the crossblind. Look at the young scamps
after him.
—Show. Where? Lenehan cried, running to the window.
A STREET CORTÈGE
Both smiled over the crossblind at the file of capering newsboys in Mr
Bloom’s wake, the last zigzagging white on the breeze a mocking kite, a
tail of white bowknots.
—Look at the young guttersnipe behind him hue and cry, Lenehan said,
and you’ll kick. O, my rib risible! Taking off his flat spaugs and the
walk. Small nines. Steal upon larks.
He began to mazurka in swift caricature across the floor on sliding
feet past the fireplace to J. J. O’Molloy who placed the tissues in his
receiving hands.
—What’s that? Myles Crawford said with a start. Where are the other two
gone?
—Who? the professor said, turning. They’re gone round to the Oval for a
drink. Paddy Hooper is there with Jack Hall. Came over last night.
—Come on then, Myles Crawford said. Where’s my hat?
He walked jerkily into the office behind, parting the vent of his
jacket, jingling his keys in his back pocket. They jingled then in the
air and against the wood as he locked his desk drawer.
—He’s pretty well on, professor MacHugh said in a low voice.
—Seems to be, J. J. O’Molloy said, taking out a cigarettecase in
murmuring meditation, but it is not always as it seems. Who has the
most matches?
THE CALUMET OF PEACE
He offered a cigarette to the professor and took one himself. Lenehan
promptly struck a match for them and lit their cigarettes in turn. J.
J. O’Molloy opened his case again and offered it.
—_Thanky vous_, Lenehan said, helping himself.
The editor came from the inner office, a straw hat awry on his brow. He
declaimed in song, pointing sternly at professor MacHugh:
 ’Twas rank and fame that tempted thee,
 ’Twas empire charmed thy heart.
The professor grinned, locking his long lips.
—Eh? You bloody old Roman empire? Myles Crawford said.
He took a cigarette from the open case. Lenehan, lighting it for him
with quick grace, said:
—Silence for my brandnew riddle!
—_Imperium romanum_, J. J. O’Molloy said gently. It sounds nobler than
British or Brixton. The word reminds one somehow of fat in the fire.
Myles Crawford blew his first puff violently towards the ceiling.
—That’s it, he said. We are the fat. You and I are the fat in the fire.
We haven’t got the chance of a snowball in hell.
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
—Wait a moment, professor MacHugh said, raising two quiet claws. We
mustn’t be led away by words, by sounds of words. We think of Rome,
imperial, imperious, imperative.
He extended elocutionary arms from frayed stained shirtcuffs, pausing:
—What was their civilisation? Vast, I allow: but vile. Cloacae: sewers.
The Jews in the wilderness and on the mountaintop said: _It is meet to
be here. Let us build an altar to Jehovah_. The Roman, like the
Englishman who follows in his footsteps, brought to every new shore on
which he set his foot (on our shore he never set it) only his cloacal
obsession. He gazed about him in his toga and he said: _It is meet to
be here. Let us construct a watercloset._
—Which they accordingly did do, Lenehan said. Our old ancient
ancestors, as we read in the first chapter of Guinness’s, were partial
to the running stream.
—They were nature’s gentlemen, J. J. O’Molloy murmured. But we have
also Roman law.
—And Pontius Pilate is its prophet, professor MacHugh responded.
—Do you know that story about chief baron Palles? J. J. O’Molloy asked.
It was at the royal university dinner. Everything was going swimmingly
...
—First my riddle, Lenehan said. Are you ready?
Mr O’Madden Burke, tall in copious grey of Donegal tweed, came in from
the hallway. Stephen Dedalus, behind him, uncovered as he entered.
—_Entrez, mes enfants!_ Lenehan cried.
—I escort a suppliant, Mr O’Madden Burke said melodiously. Youth led by
Experience visits Notoriety.
—How do you do? the editor said, holding out a hand. Come in. Your
governor is just gone.
???
Lenehan said to all:
—Silence! What opera resembles a railwayline? Reflect, ponder,
excogitate, reply.
Stephen handed over the typed sheets, pointing to the title and
signature.
—Who? the editor asked.
Bit torn off.
—Mr Garrett Deasy, Stephen said.
—That old pelters, the editor said. Who tore it? Was he short taken?
 On swift sail flaming
 From storm and south
 He comes, pale vampire,
 Mouth to my mouth.
