[ 2 ]

—You, Cochrane, what city sent for him?

—Tarentum, sir.

—Very good. Well?

—There was a battle, sir.

—Very good. Where?

The boy’s blank face asked the blank window.

Fabled by the daughters of memory. And yet it was in some way if not as memory
fabled it. A phrase, then, of impatience, thud of Blake’s wings of excess. I
hear the ruin of all space, shattered glass and toppling masonry, and time one
livid final flame. What’s left us then?

—I forget the place, sir. 279 B. C.

—Asculum, Stephen said, glancing at the name and date in the gorescarred
book.

—Yes, sir. And he said: Another victory like that and we are done
for.

That phrase the world had remembered. A dull ease of the mind. From a hill
above a corpsestrewn plain a general speaking to his officers, leaned upon his
spear. Any general to any officers. They lend ear.

—You, Armstrong, Stephen said. What was the end of Pyrrhus?

—End of Pyrrhus, sir?

—I know, sir. Ask me, sir, Comyn said.

—Wait. You, Armstrong. Do you know anything about Pyrrhus?

A bag of figrolls lay snugly in Armstrong’s satchel. He curled them between his
palms at whiles and swallowed them softly. Crumbs adhered to the tissue of his
lips. A sweetened boy’s breath. Welloff people, proud that their eldest son was
in the navy. Vico Road, Dalkey.

—Pyrrhus, sir? Pyrrhus, a pier.

All laughed. Mirthless high malicious laughter. Armstrong looked round at his
classmates, silly glee in profile. In a moment they will laugh more loudly,
aware of my lack of rule and of the fees their papas pay.

—Tell me now, Stephen said, poking the boy’s shoulder with the book, what
is a pier.

—A pier, sir, Armstrong said. A thing out in the water. A kind of a
bridge. Kingstown pier, sir.

Some laughed again: mirthless but with meaning. Two in the back bench
whispered. Yes. They knew: had never learned nor ever been innocent. All. With
envy he watched their faces: Edith, Ethel, Gerty, Lily. Their likes: their
breaths, too, sweetened with tea and jam, their bracelets tittering in the
struggle.

—Kingstown pier, Stephen said. Yes, a disappointed bridge.

The words troubled their gaze.

—How, sir? Comyn asked. A bridge is across a river.

For Haines’s chapbook. No-one here to hear. Tonight deftly amid wild drink and
talk, to pierce the polished mail of his mind. What then? A jester at the court
of his master, indulged and disesteemed, winning a clement master’s praise. Why
had they chosen all that part? Not wholly for the smooth caress. For them too
history was a tale like any other too often heard, their land a pawnshop.

Had Pyrrhus not fallen by a beldam’s hand in Argos or Julius Caesar not been
knifed to death. They are not to be thought away. Time has branded them and
fettered they are lodged in the room of the infinite possibilities they have
ousted. But can those have been possible seeing that they never were? Or was
that only possible which came to pass? Weave, weaver of the wind.

—Tell us a story, sir.

—O, do, sir. A ghoststory.

—Where do you begin in this? Stephen asked, opening another book.

—Weep no more, Comyn said.

—Go on then, Talbot.

—And the story, sir?

—After, Stephen said. Go on, Talbot.

A swarthy boy opened a book and propped it nimbly under the breastwork of his
satchel. He recited jerks of verse with odd glances at the text:

—Weep no more, woful shepherds, weep no more
For Lycidas, your sorrow, is not dead,
Sunk though he be beneath the watery floor…

It must be a movement then, an actuality of the possible as possible.
Aristotle’s phrase formed itself within the gabbled verses and floated out into
the studious silence of the library of Saint Genevieve where he had read,
sheltered from the sin of Paris, night by night. By his elbow a delicate
Siamese conned a handbook of strategy. Fed and feeding brains about me: under
glowlamps, impaled, with faintly beating feelers: and in my mind’s darkness a
sloth of the underworld, reluctant, shy of brightness, shifting her dragon
scaly folds. Thought is the thought of thought. Tranquil brightness. The soul
is in a manner all that is: the soul is the form of forms. Tranquility sudden,
vast, candescent: form of forms.

Talbot repeated:

—Through the dear might of Him that walked the waves,
Through the dear might…

—Turn over, Stephen said quietly. I don’t see anything.

—What, sir? Talbot asked simply, bending forward.

His hand turned the page over. He leaned back and went on again, having just
remembered. Of him that walked the waves. Here also over these craven hearts
his shadow lies and on the scoffer’s heart and lips and on mine. It lies upon
their eager faces who offered him a coin of the tribute. To Caesar what is
Caesar’s, to God what is God’s. A long look from dark eyes, a riddling sentence
to be woven and woven on the church’s looms. Ay.

Riddle me, riddle me, randy ro.
My father gave me seeds to sow.

Talbot slid his closed book into his satchel.

—Have I heard all? Stephen asked.

—Yes, sir. Hockey at ten, sir.

—Half day, sir. Thursday.

—Who can answer a riddle? Stephen asked.

They bundled their books away, pencils clacking, pages rustling. Crowding
together they strapped and buckled their satchels, all gabbling gaily:

—A riddle, sir? Ask me, sir.

—O, ask me, sir.

—A hard one, sir.

—This is the riddle, Stephen said:

The cock crew,
The sky was blue:
The bells in heaven
Were striking eleven.
’Tis time for this poor soul
To go to heaven.

What is that?

—What, sir?

—Again, sir. We didn’t hear.

Their eyes grew bigger as the lines were repeated. After a silence Cochrane
said:

—What is it, sir? We give it up.

Stephen, his throat itching, answered:

—The fox burying his grandmother under a hollybush.

He stood up and gave a shout of nervous laughter to which their cries echoed
dismay.

A stick struck the door and a voice in the corridor called:

—Hockey!

They broke asunder, sidling out of their benches, leaping them. Quickly they
were gone and from the lumberroom came the rattle of sticks and clamour of
their boots and tongues.

Sargent who alone had lingered came forward slowly, showing an open copybook.
His tangled hair and scraggy neck gave witness of unreadiness and through his
misty glasses weak eyes looked up pleading. On his cheek, dull and bloodless, a
soft stain of ink lay, dateshaped, recent and damp as a snail’s bed.

He held out his copybook. The word Sums was written on the headline.
Beneath were sloping figures and at the foot a crooked signature with blind
loops and a blot. Cyril Sargent: his name and seal.

—Mr Deasy told me to write them out all again, he said, and show them to
you, sir.

Stephen touched the edges of the book. Futility.

—Do you understand how to do them now? he asked.

—Numbers eleven to fifteen, Sargent answered. Mr Deasy said I was to copy
them off the board, sir.

—Can you do them yourself? Stephen asked.

—No, sir.

Ugly and futile: lean neck and tangled hair and a stain of ink, a snail’s bed.
Yet someone had loved him, borne him in her arms and in her heart. But for her
the race of the world would have trampled him underfoot, a squashed boneless
snail. She had loved his weak watery blood drained from her own. Was that then
real? The only true thing in life? His mother’s prostrate body the fiery
Columbanus in holy zeal bestrode. She was no more: the trembling skeleton of a
twig burnt in the fire, an odour of rosewood and wetted ashes. She had saved
him from being trampled underfoot and had gone, scarcely having been. A poor
soul gone to heaven: and on a heath beneath winking stars a fox, red reek of
rapine in his fur, with merciless bright eyes scraped in the earth, listened,
scraped up the earth, listened, scraped and scraped.

Sitting at his side Stephen solved out the problem. He proves by algebra that
Shakespeare’s ghost is Hamlet’s grandfather. Sargent peered askance through his
slanted glasses. Hockeysticks rattled in the lumberroom: the hollow knock of a
ball and calls from the field.

Across the page the symbols moved in grave morrice, in the mummery of their
letters, wearing quaint caps of squares and cubes. Give hands, traverse, bow to
partner: so: imps of fancy of the Moors. Gone too from the world, Averroes and
Moses Maimonides, dark men in mien and movement, flashing in their mocking
mirrors the obscure soul of the world, a darkness shining in brightness which
brightness could not comprehend.

—Do you understand now? Can you work the second for yourself?

—Yes, sir.

In long shaky strokes Sargent copied the data. Waiting always for a word of
help his hand moved faithfully the unsteady symbols, a faint hue of shame
flickering behind his dull skin. Amor matris: subjective and objective
genitive. With her weak blood and wheysour milk she had fed him and hid from
sight of others his swaddling bands.

Like him was I, these sloping shoulders, this gracelessness. My childhood bends
beside me. Too far for me to lay a hand there once or lightly. Mine is far and
his secret as our eyes. Secrets, silent, stony sit in the dark palaces of both
our hearts: secrets weary of their tyranny: tyrants, willing to be dethroned.

The sum was done.

—It is very simple, Stephen said as he stood up.

—Yes, sir. Thanks, Sargent answered.

He dried the page with a sheet of thin blottingpaper and carried his copybook
back to his bench.

—You had better get your stick and go out to the others, Stephen said as
he followed towards the door the boy’s graceless form.

—Yes, sir.

In the corridor his name was heard, called from the playfield.

—Sargent!

—Run on, Stephen said. Mr Deasy is calling you.

He stood in the porch and watched the laggard hurry towards the scrappy field
where sharp voices were in strife. They were sorted in teams and Mr Deasy came
away stepping over wisps of grass with gaitered feet. When he had reached the
schoolhouse voices again contending called to him. He turned his angry white
moustache.

—What is it now? he cried continually without listening.

—Cochrane and Halliday are on the same side, sir, Stephen said.

—Will you wait in my study for a moment, Mr Deasy said, till I restore
order here.

And as he stepped fussily back across the field his old man’s voice cried
sternly:

—What is the matter? What is it now?

Their sharp voices cried about him on all sides: their many forms closed round
him, the garish sunshine bleaching the honey of his illdyed head.

Stale smoky air hung in the study with the smell of drab abraded leather of its
chairs. As on the first day he bargained with me here. As it was in the
beginning, is now. On the sideboard the tray of Stuart coins, base treasure of
a bog: and ever shall be. And snug in their spooncase of purple plush, faded,
the twelve apostles having preached to all the gentiles: world without end.

A hasty step over the stone porch and in the corridor. Blowing out his rare
moustache Mr Deasy halted at the table.

—First, our little financial settlement, he said.

He brought out of his coat a pocketbook bound by a leather thong. It slapped
open and he took from it two notes, one of joined halves, and laid them
carefully on the table.

—Two, he said, strapping and stowing his pocketbook away.

And now his strongroom for the gold. Stephen’s embarrassed hand moved over the
shells heaped in the cold stone mortar: whelks and money cowries and leopard
shells: and this, whorled as an emir’s turban, and this, the scallop of saint
James. An old pilgrim’s hoard, dead treasure, hollow shells.

A sovereign fell, bright and new, on the soft pile of the tablecloth.

—Three, Mr Deasy said, turning his little savingsbox about in his hand.
These are handy things to have. See. This is for sovereigns. This is for
shillings. Sixpences, halfcrowns. And here crowns. See.

He shot from it two crowns and two shillings.

—Three twelve, he said. I think you’ll find that’s right.

—Thank you, sir, Stephen said, gathering the money together with shy
haste and putting it all in a pocket of his trousers.

—No thanks at all, Mr Deasy said. You have earned it.

Stephen’s hand, free again, went back to the hollow shells. Symbols too of
beauty and of power. A lump in my pocket: symbols soiled by greed and misery.

—Don’t carry it like that, Mr Deasy said. You’ll pull it out somewhere
and lose it. You just buy one of these machines. You’ll find them very handy.

Answer something.

—Mine would be often empty, Stephen said.

The same room and hour, the same wisdom: and I the same. Three times now. Three
nooses round me here. Well? I can break them in this instant if I will.

—Because you don’t save, Mr Deasy said, pointing his finger. You don’t
know yet what money is. Money is power. When you have lived as long as I have.
I know, I know. If youth but knew. But what does Shakespeare say? Put but
money in thy purse.

—Iago, Stephen murmured.

He lifted his gaze from the idle shells to the old man’s stare.

—He knew what money was, Mr Deasy said. He made money. A poet, yes, but
an Englishman too. Do you know what is the pride of the English? Do you know
what is the proudest word you will ever hear from an Englishman’s mouth?

The seas’ ruler. His seacold eyes looked on the empty bay: it seems history is
to blame: on me and on my words, unhating.

—That on his empire, Stephen said, the sun never sets.

—Ba! Mr Deasy cried. That’s not English. A French Celt said that. He
tapped his savingsbox against his thumbnail.

—I will tell you, he said solemnly, what is his proudest boast. I paid
my way.

Good man, good man.

—I paid my way. I never borrowed a shilling in my life. Can you
feel that? I owe nothing. Can you?

Mulligan, nine pounds, three pairs of socks, one pair brogues, ties. Curran,
ten guineas. McCann, one guinea. Fred Ryan, two shillings. Temple, two lunches.
Russell, one guinea, Cousins, ten shillings, Bob Reynolds, half a guinea,
Koehler, three guineas, Mrs MacKernan, five weeks’ board. The lump I have is
useless.

—For the moment, no, Stephen answered.

Mr Deasy laughed with rich delight, putting back his savingsbox.

—I knew you couldn’t, he said joyously. But one day you must feel it. We
are a generous people but we must also be just.

—I fear those big words, Stephen said, which make us so unhappy.

Mr Deasy stared sternly for some moments over the mantelpiece at the shapely
bulk of a man in tartan fillibegs: Albert Edward, prince of Wales.

—You think me an old fogey and an old tory, his thoughtful voice said. I
saw three generations since O’Connell’s time. I remember the famine in ’46. Do
you know that the orange lodges agitated for repeal of the union twenty years
before O’Connell did or before the prelates of your communion denounced him as
a demagogue? You fenians forget some things.

Glorious, pious and immortal memory. The lodge of Diamond in Armagh the
splendid behung with corpses of papishes. Hoarse, masked and armed, the
planters’ covenant. The black north and true blue bible. Croppies lie down.

Stephen sketched a brief gesture.

—I have rebel blood in me too, Mr Deasy said. On the spindle side. But I
am descended from sir John Blackwood who voted for the union. We are all Irish,
all kings’ sons.

—Alas, Stephen said.

—Per vias rectas, Mr Deasy said firmly, was his motto. He voted
for it and put on his topboots to ride to Dublin from the Ards of Down to do
so.

Lal the ral the ra
The rocky road to Dublin.

A gruff squire on horseback with shiny topboots. Soft day, sir John! Soft day,
your honour!… Day!… Day!… Two topboots jog dangling on to Dublin. Lal the
ral the ra. Lal the ral the raddy.

—That reminds me, Mr Deasy said. You can do me a favour, Mr Dedalus, with
some of your literary friends. I have a letter here for the press. Sit down a
moment. I have just to copy the end.

He went to the desk near the window, pulled in his chair twice and read off
some words from the sheet on the drum of his typewriter.

—Sit down. Excuse me, he said over his shoulder, the dictates of
common sense. Just a moment.

He peered from under his shaggy brows at the manuscript by his elbow and,
muttering, began to prod the stiff buttons of the keyboard slowly, sometimes
blowing as he screwed up the drum to erase an error.

Stephen seated himself noiselessly before the princely presence. Framed around
the walls images of vanished horses stood in homage, their meek heads poised in
air: lord Hastings’ Repulse, the duke of Westminster’s Shotover,
the duke of Beaufort’s Ceylon, prix de Paris, 1866. Elfin riders
sat them, watchful of a sign. He saw their speeds, backing king’s colours, and
shouted with the shouts of vanished crowds.

—Full stop, Mr Deasy bade his keys. But prompt ventilation of this
allimportant question…

Where Cranly led me to get rich quick, hunting his winners among the
mudsplashed brakes, amid the bawls of bookies on their pitches and reek of the
canteen, over the motley slush. Even money Fair Rebel. Ten to one the
field. Dicers and thimbleriggers we hurried by after the hoofs, the vying caps
and jackets and past the meatfaced woman, a butcher’s dame, nuzzling thirstily
her clove of orange.

Shouts rang shrill from the boys’ playfield and a whirring whistle.

Again: a goal. I am among them, among their battling bodies in a medley, the
joust of life. You mean that knockkneed mother’s darling who seems to be
slightly crawsick? Jousts. Time shocked rebounds, shock by shock. Jousts, slush
and uproar of battles, the frozen deathspew of the slain, a shout of
spearspikes baited with men’s bloodied guts.

—Now then, Mr Deasy said, rising.

He came to the table, pinning together his sheets. Stephen stood up.

—I have put the matter into a nutshell, Mr Deasy said. It’s about the
foot and mouth disease. Just look through it. There can be no two opinions on
the matter.

May I trespass on your valuable space. That doctrine of laissez faire
which so often in our history. Our cattle trade. The way of all our old
industries. Liverpool ring which jockeyed the Galway harbour scheme. European
conflagration. Grain supplies through the narrow waters of the channel. The
pluterperfect imperturbability of the department of agriculture. Pardoned a
classical allusion. Cassandra. By a woman who was no better than she should be.
To come to the point at issue.

—I don’t mince words, do I? Mr Deasy asked as Stephen read on.

Foot and mouth disease. Known as Koch’s preparation. Serum and virus.
Percentage of salted horses. Rinderpest. Emperor’s horses at Mürzsteg, lower
Austria. Veterinary surgeons. Mr Henry Blackwood Price. Courteous offer a fair
trial. Dictates of common sense. Allimportant question. In every sense of the
word take the bull by the horns. Thanking you for the hospitality of your
columns.

—I want that to be printed and read, Mr Deasy said. You will see at the
next outbreak they will put an embargo on Irish cattle. And it can be cured. It
is cured. My cousin, Blackwood Price, writes to me it is regularly treated and
cured in Austria by cattledoctors there. They offer to come over here. I am
trying to work up influence with the department. Now I’m going to try
publicity. I am surrounded by difficulties, by… intrigues by… backstairs
influence by…

He raised his forefinger and beat the air oldly before his voice spoke.

—Mark my words, Mr Dedalus, he said. England is in the hands of the jews.
In all the highest places: her finance, her press. And they are the signs of a
nation’s decay. Wherever they gather they eat up the nation’s vital strength. I
have seen it coming these years. As sure as we are standing here the jew
merchants are already at their work of destruction. Old England is dying.

He stepped swiftly off, his eyes coming to blue life as they passed a broad
sunbeam. He faced about and back again.

—Dying, he said again, if not dead by now.

The harlot’s cry from street to street
Shall weave old England’s windingsheet.

His eyes open wide in vision stared sternly across the sunbeam in which he
halted.

—A merchant, Stephen said, is one who buys cheap and sells dear, jew or
gentile, is he not?

—They sinned against the light, Mr Deasy said gravely. And you can see
the darkness in their eyes. And that is why they are wanderers on the earth to
this day.

On the steps of the Paris stock exchange the goldskinned men quoting prices on
their gemmed fingers. Gabble of geese. They swarmed loud, uncouth about the
temple, their heads thickplotting under maladroit silk hats. Not theirs: these
clothes, this speech, these gestures. Their full slow eyes belied the words,
the gestures eager and unoffending, but knew the rancours massed about them and
knew their zeal was vain. Vain patience to heap and hoard. Time surely would
scatter all. A hoard heaped by the roadside: plundered and passing on. Their
eyes knew their years of wandering and, patient, knew the dishonours of their
flesh.

—Who has not? Stephen said.

—What do you mean? Mr Deasy asked.

He came forward a pace and stood by the table. His underjaw fell sideways open
uncertainly. Is this old wisdom? He waits to hear from me.

—History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.

From the playfield the boys raised a shout. A whirring whistle: goal. What if
that nightmare gave you a back kick?

—The ways of the Creator are not our ways, Mr Deasy said. All human
history moves towards one great goal, the manifestation of God.

Stephen jerked his thumb towards the window, saying:

—That is God.

Hooray! Ay! Whrrwhee!

—What? Mr Deasy asked.

—A shout in the street, Stephen answered, shrugging his shoulders.

Mr Deasy looked down and held for awhile the wings of his nose tweaked between
his fingers. Looking up again he set them free.

—I am happier than you are, he said. We have committed many errors and
many sins. A woman brought sin into the world. For a woman who was no better
than she should be, Helen, the runaway wife of Menelaus, ten years the Greeks
made war on Troy. A faithless wife first brought the strangers to our shore
here, MacMurrough’s wife and her leman, O’Rourke, prince of Breffni. A woman
too brought Parnell low. Many errors, many failures but not the one sin. I am a
struggler now at the end of my days. But I will fight for the right till the
end.

For Ulster will fight
And Ulster will be right.

Stephen raised the sheets in his hand.

—Well, sir, he began.

—I foresee, Mr Deasy said, that you will not remain here very long at
this work. You were not born to be a teacher, I think. Perhaps I am wrong.

—A learner rather, Stephen said.

And here what will you learn more?

Mr Deasy shook his head.

—Who knows? he said. To learn one must be humble. But life is the great
teacher.

Stephen rustled the sheets again.

—As regards these, he began.

—Yes, Mr Deasy said. You have two copies there. If you can have them
published at once.

Telegraph. Irish Homestead.

—I will try, Stephen said, and let you know tomorrow. I know two editors
slightly.

—That will do, Mr Deasy said briskly. I wrote last night to Mr Field,
M.P. There is a meeting of the cattletraders’ association today at the City
Arms hotel. I asked him to lay my letter before the meeting. You see if you can
get it into your two papers. What are they?

—The Evening Telegraph…

—That will do, Mr Deasy said. There is no time to lose. Now I have to
answer that letter from my cousin.

—Good morning, sir, Stephen said, putting the sheets in his pocket. Thank
you.

—Not at all, Mr Deasy said as he searched the papers on his desk. I like
to break a lance with you, old as I am.

—Good morning, sir, Stephen said again, bowing to his bent back.

He went out by the open porch and down the gravel path under the trees, hearing
the cries of voices and crack of sticks from the playfield. The lions couchant
on the pillars as he passed out through the gate: toothless terrors. Still I
will help him in his fight. Mulligan will dub me a new name: the
bullockbefriending bard.

—Mr Dedalus!

Running after me. No more letters, I hope.

—Just one moment.

—Yes, sir, Stephen said, turning back at the gate.

Mr Deasy halted, breathing hard and swallowing his breath.

—I just wanted to say, he said. Ireland, they say, has the honour of
being the only country which never persecuted the jews. Do you know that? No.
And do you know why?

He frowned sternly on the bright air.

—Why, sir? Stephen asked, beginning to smile.

—Because she never let them in, Mr Deasy said solemnly.

A coughball of laughter leaped from his throat dragging after it a rattling
chain of phlegm. He turned back quickly, coughing, laughing, his lifted arms
waving to the air.

—She never let them in, he cried again through his laughter as he stamped
on gaitered feet over the gravel of the path. That’s why.

On his wise shoulders through the checkerwork of leaves the sun flung spangles,
dancing coins.

[ 3 ]

Ineluctable modality of the visible: at least that if no more, thought through
my eyes. Signatures of all things I am here to read, seaspawn and seawrack, the
nearing tide, that rusty boot. Snotgreen, bluesilver, rust: coloured signs.
Limits of the diaphane. But he adds: in bodies. Then he was aware of them
bodies before of them coloured. How? By knocking his sconce against them, sure.
Go easy. Bald he was and a millionaire, maestro di color che sanno.
Limit of the diaphane in. Why in? Diaphane, adiaphane. If you can put your five
fingers through it it is a gate, if not a door. Shut your eyes and see.

Stephen closed his eyes to hear his boots crush crackling wrack and shells. You
are walking through it howsomever. I am, a stride at a time. A very short space
of time through very short times of space. Five, six: the nacheinander.
Exactly: and that is the ineluctable modality of the audible. Open your eyes.
No. Jesus! If I fell over a cliff that beetles o’er his base, fell through the
nebeneinander ineluctably! I am getting on nicely in the dark. My ash
sword hangs at my side. Tap with it: they do. My two feet in his boots are at
the ends of his legs, nebeneinander. Sounds solid: made by the mallet of
Los Demiurgos. Am I walking into eternity along Sandymount strand?
Crush, crack, crick, crick. Wild sea money. Dominie Deasy kens them a’.

Won’t you come to Sandymount,
Madeline the mare?

Rhythm begins, you see. I hear. A catalectic tetrameter of iambs marching. No,
agallop: deline the mare.

Open your eyes now. I will. One moment. Has all vanished since? If I open and
am for ever in the black adiaphane. Basta! I will see if I can see.

See now. There all the time without you: and ever shall be, world without end.

