Public Domain Tales: Ulysses: Book Seven

Public Domain Tales: Ulysses: Book Seven is the one-hundred-and-twenty-first book in the Public Domain Tales series.
[ 17 ]
What parallel courses did Bloom and Stephen follow returning?
Starting united both at normal walking pace from Beresford place they
followed in the order named Lower and Middle Gardiner streets and
Mountjoy square, west: then, at reduced pace, each bearing left,
Gardiner’s place by an inadvertence as far as the farther corner of
Temple street: then, at reduced pace with interruptions of halt,
bearing right, Temple street, north, as far as Hardwicke place.
Approaching, disparate, at relaxed walking pace they crossed both the
circus before George’s church diametrically, the chord in any circle
being less than the arc which it subtends.
Of what did the duumvirate deliberate during their itinerary?
Music, literature, Ireland, Dublin, Paris, friendship, woman,
prostitution, diet, the influence of gaslight or the light of arc and
glowlamps on the growth of adjoining paraheliotropic trees, exposed
corporation emergency dustbuckets, the Roman catholic church,
ecclesiastical celibacy, the Irish nation, jesuit education, careers,
the study of medicine, the past day, the maleficent influence of the
presabbath, Stephen’s collapse.
Did Bloom discover common factors of similarity between their
respective like and unlike reactions to experience?
Both were sensitive to artistic impressions, musical in preference to
plastic or pictorial. Both preferred a continental to an insular manner
of life, a cisatlantic to a transatlantic place of residence. Both
indurated by early domestic training and an inherited tenacity of
heterodox resistance professed their disbelief in many orthodox
religious, national, social and ethical doctrines. Both admitted the
alternately stimulating and obtunding influence of heterosexual
magnetism.
Were their views on some points divergent?
Stephen dissented openly from Bloom’s views on the importance of
dietary and civic selfhelp while Bloom dissented tacitly from Stephen’s
views on the eternal affirmation of the spirit of man in literature.
Bloom assented covertly to Stephen’s rectification of the anachronism
involved in assigning the date of the conversion of the Irish nation to
christianity from druidism by Patrick son of Calpornus, son of Potitus,
son of Odyssus, sent by pope Celestine I in the year 432 in the reign
of Leary to the year 260 or thereabouts in the reign of Cormac MacArt
(† 266 A.D.), suffocated by imperfect deglutition of aliment at Sletty
and interred at Rossnaree. The collapse which Bloom ascribed to gastric
inanition and certain chemical compounds of varying degrees of
adulteration and alcoholic strength, accelerated by mental exertion and
the velocity of rapid circular motion in a relaxing atmosphere, Stephen
attributed to the reapparition of a matutinal cloud (perceived by both
from two different points of observation Sandycove and Dublin) at first
no bigger than a woman’s hand.
Was there one point on which their views were equal and negative?
The influence of gaslight or electric light on the growth of adjoining
paraheliotropic trees.
Had Bloom discussed similar subjects during nocturnal perambulations in
the past?
In 1884 with Owen Goldberg and Cecil Turnbull at night on public
thoroughfares between Longwood avenue and Leonard’s corner and
Leonard’s corner and Synge street and Synge street and Bloomfield
avenue. In 1885 with Percy Apjohn in the evenings, reclined against the
wall between Gibraltar villa and Bloomfield house in Crumlin, barony of
Uppercross. In 1886 occasionally with casual acquaintances and
prospective purchasers on doorsteps, in front parlours, in third class
railway carriages of suburban lines. In 1888 frequently with major
Brian Tweedy and his daughter Miss Marion Tweedy, together and
separately on the lounge in Matthew Dillon’s house in Roundtown. Once
in 1892 and once in 1893 with Julius (Juda) Mastiansky, on both
occasions in the parlour of his (Bloom’s) house in Lombard street,
west.
What reflection concerning the irregular sequence of dates 1884, 1885,
1886, 1888, 1892, 1893, 1904 did Bloom make before their arrival at
their destination?
He reflected that the progressive extension of the field of individual
development and experience was regressively accompanied by a
restriction of the converse domain of interindividual relations.
As in what ways?
From inexistence to existence he came to many and was as one received:
existence with existence he was with any as any with any: from
existence to nonexistence gone he would be by all as none perceived.
What act did Bloom make on their arrival at their destination?
At the housesteps of the 4th of the equidifferent uneven numbers,
number 7 Eccles street, he inserted his hand mechanically into the back
pocket of his trousers to obtain his latchkey.
Was it there?
It was in the corresponding pocket of the trousers which he had worn on
the day but one preceding.
Why was he doubly irritated?
Because he had forgotten and because he remembered that he had reminded
himself twice not to forget.
What were then the alternatives before the, premeditatedly
(respectively) and inadvertently, keyless couple?
To enter or not to enter. To knock or not to knock.
Bloom’s decision?
A stratagem. Resting his feet on the dwarf wall, he climbed over the
area railings, compressed his hat on his head, grasped two points at
the lower union of rails and stiles, lowered his body gradually by its
length of five feet nine inches and a half to within two feet ten
inches of the area pavement and allowed his body to move freely in
space by separating himself from the railings and crouching in
preparation for the impact of the fall.
Did he fall?
By his body’s known weight of eleven stone and four pounds in
avoirdupois measure, as certified by the graduated machine for
periodical selfweighing in the premises of Francis Froedman,
pharmaceutical chemist of 19 Frederick street, north, on the last feast
of the Ascension, to wit, the twelfth day of May of the bissextile year
one thousand nine hundred and four of the christian era (jewish era
five thousand six hundred and sixtyfour, mohammadan era one thousand
three hundred and twentytwo), golden number 5, epact 13, solar cycle 9,
dominical letters C B, Roman indiction 2, Julian period 6617, MCMIV.
Did he rise uninjured by concussion?
Regaining new stable equilibrium he rose uninjured though concussed by
the impact, raised the latch of the area door by the exertion of force
at its freely moving flange and by leverage of the first kind applied
at its fulcrum, gained retarded access to the kitchen through the
subadjacent scullery, ignited a lucifer match by friction, set free
inflammable coal gas by turning on the ventcock, lit a high flame
which, by regulating, he reduced to quiescent candescence and lit
finally a portable candle.
What discrete succession of images did Stephen meanwhile perceive?
Reclined against the area railings he perceived through the transparent
kitchen panes a man regulating a gasflame of 14 CP, a man lighting a
candle of 1 CP, a man removing in turn each of his two boots, a man
leaving the kitchen holding a candle.
Did the man reappear elsewhere?
After a lapse of four minutes the glimmer of his candle was discernible
through the semitransparent semicircular glass fanlight over the
halldoor. The halldoor turned gradually on its hinges. In the open
space of the doorway the man reappeared without his hat, with his
candle.
Did Stephen obey his sign?
Yes, entering softly, he helped to close and chain the door and
followed softly along the hallway the man’s back and listed feet and
lighted candle past a lighted crevice of doorway on the left and
carefully down a turning staircase of more than five steps into the
kitchen of Bloom’s house.
What did Bloom do?
He extinguished the candle by a sharp expiration of breath upon its
flame, drew two spoonseat deal chairs to the hearthstone, one for
Stephen with its back to the area window, the other for himself when
necessary, knelt on one knee, composed in the grate a pyre of crosslaid
resintipped sticks and various coloured papers and irregular polygons
of best Abram coal at twentyone shillings a ton from the yard of Messrs
Flower and M’Donald of 14 D’Olier street, kindled it at three
projecting points of paper with one ignited lucifer match, thereby
releasing the potential energy contained in the fuel by allowing its
carbon and hydrogen elements to enter into free union with the oxygen
of the air.
Of what similar apparitions did Stephen think?
Of others elsewhere in other times who, kneeling on one knee or on two,
had kindled fires for him, of Brother Michael in the infirmary of the
college of the Society of Jesus at Clongowes Wood, Sallins, in the
county of Kildare: of his father, Simon Dedalus, in an unfurnished room
of his first residence in Dublin, number thirteen Fitzgibbon street: of
his godmother Miss Kate Morkan in the house of her dying sister Miss
Julia Morkan at 15 Usher’s Island: of his aunt Sara, wife of Richie
(Richard) Goulding, in the kitchen of their lodgings at 62 Clanbrassil
street: of his mother Mary, wife of Simon Dedalus, in the kitchen of
number twelve North Richmond street on the morning of the feast of
Saint Francis Xavier 1898: of the dean of studies, Father Butt, in the
physics’ theatre of university College, 16 Stephen’s Green, north: of
his sister Dilly (Delia) in his father’s house in Cabra.
What did Stephen see on raising his gaze to the height of a yard from
the fire towards the opposite wall?
Under a row of five coiled spring housebells a curvilinear rope,
stretched between two holdfasts athwart across the recess beside the
chimney pier, from which hung four smallsized square handkerchiefs
folded unattached consecutively in adjacent rectangles and one pair of
ladies’ grey hose with Lisle suspender tops and feet in their habitual
position clamped by three erect wooden pegs two at their outer
extremities and the third at their point of junction.
What did Bloom see on the range?
On the right (smaller) hob a blue enamelled saucepan: on the left
(larger) hob a black iron kettle.
What did Bloom do at the range?
He removed the saucepan to the left hob, rose and carried the iron
kettle to the sink in order to tap the current by turning the faucet to
let it flow.
Did it flow?
Yes. From Roundwood reservoir in county Wicklow of a cubic capacity of
2400 million gallons, percolating through a subterranean aqueduct of
filter mains of single and double pipeage constructed at an initial
plant cost of £ 5 per linear yard by way of the Dargle, Rathdown, Glen
of the Downs and Callowhill to the 26 acre reservoir at Stillorgan, a
distance of 22 statute miles, and thence, through a system of relieving
tanks, by a gradient of 250 feet to the city boundary at Eustace
bridge, upper Leeson street, though from prolonged summer drouth and
daily supply of 12 1/2 million gallons the water had fallen below the
sill of the overflow weir for which reason the borough surveyor and
waterworks engineer, Mr Spencer Harty, C. E., on the instructions of
the waterworks committee had prohibited the use of municipal water for
purposes other than those of consumption (envisaging the possibility of
recourse being had to the impotable water of the Grand and Royal canals
as in 1893) particularly as the South Dublin Guardians, notwithstanding
their ration of 15 gallons per day per pauper supplied through a 6 inch
meter, had been convicted of a wastage of 20,000 gallons per night by a
reading of their meter on the affirmation of the law agent of the
corporation, Mr Ignatius Rice, solicitor, thereby acting to the
detriment of another section of the public, selfsupporting taxpayers,
solvent, sound.
What in water did Bloom, waterlover, drawer of water, watercarrier,
returning to the range, admire?
Its universality: its democratic equality and constancy to its nature
in seeking its own level: its vastness in the ocean of Mercator’s
projection: its unplumbed profundity in the Sundam trench of the
Pacific exceeding 8000 fathoms: the restlessness of its waves and
surface particles visiting in turn all points of its seaboard: the
independence of its units: the variability of states of sea: its
hydrostatic quiescence in calm: its hydrokinetic turgidity in neap and
spring tides: its subsidence after devastation: its sterility in the
circumpolar icecaps, arctic and antarctic: its climatic and commercial
significance: its preponderance of 3 to 1 over the dry land of the
globe: its indisputable hegemony extending in square leagues over all
the region below the subequatorial tropic of Capricorn: the
multisecular stability of its primeval basin: its luteofulvous bed: its
capacity to dissolve and hold in solution all soluble substances
including millions of tons of the most precious metals: its slow
erosions of peninsulas and islands, its persistent formation of
homothetic islands, peninsulas and downwardtending promontories: its
alluvial deposits: its weight and volume and density: its
imperturbability in lagoons and highland tarns: its gradation of
colours in the torrid and temperate and frigid zones: its vehicular
ramifications in continental lakecontained streams and confluent
oceanflowing rivers with their tributaries and transoceanic currents,
gulfstream, north and south equatorial courses: its violence in
seaquakes, waterspouts, Artesian wells, eruptions, torrents, eddies,
freshets, spates, groundswells, watersheds, waterpartings, geysers,
cataracts, whirlpools, maelstroms, inundations, deluges, cloudbursts:
its vast circumterrestrial ahorizontal curve: its secrecy in springs
and latent humidity, revealed by rhabdomantic or hygrometric
instruments and exemplified by the well by the hole in the wall at
Ashtown gate, saturation of air, distillation of dew: the simplicity of
its composition, two constituent parts of hydrogen with one constituent
part of oxygen: its healing virtues: its buoyancy in the waters of the
Dead Sea: its persevering penetrativeness in runnels, gullies,
inadequate dams, leaks on shipboard: its properties for cleansing,
quenching thirst and fire, nourishing vegetation: its infallibility as
paradigm and paragon: its metamorphoses as vapour, mist, cloud, rain,
sleet, snow, hail: its strength in rigid hydrants: its variety of forms
in loughs and bays and gulfs and bights and guts and lagoons and atolls
and archipelagos and sounds and fjords and minches and tidal estuaries
and arms of sea: its solidity in glaciers, icebergs, icefloes: its
docility in working hydraulic millwheels, turbines, dynamos, electric
power stations, bleachworks, tanneries, scutchmills: its utility in
canals, rivers, if navigable, floating and graving docks: its
potentiality derivable from harnessed tides or watercourses falling
from level to level: its submarine fauna and flora (anacoustic,
photophobe), numerically, if not literally, the inhabitants of the
globe: its ubiquity as constituting 90
% of the human body: the noxiousness of its effluvia in lacustrine
% marshes,
pestilential fens, faded flowerwater, stagnant pools in the waning
moon.
Having set the halffilled kettle on the now burning coals, why did he
return to the stillflowing tap?
To wash his soiled hands with a partially consumed tablet of
Barrington’s lemonflavoured soap, to which paper still adhered, (bought
thirteen hours previously for fourpence and still unpaid for), in fresh
cold neverchanging everchanging water and dry them, face and hands, in
a long redbordered holland cloth passed over a wooden revolving roller.
What reason did Stephen give for declining Bloom’s offer?
That he was hydrophobe, hating partial contact by immersion or total by
submersion in cold water, (his last bath having taken place in the
month of October of the preceding year), disliking the aqueous
substances of glass and crystal, distrusting aquacities of thought and
language.
What impeded Bloom from giving Stephen counsels of hygiene and
prophylactic to which should be added suggestions concerning a
preliminary wetting of the head and contraction of the muscles with
rapid splashing of the face and neck and thoracic and epigastric region
in case of sea or river bathing, the parts of the human anatomy most
sensitive to cold being the nape, stomach and thenar or sole of foot?
The incompatibility of aquacity with the erratic originality of genius.
What additional didactic counsels did he similarly repress?
Dietary: concerning the respective percentage of protein and caloric
energy in bacon, salt ling and butter, the absence of the former in the
lastnamed and the abundance of the latter in the firstnamed.
Which seemed to the host to be the predominant qualities of his guest?
Confidence in himself, an equal and opposite power of abandonment and
recuperation.
What concomitant phenomenon took place in the vessel of liquid by the
agency of fire?
The phenomenon of ebullition. Fanned by a constant updraught of
ventilation between the kitchen and the chimneyflue, ignition was
communicated from the woodcuts of precombustible fuel to polyhedral
masses of bituminous coal, containing in compressed mineral form the
foliated fossilised decidua of primeval forests which had in turn
derived their vegetative existence from the sun, primal source of heat
(radiant), transmitted through omnipresent luminiferous diathermanous
ether. Heat (convected), a mode of motion developed by such combustion,
was constantly and increasingly conveyed from the source of
calorification to the liquid contained in the vessel, being radiated
through the uneven unpolished dark surface of the metal iron, in part
reflected, in part absorbed, in part transmitted, gradually raising the
temperature of the water from normal to boiling point, a rise in
temperature expressible as the result of an expenditure of 72 thermal
units needed to raise 1 pound of water from 50° to 212° Fahrenheit.
What announced the accomplishment of this rise in temperature?
A double falciform ejection of water vapour from under the kettlelid at
both sides simultaneously.
For what personal purpose could Bloom have applied the water so boiled?
To shave himself.
What advantages attended shaving by night?
A softer beard: a softer brush if intentionally allowed to remain from
shave to shave in its agglutinated lather: a softer skin if
unexpectedly encountering female acquaintances in remote places at
incustomary hours: quiet reflections upon the course of the day: a
cleaner sensation when awaking after a fresher sleep since matutinal
noises, premonitions and perturbations, a clattered milkcan, a
postman’s double knock, a paper read, reread while lathering,
relathering the same spot, a shock, a shoot, with thought of aught he
sought though fraught with nought might cause a faster rate of shaving
and a nick on which incision plaster with precision cut and humected
and applied adhered: which was to be done.
Why did absence of light disturb him less than presence of noise?
Because of the surety of the sense of touch in his firm full masculine
feminine passive active hand.
What quality did it (his hand) possess but with what counteracting
influence?
The operative surgical quality but that he was reluctant to shed human
blood even when the end justified the means, preferring, in their
natural order, heliotherapy, psychophysicotherapeutics, osteopathic
surgery.
What lay under exposure on the lower, middle and upper shelves of the
kitchen dresser, opened by Bloom?
On the lower shelf five vertical breakfast plates, six horizontal
breakfast saucers on which rested inverted breakfast cups, a
moustachecup, uninverted, and saucer of Crown Derby, four white
goldrimmed eggcups, an open shammy purse displaying coins, mostly
copper, and a phial of aromatic (violet) comfits. On the middle shelf a
chipped eggcup containing pepper, a drum of table salt, four
conglomerated black olives in oleaginous paper, an empty pot of
Plumtree’s potted meat, an oval wicker basket bedded with fibre and
containing one Jersey pear, a halfempty bottle of William Gilbey and
Co’s white invalid port, half disrobed of its swathe of coralpink
tissue paper, a packet of Epps’s soluble cocoa, five ounces of Anne
Lynch’s choice tea at 2/- per lb in a crinkled leadpaper bag, a
cylindrical canister containing the best crystallised lump sugar, two
onions, one, the larger, Spanish, entire, the other, smaller, Irish,
bisected with augmented surface and more redolent, a jar of Irish Model
Dairy’s cream, a jug of brown crockery containing a naggin and a
quarter of soured adulterated milk, converted by heat into water,
acidulous serum and semisolidified curds, which added to the quantity
subtracted for Mr Bloom’s and Mrs Fleming’s breakfasts, made one
imperial pint, the total quantity originally delivered, two cloves, a
halfpenny and a small dish containing a slice of fresh ribsteak. On the
upper shelf a battery of jamjars (empty) of various sizes and
proveniences.
What attracted his attention lying on the apron of the dresser?
Four polygonal fragments of two lacerated scarlet betting tickets,
numbered 8 87, 88 6.
What reminiscences temporarily corrugated his brow?
Reminiscences of coincidences, truth stranger than fiction,
preindicative of the result of the Gold Cup flat handicap, the official
and definitive result of which he had read in the _Evening Telegraph_,
late pink edition, in the cabman’s shelter, at Butt bridge.
Where had previous intimations of the result, effected or projected,
been received by him?
In Bernard Kiernan’s licensed premises 8, 9 and 10 little Britain
street: in David Byrne’s licensed premises, 14 Duke street: in
O’Connell street lower, outside Graham Lemon’s when a dark man had
placed in his hand a throwaway (subsequently thrown away), advertising
Elijah, restorer of the church in Zion: in Lincoln place outside the
premises of F. W. Sweny and Co (Limited), dispensing chemists, when,
when Frederick M. (Bantam) Lyons had rapidly and successively
requested, perused and restituted the copy of the current issue of the
_Freeman’s Journal_ and _National Press_ which he had been about to
throw away (subsequently thrown away), he had proceeded towards the
oriental edifice of the Turkish and Warm Baths, 11 Leinster street,
with the light of inspiration shining in his countenance and bearing in
his arms the secret of the race, graven in the language of prediction.
What qualifying considerations allayed his perturbations?
The difficulties of interpretation since the significance of any event
followed its occurrence as variably as the acoustic report followed the
electrical discharge and of counterestimating against an actual loss by
failure to interpret the total sum of possible losses proceeding
originally from a successful interpretation.
His mood?
He had not risked, he did not expect, he had not been disappointed, he
was satisfied.
What satisfied him?
To have sustained no positive loss. To have brought a positive gain to
others. Light to the gentiles.
How did Bloom prepare a collation for a gentile?
He poured into two teacups two level spoonfuls, four in all, of Epps’s
soluble cocoa and proceeded according to the directions for use printed
on the label, to each adding after sufficient time for infusion the
prescribed ingredients for diffusion in the manner and in the quantity
prescribed.
What supererogatory marks of special hospitality did the host show his
guest?
Relinquishing his symposiarchal right to the moustache cup of imitation
Crown Derby presented to him by his only daughter, Millicent (Milly),
he substituted a cup identical with that of his guest and served
extraordinarily to his guest and, in reduced measure, to himself the
viscous cream ordinarily reserved for the breakfast of his wife Marion
(Molly).
Was the guest conscious of and did he acknowledge these marks of
hospitality?
His attention was directed to them by his host jocosely, and he
accepted them seriously as they drank in jocoserious silence Epps’s
massproduct, the creature cocoa.
Were there marks of hospitality which he contemplated but suppressed,
reserving them for another and for himself on future occasions to
complete the act begun?
The reparation of a fissure of the length of 1 1/2 inches in the right
side of his guest’s jacket. A gift to his guest of one of the four
lady’s handkerchiefs, if and when ascertained to be in a presentable
condition.
Who drank more quickly?
Bloom, having the advantage of ten seconds at the initiation and
taking, from the concave surface of a spoon along the handle of which a
steady flow of heat was conducted, three sips to his opponent’s one,
six to two, nine to three.
What cerebration accompanied his frequentative act?
Concluding by inspection but erroneously that his silent companion was
engaged in mental composition he reflected on the pleasures derived
from literature of instruction rather than of amusement as he himself
had applied to the works of William Shakespeare more than once for the
solution of difficult problems in imaginary or real life.
Had he found their solution?
In spite of careful and repeated reading of certain classical passages,
aided by a glossary, he had derived imperfect conviction from the text,
the answers not bearing in all points.
What lines concluded his first piece of original verse written by him,
potential poet, at the age of 11 in 1877 on the occasion of the
offering of three prizes of 10/-, 5/- and 2/6 respectively for
competition by the _Shamrock_, a weekly newspaper?
 An ambition to squint
 At my verses in print
 Makes me hope that for these you’ll find room.
 If you so condescend
 Then please place at the end
 The name of yours truly, L. Bloom.
Did he find four separating forces between his temporary guest and him?
Name, age, race, creed.
What anagrams had he made on his name in youth?
Leopold Bloom
Ellpodbomool
Molldopeloob
Bollopedoom
Old Ollebo, M. P.
What acrostic upon the abbreviation of his first name had he (kinetic
poet) sent to Miss Marion (Molly) Tweedy on the 14 February 1888?
 Poets oft have sung in rhyme
 Of music sweet their praise divine.
 Let them hymn it nine times nine.
 Dearer far than song or wine.
 You are mine. The world is mine.
What had prevented him from completing a topical song (music by R. G.
Johnston) on the events of the past, or fixtures for the actual, years,
entitled _If Brian Boru could but come back and see old Dublin now_,
commissioned by Michael Gunn, lessee of the Gaiety Theatre, 46, 47, 48,
49 South King street, and to be introduced into the sixth scene, the
valley of diamonds, of the second edition (30 January 1893) of the
grand annual Christmas pantomime _Sinbad the Sailor_ (produced by R.
Shelton 26 December 1892, written by Greenleaf Whittier, scenery by
George A. Jackson and Cecil Hicks, costumes by Mrs and Miss Whelan
under the personal supervision of Mrs Michael Gunn, ballets by Jessie
Noir, harlequinade by Thomas Otto) and sung by Nelly Bouverist,
principal girl?
Firstly, oscillation between events of imperial and of local interest,
the anticipated diamond jubilee of Queen Victoria (born 1820, acceded
1837) and the posticipated opening of the new municipal fish market:
secondly, apprehension of opposition from extreme circles on the
questions of the respective visits of Their Royal Highnesses the duke
and duchess of York (real) and of His Majesty King Brian Boru
(imaginary): thirdly, a conflict between professional etiquette and
professional emulation concerning the recent erections of the Grand
Lyric Hall on Burgh Quay and the Theatre Royal in Hawkins street:
fourthly, distraction resultant from compassion for Nelly Bouverist’s
non-intellectual, non-political, non-topical expression of countenance
and concupiscence caused by Nelly Bouverist’s revelations of white
articles of non-intellectual, non-political, non-topical underclothing
while she (Nelly Bouverist) was in the articles: fifthly, the
difficulties of the selection of appropriate music and humorous
allusions from _Everybody’s Book of Jokes_ (1000 pages and a laugh in
every one): sixthly, the rhymes, homophonous and cacophonous,
associated with the names of the new lord mayor, Daniel Tallon, the new
high sheriff, Thomas Pile and the new solicitorgeneral, Dunbar Plunket
Barton.
What relation existed between their ages?
16 years before in 1888 when Bloom was of Stephen’s present age Stephen
was 6. 16 years after in 1920 when Stephen would be of Bloom’s present
age Bloom would be 54. In 1936 when Bloom would be 70 and Stephen 54
their ages initially in the ratio of 16 to 0 would be as 17 1/2 to 13
1/2, the proportion increasing and the disparity diminishing according
as arbitrary future years were added, for if the proportion existing in
1883 had continued immutable, conceiving that to be possible, till then
1904 when Stephen was 22 Bloom would be 374 and in 1920 when Stephen
would be 38, as Bloom then was, Bloom would be 646 while in 1952 when
Stephen would have attained the maximum postdiluvian age of 70 Bloom,
being 1190 years alive having been born in the year 714, would have
surpassed by 221 years the maximum antediluvian age, that of
Methusalah, 969 years, while, if Stephen would continue to live until
he would attain that age in the year 3072 A.D., Bloom would have been
obliged to have been alive 83,300 years, having been obliged to have
been born in the year 81,396 B.C.
What events might nullify these calculations?
The cessation of existence of both or either, the inauguration of a new
era or calendar, the annihilation of the world and consequent
extermination of the human species, inevitable but impredictable.
How many previous encounters proved their preexisting acquaintance?
Two. The first in the lilacgarden of Matthew Dillon’s house, Medina
Villa, Kimmage road, Roundtown, in 1887, in the company of Stephen’s
mother, Stephen being then of the age of 5 and reluctant to give his
hand in salutation. The second in the coffeeroom of Breslin’s hotel on
a rainy Sunday in the January of 1892, in the company of Stephen’s
father and Stephen’s granduncle, Stephen being then 5 years older.
Did Bloom accept the invitation to dinner given then by the son and
afterwards seconded by the father?
Very gratefully, with grateful appreciation, with sincere appreciative
gratitude, in appreciatively grateful sincerity of regret, he declined.
Did their conversation on the subject of these reminiscences reveal a
third connecting link between them?
Mrs Riordan (Dante), a widow of independent means, had resided in the
house of Stephen’s parents from 1 September 1888 to 29 December 1891
and had also resided during the years 1892, 1893 and 1894 in the City
Arms Hotel owned by Elizabeth O’Dowd of 54 Prussia street where, during
parts of the years 1893 and 1894, she had been a constant informant of
Bloom who resided also in the same hotel, being at that time a clerk in
the employment of Joseph Cuffe of 5 Smithfield for the superintendence
of sales in the adjacent Dublin Cattle market on the North Circular
road.
Had he performed any special corporal work of mercy for her?