—Good day, Stephen, the professor said, coming to peer over their
shoulders. Foot and mouth? Are you turned...?
Bullockbefriending bard.
SHINDY IN WELLKNOWN RESTAURANT
—Good day, sir, Stephen answered blushing. The letter is not mine. Mr
Garrett Deasy asked me to...
—O, I know him, Myles Crawford said, and I knew his wife too. The
bloodiest old tartar God ever made. By Jesus, she had the foot and
mouth disease and no mistake! The night she threw the soup in the
waiter’s face in the Star and Garter. Oho!
A woman brought sin into the world. For Helen, the runaway wife of
Menelaus, ten years the Greeks. O’Rourke, prince of Breffni.
—Is he a widower? Stephen asked.
—Ay, a grass one, Myles Crawford said, his eye running down the
typescript. Emperor’s horses. Habsburg. An Irishman saved his life on
the ramparts of Vienna. Don’t you forget! Maximilian Karl O’Donnell,
graf von Tirconnell in Ireland. Sent his heir over to make the king an
Austrian fieldmarshal now. Going to be trouble there one day. Wild
geese. O yes, every time. Don’t you forget that!
—The moot point is did he forget it, J. J. O’Molloy said quietly,
turning a horseshoe paperweight. Saving princes is a thank you job.
Professor MacHugh turned on him.
—And if not? he said.
—I’ll tell you how it was, Myles Crawford began. A Hungarian it was one
day...
LOST CAUSES NOBLE MARQUESS MENTIONED
—We were always loyal to lost causes, the professor said. Success for
us is the death of the intellect and of the imagination. We were never
loyal to the successful. We serve them. I teach the blatant Latin
language. I speak the tongue of a race the acme of whose mentality is
the maxim: time is money. Material domination. _Dominus!_ Lord! Where
is the spirituality? Lord Jesus? Lord Salisbury? A sofa in a westend
club. But the Greek!
KYRIE ELEISON!
A smile of light brightened his darkrimmed eyes, lengthened his long
lips.
—The Greek! he said again. _Kyrios!_ Shining word! The vowels the
Semite and the Saxon know not. _Kyrie!_ The radiance of the intellect.
I ought to profess Greek, the language of the mind. _Kyrie eleison!_
The closetmaker and the cloacamaker will never be lords of our spirit.
We are liege subjects of the catholic chivalry of Europe that foundered
at Trafalgar and of the empire of the spirit, not an _imperium,_ that
went under with the Athenian fleets at Aegospotami. Yes, yes. They went
under. Pyrrhus, misled by an oracle, made a last attempt to retrieve
the fortunes of Greece. Loyal to a lost cause.
He strode away from them towards the window.
—They went forth to battle, Mr O’Madden Burke said greyly, but they
always fell.
—Boohoo! Lenehan wept with a little noise. Owing to a brick received in
the latter half of the _matinée_. Poor, poor, poor Pyrrhus!
He whispered then near Stephen’s ear:
LENEHAN’S LIMERICK
—_There’s a ponderous pundit MacHugh
Who wears goggles of ebony hue.
As he mostly sees double
To wear them why trouble?
I can’t see the Joe Miller. Can you?_
In mourning for Sallust, Mulligan says. Whose mother is beastly dead.
Myles Crawford crammed the sheets into a sidepocket.
—That’ll be all right, he said. I’ll read the rest after. That’ll be
all right.
Lenehan extended his hands in protest.
—But my riddle! he said. What opera is like a railwayline?
—Opera? Mr O’Madden Burke’s sphinx face reriddled.
Lenehan announced gladly:
—_The Rose of Castile_. See the wheeze? Rows of cast steel. Gee!
He poked Mr O’Madden Burke mildly in the spleen. Mr O’Madden Burke fell
back with grace on his umbrella, feigning a gasp.
—Help! he sighed. I feel a strong weakness.
Lenehan, rising to tiptoe, fanned his face rapidly with the rustling
tissues.
The professor, returning by way of the files, swept his hand across
Stephen’s and Mr O’Madden Burke’s loose ties.
—Paris, past and present, he said. You look like communards.
—Like fellows who had blown up the Bastile, J. J. O’Molloy said in
quiet mockery. Or was it you shot the lord lieutenant of Finland
between you? You look as though you had done the deed. General
Bobrikoff.