They came down the steps from Leahy’s terrace prudently, Frauenzimmer:
and down the shelving shore flabbily, their splayed feet sinking in the silted
sand. Like me, like Algy, coming down to our mighty mother. Number one swung
lourdily her midwife’s bag, the other’s gamp poked in the beach. From the
liberties, out for the day. Mrs Florence MacCabe, relict of the late Patk
MacCabe, deeply lamented, of Bride Street. One of her sisterhood lugged me
squealing into life. Creation from nothing. What has she in the bag? A misbirth
with a trailing navelcord, hushed in ruddy wool. The cords of all link back,
strandentwining cable of all flesh. That is why mystic monks. Will you be as
gods? Gaze in your omphalos. Hello. Kinch here. Put me on to Edenville.
Aleph, alpha: nought, nought, one.

Spouse and helpmate of Adam Kadmon: Heva, naked Eve. She had no navel. Gaze.
Belly without blemish, bulging big, a buckler of taut vellum, no, whiteheaped
corn, orient and immortal, standing from everlasting to everlasting. Womb of
sin.

Wombed in sin darkness I was too, made not begotten. By them, the man with my
voice and my eyes and a ghostwoman with ashes on her breath. They clasped and
sundered, did the coupler’s will. From before the ages He willed me and now may
not will me away or ever. A lex eterna stays about Him. Is that then the
divine substance wherein Father and Son are consubstantial? Where is poor dear
Arius to try conclusions? Warring his life long upon the
contransmagnificandjewbangtantiality. Illstarred heresiarch! In a Greek
watercloset he breathed his last: euthanasia. With beaded mitre and with
crozier, stalled upon his throne, widower of a widowed see, with upstiffed
omophorion, with clotted hinderparts.

Airs romped round him, nipping and eager airs. They are coming, waves. The
whitemaned seahorses, champing, brightwindbridled, the steeds of Mananaan.

I mustn’t forget his letter for the press. And after? The Ship, half twelve. By
the way go easy with that money like a good young imbecile. Yes, I must.

His pace slackened. Here. Am I going to aunt Sara’s or not? My consubstantial
father’s voice. Did you see anything of your artist brother Stephen lately? No?
Sure he’s not down in Strasburg terrace with his aunt Sally? Couldn’t he fly a
bit higher than that, eh? And and and and tell us, Stephen, how is uncle Si? O,
weeping God, the things I married into! De boys up in de hayloft. The drunken
little costdrawer and his brother, the cornet player. Highly respectable
gondoliers! And skeweyed Walter sirring his father, no less! Sir. Yes, sir. No,
sir. Jesus wept: and no wonder, by Christ!

I pull the wheezy bell of their shuttered cottage: and wait. They take me for a
dun, peer out from a coign of vantage.

—It’s Stephen, sir.

—Let him in. Let Stephen in.

A bolt drawn back and Walter welcomes me.

—We thought you were someone else.

In his broad bed nuncle Richie, pillowed and blanketed, extends over the
hillock of his knees a sturdy forearm. Cleanchested. He has washed the upper
moiety.

—Morrow, nephew.

He lays aside the lapboard whereon he drafts his bills of costs for the eyes of
master Goff and master Shapland Tandy, filing consents and common searches and
a writ of Duces Tecum. A bogoak frame over his bald head: Wilde’s
Requiescat. The drone of his misleading whistle brings Walter back.

—Yes, sir?

—Malt for Richie and Stephen, tell mother. Where is she?

—Bathing Crissie, sir.

Papa’s little bedpal. Lump of love.

—No, uncle Richie…

—Call me Richie. Damn your lithia water. It lowers. Whusky!

—Uncle Richie, really…

—Sit down or by the law Harry I’ll knock you down.

Walter squints vainly for a chair.

—He has nothing to sit down on, sir.

—He has nowhere to put it, you mug. Bring in our chippendale chair. Would
you like a bite of something? None of your damned lawdeedaw airs here. The rich
of a rasher fried with a herring? Sure? So much the better. We have nothing in
the house but backache pills.

All’erta!

He drones bars of Ferrando’s aria di sortita. The grandest number,
Stephen, in the whole opera. Listen.

His tuneful whistle sounds again, finely shaded, with rushes of the air, his
fists bigdrumming on his padded knees.

This wind is sweeter.

Houses of decay, mine, his and all. You told the Clongowes gentry you had an
uncle a judge and an uncle a general in the army. Come out of them, Stephen.
Beauty is not there. Nor in the stagnant bay of Marsh’s library where you read
the fading prophecies of Joachim Abbas. For whom? The hundredheaded rabble of
the cathedral close. A hater of his kind ran from them to the wood of madness,
his mane foaming in the moon, his eyeballs stars. Houyhnhnm, horsenostrilled.
The oval equine faces, Temple, Buck Mulligan, Foxy Campbell, Lanternjaws. Abbas
father, furious dean, what offence laid fire to their brains? Paff!
Descende, calve, ut ne nimium decalveris. A garland of grey hair on his
comminated head see him me clambering down to the footpace (descende!),
clutching a monstrance, basiliskeyed. Get down, baldpoll! A choir gives back
menace and echo, assisting about the altar’s horns, the snorted Latin of
jackpriests moving burly in their albs, tonsured and oiled and gelded, fat with
the fat of kidneys of wheat.

And at the same instant perhaps a priest round the corner is elevating it.
Dringdring! And two streets off another locking it into a pyx. Dringadring! And
in a ladychapel another taking housel all to his own cheek. Dringdring! Down,
up, forward, back. Dan Occam thought of that, invincible doctor. A misty
English morning the imp hypostasis tickled his brain. Bringing his host down
and kneeling he heard twine with his second bell the first bell in the transept
(he is lifting his) and, rising, heard (now I am lifting) their two bells (he
is kneeling) twang in diphthong.

Cousin Stephen, you will never be a saint. Isle of saints. You were awfully
holy, weren’t you? You prayed to the Blessed Virgin that you might not have a
red nose. You prayed to the devil in Serpentine avenue that the fubsy widow in
front might lift her clothes still more from the wet street. O si,
certo! Sell your soul for that, do, dyed rags pinned round a squaw. More
tell me, more still! On the top of the Howth tram alone crying to the rain:
Naked women! Naked women! What about that, eh?

What about what? What else were they invented for?

Reading two pages apiece of seven books every night, eh? I was young. You bowed
to yourself in the mirror, stepping forward to applause earnestly, striking
face. Hurray for the Goddamned idiot! Hray! No-one saw: tell no-one. Books you
were going to write with letters for titles. Have you read his F? O yes, but I
prefer Q. Yes, but W is wonderful. O yes, W. Remember your epiphanies written
on green oval leaves, deeply deep, copies to be sent if you died to all the
great libraries of the world, including Alexandria? Someone was to read them
there after a few thousand years, a mahamanvantara. Pico della Mirandola like.
Ay, very like a whale. When one reads these strange pages of one long gone one
feels that one is at one with one who once…

The grainy sand had gone from under his feet. His boots trod again a damp
crackling mast, razorshells, squeaking pebbles, that on the unnumbered pebbles
beats, wood sieved by the shipworm, lost Armada. Unwholesome sandflats waited
to suck his treading soles, breathing upward sewage breath, a pocket of seaweed
smouldered in seafire under a midden of man’s ashes. He coasted them, walking
warily. A porterbottle stood up, stogged to its waist, in the cakey sand dough.
A sentinel: isle of dreadful thirst. Broken hoops on the shore; at the land a
maze of dark cunning nets; farther away chalkscrawled backdoors and on the
higher beach a dryingline with two crucified shirts. Ringsend: wigwams of brown
steersmen and master mariners. Human shells.

He halted. I have passed the way to aunt Sara’s. Am I not going there? Seems
not. No-one about. He turned northeast and crossed the firmer sand towards the
Pigeonhouse.

—Qui vous a mis dans cette fichue position?

—C’est le pigeon, Joseph.

Patrice, home on furlough, lapped warm milk with me in the bar MacMahon. Son of
the wild goose, Kevin Egan of Paris. My father’s a bird, he lapped the sweet
lait chaud with pink young tongue, plump bunny’s face. Lap,
lapin. He hopes to win in the gros lots. About the nature of
women he read in Michelet. But he must send me La Vie de Jésus by M. Léo
Taxil. Lent it to his friend.

—C’est tordant, vous savez. Moi, je suis socialiste. Je ne crois pas
en l’existence de Dieu. Faut pas le dire à mon père.

—Il croit?

—Mon père, oui.

Schluss. He laps.

My Latin quarter hat. God, we simply must dress the character. I want puce
gloves. You were a student, weren’t you? Of what in the other devil’s name?
Paysayenn. P. C. N., you know: physiques, chimiques et naturelles. Aha.
Eating your groatsworth of mou en civet, fleshpots of Egypt, elbowed by
belching cabmen. Just say in the most natural tone: when I was in Paris;
boul’ Mich’, I used to. Yes, used to carry punched tickets to prove an
alibi if they arrested you for murder somewhere. Justice. On the night of the
seventeenth of February 1904 the prisoner was seen by two witnesses. Other
fellow did it: other me. Hat, tie, overcoat, nose. Lui, c’est moi. You
seem to have enjoyed yourself.

Proudly walking. Whom were you trying to walk like? Forget: a dispossessed.
With mother’s money order, eight shillings, the banging door of the post office
slammed in your face by the usher. Hunger toothache. Encore deux
minutes. Look clock. Must get. Fermé. Hired dog! Shoot him to bloody
bits with a bang shotgun, bits man spattered walls all brass buttons. Bits all
khrrrrklak in place clack back. Not hurt? O, that’s all right. Shake hands. See
what I meant, see? O, that’s all right. Shake a shake. O, that’s all only all
right.

You were going to do wonders, what? Missionary to Europe after fiery
Columbanus. Fiacre and Scotus on their creepystools in heaven spilt from their
pintpots, loudlatinlaughing: Euge! Euge! Pretending to speak broken
English as you dragged your valise, porter threepence, across the slimy pier at
Newhaven. Comment? Rich booty you brought back; Le Tutu, five
tattered numbers of Pantalon Blanc et Culotte Rouge; a blue French
telegram, curiosity to show:

—Mother dying come home father.

The aunt thinks you killed your mother. That’s why she won’t.

Then here’s a health to Mulligan’s aunt
And I’ll tell you the reason why.
She always kept things decent in
The Hannigan famileye.

His feet marched in sudden proud rhythm over the sand furrows, along by the
boulders of the south wall. He stared at them proudly, piled stone mammoth
skulls. Gold light on sea, on sand, on boulders. The sun is there, the slender
trees, the lemon houses.

Paris rawly waking, crude sunlight on her lemon streets. Moist pith of farls of
bread, the froggreen wormwood, her matin incense, court the air. Belluomo rises
from the bed of his wife’s lover’s wife, the kerchiefed housewife is astir, a
saucer of acetic acid in her hand. In Rodot’s Yvonne and Madeleine newmake
their tumbled beauties, shattering with gold teeth chaussons of pastry,
their mouths yellowed with the pus of flan bréton. Faces of Paris
men go by, their wellpleased pleasers, curled conquistadores.

Noon slumbers. Kevin Egan rolls gunpowder cigarettes through fingers smeared
with printer’s ink, sipping his green fairy as Patrice his white. About us
gobblers fork spiced beans down their gullets. Un demi sétier! A jet of
coffee steam from the burnished caldron. She serves me at his beck. Il est
irlandais. Hollandais? Non fromage. Deux irlandais, nous, Irlande, vous savez
ah, oui! She thought you wanted a cheese hollandais. Your
postprandial, do you know that word? Postprandial. There was a fellow I knew
once in Barcelona, queer fellow, used to call it his postprandial. Well:
slainte! Around the slabbed tables the tangle of wined breaths and
grumbling gorges. His breath hangs over our saucestained plates, the green
fairy’s fang thrusting between his lips. Of Ireland, the Dalcassians, of hopes,
conspiracies, of Arthur Griffith now, A E, pimander, good shepherd of men. To
yoke me as his yokefellow, our crimes our common cause. You’re your father’s
son. I know the voice. His fustian shirt, sanguineflowered, trembles its
Spanish tassels at his secrets. M. Drumont, famous journalist, Drumont, know
what he called queen Victoria? Old hag with the yellow teeth. Vieille
ogresse with the dents jaunes. Maud Gonne, beautiful woman, La
Patrie, M. Millevoye, Félix Faure, know how he died? Licentious men. The
froeken, bonne à tout faire, who rubs male nakedness in the bath at
Upsala. Moi faire, she said, Tous les messieurs. Not this
Monsieur, I said. Most licentious custom. Bath a most private thing. I
wouldn’t let my brother, not even my own brother, most lascivious thing. Green
eyes, I see you. Fang, I feel. Lascivious people.

The blue fuse burns deadly between hands and burns clear. Loose tobaccoshreds
catch fire: a flame and acrid smoke light our corner. Raw facebones under his
peep of day boy’s hat. How the head centre got away, authentic version. Got up
as a young bride, man, veil, orangeblossoms, drove out the road to Malahide.
Did, faith. Of lost leaders, the betrayed, wild escapes. Disguises, clutched
at, gone, not here.

Spurned lover. I was a strapping young gossoon at that time, I tell you. I’ll
show you my likeness one day. I was, faith. Lover, for her love he prowled with
colonel Richard Burke, tanist of his sept, under the walls of Clerkenwell and,
crouching, saw a flame of vengeance hurl them upward in the fog. Shattered
glass and toppling masonry. In gay Paree he hides, Egan of Paris, unsought by
any save by me. Making his day’s stations, the dingy printingcase, his three
taverns, the Montmartre lair he sleeps short night in, rue de la Goutte-d’Or,
damascened with flyblown faces of the gone. Loveless, landless, wifeless. She
is quite nicey comfy without her outcast man, madame in rue Gît-le-Cœur, canary
and two buck lodgers. Peachy cheeks, a zebra skirt, frisky as a young thing’s.
Spurned and undespairing. Tell Pat you saw me, won’t you? I wanted to get poor
Pat a job one time. Mon fils, soldier of France. I taught him to sing
The boys of Kilkenny are stout roaring blades. Know that old lay? I
taught Patrice that. Old Kilkenny: saint Canice, Strongbow’s castle on the
Nore. Goes like this. O, O. He takes me, Napper Tandy, by the hand.

O, O the boys of
Kilkenny…

Weak wasting hand on mine. They have forgotten Kevin Egan, not he them.
Remembering thee, O Sion.

He had come nearer the edge of the sea and wet sand slapped his boots. The new
air greeted him, harping in wild nerves, wind of wild air of seeds of
brightness. Here, I am not walking out to the Kish lightship, am I? He stood
suddenly, his feet beginning to sink slowly in the quaking soil. Turn back.

Turning, he scanned the shore south, his feet sinking again slowly in new
sockets. The cold domed room of the tower waits. Through the barbacans the
shafts of light are moving ever, slowly ever as my feet are sinking, creeping
duskward over the dial floor. Blue dusk, nightfall, deep blue night. In the
darkness of the dome they wait, their pushedback chairs, my obelisk valise,
around a board of abandoned platters. Who to clear it? He has the key. I will
not sleep there when this night comes. A shut door of a silent tower, entombing
their blind bodies, the panthersahib and his pointer. Call: no answer. He
lifted his feet up from the suck and turned back by the mole of boulders. Take
all, keep all. My soul walks with me, form of forms. So in the moon’s
midwatches I pace the path above the rocks, in sable silvered, hearing
Elsinore’s tempting flood.

The flood is following me. I can watch it flow past from here. Get back then by
the Poolbeg road to the strand there. He climbed over the sedge and eely
oarweeds and sat on a stool of rock, resting his ashplant in a grike.

A bloated carcass of a dog lay lolled on bladderwrack. Before him the gunwale
of a boat, sunk in sand. Un coche ensablé Louis Veuillot called
Gautier’s prose. These heavy sands are language tide and wind have silted here.
And these, the stoneheaps of dead builders, a warren of weasel rats. Hide gold
there. Try it. You have some. Sands and stones. Heavy of the past. Sir Lout’s
toys. Mind you don’t get one bang on the ear. I’m the bloody well gigant rolls
all them bloody well boulders, bones for my steppingstones. Feefawfum. I zmellz
de bloodz odz an Iridzman.

A point, live dog, grew into sight running across the sweep of sand. Lord, is
he going to attack me? Respect his liberty. You will not be master of others or
their slave. I have my stick. Sit tight. From farther away, walking shoreward
across from the crested tide, figures, two. The two maries. They have tucked it
safe mong the bulrushes. Peekaboo. I see you. No, the dog. He is running back
to them. Who?

Galleys of the Lochlanns ran here to beach, in quest of prey, their bloodbeaked
prows riding low on a molten pewter surf. Dane vikings, torcs of tomahawks
aglitter on their breasts when Malachi wore the collar of gold. A school of
turlehide whales stranded in hot noon, spouting, hobbling in the shallows. Then
from the starving cagework city a horde of jerkined dwarfs, my people, with
flayers’ knives, running, scaling, hacking in green blubbery whalemeat. Famine,
plague and slaughters. Their blood is in me, their lusts my waves. I moved
among them on the frozen Liffey, that I, a changeling, among the spluttering
resin fires. I spoke to no-one: none to me.

The dog’s bark ran towards him, stopped, ran back. Dog of my enemy. I just
simply stood pale, silent, bayed about. Terribilia meditans. A primrose
doublet, fortune’s knave, smiled on my fear. For that are you pining, the bark
of their applause? Pretenders: live their lives. The Bruce’s brother, Thomas
Fitzgerald, silken knight, Perkin Warbeck, York’s false scion, in breeches of
silk of whiterose ivory, wonder of a day, and Lambert Simnel, with a tail of
nans and sutlers, a scullion crowned. All kings’ sons. Paradise of pretenders
then and now. He saved men from drowning and you shake at a cur’s yelping. But
the courtiers who mocked Guido in Or san Michele were in their own house. House
of… We don’t want any of your medieval abstrusiosities. Would you do what he
did? A boat would be near, a lifebuoy. Natürlich, put there for you.
Would you or would you not? The man that was drowned nine days ago off Maiden’s
rock. They are waiting for him now. The truth, spit it out. I would want to. I
would try. I am not a strong swimmer. Water cold soft. When I put my face into
it in the basin at Clongowes. Can’t see! Who’s behind me? Out quickly, quickly!
Do you see the tide flowing quickly in on all sides, sheeting the lows of sand
quickly, shellcocoacoloured? If I had land under my feet. I want his life still
to be his, mine to be mine. A drowning man. His human eyes scream to me out of
horror of his death. I… With him together down… I could not save her.
Waters: bitter death: lost.

A woman and a man. I see her skirties. Pinned up, I bet.

Their dog ambled about a bank of dwindling sand, trotting, sniffing on all
sides. Looking for something lost in a past life. Suddenly he made off like a
bounding hare, ears flung back, chasing the shadow of a lowskimming gull. The
man’s shrieked whistle struck his limp ears. He turned, bounded back, came
nearer, trotted on twinkling shanks. On a field tenney a buck, trippant,
proper, unattired. At the lacefringe of the tide he halted with stiff
forehoofs, seawardpointed ears. His snout lifted barked at the wavenoise, herds
of seamorse. They serpented towards his feet, curling, unfurling many crests,
every ninth, breaking, plashing, from far, from farther out, waves and waves.

Cocklepickers. They waded a little way in the water and, stooping, soused their
bags and, lifting them again, waded out. The dog yelped running to them, reared
up and pawed them, dropping on all fours, again reared up at them with mute
bearish fawning. Unheeded he kept by them as they came towards the drier sand,
a rag of wolf’s tongue redpanting from his jaws. His speckled body ambled ahead
of them and then loped off at a calf’s gallop. The carcass lay on his path. He
stopped, sniffed, stalked round it, brother, nosing closer, went round it,
sniffling rapidly like a dog all over the dead dog’s bedraggled fell. Dogskull,
dogsniff, eyes on the ground, moves to one great goal. Ah, poor dogsbody! Here
lies poor dogsbody’s body.

—Tatters! Out of that, you mongrel!

The cry brought him skulking back to his master and a blunt bootless kick sent
him unscathed across a spit of sand, crouched in flight. He slunk back in a
curve. Doesn’t see me. Along by the edge of the mole he lolloped, dawdled,
smelt a rock and from under a cocked hindleg pissed against it. He trotted
forward and, lifting again his hindleg, pissed quick short at an unsmelt rock.
The simple pleasures of the poor. His hindpaws then scattered the sand: then
his forepaws dabbled and delved. Something he buried there, his grandmother. He
rooted in the sand, dabbling, delving and stopped to listen to the air, scraped
up the sand again with a fury of his claws, soon ceasing, a pard, a panther,
got in spousebreach, vulturing the dead.

After he woke me last night same dream or was it? Wait. Open hallway. Street of
harlots. Remember. Haroun al Raschid. I am almosting it. That man led me,
spoke. I was not afraid. The melon he had he held against my face. Smiled:
creamfruit smell. That was the rule, said. In. Come. Red carpet spread. You
will see who.

Shouldering their bags they trudged, the red Egyptians. His blued feet out of
turnedup trousers slapped the clammy sand, a dull brick muffler strangling his
unshaven neck. With woman steps she followed: the ruffian and his strolling
mort. Spoils slung at her back. Loose sand and shellgrit crusted her bare feet.
About her windraw face hair trailed. Behind her lord, his helpmate, bing awast
to Romeville. When night hides her body’s flaws calling under her brown shawl
from an archway where dogs have mired. Her fancyman is treating two Royal
Dublins in O’Loughlin’s of Blackpitts. Buss her, wap in rogues’ rum lingo, for,
O, my dimber wapping dell! A shefiend’s whiteness under her rancid rags.
Fumbally’s lane that night: the tanyard smells.

White thy fambles, red thy gan
And thy quarrons dainty is.
Couch a hogshead with me then.
In the darkmans clip and kiss.

Morose delectation Aquinas tunbelly calls this, frate porcospino.
Unfallen Adam rode and not rutted. Call away let him: thy quarrons dainty
is. Language no whit worse than his. Monkwords, marybeads jabber on their
girdles: roguewords, tough nuggets patter in their pockets.

Passing now.

A side eye at my Hamlet hat. If I were suddenly naked here as I sit? I am not.
Across the sands of all the world, followed by the sun’s flaming sword, to the
west, trekking to evening lands. She trudges, schlepps, trains, drags,
trascines her load. A tide westering, moondrawn, in her wake. Tides,
myriadislanded, within her, blood not mine, oinopa ponton, a winedark
sea. Behold the handmaid of the moon. In sleep the wet sign calls her hour,
bids her rise. Bridebed, childbed, bed of death, ghostcandled. Omnis caro ad
te veniet. He comes, pale vampire, through storm his eyes, his bat sails
bloodying the sea, mouth to her mouth’s kiss.

Here. Put a pin in that chap, will you? My tablets. Mouth to her kiss. No. Must
be two of em. Glue em well. Mouth to her mouth’s kiss.

His lips lipped and mouthed fleshless lips of air: mouth to her moomb. Oomb,
allwombing tomb. His mouth moulded issuing breath, unspeeched: ooeeehah: roar
of cataractic planets, globed, blazing, roaring wayawayawayawayaway. Paper. The
banknotes, blast them. Old Deasy’s letter. Here. Thanking you for the
hospitality tear the blank end off. Turning his back to the sun he bent over
far to a table of rock and scribbled words. That’s twice I forgot to take slips
from the library counter.

His shadow lay over the rocks as he bent, ending. Why not endless till the
farthest star? Darkly they are there behind this light, darkness shining in the
brightness, delta of Cassiopeia, worlds. Me sits there with his augur’s rod of
ash, in borrowed sandals, by day beside a livid sea, unbeheld, in violet night
walking beneath a reign of uncouth stars. I throw this ended shadow from me,
manshape ineluctable, call it back. Endless, would it be mine, form of my form?
Who watches me here? Who ever anywhere will read these written words? Signs on
a white field. Somewhere to someone in your flutiest voice. The good bishop of
Cloyne took the veil of the temple out of his shovel hat: veil of space with
coloured emblems hatched on its field. Hold hard. Coloured on a flat: yes,
that’s right. Flat I see, then think distance, near, far, flat I see, east,
back. Ah, see now! Falls back suddenly, frozen in stereoscope. Click does the
trick. You find my words dark. Darkness is in our souls do you not think?
Flutier. Our souls, shamewounded by our sins, cling to us yet more, a woman to
her lover clinging, the more the more.

She trusts me, her hand gentle, the longlashed eyes. Now where the blue hell am
I bringing her beyond the veil? Into the ineluctable modality of the
ineluctable visuality. She, she, she. What she? The virgin at Hodges Figgis’
window on Monday looking in for one of the alphabet books you were going to
write. Keen glance you gave her. Wrist through the braided jesse of her
sunshade. She lives in Leeson park with a grief and kickshaws, a lady of
letters. Talk that to someone else, Stevie: a pickmeup. Bet she wears those
curse of God stays suspenders and yellow stockings, darned with lumpy wool.
Talk about apple dumplings, piuttosto. Where are your wits?