He had sometimes propelled her on warm summer evenings, an infirm widow
of independent, if limited, means, in her convalescent bathchair with
slow revolutions of its wheels as far as the corner of the North
Circular road opposite Mr Gavin Low’s place of business where she had
remained for a certain time scanning through his onelensed binocular
fieldglasses unrecognisable citizens on tramcars, roadster bicycles
equipped with inflated pneumatic tyres, hackney carriages, tandems,
private and hired landaus, dogcarts, ponytraps and brakes passing from
the city to the Phoenix Park and _vice versa_.
Why could he then support that his vigil with the greater equanimity?
Because in middle youth he had often sat observing through a rondel of
bossed glass of a multicoloured pane the spectacle offered with
continual changes of the thoroughfare without, pedestrians, quadrupeds,
velocipedes, vehicles, passing slowly, quickly, evenly, round and round
and round the rim of a round and round precipitous globe.
What distinct different memories had each of her now eight years
deceased?
The older, her bezique cards and counters, her Skye terrier, her
suppositious wealth, her lapses of responsiveness and incipient
catarrhal deafness: the younger, her lamp of colza oil before the
statue of the Immaculate Conception, her green and maroon brushes for
Charles Stewart Parnell and for Michael Davitt, her tissue papers.
Were there no means still remaining to him to achieve the rejuvenation
which these reminiscences divulged to a younger companion rendered the
more desirable?
The indoor exercises, formerly intermittently practised, subsequently
abandoned, prescribed in Eugen Sandow’s _Physical Strength and How to
Obtain It_ which, designed particularly for commercial men engaged in
sedentary occupations, were to be made with mental concentration in
front of a mirror so as to bring into play the various families of
muscles and produce successively a pleasant rigidity, a more pleasant
relaxation and the most pleasant repristination of juvenile agility.
Had any special agility been his in earlier youth?
Though ringweight lifting had been beyond his strength and the full
circle gyration beyond his courage yet as a High school scholar he had
excelled in his stable and protracted execution of the half lever
movement on the parallel bars in consequence of his abnormally
developed abdominal muscles.
Did either openly allude to their racial difference?
Neither.
What, reduced to their simplest reciprocal form, were Bloom’s thoughts
about Stephen’s thoughts about Bloom and about Stephen’s thoughts about
Bloom’s thoughts about Stephen?
He thought that he thought that he was a jew whereas he knew that he
knew that he knew that he was not.
What, the enclosures of reticence removed, were their respective
parentages?
Bloom, only born male transubstantial heir of Rudolf Virag
(subsequently Rudolph Bloom) of Szombathely, Vienna, Budapest, Milan,
London and Dublin and of Ellen Higgins, second daughter of Julius
Higgins (born Karoly) and Fanny Higgins (born Hegarty). Stephen, eldest
surviving male consubstantial heir of Simon Dedalus of Cork and Dublin
and of Mary, daughter of Richard and Christina Goulding (born Grier).
Had Bloom and Stephen been baptised, and where and by whom, cleric or
layman?
Bloom (three times), by the reverend Mr Gilmer Johnston M. A., alone,
in the protestant church of Saint Nicholas Without, Coombe, by James
O’Connor, Philip Gilligan and James Fitzpatrick, together, under a pump
in the village of Swords, and by the reverend Charles Malone C. C., in
the church of the Three Patrons, Rathgar. Stephen (once) by the
reverend Charles Malone C. C., alone, in the church of the Three
Patrons, Rathgar.
Did they find their educational careers similar?
Substituting Stephen for Bloom Stoom would have passed successively
through a dame’s school and the high school. Substituting Bloom for
Stephen Blephen would have passed successively through the preparatory,
junior, middle and senior grades of the intermediate and through the
matriculation, first arts, second arts and arts degree courses of the
royal university.
Why did Bloom refrain from stating that he had frequented the
university of life?
Because of his fluctuating incertitude as to whether this observation
had or had not been already made by him to Stephen or by Stephen to
him.
What two temperaments did they individually represent?
The scientific. The artistic.
What proofs did Bloom adduce to prove that his tendency was towards
applied, rather than towards pure, science?
Certain possible inventions of which he had cogitated when reclining in
a state of supine repletion to aid digestion, stimulated by his
appreciation of the importance of inventions now common but once
revolutionary, for example, the aeronautic parachute, the reflecting
telescope, the spiral corkscrew, the safety pin, the mineral water
siphon, the canal lock with winch and sluice, the suction pump.
Were these inventions principally intended for an improved scheme of
kindergarten?
Yes, rendering obsolete popguns, elastic airbladders, games of hazard,
catapults. They comprised astronomical kaleidoscopes exhibiting the
twelve constellations of the zodiac from Aries to Pisces, miniature
mechanical orreries, arithmetical gelatine lozenges, geometrical to
correspond with zoological biscuits, globemap playing balls,
historically costumed dolls.
What also stimulated him in his cogitations?
The financial success achieved by Ephraim Marks and Charles A. James,
the former by his 1d bazaar at 42 George’s street, south, the latter at
his 6 1/2d shop and world’s fancy fair and waxwork exhibition at 30
Henry street, admission 2d, children 1d: and the infinite possibilities
hitherto unexploited of the modern art of advertisement if condensed in
triliteral monoideal symbols, vertically of maximum visibility
(divined), horizontally of maximum legibility (deciphered) and of
magnetising efficacy to arrest involuntary attention, to interest, to
convince, to decide.
Such as?
K. 11. Kino’s 11/— Trousers.
House of Keys. Alexander J. Keyes.
Such as not?
Look at this long candle. Calculate when it burns out and you receive
gratis 1 pair of our special non-compo boots, guaranteed 1 candle
power. Address: Barclay and Cook, 18 Talbot street.
Bacilikil (Insect Powder).
Veribest (Boot Blacking).
Uwantit (Combined pocket twoblade penknife with corkscrew, nailfile and
pipecleaner).
Such as never?
What is home without Plumtree’s Potted Meat?
Incomplete.
With it an abode of bliss.
Manufactured by George Plumtree, 23 Merchants’ quay, Dublin, put up in
4 oz pots, and inserted by Councillor Joseph P. Nannetti, M. P.,
Rotunda Ward, 19 Hardwicke street, under the obituary notices and
anniversaries of deceases. The name on the label is Plumtree. A
plumtree in a meatpot, registered trade mark. Beware of imitations.
Peatmot. Trumplee. Moutpat. Plamtroo.
Which example did he adduce to induce Stephen to deduce that
originality, though producing its own reward, does not invariably
conduce to success?
His own ideated and rejected project of an illuminated showcart, drawn
by a beast of burden, in which two smartly dressed girls were to be
seated engaged in writing.
What suggested scene was then constructed by Stephen?
Solitary hotel in mountain pass. Autumn. Twilight. Fire lit. In dark
corner young man seated. Young woman enters. Restless. Solitary. She
sits. She goes to window. She stands. She sits. Twilight. She thinks.
On solitary hotel paper she writes. She thinks. She writes. She sighs.
Wheels and hoofs. She hurries out. He comes from his dark corner. He
seizes solitary paper. He holds it towards fire. Twilight. He reads.
Solitary.
What?
In sloping, upright and backhands: Queen’s Hotel, Queen’s Hotel,
Queen’s Hotel. Queen’s Ho...
What suggested scene was then reconstructed by Bloom?
The Queen’s Hotel, Ennis, county Clare, where Rudolph Bloom (Rudolf
Virag) died on the evening of the 27 June 1886, at some hour unstated,
in consequence of an overdose of monkshood (aconite) selfadministered
in the form of a neuralgic liniment composed of 2 parts of aconite
liniment to 1 of chloroform liniment (purchased by him at 10.20 a.m. on
the morning of 27 June 1886 at the medical hall of Francis Dennehy, 17
Church street, Ennis) after having, though not in consequence of
having, purchased at 3.15 p.m. on the afternoon of 27 June 1886 a new
boater straw hat, extra smart (after having, though not in consequence
of having, purchased at the hour and in the place aforesaid, the toxin
aforesaid), at the general drapery store of James Cullen, 4 Main
street, Ennis.
Did he attribute this homonymity to information or coincidence or
intuition?
Coincidence.
Did he depict the scene verbally for his guest to see?
He preferred himself to see another’s face and listen to another’s
words by which potential narration was realised and kinetic temperament
relieved.
Did he see only a second coincidence in the second scene narrated to
him, described by the narrator as _A Pisgah Sight of Palestine_ or _The
Parable of the Plums_?
It, with the preceding scene and with others unnarrated but existent by
implication, to which add essays on various subjects or moral apothegms
(e.g. _My Favourite Hero_ or _Procrastination is the Thief of Time_)
composed during schoolyears, seemed to him to contain in itself and in
conjunction with the personal equation certain possibilities of
financial, social, personal and sexual success, whether specially
collected and selected as model pedagogic themes (of cent per cent
merit) for the use of preparatory and junior grade students or
contributed in printed form, following the precedent of Philip Beaufoy
or Doctor Dick or Heblon’s _Studies in Blue_, to a publication of
certified circulation and solvency or employed verbally as intellectual
stimulation for sympathetic auditors, tacitly appreciative of
successful narrative and confidently augurative of successful
achievement, during the increasingly longer nights gradually following
the summer solstice on the day but three following, videlicet, Tuesday,
21 June (S. Aloysius Gonzaga), sunrise 3.33 a.m., sunset 8.29 p.m.
Which domestic problem as much as, if not more than, any other
frequently engaged his mind?
What to do with our wives.
What had been his hypothetical singular solutions?
Parlour games (dominos, halma, tiddledywinks, spilikins, cup and ball,
nap, spoil five, bezique, twentyfive, beggar my neighbour, draughts,
chess or backgammon): embroidery, darning or knitting for the
policeaided clothing society: musical duets, mandoline and guitar,
piano and flute, guitar and piano: legal scrivenery or envelope
addressing: biweekly visits to variety entertainments: commercial
activity as pleasantly commanding and pleasingly obeyed mistress
proprietress in a cool dairy shop or warm cigar divan: the clandestine
satisfaction of erotic irritation in masculine brothels, state
inspected and medically controlled: social visits, at regular
infrequent prevented intervals and with regular frequent preventive
superintendence, to and from female acquaintances of recognised
respectability in the vicinity: courses of evening instruction
specially designed to render liberal instruction agreeable.
What instances of deficient mental development in his wife inclined him
in favour of the lastmentioned (ninth) solution?
In disoccupied moments she had more than once covered a sheet of paper
with signs and hieroglyphics which she stated were Greek and Irish and
Hebrew characters. She had interrogated constantly at varying intervals
as to the correct method of writing the capital initial of the name of
a city in Canada, Quebec. She understood little of political
complications, internal, or balance of power, external. In calculating
the addenda of bills she frequently had recourse to digital aid. After
completion of laconic epistolary compositions she abandoned the
implement of calligraphy in the encaustic pigment, exposed to the
corrosive action of copperas, green vitriol and nutgall. Unusual
polysyllables of foreign origin she interpreted phonetically or by
false analogy or by both: metempsychosis (met him pike hoses), _alias_
(a mendacious person mentioned in sacred scripture).
What compensated in the false balance of her intelligence for these and
such deficiencies of judgment regarding persons, places and things?
The false apparent parallelism of all perpendicular arms of all
balances, proved true by construction. The counterbalance of her
proficiency of judgment regarding one person, proved true by
experiment.
How had he attempted to remedy this state of comparative ignorance?
Variously. By leaving in a conspicuous place a certain book open at a
certain page: by assuming in her, when alluding explanatorily, latent
knowledge: by open ridicule in her presence of some absent other’s
ignorant lapse.
With what success had he attempted direct instruction?
She followed not all, a part of the whole, gave attention with interest
comprehended with surprise, with care repeated, with greater difficulty
remembered, forgot with ease, with misgiving reremembered, rerepeated
with error.
What system had proved more effective?
Indirect suggestion implicating selfinterest.
Example?
She disliked umbrella with rain, he liked woman with umbrella, she
disliked new hat with rain, he liked woman with new hat, he bought new
hat with rain, she carried umbrella with new hat.
Accepting the analogy implied in his guest’s parable which examples of
postexilic eminence did he adduce?
Three seekers of the pure truth, Moses of Egypt, Moses Maimonides,
author of _More Nebukim_ (Guide of the Perplexed) and Moses Mendelssohn
of such eminence that from Moses (of Egypt) to Moses (Mendelssohn)
there arose none like Moses (Maimonides).
What statement was made, under correction, by Bloom concerning a fourth
seeker of pure truth, by name Aristotle, mentioned, with permission, by
Stephen?
That the seeker mentioned had been a pupil of a rabbinical philosopher,
name uncertain.
Were other anapocryphal illustrious sons of the law and children of a
selected or rejected race mentioned?
Felix Bartholdy Mendelssohn (composer), Baruch Spinoza (philosopher),
Mendoza (pugilist), Ferdinand Lassalle (reformer, duellist).
What fragments of verse from the ancient Hebrew and ancient Irish
languages were cited with modulations of voice and translation of texts
by guest to host and by host to guest?
By Stephen: _suil, suil, suil arun, suil go siocair agus suil go cuin_
(walk, walk, walk your way, walk in safety, walk with care).
By Bloom: _Kifeloch, harimon rakatejch m’baad l’zamatejch_ (thy temple
amid thy hair is as a slice of pomegranate).
How was a glyphic comparison of the phonic symbols of both languages
made in substantiation of the oral comparison?
By juxtaposition. On the penultimate blank page of a book of inferior
literary style, entituled _Sweets of Sin_ (produced by Bloom and so
manipulated that its front cover came in contact with the surface of
the table) with a pencil (supplied by Stephen) Stephen wrote the Irish
characters for gee, eh, dee, em, simple and modified, and Bloom in turn
wrote the Hebrew characters ghimel, aleph, daleth and (in the absence
of mem) a substituted qoph, explaining their arithmetical values as
ordinal and cardinal numbers, videlicet 3, 1, 4, and 100.
Was the knowledge possessed by both of each of these languages, the
extinct and the revived, theoretical or practical?
Theoretical, being confined to certain grammatical rules of accidence
and syntax and practically excluding vocabulary.
What points of contact existed between these languages and between the
peoples who spoke them?
The presence of guttural sounds, diacritic aspirations, epenthetic and
servile letters in both languages: their antiquity, both having been
taught on the plain of Shinar 242 years after the deluge in the
seminary instituted by Fenius Farsaigh, descendant of Noah, progenitor
of Israel, and ascendant of Heber and Heremon, progenitors of Ireland:
their archaeological, genealogical, hagiographical, exegetical,
homiletic, toponomastic, historical and religious literatures
comprising the works of rabbis and culdees, Torah, Talmud (Mischna and
Ghemara), Massor, Pentateuch, Book of the Dun Cow, Book of Ballymote,
Garland of Howth, Book of Kells: their dispersal, persecution, survival
and revival: the isolation of their synagogical and ecclesiastical
rites in ghetto (S. Mary’s Abbey) and masshouse (Adam and Eve’s
tavern): the proscription of their national costumes in penal laws and
jewish dress acts: the restoration in Chanah David of Zion and the
possibility of Irish political autonomy or devolution.
What anthem did Bloom chant partially in anticipation of that multiple,
ethnically irreducible consummation?
 Kolod balejwaw pnimah
 Nefesch, jehudi, homijah.
Why was the chant arrested at the conclusion of this first distich?
In consequence of defective mnemotechnic.
How did the chanter compensate for this deficiency?
By a periphrastic version of the general text.
In what common study did their mutual reflections merge?
The increasing simplification traceable from the Egyptian epigraphic
hieroglyphs to the Greek and Roman alphabets and the anticipation of
modern stenography and telegraphic code in the cuneiform inscriptions
(Semitic) and the virgular quinquecostate ogham writing (Celtic).
Did the guest comply with his host’s request?
Doubly, by appending his signature in Irish and Roman characters.
What was Stephen’s auditive sensation?
He heard in a profound ancient male unfamiliar melody the accumulation
of the past.
What was Bloom’s visual sensation?
He saw in a quick young male familiar form the predestination of a
future.
What were Stephen’s and Bloom’s quasisimultaneous volitional
quasisensations of concealed identities?
Visually, Stephen’s: The traditional figure of hypostasis, depicted by
Johannes Damascenus, Lentulus Romanus and Epiphanius Monachus as
leucodermic, sesquipedalian with winedark hair.
Auditively, Bloom’s: The traditional accent of the ecstasy of
catastrophe.
What future careers had been possible for Bloom in the past and with
what exemplars?
In the church, Roman, Anglican or Nonconformist: exemplars, the very
reverend John Conmee S. J., the reverend T. Salmon, D. D., provost of
Trinity college, Dr Alexander J. Dowie. At the bar, English or Irish:
exemplars, Seymour Bushe, K. C., Rufus Isaacs, K. C. On the stage,
modern or Shakespearean: exemplars, Charles Wyndham, high comedian,
Osmond Tearle († 1901), exponent of Shakespeare.
Did the host encourage his guest to chant in a modulated voice a
strange legend on an allied theme?
Reassuringly, their place, where none could hear them talk, being
secluded, reassured, the decocted beverages, allowing for subsolid
residual sediment of a mechanical mixture, water plus sugar plus cream
plus cocoa, having been consumed.
Recite the first (major) part of this chanted legend.
 Little Harry Hughes and his schoolfellows all
 Went out for to play ball.
 And the very first ball little Harry Hughes played
 He drove it o’er the jew’s garden wall.
 And the very second ball little Harry Hughes played
 He broke the jew’s windows all.
[Illustration]
How did the son of Rudolph receive this first part?
With unmixed feeling. Smiling, a jew, he heard with pleasure and saw
the unbroken kitchen window.
Recite the second part (minor) of the legend.
 Then out there came the jew’s daughter
 And she all dressed in green.
 “Come back, come back, you pretty little boy,
 And play your ball again.”
 
 I can’t come back and I won’t come back
 Without my schoolfellows all.
 For if my master he did hear
 He’d make it a sorry ball.”
 She took him by the lilywhite hand
 And led him along the hall
 Until she led him to a room
 Where none could hear him call.
 She took a penknife out of her pocket
 And cut off his little head.
 And now he’ll play his ball no more
 For he lies among the dead.
[Illustration]
How did the father of Millicent receive this second part?
With mixed feelings. Unsmiling, he heard and saw with wonder a jew’s
daughter, all dressed in green.
Condense Stephen’s commentary.
One of all, the least of all, is the victim predestined. Once by
inadvertence twice by design he challenges his destiny. It comes when
he is abandoned and challenges him reluctant and, as an apparition of
hope and youth, holds him unresisting. It leads him to a strange
habitation, to a secret infidel apartment, and there, implacable,
immolates him, consenting.
Why was the host (victim predestined) sad?
He wished that a tale of a deed should be told of a deed not by him
should by him not be told.
Why was the host (reluctant, unresisting) still?
In accordance with the law of the conservation of energy.
Why was the host (secret infidel) silent?
He weighed the possible evidences for and against ritual murder: the
incitations of the hierarchy, the superstition of the populace, the
propagation of rumour in continued fraction of veridicity, the envy of
opulence, the influence of retaliation, the sporadic reappearance of
atavistic delinquency, the mitigating circumstances of fanaticism,
hypnotic suggestion and somnambulism.
From which (if any) of these mental or physical disorders was he not
totally immune?
From hypnotic suggestion: once, waking, he had not recognised his
sleeping apartment: more than once, waking, he had been for an
indefinite time incapable of moving or uttering sounds. From
somnambulism: once, sleeping, his body had risen, crouched and crawled
in the direction of a heatless fire and, having attained its
destination, there, curled, unheated, in night attire had lain,
sleeping.
Had this latter or any cognate phenomenon declared itself in any member
of his family?
Twice, in Holles street and in Ontario terrace, his daughter Millicent
(Milly) at the ages of 6 and 8 years had uttered in sleep an
exclamation of terror and had replied to the interrogations of two
figures in night attire with a vacant mute expression.
What other infantile memories had he of her?
15 June 1889. A querulous newborn female infant crying to cause and
lessen congestion. A child renamed Padney Socks she shook with shocks
her moneybox: counted his three free moneypenny buttons, one, tloo,
tlee: a doll, a boy, a sailor she cast away: blond, born of two dark,
she had blond ancestry, remote, a violation, Herr Hauptmann Hainau,
Austrian army, proximate, a hallucination, lieutenant Mulvey, British
navy.
What endemic characteristics were present?
Conversely the nasal and frontal formation was derived in a direct line
of lineage which, though interrupted, would continue at distant
intervals to more distant intervals to its most distant intervals.
What memories had he of her adolescence?
She relegated her hoop and skippingrope to a recess. On the duke’s
lawn, entreated by an English visitor, she declined to permit him to
make and take away her photographic image (objection not stated). On
the South Circular road in the company of Elsa Potter, followed by an
individual of sinister aspect, she went half way down Stamer street and
turned abruptly back (reason of change not stated). On the vigil of the
15th anniversary of her birth she wrote a letter from Mullingar, county
Westmeath, making a brief allusion to a local student (faculty and year
not stated).
Did that first division, portending a second division, afflict him?
Less than he had imagined, more than he had hoped.
What second departure was contemporaneously perceived by him similarly,
if differently?
A temporary departure of his cat.
Why similarly, why differently?
Similarly, because actuated by a secret purpose the quest of a new male
(Mullingar student) or of a healing herb (valerian). Differently,
because of different possible returns to the inhabitants or to the
habitation.
In other respects were their differences similar?
In passivity, in economy, in the instinct of tradition, in
unexpectedness.
As?
Inasmuch as leaning she sustained her blond hair for him to ribbon it
for her (cf neckarching cat). Moreover, on the free surface of the lake
in Stephen’s green amid inverted reflections of trees her uncommented
spit, describing concentric circles of waterrings, indicated by the
constancy of its permanence the locus of a somnolent prostrate fish (cf
mousewatching cat). Again, in order to remember the date, combatants,
issue and consequences of a famous military engagement she pulled a
plait of her hair (cf earwashing cat). Furthermore, silly Milly, she
dreamed of having had an unspoken unremembered conversation with a
horse whose name had been Joseph to whom (which) she had offered a
tumblerful of lemonade which it (he) had appeared to have accepted (cf
hearthdreaming cat). Hence, in passivity, in economy, in the instinct
of tradition, in unexpectedness, their differences were similar.
In what way had he utilised gifts (1) an owl, 2) a clock, given as
matrimonial auguries, to interest and to instruct her?
As object lessons to explain: 1) the nature and habits of oviparous
animals, the possibility of aerial flight, certain abnormalities of
vision, the secular process of imbalsamation: 2) the principle of the
pendulum, exemplified in bob, wheelgear and regulator, the translation
in terms of human or social regulation of the various positions of
clockwise moveable indicators on an unmoving dial, the exactitude of
the recurrence per hour of an instant in each hour when the longer and
the shorter indicator were at the same angle of inclination,
_videlicet_, 5 5/11 minutes past each hour per hour in arithmetical
progression.
In what manners did she reciprocate?
She remembered: on the 27th anniversary of his birth she presented to
him a breakfast moustachecup of imitation Crown Derby porcelain ware.
She provided: at quarter day or thereabouts if or when purchases had
been made by him not for her she showed herself attentive to his
necessities, anticipating his desires. She admired: a natural
phenomenon having been explained by him to her she expressed the
immediate desire to possess without gradual acquisition a fraction of
his science, the moiety, the quarter, a thousandth part.
What proposal did Bloom, diambulist, father of Milly, somnambulist,
make to Stephen, noctambulist?
To pass in repose the hours intervening between Thursday (proper) and
Friday (normal) on an extemporised cubicle in the apartment immediately
above the kitchen and immediately adjacent to the sleeping apartment of
his host and hostess.
What various advantages would or might have resulted from a
prolongation of such an extemporisation?
For the guest: security of domicile and seclusion of study. For the
host: rejuvenation of intelligence, vicarious satisfaction. For the
hostess: disintegration of obsession, acquisition of correct Italian
pronunciation.
Why might these several provisional contingencies between a guest and a
hostess not necessarily preclude or be precluded by a permanent
eventuality of reconciliatory union between a schoolfellow and a jew’s
daughter?
Because the way to daughter led through mother, the way to mother
through daughter.
To what inconsequent polysyllabic question of his host did the guest
return a monosyllabic negative answer?
If he had known the late Mrs Emily Sinico, accidentally killed at
Sydney Parade railway station, 14 October 1903.
What inchoate corollary statement was consequently suppressed by the
host?
A statement explanatory of his absence on the occasion of the interment
of Mrs Mary Dedalus (born Goulding), 26 June 1903, vigil of the
anniversary of the decease of Rudolph Bloom (born Virag).
Was the proposal of asylum accepted?
Promptly, inexplicably, with amicability, gratefully it was declined.
What exchange of money took place between host and guest?
The former returned to the latter, without interest, a sum of money (£
1-7-0), one pound seven shillings sterling, advanced by the latter to
the former.
What counterproposals were alternately advanced, accepted, modified,
declined, restated in other terms, reaccepted, ratified, reconfirmed?
To inaugurate a prearranged course of Italian instruction, place the
residence of the instructed. To inaugurate a course of vocal
instruction, place the residence of the instructress. To inaugurate a
series of static, semistatic and peripatetic intellectual dialogues,
places the residence of both speakers (if both speakers were resident
in the same place), the _Ship_ hotel and tavern, 6 Lower Abbey street
(W. and E. Connery, proprietors), the National Library of Ireland, 10
Kildare street, the National Maternity Hospital, 29, 30 and 31 Holles
street, a public garden, the vicinity of a place of worship, a
conjunction of two or more public thoroughfares, the point of bisection
of a right line drawn between their residences (if both speakers were
resident in different places).
What rendered problematic for Bloom the realisation of these mutually
selfexcluding propositions?
The irreparability of the past: once at a performance of Albert
Hengler’s circus in the Rotunda, Rutland square, Dublin, an intuitive
particoloured clown in quest of paternity had penetrated from the ring
to a place in the auditorium where Bloom, solitary, was seated and had
publicly declared to an exhilarated audience that he (Bloom) was his
(the clown’s) papa. The imprevidibility of the future: once in the
summer of 1898 he (Bloom) had marked a florin (2/-) with three notches
on the milled edge and tendered it in payment of an account due to and
received by J. and T. Davy, family grocers, 1 Charlemont Mall, Grand
Canal, for circulation on the waters of civic finance, for possible,
circuitous or direct, return.
Was the clown Bloom’s son?
No.
Had Bloom’s coin returned?
Never.
Why would a recurrent frustration the more depress him?
Because at the critical turningpoint of human existence he desired to
amend many social conditions, the product of inequality and avarice and
international animosity.
He believed then that human life was infinitely perfectible,
eliminating these conditions?
There remained the generic conditions imposed by natural, as distinct
from human law, as integral parts of the human whole: the necessity of
destruction to procure alimentary sustenance: the painful character of
the ultimate functions of separate existence, the agonies of birth and
death: the monotonous menstruation of simian and (particularly) human
females extending from the age of puberty to the menopause: inevitable
accidents at sea, in mines and factories: certain very painful maladies
and their resultant surgical operations, innate lunacy and congenital
criminality, decimating epidemics: catastrophic cataclysms which make
terror the basis of human mentality: seismic upheavals the epicentres
of which are located in densely populated regions: the fact of vital
growth, through convulsions of metamorphosis, from infancy through
maturity to decay.
Why did he desist from speculation?
Because it was a task for a superior intelligence to substitute other
more acceptable phenomena in the place of the less acceptable phenomena
to be removed.
Did Stephen participate in his dejection?
He affirmed his significance as a conscious rational animal proceeding
syllogistically from the known to the unknown and a conscious rational
reagent between a micro and a macrocosm ineluctably constructed upon
the incertitude of the void.
Was this affirmation apprehended by Bloom?
Not verbally. Substantially.
What comforted his misapprehension?
That as a competent keyless citizen he had proceeded energetically from
the unknown to the known through the incertitude of the void.
In what order of precedence, with what attendant ceremony was the
exodus from the house of bondage to the wilderness of inhabitation
effected?