OMNIUM GATHERUM
—We were only thinking about it, Stephen said.
—All the talents, Myles Crawford said. Law, the classics...
—The turf, Lenehan put in.
—Literature, the press.
—If Bloom were here, the professor said. The gentle art of
advertisement.
—And Madam Bloom, Mr O’Madden Burke added. The vocal muse. Dublin’s
prime favourite.
Lenehan gave a loud cough.
—Ahem! he said very softly. O, for a fresh of breath air! I caught a
cold in the park. The gate was open.
“YOU CAN DO IT!”
The editor laid a nervous hand on Stephen’s shoulder.
—I want you to write something for me, he said. Something with a bite
in it. You can do it. I see it in your face. _In the lexicon of
youth_...
See it in your face. See it in your eye. Lazy idle little schemer.
—Foot and mouth disease! the editor cried in scornful invective. Great
nationalist meeting in Borris-in-Ossory. All balls! Bulldosing the
public! Give them something with a bite in it. Put us all into it, damn
its soul. Father, Son and Holy Ghost and Jakes M’Carthy.
—We can all supply mental pabulum, Mr O’Madden Burke said.
Stephen raised his eyes to the bold unheeding stare.
—He wants you for the pressgang, J. J. O’Molloy said.
THE GREAT GALLAHER
—You can do it, Myles Crawford repeated, clenching his hand in
emphasis. Wait a minute. We’ll paralyse Europe as Ignatius Gallaher
used to say when he was on the shaughraun, doing billiardmarking in the
Clarence. Gallaher, that was a pressman for you. That was a pen. You
know how he made his mark? I’ll tell you. That was the smartest piece
of journalism ever known. That was in eightyone, sixth of May, time of
the invincibles, murder in the Phoenix park, before you were born, I
suppose. I’ll show you.
He pushed past them to the files.
—Look at here, he said turning. The _New York World_ cabled for a
special. Remember that time?
Professor MacHugh nodded.
—_New York World_, the editor said, excitedly pushing back his straw
hat. Where it took place. Tim Kelly, or Kavanagh I mean. Joe Brady and
the rest of them. Where Skin-the-Goat drove the car. Whole route, see?
—Skin-the-Goat, Mr O’Madden Burke said. Fitzharris. He has that
cabman’s shelter, they say, down there at Butt bridge. Holohan told me.
You know Holohan?
—Hop and carry one, is it? Myles Crawford said.
—And poor Gumley is down there too, so he told me, minding stones for
the corporation. A night watchman.
Stephen turned in surprise.
—Gumley? he said. You don’t say so? A friend of my father’s, is it?
—Never mind Gumley, Myles Crawford cried angrily. Let Gumley mind the
stones, see they don’t run away. Look at here. What did Ignatius
Gallaher do? I’ll tell you. Inspiration of genius. Cabled right away.
Have you _Weekly Freeman_ of 17 March? Right. Have you got that?
He flung back pages of the files and stuck his finger on a point.
—Take page four, advertisement for Bransome’s coffee, let us say. Have
you got that? Right.
The telephone whirred.
A DISTANT VOICE
—I’ll answer it, the professor said, going.
—B is parkgate. Good.
His finger leaped and struck point after point, vibrating.
—T is viceregal lodge. C is where murder took place. K is Knockmaroon
gate.
The loose flesh of his neck shook like a cock’s wattles. An illstarched
dicky jutted up and with a rude gesture he thrust it back into his
waistcoat.
—Hello? _Evening Telegraph_ here... Hello?... Who’s there?... Yes...
Yes... Yes.
—F to P is the route Skin-the-Goat drove the car for an alibi,
Inchicore, Roundtown, Windy Arbour, Palmerston Park, Ranelagh. F.A.B.P.
Got that? X is Davy’s publichouse in upper Leeson street.
The professor came to the inner door.
—Bloom is at the telephone, he said.
—Tell him go to hell, the editor said promptly. X is Davy’s
publichouse, see?
CLEVER, VERY
—Clever, Lenehan said. Very.
—Gave it to them on a hot plate, Myles Crawford said, the whole bloody
history.
Nightmare from which you will never awake.
—I saw it, the editor said proudly. I was present. Dick Adams, the
besthearted bloody Corkman the Lord ever put the breath of life in, and
myself.
Lenehan bowed to a shape of air, announcing:
—Madam, I’m Adam. And Able was I ere I saw Elba.