Touch me. Soft eyes. Soft soft soft hand. I am lonely here. O, touch me soon,
now. What is that word known to all men? I am quiet here alone. Sad too. Touch,
touch me.

He lay back at full stretch over the sharp rocks, cramming the scribbled note
and pencil into a pocket, his hat tilted down on his eyes. That is Kevin Egan’s
movement I made, nodding for his nap, sabbath sleep. Et vidit Deus. Et erant
valde bona. Alo! Bonjour. Welcome as the flowers in May. Under its
leaf he watched through peacocktwittering lashes the southing sun. I am caught
in this burning scene. Pan’s hour, the faunal noon. Among gumheavy
serpentplants, milkoozing fruits, where on the tawny waters leaves lie wide.
Pain is far.

And no more turn aside and brood.

His gaze brooded on his broadtoed boots, a buck’s castoffs,
nebeneinander. He counted the creases of rucked leather wherein
another’s foot had nested warm. The foot that beat the ground in tripudium,
foot I dislove. But you were delighted when Esther Osvalt’s shoe went on you:
girl I knew in Paris. Tiens, quel petit pied! Staunch friend, a brother
soul: Wilde’s love that dare not speak its name. His arm: Cranly’s arm. He now
will leave me. And the blame? As I am. As I am. All or not at all.

In long lassoes from the Cock lake the water flowed full, covering
greengoldenly lagoons of sand, rising, flowing. My ashplant will float away. I
shall wait. No, they will pass on, passing, chafing against the low rocks,
swirling, passing. Better get this job over quick. Listen: a fourworded
wavespeech: seesoo, hrss, rsseeiss, ooos. Vehement breath of waters amid
seasnakes, rearing horses, rocks. In cups of rocks it slops: flop, slop, slap:
bounded in barrels. And, spent, its speech ceases. It flows purling, widely
flowing, floating foampool, flower unfurling.

Under the upswelling tide he saw the writhing weeds lift languidly and sway
reluctant arms, hising up their petticoats, in whispering water swaying and
upturning coy silver fronds. Day by day: night by night: lifted, flooded and
let fall. Lord, they are weary; and, whispered to, they sigh. Saint Ambrose
heard it, sigh of leaves and waves, waiting, awaiting the fullness of their
times, diebus ac noctibus iniurias patiens ingemiscit. To no end
gathered; vainly then released, forthflowing, wending back: loom of the moon.
Weary too in sight of lovers, lascivious men, a naked woman shining in her
courts, she draws a toil of waters.

Five fathoms out there. Full fathom five thy father lies. At one, he said.
Found drowned. High water at Dublin bar. Driving before it a loose drift of
rubble, fanshoals of fishes, silly shells. A corpse rising saltwhite from the
undertow, bobbing a pace a pace a porpoise landward. There he is. Hook it
quick. Pull. Sunk though he be beneath the watery floor. We have him. Easy now.

Bag of corpsegas sopping in foul brine. A quiver of minnows, fat of a spongy
titbit, flash through the slits of his buttoned trouserfly. God becomes man
becomes fish becomes barnacle goose becomes featherbed mountain. Dead breaths I
living breathe, tread dead dust, devour a urinous offal from all dead. Hauled
stark over the gunwale he breathes upward the stench of his green grave, his
leprous nosehole snoring to the sun.

A seachange this, brown eyes saltblue. Seadeath, mildest of all deaths known to
man. Old Father Ocean. Prix de Paris: beware of imitations. Just you
give it a fair trial. We enjoyed ourselves immensely.

Come. I thirst. Clouding over. No black clouds anywhere, are there?
Thunderstorm. Allbright he falls, proud lightning of the intellect, Lucifer,
dico, qui nescit occasum. No. My cockle hat and staff and hismy sandal
shoon. Where? To evening lands. Evening will find itself.

He took the hilt of his ashplant, lunging with it softly, dallying still. Yes,
evening will find itself in me, without me. All days make their end. By the way
next when is it Tuesday will be the longest day. Of all the glad new year,
mother, the rum tum tiddledy tum. Lawn Tennyson, gentleman poet. Già.
For the old hag with the yellow teeth. And Monsieur Drumont, gentleman
journalist. Già. My teeth are very bad. Why, I wonder. Feel. That one is
going too. Shells. Ought I go to a dentist, I wonder, with that money? That
one. This. Toothless Kinch, the superman. Why is that, I wonder, or does it
mean something perhaps?

My handkerchief. He threw it. I remember. Did I not take it up?

His hand groped vainly in his pockets. No, I didn’t. Better buy one.

He laid the dry snot picked from his nostril on a ledge of rock, carefully. For
the rest let look who will.

Behind. Perhaps there is someone.

He turned his face over a shoulder, rere regardant. Moving through the air high
spars of a threemaster, her sails brailed up on the crosstrees, homing,
upstream, silently moving, a silent ship.

— II —

[ 4 ]

Mr Leopold Bloom ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls. He liked
thick giblet soup, nutty gizzards, a stuffed roast heart, liverslices fried
with crustcrumbs, fried hencods’ roes. Most of all he liked grilled mutton
kidneys which gave to his palate a fine tang of faintly scented urine.

Kidneys were in his mind as he moved about the kitchen softly, righting her
breakfast things on the humpy tray. Gelid light and air were in the kitchen but
out of doors gentle summer morning everywhere. Made him feel a bit peckish.

The coals were reddening.

Another slice of bread and butter: three, four: right. She didn’t like her
plate full. Right. He turned from the tray, lifted the kettle off the hob and
set it sideways on the fire. It sat there, dull and squat, its spout stuck out.
Cup of tea soon. Good. Mouth dry. The cat walked stiffly round a leg of the
table with tail on high.

—Mkgnao!

—O, there you are, Mr Bloom said, turning from the fire.

The cat mewed in answer and stalked again stiffly round a leg of the table,
mewing. Just how she stalks over my writingtable. Prr. Scratch my head. Prr.

Mr Bloom watched curiously, kindly the lithe black form. Clean to see: the
gloss of her sleek hide, the white button under the butt of her tail, the green
flashing eyes. He bent down to her, his hands on his knees.

—Milk for the pussens, he said.

—Mrkgnao! the cat cried.

They call them stupid. They understand what we say better than we understand
them. She understands all she wants to. Vindictive too. Cruel. Her nature.
Curious mice never squeal. Seem to like it. Wonder what I look like to her.
Height of a tower? No, she can jump me.

—Afraid of the chickens she is, he said mockingly. Afraid of the
chookchooks. I never saw such a stupid pussens as the pussens.

—Mrkrgnao! the cat said loudly.

She blinked up out of her avid shameclosing eyes, mewing plaintively and long,
showing him her milkwhite teeth. He watched the dark eyeslits narrowing with
greed till her eyes were green stones. Then he went to the dresser, took the
jug Hanlon’s milkman had just filled for him, poured warmbubbled milk on a
saucer and set it slowly on the floor.

—Gurrhr! she cried, running to lap.

He watched the bristles shining wirily in the weak light as she tipped three
times and licked lightly. Wonder is it true if you clip them they can’t mouse
after. Why? They shine in the dark, perhaps, the tips. Or kind of feelers in
the dark, perhaps.

He listened to her licking lap. Ham and eggs, no. No good eggs with this
drouth. Want pure fresh water. Thursday: not a good day either for a mutton
kidney at Buckley’s. Fried with butter, a shake of pepper. Better a pork kidney
at Dlugacz’s. While the kettle is boiling. She lapped slower, then licking the
saucer clean. Why are their tongues so rough? To lap better, all porous holes.
Nothing she can eat? He glanced round him. No.

On quietly creaky boots he went up the staircase to the hall, paused by the
bedroom door. She might like something tasty. Thin bread and butter she likes
in the morning. Still perhaps: once in a way.

He said softly in the bare hall:

—I’m going round the corner. Be back in a minute.

And when he had heard his voice say it he added:

—You don’t want anything for breakfast?

A sleepy soft grunt answered:

—Mn.

No. She didn’t want anything. He heard then a warm heavy sigh, softer, as she
turned over and the loose brass quoits of the bedstead jingled. Must get those
settled really. Pity. All the way from Gibraltar. Forgotten any little Spanish
she knew. Wonder what her father gave for it. Old style. Ah yes! of course.
Bought it at the governor’s auction. Got a short knock. Hard as nails at a
bargain, old Tweedy. Yes, sir. At Plevna that was. I rose from the ranks, sir,
and I’m proud of it. Still he had brains enough to make that corner in stamps.
Now that was farseeing.

His hand took his hat from the peg over his initialled heavy overcoat and his
lost property office secondhand waterproof. Stamps: stickyback pictures.
Daresay lots of officers are in the swim too. Course they do. The sweated
legend in the crown of his hat told him mutely: Plasto’s high grade ha. He
peeped quickly inside the leather headband. White slip of paper. Quite safe.

On the doorstep he felt in his hip pocket for the latchkey. Not there. In the
trousers I left off. Must get it. Potato I have. Creaky wardrobe. No use
disturbing her. She turned over sleepily that time. He pulled the halldoor to
after him very quietly, more, till the footleaf dropped gently over the
threshold, a limp lid. Looked shut. All right till I come back anyhow.

He crossed to the bright side, avoiding the loose cellarflap of number
seventyfive. The sun was nearing the steeple of George’s church. Be a warm day
I fancy. Specially in these black clothes feel it more. Black conducts,
reflects, (refracts is it?), the heat. But I couldn’t go in that light suit.
Make a picnic of it. His eyelids sank quietly often as he walked in happy
warmth. Boland’s breadvan delivering with trays our daily but she prefers
yesterday’s loaves turnovers crisp crowns hot. Makes you feel young. Somewhere
in the east: early morning: set off at dawn. Travel round in front of the sun,
steal a day’s march on him. Keep it up for ever never grow a day older
technically. Walk along a strand, strange land, come to a city gate, sentry
there, old ranker too, old Tweedy’s big moustaches, leaning on a long kind of a
spear. Wander through awned streets. Turbaned faces going by. Dark caves of
carpet shops, big man, Turko the terrible, seated crosslegged, smoking a coiled
pipe. Cries of sellers in the streets. Drink water scented with fennel,
sherbet. Dander along all day. Might meet a robber or two. Well, meet him.
Getting on to sundown. The shadows of the mosques among the pillars: priest
with a scroll rolled up. A shiver of the trees, signal, the evening wind. I
pass on. Fading gold sky. A mother watches me from her doorway. She calls her
children home in their dark language. High wall: beyond strings twanged. Night
sky, moon, violet, colour of Molly’s new garters. Strings. Listen. A girl
playing one of those instruments what do you call them: dulcimers. I pass.

Probably not a bit like it really. Kind of stuff you read: in the track of the
sun. Sunburst on the titlepage. He smiled, pleasing himself. What Arthur
Griffith said about the headpiece over the Freeman leader: a homerule
sun rising up in the northwest from the laneway behind the bank of Ireland. He
prolonged his pleased smile. Ikey touch that: homerule sun rising up in the
northwest.

He approached Larry O’Rourke’s. From the cellar grating floated up the flabby
gush of porter. Through the open doorway the bar squirted out whiffs of ginger,
teadust, biscuitmush. Good house, however: just the end of the city traffic.
For instance M’Auley’s down there: n. g. as position. Of course if they ran a
tramline along the North Circular from the cattlemarket to the quays value
would go up like a shot.

Baldhead over the blind. Cute old codger. No use canvassing him for an ad.
Still he knows his own business best. There he is, sure enough, my bold Larry,
leaning against the sugarbin in his shirtsleeves watching the aproned curate
swab up with mop and bucket. Simon Dedalus takes him off to a tee with his eyes
screwed up. Do you know what I’m going to tell you? What’s that, Mr O’Rourke?
Do you know what? The Russians, they’d only be an eight o’clock breakfast for
the Japanese.

Stop and say a word: about the funeral perhaps. Sad thing about poor Dignam, Mr
O’Rourke.

Turning into Dorset street he said freshly in greeting through the doorway:

—Good day, Mr O’Rourke.

—Good day to you.

—Lovely weather, sir.

—’Tis all that.

Where do they get the money? Coming up redheaded curates from the county
Leitrim, rinsing empties and old man in the cellar. Then, lo and behold, they
blossom out as Adam Findlaters or Dan Tallons. Then think of the competition.
General thirst. Good puzzle would be cross Dublin without passing a pub. Save
it they can’t. Off the drunks perhaps. Put down three and carry five. What is
that, a bob here and there, dribs and drabs. On the wholesale orders perhaps.
Doing a double shuffle with the town travellers. Square it you with the boss
and we’ll split the job, see?

How much would that tot to off the porter in the month? Say ten barrels of
stuff. Say he got ten per cent off. O more. Fifteen. He passed Saint Joseph’s
National school. Brats’ clamour. Windows open. Fresh air helps memory. Or a
lilt. Ahbeesee defeegee kelomen opeecue rustyouvee doubleyou. Boys are they?
Yes. Inishturk. Inishark. Inishboffin. At their joggerfry. Mine. Slieve Bloom.

He halted before Dlugacz’s window, staring at the hanks of sausages, polonies,
black and white. Fifteen multiplied by. The figures whitened in his mind,
unsolved: displeased, he let them fade. The shiny links, packed with forcemeat,
fed his gaze and he breathed in tranquilly the lukewarm breath of cooked spicy
pigs’ blood.

A kidney oozed bloodgouts on the willowpatterned dish: the last. He stood by
the nextdoor girl at the counter. Would she buy it too, calling the items from
a slip in her hand? Chapped: washingsoda. And a pound and a half of Denny’s
sausages. His eyes rested on her vigorous hips. Woods his name is. Wonder what
he does. Wife is oldish. New blood. No followers allowed. Strong pair of arms.
Whacking a carpet on the clothesline. She does whack it, by George. The way her
crooked skirt swings at each whack.

The ferreteyed porkbutcher folded the sausages he had snipped off with blotchy
fingers, sausagepink. Sound meat there: like a stallfed heifer.

He took a page up from the pile of cut sheets: the model farm at Kinnereth on
the lakeshore of Tiberias. Can become ideal winter sanatorium. Moses
Montefiore. I thought he was. Farmhouse, wall round it, blurred cattle
cropping. He held the page from him: interesting: read it nearer, the title,
the blurred cropping cattle, the page rustling. A young white heifer. Those
mornings in the cattlemarket, the beasts lowing in their pens, branded sheep,
flop and fall of dung, the breeders in hobnailed boots trudging through the
litter, slapping a palm on a ripemeated hindquarter, there’s a prime one,
unpeeled switches in their hands. He held the page aslant patiently, bending
his senses and his will, his soft subject gaze at rest. The crooked skirt
swinging, whack by whack by whack.

The porkbutcher snapped two sheets from the pile, wrapped up her prime sausages
and made a red grimace.

—Now, my miss, he said.

She tendered a coin, smiling boldly, holding her thick wrist out.

—Thank you, my miss. And one shilling threepence change. For you, please?

Mr Bloom pointed quickly. To catch up and walk behind her if she went slowly,
behind her moving hams. Pleasant to see first thing in the morning. Hurry up,
damn it. Make hay while the sun shines. She stood outside the shop in sunlight
and sauntered lazily to the right. He sighed down his nose: they never
understand. Sodachapped hands. Crusted toenails too. Brown scapulars in
tatters, defending her both ways. The sting of disregard glowed to weak
pleasure within his breast. For another: a constable off duty cuddling her in
Eccles’ Lane. They like them sizeable. Prime sausage. O please, Mr Policeman,
I’m lost in the wood.

—Threepence, please.

His hand accepted the moist tender gland and slid it into a sidepocket. Then it
fetched up three coins from his trousers’ pocket and laid them on the rubber
prickles. They lay, were read quickly and quickly slid, disc by disc, into the
till.

—Thank you, sir. Another time.

A speck of eager fire from foxeyes thanked him. He withdrew his gaze after an
instant. No: better not: another time.

—Good morning, he said, moving away.

—Good morning, sir.

No sign. Gone. What matter?

He walked back along Dorset street, reading gravely. Agendath Netaim: planters’
company. To purchase waste sandy tracts from Turkish government and plant with
eucalyptus trees. Excellent for shade, fuel and construction. Orangegroves and
immense melonfields north of Jaffa. You pay eighty marks and they plant a dunam
of land for you with olives, oranges, almonds or citrons. Olives cheaper:
oranges need artificial irrigation. Every year you get a sending of the crop.
Your name entered for life as owner in the book of the union. Can pay ten down
and the balance in yearly instalments. Bleibtreustrasse 34, Berlin, W. 15.

Nothing doing. Still an idea behind it.

He looked at the cattle, blurred in silver heat. Silverpowdered olivetrees.
Quiet long days: pruning, ripening. Olives are packed in jars, eh? I have a few
left from Andrews. Molly spitting them out. Knows the taste of them now.
Oranges in tissue paper packed in crates. Citrons too. Wonder is poor Citron
still in Saint Kevin’s parade. And Mastiansky with the old cither. Pleasant
evenings we had then. Molly in Citron’s basketchair. Nice to hold, cool waxen
fruit, hold in the hand, lift it to the nostrils and smell the perfume. Like
that, heavy, sweet, wild perfume. Always the same, year after year. They
fetched high prices too, Moisel told me. Arbutus place: Pleasants street:
pleasant old times. Must be without a flaw, he said. Coming all that way:
Spain, Gibraltar, Mediterranean, the Levant. Crates lined up on the quayside at
Jaffa, chap ticking them off in a book, navvies handling them barefoot in
soiled dungarees. There’s whatdoyoucallhim out of. How do you? Doesn’t see.
Chap you know just to salute bit of a bore. His back is like that Norwegian
captain’s. Wonder if I’ll meet him today. Watering cart. To provoke the rain.
On earth as it is in heaven.

A cloud began to cover the sun slowly, wholly. Grey. Far.

No, not like that. A barren land, bare waste. Vulcanic lake, the dead sea: no
fish, weedless, sunk deep in the earth. No wind could lift those waves, grey
metal, poisonous foggy waters. Brimstone they called it raining down: the
cities of the plain: Sodom, Gomorrah, Edom. All dead names. A dead sea in a
dead land, grey and old. Old now. It bore the oldest, the first race. A bent
hag crossed from Cassidy’s, clutching a naggin bottle by the neck. The oldest
people. Wandered far away over all the earth, captivity to captivity,
multiplying, dying, being born everywhere. It lay there now. Now it could bear
no more. Dead: an old woman’s: the grey sunken cunt of the world.

Desolation.

Grey horror seared his flesh. Folding the page into his pocket he turned into
Eccles street, hurrying homeward. Cold oils slid along his veins, chilling his
blood: age crusting him with a salt cloak. Well, I am here now. Yes, I am here
now. Morning mouth bad images. Got up wrong side of the bed. Must begin again
those Sandow’s exercises. On the hands down. Blotchy brown brick houses. Number
eighty still unlet. Why is that? Valuation is only twentyeight. Towers,
Battersby, North, MacArthur: parlour windows plastered with bills. Plasters on
a sore eye. To smell the gentle smoke of tea, fume of the pan, sizzling butter.
Be near her ample bedwarmed flesh. Yes, yes.

Quick warm sunlight came running from Berkeley road, swiftly, in slim sandals,
along the brightening footpath. Runs, she runs to meet me, a girl with gold
hair on the wind.

Two letters and a card lay on the hallfloor. He stooped and gathered them. Mrs
Marion Bloom. His quickened heart slowed at once. Bold hand. Mrs Marion.

—Poldy!

Entering the bedroom he halfclosed his eyes and walked through warm yellow
twilight towards her tousled head.

—Who are the letters for?

He looked at them. Mullingar. Milly.

—A letter for me from Milly, he said carefully, and a card to you. And a
letter for you.

He laid her card and letter on the twill bedspread near the curve of her knees.

—Do you want the blind up?

Letting the blind up by gentle tugs halfway his backward eye saw her glance at
the letter and tuck it under her pillow.

—That do? he asked, turning.

She was reading the card, propped on her elbow.

—She got the things, she said.

He waited till she had laid the card aside and curled herself back slowly with
a snug sigh.

—Hurry up with that tea, she said. I’m parched.

—The kettle is boiling, he said.

But he delayed to clear the chair: her striped petticoat, tossed soiled linen:
and lifted all in an armful on to the foot of the bed.

As he went down the kitchen stairs she called:

—Poldy!

—What?

—Scald the teapot.

On the boil sure enough: a plume of steam from the spout. He scalded and rinsed
out the teapot and put in four full spoons of tea, tilting the kettle then to
let the water flow in. Having set it to draw he took off the kettle, crushed
the pan flat on the live coals and watched the lump of butter slide and melt.
While he unwrapped the kidney the cat mewed hungrily against him. Give her too
much meat she won’t mouse. Say they won’t eat pork. Kosher. Here. He let the
bloodsmeared paper fall to her and dropped the kidney amid the sizzling butter
sauce. Pepper. He sprinkled it through his fingers ringwise from the chipped
eggcup.

Then he slit open his letter, glancing down the page and over. Thanks: new tam:
Mr Coghlan: lough Owel picnic: young student: Blazes Boylan’s seaside girls.

The tea was drawn. He filled his own moustachecup, sham crown Derby, smiling.
Silly Milly’s birthday gift. Only five she was then. No, wait: four. I gave her
the amberoid necklace she broke. Putting pieces of folded brown paper in the
letterbox for her. He smiled, pouring.

O, Milly Bloom, you are my darling.
You are my lookingglass from night to morning.
I’d rather have you without a farthing
Than Katey Keogh with her ass and garden.

Poor old professor Goodwin. Dreadful old case. Still he was a courteous old
chap. Oldfashioned way he used to bow Molly off the platform. And the little
mirror in his silk hat. The night Milly brought it into the parlour. O, look
what I found in professor Goodwin’s hat! All we laughed. Sex breaking out even
then. Pert little piece she was.

He prodded a fork into the kidney and slapped it over: then fitted the teapot
on the tray. Its hump bumped as he took it up. Everything on it? Bread and
butter, four, sugar, spoon, her cream. Yes. He carried it upstairs, his thumb
hooked in the teapot handle.

Nudging the door open with his knee he carried the tray in and set it on the
chair by the bedhead.

—What a time you were! she said.

She set the brasses jingling as she raised herself briskly, an elbow on the
pillow. He looked calmly down on her bulk and between her large soft bubs,
sloping within her nightdress like a shegoat’s udder. The warmth of her couched
body rose on the air, mingling with the fragrance of the tea she poured.

A strip of torn envelope peeped from under the dimpled pillow. In the act of
going he stayed to straighten the bedspread.

—Who was the letter from? he asked.

Bold hand. Marion.

—O, Boylan, she said. He’s bringing the programme.

—What are you singing?

—Là ci darem with J. C. Doyle, she said, and Love’s Old Sweet
Song.

Her full lips, drinking, smiled. Rather stale smell that incense leaves next
day. Like foul flowerwater.

—Would you like the window open a little?

She doubled a slice of bread into her mouth, asking:

—What time is the funeral?

—Eleven, I think, he answered. I didn’t see the paper.

Following the pointing of her finger he took up a leg of her soiled drawers
from the bed. No? Then, a twisted grey garter looped round a stocking: rumpled,
shiny sole.

—No: that book.

Other stocking. Her petticoat.

—It must have fell down, she said.

He felt here and there. Voglio e non vorrei. Wonder if she pronounces
that right: voglio. Not in the bed. Must have slid down. He stooped and
lifted the valance. The book, fallen, sprawled against the bulge of the
orangekeyed chamberpot.

—Show here, she said. I put a mark in it. There’s a word I wanted to ask
you.

She swallowed a draught of tea from her cup held by nothandle and, having wiped
her fingertips smartly on the blanket, began to search the text with the
hairpin till she reached the word.

—Met him what? he asked.

—Here, she said. What does that mean?

He leaned downward and read near her polished thumbnail.

—Metempsychosis?

—Yes. Who’s he when he’s at home?

—Metempsychosis, he said, frowning. It’s Greek: from the Greek. That
means the transmigration of souls.

—O, rocks! she said. Tell us in plain words.

He smiled, glancing askance at her mocking eyes. The same young eyes. The first
night after the charades. Dolphin’s Barn. He turned over the smudged pages.
Ruby: the Pride of the Ring. Hello. Illustration. Fierce Italian with
carriagewhip. Must be Ruby pride of the on the floor naked. Sheet kindly lent.
The monster Maffei desisted and flung his victim from him with an oath.
Cruelty behind it all. Doped animals. Trapeze at Hengler’s. Had to look the
other way. Mob gaping. Break your neck and we’ll break our sides. Families of
them. Bone them young so they metamspychosis. That we live after death. Our
souls. That a man’s soul after he dies. Dignam’s soul…

—Did you finish it? he asked.