Lighted Candle in Stick borne by
BLOOM
Diaconal Hat on Ashplant borne by
STEPHEN
With what intonation _secreto_ of what commemorative psalm?
The 113th, _modus peregrinus: In exitu Israël de Egypto: domus Jacob de
populo barbaro_.
What did each do at the door of egress?
Bloom set the candlestick on the floor. Stephen put the hat on his
head.
For what creature was the door of egress a door of ingress?
For a cat.
What spectacle confronted them when they, first the host, then the
guest, emerged silently, doubly dark, from obscurity by a passage from
the rere of the house into the penumbra of the garden?
The heaventree of stars hung with humid nightblue fruit.
With what meditations did Bloom accompany his demonstration to his
companion of various constellations?
Meditations of evolution increasingly vaster: of the moon invisible in
incipient lunation, approaching perigee: of the infinite lattiginous
scintillating uncondensed milky way, discernible by daylight by an
observer placed at the lower end of a cylindrical vertical shaft 5000
ft deep sunk from the surface towards the centre of the earth: of
Sirius (alpha in Canis Maior) 10 lightyears (57,000,000,000,000 miles)
distant and in volume 900 times the dimension of our planet: of
Arcturus: of the precession of equinoxes: of Orion with belt and
sextuple sun theta and nebula in which 100 of our solar systems could
be contained: of moribund and of nascent new stars such as Nova in
1901: of our system plunging towards the constellation of Hercules: of
the parallax or parallactic drift of socalled fixed stars, in reality
evermoving wanderers from immeasurably remote eons to infinitely remote
futures in comparison with which the years, threescore and ten, of
allotted human life formed a parenthesis of infinitesimal brevity.
Were there obverse meditations of involution increasingly less vast?
Of the eons of geological periods recorded in the stratifications of
the earth: of the myriad minute entomological organic existences
concealed in cavities of the earth, beneath removable stones, in hives
and mounds, of microbes, germs, bacteria, bacilli, spermatozoa: of the
incalculable trillions of billions of millions of imperceptible
molecules contained by cohesion of molecular affinity in a single
pinhead: of the universe of human serum constellated with red and white
bodies, themselves universes of void space constellated with other
bodies, each, in continuity, its universe of divisible component bodies
of which each was again divisible in divisions of redivisible component
bodies, dividends and divisors ever diminishing without actual division
till, if the progress were carried far enough, nought nowhere was never
reached.
Why did he not elaborate these calculations to a more precise result?
Because some years previously in 1886 when occupied with the problem of
the quadrature of the circle he had learned of the existence of a
number computed to a relative degree of accuracy to be of such
magnitude and of so many places, e.g., the 9th power of the 9th power
of 9, that, the result having been obtained, 33 closely printed volumes
of 1000 pages each of innumerable quires and reams of India paper would
have to be requisitioned in order to contain the complete tale of its
printed integers of units, tens, hundreds, thousands, tens of
thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions, tens of millions, hundreds
of millions, billions, the nucleus of the nebula of every digit of
every series containing succinctly the potentiality of being raised to
the utmost kinetic elaboration of any power of any of its powers.
Did he find the problems of the inhabitability of the planets and their
satellites by a race, given in species, and of the possible social and
moral redemption of said race by a redeemer, easier of solution?
Of a different order of difficulty. Conscious that the human organism,
normally capable of sustaining an atmospheric pressure of 19 tons, when
elevated to a considerable altitude in the terrestrial atmosphere
suffered with arithmetical progression of intensity, according as the
line of demarcation between troposphere and stratosphere was
approximated from nasal hemorrhage, impeded respiration and vertigo,
when proposing this problem for solution, he had conjectured as a
working hypothesis which could not be proved impossible that a more
adaptable and differently anatomically constructed race of beings might
subsist otherwise under Martian, Mercurial, Veneral, Jovian, Saturnian,
Neptunian or Uranian sufficient and equivalent conditions, though an
apogean humanity of beings created in varying forms with finite
differences resulting similar to the whole and to one another would
probably there as here remain inalterably and inalienably attached to
vanities, to vanities of vanities and to all that is vanity.
And the problem of possible redemption?
The minor was proved by the major.
Which various features of the constellations were in turn considered?
The various colours significant of various degrees of vitality (white,
yellow, crimson, vermilion, cinnabar): their degrees of brilliancy:
their magnitudes revealed up to and including the 7th: their positions:
the waggoner’s star: Walsingham way: the chariot of David: the annular
cinctures of Saturn: the condensation of spiral nebulae into suns: the
interdependent gyrations of double suns: the independent synchronous
discoveries of Galileo, Simon Marius, Piazzi, Le Verrier, Herschel,
Galle: the systematisations attempted by Bode and Kepler of cubes of
distances and squares of times of revolution: the almost infinite
compressibility of hirsute comets and their vast elliptical egressive
and reentrant orbits from perihelion to aphelion: the sidereal origin
of meteoric stones: the Libyan floods on Mars about the period of the
birth of the younger astroscopist: the annual recurrence of meteoric
showers about the period of the feast of S. Lawrence (martyr, 10
August): the monthly recurrence known as the new moon with the old moon
in her arms: the posited influence of celestial on human bodies: the
appearance of a star (1st magnitude) of exceeding brilliancy dominating
by night and day (a new luminous sun generated by the collision and
amalgamation in incandescence of two nonluminous exsuns) about the
period of the birth of William Shakespeare over delta in the recumbent
neversetting constellation of Cassiopeia and of a star (2nd magnitude)
of similar origin but of lesser brilliancy which had appeared in and
disappeared from the constellation of the Corona Septentrionalis about
the period of the birth of Leopold Bloom and of other stars of
(presumably) similar origin which had (effectively or presumably)
appeared in and disappeared from the constellation of Andromeda about
the period of the birth of Stephen Dedalus, and in and from the
constellation of Auriga some years after the birth and death of Rudolph
Bloom, junior, and in and from other constellations some years before
or after the birth or death of other persons: the attendant phenomena
of eclipses, solar and lunar, from immersion to emersion, abatement of
wind, transit of shadow, taciturnity of winged creatures, emergence of
nocturnal or crepuscular animals, persistence of infernal light,
obscurity of terrestrial waters, pallor of human beings.
His (Bloom’s) logical conclusion, having weighed the matter and
allowing for possible error?
That it was not a heaventree, not a heavengrot, not a heavenbeast, not
a heavenman. That it was a Utopia, there being no known method from the
known to the unknown: an infinity renderable equally finite by the
suppositious apposition of one or more bodies equally of the same and
of different magnitudes: a mobility of illusory forms immobilised in
space, remobilised in air: a past which possibly had ceased to exist as
a present before its probable spectators had entered actual present
existence.
Was he more convinced of the esthetic value of the spectacle?
Indubitably in consequence of the reiterated examples of poets in the
delirium of the frenzy of attachment or in the abasement of rejection
invoking ardent sympathetic constellations or the frigidity of the
satellite of their planet.
Did he then accept as an article of belief the theory of astrological
influences upon sublunary disasters?
It seemed to him as possible of proof as of confutation and the
nomenclature employed in its selenographical charts as attributable to
verifiable intuition as to fallacious analogy: the lake of dreams, the
sea of rains, the gulf of dews, the ocean of fecundity.
What special affinities appeared to him to exist between the moon and
woman?
Her antiquity in preceding and surviving successive tellurian
generations: her nocturnal predominance: her satellitic dependence: her
luminary reflection: her constancy under all her phases, rising and
setting by her appointed times, waxing and waning: the forced
invariability of her aspect: her indeterminate response to
inaffirmative interrogation: her potency over effluent and refluent
waters: her power to enamour, to mortify, to invest with beauty, to
render insane, to incite to and aid delinquency: the tranquil
inscrutability of her visage: the terribility of her isolated dominant
implacable resplendent propinquity: her omens of tempest and of calm:
the stimulation of her light, her motion and her presence: the
admonition of her craters, her arid seas, her silence: her splendour,
when visible: her attraction, when invisible.
What visible luminous sign attracted Bloom’s, who attracted Stephen’s,
gaze?
In the second storey (rere) of his (Bloom’s) house the light of a
paraffin oil lamp with oblique shade projected on a screen of roller
blind supplied by Frank O’Hara, window blind, curtain pole and
revolving shutter manufacturer, 16 Aungier street.
How did he elucidate the mystery of an invisible attractive person, his
wife Marion (Molly) Bloom, denoted by a visible splendid sign, a lamp?
With indirect and direct verbal allusions or affirmations: with subdued
affection and admiration: with description: with impediment: with
suggestion.
Both then were silent?
Silent, each contemplating the other in both mirrors of the reciprocal
flesh of theirhisnothis fellowfaces.
Were they indefinitely inactive?
At Stephen’s suggestion, at Bloom’s instigation both, first Stephen,
then Bloom, in penumbra urinated, their sides contiguous, their organs
of micturition reciprocally rendered invisible by manual
circumposition, their gazes, first Bloom’s, then Stephen’s, elevated to
the projected luminous and semiluminous shadow.
Similarly?
The trajectories of their, first sequent, then simultaneous, urinations
were dissimilar: Bloom’s longer, less irruent, in the incomplete form
of the bifurcated penultimate alphabetical letter, who in his ultimate
year at High School (1880) had been capable of attaining the point of
greatest altitude against the whole concurrent strength of the
institution, 210 scholars: Stephen’s higher, more sibilant, who in the
ultimate hours of the previous day had augmented by diuretic
consumption an insistent vesical pressure.
What different problems presented themselves to each concerning the
invisible audible collateral organ of the other?
To Bloom: the problems of irritability, tumescence, rigidity,
reactivity, dimension, sanitariness, pilosity.
To Stephen: the problem of the sacerdotal integrity of Jesus
circumcised (1 January, holiday of obligation to hear mass and abstain
from unnecessary servile work) and the problem as to whether the divine
prepuce, the carnal bridal ring of the holy Roman catholic apostolic
church, conserved in Calcata, were deserving of simple hyperduly or of
the fourth degree of latria accorded to the abscission of such divine
excrescences as hair and toenails.
What celestial sign was by both simultaneously observed?
A star precipitated with great apparent velocity across the firmament
from Vega in the Lyre above the zenith beyond the stargroup of the
Tress of Berenice towards the zodiacal sign of Leo.
How did the centripetal remainer afford egress to the centrifugal
departer?
By inserting the barrel of an arruginated male key in the hole of an
unstable female lock, obtaining a purchase on the bow of the key and
turning its wards from right to left, withdrawing a bolt from its
staple, pulling inward spasmodically an obsolescent unhinged door and
revealing an aperture for free egress and free ingress.
How did they take leave, one of the other, in separation?
Standing perpendicular at the same door and on different sides of its
base, the lines of their valedictory arms, meeting at any point and
forming any angle less than the sum of two right angles.
What sound accompanied the union of their tangent, the disunion of
their (respectively) centrifugal and centripetal hands?
The sound of the peal of the hour of the night by the chime of the
bells in the church of Saint George.
What echoes of that sound were by both and each heard?
By Stephen:
 Liliata rutilantium. Turma circumdet.
 Iubilantium te virginum. Chorus excipiat.
By Bloom:
 Heigho, heigho,
 Heigho, heigho.
Where were the several members of the company which with Bloom that day
at the bidding of that peal had travelled from Sandymount in the south
to Glasnevin in the north?
Martin Cunningham (in bed), Jack Power (in bed), Simon Dedalus (in
bed), Ned Lambert (in bed), Tom Kernan (in bed), Joe Hynes (in bed),
John Henry Menton (in bed), Bernard Corrigan (in bed), Patsy Dignam (in
bed), Paddy Dignam (in the grave).
Alone, what did Bloom hear?
The double reverberation of retreating feet on the heavenborn earth,
the double vibration of a jew’s harp in the resonant lane.
Alone, what did Bloom feel?
The cold of interstellar space, thousands of degrees below freezing
point or the absolute zero of Fahrenheit, Centigrade or Réaumur: the
incipient intimations of proximate dawn.
Of what did bellchime and handtouch and footstep and lonechill remind
him?
Of companions now in various manners in different places defunct: Percy
Apjohn (killed in action, Modder River), Philip Gilligan (phthisis,
Jervis Street hospital), Matthew F. Kane (accidental drowning, Dublin
Bay), Philip Moisel (pyemia, Heytesbury street), Michael Hart
(phthisis, Mater Misericordiae hospital), Patrick Dignam (apoplexy,
Sandymount).
What prospect of what phenomena inclined him to remain?
The disparition of three final stars, the diffusion of daybreak, the
apparition of a new solar disk.
Had he ever been a spectator of those phenomena?
Once, in 1887, after a protracted performance of charades in the house
of Luke Doyle, Kimmage, he had awaited with patience the apparition of
the diurnal phenomenon, seated on a wall, his gaze turned in the
direction of Mizrach, the east.
He remembered the initial paraphenomena?
More active air, a matutinal distant cock, ecclesiastical clocks at
various points, avine music, the isolated tread of an early wayfarer,
the visible diffusion of the light of an invisible luminous body, the
first golden limb of the resurgent sun perceptible low on the horizon.
Did he remain?
With deep inspiration he returned, retraversing the garden, reentering
the passage, reclosing the door. With brief suspiration he reassumed
the candle, reascended the stairs, reapproached the door of the front
room, hallfloor, and reentered.
What suddenly arrested his ingress?
The right temporal lobe of the hollow sphere of his cranium came into
contact with a solid timber angle where, an infinitesimal but sensible
fraction of a second later, a painful sensation was located in
consequence of antecedent sensations transmitted and registered.
Describe the alterations effected in the disposition of the articles of
furniture.
A sofa upholstered in prune plush had been translocated from opposite
the door to the ingleside near the compactly furled Union Jack (an
alteration which he had frequently intended to execute): the blue and
white checker inlaid majolicatopped table had been placed opposite the
door in the place vacated by the prune plush sofa: the walnut sideboard
(a projecting angle of which had momentarily arrested his ingress) had
been moved from its position beside the door to a more advantageous but
more perilous position in front of the door: two chairs had been moved
from right and left of the ingleside to the position originally
occupied by the blue and white checker inlaid majolicatopped table.
Describe them.
One: a squat stuffed easychair, with stout arms extended and back
slanted to the rere, which, repelled in recoil, had then upturned an
irregular fringe of a rectangular rug and now displayed on its amply
upholstered seat a centralised diffusing and diminishing
discolouration. The other: a slender splayfoot chair of glossy cane
curves, placed directly opposite the former, its frame from top to seat
and from seat to base being varnished dark brown, its seat being a
bright circle of white plaited rush.
What significances attached to these two chairs?
Significances of similitude, of posture, of symbolism, of
circumstantial evidence, of testimonial supermanence.
What occupied the position originally occupied by the sideboard?
A vertical piano (Cadby) with exposed keyboard, its closed coffin
supporting a pair of long yellow ladies’ gloves and an emerald ashtray
containing four consumed matches, a partly consumed cigarette and two
discoloured ends of cigarettes, its musicrest supporting the music in
the key of G natural for voice and piano of _Love’s Old Sweet Song_
(words by G. Clifton Bingham, composed by J. L. Molloy, sung by Madam
Antoinette Sterling) open at the last page with the final indications
_ad libitum, forte_, pedal, _animato_, sustained pedal, _ritirando_,
close.
With what sensations did Bloom contemplate in rotation these objects?
With strain, elevating a candlestick: with pain, feeling on his right
temple a contused tumescence: with attention, focussing his gaze on a
large dull passive and a slender bright active: with solicitation,
bending and downturning the upturned rugfringe: with amusement,
remembering Dr Malachi Mulligan’s scheme of colour containing the
gradation of green: with pleasure, repeating the words and antecedent
act and perceiving through various channels of internal sensibility the
consequent and concomitant tepid pleasant diffusion of gradual
discolouration.
His next proceeding?
From an open box on the majolicatopped table he extracted a black
diminutive cone, one inch in height, placed it on its circular base on
a small tin plate, placed his candlestick on the right corner of the
mantelpiece, produced from his waistcoat a folded page of prospectus
(illustrated) entitled Agendath Netaim, unfolded the same, examined it
superficially, rolled it into a thin cylinder, ignited it in the
candleflame, applied it when ignited to the apex of the cone till the
latter reached the stage of rutilance, placed the cylinder in the basin
of the candlestick disposing its unconsumed part in such a manner as to
facilitate total combustion.
What followed this operation?
The truncated conical crater summit of the diminutive volcano emitted a
vertical and serpentine fume redolent of aromatic oriental incense.
What homothetic objects, other than the candlestick, stood on the
mantelpiece?
A timepiece of striated Connemara marble, stopped at the hour of 4.46
a.m. on the 21 March 1896, matrimonial gift of Matthew Dillon: a dwarf
tree of glacial arborescence under a transparent bellshade, matrimonial
gift of Luke and Caroline Doyle: an embalmed owl, matrimonial gift of
Alderman John Hooper.
What interchanges of looks took place between these three objects and
Bloom?
In the mirror of the giltbordered pierglass the undecorated back of the
dwarf tree regarded the upright back of the embalmed owl. Before the
mirror the matrimonial gift of Alderman John Hooper with a clear
melancholy wise bright motionless compassionate gaze regarded Bloom
while Bloom with obscure tranquil profound motionless compassionated
gaze regarded the matrimonial gift of Luke and Caroline Doyle.
What composite asymmetrical image in the mirror then attracted his
attention?
The image of a solitary (ipsorelative) mutable (aliorelative) man.
Why solitary (ipsorelative)?
 Brothers and sisters had he none.
 Yet that man’s father was his grandfather’s son.
Why mutable (aliorelative)?
From infancy to maturity he had resembled his maternal procreatrix.
From maturity to senility he would increasingly resemble his paternal
procreator.
What final visual impression was communicated to him by the mirror?
The optical reflection of several inverted volumes improperly arranged
and not in the order of their common letters with scintillating titles
on the two bookshelves opposite.
Catalogue these books.
_Thom’s Dublin Post Office Directory_, 1886.
Denis Florence M’Carthy’s _Poetical Works_ (copper beechleaf bookmark
at p. 5).
Shakespeare’s _Works_ (dark crimson morocco, goldtooled).
_The Useful Ready Reckoner_ (brown cloth).
_The Secret History of the Court of Charles II_ (red cloth, tooled
binding).
_The Child’s Guide_ (blue cloth).
_The Beauties of Killarney_ (wrappers).
_When We Were Boys_ by William O’Brien M. P. (green cloth, slightly
faded, envelope bookmark at p. 217).
_Thoughts from Spinoza_ (maroon leather).
_The Story of the Heavens_ by Sir Robert Ball (blue cloth).
Ellis’s _Three Trips to Madagascar_ (brown cloth, title obliterated).
_The Stark-Munro Letters_ by A. Conan Doyle, property of the City of
Dublin Public Library, 106 Capel street, lent 21 May (Whitsun Eve)
1904, due 4 June 1904, 13 days overdue (black cloth binding, bearing
white letternumber ticket).
_Voyages in China_ by “Viator” (recovered with brown paper, red ink
title).
_Philosophy of the Talmud_ (sewn pamphlet).
Lockhart’s _Life of Napoleon_ (cover wanting, marginal annotations,
minimising victories, aggrandising defeats of the protagonist).
_Soll und Haben_ by Gustav Freytag (black boards, Gothic characters,
cigarette coupon bookmark at p. 24).
Hozier’s _History of the Russo-Turkish War_ (brown cloth, 2 volumes,
with gummed label, Garrison Library, Governor’s Parade, Gibraltar, on
verso of cover).
_Laurence Bloomfield in Ireland_ by William Allingham (second edition,
green cloth, gilt trefoil design, previous owner’s name on recto of
flyleaf erased).
_A Handbook of Astronomy_ (cover, brown leather, detached, 5 plates,
antique letterpress long primer, author’s footnotes nonpareil, marginal
clues brevier, captions small pica).
_The Hidden Life of Christ_ (black boards).
_In the Track of the Sun_ (yellow cloth, titlepage missing, recurrent
title intestation).
_Physical Strength and How to Obtain It_ by Eugen Sandow (red cloth).
_Short but yet Plain Elements of Geometry_ written in French by F.
Ignat. Pardies and rendered into Engliſh by John Harris D. D. London,
printed for R. Knaplock at the Biſhop’s Head, MDCCXI, with dedicatory
epiſtle to his worthy friend Charles Cox, eſquire, Member of Parliament
for the burgh of Southwark and having ink calligraphed statement on the
flyleaf certifying that the book was the property of Michael Gallagher,
dated this 10th day of May 1822 and requeſting the perſon who should
find it, if the book should be loſt or go aſtray, to reſtore it to
Michael Gallagher, carpenter, Dufery Gate, Enniſcorthy, county Wicklow,
the fineſt place in the world.
What reflections occupied his mind during the process of reversion of
the inverted volumes?
The necessity of order, a place for everything and everything in its
place: the deficient appreciation of literature possessed by females:
the incongruity of an apple incuneated in a tumbler and of an umbrella
inclined in a closestool: the insecurity of hiding any secret document
behind, beneath or between the pages of a book.
Which volume was the largest in bulk?
Hozier’s _History of the Russo-Turkish War._
What among other data did the second volume of the work in question
contain?
The name of a decisive battle (forgotten), frequently remembered by a
decisive officer, major Brian Cooper Tweedy (remembered).
Why, firstly and secondly, did he not consult the work in question?
Firstly, in order to exercise mnemotechnic: secondly, because after an
interval of amnesia, when, seated at the central table, about to
consult the work in question, he remembered by mnemotechnic the name of
the military engagement, Plevna.
What caused him consolation in his sitting posture?
The candour, nudity, pose, tranquility, youth, grace, sex, counsel of a
statue erect in the centre of the table, an image of Narcissus
purchased by auction from P. A. Wren, 9 Bachelor’s Walk.
What caused him irritation in his sitting posture?
Inhibitory pressure of collar (size 17) and waistcoat (5 buttons), two
articles of clothing superfluous in the costume of mature males and
inelastic to alterations of mass by expansion.
How was the irritation allayed?
He removed his collar, with contained black necktie and collapsible
stud, from his neck to a position on the left of the table. He
unbuttoned successively in reversed direction waistcoat, trousers,
shirt and vest along the medial line of irregular incrispated black
hairs extending in triangular convergence from the pelvic basin over
the circumference of the abdomen and umbilicular fossicle along the
medial line of nodes to the intersection of the sixth pectoral
vertebrae, thence produced both ways at right angles and terminating in
circles described about two equidistant points, right and left, on the
summits of the mammary prominences. He unbraced successively each of
six minus one braced trouser buttons, arranged in pairs, of which one
incomplete.
What involuntary actions followed?
He compressed between 2 fingers the flesh circumjacent to a cicatrice
in the left infracostal region below the diaphragm resulting from a
sting inflicted 2 weeks and 3 days previously (23 May 1904) by a bee.
He scratched imprecisely with his right hand, though insensible of
prurition, various points and surfaces of his partly exposed, wholly
abluted skin. He inserted his left hand into the left lower pocket of
his waistcoat and extracted and replaced a silver coin (1 shilling),
placed there (presumably) on the occasion (17 October 1903) of the
interment of Mrs Emily Sinico, Sydney Parade.
Compile the budget for 16 June 1904.
 Debit
 £. s. d.
 1 Pork kidney 0—0—3
 1 Copy Freeman’s Journal 0—0—1
 1 Bath and Gratification 0—1—6
 Tramfare 0—0—1
 1 In Memoriam Patrick Dignam 0—5—0
 2 Banbury cakes 0—0—1
 1 Lunch 0—0—7
 1 Renewal fee for book 0—1—0
 1 Packet Notepaper and Envelopes 0—0—2
 1 Dinner and Gratification 0—2—0
 1 Postal Order and Stamp 0—2—8
 Tramfare 0—0—1
 1 Pig’s Foot 0—0—4
 1 Sheep’s Trotter 0—0—3
 1 Cake Fry’s Plain Chocolate 0—0—1
 1 Square Soda Bread 0—0—4
 1 Coffee and Bun 0—0—4
 Loan (Stephen Dedalus) refunded 1—7—0
 BALANCE 0—16—6
 —————
 2—19—3
 Credit
 £. s. d.
 Cash in hand 0—4—9
 Commission recd. Freeman’s Journal 1—7—6
 Loan (Stephen Dedalus) 1—7—0
 —————
 2—19—3
Did the process of divestiture continue?
Did the process of divestiture continue?
Sensible of a benignant persistent ache in his footsoles he extended
his foot to one side and observed the creases, protuberances and
salient points caused by foot pressure in the course of walking
repeatedly in several different directions, then, inclined, he disnoded
the laceknots, unhooked and loosened the laces, took off each of his
two boots for the second time, detached the partially moistened right
sock through the fore part of which the nail of his great toe had again
effracted, raised his right foot and, having unhooked a purple elastic
sock suspender, took off his right sock, placed his unclothed right
foot on the margin of the seat of his chair, picked at and gently
lacerated the protruding part of the great toenail, raised the part
lacerated to his nostrils and inhaled the odour of the quick, then,
with satisfaction, threw away the lacerated ungual fragment.
Why with satisfaction?
Because the odour inhaled corresponded to other odours inhaled of other
ungual fragments, picked and lacerated by Master Bloom, pupil of Mrs
Ellis’s juvenile school, patiently each night in the act of brief
genuflection and nocturnal prayer and ambitious meditation.
In what ultimate ambition had all concurrent and consecutive ambitions
now coalesced?
Not to inherit by right of primogeniture, gavelkind or borough English,
or possess in perpetuity an extensive demesne of a sufficient number of
acres, roods and perches, statute land measure (valuation £ 42), of
grazing turbary surrounding a baronial hall with gatelodge and carriage
drive nor, on the other hand, a terracehouse or semidetached villa,
described as _Rus in Urbe_ or _Qui si sana_, but to purchase by private
treaty in fee simple a thatched bungalowshaped 2 storey dwellinghouse
of southerly aspect, surmounted by vane and lightning conductor,
connected with the earth, with porch covered by parasitic plants (ivy
or Virginia creeper), halldoor, olive green, with smart carriage finish
and neat doorbrasses, stucco front with gilt tracery at eaves and
gable, rising, if possible, upon a gentle eminence with agreeable
prospect from balcony with stone pillar parapet over unoccupied and
unoccupyable interjacent pastures and standing in 5 or 6 acres of its
own ground, at such a distance from the nearest public thoroughfare as
to render its houselights visible at night above and through a quickset
hornbeam hedge of topiary cutting, situate at a given point not less
than 1 statute mile from the periphery of the metropolis, within a time
limit of not more than 15 minutes from tram or train line (e.g.,
Dundrum, south, or Sutton, north, both localities equally reported by
trial to resemble the terrestrial poles in being favourable climates
for phthisical subjects), the premises to be held under feefarm grant,
lease 999 years, the messuage to consist of 1 drawingroom with
baywindow (2 lancets), thermometer affixed, 1 sittingroom, 4 bedrooms,
2 servants’ rooms, tiled kitchen with close range and scullery, lounge
hall fitted with linen wallpresses, fumed oak sectional bookcase
containing the Encyclopaedia Britannica and New Century Dictionary,
transverse obsolete medieval and oriental weapons, dinner gong,
alabaster lamp, bowl pendant, vulcanite automatic telephone receiver
with adjacent directory, handtufted Axminster carpet with cream ground
and trellis border, loo table with pillar and claw legs, hearth with
massive firebrasses and ormolu mantel chronometer clock, guaranteed
timekeeper with cathedral chime, barometer with hygrographic chart,
comfortable lounge settees and corner fitments, upholstered in ruby
plush with good springing and sunk centre, three banner Japanese screen
and cuspidors (club style, rich winecoloured leather, gloss renewable
with a minimum of labour by use of linseed oil and vinegar) and
pyramidically prismatic central chandelier lustre, bentwood perch with
fingertame parrot (expurgated language), embossed mural paper at 10/-
per dozen with transverse swags of carmine floral design and top crown
frieze, staircase, three continuous flights at successive right angles,
of varnished cleargrained oak, treads and risers, newel, balusters and
handrail, with steppedup panel dado, dressed with camphorated wax:
bathroom, hot and cold supply, reclining and shower: water closet on
mezzanine provided with opaque singlepane oblong window, tipup seat,
bracket lamp, brass tierod and brace, armrests, footstool and artistic
oleograph on inner face of door: ditto, plain: servants’ apartments
with separate sanitary and hygienic necessaries for cook, general and
betweenmaid (salary, rising by biennial unearned increments of £ 2,
with comprehensive fidelity insurance, annual bonus (£ 1) and retiring
allowance (based on the 65 system) after 30 years’ service), pantry,
buttery, larder, refrigerator, outoffices, coal and wood cellarage with
winebin (still and sparkling vintages) for distinguished guests, if
entertained to dinner (evening dress), carbon monoxide gas supply
throughout.