—History! Myles Crawford cried. The Old Woman of Prince’s street was
there first. There was weeping and gnashing of teeth over that. Out of
an advertisement. Gregor Grey made the design for it. That gave him the
leg up. Then Paddy Hooper worked Tay Pay who took him on to the _Star._
Now he’s got in with Blumenfeld. That’s press. That’s talent. Pyatt! He
was all their daddies!
—The father of scare journalism, Lenehan confirmed, and the
brother-in-law of Chris Callinan.
—Hello?... Are you there?... Yes, he’s here still. Come across
yourself.
—Where do you find a pressman like that now, eh? the editor cried.
He flung the pages down.
—Clamn dever, Lenehan said to Mr O’Madden Burke.
—Very smart, Mr O’Madden Burke said.
Professor MacHugh came from the inner office.
—Talking about the invincibles, he said, did you see that some hawkers
were up before the recorder...
—O yes, J. J. O’Molloy said eagerly. Lady Dudley was walking home
through the park to see all the trees that were blown down by that
cyclone last year and thought she’d buy a view of Dublin. And it turned
out to be a commemoration postcard of Joe Brady or Number One or
Skin-the-Goat. Right outside the viceregal lodge, imagine!
—They’re only in the hook and eye department, Myles Crawford said.
Psha! Press and the bar! Where have you a man now at the bar like those
fellows, like Whiteside, like Isaac Butt, like silvertongued O’Hagan.
Eh? Ah, bloody nonsense. Psha! Only in the halfpenny place.
His mouth continued to twitch unspeaking in nervous curls of disdain.
Would anyone wish that mouth for her kiss? How do you know? Why did you
write it then?
RHYMES AND REASONS
Mouth, south. Is the mouth south someway? Or the south a mouth? Must be
some. South, pout, out, shout, drouth. Rhymes: two men dressed the
same, looking the same, two by two.
 ........................ la tua pace
 .................. che parlar ti piace
 Mentre che il vento, come fa, si tace.
He saw them three by three, approaching girls, in green, in rose, in
russet, entwining, _per l’aer perso_, in mauve, in purple, _quella
pacifica oriafiamma_, gold of oriflamme, _di rimirar fè più ardenti._
But I old men, penitent, leadenfooted, underdarkneath the night: mouth
south: tomb womb.
—Speak up for yourself, Mr O’Madden Burke said.
SUFFICIENT FOR THE DAY...
J. J. O’Molloy, smiling palely, took up the gage.
—My dear Myles, he said, flinging his cigarette aside, you put a false
construction on my words. I hold no brief, as at present advised, for
the third profession _qua_ profession but your Cork legs are running
away with you. Why not bring in Henry Grattan and Flood and Demosthenes
and Edmund Burke? Ignatius Gallaher we all know and his Chapelizod
boss, Harmsworth of the farthing press, and his American cousin of the
Bowery guttersheet not to mention _Paddy Kelly’s Budget_, _Pue’s
Occurrences_ and our watchful friend _The Skibbereen Eagle_. Why bring
in a master of forensic eloquence like Whiteside? Sufficient for the
day is the newspaper thereof.
LINKS WITH BYGONE DAYS OF YORE
—Grattan and Flood wrote for this very paper, the editor cried in his
face. Irish volunteers. Where are you now? Established 1763. Dr Lucas.
Who have you now like John Philpot Curran? Psha!
—Well, J. J. O’Molloy said, Bushe K.C., for example.
—Bushe? the editor said. Well, yes: Bushe, yes. He has a strain of it
in his blood. Kendal Bushe or I mean Seymour Bushe.
—He would have been on the bench long ago, the professor said, only for
.... But no matter.
J. J. O’Molloy turned to Stephen and said quietly and slowly:
—One of the most polished periods I think I ever listened to in my life
fell from the lips of Seymour Bushe. It was in that case of fratricide,
the Childs murder case. Bushe defended him.
 _And in the porches of mine ear did pour._
By the way how did he find that out? He died in his sleep. Or the other
story, beast with two backs?
—What was that? the professor asked.
ITALIA, MAGISTRA ARTIUM
—He spoke on the law of evidence, J. J. O’Molloy said, of Roman justice
as contrasted with the earlier Mosaic code, the _lex talionis_. And he
cited the Moses of Michelangelo in the vatican.