—Yes, she said. There’s nothing smutty in it. Is she in love with the
first fellow all the time?

—Never read it. Do you want another?

—Yes. Get another of Paul de Kock’s. Nice name he has.

She poured more tea into her cup, watching it flow sideways.

Must get that Capel street library book renewed or they’ll write to Kearney, my
guarantor. Reincarnation: that’s the word.

—Some people believe, he said, that we go on living in another body after
death, that we lived before. They call it reincarnation. That we all lived
before on the earth thousands of years ago or some other planet. They say we
have forgotten it. Some say they remember their past lives.

The sluggish cream wound curdling spirals through her tea. Better remind her of
the word: metempsychosis. An example would be better. An example?

The Bath of the Nymph over the bed. Given away with the Easter number of
Photo Bits: Splendid masterpiece in art colours. Tea before you put milk
in. Not unlike her with her hair down: slimmer. Three and six I gave for the
frame. She said it would look nice over the bed. Naked nymphs: Greece: and for
instance all the people that lived then.

He turned the pages back.

—Metempsychosis, he said, is what the ancient Greeks called it. They used
to believe you could be changed into an animal or a tree, for instance. What
they called nymphs, for example.

Her spoon ceased to stir up the sugar. She gazed straight before her, inhaling
through her arched nostrils.

—There’s a smell of burn, she said. Did you leave anything on the fire?

—The kidney! he cried suddenly.

He fitted the book roughly into his inner pocket and, stubbing his toes against
the broken commode, hurried out towards the smell, stepping hastily down the
stairs with a flurried stork’s legs. Pungent smoke shot up in an angry jet from
a side of the pan. By prodding a prong of the fork under the kidney he detached
it and turned it turtle on its back. Only a little burnt. He tossed it off the
pan on to a plate and let the scanty brown gravy trickle over it.

Cup of tea now. He sat down, cut and buttered a slice of the loaf. He shore
away the burnt flesh and flung it to the cat. Then he put a forkful into his
mouth, chewing with discernment the toothsome pliant meat. Done to a turn. A
mouthful of tea. Then he cut away dies of bread, sopped one in the gravy and
put it in his mouth. What was that about some young student and a picnic? He
creased out the letter at his side, reading it slowly as he chewed, sopping
another die of bread in the gravy and raising it to his mouth.

Dearest Papli

Thanks ever so much for the lovely birthday present. It suits me splendid.
Everyone says I am quite the belle in my new tam. I got mummy’s lovely box of
creams and am writing. They are lovely. I am getting on swimming in the photo
business now. Mr Coghlan took one of me and Mrs. Will send when developed. We
did great biz yesterday. Fair day and all the beef to the heels were in. We are
going to lough Owel on Monday with a few friends to make a scrap picnic. Give
my love to mummy and to yourself a big kiss and thanks. I hear them at the
piano downstairs. There is to be a concert in the Greville Arms on Saturday.
There is a young student comes here some evenings named Bannon his cousins or
something are big swells and he sings Boylan’s (I was on the pop of writing
Blazes Boylan’s) song about those seaside girls. Tell him silly Milly sends my
best respects. I must now close with fondest love

Your fond daughter

Milly

P. S. Excuse bad writing am in hurry. Byby.

M.

Fifteen yesterday. Curious, fifteenth of the month too. Her first birthday away
from home. Separation. Remember the summer morning she was born, running to
knock up Mrs Thornton in Denzille street. Jolly old woman. Lot of babies she
must have helped into the world. She knew from the first poor little Rudy
wouldn’t live. Well, God is good, sir. She knew at once. He would be eleven now
if he had lived.

His vacant face stared pityingly at the postscript. Excuse bad writing. Hurry.
Piano downstairs. Coming out of her shell. Row with her in the XL Café about
the bracelet. Wouldn’t eat her cakes or speak or look. Saucebox. He sopped
other dies of bread in the gravy and ate piece after piece of kidney. Twelve
and six a week. Not much. Still, she might do worse. Music hall stage. Young
student. He drank a draught of cooler tea to wash down his meal. Then he read
the letter again: twice.

O, well: she knows how to mind herself. But if not? No, nothing has happened.
Of course it might. Wait in any case till it does. A wild piece of goods. Her
slim legs running up the staircase. Destiny. Ripening now. Vain: very.

He smiled with troubled affection at the kitchen window. Day I caught her in
the street pinching her cheeks to make them red. Anemic a little. Was given
milk too long. On the Erin’s King that day round the Kish. Damned old
tub pitching about. Not a bit funky. Her pale blue scarf loose in the wind with
her hair.

All dimpled cheeks and curls,
Your head it simply swirls.

Seaside girls. Torn envelope. Hands stuck in his trousers’ pockets, jarvey off
for the day, singing. Friend of the family. Swurls, he says. Pier with lamps,
summer evening, band.

Those girls, those girls,
Those lovely seaside girls.

Milly too. Young kisses: the first. Far away now past. Mrs Marion. Reading,
lying back now, counting the strands of her hair, smiling, braiding.

A soft qualm, regret, flowed down his backbone, increasing. Will happen, yes.
Prevent. Useless: can’t move. Girl’s sweet light lips. Will happen too. He felt
the flowing qualm spread over him. Useless to move now. Lips kissed, kissing,
kissed. Full gluey woman’s lips.

Better where she is down there: away. Occupy her. Wanted a dog to pass the
time. Might take a trip down there. August bank holiday, only two and six
return. Six weeks off, however. Might work a press pass. Or through M’Coy.

The cat, having cleaned all her fur, returned to the meatstained paper, nosed
at it and stalked to the door. She looked back at him, mewing. Wants to go out.
Wait before a door sometime it will open. Let her wait. Has the fidgets.
Electric. Thunder in the air. Was washing at her ear with her back to the fire
too.

He felt heavy, full: then a gentle loosening of his bowels. He stood up,
undoing the waistband of his trousers. The cat mewed to him.

—Miaow! he said in answer. Wait till I’m ready.

Heaviness: hot day coming. Too much trouble to fag up the stairs to the
landing.

A paper. He liked to read at stool. Hope no ape comes knocking just as I’m.

In the tabledrawer he found an old number of Titbits. He folded it under
his armpit, went to the door and opened it. The cat went up in soft bounds. Ah,
wanted to go upstairs, curl up in a ball on the bed.

Listening, he heard her voice:

—Come, come, pussy. Come.

He went out through the backdoor into the garden: stood to listen towards the
next garden. No sound. Perhaps hanging clothes out to dry. The maid was in the
garden. Fine morning.

He bent down to regard a lean file of spearmint growing by the wall. Make a
summerhouse here. Scarlet runners. Virginia creepers. Want to manure the whole
place over, scabby soil. A coat of liver of sulphur. All soil like that without
dung. Household slops. Loam, what is this that is? The hens in the next garden:
their droppings are very good top dressing. Best of all though are the cattle,
especially when they are fed on those oilcakes. Mulch of dung. Best thing to
clean ladies’ kid gloves. Dirty cleans. Ashes too. Reclaim the whole place.
Grow peas in that corner there. Lettuce. Always have fresh greens then. Still
gardens have their drawbacks. That bee or bluebottle here Whitmonday.

He walked on. Where is my hat, by the way? Must have put it back on the peg. Or
hanging up on the floor. Funny I don’t remember that. Hallstand too full. Four
umbrellas, her raincloak. Picking up the letters. Drago’s shopbell ringing.
Queer I was just thinking that moment. Brown brillantined hair over his collar.
Just had a wash and brushup. Wonder have I time for a bath this morning. Tara
street. Chap in the paybox there got away James Stephens, they say. O’Brien.

Deep voice that fellow Dlugacz has. Agendath what is it? Now, my miss.
Enthusiast.

He kicked open the crazy door of the jakes. Better be careful not to get these
trousers dirty for the funeral. He went in, bowing his head under the low
lintel. Leaving the door ajar, amid the stench of mouldy limewash and stale
cobwebs he undid his braces. Before sitting down he peered through a chink up
at the nextdoor windows. The king was in his countinghouse. Nobody.

Asquat on the cuckstool he folded out his paper, turning its pages over on his
bared knees. Something new and easy. No great hurry. Keep it a bit. Our prize
titbit: Matcham’s Masterstroke. Written by Mr Philip Beaufoy, Playgoers’
Club, London. Payment at the rate of one guinea a column has been made to the
writer. Three and a half. Three pounds three. Three pounds, thirteen and six.

Quietly he read, restraining himself, the first column and, yielding but
resisting, began the second. Midway, his last resistance yielding, he allowed
his bowels to ease themselves quietly as he read, reading still patiently that
slight constipation of yesterday quite gone. Hope it’s not too big bring on
piles again. No, just right. So. Ah! Costive. One tabloid of cascara sagrada.
Life might be so. It did not move or touch him but it was something quick and
neat. Print anything now. Silly season. He read on, seated calm above his own
rising smell. Neat certainly. Matcham often thinks of the masterstroke by
which he won the laughing witch who now. Begins and ends morally. Hand
in hand. Smart. He glanced back through what he had read and, while feeling
his water flow quietly, he envied kindly Mr Beaufoy who had written it and
received payment of three pounds, thirteen and six.

Might manage a sketch. By Mr and Mrs L. M. Bloom. Invent a story for some
proverb. Which? Time I used to try jotting down on my cuff what she said
dressing. Dislike dressing together. Nicked myself shaving. Biting her nether
lip, hooking the placket of her skirt. Timing her. 9.15. Did Roberts pay you
yet? 9.20. What had Gretta Conroy on? 9.23. What possessed me to buy this comb?
9.24. I’m swelled after that cabbage. A speck of dust on the patent leather of
her boot.

Rubbing smartly in turn each welt against her stockinged calf. Morning after
the bazaar dance when May’s band played Ponchielli’s dance of the hours.
Explain that: morning hours, noon, then evening coming on, then night hours.
Washing her teeth. That was the first night. Her head dancing. Her fansticks
clicking. Is that Boylan well off? He has money. Why? I noticed he had a good
rich smell off his breath dancing. No use humming then. Allude to it. Strange
kind of music that last night. The mirror was in shadow. She rubbed her
handglass briskly on her woollen vest against her full wagging bub. Peering
into it. Lines in her eyes. It wouldn’t pan out somehow.

Evening hours, girls in grey gauze. Night hours then: black with daggers and
eyemasks. Poetical idea: pink, then golden, then grey, then black. Still, true
to life also. Day: then the night.

He tore away half the prize story sharply and wiped himself with it. Then he
girded up his trousers, braced and buttoned himself. He pulled back the jerky
shaky door of the jakes and came forth from the gloom into the air.

In the bright light, lightened and cooled in limb, he eyed carefully his black
trousers: the ends, the knees, the houghs of the knees. What time is the
funeral? Better find out in the paper.

A creak and a dark whirr in the air high up. The bells of George’s church. They
tolled the hour: loud dark iron.

Heigho! Heigho!
Heigho! Heigho!
Heigho! Heigho!

Quarter to. There again: the overtone following through the air. A third.

Poor Dignam!

[ 5 ]

By lorries along sir John Rogerson’s quay Mr Bloom walked soberly, past
Windmill lane, Leask’s the linseed crusher, the postal telegraph office. Could
have given that address too. And past the sailors’ home. He turned from the
morning noises of the quayside and walked through Lime street. By Brady’s
cottages a boy for the skins lolled, his bucket of offal linked, smoking a
chewed fagbutt. A smaller girl with scars of eczema on her forehead eyed him,
listlessly holding her battered caskhoop. Tell him if he smokes he won’t grow.
O let him! His life isn’t such a bed of roses. Waiting outside pubs to bring da
home. Come home to ma, da. Slack hour: won’t be many there. He crossed Townsend
street, passed the frowning face of Bethel. El, yes: house of: Aleph, Beth. And
past Nichols’ the undertaker. At eleven it is. Time enough. Daresay Corny
Kelleher bagged the job for O’Neill’s. Singing with his eyes shut. Corny. Met
her once in the park. In the dark. What a lark. Police tout. Her name and
address she then told with my tooraloom tooraloom tay. O, surely he bagged it.
Bury him cheap in a whatyoumaycall. With my tooraloom, tooraloom, tooraloom,
tooraloom.

In Westland row he halted before the window of the Belfast and Oriental Tea
Company and read the legends of leadpapered packets: choice blend, finest
quality, family tea. Rather warm. Tea. Must get some from Tom Kernan. Couldn’t
ask him at a funeral, though. While his eyes still read blandly he took off his
hat quietly inhaling his hairoil and sent his right hand with slow grace over
his brow and hair. Very warm morning. Under their dropped lids his eyes found
the tiny bow of the leather headband inside his high grade ha. Just there. His
right hand came down into the bowl of his hat. His fingers found quickly a card
behind the headband and transferred it to his waistcoat pocket.

So warm. His right hand once more more slowly went over his brow and hair. Then
he put on his hat again, relieved: and read again: choice blend, made of the
finest Ceylon brands. The far east. Lovely spot it must be: the garden of the
world, big lazy leaves to float about on, cactuses, flowery meads, snaky lianas
they call them. Wonder is it like that. Those Cinghalese lobbing about in the
sun in dolce far niente, not doing a hand’s turn all day. Sleep six
months out of twelve. Too hot to quarrel. Influence of the climate. Lethargy.
Flowers of idleness. The air feeds most. Azotes. Hothouse in Botanic gardens.
Sensitive plants. Waterlilies. Petals too tired to. Sleeping sickness in the
air. Walk on roseleaves. Imagine trying to eat tripe and cowheel. Where was the
chap I saw in that picture somewhere? Ah yes, in the dead sea floating on his
back, reading a book with a parasol open. Couldn’t sink if you tried: so thick
with salt. Because the weight of the water, no, the weight of the body in the
water is equal to the weight of the what? Or is it the volume is equal to the
weight? It’s a law something like that. Vance in High school cracking his
fingerjoints, teaching. The college curriculum. Cracking curriculum. What is
weight really when you say the weight? Thirtytwo feet per second per second.
Law of falling bodies: per second per second. They all fall to the ground. The
earth. It’s the force of gravity of the earth is the weight.

He turned away and sauntered across the road. How did she walk with her
sausages? Like that something. As he walked he took the folded Freeman
from his sidepocket, unfolded it, rolled it lengthwise in a baton and tapped it
at each sauntering step against his trouserleg. Careless air: just drop in to
see. Per second per second. Per second for every second it means. From the
curbstone he darted a keen glance through the door of the postoffice. Too late
box. Post here. No-one. In.

He handed the card through the brass grill.

—Are there any letters for me? he asked.

While the postmistress searched a pigeonhole he gazed at the recruiting poster
with soldiers of all arms on parade: and held the tip of his baton against his
nostrils, smelling freshprinted rag paper. No answer probably. Went too far
last time.

The postmistress handed him back through the grill his card with a letter. He
thanked her and glanced rapidly at the typed envelope.

Henry Flower Esq,
c/o P. O. Westland Row,
City.

Answered anyhow. He slipped card and letter into his sidepocket, reviewing
again the soldiers on parade. Where’s old Tweedy’s regiment? Castoff soldier.
There: bearskin cap and hackle plume. No, he’s a grenadier. Pointed cuffs.
There he is: royal Dublin fusiliers. Redcoats. Too showy. That must be why the
women go after them. Uniform. Easier to enlist and drill. Maud Gonne’s letter
about taking them off O’Connell street at night: disgrace to our Irish capital.
Griffith’s paper is on the same tack now: an army rotten with venereal disease:
overseas or halfseasover empire. Half baked they look: hypnotised like. Eyes
front. Mark time. Table: able. Bed: ed. The King’s own. Never see him dressed
up as a fireman or a bobby. A mason, yes.

He strolled out of the postoffice and turned to the right. Talk: as if that
would mend matters. His hand went into his pocket and a forefinger felt its way
under the flap of the envelope, ripping it open in jerks. Women will pay a lot
of heed, I don’t think. His fingers drew forth the letter the letter and
crumpled the envelope in his pocket. Something pinned on: photo perhaps. Hair?
No.

M’Coy. Get rid of him quickly. Take me out of my way. Hate company when you.

—Hello, Bloom. Where are you off to?

—Hello, M’Coy. Nowhere in particular.

—How’s the body?

—Fine. How are you?

—Just keeping alive, M’Coy said.

His eyes on the black tie and clothes he asked with low respect:

—Is there any… no trouble I hope? I see you’re…

—O, no, Mr Bloom said. Poor Dignam, you know. The funeral is today.

—To be sure, poor fellow. So it is. What time?

A photo it isn’t. A badge maybe.

—E…eleven, Mr Bloom answered.

—I must try to get out there, M’Coy said. Eleven, is it? I only heard it
last night. Who was telling me? Holohan. You know Hoppy?

—I know.

Mr Bloom gazed across the road at the outsider drawn up before the door of the
Grosvenor. The porter hoisted the valise up on the well. She stood still,
waiting, while the man, husband, brother, like her, searched his pockets for
change. Stylish kind of coat with that roll collar, warm for a day like this,
looks like blanketcloth. Careless stand of her with her hands in those patch
pockets. Like that haughty creature at the polo match. Women all for caste till
you touch the spot. Handsome is and handsome does. Reserved about to yield. The
honourable Mrs and Brutus is an honourable man. Possess her once take the
starch out of her.

—I was with Bob Doran, he’s on one of his periodical bends, and what do
you call him Bantam Lyons. Just down there in Conway’s we were.

Doran Lyons in Conway’s. She raised a gloved hand to her hair. In came Hoppy.
Having a wet. Drawing back his head and gazing far from beneath his vailed
eyelids he saw the bright fawn skin shine in the glare, the braided drums.
Clearly I can see today. Moisture about gives long sight perhaps. Talking of
one thing or another. Lady’s hand. Which side will she get up?

—And he said: Sad thing about our poor friend Paddy! What Paddy? I
said. Poor little Paddy Dignam, he said.

Off to the country: Broadstone probably. High brown boots with laces dangling.
Wellturned foot. What is he foostering over that change for? Sees me looking.
Eye out for other fellow always. Good fallback. Two strings to her bow.

—Why? I said. What’s wrong with him? I said.

Proud: rich: silk stockings.

—Yes, Mr Bloom said.

He moved a little to the side of M’Coy’s talking head. Getting up in a minute.

—What’s wrong with him? He said. He’s dead, he said. And,
faith, he filled up. Is it Paddy Dignam? I said. I couldn’t believe it
when I heard it. I was with him no later than Friday last or Thursday was it in
the Arch. Yes, he said. He’s gone. He died on Monday, poor
fellow.

Watch! Watch! Silk flash rich stockings white. Watch!

A heavy tramcar honking its gong slewed between.

Lost it. Curse your noisy pugnose. Feels locked out of it. Paradise and the
peri. Always happening like that. The very moment. Girl in Eustace street
hallway Monday was it settling her garter. Her friend covering the display of.
Esprit de corps. Well, what are you gaping at?

—Yes, yes, Mr Bloom said after a dull sigh. Another gone.

—One of the best, M’Coy said.

The tram passed. They drove off towards the Loop Line bridge, her rich gloved
hand on the steel grip. Flicker, flicker: the laceflare of her hat in the sun:
flicker, flick.

—Wife well, I suppose? M’Coy’s changed voice said.

—O, yes, Mr Bloom said. Tiptop, thanks.

He unrolled the newspaper baton idly and read idly:

What is home without
Plumtree’s Potted Meat?
Incomplete.
With it an abode of bliss.

—My missus has just got an engagement. At least it’s not settled yet.

Valise tack again. By the way no harm. I’m off that, thanks.

Mr Bloom turned his largelidded eyes with unhasty friendliness.

—My wife too, he said. She’s going to sing at a swagger affair in the
Ulster Hall, Belfast, on the twentyfifth.

—That so? M’Coy said. Glad to hear that, old man. Who’s getting it up?

Mrs Marion Bloom. Not up yet. Queen was in her bedroom eating bread and. No
book. Blackened court cards laid along her thigh by sevens. Dark lady and fair
man. Letter. Cat furry black ball. Torn strip of envelope.

Love’s
Old
Sweet
Song
Comes lo-ove’s old…

—It’s a kind of a tour, don’t you see, Mr Bloom said thoughtfully.
Sweeeet song. There’s a committee formed. Part shares and part profits.

M’Coy nodded, picking at his moustache stubble.

—O, well, he said. That’s good news.

He moved to go.

—Well, glad to see you looking fit, he said. Meet you knocking around.

—Yes, Mr Bloom said.

—Tell you what, M’Coy said. You might put down my name at the funeral,
will you? I’d like to go but I mightn’t be able, you see. There’s a drowning
case at Sandycove may turn up and then the coroner and myself would have to go
down if the body is found. You just shove in my name if I’m not there, will
you?

—I’ll do that, Mr Bloom said, moving to get off. That’ll be all right.

—Right, M’Coy said brightly. Thanks, old man. I’d go if I possibly could.
Well, tolloll. Just C. P. M’Coy will do.

—That will be done, Mr Bloom answered firmly.

Didn’t catch me napping that wheeze. The quick touch. Soft mark. I’d like my
job. Valise I have a particular fancy for. Leather. Capped corners, rivetted
edges, double action lever lock. Bob Cowley lent him his for the Wicklow
regatta concert last year and never heard tidings of it from that good day to
this.

Mr Bloom, strolling towards Brunswick street, smiled. My missus has just got
an. Reedy freckled soprano. Cheeseparing nose. Nice enough in its way: for a
little ballad. No guts in it. You and me, don’t you know: in the same boat.
Softsoaping. Give you the needle that would. Can’t he hear the difference?
Think he’s that way inclined a bit. Against my grain somehow. Thought that
Belfast would fetch him. I hope that smallpox up there doesn’t get worse.
Suppose she wouldn’t let herself be vaccinated again. Your wife and my wife.

Wonder is he pimping after me?

Mr Bloom stood at the corner, his eyes wandering over the multicoloured
hoardings. Cantrell and Cochrane’s Ginger Ale (Aromatic). Clery’s Summer Sale.
No, he’s going on straight. Hello. Leah tonight. Mrs Bandmann Palmer.
Like to see her again in that. Hamlet she played last night. Male
impersonator. Perhaps he was a woman. Why Ophelia committed suicide. Poor papa!
How he used to talk of Kate Bateman in that. Outside the Adelphi in London
waited all the afternoon to get in. Year before I was born that was: sixtyfive.
And Ristori in Vienna. What is this the right name is? By Mosenthal it is.
Rachel, is it? No. The scene he was always talking about where the old blind
Abraham recognises the voice and puts his fingers on his face.

Nathan’s voice! His son’s voice! I hear the voice of Nathan who left his father
to die of grief and misery in my arms, who left the house of his father and
left the God of his father.

Every word is so deep, Leopold.

Poor papa! Poor man! I’m glad I didn’t go into the room to look at his face.
That day! O, dear! O, dear! Ffoo! Well, perhaps it was best for him.

Mr Bloom went round the corner and passed the drooping nags of the hazard. No
use thinking of it any more. Nosebag time. Wish I hadn’t met that M’Coy fellow.

He came nearer and heard a crunching of gilded oats, the gently champing teeth.
Their full buck eyes regarded him as he went by, amid the sweet oaten reek of
horsepiss. Their Eldorado. Poor jugginses! Damn all they know or care about
anything with their long noses stuck in nosebags. Too full for words. Still
they get their feed all right and their doss. Gelded too: a stump of black
guttapercha wagging limp between their haunches. Might be happy all the same
that way. Good poor brutes they look. Still their neigh can be very irritating.

He drew the letter from his pocket and folded it into the newspaper he carried.
Might just walk into her here. The lane is safer.

He passed the cabman’s shelter. Curious the life of drifting cabbies. All
weathers, all places, time or setdown, no will of their own. Voglio e
non. Like to give them an odd cigarette. Sociable. Shout a few flying
syllables as they pass. He hummed:

Là ci darem la mano
La la lala la la.

He turned into Cumberland street and, going on some paces, halted in the lee of
the station wall. No-one. Meade’s timberyard. Piled balks. Ruins and tenements.
With careful tread he passed over a hopscotch court with its forgotten
pickeystone. Not a sinner. Near the timberyard a squatted child at marbles,
alone, shooting the taw with a cunnythumb. A wise tabby, a blinking sphinx,
watched from her warm sill. Pity to disturb them. Mohammed cut a piece out of
his mantle not to wake her. Open it. And once I played marbles when I went to
that old dame’s school. She liked mignonette. Mrs Ellis’s. And Mr? He opened
the letter within the newspaper.

A flower. I think it’s a. A yellow flower with flattened petals. Not annoyed
then? What does she say?