What additional attractions might the grounds contain?
As addenda, a tennis and fives court, a shrubbery, a glass summerhouse
with tropical palms, equipped in the best botanical manner, a rockery
with waterspray, a beehive arranged on humane principles, oval
flowerbeds in rectangular grassplots set with eccentric ellipses of
scarlet and chrome tulips, blue scillas, crocuses, polyanthus, sweet
William, sweet pea, lily of the valley (bulbs obtainable from sir James
W. Mackey (Limited) wholesale and retail seed and bulb merchants and
nurserymen, agents for chemical manures, 23 Sackville street, upper),
an orchard, kitchen garden and vinery, protected against illegal
trespassers by glasstopped mural enclosures, a lumbershed with padlock
for various inventoried implements.
As?
Eeltraps, lobsterpots, fishingrods, hatchet, steelyard, grindstone,
clodcrusher, swatheturner, carriagesack, telescope ladder, 10 tooth
rake, washing clogs, haytedder, tumbling rake, billhook, paintpot,
brush, hoe and so on.
What improvements might be subsequently introduced?
A rabbitry and fowlrun, a dovecote, a botanical conservatory, 2
hammocks (lady’s and gentleman’s), a sundial shaded and sheltered by
laburnum or lilac trees, an exotically harmonically accorded Japanese
tinkle gatebell affixed to left lateral gatepost, a capacious
waterbutt, a lawnmower with side delivery and grassbox, a lawnsprinkler
with hydraulic hose.
What facilities of transit were desirable?
When citybound frequent connection by train or tram from their
respective intermediate station or terminal. When countrybound
velocipedes, a chainless freewheel roadster cycle with side basketcar
attached, or draught conveyance, a donkey with wicker trap or smart
phaeton with good working solidungular cob (roan gelding, 14 h).
What might be the name of this erigible or erected residence?
Bloom Cottage. Saint Leopold’s. Flowerville.
Could Bloom of 7 Eccles street foresee Bloom of Flowerville?
In loose allwool garments with Harris tweed cap, price 8/6, and useful
garden boots with elastic gussets and wateringcan, planting aligned
young firtrees, syringing, pruning, staking, sowing hayseed, trundling
a weedladen wheelbarrow without excessive fatigue at sunset amid the
scent of newmown hay, ameliorating the soil, multiplying wisdom,
achieving longevity.
What syllabus of intellectual pursuits was simultaneously possible?
Snapshot photography, comparative study of religions, folklore relative
to various amatory and superstitious practices, contemplation of the
celestial constellations.
What lighter recreations?
Outdoor: garden and fieldwork, cycling on level macadamised causeways,
ascents of moderately high hills, natation in secluded fresh water and
unmolested river boating in secure wherry or light curricle with kedge
anchor on reaches free from weirs and rapids (period of estivation),
vespertinal perambulation or equestrian circumprocession with
inspection of sterile landscape and contrastingly agreeable cottagers’
fires of smoking peat turves (period of hibernation). Indoor:
discussion in tepid security of unsolved historical and criminal
problems: lecture of unexpurgated exotic erotic masterpieces: house
carpentry with toolbox containing hammer, awl, nails, screws, tintacks,
gimlet, tweezers, bullnose plane and turnscrew.
Might he become a gentleman farmer of field produce and live stock?
Not impossibly, with 1 or 2 stripper cows, 1 pike of upland hay and
requisite farming implements, e.g., an end-to-end churn, a turnip
pulper etc.
What would be his civic functions and social status among the county
families and landed gentry?
Arranged successively in ascending powers of hierarchical order, that
of gardener, groundsman, cultivator, breeder, and at the zenith of his
career, resident magistrate or justice of the peace with a family crest
and coat of arms and appropriate classical motto _(Semper paratus_),
duly recorded in the court directory (Bloom, Leopold P., M. P., P. C.,
K. P., L. L. D. (_honoris causa_), Bloomville, Dundrum) and mentioned
in court and fashionable intelligence (Mr and Mrs Leopold Bloom have
left Kingstown for England).
What course of action did he outline for himself in such capacity?
A course that lay between undue clemency and excessive rigour: the
dispensation in a heterogeneous society of arbitrary classes,
incessantly rearranged in terms of greater and lesser social
inequality, of unbiassed homogeneous indisputable justice, tempered
with mitigants of the widest possible latitude but exactable to the
uttermost farthing with confiscation of estate, real and personal, to
the crown. Loyal to the highest constituted power in the land, actuated
by an innate love of rectitude his aims would be the strict maintenance
of public order, the repression of many abuses though not of all
simultaneously (every measure of reform or retrenchment being a
preliminary solution to be contained by fluxion in the final solution),
the upholding of the letter of the law (common, statute and law
merchant) against all traversers in covin and trespassers acting in
contravention of bylaws and regulations, all resuscitators (by trespass
and petty larceny of kindlings) of venville rights, obsolete by
desuetude, all orotund instigators of international persecution, all
perpetuators of international animosities, all menial molestors of
domestic conviviality, all recalcitrant violators of domestic
connubiality.
Prove that he had loved rectitude from his earliest youth.
To Master Percy Apjohn at High School in 1880 he had divulged his
disbelief in the tenets of the Irish (protestant) church (to which his
father Rudolf Virag (later Rudolph Bloom) had been converted from the
Israelitic faith and communion in 1865 by the Society for promoting
Christianity among the jews) subsequently abjured by him in favour of
Roman catholicism at the epoch of and with a view to his matrimony in
1888. To Daniel Magrane and Francis Wade in 1882 during a juvenile
friendship (terminated by the premature emigration of the former) he
had advocated during nocturnal perambulations the political theory of
colonial (e.g. Canadian) expansion and the evolutionary theories of
Charles Darwin, expounded in _The Descent of Man_ and _The Origin of
Species_. In 1885 he had publicly expressed his adherence to the
collective and national economic programme advocated by James Fintan
Lalor, John Fisher Murray, John Mitchel, J. F. X. O’Brien and others,
the agrarian policy of Michael Davitt, the constitutional agitation of
Charles Stewart Parnell (M. P. for Cork City), the programme of peace,
retrenchment and reform of William Ewart Gladstone (M. P. for
Midlothian, N. B.) and, in support of his political convictions, had
climbed up into a secure position amid the ramifications of a tree on
Northumberland road to see the entrance (2 February 1888) into the
capital of a demonstrative torchlight procession of 20,000
torchbearers, divided into 120 trade corporations, bearing 2000 torches
in escort of the marquess of Ripon and (honest) John Morley.
How much and how did he propose to pay for this country residence?
As per prospectus of the Industrious Foreign Acclimatised Nationalised
Friendly Stateaided Building Society (incorporated 1874), a maximum of
£ 60 per annum, being 1/6 of an assured income, derived from giltedged
securities, representing at 5 % simple interest on capital of £ 1200
(estimate of price at 20 years’ purchase), of which 1/3 to be paid on
acquisition and the balance in the form of annual rent, viz. £ 800 plus
2 1/2 % interest on the same, repayable quarterly in equal annual
instalments until extinction by amortisation of loan advanced for
purchase within a period of 20 years, amounting to an annual rental of
£ 64, headrent included, the titledeeds to remain in possession of the
lender or lenders with a saving clause envisaging forced sale,
foreclosure and mutual compensation in the event of protracted failure
to pay the terms assigned, otherwise the messuage to become the
absolute property of the tenant occupier upon expiry of the period of
years stipulated.
What rapid but insecure means to opulence might facilitate immediate
purchase?
A private wireless telegraph which would transmit by dot and dash
system the result of a national equine handicap (flat or steeplechase)
of 1 or more miles and furlongs won by an outsider at odds of 50 to 1
at 3 hr 8 m p.m. at Ascot (Greenwich time), the message being received
and available for betting purposes in Dublin at 2.59 p.m. (Dunsink
time). The unexpected discovery of an object of great monetary value
(precious stone, valuable adhesive or impressed postage stamps (7
schilling, mauve, imperforate, Hamburg, 1866: 4 pence, rose, blue
paper, perforate, Great Britain, 1855: 1 franc, stone, official,
rouletted, diagonal surcharge, Luxemburg, 1878), antique dynastical
ring, unique relic) in unusual repositories or by unusual means: from
the air (dropped by an eagle in flight), by fire (amid the carbonised
remains of an incendiated edifice), in the sea (amid flotsam, jetsam,
lagan and derelict), on earth (in the gizzard of a comestible fowl). A
Spanish prisoner’s donation of a distant treasure of valuables or
specie or bullion lodged with a solvent banking corporation 100 years
previously at 5% compound interest of the collective worth of £
5,000,000 stg (five million pounds sterling). A contract with an
inconsiderate contractee for the delivery of 32 consignments of some
given commodity in consideration of cash payment on delivery per
delivery at the initial rate of 1/4d to be increased constantly in the
geometrical progression of 2 (1/4d, 1/2d, 1d, 2d, 4d, 8d, 1s 4d, 2s 8d
to 32 terms). A prepared scheme based on a study of the laws of
probability to break the bank at Monte Carlo. A solution of the secular
problem of the quadrature of the circle, government premium £ 1,000,000
sterling.
Was vast wealth acquirable through industrial channels?
The reclamation of dunams of waste arenary soil, proposed in the
prospectus of Agendath Netaim, Bleibtreustrasse, Berlin, W. 15, by the
cultivation of orange plantations and melonfields and reafforestation.
The utilisation of waste paper, fells of sewer rodents, human excrement
possessing chemical properties, in view of the vast production of the
first, vast number of the second and immense quantity of the third,
every normal human being of average vitality and appetite producing
annually, cancelling byproducts of water, a sum total of 80 lbs. (mixed
animal and vegetable diet), to be multiplied by 4,386,035, the total
population of Ireland according to census returns of 1901.
Were there schemes of wider scope?
A scheme to be formulated and submitted for approval to the harbour
commissioners for the exploitation of white coal (hydraulic power),
obtained by hydroelectric plant at peak of tide at Dublin bar or at
head of water at Poulaphouca or Powerscourt or catchment basins of main
streams for the economic production of 500,000 W. H. P. of electricity.
A scheme to enclose the peninsular delta of the North Bull at
Dollymount and erect on the space of the foreland, used for golf links
and rifle ranges, an asphalted esplanade with casinos, booths, shooting
galleries, hotels, boardinghouses, readingrooms, establishments for
mixed bathing. A scheme for the use of dogvans and goatvans for the
delivery of early morning milk. A scheme for the development of Irish
tourist traffic in and around Dublin by means of petrolpropelled
riverboats, plying in the fluvial fairway between Island bridge and
Ringsend, charabancs, narrow gauge local railways, and pleasure
steamers for coastwise navigation (10/- per person per day, guide
(trilingual) included). A scheme for the repristination of passenger
and goods traffics over Irish waterways, when freed from weedbeds. A
scheme to connect by tramline the Cattle Market (North Circular road
and Prussia street) with the quays (Sheriff street, lower, and East
Wall), parallel with the Link line railway laid (in conjunction with
the Great Southern and Western railway line) between the cattle park,
Liffey junction, and terminus of Midland Great Western Railway 43 to 45
North Wall, in proximity to the terminal stations or Dublin branches of
Great Central Railway, Midland Railway of England, City of Dublin Steam
Packet Company, Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway Company, Dublin and
Glasgow Steam Packet Company, Glasgow, Dublin and Londonderry Steam
Packet Company (Laird line), British and Irish Steam Packet Company,
Dublin and Morecambe Steamers, London and North Western Railway
Company, Dublin Port and Docks Board Landing Sheds and transit sheds of
Palgrave, Murphy and Company, steamship owners, agents for steamers
from Mediterranean, Spain, Portugal, France, Belgium and Holland and
for Liverpool Underwriters’ Association, the cost of acquired rolling
stock for animal transport and of additional mileage operated by the
Dublin United Tramways Company, limited, to be covered by graziers’
fees.
Positing what protasis would the contraction for such several schemes
become a natural and necessary apodosis?
Given a guarantee equal to the sum sought, the support, by deed of gift
and transfer vouchers during donor’s lifetime or by bequest after
donor’s painless extinction, of eminent financiers (Blum Pasha,
Rothschild, Guggenheim, Hirsch, Montefiore, Morgan, Rockefeller)
possessing fortunes in 6 figures, amassed during a successful life, and
joining capital with opportunity the thing required was done.
What eventuality would render him independent of such wealth?
The independent discovery of a goldseam of inexhaustible ore.
For what reason did he meditate on schemes so difficult of realisation?
It was one of his axioms that similar meditations or the automatic
relation to himself of a narrative concerning himself or tranquil
recollection of the past when practised habitually before retiring for
the night alleviated fatigue and produced as a result sound repose and
renovated vitality.
His justifications?
As a physicist he had learned that of the 70 years of complete human
life at least 2/7, viz. 20 years are passed in sleep. As a philosopher
he knew that at the termination of any allotted life only an
infinitesimal part of any person’s desires has been realised. As a
physiologist he believed in the artificial placation of malignant
agencies chiefly operative during somnolence.
What did he fear?
The committal of homicide or suicide during sleep by an aberration of
the light of reason, the incommensurable categorical intelligence
situated in the cerebral convolutions.
What were habitually his final meditations?
Of some one sole unique advertisement to cause passers to stop in
wonder, a poster novelty, with all extraneous accretions excluded,
reduced to its simplest and most efficient terms not exceeding the span
of casual vision and congruous with the velocity of modern life.
What did the first drawer unlocked contain?
A Vere Foster’s handwriting copybook, property of Milly (Millicent)
Bloom, certain pages of which bore diagram drawings, marked _Papli_,
which showed a large globular head with 5 hairs erect, 2 eyes in
profile, the trunk full front with 3 large buttons, 1 triangular foot:
2 fading photographs of queen Alexandra of England and of Maud
Branscombe, actress and professional beauty: a Yuletide card, bearing
on it a pictorial representation of a parasitic plant, the legend
_Mizpah_, the date Xmas 1892, the name of the senders: from Mr + Mrs M.
Comerford, the versicle: _May this Yuletide bring to thee, Joy and
peace and welcome glee_: a butt of red partly liquefied sealing wax,
obtained from the stores department of Messrs Hely’s, Ltd., 89, 90, and
91 Dame street: a box containing the remainder of a gross of gilt “J”
pennibs, obtained from same department of same firm: an old sandglass
which rolled containing sand which rolled: a sealed prophecy (never
unsealed) written by Leopold Bloom in 1886 concerning the consequences
of the passing into law of William Ewart Gladstone’s Home Rule bill of
1886 (never passed into law): a bazaar ticket, No 2004, of S. Kevin’s
Charity Fair, price 6d, 100 prizes: an infantile epistle, dated, small
em monday, reading: capital pee Papli comma capital aitch How are you
note of interrogation capital eye I am very well full stop new
paragraph signature with flourishes capital em Milly no stop: a cameo
brooch, property of Ellen Bloom (born Higgins), deceased: a cameo
scarfpin, property of Rudolph Bloom (born Virag), deceased: 3
typewritten letters, addressee, Henry Flower, c/o. P. O. Westland Row,
addresser, Martha Clifford, c/o. P. O. Dolphin’s Barn: the
transliterated name and address of the addresser of the 3 letters in
reversed alphabetic boustrophedonic punctated quadrilinear cryptogram
(vowels suppressed) N. IGS./WI. UU. OX/W. OKS. MH/Y. IM: a press
cutting from an English weekly periodical _Modern Society_, subject
corporal chastisement in girls’ schools: a pink ribbon which had
festooned an Easter egg in the year 1899: two partly uncoiled rubber
preservatives with reserve pockets, purchased by post from Box 32, P.
O., Charing Cross, London, W. C.: 1 pack of 1 dozen creamlaid envelopes
and feintruled notepaper, watermarked, now reduced by 3: some assorted
Austrian-Hungarian coins: 2 coupons of the Royal and Privileged
Hungarian Lottery: a lowpower magnifying glass: 2 erotic photocards
showing a) buccal coition between nude senorita (rere presentation,
superior position) and nude torero (fore presentation, inferior
position) b) anal violation by male religious (fully clothed, eyes
abject) of female religious (partly clothed, eyes direct), purchased by
post from Box 32, P. O., Charing Cross, London, W. C.: a press cutting
of recipe for renovation of old tan boots: a 1d adhesive stamp,
lavender, of the reign of Queen Victoria: a chart of the measurements
of Leopold Bloom compiled before, during and after 2 months’
consecutive use of Sandow-Whiteley’s pulley exerciser (men’s 15/-,
athlete’s 20/-) viz. chest 28 in and 29 1/2 in, biceps 9 in and 10 in,
forearm 8 1/2 in and 9 in, thigh 10 in and 12 in, calf 11 in and 12 in:
1 prospectus of The Wonderworker, the world’s greatest remedy for
rectal complaints, direct from Wonderworker, Coventry House, South
Place, London E C, addressed (erroneously) to Mrs L. Bloom with brief
accompanying note commencing (erroneously): Dear Madam.
Quote the textual terms in which the prospectus claimed advantages for
this thaumaturgic remedy.
It heals and soothes while you sleep, in case of trouble in breaking
wind, assists nature in the most formidable way, insuring instant
relief in discharge of gases, keeping parts clean and free natural
action, an initial outlay of 7/6 making a new man of you and life worth
living. Ladies find Wonderworker especially useful, a pleasant surprise
when they note delightful result like a cool drink of fresh spring
water on a sultry summer’s day. Recommend it to your lady and gentlemen
friends, lasts a lifetime. Insert long round end. Wonderworker.
Were there testimonials?
Numerous. From clergyman, British naval officer, wellknown author, city
man, hospital nurse, lady, mother of five, absentminded beggar.
How did absentminded beggar’s concluding testimonial conclude?
What a pity the government did not supply our men with wonderworkers
during the South African campaign! What a relief it would have been!
What object did Bloom add to this collection of objects?
A 4th typewritten letter received by Henry Flower (let H. F. be L. B.)
from Martha Clifford (find M. C.).
What pleasant reflection accompanied this action?
The reflection that, apart from the letter in question, his magnetic
face, form and address had been favourably received during the course
of the preceding day by a wife (Mrs Josephine Breen, born Josie
Powell), a nurse, Miss Callan (Christian name unknown), a maid,
Gertrude (Gerty, family name unknown).
What possibility suggested itself?
The possibility of exercising virile power of fascination in the not
immediate future after an expensive repast in a private apartment in
the company of an elegant courtesan, of corporal beauty, moderately
mercenary, variously instructed, a lady by origin.
What did the 2nd drawer contain?
Documents: the birth certificate of Leopold Paula Bloom: an endowment
assurance policy of £ 500 in the Scottish Widows’ Assurance Society,
intestated Millicent (Milly) Bloom, coming into force at 25 years as
with profit policy of £ 430, £ 462-10-0 and £ 500 at 60 years or death,
65 years or death and death, respectively, or with profit policy
(paidup) of £ 299-10-0 together with cash payment of £ 133-10-0, at
option: a bank passbook issued by the Ulster Bank, College Green branch
showing statement of a/c for halfyear ending 31 December 1903, balance
in depositor’s favour: £ 18-14-6 (eighteen pounds, fourteen shillings
and sixpence, sterling), net personalty: certificate of possession of £
900, Canadian 4% (inscribed) government stock (free of stamp duty):
dockets of the Catholic Cemeteries’ (Glasnevin) Committee, relative to
a graveplot purchased: a local press cutting concerning change of name
by deedpoll.
Quote the textual terms of this notice.
I, Rudolph Virag, now resident at no 52 Clanbrassil street, Dublin,
formerly of Szombathely in the kingdom of Hungary, hereby give notice
that I have assumed and intend henceforth upon all occasions and at all
times to be known by the name of Rudolph Bloom.
What other objects relative to Rudolph Bloom (born Virag) were in the
2nd drawer?
An indistinct daguerreotype of Rudolf Virag and his father Leopold
Virag executed in the year 1852 in the portrait atelier of their
(respectively) 1st and 2nd cousin, Stefan Virag of Szesfehervar,
Hungary. An ancient haggadah book in which a pair of hornrimmed convex
spectacles inserted marked the passage of thanksgiving in the ritual
prayers for Pessach (Passover): a photocard of the Queen’s Hotel,
Ennis, proprietor, Rudolph Bloom: an envelope addressed: _To My Dear
Son Leopold_.
What fractions of phrases did the lecture of those five whole words
evoke?
Tomorrow will be a week that I received... it is no use Leopold to be
... with your dear mother... that is not more to stand... to her... all
for me is out... be kind to Athos, Leopold... my dear son... always...
of me... _das Herz... Gott... dein_...
What reminiscences of a human subject suffering from progressive
melancholia did these objects evoke in Bloom?
An old man, widower, unkempt of hair, in bed, with head covered,
sighing: an infirm dog, Athos: aconite, resorted to by increasing doses
of grains and scruples as a palliative of recrudescent neuralgia: the
face in death of a septuagenarian, suicide by poison.
Why did Bloom experience a sentiment of remorse?
Because in immature impatience he had treated with disrespect certain
beliefs and practices.
As?
The prohibition of the use of fleshmeat and milk at one meal: the
hebdomadary symposium of incoordinately abstract, perfervidly concrete
mercantile coexreligionist excompatriots: the circumcision of male
infants: the supernatural character of Judaic scripture: the
ineffability of the tetragrammaton: the sanctity of the sabbath.
How did these beliefs and practices now appear to him?
Not more rational than they had then appeared, not less rational than
other beliefs and practices now appeared.
What first reminiscence had he of Rudolph Bloom (deceased)?
Rudolph Bloom (deceased) narrated to his son Leopold Bloom (aged 6) a
retrospective arrangement of migrations and settlements in and between
Dublin, London, Florence, Milan, Vienna, Budapest, Szombathely with
statements of satisfaction (his grandfather having seen Maria Theresia,
empress of Austria, queen of Hungary), with commercial advice (having
taken care of pence, the pounds having taken care of themselves).
Leopold Bloom (aged 6) had accompanied these narrations by constant
consultation of a geographical map of Europe (political) and by
suggestions for the establishment of affiliated business premises in
the various centres mentioned.
Had time equally but differently obliterated the memory of these
migrations in narrator and listener?
In narrator by the access of years and in consequence of the use of
narcotic toxin: in listener by the access of years and in consequence
of the action of distraction upon vicarious experiences.
What idiosyncracies of the narrator were concomitant products of
amnesia?
Occasionally he ate without having previously removed his hat.
Occasionally he drank voraciously the juice of gooseberry fool from an
inclined plate. Occasionally he removed from his lips the traces of
food by means of a lacerated envelope or other accessible fragment of
paper.
What two phenomena of senescence were more frequent?
The myopic digital calculation of coins, eructation consequent upon
repletion.
What object offered partial consolation for these reminiscences?
The endowment policy, the bank passbook, the certificate of the
possession of scrip.
Reduce Bloom by cross multiplication of reverses of fortune, from which
these supports protected him, and by elimination of all positive values
to a negligible negative irrational unreal quantity.
Successively, in descending helotic order: Poverty: that of the outdoor
hawker of imitation jewellery, the dun for the recovery of bad and
doubtful debts, the poor rate and deputy cess collector. Mendicancy:
that of the fraudulent bankrupt with negligible assets paying 1/4d in
the £, sandwichman, distributor of throwaways, nocturnal vagrant,
insinuating sycophant, maimed sailor, blind stripling, superannuated
bailiff’s man, marfeast, lickplate, spoilsport, pickthank, eccentric
public laughingstock seated on bench of public park under discarded
perforated umbrella. Destitution: the inmate of Old Man’s House (Royal
Hospital), Kilmainham, the inmate of Simpson’s Hospital for reduced but
respectable men permanently disabled by gout or want of sight. Nadir of
misery: the aged impotent disfranchised ratesupported moribund lunatic
pauper.
With which attendant indignities?
The unsympathetic indifference of previously amiable females, the
contempt of muscular males, the acceptance of fragments of bread, the
simulated ignorance of casual acquaintances, the latration of
illegitimate unlicensed vagabond dogs, the infantile discharge of
decomposed vegetable missiles, worth little or nothing, nothing or less
than nothing.
By what could such a situation be precluded?
By decease (change of state): by departure (change of place).
Which preferably?
The latter, by the line of least resistance.
What considerations rendered departure not entirely undesirable?
Constant cohabitation impeding mutual toleration of personal defects.
The habit of independent purchase increasingly cultivated. The
necessity to counteract by impermanent sojourn the permanence of
arrest.
What considerations rendered departure not irrational?
The parties concerned, uniting, had increased and multiplied, which
being done, offspring produced and educed to maturity, the parties, if
not disunited were obliged to reunite for increase and multiplication,
which was absurd, to form by reunion the original couple of uniting
parties, which was impossible.
What considerations rendered departure desirable?
The attractive character of certain localities in Ireland and abroad,
as represented in general geographical maps of polychrome design or in
special ordnance survey charts by employment of scale numerals and
hachures.
In Ireland?
The cliffs of Moher, the windy wilds of Connemara, lough Neagh with
submerged petrified city, the Giant’s Causeway, Fort Camden and Fort
Carlisle, the Golden Vale of Tipperary, the islands of Aran, the
pastures of royal Meath, Brigid’s elm in Kildare, the Queen’s Island
shipyard in Belfast, the Salmon Leap, the lakes of Killarney.
Abroad?
Ceylon (with spicegardens supplying tea to Thomas Kernan, agent for
Pulbrook, Robertson and Co, 2 Mincing Lane, London, E. C., 5 Dame
street, Dublin), Jerusalem, the holy city (with mosque of Omar and gate
of Damascus, goal of aspiration), the straits of Gibraltar (the unique
birthplace of Marion Tweedy), the Parthenon (containing statues of nude
Grecian divinities), the Wall street money market (which controlled
international finance), the Plaza de Toros at La Linea, Spain (where
O’Hara of the Camerons had slain the bull), Niagara (over which no
human being had passed with impunity), the land of the Eskimos (eaters
of soap), the forbidden country of Thibet (from which no traveller
returns), the bay of Naples (to see which was to die), the Dead Sea.
Under what guidance, following what signs?
At sea, septentrional, by night the polestar, located at the point of
intersection of the right line from beta to alpha in Ursa Maior
produced and divided externally at omega and the hypotenuse of the
rightangled triangle formed by the line alpha omega so produced and the
line alpha delta of Ursa Maior. On land, meridional, a bispherical
moon, revealed in imperfect varying phases of lunation through the
posterior interstice of the imperfectly occluded skirt of a carnose
negligent perambulating female, a pillar of the cloud by day.
What public advertisement would divulge the occultation of the
departed?
£ 5 reward, lost, stolen or strayed from his residence 7 Eccles street,
missing gent about 40, answering to the name of Bloom, Leopold (Poldy),
height 5 ft 9 1/2 inches, full build, olive complexion, may have since
grown a beard, when last seen was wearing a black suit. Above sum will
be paid for information leading to his discovery.