—Ha.
—A few wellchosen words, Lenehan prefaced. Silence!
Pause. J. J. O’Molloy took out his cigarettecase.
False lull. Something quite ordinary.
Messenger took out his matchbox thoughtfully and lit his cigar.
I have often thought since on looking back over that strange time that
it was that small act, trivial in itself, that striking of that match,
that determined the whole aftercourse of both our lives.
A POLISHED PERIOD
J. J. O’Molloy resumed, moulding his words:
—He said of it: _that stony effigy in frozen music, horned and
terrible, of the human form divine, that eternal symbol of wisdom and
of prophecy which, if aught that the imagination or the hand of
sculptor has wrought in marble of soultransfigured and of
soultransfiguring deserves to live, deserves to live._
His slim hand with a wave graced echo and fall.
—Fine! Myles Crawford said at once.
—The divine afflatus, Mr O’Madden Burke said.
—You like it? J. J. O’Molloy asked Stephen.
Stephen, his blood wooed by grace of language and gesture, blushed. He
took a cigarette from the case. J. J. O’Molloy offered his case to
Myles Crawford. Lenehan lit their cigarettes as before and took his
trophy, saying:
—Muchibus thankibus.
A MAN OF HIGH MORALE
—Professor Magennis was speaking to me about you, J. J. O’Molloy said
to Stephen. What do you think really of that hermetic crowd, the opal
hush poets: A. E. the mastermystic? That Blavatsky woman started it.
She was a nice old bag of tricks. A. E. has been telling some yankee
interviewer that you came to him in the small hours of the morning to
ask him about planes of consciousness. Magennis thinks you must have
been pulling A. E.’s leg. He is a man of the very highest morale,
Magennis.
Speaking about me. What did he say? What did he say? What did he say
about me? Don’t ask.
—No, thanks, professor MacHugh said, waving the cigarettecase aside.
Wait a moment. Let me say one thing. The finest display of oratory I
ever heard was a speech made by John F Taylor at the college historical
society. Mr Justice Fitzgibbon, the present lord justice of appeal, had
spoken and the paper under debate was an essay (new for those days),
advocating the revival of the Irish tongue.
He turned towards Myles Crawford and said:
—You know Gerald Fitzgibbon. Then you can imagine the style of his
discourse.
—He is sitting with Tim Healy, J. J. O’Molloy said, rumour has it, on
the Trinity college estates commission.
—He is sitting with a sweet thing, Myles Crawford said, in a child’s
frock. Go on. Well?
—It was the speech, mark you, the professor said, of a finished orator,
full of courteous haughtiness and pouring in chastened diction I will
not say the vials of his wrath but pouring the proud man’s contumely
upon the new movement. It was then a new movement. We were weak,
therefore worthless.
He closed his long thin lips an instant but, eager to be on, raised an
outspanned hand to his spectacles and, with trembling thumb and
ringfinger touching lightly the black rims, steadied them to a new
focus.
IMPROMPTU
In ferial tone he addressed J. J. O’Molloy:
—Taylor had come there, you must know, from a sickbed. That he had
prepared his speech I do not believe for there was not even one
shorthandwriter in the hall. His dark lean face had a growth of shaggy
beard round it. He wore a loose white silk neckcloth and altogether he
looked (though he was not) a dying man.
His gaze turned at once but slowly from J. J. O’Molloy’s towards
Stephen’s face and then bent at once to the ground, seeking. His
unglazed linen collar appeared behind his bent head, soiled by his
withering hair. Still seeking, he said:
—When Fitzgibbon’s speech had ended John F Taylor rose to reply.
Briefly, as well as I can bring them to mind, his words were these.
He raised his head firmly. His eyes bethought themselves once more.
Witless shellfish swam in the gross lenses to and fro, seeking outlet.
He began:
_—Mr Chairman, ladies and gentlemen: Great was my admiration in
listening to the remarks addressed to the youth of Ireland a moment
since by my learned friend. It seemed to me that I had been transported
into a country far away from this country, into an age remote from this
age, that I stood in ancient Egypt and that I was listening to the
speech of some highpriest of that land addressed to the youthful
Moses._
His listeners held their cigarettes poised to hear, their smokes
ascending in frail stalks that flowered with his speech. _And let our
crooked smokes._ Noble words coming. Look out. Could you try your hand
at it yourself?