Dear Henry

I got your last letter to me and thank you very much for it. I am sorry you did
not like my last letter. Why did you enclose the stamps? I am awfully angry
with you. I do wish I could punish you for that. I called you naughty boy
because I do not like that other world. Please tell me what is the real meaning
of that word? Are you not happy in your home you poor little naughty boy? I do
wish I could do something for you. Please tell me what you think of poor me. I
often think of the beautiful name you have. Dear Henry, when will we meet? I
think of you so often you have no idea. I have never felt myself so much drawn
to a man as you. I feel so bad about. Please write me a long letter and tell me
more. Remember if you do not I will punish you. So now you know what I will do
to you, you naughty boy, if you do not wrote. O how I long to meet you. Henry
dear, do not deny my request before my patience are exhausted. Then I will tell
you all. Goodbye now, naughty darling, I have such a bad headache. today. and
write by return to your longing

Martha

P. S. Do tell me what kind of perfume does your wife use. I want to know.

He tore the flower gravely from its pinhold smelt its almost no smell and
placed it in his heart pocket. Language of flowers. They like it because no-one
can hear. Or a poison bouquet to strike him down. Then walking slowly forward
he read the letter again, murmuring here and there a word. Angry tulips with
you darling manflower punish your cactus if you don’t please poor forgetmenot
how I long violets to dear roses when we soon anemone meet all naughty
nightstalk wife Martha’s perfume. Having read it all he took it from the
newspaper and put it back in his sidepocket.

Weak joy opened his lips. Changed since the first letter. Wonder did she wrote
it herself. Doing the indignant: a girl of good family like me, respectable
character. Could meet one Sunday after the rosary. Thank you: not having any.
Usual love scrimmage. Then running round corners. Bad as a row with Molly.
Cigar has a cooling effect. Narcotic. Go further next time. Naughty boy:
punish: afraid of words, of course. Brutal, why not? Try it anyhow. A bit at a
time.

Fingering still the letter in his pocket he drew the pin out of it. Common pin,
eh? He threw it on the road. Out of her clothes somewhere: pinned together.
Queer the number of pins they always have. No roses without thorns.

Flat Dublin voices bawled in his head. Those two sluts that night in the
Coombe, linked together in the rain.

O, Mairy lost the pin of her drawers.
She didn’t know what to do
To keep it up,
To keep it up.

It? Them. Such a bad headache. Has her roses probably. Or sitting all day
typing. Eyefocus bad for stomach nerves. What perfume does your wife use. Now
could you make out a thing like that?

To keep it up.

Martha, Mary. I saw that picture somewhere I forget now old master or faked for
money. He is sitting in their house, talking. Mysterious. Also the two sluts in
the Coombe would listen.

To keep it up.

Nice kind of evening feeling. No more wandering about. Just loll there: quiet
dusk: let everything rip. Forget. Tell about places you have been, strange
customs. The other one, jar on her head, was getting the supper: fruit, olives,
lovely cool water out of a well, stonecold like the hole in the wall at
Ashtown. Must carry a paper goblet next time I go to the trottingmatches. She
listens with big dark soft eyes. Tell her: more and more: all. Then a sigh:
silence. Long long long rest.

Going under the railway arch he took out the envelope, tore it swiftly in
shreds and scattered them towards the road. The shreds fluttered away, sank in
the dank air: a white flutter, then all sank.

Henry Flower. You could tear up a cheque for a hundred pounds in the same way.
Simple bit of paper. Lord Iveagh once cashed a sevenfigure cheque for a million
in the bank of Ireland. Shows you the money to be made out of porter. Still the
other brother lord Ardilaun has to change his shirt four times a day, they say.
Skin breeds lice or vermin. A million pounds, wait a moment. Twopence a pint,
fourpence a quart, eightpence a gallon of porter, no, one and fourpence a
gallon of porter. One and four into twenty: fifteen about. Yes, exactly.
Fifteen millions of barrels of porter.

What am I saying barrels? Gallons. About a million barrels all the same.

An incoming train clanked heavily above his head, coach after coach. Barrels
bumped in his head: dull porter slopped and churned inside. The bungholes
sprang open and a huge dull flood leaked out, flowing together, winding through
mudflats all over the level land, a lazy pooling swirl of liquor bearing along
wideleaved flowers of its froth.

He had reached the open backdoor of All Hallows. Stepping into the porch he
doffed his hat, took the card from his pocket and tucked it again behind the
leather headband. Damn it. I might have tried to work M’Coy for a pass to
Mullingar.

Same notice on the door. Sermon by the very reverend John Conmee S. J. on saint
Peter Claver S. J. and the African Mission. Prayers for the conversion of
Gladstone they had too when he was almost unconscious. The protestants are the
same. Convert Dr William J. Walsh D.D. to the true religion. Save China’s
millions. Wonder how they explain it to the heathen Chinee. Prefer an ounce of
opium. Celestials. Rank heresy for them. Buddha their god lying on his side in
the museum. Taking it easy with hand under his cheek. Josssticks burning. Not
like Ecce Homo. Crown of thorns and cross. Clever idea Saint Patrick the
shamrock. Chopsticks? Conmee: Martin Cunningham knows him:
distinguishedlooking. Sorry I didn’t work him about getting Molly into the
choir instead of that Father Farley who looked a fool but wasn’t. They’re
taught that. He’s not going out in bluey specs with the sweat rolling off him
to baptise blacks, is he? The glasses would take their fancy, flashing. Like to
see them sitting round in a ring with blub lips, entranced, listening. Still
life. Lap it up like milk, I suppose.

The cold smell of sacred stone called him. He trod the worn steps, pushed the
swingdoor and entered softly by the rere.

Something going on: some sodality. Pity so empty. Nice discreet place to be
next some girl. Who is my neighbour? Jammed by the hour to slow music. That
woman at midnight mass. Seventh heaven. Women knelt in the benches with crimson
halters round their necks, heads bowed. A batch knelt at the altarrails. The
priest went along by them, murmuring, holding the thing in his hands. He
stopped at each, took out a communion, shook a drop or two (are they in water?)
off it and put it neatly into her mouth. Her hat and head sank. Then the next
one. Her hat sank at once. Then the next one: a small old woman. The priest
bent down to put it into her mouth, murmuring all the time. Latin. The next
one. Shut your eyes and open your mouth. What? Corpus: body. Corpse.
Good idea the Latin. Stupefies them first. Hospice for the dying. They don’t
seem to chew it: only swallow it down. Rum idea: eating bits of a corpse. Why
the cannibals cotton to it.

He stood aside watching their blind masks pass down the aisle, one by one, and
seek their places. He approached a bench and seated himself in its corner,
nursing his hat and newspaper. These pots we have to wear. We ought to have
hats modelled on our heads. They were about him here and there, with heads
still bowed in their crimson halters, waiting for it to melt in their stomachs.
Something like those mazzoth: it’s that sort of bread: unleavened shewbread.
Look at them. Now I bet it makes them feel happy. Lollipop. It does. Yes, bread
of angels it’s called. There’s a big idea behind it, kind of kingdom of God is
within you feel. First communicants. Hokypoky penny a lump. Then feel all like
one family party, same in the theatre, all in the same swim. They do. I’m sure
of that. Not so lonely. In our confraternity. Then come out a bit spreeish. Let
off steam. Thing is if you really believe in it. Lourdes cure, waters of
oblivion, and the Knock apparition, statues bleeding. Old fellow asleep near
that confessionbox. Hence those snores. Blind faith. Safe in the arms of
kingdom come. Lulls all pain. Wake this time next year.

He saw the priest stow the communion cup away, well in, and kneel an instant
before it, showing a large grey bootsole from under the lace affair he had on.
Suppose he lost the pin of his. He wouldn’t know what to do to. Bald spot
behind. Letters on his back: I.N.R.I? No: I.H.S. Molly told me one time I asked
her. I have sinned: or no: I have suffered, it is. And the other one? Iron
nails ran in.

Meet one Sunday after the rosary. Do not deny my request. Turn up with a veil
and black bag. Dusk and the light behind her. She might be here with a ribbon
round her neck and do the other thing all the same on the sly. Their character.
That fellow that turned queen’s evidence on the invincibles he used to receive
the, Carey was his name, the communion every morning. This very church. Peter
Carey, yes. No, Peter Claver I am thinking of. Denis Carey. And just imagine
that. Wife and six children at home. And plotting that murder all the time.
Those crawthumpers, now that’s a good name for them, there’s always something
shiftylooking about them. They’re not straight men of business either. O, no,
she’s not here: the flower: no, no. By the way, did I tear up that envelope?
Yes: under the bridge.

The priest was rinsing out the chalice: then he tossed off the dregs smartly.
Wine. Makes it more aristocratic than for example if he drank what they are
used to Guinness’s porter or some temperance beverage Wheatley’s Dublin hop
bitters or Cantrell and Cochrane’s ginger ale (aromatic). Doesn’t give them any
of it: shew wine: only the other. Cold comfort. Pious fraud but quite right:
otherwise they’d have one old booser worse than another coming along, cadging
for a drink. Queer the whole atmosphere of the. Quite right. Perfectly right
that is.

Mr Bloom looked back towards the choir. Not going to be any music. Pity. Who
has the organ here I wonder? Old Glynn he knew how to make that instrument
talk, the vibrato: fifty pounds a year they say he had in Gardiner
street. Molly was in fine voice that day, the Stabat Mater of Rossini.
Father Bernard Vaughan’s sermon first. Christ or Pilate? Christ, but don’t keep
us all night over it. Music they wanted. Footdrill stopped. Could hear a pin
drop. I told her to pitch her voice against that corner. I could feel the
thrill in the air, the full, the people looking up:

Quis est homo.

Some of that old sacred music splendid. Mercadante: seven last words. Mozart’s
twelfth mass: Gloria in that. Those old popes keen on music, on art and
statues and pictures of all kinds. Palestrina for example too. They had a gay
old time while it lasted. Healthy too, chanting, regular hours, then brew
liqueurs. Benedictine. Green Chartreuse. Still, having eunuchs in their choir
that was coming it a bit thick. What kind of voice is it? Must be curious to
hear after their own strong basses. Connoisseurs. Suppose they wouldn’t feel
anything after. Kind of a placid. No worry. Fall into flesh, don’t they?
Gluttons, tall, long legs. Who knows? Eunuch. One way out of it.

He saw the priest bend down and kiss the altar and then face about and bless
all the people. All crossed themselves and stood up. Mr Bloom glanced about him
and then stood up, looking over the risen hats. Stand up at the gospel of
course. Then all settled down on their knees again and he sat back quietly in
his bench. The priest came down from the altar, holding the thing out from him,
and he and the massboy answered each other in Latin. Then the priest knelt down
and began to read off a card:

—O God, our refuge and our strength…

Mr Bloom put his face forward to catch the words. English. Throw them the bone.
I remember slightly. How long since your last mass? Glorious and immaculate
virgin. Joseph, her spouse. Peter and Paul. More interesting if you understood
what it was all about. Wonderful organisation certainly, goes like clockwork.
Confession. Everyone wants to. Then I will tell you all. Penance. Punish me,
please. Great weapon in their hands. More than doctor or solicitor. Woman dying
to. And I schschschschschsch. And did you chachachachacha? And why did you?
Look down at her ring to find an excuse. Whispering gallery walls have ears.
Husband learn to his surprise. God’s little joke. Then out she comes.
Repentance skindeep. Lovely shame. Pray at an altar. Hail Mary and Holy Mary.
Flowers, incense, candles melting. Hide her blushes. Salvation army blatant
imitation. Reformed prostitute will address the meeting. How I found the Lord.
Squareheaded chaps those must be in Rome: they work the whole show. And don’t
they rake in the money too? Bequests also: to the P.P. for the time being in
his absolute discretion. Masses for the repose of my soul to be said publicly
with open doors. Monasteries and convents. The priest in that Fermanagh will
case in the witnessbox. No browbeating him. He had his answer pat for
everything. Liberty and exaltation of our holy mother the church. The doctors
of the church: they mapped out the whole theology of it.

The priest prayed:

—Blessed Michael, archangel, defend us in the hour of conflict. Be our
safeguard against the wickedness and snares of the devil (may God restrain him,
we humbly pray!): and do thou, O prince of the heavenly host, by the power of
God thrust Satan down to hell and with him those other wicked spirits who
wander through the world for the ruin of souls.

The priest and the massboy stood up and walked off. All over. The women
remained behind: thanksgiving.

Better be shoving along. Brother Buzz. Come around with the plate perhaps. Pay
your Easter duty.

He stood up. Hello. Were those two buttons of my waistcoat open all the time?
Women enjoy it. Never tell you. But we. Excuse, miss, there’s a (whh!) just a
(whh!) fluff. Or their skirt behind, placket unhooked. Glimpses of the moon.
Annoyed if you don’t. Why didn’t you tell me before. Still like you better
untidy. Good job it wasn’t farther south. He passed, discreetly buttoning, down
the aisle and out through the main door into the light. He stood a moment
unseeing by the cold black marble bowl while before him and behind two
worshippers dipped furtive hands in the low tide of holy water. Trams: a car of
Prescott’s dyeworks: a widow in her weeds. Notice because I’m in mourning
myself. He covered himself. How goes the time? Quarter past. Time enough yet.
Better get that lotion made up. Where is this? Ah yes, the last time. Sweny’s
in Lincoln place. Chemists rarely move. Their green and gold beaconjars too
heavy to stir. Hamilton Long’s, founded in the year of the flood. Huguenot
churchyard near there. Visit some day.

He walked southward along Westland row. But the recipe is in the other
trousers. O, and I forgot that latchkey too. Bore this funeral affair. O well,
poor fellow, it’s not his fault. When was it I got it made up last? Wait. I
changed a sovereign I remember. First of the month it must have been or the
second. O, he can look it up in the prescriptions book.

The chemist turned back page after page. Sandy shrivelled smell he seems to
have. Shrunken skull. And old. Quest for the philosopher’s stone. The
alchemists. Drugs age you after mental excitement. Lethargy then. Why?
Reaction. A lifetime in a night. Gradually changes your character. Living all
the day among herbs, ointments, disinfectants. All his alabaster lilypots.
Mortar and pestle. Aq. Dist. Fol. Laur. Te Virid. Smell almost cure you like
the dentist’s doorbell. Doctor Whack. He ought to physic himself a bit.
Electuary or emulsion. The first fellow that picked an herb to cure himself had
a bit of pluck. Simples. Want to be careful. Enough stuff here to chloroform
you. Test: turns blue litmus paper red. Chloroform. Overdose of laudanum.
Sleeping draughts. Lovephiltres. Paragoric poppysyrup bad for cough. Clogs the
pores or the phlegm. Poisons the only cures. Remedy where you least expect it.
Clever of nature.

—About a fortnight ago, sir?

—Yes, Mr Bloom said.

He waited by the counter, inhaling slowly the keen reek of drugs, the dusty dry
smell of sponges and loofahs. Lot of time taken up telling your aches and
pains.

—Sweet almond oil and tincture of benzoin, Mr Bloom said, and then
orangeflower water…

It certainly did make her skin so delicate white like wax.

—And white wax also, he said.

Brings out the darkness of her eyes. Looking at me, the sheet up to her eyes,
Spanish, smelling herself, when I was fixing the links in my cuffs. Those
homely recipes are often the best: strawberries for the teeth: nettles and
rainwater: oatmeal they say steeped in buttermilk. Skinfood. One of the old
queen’s sons, duke of Albany was it? had only one skin. Leopold, yes. Three we
have. Warts, bunions and pimples to make it worse. But you want a perfume too.
What perfume does your? Peau d’Espagne. That orangeflower water is so
fresh. Nice smell these soaps have. Pure curd soap. Time to get a bath round
the corner. Hammam. Turkish. Massage. Dirt gets rolled up in your navel. Nicer
if a nice girl did it. Also I think I. Yes I. Do it in the bath. Curious
longing I. Water to water. Combine business with pleasure. Pity no time for
massage. Feel fresh then all the day. Funeral be rather glum.

—Yes, sir, the chemist said. That was two and nine. Have you brought a
bottle?

—No, Mr Bloom said. Make it up, please. I’ll call later in the day and
I’ll take one of these soaps. How much are they?

—Fourpence, sir.

Mr Bloom raised a cake to his nostrils. Sweet lemony wax.

—I’ll take this one, he said. That makes three and a penny.

—Yes, sir, the chemist said. You can pay all together, sir, when you come
back.

—Good, Mr Bloom said.

He strolled out of the shop, the newspaper baton under his armpit, the
coolwrappered soap in his left hand.

At his armpit Bantam Lyons’ voice and hand said:

—Hello, Bloom. What’s the best news? Is that today’s? Show us a minute.

Shaved off his moustache again, by Jove! Long cold upper lip. To look younger.
He does look balmy. Younger than I am.

Bantam Lyons’s yellow blacknailed fingers unrolled the baton. Wants a wash too.
Take off the rough dirt. Good morning, have you used Pears’ soap? Dandruff on
his shoulders. Scalp wants oiling.

—I want to see about that French horse that’s running today, Bantam Lyons
said. Where the bugger is it?

He rustled the pleated pages, jerking his chin on his high collar. Barber’s
itch. Tight collar he’ll lose his hair. Better leave him the paper and get shut
of him.

—You can keep it, Mr Bloom said.

—Ascot. Gold cup. Wait, Bantam Lyons muttered. Half a mo. Maximum the
second.

—I was just going to throw it away, Mr Bloom said.

Bantam Lyons raised his eyes suddenly and leered weakly.

—What’s that? his sharp voice said.

—I say you can keep it, Mr Bloom answered. I was going to throw it away
that moment.

Bantam Lyons doubted an instant, leering: then thrust the outspread sheets back
on Mr Bloom’s arms.

—I’ll risk it, he said. Here, thanks.

He sped off towards Conway’s corner. God speed scut.

Mr Bloom folded the sheets again to a neat square and lodged the soap in it,
smiling. Silly lips of that chap. Betting. Regular hotbed of it lately.
Messenger boys stealing to put on sixpence. Raffle for large tender turkey.
Your Christmas dinner for threepence. Jack Fleming embezzling to gamble then
smuggled off to America. Keeps a hotel now. They never come back. Fleshpots of
Egypt.

He walked cheerfully towards the mosque of the baths. Remind you of a mosque,
redbaked bricks, the minarets. College sports today I see. He eyed the
horseshoe poster over the gate of college park: cyclist doubled up like a cod
in a pot. Damn bad ad. Now if they had made it round like a wheel. Then the
spokes: sports, sports, sports: and the hub big: college. Something to catch
the eye.

There’s Hornblower standing at the porter’s lodge. Keep him on hands: might
take a turn in there on the nod. How do you do, Mr Hornblower? How do you do,
sir?

Heavenly weather really. If life was always like that. Cricket weather. Sit
around under sunshades. Over after over. Out. They can’t play it here. Duck for
six wickets. Still Captain Culler broke a window in the Kildare street club
with a slog to square leg. Donnybrook fair more in their line. And the skulls
we were acracking when M’Carthy took the floor. Heatwave. Won’t last. Always
passing, the stream of life, which in the stream of life we trace is dearer
than them all.

Enjoy a bath now: clean trough of water, cool enamel, the gentle tepid stream.
This is my body.

He foresaw his pale body reclined in it at full, naked, in a womb of warmth,
oiled by scented melting soap, softly laved. He saw his trunk and limbs
riprippled over and sustained, buoyed lightly upward, lemonyellow: his navel,
bud of flesh: and saw the dark tangled curls of his bush floating, floating
hair of the stream around the limp father of thousands, a languid floating
flower.

[ 6 ]

Martin Cunningham, first, poked his silkhatted head into the creaking carriage
and, entering deftly, seated himself. Mr Power stepped in after him, curving
his height with care.

—Come on, Simon.

—After you, Mr Bloom said.

Mr Dedalus covered himself quickly and got in, saying:

—Yes, yes.

—Are we all here now? Martin Cunningham asked. Come along, Bloom.

Mr Bloom entered and sat in the vacant place. He pulled the door to after him
and slammed it twice till it shut tight. He passed an arm through the armstrap
and looked seriously from the open carriagewindow at the lowered blinds of the
avenue. One dragged aside: an old woman peeping. Nose whiteflattened against
the pane. Thanking her stars she was passed over. Extraordinary the interest
they take in a corpse. Glad to see us go we give them such trouble coming. Job
seems to suit them. Huggermugger in corners. Slop about in slipperslappers for
fear he’d wake. Then getting it ready. Laying it out. Molly and Mrs Fleming
making the bed. Pull it more to your side. Our windingsheet. Never know who
will touch you dead. Wash and shampoo. I believe they clip the nails and the
hair. Keep a bit in an envelope. Grows all the same after. Unclean job.

All waited. Nothing was said. Stowing in the wreaths probably. I am sitting on
something hard. Ah, that soap: in my hip pocket. Better shift it out of that.
Wait for an opportunity.

All waited. Then wheels were heard from in front, turning: then nearer: then
horses’ hoofs. A jolt. Their carriage began to move, creaking and swaying.
Other hoofs and creaking wheels started behind. The blinds of the avenue passed
and number nine with its craped knocker, door ajar. At walking pace.

They waited still, their knees jogging, till they had turned and were passing
along the tramtracks. Tritonville road. Quicker. The wheels rattled rolling
over the cobbled causeway and the crazy glasses shook rattling in the
doorframes.

—What way is he taking us? Mr Power asked through both windows.

—Irishtown, Martin Cunningham said. Ringsend. Brunswick street.

Mr Dedalus nodded, looking out.

—That’s a fine old custom, he said. I am glad to see it has not died out.

All watched awhile through their windows caps and hats lifted by passers.
Respect. The carriage swerved from the tramtrack to the smoother road past
Watery lane. Mr Bloom at gaze saw a lithe young man, clad in mourning, a wide
hat.

—There’s a friend of yours gone by, Dedalus, he said.

—Who is that?

—Your son and heir.

—Where is he? Mr Dedalus said, stretching over across.

The carriage, passing the open drains and mounds of rippedup roadway before the
tenement houses, lurched round the corner and, swerving back to the tramtrack,
rolled on noisily with chattering wheels. Mr Dedalus fell back, saying:

—Was that Mulligan cad with him? His fidus Achates!

—No, Mr Bloom said. He was alone.

—Down with his aunt Sally, I suppose, Mr Dedalus said, the Goulding
faction, the drunken little costdrawer and Crissie, papa’s little lump of dung,
the wise child that knows her own father.

Mr Bloom smiled joylessly on Ringsend road. Wallace Bros: the bottleworks:
Dodder bridge.

Richie Goulding and the legal bag. Goulding, Collis and Ward he calls the firm.
His jokes are getting a bit damp. Great card he was. Waltzing in Stamer street
with Ignatius Gallaher on a Sunday morning, the landlady’s two hats pinned on
his head. Out on the rampage all night. Beginning to tell on him now: that
backache of his, I fear. Wife ironing his back. Thinks he’ll cure it with
pills. All breadcrumbs they are. About six hundred per cent profit.

—He’s in with a lowdown crowd, Mr Dedalus snarled. That Mulligan is a
contaminated bloody doubledyed ruffian by all accounts. His name stinks all
over Dublin. But with the help of God and His blessed mother I’ll make it my
business to write a letter one of those days to his mother or his aunt or
whatever she is that will open her eye as wide as a gate. I’ll tickle his
catastrophe, believe you me.

He cried above the clatter of the wheels:

—I won’t have her bastard of a nephew ruin my son. A counterjumper’s son.
Selling tapes in my cousin, Peter Paul M’Swiney’s. Not likely.

He ceased. Mr Bloom glanced from his angry moustache to Mr Power’s mild face
and Martin Cunningham’s eyes and beard, gravely shaking. Noisy selfwilled man.
Full of his son. He is right. Something to hand on. If little Rudy had lived.
See him grow up. Hear his voice in the house. Walking beside Molly in an Eton
suit. My son. Me in his eyes. Strange feeling it would be. From me. Just a
chance. Must have been that morning in Raymond terrace she was at the window
watching the two dogs at it by the wall of the cease to do evil. And the
sergeant grinning up. She had that cream gown on with the rip she never
stitched. Give us a touch, Poldy. God, I’m dying for it. How life begins.

Got big then. Had to refuse the Greystones concert. My son inside her. I could
have helped him on in life. I could. Make him independent. Learn German too.

—Are we late? Mr Power asked.

—Ten minutes, Martin Cunningham said, looking at his watch.

Molly. Milly. Same thing watered down. Her tomboy oaths. O jumping Jupiter! Ye
gods and little fishes! Still, she’s a dear girl. Soon be a woman. Mullingar.
Dearest Papli. Young student. Yes, yes: a woman too. Life, life.

The carriage heeled over and back, their four trunks swaying.

—Corny might have given us a more commodious yoke, Mr Power said.