What universal binomial denominations would be his as entity and
nonentity?
Assumed by any or known to none. Everyman or Noman.
What tributes his?
Honour and gifts of strangers, the friends of Everyman. A nymph
immortal, beauty, the bride of Noman.
Would the departed never nowhere nohow reappear?
Ever he would wander, selfcompelled, to the extreme limit of his
cometary orbit, beyond the fixed stars and variable suns and telescopic
planets, astronomical waifs and strays, to the extreme boundary of
space, passing from land to land, among peoples, amid events. Somewhere
imperceptibly he would hear and somehow reluctantly, suncompelled, obey
the summons of recall. Whence, disappearing from the constellation of
the Northern Crown he would somehow reappear reborn above delta in the
constellation of Cassiopeia and after incalculable eons of
peregrination return an estranged avenger, a wreaker of justice on
malefactors, a dark crusader, a sleeper awakened, with financial
resources (by supposition) surpassing those of Rothschild or the silver
king.
What would render such return irrational?
An unsatisfactory equation between an exodus and return in time through
reversible space and an exodus and return in space through irreversible
time.
What play of forces, inducing inertia, rendered departure undesirable?
The lateness of the hour, rendering procrastinatory: the obscurity of
the night, rendering invisible: the uncertainty of thoroughfares,
rendering perilous: the necessity for repose, obviating movement: the
proximity of an occupied bed, obviating research: the anticipation of
warmth (human) tempered with coolness (linen), obviating desire and
rendering desirable: the statue of Narcissus, sound without echo,
desired desire.
What advantages were possessed by an occupied, as distinct from an
unoccupied bed?
The removal of nocturnal solitude, the superior quality of human
(mature female) to inhuman (hotwaterjar) calefaction, the stimulation
of matutinal contact, the economy of mangling done on the premises in
the case of trousers accurately folded and placed lengthwise between
the spring mattress (striped) and the woollen mattress (biscuit
section).
What past consecutive causes, before rising preapprehended, of
accumulated fatigue did Bloom, before rising, silently recapitulate?
The preparation of breakfast (burnt offering): intestinal congestion
and premeditative defecation (holy of holies): the bath (rite of John):
the funeral (rite of Samuel): the advertisement of Alexander Keyes
(Urim and Thummim): the unsubstantial lunch (rite of Melchisedek): the
visit to museum and national library (holy place): the bookhunt along
Bedford row, Merchants’ Arch, Wellington Quay (Simchath Torah): the
music in the Ormond Hotel (Shira Shirim): the altercation with a
truculent troglodyte in Bernard Kiernan’s premises (holocaust): a blank
period of time including a cardrive, a visit to a house of mourning, a
leavetaking (wilderness): the eroticism produced by feminine
exhibitionism (rite of Onan): the prolonged delivery of Mrs Mina
Purefoy (heave offering): the visit to the disorderly house of Mrs
Bella Cohen, 82 Tyrone street, lower, and subsequent brawl and chance
medley in Beaver street (Armageddon): nocturnal perambulation to and
from the cabman’s shelter, Butt Bridge (atonement).
What selfimposed enigma did Bloom about to rise in order to go so as to
conclude lest he should not conclude involuntarily apprehend?
The cause of a brief sharp unforeseen heard loud lone crack emitted by
the insentient material of a strainveined timber table.
What selfinvolved enigma did Bloom risen, going, gathering
multicoloured multiform multitudinous garments, voluntarily
apprehending, not comprehend?
Who was M’Intosh?
What selfevident enigma pondered with desultory constancy during 30
years did Bloom now, having effected natural obscurity by the
extinction of artificial light, silently suddenly comprehend?
Where was Moses when the candle went out?
What imperfections in a perfect day did Bloom, walking, charged with
collected articles of recently disvested male wearing apparel,
silently, successively, enumerate?
A provisional failure to obtain renewal of an advertisement: to obtain
a certain quantity of tea from Thomas Kernan (agent for Pulbrook,
Robertson and Co, 5 Dame Street, Dublin, and 2 Mincing Lane, London E.
C.): to certify the presence or absence of posterior rectal orifice in
the case of Hellenic female divinities: to obtain admission (gratuitous
or paid) to the performance of _Leah_ by Mrs Bandmann Palmer at the
Gaiety Theatre, 46, 47, 48, 49 South King street.
What impression of an absent face did Bloom, arrested, silently recall?
The face of her father, the late Major Brian Cooper Tweedy, Royal
Dublin Fusiliers, of Gibraltar and Rehoboth, Dolphin’s Barn.
What recurrent impressions of the same were possible by hypothesis?
Retreating, at the terminus of the Great Northern Railway, Amiens
street, with constant uniform acceleration, along parallel lines
meeting at infinity, if produced: along parallel lines, reproduced from
infinity, with constant uniform retardation, at the terminus of the
Great Northern Railway, Amiens street, returning.
What miscellaneous effects of female personal wearing apparel were
perceived by him?
A pair of new inodorous halfsilk black ladies’ hose, a pair of new
violet garters, a pair of outsize ladies’ drawers of India mull, cut on
generous lines, redolent of opoponax, jessamine and Muratti’s Turkish
cigarettes and containing a long bright steel safety pin, folded
curvilinear, a camisole of batiste with thin lace border, an accordion
underskirt of blue silk moirette, all these objects being disposed
irregularly on the top of a rectangular trunk, quadruple battened,
having capped corners, with multicoloured labels, initialled on its
fore side in white lettering B. C. T. (Brian Cooper Tweedy).
What impersonal objects were perceived?
A commode, one leg fractured, totally covered by square cretonne
cutting, apple design, on which rested a lady’s black straw hat.
Orangekeyed ware, bought of Henry Price, basket, fancy goods, chinaware
and ironmongery manufacturer, 21, 22, 23 Moore street, disposed
irregularly on the washstand and floor and consisting of basin,
soapdish and brushtray (on the washstand, together), pitcher and night
article (on the floor, separate).
Bloom’s acts?
He deposited the articles of clothing on a chair, removed his remaining
articles of clothing, took from beneath the bolster at the head of the
bed a folded long white nightshirt, inserted his head and arms into the
proper apertures of the nightshirt, removed a pillow from the head to
the foot of the bed, prepared the bedlinen accordingly and entered the
bed.
How?
With circumspection, as invariably when entering an abode (his own or
not his own): with solicitude, the snakespiral springs of the mattress
being old, the brass quoits and pendent viper radii loose and tremulous
under stress and strain: prudently, as entering a lair or ambush of
lust or adders: lightly, the less to disturb: reverently, the bed of
conception and of birth, of consummation of marriage and of breach of
marriage, of sleep and of death.
What did his limbs, when gradually extended, encounter?
New clean bedlinen, additional odours, the presence of a human form,
female, hers, the imprint of a human form, male, not his, some crumbs,
some flakes of potted meat, recooked, which he removed.
If he had smiled why would he have smiled?
To reflect that each one who enters imagines himself to be the first to
enter whereas he is always the last term of a preceding series even if
the first term of a succeeding one, each imagining himself to be first,
last, only and alone whereas he is neither first nor last nor only nor
alone in a series originating in and repeated to infinity.
What preceding series?
Assuming Mulvey to be the first term of his series, Penrose, Bartell
d’Arcy, professor Goodwin, Julius Mastiansky, John Henry Menton, Father
Bernard Corrigan, a farmer at the Royal Dublin Society’s Horse Show,
Maggot O’Reilly, Matthew Dillon, Valentine Blake Dillon (Lord Mayor of
Dublin), Christopher Callinan, Lenehan, an Italian organgrinder, an
unknown gentleman in the Gaiety Theatre, Benjamin Dollard, Simon
Dedalus, Andrew (Pisser) Burke, Joseph Cuffe, Wisdom Hely, Alderman
John Hooper, Dr Francis Brady, Father Sebastian of Mount Argus, a
bootblack at the General Post Office, Hugh E. (Blazes) Boylan and so
each and so on to no last term.
What were his reflections concerning the last member of this series and
late occupant of the bed?
Reflections on his vigour (a bounder), corporal proportion (a
billsticker), commercial ability (a bester), impressionability (a
boaster).
Why for the observer impressionability in addition to vigour, corporal
proportion and commercial ability?
Because he had observed with augmenting frequency in the preceding
members of the same series the same concupiscence, inflammably
transmitted, first with alarm, then with understanding, then with
desire, finally with fatigue, with alternating symptoms of epicene
comprehension and apprehension.
With what antagonistic sentiments were his subsequent reflections
affected?
Envy, jealousy, abnegation, equanimity.
Envy?
Of a bodily and mental male organism specially adapted for the
superincumbent posture of energetic human copulation and energetic
piston and cylinder movement necessary for the complete satisfaction of
a constant but not acute concupiscence resident in a bodily and mental
female organism, passive but not obtuse.
Jealousy?
Because a nature full and volatile in its free state, was alternately
the agent and reagent of attraction. Because attraction between
agent(s) and reagent(s) at all instants varied, with inverse proportion
of increase and decrease, with incessant circular extension and radial
reentrance. Because the controlled contemplation of the fluctuation of
attraction produced, if desired, a fluctuation of pleasure.
Abnegation?
In virtue of a) acquaintance initiated in September 1903 in the
establishment of George Mesias, merchant tailor and outfitter, 5 Eden
Quay, b) hospitality extended and received in kind, reciprocated and
reappropriated in person, c) comparative youth subject to impulses of
ambition and magnanimity, colleagual altruism and amorous egoism, d)
extraracial attraction, intraracial inhibition, supraracial
prerogative, e) an imminent provincial musical tour, common current
expenses, net proceeds divided.
Equanimity?
As as natural as any and every natural act of a nature expressed or
understood executed in natured nature by natural creatures in
accordance with his, her and their natured natures, of dissimilar
similarity. As not so calamitous as a cataclysmic annihilation of the
planet in consequence of a collision with a dark sun. As less
reprehensible than theft, highway robbery, cruelty to children and
animals, obtaining money under false pretences, forgery, embezzlement,
misappropriation of public money, betrayal of public trust,
malingering, mayhem, corruption of minors, criminal libel, blackmail,
contempt of court, arson, treason, felony, mutiny on the high seas,
trespass, burglary, jailbreaking, practice of unnatural vice, desertion
from armed forces in the field, perjury, poaching, usury, intelligence
with the king’s enemies, impersonation, criminal assault, manslaughter,
wilful and premeditated murder. As not more abnormal than all other
parallel processes of adaptation to altered conditions of existence,
resulting in a reciprocal equilibrium between the bodily organism and
its attendant circumstances, foods, beverages, acquired habits,
indulged inclinations, significant disease. As more than inevitable,
irreparable.
Why more abnegation than jealousy, less envy than equanimity?
From outrage (matrimony) to outrage (adultery) there arose nought but
outrage (copulation) yet the matrimonial violator of the matrimonially
violated had not been outraged by the adulterous violator of the
adulterously violated.
What retribution, if any?
Assassination, never, as two wrongs did not make one right. Duel by
combat, no. Divorce, not now. Exposure by mechanical artifice
(automatic bed) or individual testimony (concealed ocular witnesses),
not yet. Suit for damages by legal influence or simulation of assault
with evidence of injuries sustained (selfinflicted), not impossibly.
Hushmoney by moral influence, possibly. If any, positively, connivance,
introduction of emulation (material, a prosperous rival agency of
publicity: moral, a successful rival agent of intimacy), depreciation,
alienation, humiliation, separation protecting the one separated from
the other, protecting the separator from both.
By what reflections did he, a conscious reactor against the void of
incertitude, justify to himself his sentiments?
The preordained frangibility of the hymen: the presupposed
intangibility of the thing in itself: the incongruity and disproportion
between the selfprolonging tension of the thing proposed to be done and
the selfabbreviating relaxation of the thing done: the fallaciously
inferred debility of the female: the muscularity of the male: the
variations of ethical codes: the natural grammatical transition by
inversion involving no alteration of sense of an aorist preterite
proposition (parsed as masculine subject, monosyllabic onomatopoeic
transitive verb with direct feminine object) from the active voice into
its correlative aorist preterite proposition (parsed as feminine
subject, auxiliary verb and quasimonosyllabic onomatopoeic past
participle with complementary masculine agent) in the passive voice:
the continued product of seminators by generation: the continual
production of semen by distillation: the futility of triumph or protest
or vindication: the inanity of extolled virtue: the lethargy of
nescient matter: the apathy of the stars.
In what final satisfaction did these antagonistic sentiments and
reflections, reduced to their simplest forms, converge?
Satisfaction at the ubiquity in eastern and western terrestrial
hemispheres, in all habitable lands and islands explored or unexplored
(the land of the midnight sun, the islands of the blessed, the isles of
Greece, the land of promise), of adipose anterior and posterior female
hemispheres, redolent of milk and honey and of excretory sanguine and
seminal warmth, reminiscent of secular families of curves of amplitude,
insusceptible of moods of impression or of contrarieties of expression,
expressive of mute immutable mature animality.
The visible signs of antesatisfaction?
An approximate erection: a solicitous adversion: a gradual elevation: a
tentative revelation: a silent contemplation.
Then?
He kissed the plump mellow yellow smellow melons of her rump, on each
plump melonous hemisphere, in their mellow yellow furrow, with obscure
prolonged provocative melonsmellonous osculation.
The visible signs of postsatisfaction?
A silent contemplation: a tentative velation: a gradual abasement: a
solicitous aversion: a proximate erection.
What followed this silent action?
Somnolent invocation, less somnolent recognition, incipient excitation,
catechetical interrogation.
With what modifications did the narrator reply to this interrogation?
Negative: he omitted to mention the clandestine correspondence between
Martha Clifford and Henry Flower, the public altercation at, in and in
the vicinity of the licensed premises of Bernard Kiernan and Co,
Limited, 8, 9 and 10 Little Britain street, the erotic provocation and
response thereto caused by the exhibitionism of Gertrude (Gerty),
surname unknown. Positive: he included mention of a performance by Mrs
Bandmann Palmer of _Leah_ at the Gaiety Theatre, 46, 47, 48, 49 South
King street, an invitation to supper at Wynn’s (Murphy’s) Hotel, 35, 36
and 37 Lower Abbey street, a volume of peccaminous pornographical
tendency entituled _Sweets of Sin_, anonymous author a gentleman of
fashion, a temporary concussion caused by a falsely calculated movement
in the course of a postcenal gymnastic display, the victim (since
completely recovered) being Stephen Dedalus, professor and author,
eldest surviving son of Simon Dedalus, of no fixed occupation, an
aeronautical feat executed by him (narrator) in the presence of a
witness, the professor and author aforesaid, with promptitude of
decision and gymnastic flexibility.
Was the narration otherwise unaltered by modifications?
Absolutely.
Which event or person emerged as the salient point of his narration?
Stephen Dedalus, professor and author.
What limitations of activity and inhibitions of conjugal rights were
perceived by listener and narrator concerning themselves during the
course of this intermittent and increasingly more laconic narration?
By the listener a limitation of fertility inasmuch as marriage had been
celebrated 1 calendar month after the 18th anniversary of her birth (8
September 1870), viz. 8 October, and consummated on the same date with
female issue born 15 June 1889, having been anticipatorily consummated
on the 10 September of the same year and complete carnal intercourse,
with ejaculation of semen within the natural female organ, having last
taken place 5 weeks previous, viz. 27 November 1893, to the birth on 29
December 1893 of second (and only male) issue, deceased 9 January 1894,
aged 11 days, there remained a period of 10 years, 5 months and 18 days
during which carnal intercourse had been incomplete, without
ejaculation of semen within the natural female organ. By the narrator a
limitation of activity, mental and corporal, inasmuch as complete
mental intercourse between himself and the listener had not taken place
since the consummation of puberty, indicated by catamenic hemorrhage,
of the female issue of narrator and listener, 15 September 1903, there
remained a period of 9 months and 1 day during which, in consequence of
a preestablished natural comprehension in incomprehension between the
consummated females (listener and issue), complete corporal liberty of
action had been circumscribed.
How?
By various reiterated feminine interrogation concerning the masculine
destination whither, the place where, the time at which, the duration
for which, the object with which in the case of temporary absences,
projected or effected.
What moved visibly above the listener’s and the narrator’s invisible
thoughts?
The upcast reflection of a lamp and shade, an inconstant series of
concentric circles of varying gradations of light and shadow.
In what directions did listener and narrator lie?
Listener, S. E. by E.: Narrator, N. W. by W.: on the 53rd parallel of
latitude, N., and 6th meridian of longitude, W.: at an angle of 45° to
the terrestrial equator.
In what state of rest or motion?
At rest relatively to themselves and to each other. In motion being
each and both carried westward, forward and rereward respectively, by
the proper perpetual motion of the earth through everchanging tracks of
neverchanging space.
In what posture?
Listener: reclined semilaterally, left, left hand under head, right leg
extended in a straight line and resting on left leg, flexed, in the
attitude of Gea-Tellus, fulfilled, recumbent, big with seed. Narrator:
reclined laterally, left, with right and left legs flexed, the index
finger and thumb of the right hand resting on the bridge of the nose,
in the attitude depicted in a snapshot photograph made by Percy Apjohn,
the childman weary, the manchild in the womb.
Womb? Weary?
He rests. He has travelled.
With?
Sinbad the Sailor and Tinbad the Tailor and Jinbad the Jailer and
Whinbad the Whaler and Ninbad the Nailer and Finbad the Failer and
Binbad the Bailer and Pinbad the Pailer and Minbad the Mailer and
Hinbad the Hailer and Rinbad the Railer and Dinbad the Kailer and
Vinbad the Quailer and Linbad the Yailer and Xinbad the Phthailer.
When?
Going to dark bed there was a square round Sinbad the Sailor roc’s
auk’s egg in the night of the bed of all the auks of the rocs of
Darkinbad the Brightdayler.
Where?
•
[ 18 ]
Yes because he never did a thing like that before as ask to get his
breakfast in bed with a couple of eggs since the _City Arms_ hotel when
he used to be pretending to be laid up with a sick voice doing his
highness to make himself interesting for that old woodcut Mrs Riordan
that he thought he had a great leg of and she never left us a farthing
all for masses for herself and her soul greatest miser ever was
actually afraid to lay out 4d for her methylated spirit telling me all
her ailments she had too much old chat in her about politics and
earthquakes and the end of the world let us have a bit of fun first God
help the world if all the women were her sort down on bathingsuits and
lownecks of course nobody wanted her to wear them I suppose she was
pious because no man would look at her twice I hope Ill never be like
her a wonder she didnt want us to cover our faces but she was a
welleducated woman certainly and her gabby talk about Mr Riordan here
and Mr Riordan there I suppose he was glad to get shut of her and her
dog smelling my fur and always edging to get up under my petticoats
especially then still I like that in him polite to old women like that
and waiters and beggars too hes not proud out of nothing but not always
if ever he got anything really serious the matter with him its much
better for them to go into a hospital where everything is clean but I
suppose Id have to dring it into him for a month yes and then wed have
a hospital nurse next thing on the carpet have him staying there till
they throw him out or a nun maybe like the smutty photo he has shes as
much a nun as Im not yes because theyre so weak and puling when theyre
sick they want a woman to get well if his nose bleeds youd think it was
O tragic and that dyinglooking one off the south circular when he
sprained his foot at the choir party at the sugarloaf Mountain the day
I wore that dress Miss Stack bringing him flowers the worst old ones
she could find at the bottom of the basket anything at all to get into
a mans bedroom with her old maids voice trying to imagine he was dying
on account of her to never see thy face again though he looked more
like a man with his beard a bit grown in the bed father was the same
besides I hate bandaging and dosing when he cut his toe with the razor
paring his corns afraid hed get bloodpoisoning but if it was a thing I
was sick then wed see what attention only of course the woman hides it
not to give all the trouble they do yes he came somewhere Im sure by
his appetite anyway love its not or hed be off his feed thinking of her
so either it was one of those night women if it was down there he was
really and the hotel story he made up a pack of lies to hide it
planning it Hynes kept me who did I meet ah yes I met do you remember
Menton and who else who let me see that big babbyface I saw him and he
not long married flirting with a young girl at Pooles Myriorama and
turned my back on him when he slinked out looking quite conscious what
harm but he had the impudence to make up to me one time well done to
him mouth almighty and his boiled eyes of all the big stupoes I ever
met and thats called a solicitor only for I hate having a long wrangle
in bed or else if its not that its some little bitch or other he got in
with somewhere or picked up on the sly if they only knew him as well as
I do yes because the day before yesterday he was scribbling something a
letter when I came into the front room to show him Dignams death in the
paper as if something told me and he covered it up with the
blottingpaper pretending to be thinking about business so very probably
that was it to somebody who thinks she has a softy in him because all
men get a bit like that at his age especially getting on to forty he is
now so as to wheedle any money she can out of him no fool like an old
fool and then the usual kissing my bottom was to hide it not that I
care two straws now who he does it with or knew before that way though
Id like to find out so long as I dont have the two of them under my
nose all the time like that slut that Mary we had in Ontario terrace
padding out her false bottom to excite him bad enough to get the smell
of those painted women off him once or twice I had a suspicion by
getting him to come near me when I found the long hair on his coat
without that one when I went into the kitchen pretending he was
drinking water 1 woman is not enough for them it was all his fault of
course ruining servants then proposing that she could eat at our table
on Christmas day if you please O no thank you not in my house stealing
my potatoes and the oysters 2/6 per doz going out to see her aunt if
you please common robbery so it was but I was sure he had something on
with that one it takes me to find out a thing like that he said you
have no proof it was her proof O yes her aunt was very fond of oysters
but I told her what I thought of her suggesting me to go out to be
alone with her I wouldnt lower myself to spy on them the garters I
found in her room the Friday she was out that was enough for me a
little bit too much her face swelled up on her with temper when I gave
her her weeks notice I saw to that better do without them altogether do
out the rooms myself quicker only for the damn cooking and throwing out
the dirt I gave it to him anyhow either she or me leaves the house I
couldnt even touch him if I thought he was with a dirty barefaced liar
and sloven like that one denying it up to my face and singing about the
place in the W C too because she knew she was too well off yes because
he couldnt possibly do without it that long so he must do it somewhere
and the last time he came on my bottom when was it the night Boylan
gave my hand a great squeeze going along by the Tolka in my hand there
steals another I just pressed the back of his like that with my thumb
to squeeze back singing the young May moon shes beaming love because he
has an idea about him and me hes not such a fool he said Im dining out
and going to the Gaiety though Im not going to give him the
satisfaction in any case God knows hes a change in a way not to be
always and ever wearing the same old hat unless I paid some nicelooking
boy to do it since I cant do it myself a young boy would like me Id
confuse him a little alone with him if we were Id let him see my
garters the new ones and make him turn red looking at him seduce him I
know what boys feel with that down on their cheek doing that frigging
drawing out the thing by the hour question and answer would you do this
that and the other with the coalman yes with a bishop yes I would
because I told him about some dean or bishop was sitting beside me in
the jews temples gardens when I was knitting that woollen thing a
stranger to Dublin what place was it and so on about the monuments and
he tired me out with statues encouraging him making him worse than he
is who is in your mind now tell me who are you thinking of who is it
tell me his name who tell me who the german Emperor is it yes imagine
Im him think of him can you feel him trying to make a whore of me what
he never will he ought to give it up now at this age of his life simply
ruination for any woman and no satisfaction in it pretending to like it
till he comes and then finish it off myself anyway and it makes your
lips pale anyhow its done now once and for all with all the talk of the
world about it people make its only the first time after that its just
the ordinary do it and think no more about it why cant you kiss a man
without going and marrying him first you sometimes love to wildly when
you feel that way so nice all over you you cant help yourself I wish
some man or other would take me sometime when hes there and kiss me in
his arms theres nothing like a kiss long and hot down to your soul
almost paralyses you then I hate that confession when I used to go to
Father Corrigan he touched me father and what harm if he did where and
I said on the canal bank like a fool but whereabouts on your person my
child on the leg behind high up was it yes rather high up was it where
you sit down yes O Lord couldnt he say bottom right out and have done
with it what has that got to do with it and did you whatever way he put
it I forget no father and I always think of the real father what did he
want to know for when I already confessed it to God he had a nice fat
hand the palm moist always I wouldnt mind feeling it neither would he
Id say by the bullneck in his horsecollar I wonder did he know me in
the box I could see his face he couldnt see mine of course hed never
turn or let on still his eyes were red when his father died theyre lost
for a woman of course must be terrible when a man cries let alone them
Id like to be embraced by one in his vestments and the smell of incense
off him like the pope besides theres no danger with a priest if youre
married hes too careful about himself then give something to H H the
pope for a penance I wonder was he satisfied with me one thing I didnt
like his slapping me behind going away so familiarly in the hall though
I laughed Im not a horse or an ass am I I suppose he was thinking of
his fathers I wonder is he awake thinking of me or dreaming am I in it
who gave him that flower he said he bought he smelt of some kind of
drink not whisky or stout or perhaps the sweety kind of paste they
stick their bills up with some liqueur Id like to sip those richlooking
green and yellow expensive drinks those stagedoor johnnies drink with
the opera hats I tasted once with my finger dipped out of that American
that had the squirrel talking stamps with father he had all he could do
to keep himself from falling asleep after the last time after we took
the port and potted meat it had a fine salty taste yes because I felt
lovely and tired myself and fell asleep as sound as a top the moment I
popped straight into bed till that thunder woke me up God be merciful
to us I thought the heavens were coming down about us to punish us when
I blessed myself and said a Hail Mary like those awful thunderbolts in
Gibraltar as if the world was coming to an end and then they come and
tell you theres no God what could you do if it was running and rushing
about nothing only make an act of contrition the candle I lit that
evening in Whitefriars street chapel for the month of May see it
brought its luck though hed scoff if he heard because he never goes to
church mass or meeting he says your soul you have no soul inside only
grey matter because he doesnt know what it is to have one yes when I
lit the lamp because he must have come 3 or 4 times with that
tremendous big red brute of a thing he has I thought the vein or
whatever the dickens they call it was going to burst though his nose is
not so big after I took off all my things with the blinds down after my
hours dressing and perfuming and combing it like iron or some kind of a
thick crowbar standing all the time he must have eaten oysters I think
a few dozen he was in great singing voice no I never in all my life
felt anyone had one the size of that to make you feel full up he must
have eaten a whole sheep after whats the idea making us like that with
a big hole in the middle of us or like a Stallion driving it up into
you because thats all they want out of you with that determined vicious
look in his eye I had to halfshut my eyes still he hasnt such a
tremendous amount of spunk in him when I made him pull out and do it on
me considering how big it is so much the better in case any of it wasnt
washed out properly the last time I let him finish it in me nice
invention they made for women for him to get all the pleasure but if
someone gave them a touch of it themselves theyd know what I went
through with Milly nobody would believe cutting her teeth too and Mina
Purefoys husband give us a swing out of your whiskers filling her up
with a child or twins once a year as regular as the clock always with a
smell of children off her the one they called budgers or something like
a slave with a shock of hair on it Jesusjack the child is a black the
last time I was there a squad of them falling over one another and
bawling you couldnt hear your ears supposed to be healthy not satisfied
till they have us swollen out like elephants or I dont know what
supposing I risked having another not off him though still if he was
married Im sure hed have a fine strong child but I dont know Poldy has
more spunk in him yes thatd be awfully jolly I suppose it was meeting
Josie Powell and the funeral and thinking about me and Boylan set him
off well he can think what he likes now if thatll do him any good I
know they were spooning a bit when I came on the scene he was dancing
and sitting out with her the night of Georgina Simpsons housewarming
and then he wanted to ram it down my neck it was on account of not
liking to see her a wallflower that was why we had the standup row over
politics he began it not me when he said about Our Lord being a
carpenter at last he made me cry of course a woman is so sensitive
about everything I was fuming with myself after for giving in only for
I knew he was gone on me and the first socialist he said He was he
annoyed me so much I couldnt put him into a temper still he knows a lot
of mixedup things especially about the body and the inside I often
wanted to study up that myself what we have inside us in that family
physician I could always hear his voice talking when the room was
crowded and watch him after that I pretended I had a coolness on with
her over him because he used to be a bit on the jealous side whenever
he asked who are you going to and I said over to Floey and he made me
the present of Byrons poems and the three pairs of gloves so that
finished that I could quite easily get him to make it up any time I
know how Id even supposing he got in with her again and was going out
to see her somewhere Id know if he refused to eat the onions I know
plenty of ways ask him to tuck down the collar of my blouse or touch
him with my veil and gloves on going out 1 kiss then would send them
all spinning however alright well see then let him go to her she of
course would only be too delighted to pretend shes mad in love with him
that I wouldnt so much mind Id just go to her and ask her do you love
him and look her square in the eyes she couldnt fool me but he might
imagine he was and make a declaration to her with his plabbery kind of
a manner like he did to me though I had the devils own job to get it
out of him though I liked him for that it showed he could hold in and
wasnt to be got for the asking he was on the pop of asking me too the
night in the kitchen I was rolling the potato cake theres something I
want to say to you only for I put him off letting on I was in a temper
with my hands and arms full of pasty flour in any case I let out too
much the night before talking of dreams so I didnt want to let him know
more than was good for him she used to be always embracing me Josie
whenever he was there meaning him of course glauming me over and when I
said I washed up and down as far as possible asking me and did you wash
possible the women are always egging on to that putting it on thick
when hes there they know by his sly eye blinking a bit putting on the
indifferent when they come out with something the kind he is what
spoils him I dont wonder in the least because he was very handsome at
that time trying to look like Lord Byron I said I liked though he was
too beautiful for a man and he was a little before we got engaged
afterwards though she didnt like it so much the day I was in fits of
laughing with the giggles I couldnt stop about all my hairpins falling
out one after another with the mass of hair I had youre always in great
humour she said yes because it grigged her because she knew what it
meant because I used to tell her a good bit of what went on between us
not all but just enough to make her mouth water but that wasnt my fault
she didnt darken the door much after we were married I wonder what shes
got like now after living with that dotty husband of hers she had her
face beginning to look drawn and run down the last time I saw her she
must have been just after a row with him because I saw on the moment
she was edging to draw down a conversation about husbands and talk
about him to run him down what was it she told me O yes that sometimes
he used to go to bed with his muddy boots on when the maggot takes him
just imagine having to get into bed with a thing like that that might
murder you any moment what a man well its not the one way everyone goes
mad Poldy anyhow whatever he does always wipes his feet on the mat when
he comes in wet or shine and always blacks his own boots too and he
always takes off his hat when he comes up in the street like then and
now hes going about in his slippers to look for £ 10000 for a postcard
U p up O sweetheart May wouldnt a thing like that simply bore you stiff
to extinction actually too stupid even to take his boots off now what
could you make of a man like that Id rather die 20 times over than
marry another of their sex of course hed never find another woman like
me to put up with him the way I do know me come sleep with me yes and
he knows that too at the bottom of his heart take that Mrs Maybrick
that poisoned her husband for what I wonder in love with some other man
yes it was found out on her wasnt she the downright villain to go and
do a thing like that of course some men can be dreadfully aggravating