_—And it seemed to me that I heard the voice of that Egyptian
highpriest raised in a tone of like haughtiness and like pride. I heard
his words and their meaning was revealed to me._
FROM THE FATHERS
It was revealed to me that those things are good which yet are
corrupted which neither if they were supremely good nor unless they
were good could be corrupted. Ah, curse you! That’s saint Augustine.
_—Why will you jews not accept our culture, our religion and our
language? You are a tribe of nomad herdsmen: we are a mighty people.
You have no cities nor no wealth: our cities are hives of humanity and
our galleys, trireme and quadrireme, laden with all manner merchandise
furrow the waters of the known globe. You have but emerged from
primitive conditions: we have a literature, a priesthood, an agelong
history and a polity._
Nile.
Child, man, effigy.
By the Nilebank the babemaries kneel, cradle of bulrushes: a man supple
in combat: stonehorned, stonebearded, heart of stone.
_—You pray to a local and obscure idol: our temples, majestic and
mysterious, are the abodes of Isis and Osiris, of Horus and Ammon Ra.
Yours serfdom, awe and humbleness: ours thunder and the seas. Israel is
weak and few are her children: Egypt is an host and terrible are her
arms. Vagrants and daylabourers are you called: the world trembles at
our name._
A dumb belch of hunger cleft his speech. He lifted his voice above it
boldly:
_—But, ladies and gentlemen, had the youthful Moses listened to and
accepted that view of life, had he bowed his head and bowed his will
and bowed his spirit before that arrogant admonition he would never
have brought the chosen people out of their house of bondage, nor
followed the pillar of the cloud by day. He would never have spoken
with the Eternal amid lightnings on Sinai’s mountaintop nor ever have
come down with the light of inspiration shining in his countenance and
bearing in his arms the tables of the law, graven in the language of
the outlaw._
He ceased and looked at them, enjoying a silence.
OMINOUS—FOR HIM!
J. J. O’Molloy said not without regret:
—And yet he died without having entered the land of promise.
—A—sudden—at—the—moment—though—from—lingering—illness—often—previously—
expectorated—demise, Lenehan added. And with a great future behind him.
The troop of bare feet was heard rushing along the hallway and
pattering up the staircase.
—That is oratory, the professor said uncontradicted.
Gone with the wind. Hosts at Mullaghmast and Tara of the kings. Miles
of ears of porches. The tribune’s words, howled and scattered to the
four winds. A people sheltered within his voice. Dead noise. Akasic
records of all that ever anywhere wherever was. Love and laud him: me
no more.
I have money.
—Gentlemen, Stephen said. As the next motion on the agenda paper may I
suggest that the house do now adjourn?
—You take my breath away. It is not perchance a French compliment? Mr
O’Madden Burke asked. ’Tis the hour, methinks, when the winejug,
metaphorically speaking, is most grateful in Ye ancient hostelry.
—That it be and hereby is resolutely resolved. All that are in favour
say ay, Lenehan announced. The contrary no. I declare it carried. To
which particular boosing shed...? My casting vote is: Mooney’s!
He led the way, admonishing:
—We will sternly refuse to partake of strong waters, will we not? Yes,
we will not. By no manner of means.
Mr O’Madden Burke, following close, said with an ally’s lunge of his
umbrella:
—Lay on, Macduff!
—Chip of the old block! the editor cried, clapping Stephen on the
shoulder. Let us go. Where are those blasted keys?
He fumbled in his pocket pulling out the crushed typesheets.
—Foot and mouth. I know. That’ll be all right. That’ll go in. Where are
they? That’s all right.
He thrust the sheets back and went into the inner office.
LET US HOPE
J. J. O’Molloy, about to follow him in, said quietly to Stephen:
—I hope you will live to see it published. Myles, one moment.
He went into the inner office, closing the door behind him.
—Come along, Stephen, the professor said. That is fine, isn’t it? It
has the prophetic vision. _Fuit Ilium!_ The sack of windy Troy.
Kingdoms of this world. The masters of the Mediterranean are fellaheen
today.
The first newsboy came pattering down the stairs at their heels and
rushed out into the street, yelling:
—Racing special!
Dublin. I have much, much to learn.
They turned to the left along Abbey street.
—I have a vision too, Stephen said.
—Yes? the professor said, skipping to get into step. Crawford will
follow.