—He might, Mr Dedalus said, if he hadn’t that squint troubling him. Do
you follow me?

He closed his left eye. Martin Cunningham began to brush away crustcrumbs from
under his thighs.

—What is this, he said, in the name of God? Crumbs?

—Someone seems to have been making a picnic party here lately, Mr Power
said.

All raised their thighs and eyed with disfavour the mildewed buttonless leather
of the seats. Mr Dedalus, twisting his nose, frowned downward and said:

—Unless I’m greatly mistaken. What do you think, Martin?

—It struck me too, Martin Cunningham said.

Mr Bloom set his thigh down. Glad I took that bath. Feel my feet quite clean.
But I wish Mrs Fleming had darned these socks better.

Mr Dedalus sighed resignedly.

—After all, he said, it’s the most natural thing in the world.

—Did Tom Kernan turn up? Martin Cunningham asked, twirling the peak of
his beard gently.

—Yes, Mr Bloom answered. He’s behind with Ned Lambert and Hynes.

—And Corny Kelleher himself? Mr Power asked.

—At the cemetery, Martin Cunningham said.

—I met M’Coy this morning, Mr Bloom said. He said he’d try to come.

The carriage halted short.

—What’s wrong?

—We’re stopped.

—Where are we?

Mr Bloom put his head out of the window.

—The grand canal, he said.

Gasworks. Whooping cough they say it cures. Good job Milly never got it. Poor
children! Doubles them up black and blue in convulsions. Shame really. Got off
lightly with illnesses compared. Only measles. Flaxseed tea. Scarlatina,
influenza epidemics. Canvassing for death. Don’t miss this chance. Dogs’ home
over there. Poor old Athos! Be good to Athos, Leopold, is my last wish. Thy
will be done. We obey them in the grave. A dying scrawl. He took it to heart,
pined away. Quiet brute. Old men’s dogs usually are.

A raindrop spat on his hat. He drew back and saw an instant of shower spray
dots over the grey flags. Apart. Curious. Like through a colander. I thought it
would. My boots were creaking I remember now.

—The weather is changing, he said quietly.

—A pity it did not keep up fine, Martin Cunningham said.

—Wanted for the country, Mr Power said. There’s the sun again coming out.

Mr Dedalus, peering through his glasses towards the veiled sun, hurled a mute
curse at the sky.

—It’s as uncertain as a child’s bottom, he said.

—We’re off again.

The carriage turned again its stiff wheels and their trunks swayed gently.
Martin Cunningham twirled more quickly the peak of his beard.

—Tom Kernan was immense last night, he said. And Paddy Leonard taking him
off to his face.

—O, draw him out, Martin, Mr Power said eagerly. Wait till you hear him,
Simon, on Ben Dollard’s singing of The Croppy Boy.

—Immense, Martin Cunningham said pompously. His singing of that simple
ballad, Martin, is the most trenchant rendering I ever heard in the whole
course of my experience.

—Trenchant, Mr Power said laughing. He’s dead nuts on that. And the
retrospective arrangement.

—Did you read Dan Dawson’s speech? Martin Cunningham asked.

—I did not then, Mr Dedalus said. Where is it?

—In the paper this morning.

Mr Bloom took the paper from his inside pocket. That book I must change for
her.

—No, no, Mr Dedalus said quickly. Later on please.

Mr Bloom’s glance travelled down the edge of the paper, scanning the deaths:
Callan, Coleman, Dignam, Fawcett, Lowry, Naumann, Peake, what Peake is that? is
it the chap was in Crosbie and Alleyne’s? no, Sexton, Urbright. Inked
characters fast fading on the frayed breaking paper. Thanks to the Little
Flower. Sadly missed. To the inexpressible grief of his. Aged 88 after a long
and tedious illness. Month’s mind: Quinlan. On whose soul Sweet Jesus have
mercy.

It is now a month since dear Henry fled
To his home up above in the sky
While his family weeps and mourns his loss
Hoping some day to meet him on high.

I tore up the envelope? Yes. Where did I put her letter after I read it in the
bath? He patted his waistcoatpocket. There all right. Dear Henry fled. Before
my patience are exhausted.

National school. Meade’s yard. The hazard. Only two there now. Nodding. Full as
a tick. Too much bone in their skulls. The other trotting round with a fare. An
hour ago I was passing there. The jarvies raised their hats.

A pointsman’s back straightened itself upright suddenly against a tramway
standard by Mr Bloom’s window. Couldn’t they invent something automatic so that
the wheel itself much handier? Well but that fellow would lose his job then?
Well but then another fellow would get a job making the new invention?

Antient concert rooms. Nothing on there. A man in a buff suit with a crape
armlet. Not much grief there. Quarter mourning. People in law perhaps.

They went past the bleak pulpit of saint Mark’s, under the railway bridge, past
the Queen’s theatre: in silence. Hoardings: Eugene Stratton, Mrs Bandmann
Palmer. Could I go to see Leah tonight, I wonder. I said I. Or the
Lily of Killarney? Elster Grimes Opera Company. Big powerful change. Wet
bright bills for next week. Fun on the Bristol. Martin Cunningham could
work a pass for the Gaiety. Have to stand a drink or two. As broad as it’s
long.

He’s coming in the afternoon. Her songs.

Plasto’s. Sir Philip Crampton’s memorial fountain bust. Who was he?

—How do you do? Martin Cunningham said, raising his palm to his brow in
salute.

—He doesn’t see us, Mr Power said. Yes, he does. How do you do?

—Who? Mr Dedalus asked.

—Blazes Boylan, Mr Power said. There he is airing his quiff.

Just that moment I was thinking.

Mr Dedalus bent across to salute. From the door of the Red Bank the white disc
of a straw hat flashed reply: spruce figure: passed.

Mr Bloom reviewed the nails of his left hand, then those of his right hand. The
nails, yes. Is there anything more in him that they she sees? Fascination.
Worst man in Dublin. That keeps him alive. They sometimes feel what a person
is. Instinct. But a type like that. My nails. I am just looking at them: well
pared. And after: thinking alone. Body getting a bit softy. I would notice
that: from remembering. What causes that? I suppose the skin can’t contract
quickly enough when the flesh falls off. But the shape is there. The shape is
there still. Shoulders. Hips. Plump. Night of the dance dressing. Shift stuck
between the cheeks behind.

He clasped his hands between his knees and, satisfied, sent his vacant glance
over their faces.

Mr Power asked:

—How is the concert tour getting on, Bloom?

—O, very well, Mr Bloom said. I hear great accounts of it. It’s a good
idea, you see…

—Are you going yourself?

—Well no, Mr Bloom said. In point of fact I have to go down to the county
Clare on some private business. You see the idea is to tour the chief towns.
What you lose on one you can make up on the other.

—Quite so, Martin Cunningham said. Mary Anderson is up there now.

Have you good artists?

—Louis Werner is touring her, Mr Bloom said. O yes, we’ll have all
topnobbers. J. C. Doyle and John MacCormack I hope and. The best, in fact.

—And Madame, Mr Power said smiling. Last but not least.

Mr Bloom unclasped his hands in a gesture of soft politeness and clasped them.
Smith O’Brien. Someone has laid a bunch of flowers there. Woman. Must be his
deathday. For many happy returns. The carriage wheeling by Farrell’s statue
united noiselessly their unresisting knees.

Oot: a dullgarbed old man from the curbstone tendered his wares, his mouth
opening: oot.

—Four bootlaces for a penny.

Wonder why he was struck off the rolls. Had his office in Hume street. Same
house as Molly’s namesake, Tweedy, crown solicitor for Waterford. Has that silk
hat ever since. Relics of old decency. Mourning too. Terrible comedown, poor
wretch! Kicked about like snuff at a wake. O’Callaghan on his last legs.

And Madame. Twenty past eleven. Up. Mrs Fleming is in to clean. Doing
her hair, humming: voglio e non vorrei. No: vorrei e non. Looking
at the tips of her hairs to see if they are split. Mi trema un poco il.
Beautiful on that tre her voice is: weeping tone. A thrush. A throstle.
There is a word throstle that expresses that.

His eyes passed lightly over Mr Power’s goodlooking face. Greyish over the
ears. Madame: smiling. I smiled back. A smile goes a long way. Only
politeness perhaps. Nice fellow. Who knows is that true about the woman he
keeps? Not pleasant for the wife. Yet they say, who was it told me, there is no
carnal. You would imagine that would get played out pretty quick. Yes, it was
Crofton met him one evening bringing her a pound of rumpsteak. What is this she
was? Barmaid in Jury’s. Or the Moira, was it?

They passed under the hugecloaked Liberator’s form.

Martin Cunningham nudged Mr Power.

—Of the tribe of Reuben, he said.

A tall blackbearded figure, bent on a stick, stumping round the corner of
Elvery’s Elephant house, showed them a curved hand open on his spine.

—In all his pristine beauty, Mr Power said.

Mr Dedalus looked after the stumping figure and said mildly:

—The devil break the hasp of your back!

Mr Power, collapsing in laughter, shaded his face from the window as the
carriage passed Gray’s statue.

—We have all been there, Martin Cunningham said broadly.

His eyes met Mr Bloom’s eyes. He caressed his beard, adding:

—Well, nearly all of us.

Mr Bloom began to speak with sudden eagerness to his companions’ faces.

—That’s an awfully good one that’s going the rounds about Reuben J and
the son.

—About the boatman? Mr Power asked.

—Yes. Isn’t it awfully good?

—What is that? Mr Dedalus asked. I didn’t hear it.

—There was a girl in the case, Mr Bloom began, and he determined to send
him to the Isle of Man out of harm’s way but when they were both…..

—What? Mr Dedalus asked. That confirmed bloody hobbledehoy is it?

—Yes, Mr Bloom said. They were both on the way to the boat and he tried
to drown…..

—Drown Barabbas! Mr Dedalus cried. I wish to Christ he did!

Mr Power sent a long laugh down his shaded nostrils.

—No, Mr Bloom said, the son himself…..

Martin Cunningham thwarted his speech rudely:

—Reuben J and the son were piking it down the quay next the river on
their way to the Isle of Man boat and the young chiseller suddenly got loose
and over the wall with him into the Liffey.

—For God’s sake! Mr Dedalus exclaimed in fright. Is he dead?

—Dead! Martin Cunningham cried. Not he! A boatman got a pole and fished
him out by the slack of the breeches and he was landed up to the father on the
quay more dead than alive. Half the town was there.

—Yes, Mr Bloom said. But the funny part is…..

—And Reuben J, Martin Cunningham said, gave the boatman a florin for
saving his son’s life.

A stifled sigh came from under Mr Power’s hand.

—O, he did, Martin Cunningham affirmed. Like a hero. A silver florin.

—Isn’t it awfully good? Mr Bloom said eagerly.

—One and eightpence too much, Mr Dedalus said drily.

Mr Power’s choked laugh burst quietly in the carriage.

Nelson’s pillar.

—Eight plums a penny! Eight for a penny!

—We had better look a little serious, Martin Cunningham said.

Mr Dedalus sighed.

—Ah then indeed, he said, poor little Paddy wouldn’t grudge us a laugh.
Many a good one he told himself.

—The Lord forgive me! Mr Power said, wiping his wet eyes with his
fingers. Poor Paddy! I little thought a week ago when I saw him last and he was
in his usual health that I’d be driving after him like this. He’s gone from us.

—As decent a little man as ever wore a hat, Mr Dedalus said. He went very
suddenly.

—Breakdown, Martin Cunningham said. Heart.

He tapped his chest sadly.

Blazing face: redhot. Too much John Barleycorn. Cure for a red nose. Drink like
the devil till it turns adelite. A lot of money he spent colouring it.

Mr Power gazed at the passing houses with rueful apprehension.

—He had a sudden death, poor fellow, he said.

—The best death, Mr Bloom said.

Their wide open eyes looked at him.

—No suffering, he said. A moment and all is over. Like dying in sleep.

No-one spoke.

Dead side of the street this. Dull business by day, land agents, temperance
hotel, Falconer’s railway guide, civil service college, Gill’s, catholic club,
the industrious blind. Why? Some reason. Sun or wind. At night too. Chummies
and slaveys. Under the patronage of the late Father Mathew. Foundation stone
for Parnell. Breakdown. Heart.

White horses with white frontlet plumes came round the Rotunda corner,
galloping. A tiny coffin flashed by. In a hurry to bury. A mourning coach.
Unmarried. Black for the married. Piebald for bachelors. Dun for a nun.

—Sad, Martin Cunningham said. A child.

A dwarf’s face, mauve and wrinkled like little Rudy’s was. Dwarf’s body, weak
as putty, in a whitelined deal box. Burial friendly society pays. Penny a week
for a sod of turf. Our. Little. Beggar. Baby. Meant nothing. Mistake of nature.
If it’s healthy it’s from the mother. If not from the man. Better luck next
time.

—Poor little thing, Mr Dedalus said. It’s well out of it.

The carriage climbed more slowly the hill of Rutland square. Rattle his bones.
Over the stones. Only a pauper. Nobody owns.

—In the midst of life, Martin Cunningham said.

—But the worst of all, Mr Power said, is the man who takes his own life.

Martin Cunningham drew out his watch briskly, coughed and put it back.

—The greatest disgrace to have in the family, Mr Power added.

—Temporary insanity, of course, Martin Cunningham said decisively. We
must take a charitable view of it.

—They say a man who does it is a coward, Mr Dedalus said.

—It is not for us to judge, Martin Cunningham said.

Mr Bloom, about to speak, closed his lips again. Martin Cunningham’s large
eyes. Looking away now. Sympathetic human man he is. Intelligent. Like
Shakespeare’s face. Always a good word to say. They have no mercy on that here
or infanticide. Refuse christian burial. They used to drive a stake of wood
through his heart in the grave. As if it wasn’t broken already. Yet sometimes
they repent too late. Found in the riverbed clutching rushes. He looked at me.
And that awful drunkard of a wife of his. Setting up house for her time after
time and then pawning the furniture on him every Saturday almost. Leading him
the life of the damned. Wear the heart out of a stone, that. Monday morning.
Start afresh. Shoulder to the wheel. Lord, she must have looked a sight that
night Dedalus told me he was in there. Drunk about the place and capering with
Martin’s umbrella.

And they call me the jewel of Asia,
Of Asia,
The geisha.

He looked away from me. He knows. Rattle his bones.

That afternoon of the inquest. The redlabelled bottle on the table. The room in
the hotel with hunting pictures. Stuffy it was. Sunlight through the slats of
the Venetian blind. The coroner’s sunlit ears, big and hairy. Boots giving
evidence. Thought he was asleep first. Then saw like yellow streaks on his
face. Had slipped down to the foot of the bed. Verdict: overdose. Death by
misadventure. The letter. For my son Leopold.

No more pain. Wake no more. Nobody owns.

The carriage rattled swiftly along Blessington street. Over the stones.

—We are going the pace, I think, Martin Cunningham said.

—God grant he doesn’t upset us on the road, Mr Power said.

—I hope not, Martin Cunningham said. That will be a great race tomorrow
in Germany. The Gordon Bennett.

—Yes, by Jove, Mr Dedalus said. That will be worth seeing, faith.

As they turned into Berkeley street a streetorgan near the Basin sent over and
after them a rollicking rattling song of the halls. Has anybody here seen
Kelly? Kay ee double ell wy. Dead March from Saul. He’s as bad as old
Antonio. He left me on my ownio. Pirouette! The Mater Misericordiae.
Eccles street. My house down there. Big place. Ward for incurables there. Very
encouraging. Our Lady’s Hospice for the dying. Deadhouse handy underneath.
Where old Mrs Riordan died. They look terrible the women. Her feeding cup and
rubbing her mouth with the spoon. Then the screen round her bed for her to die.
Nice young student that was dressed that bite the bee gave me. He’s gone over
to the lying-in hospital they told me. From one extreme to the other.

The carriage galloped round a corner: stopped.

—What’s wrong now?

A divided drove of branded cattle passed the windows, lowing, slouching by on
padded hoofs, whisking their tails slowly on their clotted bony croups. Outside
them and through them ran raddled sheep bleating their fear.

—Emigrants, Mr Power said.

—Huuuh! the drover’s voice cried, his switch sounding on their flanks.
Huuuh! out of that!

Thursday, of course. Tomorrow is killing day. Springers. Cuffe sold them about
twentyseven quid each. For Liverpool probably. Roastbeef for old England. They
buy up all the juicy ones. And then the fifth quarter lost: all that raw stuff,
hide, hair, horns. Comes to a big thing in a year. Dead meat trade. Byproducts
of the slaughterhouses for tanneries, soap, margarine. Wonder if that dodge
works now getting dicky meat off the train at Clonsilla.

The carriage moved on through the drove.

—I can’t make out why the corporation doesn’t run a tramline from the
parkgate to the quays, Mr Bloom said. All those animals could be taken in
trucks down to the boats.

—Instead of blocking up the thoroughfare, Martin Cunningham said. Quite
right. They ought to.

—Yes, Mr Bloom said, and another thing I often thought, is to have
municipal funeral trams like they have in Milan, you know. Run the line out to
the cemetery gates and have special trams, hearse and carriage and all. Don’t
you see what I mean?

—O, that be damned for a story, Mr Dedalus said. Pullman car and saloon
diningroom.

—A poor lookout for Corny, Mr Power added.

—Why? Mr Bloom asked, turning to Mr Dedalus. Wouldn’t it be more decent
than galloping two abreast?

—Well, there’s something in that, Mr Dedalus granted.

—And, Martin Cunningham said, we wouldn’t have scenes like that when the
hearse capsized round Dunphy’s and upset the coffin on to the road.

—That was terrible, Mr Power’s shocked face said, and the corpse fell
about the road. Terrible!

—First round Dunphy’s, Mr Dedalus said, nodding. Gordon Bennett cup.

—Praises be to God! Martin Cunningham said piously.

Bom! Upset. A coffin bumped out on to the road. Burst open. Paddy Dignam shot
out and rolling over stiff in the dust in a brown habit too large for him. Red
face: grey now. Mouth fallen open. Asking what’s up now. Quite right to close
it. Looks horrid open. Then the insides decompose quickly. Much better to close
up all the orifices. Yes, also. With wax. The sphincter loose. Seal up all.

—Dunphy’s, Mr Power announced as the carriage turned right.

Dunphy’s corner. Mourning coaches drawn up, drowning their grief. A pause by
the wayside. Tiptop position for a pub. Expect we’ll pull up here on the way
back to drink his health. Pass round the consolation. Elixir of life.

But suppose now it did happen. Would he bleed if a nail say cut him in the
knocking about? He would and he wouldn’t, I suppose. Depends on where. The
circulation stops. Still some might ooze out of an artery. It would be better
to bury them in red: a dark red.

In silence they drove along Phibsborough road. An empty hearse trotted by,
coming from the cemetery: looks relieved.

Crossguns bridge: the royal canal.

Water rushed roaring through the sluices. A man stood on his dropping barge,
between clamps of turf. On the towpath by the lock a slacktethered horse.
Aboard of the Bugabu.

Their eyes watched him. On the slow weedy waterway he had floated on his raft
coastward over Ireland drawn by a haulage rope past beds of reeds, over slime,
mudchoked bottles, carrion dogs. Athlone, Mullingar, Moyvalley, I could make a
walking tour to see Milly by the canal. Or cycle down. Hire some old crock,
safety. Wren had one the other day at the auction but a lady’s. Developing
waterways. James M’Cann’s hobby to row me o’er the ferry. Cheaper transit. By
easy stages. Houseboats. Camping out. Also hearses. To heaven by water. Perhaps
I will without writing. Come as a surprise, Leixlip, Clonsilla. Dropping down
lock by lock to Dublin. With turf from the midland bogs. Salute. He lifted his
brown straw hat, saluting Paddy Dignam.

They drove on past Brian Boroimhe house. Near it now.

—I wonder how is our friend Fogarty getting on, Mr Power said.

—Better ask Tom Kernan, Mr Dedalus said.

—How is that? Martin Cunningham said. Left him weeping, I suppose?

—Though lost to sight, Mr Dedalus said, to memory dear.

The carriage steered left for Finglas road.

The stonecutter’s yard on the right. Last lap. Crowded on the spit of land
silent shapes appeared, white, sorrowful, holding out calm hands, knelt in
grief, pointing. Fragments of shapes, hewn. In white silence: appealing. The
best obtainable. Thos. H. Dennany, monumental builder and sculptor.

Passed.

On the curbstone before Jimmy Geary, the sexton’s, an old tramp sat, grumbling,
emptying the dirt and stones out of his huge dustbrown yawning boot. After
life’s journey.

Gloomy gardens then went by: one by one: gloomy houses.

Mr Power pointed.

—That is where Childs was murdered, he said. The last house.

—So it is, Mr Dedalus said. A gruesome case. Seymour Bushe got him off.
Murdered his brother. Or so they said.

—The crown had no evidence, Mr Power said.

—Only circumstantial, Martin Cunningham added. That’s the maxim of the
law. Better for ninetynine guilty to escape than for one innocent person to be
wrongfully condemned.

They looked. Murderer’s ground. It passed darkly. Shuttered, tenantless,
unweeded garden. Whole place gone to hell. Wrongfully condemned. Murder. The
murderer’s image in the eye of the murdered. They love reading about it. Man’s
head found in a garden. Her clothing consisted of. How she met her death.
Recent outrage. The weapon used. Murderer is still at large. Clues. A shoelace.
The body to be exhumed. Murder will out.

Cramped in this carriage. She mightn’t like me to come that way without letting
her know. Must be careful about women. Catch them once with their pants down.
Never forgive you after. Fifteen.

The high railings of Prospect rippled past their gaze. Dark poplars, rare white
forms. Forms more frequent, white shapes thronged amid the trees, white forms
and fragments streaming by mutely, sustaining vain gestures on the air.

The felly harshed against the curbstone: stopped. Martin Cunningham put out his
arm and, wrenching back the handle, shoved the door open with his knee. He
stepped out. Mr Power and Mr Dedalus followed.

Change that soap now. Mr Bloom’s hand unbuttoned his hip pocket swiftly and
transferred the paperstuck soap to his inner handkerchief pocket. He stepped
out of the carriage, replacing the newspaper his other hand still held.

Paltry funeral: coach and three carriages. It’s all the same. Pallbearers, gold
reins, requiem mass, firing a volley. Pomp of death. Beyond the hind carriage a
hawker stood by his barrow of cakes and fruit. Simnel cakes those are, stuck
together: cakes for the dead. Dogbiscuits. Who ate them? Mourners coming out.

He followed his companions. Mr Kernan and Ned Lambert followed, Hynes walking
after them. Corny Kelleher stood by the opened hearse and took out the two
wreaths. He handed one to the boy.

Where is that child’s funeral disappeared to?

A team of horses passed from Finglas with toiling plodding tread, dragging
through the funereal silence a creaking waggon on which lay a granite block.
The waggoner marching at their head saluted.

Coffin now. Got here before us, dead as he is. Horse looking round at it with
his plume skeowways. Dull eye: collar tight on his neck, pressing on a
bloodvessel or something. Do they know what they cart out here every day? Must
be twenty or thirty funerals every day. Then Mount Jerome for the protestants.
Funerals all over the world everywhere every minute. Shovelling them under by
the cartload doublequick. Thousands every hour. Too many in the world.

Mourners came out through the gates: woman and a girl. Leanjawed harpy, hard
woman at a bargain, her bonnet awry. Girl’s face stained with dirt and tears,
holding the woman’s arm, looking up at her for a sign to cry. Fish’s face,
bloodless and livid.

The mutes shouldered the coffin and bore it in through the gates. So much dead
weight. Felt heavier myself stepping out of that bath. First the stiff: then
the friends of the stiff. Corny Kelleher and the boy followed with their
wreaths. Who is that beside them? Ah, the brother-in-law.

All walked after.

Martin Cunningham whispered:

—I was in mortal agony with you talking of suicide before Bloom.

—What? Mr Power whispered. How so?

—His father poisoned himself, Martin Cunningham whispered. Had the
Queen’s hotel in Ennis. You heard him say he was going to Clare. Anniversary.

—O God! Mr Power whispered. First I heard of it. Poisoned himself?

He glanced behind him to where a face with dark thinking eyes followed towards
the cardinal’s mausoleum. Speaking.

—Was he insured? Mr Bloom asked.

—I believe so, Mr Kernan answered. But the policy was heavily mortgaged.
Martin is trying to get the youngster into Artane.

—How many children did he leave?

—Five. Ned Lambert says he’ll try to get one of the girls into Todd’s.

—A sad case, Mr Bloom said gently. Five young children.

—A great blow to the poor wife, Mr Kernan added.

—Indeed yes, Mr Bloom agreed.

Has the laugh at him now.