drive you mad and always the worst word in the world what do they ask
us to marry them for if were so bad as all that comes to yes because
they cant get on without us white Arsenic she put in his tea off
flypaper wasnt it I wonder why they call it that if I asked him hed say
its from the Greek leave us as wise as we were before she must have
been madly in love with the other fellow to run the chance of being
hanged O she didnt care if that was her nature what could she do
besides theyre not brutes enough to go and hang a woman surely are they
theyre all so different Boylan talking about the shape of my foot he
noticed at once even before he was introduced when I was in the D B C
with Poldy laughing and trying to listen I was waggling my foot we both
ordered 2 teas and plain bread and butter I saw him looking with his
two old maids of sisters when I stood up and asked the girl where it
was what do I care with it dropping out of me and that black closed
breeches he made me buy takes you half an hour to let them down wetting
all myself always with some brandnew fad every other week such a long
one I did I forgot my suede gloves on the seat behind that I never got
after some robber of a woman and he wanted me to put it in the Irish
times lost in the ladies lavatory D B C Dame street finder return to
Mrs Marion Bloom and I saw his eyes on my feet going out through the
turning door he was looking when I looked back and I went there for tea
2 days after in the hope but he wasnt now how did that excite him
because I was crossing them when we were in the other room first he
meant the shoes that are too tight to walk in my hand is nice like that
if I only had a ring with the stone for my month a nice aquamarine Ill
stick him for one and a gold bracelet I dont like my foot so much still
I made him spend once with my foot the night after Goodwins botchup of
a concert so cold and windy it was well we had that rum in the house to
mull and the fire wasnt black out when he asked to take off my
stockings lying on the hearthrug in Lombard street west and another
time it was my muddy boots hed like me to walk in all the horses dung I
could find but of course hes not natural like the rest of the world
that I what did he say I could give 9 points in 10 to Katty Lanner and
beat her what does that mean I asked him I forget what he said because
the stoppress edition just passed and the man with the curly hair in
the Lucan dairy thats so polite I think I saw his face before somewhere
I noticed him when I was tasting the butter so I took my time Bartell
DArcy too that he used to make fun of when he commenced kissing me on
the choir stairs after I sang Gounods _Ave Maria_ what are we waiting
for O my heart kiss me straight on the brow and part which is my brown
part he was pretty hot for all his tinny voice too my low notes he was
always raving about if you can believe him I liked the way he used his
mouth singing then he said wasnt it terrible to do that there in a
place like that I dont see anything so terrible about it Ill tell him
about that some day not now and surprise him ay and Ill take him there
and show him the very place too we did it so now there you are like it
or lump it he thinks nothing can happen without him knowing he hadnt an
idea about my mother till we were engaged otherwise hed never have got
me so cheap as he did he was 10 times worse himself anyhow begging me
to give him a tiny bit cut off my drawers that was the evening coming
along Kenilworth square he kissed me in the eye of my glove and I had
to take it off asking me questions is it permitted to enquire the shape
of my bedroom so I let him keep it as if I forgot it to think of me
when I saw him slip it into his pocket of course hes mad on the subject
of drawers thats plain to be seen always skeezing at those brazenfaced
things on the bicycles with their skirts blowing up to their navels
even when Milly and I were out with him at the open air fete that one
in the cream muslin standing right against the sun so he could see
every atom she had on when he saw me from behind following in the rain
I saw him before he saw me however standing at the corner of the
Harolds cross road with a new raincoat on him with the muffler in the
Zingari colours to show off his complexion and the brown hat looking
slyboots as usual what was he doing there where hed no business they
can go and get whatever they like from anything at all with a skirt on
it and were not to ask any questions but they want to know where were
you where are you going I could feel him coming along skulking after me
his eyes on my neck he had been keeping away from the house he felt it
was getting too warm for him so I halfturned and stopped then he
pestered me to say yes till I took off my glove slowly watching him he
said my openwork sleeves were too cold for the rain anything for an
excuse to put his hand anear me drawers drawers the whole blessed time
till I promised to give him the pair off my doll to carry about in his
waistcoat pocket _O Maria Santisima_ he did look a big fool dreeping in
the rain splendid set of teeth he had made me hungry to look at them
and beseeched of me to lift the orange petticoat I had on with the
sunray pleats that there was nobody he said hed kneel down in the wet
if I didnt so persevering he would too and ruin his new raincoat you
never know what freak theyd take alone with you theyre so savage for it
if anyone was passing so I lifted them a bit and touched his trousers
outside the way I used to Gardner after with my ring hand to keep him
from doing worse where it was too public I was dying to find out was he
circumcised he was shaking like a jelly all over they want to do
everything too quick take all the pleasure out of it and father waiting
all the time for his dinner he told me to say I left my purse in the
butchers and had to go back for it what a Deceiver then he wrote me
that letter with all those words in it how could he have the face to
any woman after his company manners making it so awkward after when we
met asking me have I offended you with my eyelids down of course he saw
I wasnt he had a few brains not like that other fool Henny Doyle he was
always breaking or tearing something in the charades I hate an unlucky
man and if I knew what it meant of course I had to say no for form sake
dont understand you I said and wasnt it natural so it is of course it
used to be written up with a picture of a womans on that wall in
Gibraltar with that word I couldnt find anywhere only for children
seeing it too young then writing every morning a letter sometimes twice
a day I liked the way he made love then he knew the way to take a woman
when he sent me the 8 big poppies because mine was the 8th then I wrote
the night he kissed my heart at Dolphins barn I couldnt describe it
simply it makes you feel like nothing on earth but he never knew how to
embrace well like Gardner I hope hell come on Monday as he said at the
same time four I hate people who come at all hours answer the door you
think its the vegetables then its somebody and you all undressed or the
door of the filthy sloppy kitchen blows open the day old frostyface
Goodwin called about the concert in Lombard street and I just after
dinner all flushed and tossed with boiling old stew dont look at me
professor I had to say Im a fright yes but he was a real old gent in
his way it was impossible to be more respectful nobody to say youre out
you have to peep out through the blind like the messengerboy today I
thought it was a putoff first him sending the port and the peaches
first and I was just beginning to yawn with nerves thinking he was
trying to make a fool of me when I knew his tattarrattat at the door he
must have been a bit late because it was 1/4 after 3 when I saw the 2
Dedalus girls coming from school I never know the time even that watch
he gave me never seems to go properly Id want to get it looked after
when I threw the penny to that lame sailor for England home and beauty
when I was whistling there is a charming girl I love and I hadnt even
put on my clean shift or powdered myself or a thing then this day week
were to go to Belfast just as well he has to go to Ennis his fathers
anniversary the 27th it wouldnt be pleasant if he did suppose our rooms
at the hotel were beside each other and any fooling went on in the new
bed I couldnt tell him to stop and not bother me with him in the next
room or perhaps some protestant clergyman with a cough knocking on the
wall then hed never believe the next day we didnt do something its all
very well a husband but you cant fool a lover after me telling him we
never did anything of course he didnt believe me no its better hes
going where he is besides something always happens with him the time
going to the Mallow concert at Maryborough ordering boiling soup for
the two of us then the bell rang out he walks down the platform with
the soup splashing about taking spoonfuls of it hadnt he the nerve and
the waiter after him making a holy show of us screeching and confusion
for the engine to start but he wouldnt pay till he finished it the two
gentlemen in the 3rd class carriage said he was quite right so he was
too hes so pigheaded sometimes when he gets a thing into his head a
good job he was able to open the carriage door with his knife or theyd
have taken us on to Cork I suppose that was done out of revenge on him
O I love jaunting in a train or a car with lovely soft cushions I
wonder will he take a 1st class for me he might want to do it in the
train by tipping the guard well O I suppose therell be the usual idiots
of men gaping at us with their eyes as stupid as ever they can possibly
be that was an exceptional man that common workman that left us alone
in the carriage that day going to Howth Id like to find out something
about him 1 or 2 tunnels perhaps then you have to look out of the
window all the nicer then coming back suppose I never came back what
would they say eloped with him that gets you on on the stage the last
concert I sang at where its over a year ago when was it St Teresas hall
Clarendon St little chits of missies they have now singing Kathleen
Kearney and her like on account of father being in the army and my
singing the absentminded beggar and wearing a brooch for Lord Roberts
when I had the map of it all and Poldy not Irish enough was it him
managed it this time I wouldnt put it past him like he got me on to
sing in the _Stabat Mater_ by going around saying he was putting Lead
Kindly Light to music I put him up to that till the jesuits found out
he was a freemason thumping the piano lead Thou me on copied from some
old opera yes and he was going about with some of them Sinner Fein
lately or whatever they call themselves talking his usual trash and
nonsense he says that little man he showed me without the neck is very
intelligent the coming man Griffiths is he well he doesnt look it thats
all I can say still it must have been him he knew there was a boycott I
hate the mention of their politics after the war that Pretoria and
Ladysmith and Bloemfontein where Gardner lieut Stanley G 8th Bn 2nd
East Lancs Rgt of enteric fever he was a lovely fellow in khaki and
just the right height over me Im sure he was brave too he said I was
lovely the evening we kissed goodbye at the canal lock my Irish beauty
he was pale with excitement about going away or wed be seen from the
road he couldnt stand properly and I so hot as I never felt they could
have made their peace in the beginning or old oom Paul and the rest of
the other old Krugers go and fight it out between them instead of
dragging on for years killing any finelooking men there were with their
fever if he was even decently shot it wouldnt have been so bad I love
to see a regiment pass in review the first time I saw the Spanish
cavalry at La Roque it was lovely after looking across the bay from
Algeciras all the lights of the rock like fireflies or those sham
battles on the 15 acres the Black Watch with their kilts in time at the
march past the 10th hussars the prince of Wales own or the lancers O
the lancers theyre grand or the Dublins that won Tugela his father made
his money over selling the horses for the cavalry well he could buy me
a nice present up in Belfast after what I gave him theyve lovely linen
up there or one of those nice kimono things I must buy a mothball like
I had before to keep in the drawer with them it would be exciting going
round with him shopping buying those things in a new city better leave
this ring behind want to keep turning and turning to get it over the
knuckle there or they might bell it round the town in their papers or
tell the police on me but theyd think were married O let them all go
and smother themselves for the fat lot I care he has plenty of money
and hes not a marrying man so somebody better get it out of him if I
could find out whether he likes me I looked a bit washy of course when
I looked close in the handglass powdering a mirror never gives you the
expression besides scrooching down on me like that all the time with
his big hipbones hes heavy too with his hairy chest for this heat
always having to lie down for them better for him put it into me from
behind the way Mrs Mastiansky told me her husband made her like the
dogs do it and stick out her tongue as far as ever she could and he so
quiet and mild with his tingating cither can you ever be up to men the
way it takes them lovely stuff in that blue suit he had on and stylish
tie and socks with the skyblue silk things on them hes certainly
welloff I know by the cut his clothes have and his heavy watch but he
was like a perfect devil for a few minutes after he came back with the
stoppress tearing up the tickets and swearing blazes because he lost 20
quid he said he lost over that outsider that won and half he put on for
me on account of Lenehans tip cursing him to the lowest pits that
sponger he was making free with me after the Glencree dinner coming
back that long joult over the featherbed mountain after the lord Mayor
looking at me with his dirty eyes Val Dillon that big heathen I first
noticed him at dessert when I was cracking the nuts with my teeth I
wished I could have picked every morsel of that chicken out of my
fingers it was so tasty and browned and as tender as anything only for
I didnt want to eat everything on my plate those forks and fishslicers
were hallmarked silver too I wish I had some I could easily have
slipped a couple into my muff when I was playing with them then always
hanging out of them for money in a restaurant for the bit you put down
your throat we have to be thankful for our mangy cup of tea itself as a
great compliment to be noticed the way the world is divided in any case
if its going to go on I want at least two other good chemises for one
thing and but I dont know what kind of drawers he likes none at all I
think didnt he say yes and half the girls in Gibraltar never wore them
either naked as God made them that Andalusian singing her Manola she
didnt make much secret of what she hadnt yes and the second pair of
silkette stockings is laddered after one days wear I could have brought
them back to Lewers this morning and kicked up a row and made that one
change them only not to upset myself and run the risk of walking into
him and ruining the whole thing and one of those kidfitting corsets Id
want advertised cheap in the Gentlewoman with elastic gores on the hips
he saved the one I have but thats no good what did they say they give a
delightful figure line 11/6 obviating that unsightly broad appearance
across the lower back to reduce flesh my belly is a bit too big Ill
have to knock off the stout at dinner or am I getting too fond of it
the last they sent from ORourkes was as flat as a pancake he makes his
money easy Larry they call him the old mangy parcel he sent at Xmas a
cottage cake and a bottle of hogwash he tried to palm off as claret
that he couldnt get anyone to drink God spare his spit for fear hed die
of the drouth or I must do a few breathing exercises I wonder is that
antifat any good might overdo it the thin ones are not so much the
fashion now garters that much I have the violet pair I wore today thats
all he bought me out of the cheque he got on the first O no there was
the face lotion I finished the last of yesterday that made my skin like
new I told him over and over again get that made up in the same place
and dont forget it God only knows whether he did after all I said to
him Ill know by the bottle anyway if not I suppose Ill only have to
wash in my piss like beeftea or chickensoup with some of that opoponax
and violet I thought it was beginning to look coarse or old a bit the
skin underneath is much finer where it peeled off there on my finger
after the burn its a pity it isnt all like that and the four paltry
handkerchiefs about 6/- in all sure you cant get on in this world
without style all going in food and rent when I get it Ill lash it
around I tell you in fine style I always want to throw a handful of tea
into the pot measuring and mincing if I buy a pair of old brogues
itself do you like those new shoes yes were they Ive no clothes at all
the brown costume and the skirt and jacket and the one at the cleaners
3 whats that for any woman cutting up this old hat and patching up the
other the men wont look at you and women try to walk on you because
they know youve no man then with all the things getting dearer every
day for the 4 years more I have of life up to 35 no Im what am I at all
Ill be 33 in September will I what O well look at that Mrs Galbraith
shes much older than me I saw her when I was out last week her beautys
on the wane she was a lovely woman magnificent head of hair on her down
to her waist tossing it back like that like Kitty OShea in Grantham
street 1st thing I did every morning to look across see her combing it
as if she loved it and was full of it pity I only got to know her the
day before we left and that Mrs Langtry the jersey lily the prince of
Wales was in love with I suppose hes like the first man going the roads
only for the name of a king theyre all made the one way only a black
mans Id like to try a beauty up to what was she 45 there was some funny
story about the jealous old husband what was it at all and an oyster
knife he went no he made her wear a kind of a tin thing round her and
the prince of Wales yes he had the oyster knife cant be true a thing
like that like some of those books he brings me the works of Master
Francois Somebody supposed to be a priest about a child born out of her
ear because her bumgut fell out a nice word for any priest to write and
her a—e as if any fool wouldnt know what that meant I hate that
pretending of all things with that old blackguards face on him anybody
can see its not true and that Ruby and Fair Tyrants he brought me that
twice I remember when I came to page 50 the part about where she hangs
him up out of a hook with a cord flagellate sure theres nothing for a
woman in that all invention made up about he drinking the champagne out
of her slipper after the ball was over like the infant Jesus in the
crib at Inchicore in the Blessed Virgins arms sure no woman could have
a child that big taken out of her and I thought first it came out of
her side because how could she go to the chamber when she wanted to and
she a rich lady of course she felt honoured H R H he was in Gibraltar
the year I was born I bet he found lilies there too where he planted
the tree he planted more than that in his time he might have planted me
too if hed come a bit sooner then I wouldnt be here as I am he ought to
chuck that Freeman with the paltry few shillings he knocks out of it
and go into an office or something where hed get regular pay or a bank
where they could put him up on a throne to count the money all the day
of course he prefers plottering about the house so you cant stir with
him any side whats your programme today I wish hed even smoke a pipe
like father to get the smell of a man or pretending to be mooching
about for advertisements when he could have been in Mr Cuffes still
only for what he did then sending me to try and patch it up I could
have got him promoted there to be the manager he gave me a great mirada
once or twice first he was as stiff as the mischief really and truly
Mrs Bloom only I felt rotten simply with the old rubbishy dress that I
lost the leads out of the tails with no cut in it but theyre coming
into fashion again I bought it simply to please him I knew it was no
good by the finish pity I changed my mind of going to Todd and Burns as
I said and not Lees it was just like the shop itself rummage sale a lot
of trash I hate those rich shops get on your nerves nothing kills me
altogether only he thinks he knows a great lot about a womans dress and
cooking mathering everything he can scour off the shelves into it if I
went by his advices every blessed hat I put on does that suit me yes
take that thats alright the one like a weddingcake standing up miles
off my head he said suited me or the dishcover one coming down on my
backside on pins and needles about the shopgirl in that place in
Grafton street I had the misfortune to bring him into and she as
insolent as ever she could be with her smirk saying Im afraid were
giving you too much trouble what shes there for but I stared it out of
her yes he was awfully stiff and no wonder but he changed the second
time he looked Poldy pigheaded as usual like the soup but I could see
him looking very hard at my chest when he stood up to open the door for
me it was nice of him to show me out in any case Im extremely sorry Mrs
Bloom believe me without making it too marked the first time after him
being insulted and me being supposed to be his wife I just half smiled
I know my chest was out that way at the door when he said Im extremely
sorry and Im sure you were
yes I think he made them a bit firmer sucking them like that so long he
made me thirsty titties he calls them I had to laugh yes this one
anyhow stiff the nipple gets for the least thing Ill get him to keep
that up and Ill take those eggs beaten up with marsala fatten them out
for him what are all those veins and things curious the way its made 2
the same in case of twins theyre supposed to represent beauty placed up
there like those statues in the museum one of them pretending to hide
it with her hand are they so beautiful of course compared with what a
man looks like with his two bags full and his other thing hanging down
out of him or sticking up at you like a hatrack no wonder they hide it
with a cabbageleaf that disgusting Cameron highlander behind the meat
market or that other wretch with the red head behind the tree where the
statue of the fish used to be when I was passing pretending he was
pissing standing out for me to see it with his babyclothes up to one
side the Queens own they were a nice lot its well the Surreys relieved
them theyre always trying to show it to you every time nearly I passed
outside the mens greenhouse near the Harcourt street station just to
try some fellow or other trying to catch my eye as if it was 1 of the 7
wonders of the world O and the stink of those rotten places the night
coming home with Poldy after the Comerfords party oranges and lemonade
to make you feel nice and watery I went into 1 of them it was so biting
cold I couldnt keep it when was that 93 the canal was frozen yes it was
a few months after a pity a couple of the Camerons werent there to see
me squatting in the mens place meadero I tried to draw a picture of it
before I tore it up like a sausage or something I wonder theyre not
afraid going about of getting a kick or a bang of something there the
woman is beauty of course thats admitted when he said I could pose for
a picture naked to some rich fellow in Holles street when he lost the
job in Helys and I was selling the clothes and strumming in the coffee
palace would I be like that bath of the nymph with my hair down yes
only shes younger or Im a little like that dirty bitch in that Spanish
photo he has nymphs used they go about like that I asked him about her
and that word met something with hoses in it and he came out with some
jawbreakers about the incarnation he never can explain a thing simply
the way a body can understand then he goes and burns the bottom out of
the pan all for his Kidney this one not so much theres the mark of his
teeth still where he tried to bite the nipple I had to scream out arent
they fearful trying to hurt you I had a great breast of milk with Milly
enough for two what was the reason of that he said I could have got a
pound a week as a wet nurse all swelled out the morning that delicate
looking student that stopped in no 28 with the Citrons Penrose nearly
caught me washing through the window only for I snapped up the towel to
my face that was his studenting hurt me they used to weaning her till
he got doctor Brady to give me the belladonna prescription I had to get
him to suck them they were so hard he said it was sweeter and thicker
than cows then he wanted to milk me into the tea well hes beyond
everything I declare somebody ought to put him in the budget if I only
could remember the one half of the things and write a book out of it
the works of Master Poldy yes and its so much smoother the skin much an
hour he was at them Im sure by the clock like some kind of a big infant
I had at me they want everything in their mouth all the pleasure those
men get out of a woman I can feel his mouth O Lord I must stretch
myself I wished he was here or somebody to let myself go with and come
again like that I feel all fire inside me or if I could dream it when
he made me spend the 2nd time tickling me behind with his finger I was
coming for about 5 minutes with my legs round him I had to hug him
after O Lord I wanted to shout out all sorts of things fuck or shit or
anything at all only not to look ugly or those lines from the strain
who knows the way hed take it you want to feel your way with a man
theyre not all like him thank God some of them want you to be so nice
about it I noticed the contrast he does it and doesnt talk I gave my
eyes that look with my hair a bit loose from the tumbling and my tongue
between my lips up to him the savage brute Thursday Friday one Saturday
two Sunday three O Lord I cant wait till Monday
frseeeeeeeefronnnng train somewhere whistling the strength those
engines have in them like big giants and the water rolling all over and
out of them all sides like the end of Loves old sweeeetsonnnng the poor
men that have to be out all the night from their wives and families in
those roasting engines stifling it was today Im glad I burned the half
of those old Freemans and Photo Bits leaving things like that lying
about hes getting very careless and threw the rest of them up in the W
C I’ll get him to cut them tomorrow for me instead of having them there
for the next year to get a few pence for them have him asking wheres
last Januarys paper and all those old overcoats I bundled out of the
hall making the place hotter than it is that rain was lovely and
refreshing just after my beauty sleep I thought it was going to get
like Gibraltar my goodness the heat there before the levanter came on
black as night and the glare of the rock standing up in it like a big
giant compared with their 3 Rock mountain they think is so great with
the red sentries here and there the poplars and they all whitehot and
the smell of the rainwater in those tanks watching the sun all the time
weltering down on you faded all that lovely frock fathers friend Mrs
Stanhope sent me from the B Marche paris what a shame my dearest
Doggerina she wrote on it she was very nice whats this her other name
was just a p c to tell you I sent the little present have just had a
jolly warm bath and feel a very clean dog now enjoyed it wogger she
called him wogger wd give anything to be back in Gib and hear you sing
Waiting and in old Madrid Concone is the name of those exercises he
bought me one of those new some word I couldnt make out shawls amusing
things but tear for the least thing still there lovely I think dont you
will always think of the lovely teas we had together scrumptious
currant scones and raspberry wafers I adore well now dearest Doggerina
be sure and write soon kind she left out regards to your father also
Captain Grove with love yrs affly Hester x x x x x she didnt look a bit
married just like a girl he was years older than her wogger he was
awfully fond of me when he held down the wire with his foot for me to
step over at the bullfight at La Linea when that matador Gomez was
given the bulls ear these clothes we have to wear whoever invented them
expecting you to walk up Killiney hill then for example at that picnic
all staysed up you cant do a blessed thing in them in a crowd run or
jump out of the way thats why I was afraid when that other ferocious
old Bull began to charge the banderilleros with the sashes and the 2
things in their hats and the brutes of men shouting bravo toro sure the
women were as bad in their nice white mantillas ripping all the whole
insides out of those poor horses I never heard of such a thing in all
my life yes he used to break his heart at me taking off the dog barking
in bell lane poor brute and it sick what became of them ever I suppose
theyre dead long ago the 2 of them its like all through a mist makes
you feel so old I made the scones of course I had everything all to
myself then a girl Hester we used to compare our hair mine was thicker
than hers she showed me how to settle it at the back when I put it up
and whats this else how to make a knot on a thread with the one hand we
were like cousins what age was I then the night of the storm I slept in
her bed she had her arms round me then we were fighting in the morning
with the pillow what fun he was watching me whenever he got an
opportunity at the band on the Alameda esplanade when I was with father
and Captain Grove I looked up at the church first and then at the
windows then down and our eyes met I felt something go through me like
all needles my eyes were dancing I remember after when I looked at
myself in the glass hardly recognised myself the change he was
attractive to a girl in spite of his being a little bald intelligent
looking disappointed and gay at the same time he was like Thomas in the
shadow of Ashlydyat I had a splendid skin from the sun and the
excitement like a rose I didnt get a wink of sleep it wouldnt have been
nice on account of her but I could have stopped it in time she gave me
the Moonstone to read that was the first I read of Wilkie Collins East
Lynne I read and the shadow of Ashlydyat Mrs Henry Wood Henry Dunbar by
that other woman I lent him afterwards with Mulveys photo in it so as
he see I wasnt without and Lord Lytton Eugene Aram Molly bawn she gave
me by Mrs Hungerford on account of the name I dont like books with a
Molly in them like that one he brought me about the one from Flanders a
whore always shoplifting anything she could cloth and stuff and yards
of it O this blanket is too heavy on me thats better I havent even one
decent nightdress this thing gets all rolled under me besides him and
his fooling thats better I used to be weltering then in the heat my
shift drenched with the sweat stuck in the cheeks of my bottom on the
chair when I stood up they were so fattish and firm when I got up on
the sofa cushions to see with my clothes up and the bugs tons of them
at night and the mosquito nets I couldnt read a line Lord how long ago
it seems centuries of course they never came back and she didnt put her
address right on it either she may have noticed her wogger people were
always going away and we never I remember that day with the waves and
the boats with their high heads rocking and the smell of ship those
Officers uniforms on shore leave made me seasick he didnt say anything
he was very serious I had the high buttoned boots on and my skirt was
blowing she kissed me six or seven times didnt I cry yes I believe I
did or near it my lips were taittering when I said goodbye she had a
Gorgeous wrap of some special kind of blue colour on her for the voyage
made very peculiarly to one side like and it was extremely pretty it
got as dull as the devil after they went I was almost planning to run
away mad out of it somewhere were never easy where we are father or
aunt or marriage waiting always waiting to guiiiide him toooo me
waiting nor speeeed his flying feet their damn guns bursting and
booming all over the shop especially the Queens birthday and throwing
everything down in all directions if you didnt open the windows when
general Ulysses Grant whoever he was or did supposed to be some great
fellow landed off the ship and old Sprague the consul that was there
from before the flood dressed up poor man and he in mourning for the
son then the same old bugles for reveille in the morning and drums
rolling and the unfortunate poor devils of soldiers walking about with
messtins smelling the place more than the old longbearded jews in their
jellibees and levites assembly and sound clear and gunfire for the men
to cross the lines and the warden marching with his keys to lock the
gates and the bagpipes and only captain Groves and father talking about
Rorkes drift and Plevna and sir Garnet Wolseley and Gordon at Khartoum
lighting their pipes for them everytime they went out drunken old devil
with his grog on the windowsill catch him leaving any of it picking his
nose trying to think of some other dirty story to tell up in a corner
but he never forgot himself when I was there sending me out of the room
on some blind excuse paying his compliments the Bushmills whisky
talking of course but hed do the same to the next woman that came along
I suppose he died of galloping drink ages ago the days like years not a
letter from a living soul except the odd few I posted to myself with
bits of paper in them so bored sometimes I could fight with my nails
listening to that old Arab with the one eye and his heass of an
instrument singing his heah heah aheah all my compriment on your
hotchapotch of your heass as bad as now with the hands hanging off me
looking out of the window if there was a nice fellow even in the
opposite house that medical in Holles street the nurse was after when I
put on my gloves and hat at the window to show I was going out not a
notion what I meant arent they thick never understand what you say even
youd want to print it up on a big poster for them not even if you shake
hands twice with the left he didnt recognise me either when I half
frowned at him outside Westland row chapel where does their great
intelligence come in Id like to know grey matter they have it all in
their tail if you ask me those country gougers up in the City Arms
intelligence they had a damn sight less than the bulls and cows they
were selling the meat and the coalmans bell that noisy bugger trying to
swindle me with the wrong bill he took out of his hat what a pair of
paws and pots and pans and kettles to mend any broken bottles for a
poor man today and no visitors or post ever except his cheques or some
advertisement like that wonderworker they sent him addressed dear Madam
only his letter and the card from Milly this morning see she wrote a
letter to him who did I get the last letter from O Mrs Dwenn now what
possessed her to write from Canada after so many years to know the
recipe I had for pisto madrileno Floey Dillon since she wrote to say
she was married to a very rich architect if Im to believe all I hear
with a villa and eight rooms her father was an awfully nice man he was
near seventy always goodhumoured well now Miss Tweedy or Miss Gillespie
theres the piannyer that was a solid silver coffee service he had too
on the mahogany sideboard then dying so far away I hate people that
have always their poor story to tell everybody has their own troubles
that poor Nancy Blake died a month ago of acute neumonia well I didnt
know her so well as all that she was Floeys friend more than mine poor
Nancy its a bother having to answer he always tells me the wrong things
and no stops to say like making a speech your sad bereavement
symph̸athy I always make that mistake and new̸phew with 2 double yous
in I hope hell write me a longer letter the next time if its a thing he
really likes me O thanks be to the great God I got somebody to give me
what I badly wanted to put some heart up into me youve no chances at
all in this place like you used long ago I wish somebody would write me
a loveletter his wasnt much and I told him he could write what he liked
yours ever Hugh Boylan in old Madrid stuff silly women believe love is
sighing I am dying still if he wrote it I suppose thered be some truth
in it true or no it fills up your whole day and life always something
to think about every moment and see it all round you like a new world I
could write the answer in bed to let him imagine me short just a few
words not those long crossed letters Atty Dillon used to write to the
fellow that was something in the four courts that jilted her after out
of the ladies letterwriter when I told her to say a few simple words he
could twist how he liked not acting with precipat precipitancy with
equal candour the greatest earthly happiness answer to a gentlemans
proposal affirmatively my goodness theres nothing else its all very
fine for them but as for being a woman as soon as youre old they might
as well throw you out in the bottom of the ashpit.