Another newsboy shot past them, yelling as he ran:
—Racing special!
DEAR DIRTY DUBLIN
Dubliners.
—Two Dublin vestals, Stephen said, elderly and pious, have lived fifty
and fiftythree years in Fumbally’s lane.
—Where is that? the professor asked.
—Off Blackpitts, Stephen said.
Damp night reeking of hungry dough. Against the wall. Face glistering
tallow under her fustian shawl. Frantic hearts. Akasic records.
Quicker, darlint!
On now. Dare it. Let there be life.
—They want to see the views of Dublin from the top of Nelson’s pillar.
They save up three and tenpence in a red tin letterbox moneybox. They
shake out the threepenny bits and sixpences and coax out the pennies
with the blade of a knife. Two and three in silver and one and seven in
coppers. They put on their bonnets and best clothes and take their
umbrellas for fear it may come on to rain.
—Wise virgins, professor MacHugh said.
LIFE ON THE RAW
—They buy one and fourpenceworth of brawn and four slices of panloaf at
the north city diningrooms in Marlborough street from Miss Kate
Collins, proprietress... They purchase four and twenty ripe plums from
a girl at the foot of Nelson’s pillar to take off the thirst of the
brawn. They give two threepenny bits to the gentleman at the turnstile
and begin to waddle slowly up the winding staircase, grunting,
encouraging each other, afraid of the dark, panting, one asking the
other have you the brawn, praising God and the Blessed Virgin,
threatening to come down, peeping at the airslits. Glory be to God.
They had no idea it was that high.
Their names are Anne Kearns and Florence MacCabe. Anne Kearns has the
lumbago for which she rubs on Lourdes water, given her by a lady who
got a bottleful from a passionist father. Florence MacCabe takes a
crubeen and a bottle of double X for supper every Saturday.
—Antithesis, the professor said nodding twice. Vestal virgins. I can
see them. What’s keeping our friend?
He turned.
A bevy of scampering newsboys rushed down the steps, scattering in all
directions, yelling, their white papers fluttering. Hard after them
Myles Crawford appeared on the steps, his hat aureoling his scarlet
face, talking with J. J. O’Molloy.
—Come along, the professor cried, waving his arm.
He set off again to walk by Stephen’s side.
RETURN OF BLOOM
—Yes, he said. I see them.
Mr Bloom, breathless, caught in a whirl of wild newsboys near the
offices of the _Irish Catholic_ and _Dublin Penny Journal_, called:
—Mr Crawford! A moment!
—_Telegraph_! Racing special!
—What is it? Myles Crawford said, falling back a pace.
A newsboy cried in Mr Bloom’s face:
—Terrible tragedy in Rathmines! A child bit by a bellows!
INTERVIEW WITH THE EDITOR
—Just this ad, Mr Bloom said, pushing through towards the steps,
puffing, and taking the cutting from his pocket. I spoke with Mr Keyes
just now. He’ll give a renewal for two months, he says. After he’ll
see. But he wants a par to call attention in the _Telegraph_ too, the
Saturday pink. And he wants it copied if it’s not too late I told
councillor Nannetti from the _Kilkenny People_. I can have access to it
in the national library. House of keys, don’t you see? His name is
Keyes. It’s a play on the name. But he practically promised he’d give
the renewal. But he wants just a little puff. What will I tell him, Mr
Crawford?
K.M.A.
—Will you tell him he can kiss my arse? Myles Crawford said throwing
out his arm for emphasis. Tell him that straight from the stable.
A bit nervy. Look out for squalls. All off for a drink. Arm in arm.
Lenehan’s yachting cap on the cadge beyond. Usual blarney. Wonder is
that young Dedalus the moving spirit. Has a good pair of boots on him
today. Last time I saw him he had his heels on view. Been walking in
muck somewhere. Careless chap. What was he doing in Irishtown?
—Well, Mr Bloom said, his eyes returning, if I can get the design I
suppose it’s worth a short par. He’d give the ad, I think. I’ll tell
him...
K.M.R.I.A.
—He can kiss my royal Irish arse, Myles Crawford cried loudly over his
shoulder. Any time he likes, tell him.
While Mr Bloom stood weighing the point and about to smile he strode on
jerkily.
RAISING THE WIND
—_Nulla bona_, Jack, he said, raising his hand to his chin. I’m up to
here. I’ve been through the hoop myself. I was looking for a fellow to
back a bill for me no later than last week. Sorry, Jack. You must take
the will for the deed. With a heart and a half if I could raise the
wind anyhow.