He looked down at the boots he had blacked and polished. She had outlived him.
Lost her husband. More dead for her than for me. One must outlive the other.
Wise men say. There are more women than men in the world. Condole with her.
Your terrible loss. I hope you’ll soon follow him. For Hindu widows only. She
would marry another. Him? No. Yet who knows after. Widowhood not the thing
since the old queen died. Drawn on a guncarriage. Victoria and Albert. Frogmore
memorial mourning. But in the end she put a few violets in her bonnet. Vain in
her heart of hearts. All for a shadow. Consort not even a king. Her son was the
substance. Something new to hope for not like the past she wanted back,
waiting. It never comes. One must go first: alone, under the ground: and lie no
more in her warm bed.

—How are you, Simon? Ned Lambert said softly, clasping hands. Haven’t
seen you for a month of Sundays.

—Never better. How are all in Cork’s own town?

—I was down there for the Cork park races on Easter Monday, Ned Lambert
said. Same old six and eightpence. Stopped with Dick Tivy.

—And how is Dick, the solid man?

—Nothing between himself and heaven, Ned Lambert answered.

—By the holy Paul! Mr Dedalus said in subdued wonder. Dick Tivy bald?

—Martin is going to get up a whip for the youngsters, Ned Lambert said,
pointing ahead. A few bob a skull. Just to keep them going till the insurance
is cleared up.

—Yes, yes, Mr Dedalus said dubiously. Is that the eldest boy in front?

—Yes, Ned Lambert said, with the wife’s brother. John Henry Menton is
behind. He put down his name for a quid.

—I’ll engage he did, Mr Dedalus said. I often told poor Paddy he ought to
mind that job. John Henry is not the worst in the world.

—How did he lose it? Ned Lambert asked. Liquor, what?

—Many a good man’s fault, Mr Dedalus said with a sigh.

They halted about the door of the mortuary chapel. Mr Bloom stood behind the
boy with the wreath looking down at his sleekcombed hair and at the slender
furrowed neck inside his brandnew collar. Poor boy! Was he there when the
father? Both unconscious. Lighten up at the last moment and recognise for the
last time. All he might have done. I owe three shillings to O’Grady. Would he
understand? The mutes bore the coffin into the chapel. Which end is his head?

After a moment he followed the others in, blinking in the screened light. The
coffin lay on its bier before the chancel, four tall yellow candles at its
corners. Always in front of us. Corny Kelleher, laying a wreath at each fore
corner, beckoned to the boy to kneel. The mourners knelt here and there in
prayingdesks. Mr Bloom stood behind near the font and, when all had knelt,
dropped carefully his unfolded newspaper from his pocket and knelt his right
knee upon it. He fitted his black hat gently on his left knee and, holding its
brim, bent over piously.

A server bearing a brass bucket with something in it came out through a door.
The whitesmocked priest came after him, tidying his stole with one hand,
balancing with the other a little book against his toad’s belly. Who’ll read
the book? I, said the rook.

They halted by the bier and the priest began to read out of his book with a
fluent croak.

Father Coffey. I knew his name was like a coffin. Dominenamine. Bully
about the muzzle he looks. Bosses the show. Muscular christian. Woe betide
anyone that looks crooked at him: priest. Thou art Peter. Burst sideways like a
sheep in clover Dedalus says he will. With a belly on him like a poisoned pup.
Most amusing expressions that man finds. Hhhn: burst sideways.

—Non intres in judicium cum servo tuo, Domine.

Makes them feel more important to be prayed over in Latin. Requiem mass. Crape
weepers. Blackedged notepaper. Your name on the altarlist. Chilly place this.
Want to feed well, sitting in there all the morning in the gloom kicking his
heels waiting for the next please. Eyes of a toad too. What swells him up that
way? Molly gets swelled after cabbage. Air of the place maybe. Looks full up of
bad gas. Must be an infernal lot of bad gas round the place. Butchers, for
instance: they get like raw beefsteaks. Who was telling me? Mervyn Browne. Down
in the vaults of saint Werburgh’s lovely old organ hundred and fifty they have
to bore a hole in the coffins sometimes to let out the bad gas and burn it. Out
it rushes: blue. One whiff of that and you’re a goner.

My kneecap is hurting me. Ow. That’s better.

The priest took a stick with a knob at the end of it out of the boy’s bucket
and shook it over the coffin. Then he walked to the other end and shook it
again. Then he came back and put it back in the bucket. As you were before you
rested. It’s all written down: he has to do it.

—Et ne nos inducas in tentationem.

The server piped the answers in the treble. I often thought it would be better
to have boy servants. Up to fifteen or so. After that, of course …

Holy water that was, I expect. Shaking sleep out of it. He must be fed up with
that job, shaking that thing over all the corpses they trot up. What harm if he
could see what he was shaking it over. Every mortal day a fresh batch:
middleaged men, old women, children, women dead in childbirth, men with beards,
baldheaded businessmen, consumptive girls with little sparrows’ breasts. All
the year round he prayed the same thing over them all and shook water on top of
them: sleep. On Dignam now.

—In paradisum.

Said he was going to paradise or is in paradise. Says that over everybody.
Tiresome kind of a job. But he has to say something.

The priest closed his book and went off, followed by the server. Corny Kelleher
opened the sidedoors and the gravediggers came in, hoisted the coffin again,
carried it out and shoved it on their cart. Corny Kelleher gave one wreath to
the boy and one to the brother-in-law. All followed them out of the sidedoors
into the mild grey air. Mr Bloom came last folding his paper again into his
pocket. He gazed gravely at the ground till the coffincart wheeled off to the
left. The metal wheels ground the gravel with a sharp grating cry and the pack
of blunt boots followed the trundled barrow along a lane of sepulchres.

The ree the ra the ree the ra the roo. Lord, I mustn’t lilt here.

—The O’Connell circle, Mr Dedalus said about him.

Mr Power’s soft eyes went up to the apex of the lofty cone.

—He’s at rest, he said, in the middle of his people, old Dan O’. But his
heart is buried in Rome. How many broken hearts are buried here, Simon!

—Her grave is over there, Jack, Mr Dedalus said. I’ll soon be stretched
beside her. Let Him take me whenever He likes.

Breaking down, he began to weep to himself quietly, stumbling a little in his
walk. Mr Power took his arm.

—She’s better where she is, he said kindly.

—I suppose so, Mr Dedalus said with a weak gasp. I suppose she is in
heaven if there is a heaven.

Corny Kelleher stepped aside from his rank and allowed the mourners to plod by.

—Sad occasions, Mr Kernan began politely.

Mr Bloom closed his eyes and sadly twice bowed his head.

—The others are putting on their hats, Mr Kernan said. I suppose we can
do so too. We are the last. This cemetery is a treacherous place.

They covered their heads.

—The reverend gentleman read the service too quickly, don’t you think? Mr
Kernan said with reproof.

Mr Bloom nodded gravely looking in the quick bloodshot eyes. Secret eyes,
secretsearching. Mason, I think: not sure. Beside him again. We are the last.
In the same boat. Hope he’ll say something else.

Mr Kernan added:

—The service of the Irish church used in Mount Jerome is simpler, more
impressive I must say.

Mr Bloom gave prudent assent. The language of course was another thing.

Mr Kernan said with solemnity:

—I am the resurrection and the life. That touches a man’s inmost
heart.

—It does, Mr Bloom said.

Your heart perhaps but what price the fellow in the six feet by two with his
toes to the daisies? No touching that. Seat of the affections. Broken heart. A
pump after all, pumping thousands of gallons of blood every day. One fine day
it gets bunged up: and there you are. Lots of them lying around here: lungs,
hearts, livers. Old rusty pumps: damn the thing else. The resurrection and the
life. Once you are dead you are dead. That last day idea. Knocking them all up
out of their graves. Come forth, Lazarus! And he came fifth and lost the job.
Get up! Last day! Then every fellow mousing around for his liver and his lights
and the rest of his traps. Find damn all of himself that morning. Pennyweight
of powder in a skull. Twelve grammes one pennyweight. Troy measure.

Corny Kelleher fell into step at their side.

—Everything went off A1, he said. What?

He looked on them from his drawling eye. Policeman’s shoulders. With your
tooraloom tooraloom.

—As it should be, Mr Kernan said.

—What? Eh? Corny Kelleher said.

Mr Kernan assured him.

—Who is that chap behind with Tom Kernan? John Henry Menton asked. I know
his face.

Ned Lambert glanced back.

—Bloom, he said, Madame Marion Tweedy that was, is, I mean, the soprano.
She’s his wife.

—O, to be sure, John Henry Menton said. I haven’t seen her for some time.
She was a finelooking woman. I danced with her, wait, fifteen seventeen golden
years ago, at Mat Dillon’s in Roundtown. And a good armful she was.

He looked behind through the others.

—What is he? he asked. What does he do? Wasn’t he in the stationery line?
I fell foul of him one evening, I remember, at bowls.

Ned Lambert smiled.

—Yes, he was, he said, in Wisdom Hely’s. A traveller for blottingpaper.

—In God’s name, John Henry Menton said, what did she marry a coon like
that for? She had plenty of game in her then.

—Has still, Ned Lambert said. He does some canvassing for ads.

John Henry Menton’s large eyes stared ahead.

The barrow turned into a side lane. A portly man, ambushed among the grasses,
raised his hat in homage. The gravediggers touched their caps.

—John O’Connell, Mr Power said pleased. He never forgets a friend.

Mr O’Connell shook all their hands in silence. Mr Dedalus said:

—I am come to pay you another visit.

—My dear Simon, the caretaker answered in a low voice. I don’t want your
custom at all.

Saluting Ned Lambert and John Henry Menton he walked on at Martin Cunningham’s
side puzzling two long keys at his back.

—Did you hear that one, he asked them, about Mulcahy from the Coombe?

—I did not, Martin Cunningham said.

They bent their silk hats in concert and Hynes inclined his ear. The caretaker
hung his thumbs in the loops of his gold watchchain and spoke in a discreet
tone to their vacant smiles.

—They tell the story, he said, that two drunks came out here one foggy
evening to look for the grave of a friend of theirs. They asked for Mulcahy
from the Coombe and were told where he was buried. After traipsing about in the
fog they found the grave sure enough. One of the drunks spelt out the name:
Terence Mulcahy. The other drunk was blinking up at a statue of Our Saviour the
widow had got put up.

The caretaker blinked up at one of the sepulchres they passed. He resumed:

—And, after blinking up at the sacred figure, Not a bloody bit like
the man, says he. That’s not Mulcahy, says he, whoever done
it.

Rewarded by smiles he fell back and spoke with Corny Kelleher, accepting the
dockets given him, turning them over and scanning them as he walked.

—That’s all done with a purpose, Martin Cunningham explained to Hynes.

—I know, Hynes said. I know that.

—To cheer a fellow up, Martin Cunningham said. It’s pure goodheartedness:
damn the thing else.

Mr Bloom admired the caretaker’s prosperous bulk. All want to be on good terms
with him. Decent fellow, John O’Connell, real good sort. Keys: like Keyes’s ad:
no fear of anyone getting out. No passout checks. Habeas corpus. I must
see about that ad after the funeral. Did I write Ballsbridge on the envelope I
took to cover when she disturbed me writing to Martha? Hope it’s not chucked in
the dead letter office. Be the better of a shave. Grey sprouting beard. That’s
the first sign when the hairs come out grey. And temper getting cross. Silver
threads among the grey. Fancy being his wife. Wonder he had the gumption to
propose to any girl. Come out and live in the graveyard. Dangle that before
her. It might thrill her first. Courting death. Shades of night hovering here
with all the dead stretched about. The shadows of the tombs when churchyards
yawn and Daniel O’Connell must be a descendant I suppose who is this used to
say he was a queer breedy man great catholic all the same like a big giant in
the dark. Will o’ the wisp. Gas of graves. Want to keep her mind off it to
conceive at all. Women especially are so touchy. Tell her a ghost story in bed
to make her sleep. Have you ever seen a ghost? Well, I have. It was a pitchdark
night. The clock was on the stroke of twelve. Still they’d kiss all right if
properly keyed up. Whores in Turkish graveyards. Learn anything if taken young.
You might pick up a young widow here. Men like that. Love among the tombstones.
Romeo. Spice of pleasure. In the midst of death we are in life. Both ends meet.
Tantalising for the poor dead. Smell of grilled beefsteaks to the starving.
Gnawing their vitals. Desire to grig people. Molly wanting to do it at the
window. Eight children he has anyway.

He has seen a fair share go under in his time, lying around him field after
field. Holy fields. More room if they buried them standing. Sitting or kneeling
you couldn’t. Standing? His head might come up some day above ground in a
landslip with his hand pointing. All honeycombed the ground must be: oblong
cells. And very neat he keeps it too: trim grass and edgings. His garden Major
Gamble calls Mount Jerome. Well, so it is. Ought to be flowers of sleep.
Chinese cemeteries with giant poppies growing produce the best opium Mastiansky
told me. The Botanic Gardens are just over there. It’s the blood sinking in the
earth gives new life. Same idea those jews they said killed the christian boy.
Every man his price. Well preserved fat corpse, gentleman, epicure, invaluable
for fruit garden. A bargain. By carcass of William Wilkinson, auditor and
accountant, lately deceased, three pounds thirteen and six. With thanks.

I daresay the soil would be quite fat with corpsemanure, bones, flesh, nails.
Charnelhouses. Dreadful. Turning green and pink decomposing. Rot quick in damp
earth. The lean old ones tougher. Then a kind of a tallowy kind of a cheesy.
Then begin to get black, black treacle oozing out of them. Then dried up.
Deathmoths. Of course the cells or whatever they are go on living. Changing
about. Live for ever practically. Nothing to feed on feed on themselves.

But they must breed a devil of a lot of maggots. Soil must be simply swirling
with them. Your head it simply swurls. Those pretty little seaside gurls. He
looks cheerful enough over it. Gives him a sense of power seeing all the others
go under first. Wonder how he looks at life. Cracking his jokes too: warms the
cockles of his heart. The one about the bulletin. Spurgeon went to heaven 4
a.m. this morning. 11 p.m. (closing time). Not arrived yet. Peter. The dead
themselves the men anyhow would like to hear an odd joke or the women to know
what’s in fashion. A juicy pear or ladies’ punch, hot, strong and sweet. Keep
out the damp. You must laugh sometimes so better do it that way. Gravediggers
in Hamlet. Shows the profound knowledge of the human heart. Daren’t joke
about the dead for two years at least. De mortuis nil nisi prius. Go out
of mourning first. Hard to imagine his funeral. Seems a sort of a joke. Read
your own obituary notice they say you live longer. Gives you second wind. New
lease of life.

—How many have you for tomorrow? the caretaker asked.

—Two, Corny Kelleher said. Half ten and eleven.

The caretaker put the papers in his pocket. The barrow had ceased to trundle.
The mourners split and moved to each side of the hole, stepping with care round
the graves. The gravediggers bore the coffin and set its nose on the brink,
looping the bands round it.

Burying him. We come to bury Cæsar. His ides of March or June. He doesn’t know
who is here nor care. Now who is that lankylooking galoot over there in the
macintosh? Now who is he I’d like to know? Now I’d give a trifle to know who he
is. Always someone turns up you never dreamt of. A fellow could live on his
lonesome all his life. Yes, he could. Still he’d have to get someone to sod him
after he died though he could dig his own grave. We all do. Only man buries.
No, ants too. First thing strikes anybody. Bury the dead. Say Robinson Crusoe
was true to life. Well then Friday buried him. Every Friday buries a Thursday
if you come to look at it.

O, poor Robinson Crusoe!
How could you possibly do so?

Poor Dignam! His last lie on the earth in his box. When you think of them all
it does seem a waste of wood. All gnawed through. They could invent a handsome
bier with a kind of panel sliding, let it down that way. Ay but they might
object to be buried out of another fellow’s. They’re so particular. Lay me in
my native earth. Bit of clay from the holy land. Only a mother and deadborn
child ever buried in the one coffin. I see what it means. I see. To protect him
as long as possible even in the earth. The Irishman’s house is his coffin.
Embalming in catacombs, mummies the same idea.

Mr Bloom stood far back, his hat in his hand, counting the bared heads. Twelve.
I’m thirteen. No. The chap in the macintosh is thirteen. Death’s number. Where
the deuce did he pop out of? He wasn’t in the chapel, that I’ll swear. Silly
superstition that about thirteen.

Nice soft tweed Ned Lambert has in that suit. Tinge of purple. I had one like
that when we lived in Lombard street west. Dressy fellow he was once. Used to
change three suits in the day. Must get that grey suit of mine turned by
Mesias. Hello. It’s dyed. His wife I forgot he’s not married or his landlady
ought to have picked out those threads for him.

The coffin dived out of sight, eased down by the men straddled on the
gravetrestles. They struggled up and out: and all uncovered. Twenty.

Pause.

If we were all suddenly somebody else.

Far away a donkey brayed. Rain. No such ass. Never see a dead one, they say.
Shame of death. They hide. Also poor papa went away.

Gentle sweet air blew round the bared heads in a whisper. Whisper. The boy by
the gravehead held his wreath with both hands staring quietly in the black open
space. Mr Bloom moved behind the portly kindly caretaker. Wellcut frockcoat.
Weighing them up perhaps to see which will go next. Well, it is a long rest.
Feel no more. It’s the moment you feel. Must be damned unpleasant. Can’t
believe it at first. Mistake must be: someone else. Try the house opposite.
Wait, I wanted to. I haven’t yet. Then darkened deathchamber. Light they want.
Whispering around you. Would you like to see a priest? Then rambling and
wandering. Delirium all you hid all your life. The death struggle. His sleep is
not natural. Press his lower eyelid. Watching is his nose pointed is his jaw
sinking are the soles of his feet yellow. Pull the pillow away and finish it
off on the floor since he’s doomed. Devil in that picture of sinner’s death
showing him a woman. Dying to embrace her in his shirt. Last act of Lucia.
Shall I nevermore behold thee? Bam! He expires. Gone at last. People talk
about you a bit: forget you. Don’t forget to pray for him. Remember him in your
prayers. Even Parnell. Ivy day dying out. Then they follow: dropping into a
hole, one after the other.

We are praying now for the repose of his soul. Hoping you’re well and not in
hell. Nice change of air. Out of the fryingpan of life into the fire of
purgatory.

Does he ever think of the hole waiting for himself? They say you do when you
shiver in the sun. Someone walking over it. Callboy’s warning. Near you. Mine
over there towards Finglas, the plot I bought. Mamma, poor mamma, and little
Rudy.

The gravediggers took up their spades and flung heavy clods of clay in on the
coffin. Mr Bloom turned away his face. And if he was alive all the time? Whew!
By jingo, that would be awful! No, no: he is dead, of course. Of course he is
dead. Monday he died. They ought to have some law to pierce the heart and make
sure or an electric clock or a telephone in the coffin and some kind of a
canvas airhole. Flag of distress. Three days. Rather long to keep them in
summer. Just as well to get shut of them as soon as you are sure there’s no.

The clay fell softer. Begin to be forgotten. Out of sight, out of mind.

The caretaker moved away a few paces and put on his hat. Had enough of it. The
mourners took heart of grace, one by one, covering themselves without show. Mr
Bloom put on his hat and saw the portly figure make its way deftly through the
maze of graves. Quietly, sure of his ground, he traversed the dismal fields.

Hynes jotting down something in his notebook. Ah, the names. But he knows them
all. No: coming to me.

—I am just taking the names, Hynes said below his breath. What is your
christian name? I’m not sure.

—L, Mr Bloom said. Leopold. And you might put down M’Coy’s name too. He
asked me to.

—Charley, Hynes said writing. I know. He was on the Freeman once.

So he was before he got the job in the morgue under Louis Byrne. Good idea a
postmortem for doctors. Find out what they imagine they know. He died of a
Tuesday. Got the run. Levanted with the cash of a few ads. Charley, you’re my
darling. That was why he asked me to. O well, does no harm. I saw to that,
M’Coy. Thanks, old chap: much obliged. Leave him under an obligation: costs
nothing.

—And tell us, Hynes said, do you know that fellow in the, fellow was over
there in the…

He looked around.

—Macintosh. Yes, I saw him, Mr Bloom said. Where is he now?

—M’Intosh, Hynes said scribbling. I don’t know who he is. Is that his
name?

He moved away, looking about him.

—No, Mr Bloom began, turning and stopping. I say, Hynes!

Didn’t hear. What? Where has he disappeared to? Not a sign. Well of all the.
Has anybody here seen? Kay ee double ell. Become invisible. Good Lord, what
became of him?

A seventh gravedigger came beside Mr Bloom to take up an idle spade.

—O, excuse me!

He stepped aside nimbly.

Clay, brown, damp, began to be seen in the hole. It rose. Nearly over. A mound
of damp clods rose more, rose, and the gravediggers rested their spades. All
uncovered again for a few instants. The boy propped his wreath against a
corner: the brother-in-law his on a lump. The gravediggers put on their caps
and carried their earthy spades towards the barrow. Then knocked the blades
lightly on the turf: clean. One bent to pluck from the haft a long tuft of
grass. One, leaving his mates, walked slowly on with shouldered weapon, its
blade blueglancing. Silently at the gravehead another coiled the coffinband.
His navelcord. The brother-in-law, turning away, placed something in his free
hand. Thanks in silence. Sorry, sir: trouble. Headshake. I know that. For
yourselves just.

The mourners moved away slowly without aim, by devious paths, staying at whiles
to read a name on a tomb.

—Let us go round by the chief’s grave, Hynes said. We have time.

—Let us, Mr Power said.

They turned to the right, following their slow thoughts. With awe Mr Power’s
blank voice spoke:

—Some say he is not in that grave at all. That the coffin was filled with
stones. That one day he will come again.

Hynes shook his head.

—Parnell will never come again, he said. He’s there, all that was mortal
of him. Peace to his ashes.

Mr Bloom walked unheeded along his grove by saddened angels, crosses, broken
pillars, family vaults, stone hopes praying with upcast eyes, old Ireland’s
hearts and hands. More sensible to spend the money on some charity for the
living. Pray for the repose of the soul of. Does anybody really? Plant him and
have done with him. Like down a coalshoot. Then lump them together to save
time. All souls’ day. Twentyseventh I’ll be at his grave. Ten shillings for the
gardener. He keeps it free of weeds. Old man himself. Bent down double with his
shears clipping. Near death’s door. Who passed away. Who departed this life. As
if they did it of their own accord. Got the shove, all of them. Who kicked the
bucket. More interesting if they told you what they were. So and So,
wheelwright. I travelled for cork lino. I paid five shillings in the pound. Or
a woman’s with her saucepan. I cooked good Irish stew. Eulogy in a country
churchyard it ought to be that poem of whose is it Wordsworth or Thomas
Campbell. Entered into rest the protestants put it. Old Dr Murren’s. The great
physician called him home. Well it’s God’s acre for them. Nice country
residence. Newly plastered and painted. Ideal spot to have a quiet smoke and
read the Church Times. Marriage ads they never try to beautify. Rusty
wreaths hung on knobs, garlands of bronzefoil. Better value that for the money.
Still, the flowers are more poetical. The other gets rather tiresome, never
withering. Expresses nothing. Immortelles.

A bird sat tamely perched on a poplar branch. Like stuffed. Like the wedding
present alderman Hooper gave us. Hoo! Not a budge out of him. Knows there are
no catapults to let fly at him. Dead animal even sadder. Silly-Milly burying
the little dead bird in the kitchen matchbox, a daisychain and bits of broken
chainies on the grave.

The Sacred Heart that is: showing it. Heart on his sleeve. Ought to be sideways
and red it should be painted like a real heart. Ireland was dedicated to it or
whatever that. Seems anything but pleased. Why this infliction? Would birds
come then and peck like the boy with the basket of fruit but he said no because
they ought to have been afraid of the boy. Apollo that was.

How many! All these here once walked round Dublin. Faithful departed. As you
are now so once were we.

Besides how could you remember everybody? Eyes, walk, voice. Well, the voice,
yes: gramophone. Have a gramophone in every grave or keep it in the house.
After dinner on a Sunday. Put on poor old greatgrandfather. Kraahraark!
Hellohellohello amawfullyglad kraark awfullygladaseeagain hellohello amawf
krpthsth. Remind you of the voice like the photograph reminds you of the face.
Otherwise you couldn’t remember the face after fifteen years, say. For instance
who? For instance some fellow that died when I was in Wisdom Hely’s.

Rtststr! A rattle of pebbles. Wait. Stop!

He looked down intently into a stone crypt. Some animal. Wait. There he goes.

An obese grey rat toddled along the side of the crypt, moving the pebbles. An
old stager: greatgrandfather: he knows the ropes. The grey alive crushed itself
in under the plinth, wriggled itself in under it. Good hidingplace for
treasure.

Who lives there? Are laid the remains of Robert Emery. Robert Emmet was buried
here by torchlight, wasn’t he? Making his rounds.