Mulveys was the first when I was in bed that morning and Mrs Rubio
brought it in with the coffee she stood there standing when I asked her
to hand me and I pointing at them I couldnt think of the word a hairpin
to open it with ah horquilla disobliging old thing and it staring her
in the face with her switch of false hair on her and vain about her
appearance ugly as she was near 80 or a 100 her face a mass of wrinkles
with all her religion domineering because she never could get over the
Atlantic fleet coming in half the ships of the world and the Union Jack
flying with all her carabineros because 4 drunken English sailors took
all the rock from them and because I didnt run into mass often enough
in Santa Maria to please her with her shawl up on her except when there
was a marriage on with all her miracles of the saints and her black
blessed virgin with the silver dress and the sun dancing 3 times on
Easter Sunday morning and when the priest was going by with the bell
bringing the vatican to the dying blessing herself for his Majestad an
admirer he signed it I near jumped out of my skin I wanted to pick him
up when I saw him following me along the Calle Real in the shop window
then he tipped me just in passing but I never thought hed write making
an appointment I had it inside my petticoat bodice all day reading it
up in every hole and corner while father was up at the drill
instructing to find out by the handwriting or the language of stamps
singing I remember shall I wear a white rose and I wanted to put on the
old stupid clock to near the time he was the first man kissed me under
the Moorish wall my sweetheart when a boy it never entered my head what
kissing meant till he put his tongue in my mouth his mouth was
sweetlike young I put my knee up to him a few times to learn the way
what did I tell him I was engaged for for fun to the son of a Spanish
nobleman named Don Miguel de la Flora and he believed me that I was to
be married to him in 3 years time theres many a true word spoken in
jest there is a flower that bloometh a few things I told him true about
myself just for him to be imagining the Spanish girls he didnt like I
suppose one of them wouldnt have him I got him excited he crushed all
the flowers on my bosom he brought me he couldnt count the pesetas and
the perragordas till I taught him Cappoquin he came from he said on the
black water but it was too short then the day before he left May yes it
was May when the infant king of Spain was born Im always like that in
the spring Id like a new fellow every year up on the tiptop under the
rockgun near OHaras tower I told him it was struck by lightning and all
about the old Barbary apes they sent to Clapham without a tail
careering all over the show on each others back Mrs Rubio said she was
a regular old rock scorpion robbing the chickens out of Inces farm and
throw stones at you if you went anear he was looking at me I had that
white blouse on open in the front to encourage him as much as I could
without too openly they were just beginning to be plump I said I was
tired we lay over the firtree cove a wild place I suppose it must be
the highest rock in existence the galleries and casemates and those
frightful rocks and Saint Michaels cave with the icicles or whatever
they call them hanging down and ladders all the mud plotching my boots
Im sure thats the way down the monkeys go under the sea to Africa when
they die the ships out far like chips that was the Malta boat passing
yes the sea and the sky you could do what you liked lie there for ever
he caressed them outside they love doing that its the roundness there I
was leaning over him with my white ricestraw hat to take the newness
out of it the left side of my face the best my blouse open for his last
day transparent kind of shirt he had I could see his chest pink he
wanted to touch mine with his for a moment but I wouldnt let him he was
awfully put out first for fear you never know consumption or leave me
with a child embarazada that old servant Ines told me that one drop
even if it got into you at all after I tried with the Banana but I was
afraid it might break and get lost up in me somewhere because they once
took something down out of a woman that was up there for years covered
with limesalts theyre all mad to get in there where they come out of
youd think they could never go far enough up and then theyre done with
you in a way till the next time yes because theres a wonderful feeling
there so tender all the time how did we finish it off yes O yes I
pulled him off into my handkerchief pretending not to be excited but I
opened my legs I wouldnt let him touch me inside my petticoat because I
had a skirt opening up the side I tormented the life out of him first
tickling him I loved rousing that dog in the hotel rrrsssstt
awokwokawok his eyes shut and a bird flying below us he was shy all the
same I liked him like that moaning I made him blush a little when I got
over him that way when I unbuttoned him and took his out and drew back
the skin it had a kind of eye in it theyre all Buttons men down the
middle on the wrong side of them Molly darling he called me what was
his name Jack Joe Harry Mulvey was it yes I think a lieutenant he was
rather fair he had a laughing kind of a voice so I went round to the
whatyoucallit everything was whatyoucallit moustache had he he said hed
come back Lord its just like yesterday to me and if I was married hed
do it to me and I promised him yes faithfully Id let him block me now
flying perhaps hes dead or killed or a captain or admiral its nearly 20
years if I said firtree cove he would if he came up behind me and put
his hands over my eyes to guess who I might recognise him hes young
still about 40 perhaps hes married some girl on the black water and is
quite changed they all do they havent half the character a woman has
she little knows what I did with her beloved husband before he ever
dreamt of her in broad daylight too in the sight of the whole world you
might say they could have put an article about it in the Chronicle I
was a bit wild after when I blew out the old bag the biscuits were in
from Benady Bros and exploded it Lord what a bang all the woodcocks and
pigeons screaming coming back the same way that we went over middle
hill round by the old guardhouse and the jews burialplace pretending to
read out the Hebrew on them I wanted to fire his pistol he said he
hadnt one he didnt know what to make of me with his peak cap on that he
always wore crooked as often as I settled it straight H M S Calypso
swinging my hat that old Bishop that spoke off the altar his long
preach about womans higher functions about girls now riding the bicycle
and wearing peak caps and the new woman bloomers God send him sense and
me more money I suppose theyre called after him I never thought that
would be my name Bloom when I used to write it in print to see how it
looked on a visiting card or practising for the butcher and oblige M
Bloom youre looking blooming Josie used to say after I married him well
its better than Breen or Briggs does brig or those awful names with
bottom in them Mrs Ramsbottom or some other kind of a bottom Mulvey I
wouldnt go mad about either or suppose I divorced him Mrs Boylan my
mother whoever she was might have given me a nicer name the Lord knows
after the lovely one she had Lunita Laredo the fun we had running along
Williss road to Europa point twisting in and out all round the other
side of Jersey they were shaking and dancing about in my blouse like
Millys little ones now when she runs up the stairs I loved looking down
at them I was jumping up at the pepper trees and the white poplars
pulling the leaves off and throwing them at him he went to India he was
to write the voyages those men have to make to the ends of the world
and back its the least they might get a squeeze or two at a woman while
they can going out to be drowned or blown up somewhere I went up
Windmill hill to the flats that Sunday morning with captain Rubios that
was dead spyglass like the sentry had he said hed have one or two from
on board I wore that frock from the B Marche paris and the coral
necklace the straits shining I could see over to Morocco almost the bay
of Tangier white and the Atlas mountain with snow on it and the straits
like a river so clear Harry Molly darling I was thinking of him on the
sea all the time after at mass when my petticoat began to slip down at
the elevation weeks and weeks I kept the handkerchief under my pillow
for the smell of him there was no decent perfume to be got in that
Gibraltar only that cheap peau dEspagne that faded and left a stink on
you more than anything else I wanted to give him a memento he gave me
that clumsy Claddagh ring for luck that I gave Gardner going to south
Africa where those Boers killed him with their war and fever but they
were well beaten all the same as if it brought its bad luck with it
like an opal or pearl still it must have been pure 18 carrot gold
because it was very heavy but what could you get in a place like that
the sandfrog shower from Africa and that derelict ship that came up to
the harbour Marie the Marie whatyoucallit no he hadnt a moustache that
was Gardner yes I can see his face cleanshaven
Frseeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeefrong that train again weeping tone once in the
dear deaead days beyondre call close my eyes breath my lips forward
kiss sad look eyes open piano ere oer the world the mists began I hate
that istsbeg comes loves sweet sooooooooooong Ill let that out full
when I get in front of the footlights again Kathleen Kearney and her
lot of squealers Miss This Miss That Miss Theother lot of sparrowfarts
skitting around talking about politics they know as much about as my
backside anything in the world to make themselves someway interesting
Irish homemade beauties soldiers daughter am I ay and whose are you
bootmakers and publicans I beg your pardon coach I thought you were a
wheelbarrow theyd die down dead off their feet if ever they got a
chance of walking down the Alameda on an officers arm like me on the
bandnight my eyes flash my bust that they havent passion God help their
poor head I knew more about men and life when I was 15 than theyll all
know at 50 they dont know how to sing a song like that Gardner said no
man could look at my mouth and teeth smiling like that and not think of
it I was afraid he mightnt like my accent first he so English all
father left me in spite of his stamps Ive my mothers eyes and figure
anyhow he always said theyre so snotty about themselves some of those
cads he wasnt a bit like that he was dead gone on my lips let them get
a husband first thats fit to be looked at and a daughter like mine or
see if they can excite a swell with money that can pick and choose
whoever he wants like Boylan to do it 4 or 5 times locked in each
others arms or the voice either I could have been a prima donna only I
married him comes looooves old deep down chin back not too much make it
double My Ladys Bower is too long for an encore about the moated grange
at twilight and vaunted rooms yes Ill sing Winds that blow from the
south that he gave after the choirstairs performance Ill change that
lace on my black dress to show off my bubs and Ill yes by God Ill get
that big fan mended make them burst with envy my hole is itching me
always when I think of him I feel I want to I feel some wind in me
better go easy not wake him have him at it again slobbering after
washing every bit of myself back belly and sides if we had even a bath
itself or my own room anyway I wish hed sleep in some bed by himself
with his cold feet on me give us room even to let a fart God or do the
least thing better yes hold them like that a bit on my side piano
quietly sweeeee theres that train far away pianissimo eeeee one more
song
that was a relief wherever you be let your wind go free who knows if
that pork chop I took with my cup of tea after was quite good with the
heat I couldnt smell anything off it Im sure that queerlooking man in
the porkbutchers is a great rogue I hope that lamp is not smoking fill
my nose up with smuts better than having him leaving the gas on all
night I couldnt rest easy in my bed in Gibraltar even getting up to see
why am I so damned nervous about that though I like it in the winter
its more company O Lord it was rotten cold too that winter when I was
only about ten was I yes I had the big doll with all the funny clothes
dressing her up and undressing that icy wind skeeting across from those
mountains the something Nevada sierra nevada standing at the fire with
the little bit of a short shift I had up to heat myself I loved dancing
about in it then make a race back into bed Im sure that fellow opposite
used to be there the whole time watching with the lights out in the
summer and I in my skin hopping around I used to love myself then
stripped at the washstand dabbing and creaming only when it came to the
chamber performance I put out the light too so then there were 2 of us
goodbye to my sleep for this night anyhow I hope hes not going to get
in with those medicals leading him astray to imagine hes young again
coming in at 4 in the morning it must be if not more still he had the
manners not to wake me what do they find to gabber about all night
squandering money and getting drunker and drunker couldnt they drink
water then he starts giving us his orders for eggs and tea and Findon
haddy and hot buttered toast I suppose well have him sitting up like
the king of the country pumping the wrong end of the spoon up and down
in his egg wherever he learned that from and I love to hear him falling
up the stairs of a morning with the cups rattling on the tray and then
play with the cat she rubs up against you for her own sake I wonder has
she fleas shes as bad as a woman always licking and lecking but I hate
their claws I wonder do they see anything that we cant staring like
that when she sits at the top of the stairs so long and listening as I
wait always what a robber too that lovely fresh plaice I bought I think
Ill get a bit of fish tomorrow or today is it Friday yes I will with
some blancmange with black currant jam like long ago not those 2 lb
pots of mixed plum and apple from the London and Newcastle Williams and
Woods goes twice as far only for the bones I hate those eels cod yes
Ill get a nice piece of cod Im always getting enough for 3 forgetting
anyway Im sick of that everlasting butchers meat from Buckleys loin
chops and leg beef and rib steak and scrag of mutton and calfs pluck
the very name is enough or a picnic suppose we all gave 5/- each and or
let him pay it and invite some other woman for him who Mrs Fleming and
drove out to the furry glen or the strawberry beds wed have him
examining all the horses toenails first like he does with the letters
no not with Boylan there yes with some cold veal and ham mixed
sandwiches there are little houses down at the bottom of the banks
there on purpose but its as hot as blazes he says not a bank holiday
anyhow I hate those ruck of Mary Ann coalboxes out for the day Whit
Monday is a cursed day too no wonder that bee bit him better the
seaside but Id never again in this life get into a boat with him after
him at Bray telling the boatman he knew how to row if anyone asked
could he ride the steeplechase for the gold cup hed say yes then it
came on to get rough the old thing crookeding about and the weight all
down my side telling me pull the right reins now pull the left and the
tide all swamping in floods in through the bottom and his oar slipping
out of the stirrup its a mercy we werent all drowned he can swim of
course me no theres no danger whatsoever keep yourself calm in his
flannel trousers Id like to have tattered them down off him before all
the people and give him what that one calls flagellate till he was
black and blue do him all the good in the world only for that longnosed
chap I dont know who he is with that other beauty Burke out of the City
Arms hotel was there spying around as usual on the slip always where he
wasnt wanted if there was a row on youd vomit a better face there was
no love lost between us thats 1 consolation I wonder what kind is that
book he brought me Sweets of Sin by a gentleman of fashion some other
Mr de Kock I suppose the people gave him that nickname going about with
his tube from one woman to another I couldnt even change my new white
shoes all ruined with the saltwater and the hat I had with that feather
all blowy and tossed on me how annoying and provoking because the smell
of the sea excited me of course the sardines and the bream in Catalan
bay round the back of the rock they were fine all silver in the
fishermens baskets old Luigi near a hundred they said came from Genoa
and the tall old chap with the earrings I dont like a man you have to
climb up to to get at I suppose theyre all dead and rotten long ago
besides I dont like being alone in this big barracks of a place at
night I suppose Ill have to put up with it I never brought a bit of
salt in even when we moved in the confusion musical academy he was
going to make on the first floor drawingroom with a brassplate or
Blooms private hotel he suggested go and ruin himself altogether the
way his father did down in Ennis like all the things he told father he
was going to do and me but I saw through him telling me all the lovely
places we could go for the honeymoon Venice by moonlight with the
gondolas and the lake of Como he had a picture cut out of some paper of
and mandolines and lanterns O how nice I said whatever I liked he was
going to do immediately if not sooner will you be my man will you carry
my can he ought to get a leather medal with a putty rim for all the
plans he invents then leaving us here all day youd never know what old
beggar at the door for a crust with his long story might be a tramp and
put his foot in the way to prevent me shutting it like that picture of
that hardened criminal he was called in Lloyds Weekly news 20 years in
jail then he comes out and murders an old woman for her money imagine
his poor wife or mother or whoever she is such a face youd run miles
away from I couldnt rest easy till I bolted all the doors and windows
to make sure but its worse again being locked up like in a prison or a
madhouse they ought to be all shot or the cat of nine tails a big brute
like that that would attack a poor old woman to murder her in her bed
Id cut them off him so I would not that hed be much use still better
than nothing the night I was sure I heard burglars in the kitchen and
he went down in his shirt with a candle and a poker as if he was
looking for a mouse as white as a sheet frightened out of his wits
making as much noise as he possibly could for the burglars benefit
there isnt much to steal indeed the Lord knows still its the feeling
especially now with Milly away such an idea for him to send the girl
down there to learn to take photographs on account of his grandfather
instead of sending her to Skerrys academy where shed have to learn not
like me getting all at school only hed do a thing like that all the
same on account of me and Boylan thats why he did it Im certain the way
he plots and plans everything out I couldnt turn round with her in the
place lately unless I bolted the door first gave me the fidgets coming
in without knocking first when I put the chair against the door just as
I was washing myself there below with the glove get on your nerves then
doing the loglady all day put her in a glasscase with two at a time to
look at her if he knew she broke off the hand off that little gimcrack
statue with her roughness and carelessness before she left that I got
that little Italian boy to mend so that you cant see the join for 2
shillings wouldnt even teem the potatoes for you of course shes right
not to ruin her hands I noticed he was always talking to her lately at
the table explaining things in the paper and she pretending to
understand sly of course that comes from his side of the house he cant
say I pretend things can he Im too honest as a matter of fact and
helping her into her coat but if there was anything wrong with her its
me shed tell not him I suppose he thinks Im finished out and laid on
the shelf well Im not no nor anything like it well see well see now
shes well on for flirting too with Tom Devans two sons imitating me
whistling with those romps of Murray girls calling for her can Milly
come out please shes in great demand to pick what they can out of her
round in Nelson street riding Harry Devans bicycle at night its as well
he sent her where she is she was just getting out of bounds wanting to
go on the skatingrink and smoking their cigarettes through their nose I
smelt it off her dress when I was biting off the thread of the button I
sewed on to the bottom of her jacket she couldnt hide much from me I
tell you only I oughtnt to have stitched it and it on her it brings a
parting and the last plumpudding too split in 2 halves see it comes out
no matter what they say her tongue is a bit too long for my taste your
blouse is open too low she says to me the pan calling the kettle
blackbottom and I had to tell her not to cock her legs up like that on
show on the windowsill before all the people passing they all look at
her like me when I was her age of course any old rag looks well on you
then a great touchmenot too in her own way at the Only Way in the
Theatre royal take your foot away out of that I hate people touching me
afraid of her life Id crush her skirt with the pleats a lot of that
touching must go on in theatres in the crush in the dark theyre always
trying to wiggle up to you that fellow in the pit at the Gaiety for
Beerbohm Tree in Trilby the last time Ill ever go there to be squashed
like that for any Trilby or her barebum every two minutes tipping me
there and looking away hes a bit daft I think I saw him after trying to
get near two stylishdressed ladies outside Switzers window at the same
little game I recognised him on the moment the face and everything but
he didnt remember me yes and she didnt even want me to kiss her at the
Broadstone going away well I hope shell get someone to dance attendance
on her the way I did when she was down with the mumps and her glands
swollen wheres this and wheres that of course she cant feel anything
deep yet I never came properly till I was what 22 or so it went into
the wrong place always only the usual girls nonsense and giggling that
Conny Connolly writing to her in white ink on black paper sealed with
sealingwax though she clapped when the curtain came down because he
looked so handsome then we had Martin Harvey for breakfast dinner and
supper I thought to myself afterwards it must be real love if a man
gives up his life for her that way for nothing I suppose there are a
few men like that left its hard to believe in it though unless it
really happened to me the majority of them with not a particle of love
in their natures to find two people like that nowadays full up of each
other that would feel the same way as you do theyre usually a bit
foolish in the head his father must have been a bit queer to go and
poison himself after her still poor old man I suppose he felt lost shes
always making love to my things too the few old rags I have wanting to
put her hair up at 15 my powder too only ruin her skin on her shes time
enough for that all her life after of course shes restless knowing shes
pretty with her lips so red a pity they wont stay that way I was too
but theres no use going to the fair with the thing answering me like a
fishwoman when I asked to go for a half a stone of potatoes the day we
met Mrs Joe Gallaher at the trottingmatches and she pretended not to
see us in her trap with Friery the solicitor we werent grand enough
till I gave her 2 damn fine cracks across the ear for herself take that
now for answering me like that and that for your impudence she had me
that exasperated of course contradicting I was badtempered too because
how was it there was a weed in the tea or I didnt sleep the night
before cheese I ate was it and I told her over and over again not to
leave knives crossed like that because she has nobody to command her as
she said herself well if he doesnt correct her faith I will that was
the last time she turned on the teartap I was just like that myself
they darent order me about the place its his fault of course having the
two of us slaving here instead of getting in a woman long ago am I ever
going to have a proper servant again of course then shed see him coming
Id have to let her know or shed revenge it arent they a nuisance that
old Mrs Fleming you have to be walking round after her putting the
things into her hands sneezing and farting into the pots well of course
shes old she cant help it a good job I found that rotten old smelly
dishcloth that got lost behind the dresser I knew there was something
and opened the area window to let out the smell bringing in his friends
to entertain them like the night he walked home with a dog if you
please that might have been mad especially Simon Dedalus son his father
such a criticiser with his glasses up with his tall hat on him at the
cricket match and a great big hole in his sock one thing laughing at
the other and his son that got all those prizes for whatever he won
them in the intermediate imagine climbing over the railings if anybody
saw him that knew us I wonder he didnt tear a big hole in his grand
funeral trousers as if the one nature gave wasnt enough for anybody
hawking him down into the dirty old kitchen now is he right in his head
I ask pity it wasnt washing day my old pair of drawers might have been
hanging up too on the line on exhibition for all hed ever care with the
ironmould mark the stupid old bundle burned on them he might think was
something else and she never even rendered down the fat I told her and
now shes going such as she was on account of her paralysed husband
getting worse theres always something wrong with them disease or they
have to go under an operation or if its not that its drink and he beats
her Ill have to hunt around again for someone every day I get up theres
some new thing on sweet God sweet God well when Im stretched out dead
in my grave I suppose Ill have some peace I want to get up a minute if
Im let wait O Jesus wait yes that thing has come on me yes now wouldnt
that afflict you of course all the poking and rooting and ploughing he
had up in me now what am I to do Friday Saturday Sunday wouldnt that
pester the soul out of a body unless he likes it some men do God knows
theres always something wrong with us 5 days every 3 or 4 weeks usual
monthly auction isnt it simply sickening that night it came on me like
that the one and only time we were in a box that Michael Gunn gave him
to see Mrs Kendal and her husband at the Gaiety something he did about
insurance for him in Drimmies I was fit to be tied though I wouldnt
give in with that gentleman of fashion staring down at me with his
glasses and him the other side of me talking about Spinoza and his soul
thats dead I suppose millions of years ago I smiled the best I could
all in a swamp leaning forward as if I was interested having to sit it
out then to the last tag I wont forget that wife of Scarli in a hurry
supposed to be a fast play about adultery that idiot in the gallery
hissing the woman adulteress he shouted I suppose he went and had a
woman in the next lane running round all the back ways after to make up
for it I wish he had what I had then hed boo I bet the cat itself is
better off than us have we too much blood up in us or what O patience
above its pouring out of me like the sea anyhow he didnt make me
pregnant as big as he is I dont want to ruin the clean sheets I just
put on I suppose the clean linen I wore brought it on too damn it damn
it and they always want to see a stain on the bed to know youre a
virgin for them all thats troubling them theyre such fools too you
could be a widow or divorced 40 times over a daub of red ink would do
or blackberry juice no thats too purply O Jamesy let me up out of this
pooh sweets of sin whoever suggested that business for women what
between clothes and cooking and children this damned old bed too
jingling like the dickens I suppose they could hear us away over the
other side of the park till I suggested to put the quilt on the floor
with the pillow under my bottom I wonder is it nicer in the day I think
it is easy I think Ill cut all this hair off me there scalding me I
might look like a young girl wouldnt he get the great suckin the next
time he turned up my clothes on me Id give anything to see his face
wheres the chamber gone easy Ive a holy horror of its breaking under me
after that old commode I wonder was I too heavy sitting on his knee I
made him sit on the easychair purposely when I took off only my blouse
and skirt first in the other room he was so busy where he oughtnt to be
he never felt me I hope my breath was sweet after those kissing comfits
easy God I remember one time I could scout it out straight whistling
like a man almost easy O Lord how noisy I hope theyre bubbles on it for
a wad of money from some fellow Ill have to perfume it in the morning
dont forget I bet he never saw a better pair of thighs than that look
how white they are the smoothest place is right there between this bit
here how soft like a peach easy God I wouldnt mind being a man and get
up on a lovely woman O Lord what a row youre making like the jersey
lily easy easy O how the waters come down at Lahore
who knows is there anything the matter with my insides or have I
something growing in me getting that thing like that every week when
was it last I Whit Monday yes its only about 3 weeks I ought to go to
the doctor only it would be like before I married him when I had that
white thing coming from me and Floey made me go to that dry old stick
Dr Collins for womens diseases on Pembroke road your vagina he called
it I suppose thats how he got all the gilt mirrors and carpets getting
round those rich ones off Stephens green running up to him for every
little fiddlefaddle her vagina and her cochinchina theyve money of
course so theyre all right I wouldnt marry him not if he was the last
man in the world besides theres something queer about their children
always smelling around those filthy bitches all sides asking me if what
I did had an offensive odour what did he want me to do but the one
thing gold maybe what a question if I smathered it all over his wrinkly
old face for him with all my compriments I suppose hed know then and
could you pass it easily pass what I thought he was talking about the
rock of Gibraltar the way he put it thats a very nice invention too by
the way only I like letting myself down after in the hole as far as I
can squeeze and pull the chain then to flush it nice cool pins and
needles still theres something in it I suppose I always used to know by
Millys when she was a child whether she had worms or not still all the
same paying him for that how much is that doctor one guinea please and
asking me had I frequent omissions where do those old fellows get all
the words they have omissions with his shortsighted eyes on me cocked
sideways I wouldnt trust him too far to give me chloroform or God knows
what else still I liked him when he sat down to write the thing out
frowning so severe his nose intelligent like that you be damned you
lying strap O anything no matter who except an idiot he was clever
enough to spot that of course that was all thinking of him and his mad
crazy letters my Precious one everything connected with your glorious
Body everything underlined that comes from it is a thing of beauty and