J. J. O’Molloy pulled a long face and walked on silently. They caught
up on the others and walked abreast.
—When they have eaten the brawn and the bread and wiped their twenty
fingers in the paper the bread was wrapped in they go nearer to the
railings.
—Something for you, the professor explained to Myles Crawford. Two old
Dublin women on the top of Nelson’s pillar.
SOME COLUMN!—THAT’S WHAT WADDLER ONE SAID
—That’s new, Myles Crawford said. That’s copy. Out for the waxies’
Dargle. Two old trickies, what?
—But they are afraid the pillar will fall, Stephen went on. They see
the roofs and argue about where the different churches are: Rathmines’
blue dome, Adam and Eve’s, saint Laurence O’Toole’s. But it makes them
giddy to look so they pull up their skirts...
THOSE SLIGHTLY RAMBUNCTIOUS FEMALES
—Easy all, Myles Crawford said. No poetic licence. We’re in the
archdiocese here.
—And settle down on their striped petticoats, peering up at the statue
of the onehandled adulterer.
—Onehandled adulterer! the professor cried. I like that. I see the
idea. I see what you mean.
DAMES DONATE DUBLIN’S CITS SPEEDPILLS VELOCITOUS AEROLITHS, BELIEF
—It gives them a crick in their necks, Stephen said, and they are too
tired to look up or down or to speak. They put the bag of plums between
them and eat the plums out of it, one after another, wiping off with
their handkerchiefs the plumjuice that dribbles out of their mouths and
spitting the plumstones slowly out between the railings.
He gave a sudden loud young laugh as a close. Lenehan and Mr O’Madden
Burke, hearing, turned, beckoned and led on across towards Mooney’s.
—Finished? Myles Crawford said. So long as they do no worse.
SOPHIST WALLOPS HAUGHTY HELEN SQUARE ON PROBOSCIS. SPARTANS GNASH
MOLARS. ITHACANS VOW PEN IS CHAMP.
—You remind me of Antisthenes, the professor said, a disciple of
Gorgias, the sophist. It is said of him that none could tell if he were
bitterer against others or against himself. He was the son of a noble
and a bondwoman. And he wrote a book in which he took away the palm of
beauty from Argive Helen and handed it to poor Penelope.
Poor Penelope. Penelope Rich.
They made ready to cross O’Connell street.
HELLO THERE, CENTRAL!
At various points along the eight lines tramcars with motionless
trolleys stood in their tracks, bound for or from Rathmines,
Rathfarnham, Blackrock, Kingstown and Dalkey, Sandymount Green,
Ringsend and Sandymount Tower, Donnybrook, Palmerston Park and Upper
Rathmines, all still, becalmed in short circuit. Hackney cars, cabs,
delivery waggons, mailvans, private broughams, aerated mineral water
floats with rattling crates of bottles, rattled, rolled, horsedrawn,
rapidly.
WHAT?—AND LIKEWISE—WHERE?
—But what do you call it? Myles Crawford asked. Where did they get the
plums?
VIRGILIAN, SAYS PEDAGOGUE. SOPHOMORE PLUMPS FOR OLD MAN MOSES.
—Call it, wait, the professor said, opening his long lips wide to
reflect. Call it, let me see. Call it: _deus nobis hæc otia fecit._
—No, Stephen said. I call it _A Pisgah Sight of Palestine_ or _The
Parable of The Plums._
—I see, the professor said.
He laughed richly.
—I see, he said again with new pleasure. Moses and the promised land.
We gave him that idea, he added to J. J. O’Molloy.
HORATIO IS CYNOSURE THIS FAIR JUNE DAY
J. J. O’Molloy sent a weary sidelong glance towards the statue and held
his peace.
—I see, the professor said.
He halted on sir John Gray’s pavement island and peered aloft at Nelson
through the meshes of his wry smile.
DIMINISHED DIGITS PROVE TOO TITILLATING FOR FRISKY FRUMPS. ANNE
WIMBLES, FLO WANGLES—YET CAN YOU BLAME THEM?
—Onehandled adulterer, he said smiling grimly. That tickles me, I must
say.
—Tickled the old ones too, Myles Crawford said, if the God Almighty’s
truth was known.
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