of joy for ever something he got out of some nonsensical book that he
had me always at myself 4 and 5 times a day sometimes and I said I
hadnt are you sure O yes I said I am quite sure in a way that shut him
up I knew what was coming next only natural weakness it was he excited
me I dont know how the first night ever we met when I was living in
Rehoboth terrace we stood staring at one another for about 10 minutes
as if we met somewhere I suppose on account of my being jewess looking
after my mother he used to amuse me the things he said with the half
sloothering smile on him and all the Doyles said he was going to stand
for a member of Parliament O wasnt I the born fool to believe all his
blather about home rule and the land league sending me that long strool
of a song out of the Huguenots to sing in French to be more classy O
beau pays de la Touraine that I never even sang once explaining and
rigmaroling about religion and persecution he wont let you enjoy
anything naturally then might he as a great favour the very 1st
opportunity he got a chance in Brighton square running into my bedroom
pretending the ink got on his hands to wash it off with the Albion milk
and sulphur soap I used to use and the gelatine still round it O I
laughed myself sick at him that day I better not make an alnight
sitting on this affair they ought to make chambers a natural size so
that a woman could sit on it properly he kneels down to do it I suppose
there isnt in all creation another man with the habits he has look at
the way hes sleeping at the foot of the bed how can he without a hard
bolster its well he doesnt kick or he might knock out all my teeth
breathing with his hand on his nose like that Indian god he took me to
show one wet Sunday in the museum in Kildare street all yellow in a
pinafore lying on his side on his hand with his ten toes sticking out
that he said was a bigger religion than the jews and Our Lords both put
together all over Asia imitating him as hes always imitating everybody
I suppose he used to sleep at the foot of the bed too with his big
square feet up in his wifes mouth damn this stinking thing anyway
wheres this those napkins are ah yes I know I hope the old press doesnt
creak ah I knew it would hes sleeping hard had a good time somewhere
still she must have given him great value for his money of course he
has to pay for it from her O this nuisance of a thing I hope theyll
have something better for us in the other world tying ourselves up God
help us thats all right for tonight now the lumpy old jingly bed always
reminds me of old Cohen I suppose he scratched himself in it often
enough and he thinks father bought it from Lord Napier that I used to
admire when I was a little girl because I told him easy piano O I like
my bed God here we are as bad as ever after 16 years how many houses
were we in at all Raymond terrace and Ontario terrace and Lombard
street and Holles street and he goes about whistling every time were on
the run again his huguenots or the frogs march pretending to help the
men with our 4 sticks of furniture and then the City Arms hotel worse
and worse says Warden Daly that charming place on the landing always
somebody inside praying then leaving all their stinks after them always
know who was in there last every time were just getting on right
something happens or he puts his big foot in it Thoms and Helys and Mr
Cuffes and Drimmies either hes going to be run into prison over his old
lottery tickets that was to be all our salvations or he goes and gives
impudence well have him coming home with the sack soon out of the
Freeman too like the rest on account of those Sinner Fein or the
freemasons then well see if the little man he showed me dribbling along
in the wet all by himself round by Coadys lane will give him much
consolation that he says is so capable and sincerely Irish he is indeed
judging by the sincerity of the trousers I saw on him wait theres
Georges church bells wait 3 quarters the hour wait two oclock well
thats a nice hour of the night for him to be coming home at to anybody
climbing down into the area if anybody saw him Ill knock him off that
little habit tomorrow first Ill look at his shirt to see or Ill see if
he has that French letter still in his pocketbook I suppose he thinks I
dont know deceitful men all their 20 pockets arent enough for their
lies then why should we tell them even if its the truth they dont
believe you then tucked up in bed like those babies in the Aristocrats
Masterpiece he brought me another time as if we hadnt enough of that in
real life without some old Aristocrat or whatever his name is
disgusting you more with those rotten pictures children with two heads
and no legs thats the kind of villainy theyre always dreaming about
with not another thing in their empty heads they ought to get slow
poison the half of them then tea and toast for him buttered on both
sides and newlaid eggs I suppose Im nothing any more when I wouldnt let
him lick me in Holles street one night man man tyrant as ever for the
one thing he slept on the floor half the night naked the way the jews
used when somebody dies belonged to them and wouldnt eat any breakfast
or speak a word wanting to be petted so I thought I stood out enough
for one time and let him he does it all wrong too thinking only of his
own pleasure his tongue is too flat or I dont know what he forgets that
wethen I dont Ill make him do it again if he doesnt mind himself and
lock him down to sleep in the coalcellar with the blackbeetles I wonder
was it her Josie off her head with my castoffs hes such a born liar too
no hed never have the courage with a married woman thats why he wants
me and Boylan though as for her Denis as she calls him that
forlornlooking spectacle you couldnt call him a husband yes its some
little bitch hes got in with even when I was with him with Milly at the
College races that Hornblower with the childs bonnet on the top of his
nob let us into by the back way he was throwing his sheeps eyes at
those two doing skirt duty up and down I tried to wink at him first no
use of course and thats the way his money goes this is the fruits of Mr
Paddy Dignam yes they were all in great style at the grand funeral in
the paper Boylan brought in if they saw a real officers funeral thatd
be something reversed arms muffled drums the poor horse walking behind
in black L Boom and Tom Kernan that drunken little barrelly man that
bit his tongue off falling down the mens W C drunk in some place or
other and Martin Cunningham and the two Dedaluses and Fanny MCoys
husband white head of cabbage skinny thing with a turn in her eye
trying to sing my songs shed want to be born all over again and her old
green dress with the lowneck as she cant attract them any other way
like dabbling on a rainy day I see it all now plainly and they call
that friendship killing and then burying one another and they all with
their wives and families at home more especially Jack Power keeping
that barmaid he does of course his wife is always sick or going to be
sick or just getting better of it and hes a goodlooking man still
though hes getting a bit grey over the ears theyre a nice lot all of
them well theyre not going to get my husband again into their clutches
if I can help it making fun of him then behind his back I know well
when he goes on with his idiotics because he has sense enough not to
squander every penny piece he earns down their gullets and looks after
his wife and family goodfornothings poor Paddy Dignam all the same Im
sorry in a way for him what are his wife and 5 children going to do
unless he was insured comical little teetotum always stuck up in some
pub corner and her or her son waiting Bill Bailey wont you please come
home her widows weeds wont improve her appearance theyre awfully
becoming though if youre goodlooking what men wasnt he yes he was at
the Glencree dinner and Ben Dollard base barreltone the night he
borrowed the swallowtail to sing out of in Holles street squeezed and
squashed into them and grinning all over his big Dolly face like a
wellwhipped childs botty didnt he look a balmy ballocks sure enough
that must have been a spectacle on the stage imagine paying 5/- in the
preserved seats for that to see him trotting off in his trowlers and
Simon Dedalus too he was always turning up half screwed singing the
second verse first the old love is the new was one of his so sweetly
sang the maiden on the hawthorn bough he was always on for flirtyfying
too when I sang Maritana with him at Freddy Mayers private opera he had
a delicious glorious voice Phoebe dearest goodbye sweetheart
_sweet_heart he always sang it not like Bartell DArcy sweet _tart_
goodbye of course he had the gift of the voice so there was no art in
it all over you like a warm showerbath O Maritana wildwood flower we
sang splendidly though it was a bit too high for my register even
transposed and he was married at the time to May Goulding but then hed
say or do something to knock the good out of it hes a widower now I
wonder what sort is his son he says hes an author and going to be a
university professor of Italian and Im to take lessons what is he
driving at now showing him my photo its not good of me I ought to have
got it taken in drapery that never looks out of fashion still I look
young in it I wonder he didnt make him a present of it altogether and
me too after all why not I saw him driving down to the Kingsbridge
station with his father and mother I was in mourning thats 11 years ago
now yes hed be 11 though what was the good in going into mourning for
what was neither one thing nor the other the first cry was enough for
me I heard the deathwatch too ticking in the wall of course he insisted
hed go into mourning for the cat I suppose hes a man now by this time
he was an innocent boy then and a darling little fellow in his lord
Fauntleroy suit and curly hair like a prince on the stage when I saw
him at Mat Dillons he liked me too I remember they all do wait by God
yes wait yes hold on he was on the cards this morning when I laid out
the deck union with a young stranger neither dark nor fair you met
before I thought it meant him but hes no chicken nor a stranger either
besides my face was turned the other way what was the 7th card after
that the 10 of spades for a journey by land then there was a letter on
its way and scandals too the 3 queens and the 8 of diamonds for a rise
in society yes wait it all came out and 2 red 8s for new garments look
at that and didnt I dream something too yes there was something about
poetry in it I hope he hasnt long greasy hair hanging into his eyes or
standing up like a red Indian what do they go about like that for only
getting themselves and their poetry laughed at I always liked poetry
when I was a girl first I thought he was a poet like lord Byron and not
an ounce of it in his composition I thought he was quite different I
wonder is he too young hes about wait 88 I was married 88 Milly is 15
yesterday 89 what age was he then at Dillons 5 or 6 about 88 I suppose
hes 20 or more Im not too old for him if hes 23 or 24 I hope hes not
that stuckup university student sort no otherwise he wouldnt go sitting
down in the old kitchen with him taking Eppss cocoa and talking of
course he pretended to understand it all probably he told him he was
out of Trinity college hes very young to be a professor I hope hes not
a professor like Goodwin was he was a potent professor of John Jameson
they all write about some woman in their poetry well I suppose he wont
find many like me where softly sighs of love the light guitar where
poetry is in the air the blue sea and the moon shining so beautifully
coming back on the nightboat from Tarifa the lighthouse at Europa point
the guitar that fellow played was so expressive will I ever go back
there again all new faces two glancing eyes a lattice hid Ill sing that
for him theyre my eyes if hes anything of a poet two eyes as darkly
bright as loves own star arent those beautiful words as loves young
star itll be a change the Lord knows to have an intelligent person to
talk to about yourself not always listening to him and Billy Prescotts
ad and Keyess ad and Tom the Devils ad then if anything goes wrong in
their business we have to suffer Im sure hes very distinguished Id like
to meet a man like that God not those other ruck besides hes young
those fine young men I could see down in Margate strand bathingplace
from the side of the rock standing up in the sun naked like a God or
something and then plunging into the sea with them why arent all men
like that thered be some consolation for a woman like that lovely
little statue he bought I could look at him all day long curly head and
his shoulders his finger up for you to listen theres real beauty and
poetry for you I often felt I wanted to kiss him all over also his
lovely young cock there so simple I wouldnt mind taking him in my mouth
if nobody was looking as if it was asking you to suck it so clean and
white he looks with his boyish face I would too in 1/2 a minute even if
some of it went down what its only like gruel or the dew theres no
danger besides hed be so clean compared with those pigs of men I
suppose never dream of washing it from 1 years end to the other the
most of them only thats what gives the women the moustaches Im sure
itll be grand if I can only get in with a handsome young poet at my age
Ill throw them the 1st thing in the morning till I see if the wishcard
comes out or Ill try pairing the lady herself and see if he comes out
Ill read and study all I can find or learn a bit off by heart if I knew
who he likes so he wont think me stupid if he thinks all women are the
same and I can teach him the other part Ill make him feel all over him
till he half faints under me then hell write about me lover and
mistress publicly too with our 2 photographs in all the papers when he
becomes famous O but then what am I going to do about him though
no thats no way for him has he no manners nor no refinement nor no
nothing in his nature slapping us behind like that on my bottom because
I didnt call him Hugh the ignoramus that doesnt know poetry from a
cabbage thats what you get for not keeping them in their proper place
pulling off his shoes and trousers there on the chair before me so
barefaced without even asking permission and standing out that vulgar
way in the half of a shirt they wear to be admired like a priest or a
butcher or those old hypocrites in the time of Julius Caesar of course
hes right enough in his way to pass the time as a joke sure you might
as well be in bed with what with a lion God Im sure hed have something
better to say for himself an old Lion would O well I suppose its
because they were so plump and tempting in my short petticoat he
couldnt resist they excite myself sometimes its well for men all the
amount of pleasure they get off a womans body were so round and white
for them always I wished I was one myself for a change just to try with
that thing they have swelling up on you so hard and at the same time so
soft when you touch it my uncle John has a thing long I heard those
cornerboys saying passing the comer of Marrowbone lane my aunt Mary has
a thing hairy because it was dark and they knew a girl was passing it
didnt make me blush why should it either its only nature and he puts
his thing long into my aunt Marys hairy etcetera and turns out to be
you put the handle in a sweepingbrush men again all over they can pick
and choose what they please a married woman or a fast widow or a girl
for their different tastes like those houses round behind Irish street
no but were to be always chained up theyre not going to be chaining me
up no damn fear once I start I tell you for their stupid husbands
jealousy why cant we all remain friends over it instead of quarrelling
her husband found it out what they did together well naturally and if
he did can he undo it hes coronado anyway whatever he does and then he
going to the other mad extreme about the wife in Fair Tyrants of course
the man never even casts a 2nd thought on the husband or wife either
its the woman he wants and he gets her what else were we given all
those desires for Id like to know I cant help it if Im young still can
I its a wonder Im not an old shrivelled hag before my time living with
him so cold never embracing me except sometimes when hes asleep the
wrong end of me not knowing I suppose who he has any man thatd kiss a
womans bottom Id throw my hat at him after that hed kiss anything
unnatural where we havent 1 atom of any kind of expression in us all of
us the same 2 lumps of lard before ever Id do that to a man pfooh the
dirty brutes the mere thought is enough I kiss the feet of you senorita
theres some sense in that didnt he kiss our halldoor yes he did what a
madman nobody understands his cracked ideas but me still of course a
woman wants to be embraced 20 times a day almost to make her look young
no matter by who so long as to be in love or loved by somebody if the
fellow you want isnt there sometimes by the Lord God I was thinking
would I go around by the quays there some dark evening where nobodyd
know me and pick up a sailor off the sea thatd be hot on for it and not
care a pin whose I was only do it off up in a gate somewhere or one of
those wildlooking gipsies in Rathfarnham had their camp pitched near
the Bloomfield laundry to try and steal our things if they could I only
sent mine there a few times for the name model laundry sending me back
over and over some old ones odd stockings that blackguardlooking fellow
with the fine eyes peeling a switch attack me in the dark and ride me
up against the wall without a word or a murderer anybody what they do
themselves the fine gentlemen in their silk hats that K C lives up
somewhere this way coming out of Hardwicke lane the night he gave us
the fish supper on account of winning over the boxing match of course
it was for me he gave it I knew him by his gaiters and the walk and
when I turned round a minute after just to see there was a woman after
coming out of it too some filthy prostitute then he goes home to his
wife after that only I suppose the half of those sailors are rotten
again with disease O move over your big carcass out of that for the
love of Mike listen to him the winds that waft my sighs to thee so well
he may sleep and sigh the great Suggester Don Poldo de la Flora if he
knew how he came out on the cards this morning hed have something to
sigh for a dark man in some perplexity between 2 7s too in prison for
Lord knows what he does that I dont know and Im to be slooching around
down in the kitchen to get his lordship his breakfast while hes rolled
up like a mummy will I indeed did you ever see me running Id just like
to see myself at it show them attention and they treat you like dirt I
dont care what anybody says itd be much better for the world to be
governed by the women in it you wouldnt see women going and killing one
another and slaughtering when do you ever see women rolling around
drunk like they do or gambling every penny they have and losing it on
horses yes because a woman whatever she does she knows where to stop
sure they wouldnt be in the world at all only for us they dont know
what it is to be a woman and a mother how could they where would they
all of them be if they hadnt all a mother to look after them what I
never had thats why I suppose hes running wild now out at night away
from his books and studies and not living at home on account of the
usual rowy house I suppose well its a poor case that those that have a
fine son like that theyre not satisfied and I none was he not able to
make one it wasnt my fault we came together when I was watching the two
dogs up in her behind in the middle of the naked street that
disheartened me altogether I suppose I oughtnt to have buried him in
that little woolly jacket I knitted crying as I was but give it to some
poor child but I knew well Id never have another our 1st death too it
was we were never the same since O Im not going to think myself into
the glooms about that any more I wonder why he wouldnt stay the night I
felt all the time it was somebody strange he brought in instead of
roving around the city meeting God knows who nightwalkers and
pickpockets his poor mother wouldnt like that if she was alive ruining
himself for life perhaps still its a lovely hour so silent I used to
love coming home after dances the air of the night they have friends
they can talk to weve none either he wants what he wont get or its some
woman ready to stick her knife in you I hate that in women no wonder
they treat us the way they do we are a dreadful lot of bitches I
suppose its all the troubles we have makes us so snappy Im not like
that he could easy have slept in there on the sofa in the other room I
suppose he was as shy as a boy he being so young hardly 20 of me in the
next room hed have heard me on the chamber arrah what harm Dedalus I
wonder its like those names in Gibraltar Delapaz Delagracia they had
the devils queer names there father Vilaplana of Santa Maria that gave
me the rosary Rosales y OReilly in the Calle las Siete Revueltas and
Pisimbo and Mrs Opisso in Governor street O what a name Id go and drown
myself in the first river if I had a name like her O my and all the
bits of streets Paradise ramp and Bedlam ramp and Rodgers ramp and
Crutchetts ramp and the devils gap steps well small blame to me if I am
a harumscarum I know I am a bit I declare to God I dont feel a day
older than then I wonder could I get my tongue round any of the Spanish
como esta usted muy bien gracias y usted see I havent forgotten it all
I thought I had only for the grammar a noun is the name of any person
place or thing pity I never tried to read that novel cantankerous Mrs
Rubio lent me by Valera with the questions in it all upside down the
two ways I always knew wed go away in the end I can tell him the
Spanish and he tell me the Italian then hell see Im not so ignorant
what a pity he didnt stay Im sure the poor fellow was dead tired and
wanted a good sleep badly I could have brought him in his breakfast in
bed with a bit of toast so long as I didnt do it on the knife for bad
luck or if the woman was going her rounds with the watercress and
something nice and tasty there are a few olives in the kitchen he might
like I never could bear the look of them in Abrines I could do the
criada the room looks all right since I changed it the other way you
see something was telling me all the time Id have to introduce myself
not knowing me from Adam very funny wouldnt it Im his wife or pretend
we were in Spain with him half awake without a Gods notion where he is
dos huevos estrellados senor Lord the cracked things come into my head
sometimes itd be great fun supposing he stayed with us why not theres
the room upstairs empty and Millys bed in the back room he could do his
writing and studies at the table in there for all the scribbling he
does at it and if he wants to read in bed in the morning like me as hes
making the breakfast for 1 he can make it for 2 Im sure Im not going to
take in lodgers off the street for him if he takes a gesabo of a house
like this Id love to have a long talk with an intelligent welleducated
person Id have to get a nice pair of red slippers like those Turks with
the fez used to sell or yellow and a nice semitransparent morning gown
that I badly want or a peachblossom dressing jacket like the one long
ago in Walpoles only 8/6 or 18/6 Ill just give him one more chance Ill
get up early in the morning Im sick of Cohens old bed in any case I
might go over to the markets to see all the vegetables and cabbages and
tomatoes and carrots and all kinds of splendid fruits all coming in
lovely and fresh who knows whod be the 1st man Id meet theyre out
looking for it in the morning Mamy Dillon used to say they are and the
night too that was her massgoing Id love a big juicy pear now to melt
in your mouth like when I used to be in the longing way then Ill throw
him up his eggs and tea in the moustachecup she gave him to make his
mouth bigger I suppose hed like my nice cream too I know what Ill do
Ill go about rather gay not too much singing a bit now and then mi fa
pieta Masetto then Ill start dressing myself to go out presto non son
piu forte Ill put on my best shift and drawers let him have a good
eyeful out of that to make his micky stand for him Ill let him know if
thats what he wanted that his wife is fucked yes and damn well fucked
too up to my neck nearly not by him 5 or 6 times handrunning theres the
mark of his spunk on the clean sheet I wouldnt bother to even iron it
out that ought to satisfy him if you dont believe me feel my belly
unless I made him stand there and put him into me Ive a mind to tell
him every scrap and make him do it out in front of me serve him right
its all his own fault if I am an adulteress as the thing in the gallery
said O much about it if thats all the harm ever we did in this vale of
tears God knows its not much doesnt everybody only they hide it I
suppose thats what a woman is supposed to be there for or He wouldnt
have made us the way He did so attractive to men then if he wants to
kiss my bottom Ill drag open my drawers and bulge it right out in his
face as large as life he can stick his tongue 7 miles up my hole as hes
there my brown part then Ill tell him I want £ 1 or perhaps 30/- Ill
tell him I want to buy underclothes then if he gives me that well he
wont be too bad I dont want to soak it all out of him like other women
do I could often have written out a fine cheque for myself and write
his name on it for a couple of pounds a few times he forgot to lock it
up besides he wont spend it Ill let him do it off on me behind provided
he doesnt smear all my good drawers O I suppose that cant be helped Ill
do the indifferent 1 or 2 questions Ill know by the answers when hes
like that he cant keep a thing back I know every turn in him Ill
tighten my bottom well and let out a few smutty words smellrump or lick
my shit or the first mad thing comes into my head then Ill suggest
about yes O wait now sonny my turn is coming Ill be quite gay and
friendly over it O but I was forgetting this bloody pest of a thing
pfooh you wouldnt know which to laugh or cry were such a mixture of
plum and apple no Ill have to wear the old things so much the better
itll be more pointed hell never know whether he did it or not there
thats good enough for you any old thing at all then Ill wipe him off me
just like a business his omission then Ill go out Ill have him eying up
at the ceiling where is she gone now make him want me thats the only
way a quarter after what an unearthly hour I suppose theyre just
getting up in China now combing out their pigtails for the day well
soon have the nuns ringing the angelus theyve nobody coming in to spoil
their sleep except an odd priest or two for his night office or the
alarmclock next door at cockshout clattering the brains out of itself
let me see if I can doze off 1 2 3 4 5 what kind of flowers are those
they invented like the stars the wallpaper in Lombard street was much
nicer the apron he gave me was like that something only I only wore it
twice better lower this lamp and try again so as I can get up early Ill
go to Lambes there beside Findlaters and get them to send us some
flowers to put about the place in case he brings him home tomorrow
today I mean no no Fridays an unlucky day first I want to do the place
up someway the dust grows in it I think while Im asleep then we can
have music and cigarettes I can accompany him first I must clean the
keys of the piano with milk whatll I wear shall I wear a white rose or
those fairy cakes in Liptons I love the smell of a rich big shop at 7
1/2d a lb or the other ones with the cherries in them and the pinky
sugar 11d a couple of lbs of those a nice plant for the middle of the
table Id get that cheaper in wait wheres this I saw them not long ago I
love flowers Id love to have the whole place swimming in roses God of
heaven theres nothing like nature the wild mountains then the sea and
the waves rushing then the beautiful country with the fields of oats
and wheat and all kinds of things and all the fine cattle going about
that would do your heart good to see rivers and lakes and flowers all
sorts of shapes and smells and colours springing up even out of the
ditches primroses and violets nature it is as for them saying theres no
God I wouldnt give a snap of my two fingers for all their learning why
dont they go and create something I often asked him atheists or
whatever they call themselves go and wash the cobbles off themselves
first then they go howling for the priest and they dying and why why
because theyre afraid of hell on account of their bad conscience ah yes
I know them well who was the first person in the universe before there
was anybody that made it all who ah that they dont know neither do I so
there you are they might as well try to stop the sun from rising
tomorrow the sun shines for you he said the day we were lying among the
rhododendrons on Howth head in the grey tweed suit and his straw hat
the day I got him to propose to me yes first I gave him the bit of
seedcake out of my mouth and it was leapyear like now yes 16 years ago
my God after that long kiss I near lost my breath yes he said I was a
flower of the mountain yes so we are flowers all a womans body yes that
was one true thing he said in his life and the sun shines for you today
yes that was why I liked him because I saw he understood or felt what a
woman is and I knew I could always get round him and I gave him all the
pleasure I could leading him on till he asked me to say yes and I
wouldnt answer first only looked out over the sea and the sky I was
thinking of so many things he didnt know of Mulvey and Mr Stanhope and
Hester and father and old captain Groves and the sailors playing all
birds fly and I say stoop and washing up dishes they called it on the
pier and the sentry in front of the governors house with the thing
round his white helmet poor devil half roasted and the Spanish girls
laughing in their shawls and their tall combs and the auctions in the
morning the Greeks and the jews and the Arabs and the devil knows who
else from all the ends of Europe and Duke street and the fowl market
all clucking outside Larby Sharons and the poor donkeys slipping half
asleep and the vague fellows in the cloaks asleep in the shade on the
steps and the big wheels of the carts of the bulls and the old castle
thousands of years old yes and those handsome Moors all in white and
turbans like kings asking you to sit down in their little bit of a shop
and Ronda with the old windows of the posadas 2 glancing eyes a lattice
hid for her lover to kiss the iron and the wineshops half open at night
and the castanets and the night we missed the boat at Algeciras the
watchman going about serene with his lamp and O that awful deepdown
torrent O and the sea the sea crimson sometimes like fire and the
glorious sunsets and the figtrees in the Alameda gardens yes and all
the queer little streets and the pink and blue and yellow houses and
the rosegardens and the jessamine and geraniums and cactuses and
Gibraltar as a girl where I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put
the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a
red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well
as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again
yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and
first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could
feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and
yes I said yes I will Yes.
Trieste-Zurich-Paris
1914-1921
Category:Books