Tail gone now.

One of those chaps would make short work of a fellow. Pick the bones clean no
matter who it was. Ordinary meat for them. A corpse is meat gone bad. Well and
what’s cheese? Corpse of milk. I read in that Voyages in China that the
Chinese say a white man smells like a corpse. Cremation better. Priests dead
against it. Devilling for the other firm. Wholesale burners and Dutch oven
dealers. Time of the plague. Quicklime feverpits to eat them. Lethal chamber.
Ashes to ashes. Or bury at sea. Where is that Parsee tower of silence? Eaten by
birds. Earth, fire, water. Drowning they say is the pleasantest. See your whole
life in a flash. But being brought back to life no. Can’t bury in the air
however. Out of a flying machine. Wonder does the news go about whenever a
fresh one is let down. Underground communication. We learned that from them.
Wouldn’t be surprised. Regular square feed for them. Flies come before he’s
well dead. Got wind of Dignam. They wouldn’t care about the smell of it.
Saltwhite crumbling mush of corpse: smell, taste like raw white turnips.

The gates glimmered in front: still open. Back to the world again. Enough of
this place. Brings you a bit nearer every time. Last time I was here was Mrs
Sinico’s funeral. Poor papa too. The love that kills. And even scraping up the
earth at night with a lantern like that case I read of to get at fresh buried
females or even putrefied with running gravesores. Give you the creeps after a
bit. I will appear to you after death. You will see my ghost after death. My
ghost will haunt you after death. There is another world after death named
hell. I do not like that other world she wrote. No more do I. Plenty to see and
hear and feel yet. Feel live warm beings near you. Let them sleep in their
maggoty beds. They are not going to get me this innings. Warm beds: warm
fullblooded life.

Martin Cunningham emerged from a sidepath, talking gravely.

Solicitor, I think. I know his face. Menton, John Henry, solicitor,
commissioner for oaths and affidavits. Dignam used to be in his office. Mat
Dillon’s long ago. Jolly Mat. Convivial evenings. Cold fowl, cigars, the
Tantalus glasses. Heart of gold really. Yes, Menton. Got his rag out that
evening on the bowlinggreen because I sailed inside him. Pure fluke of mine:
the bias. Why he took such a rooted dislike to me. Hate at first sight. Molly
and Floey Dillon linked under the lilactree, laughing. Fellow always like that,
mortified if women are by.

Got a dinge in the side of his hat. Carriage probably.

—Excuse me, sir, Mr Bloom said beside them.

They stopped.

—Your hat is a little crushed, Mr Bloom said pointing.

John Henry Menton stared at him for an instant without moving.

—There, Martin Cunningham helped, pointing also.

John Henry Menton took off his hat, bulged out the dinge and smoothed the nap
with care on his coatsleeve. He clapped the hat on his head again.

—It’s all right now, Martin Cunningham said.

John Henry Menton jerked his head down in acknowledgment.

—Thank you, he said shortly.

They walked on towards the gates. Mr Bloom, chapfallen, drew behind a few paces
so as not to overhear. Martin laying down the law. Martin could wind a
sappyhead like that round his little finger, without his seeing it.

Oyster eyes. Never mind. Be sorry after perhaps when it dawns on him. Get the
pull over him that way.

Thank you. How grand we are this morning!

[ 7 ]

IN THE HEART OF THE HIBERNIAN METROPOLIS

Before Nelson’s pillar trams slowed, shunted, changed trolley, started for
Blackrock, Kingstown and Dalkey, Clonskea, Rathgar and Terenure, Palmerston
Park and upper Rathmines, Sandymount Green, Rathmines, Ringsend and Sandymount
Tower, Harold’s Cross. The hoarse Dublin United Tramway Company’s timekeeper
bawled them off:

—Rathgar and Terenure!

—Come on, Sandymount Green!

Right and left parallel clanging ringing a doubledecker and a singledeck moved
from their railheads, swerved to the down line, glided parallel.

—Start, Palmerston Park!

THE WEARER OF THE CROWN

Under the porch of the general post office shoeblacks called and polished.
Parked in North Prince’s street His Majesty’s vermilion mailcars, bearing on
their sides the royal initials, E. R., received loudly flung sacks of letters,
postcards, lettercards, parcels, insured and paid, for local, provincial,
British and overseas delivery.

GENTLEMEN OF THE PRESS

Grossbooted draymen rolled barrels dullthudding out of Prince’s stores and
bumped them up on the brewery float. On the brewery float bumped dullthudding
barrels rolled by grossbooted draymen out of Prince’s stores.

—There it is, Red Murray said. Alexander Keyes.

—Just cut it out, will you? Mr Bloom said, and I’ll take it round to the
Telegraph office.

The door of Ruttledge’s office creaked again. Davy Stephens, minute in a large
capecoat, a small felt hat crowning his ringlets, passed out with a roll of
papers under his cape, a king’s courier.

Red Murray’s long shears sliced out the advertisement from the newspaper in
four clean strokes. Scissors and paste.

—I’ll go through the printingworks, Mr Bloom said, taking the cut square.

—Of course, if he wants a par, Red Murray said earnestly, a pen behind
his ear, we can do him one.

—Right, Mr Bloom said with a nod. I’ll rub that in.

We.

WILLIAM BRAYDEN, ESQUIRE, OF OAKLANDS, SANDYMOUNT

Red Murray touched Mr Bloom’s arm with the shears and whispered:

—Brayden.

Mr Bloom turned and saw the liveried porter raise his lettered cap as a stately
figure entered between the newsboards of the Weekly Freeman and National
Press and the Freeman’s Journal and National Press. Dullthudding
Guinness’s barrels. It passed statelily up the staircase, steered by an
umbrella, a solemn beardframed face. The broadcloth back ascended each step:
back. All his brains are in the nape of his neck, Simon Dedalus says. Welts of
flesh behind on him. Fat folds of neck, fat, neck, fat, neck.

—Don’t you think his face is like Our Saviour? Red Murray whispered.

The door of Ruttledge’s office whispered: ee: cree. They always build one door
opposite another for the wind to. Way in. Way out.

Our Saviour: beardframed oval face: talking in the dusk. Mary, Martha. Steered
by an umbrella sword to the footlights: Mario the tenor.

—Or like Mario, Mr Bloom said.

—Yes, Red Murray agreed. But Mario was said to be the picture of Our
Saviour.

Jesusmario with rougy cheeks, doublet and spindle legs. Hand on his heart. In
Martha.

Co-ome thou lost one,
Co-ome thou dear one!

THE CROZIER AND THE PEN

—His grace phoned down twice this morning, Red Murray said gravely.

They watched the knees, legs, boots vanish. Neck.

A telegram boy stepped in nimbly, threw an envelope on the counter and stepped
off posthaste with a word:

—Freeman!

Mr Bloom said slowly:

—Well, he is one of our saviours also.

A meek smile accompanied him as he lifted the counterflap, as he passed in
through a sidedoor and along the warm dark stairs and passage, along the now
reverberating boards. But will he save the circulation? Thumping. Thumping.

He pushed in the glass swingdoor and entered, stepping over strewn packing
paper. Through a lane of clanking drums he made his way towards Nannetti’s
reading closet.

WITH UNFEIGNED REGRET IT IS WE ANNOUNCE THE DISSOLUTION OF A MOST RESPECTED
DUBLIN BURGESS

Hynes here too: account of the funeral probably. Thumping. Thump. This morning
the remains of the late Mr Patrick Dignam. Machines. Smash a man to atoms if
they got him caught. Rule the world today. His machineries are pegging away
too. Like these, got out of hand: fermenting. Working away, tearing away. And
that old grey rat tearing to get in.

HOW A GREAT DAILY ORGAN IS TURNED OUT

Mr Bloom halted behind the foreman’s spare body, admiring a glossy crown.

Strange he never saw his real country. Ireland my country. Member for College
green. He boomed that workaday worker tack for all it was worth. It’s the ads
and side features sell a weekly, not the stale news in the official gazette.
Queen Anne is dead. Published by authority in the year one thousand and.
Demesne situate in the townland of Rosenallis, barony of Tinnahinch. To all
whom it may concern schedule pursuant to statute showing return of number of
mules and jennets exported from Ballina. Nature notes. Cartoons. Phil Blake’s
weekly Pat and Bull story. Uncle Toby’s page for tiny tots. Country bumpkin’s
queries. Dear Mr Editor, what is a good cure for flatulence? I’d like that
part. Learn a lot teaching others. The personal note. M. A. P. Mainly all
pictures. Shapely bathers on golden strand. World’s biggest balloon. Double
marriage of sisters celebrated. Two bridegrooms laughing heartily at each
other. Cuprani too, printer. More Irish than the Irish.

The machines clanked in threefour time. Thump, thump, thump. Now if he got
paralysed there and no-one knew how to stop them they’d clank on and on the
same, print it over and over and up and back. Monkeydoodle the whole thing.
Want a cool head.

—Well, get it into the evening edition, councillor, Hynes said.

Soon be calling him my lord mayor. Long John is backing him, they say.

The foreman, without answering, scribbled press on a corner of the sheet and
made a sign to a typesetter. He handed the sheet silently over the dirty glass
screen.

—Right: thanks, Hynes said moving off.

Mr Bloom stood in his way.

—If you want to draw the cashier is just going to lunch, he said,
pointing backward with his thumb.

—Did you? Hynes asked.

—Mm, Mr Bloom said. Look sharp and you’ll catch him.

—Thanks, old man, Hynes said. I’ll tap him too.

He hurried on eagerly towards the Freeman’s Journal.

Three bob I lent him in Meagher’s. Three weeks. Third hint.

WE SEE THE CANVASSER AT WORK

Mr Bloom laid his cutting on Mr Nannetti’s desk.

—Excuse me, councillor, he said. This ad, you see. Keyes, you remember?

Mr Nannetti considered the cutting awhile and nodded.

—He wants it in for July, Mr Bloom said.

The foreman moved his pencil towards it.

—But wait, Mr Bloom said. He wants it changed. Keyes, you see. He wants
two keys at the top.

Hell of a racket they make. He doesn’t hear it. Nannan. Iron nerves. Maybe he
understands what I.

The foreman turned round to hear patiently and, lifting an elbow, began to
scratch slowly in the armpit of his alpaca jacket.

—Like that, Mr Bloom said, crossing his forefingers at the top.

Let him take that in first.

Mr Bloom, glancing sideways up from the cross he had made, saw the foreman’s
sallow face, think he has a touch of jaundice, and beyond the obedient reels
feeding in huge webs of paper. Clank it. Clank it. Miles of it unreeled. What
becomes of it after? O, wrap up meat, parcels: various uses, thousand and one
things.

Slipping his words deftly into the pauses of the clanking he drew swiftly on
the scarred woodwork.

HOUSE OF KEY(E)S

—Like that, see. Two crossed keys here. A circle. Then here the name.
Alexander Keyes, tea, wine and spirit merchant. So on.

Better not teach him his own business.

—You know yourself, councillor, just what he wants. Then round the top in
leaded: the house of keys. You see? Do you think that’s a good idea?

The foreman moved his scratching hand to his lower ribs and scratched there
quietly.

—The idea, Mr Bloom said, is the house of keys. You know, councillor, the
Manx parliament. Innuendo of home rule. Tourists, you know, from the isle of
Man. Catches the eye, you see. Can you do that?

I could ask him perhaps about how to pronounce that voglio. But then if
he didn’t know only make it awkward for him. Better not.

—We can do that, the foreman said. Have you the design?

—I can get it, Mr Bloom said. It was in a Kilkenny paper. He has a house
there too. I’ll just run out and ask him. Well, you can do that and just a
little par calling attention. You know the usual. Highclass licensed premises.
Longfelt want. So on.

The foreman thought for an instant.

—We can do that, he said. Let him give us a three months’ renewal.

A typesetter brought him a limp galleypage. He began to check it silently. Mr
Bloom stood by, hearing the loud throbs of cranks, watching the silent
typesetters at their cases.

ORTHOGRAPHICAL

Want to be sure of his spelling. Proof fever. Martin Cunningham forgot to give
us his spellingbee conundrum this morning. It is amusing to view the unpar one
ar alleled embarra two ars is it? double ess ment of a harassed pedlar while
gauging au the symmetry with a y of a peeled pear under a cemetery wall. Silly,
isn’t it? Cemetery put in of course on account of the symmetry.

I should have said when he clapped on his topper. Thank you. I ought to have
said something about an old hat or something. No. I could have said. Looks as
good as new now. See his phiz then.

Sllt. The nethermost deck of the first machine jogged forward its flyboard with
sllt the first batch of quirefolded papers. Sllt. Almost human the way it sllt
to call attention. Doing its level best to speak. That door too sllt creaking,
asking to be shut. Everything speaks in its own way. Sllt.

NOTED CHURCHMAN AN OCCASIONAL CONTRIBUTOR

The foreman handed back the galleypage suddenly, saying:

—Wait. Where’s the archbishop’s letter? It’s to be repeated in the
Telegraph. Where’s what’s his name?

He looked about him round his loud unanswering machines.

—Monks, sir? a voice asked from the castingbox.

—Ay. Where’s Monks?

—Monks!

Mr Bloom took up his cutting. Time to get out.

—Then I’ll get the design, Mr Nannetti, he said, and you’ll give it a
good place I know.

—Monks!

—Yes, sir.

Three months’ renewal. Want to get some wind off my chest first. Try it anyhow.
Rub in August: good idea: horseshow month. Ballsbridge. Tourists over for the
show.

A DAYFATHER

He walked on through the caseroom passing an old man, bowed, spectacled,
aproned. Old Monks, the dayfather. Queer lot of stuff he must have put through
his hands in his time: obituary notices, pubs’ ads, speeches, divorce suits,
found drowned. Nearing the end of his tether now. Sober serious man with a bit
in the savingsbank I’d say. Wife a good cook and washer. Daughter working the
machine in the parlour. Plain Jane, no damn nonsense.

AND IT WAS THE FEAST OF THE PASSOVER

He stayed in his walk to watch a typesetter neatly distributing type. Reads it
backwards first. Quickly he does it. Must require some practice that. mangiD
kcirtaP. Poor papa with his hagadah book, reading backwards with his finger to
me. Pessach. Next year in Jerusalem. Dear, O dear! All that long business about
that brought us out of the land of Egypt and into the house of bondage
alleluia. Shema Israel Adonai Elohenu. No, that’s the other. Then the
twelve brothers, Jacob’s sons. And then the lamb and the cat and the dog and
the stick and the water and the butcher. And then the angel of death kills the
butcher and he kills the ox and the dog kills the cat. Sounds a bit silly till
you come to look into it well. Justice it means but it’s everybody eating
everyone else. That’s what life is after all. How quickly he does that job.
Practice makes perfect. Seems to see with his fingers.

Mr Bloom passed on out of the clanking noises through the gallery on to the
landing. Now am I going to tram it out all the way and then catch him out
perhaps. Better phone him up first. Number? Yes. Same as Citron’s house.
Twentyeight. Twentyeight double four.

ONLY ONCE MORE THAT SOAP

He went down the house staircase. Who the deuce scrawled all over those walls
with matches? Looks as if they did it for a bet. Heavy greasy smell there
always is in those works. Lukewarm glue in Thom’s next door when I was there.

He took out his handkerchief to dab his nose. Citronlemon? Ah, the soap I put
there. Lose it out of that pocket. Putting back his handkerchief he took out
the soap and stowed it away, buttoned, into the hip pocket of his trousers.

What perfume does your wife use? I could go home still: tram: something I
forgot. Just to see: before: dressing. No. Here. No.

A sudden screech of laughter came from the Evening Telegraph office.
Know who that is. What’s up? Pop in a minute to phone. Ned Lambert it is.

He entered softly.

ERIN, GREEN GEM OF THE SILVER SEA

—The ghost walks, professor MacHugh murmured softly, biscuitfully to the
dusty windowpane.

Mr Dedalus, staring from the empty fireplace at Ned Lambert’s quizzing face,
asked of it sourly:

—Agonising Christ, wouldn’t it give you a heartburn on your arse?

Ned Lambert, seated on the table, read on:

—Or again, note the meanderings of some purling rill as it babbles on
its way, tho’ quarrelling with the stony obstacles, to the tumbling waters of
Neptune’s blue domain, ’mid mossy banks, fanned by gentlest zephyrs, played on
by the glorious sunlight or ’neath the shadows cast o’er its pensive bosom by
the overarching leafage of the giants of the forest. What about that,
Simon? he asked over the fringe of his newspaper. How’s that for high?

—Changing his drink, Mr Dedalus said.

Ned Lambert, laughing, struck the newspaper on his knees, repeating:

—The pensive bosom and the overarsing leafage. O boys! O boys!

—And Xenophon looked upon Marathon, Mr Dedalus said, looking again on the
fireplace and to the window, and Marathon looked on the sea.

—That will do, professor MacHugh cried from the window. I don’t want to
hear any more of the stuff.

He ate off the crescent of water biscuit he had been nibbling and, hungered,
made ready to nibble the biscuit in his other hand.

High falutin stuff. Bladderbags. Ned Lambert is taking a day off I see. Rather
upsets a man’s day, a funeral does. He has influence they say. Old Chatterton,
the vicechancellor, is his granduncle or his greatgranduncle. Close on ninety
they say. Subleader for his death written this long time perhaps. Living to
spite them. Might go first himself. Johnny, make room for your uncle. The right
honourable Hedges Eyre Chatterton. Daresay he writes him an odd shaky cheque or
two on gale days. Windfall when he kicks out. Alleluia.

—Just another spasm, Ned Lambert said.

—What is it? Mr Bloom asked.

—A recently discovered fragment of Cicero, professor MacHugh answered
with pomp of tone. Our lovely land.

SHORT BUT TO THE POINT

—Whose land? Mr Bloom said simply.

—Most pertinent question, the professor said between his chews. With an
accent on the whose.

—Dan Dawson’s land Mr Dedalus said.

—Is it his speech last night? Mr Bloom asked.

Ned Lambert nodded.

—But listen to this, he said.

The doorknob hit Mr Bloom in the small of the back as the door was pushed in.

—Excuse me, J. J. O’Molloy said, entering.

Mr Bloom moved nimbly aside.

—I beg yours, he said.

—Good day, Jack.

—Come in. Come in.

—Good day.

—How are you, Dedalus?

—Well. And yourself?

J. J. O’Molloy shook his head.

SAD

Cleverest fellow at the junior bar he used to be. Decline, poor chap. That
hectic flush spells finis for a man. Touch and go with him. What’s in the wind,
I wonder. Money worry.

—Or again if we but climb the serried mountain peaks.

—You’re looking extra.

—Is the editor to be seen? J. J. O’Molloy asked, looking towards the
inner door.

—Very much so, professor MacHugh said. To be seen and heard. He’s in his
sanctum with Lenehan.

J. J. O’Molloy strolled to the sloping desk and began to turn back the pink
pages of the file.

Practice dwindling. A mighthavebeen. Losing heart. Gambling. Debts of honour.
Reaping the whirlwind. Used to get good retainers from D. and T. Fitzgerald.
Their wigs to show the grey matter. Brains on their sleeve like the statue in
Glasnevin. Believe he does some literary work for the Express with
Gabriel Conroy. Wellread fellow. Myles Crawford began on the
Independent. Funny the way those newspaper men veer about when they get
wind of a new opening. Weathercocks. Hot and cold in the same breath. Wouldn’t
know which to believe. One story good till you hear the next. Go for one
another baldheaded in the papers and then all blows over. Hail fellow well met
the next moment.

—Ah, listen to this for God’ sake, Ned Lambert pleaded. Or again if we
but climb the serried mountain peaks…

—Bombast! the professor broke in testily. Enough of the inflated windbag!

—Peaks, Ned Lambert went on, towering high on high, to bathe
our souls, as it were…

—Bathe his lips, Mr Dedalus said. Blessed and eternal God! Yes? Is he
taking anything for it?

—As ’twere, in the peerless panorama of Ireland’s portfolio,
unmatched, despite their wellpraised prototypes in other vaunted prize regions,
for very beauty, of bosky grove and undulating plain and luscious pastureland
of vernal green, steeped in the transcendent translucent glow of our mild
mysterious Irish twilight…

HIS NATIVE DORIC

—The moon, professor MacHugh said. He forgot Hamlet.

—That mantles the vista far and wide and wait till the glowing orb of
the moon shine forth to irradiate her silver effulgence…

—O! Mr Dedalus cried, giving vent to a hopeless groan. Shite and onions!
That’ll do, Ned. Life is too short.

He took off his silk hat and, blowing out impatiently his bushy moustache,
welshcombed his hair with raking fingers.

Ned Lambert tossed the newspaper aside, chuckling with delight. An instant
after a hoarse bark of laughter burst over professor MacHugh’s unshaven
blackspectacled face.

—Doughy Daw! he cried.

WHAT WETHERUP SAID

All very fine to jeer at it now in cold print but it goes down like hot cake
that stuff. He was in the bakery line too, wasn’t he? Why they call him Doughy
Daw. Feathered his nest well anyhow. Daughter engaged to that chap in the
inland revenue office with the motor. Hooked that nicely. Entertainments. Open
house. Big blowout. Wetherup always said that. Get a grip of them by the
stomach.

The inner door was opened violently and a scarlet beaked face, crested by a
comb of feathery hair, thrust itself in. The bold blue eyes stared about them
and the harsh voice asked:

—What is it?

—And here comes the sham squire himself! professor MacHugh said grandly.

—Getonouthat, you bloody old pedagogue! the editor said in recognition.

—Come, Ned, Mr Dedalus said, putting on his hat. I must get a drink after
that.

—Drink! the editor cried. No drinks served before mass.

—Quite right too, Mr Dedalus said, going out. Come on, Ned.

Ned Lambert sidled down from the table. The editor’s blue eyes roved towards Mr
Bloom’s face, shadowed by a smile.

—Will you join us, Myles? Ned Lambert asked.

MEMORABLE BATTLES RECALLED

—North Cork militia! the editor cried, striding to the mantelpiece. We
won every time! North Cork and Spanish officers!

—Where was that, Myles? Ned Lambert asked with a reflective glance at his
toecaps.

—In Ohio! the editor shouted.

—So it was, begad, Ned Lambert agreed.

Passing out he whispered to J. J. O’Molloy:

—Incipient jigs. Sad case.

—Ohio! the editor crowed in high treble from his uplifted scarlet face.
My Ohio!

—A perfect cretic! the professor said. Long, short and long.

O, HARP EOLIAN!

He took a reel of dental floss from his waistcoat pocket and, breaking off a
piece, twanged it smartly between two and two of his resonant unwashed teeth.

—Bingbang, bangbang.

Mr Bloom, seeing the coast clear, made for the inner door.

—Just a moment, Mr Crawford, he said. I just want to phone about an ad.

He went in.

—What about that leader this evening? professor MacHugh asked, coming to
the editor and laying a firm hand on his shoulder.

—That’ll be all right, Myles Crawford said more calmly. Never you fret.
Hello, Jack. That’s all right.

—Good day, Myles, J. J. O’Molloy said, letting the pages he held slip
limply back on the file. Is that Canada swindle case on today?

The telephone whirred inside.

—Twentyeight… No, twenty… Double four… Yes.

SPOT THE WINNER

Lenehan came out of the inner office with Sport’s tissues.

—Who wants a dead cert for the Gold cup? he asked. Sceptre with O. Madden
up.

He tossed the tissues on to the table.

Screams of newsboys barefoot in the hall rushed near and the door was flung
open.

—Hush, Lenehan said. I hear feetstoops.

Professor MacHugh strode across the room and seized the cringing urchin by the
collar as the others scampered out of the hall and down the steps. The tissues
rustled up in the draught, floated softly in the air blue scrawls and under the
table came to earth.

—It wasn’t me, sir. It was the big fellow shoved me, sir.

—Throw him out and shut the door, the editor said. There’s a hurricane
blowing.

Lenehan began to paw the tissues up from the floor, grunting as he stooped
twice.

—Waiting for the racing special, sir, the newsboy said. It was Pat
Farrell shoved me, sir.

He pointed to two faces peering in round the doorframe.

—Him, sir.

—Out of this with you, professor MacHugh said gruffly.

He hustled the boy out and banged the door to.

J. J. O’Molloy turned the files crackingly over, murmuring, seeking:

—Continued on page six, column four.

—Yes, Evening Telegraph here, Mr Bloom phoned from the inner
office. Is the boss…? Yes, Telegraph… To where? Aha! Which auction
rooms?… Aha! I see… Right. I’ll catch him.

A COLLISION ENSUES

The bell whirred again as he rang off. He came in quickly and bumped against
Lenehan who was struggling up with the second tissue.

—Pardon, monsieur, Lenehan said, clutching him for an instant and
making a grimace.

—My fault, Mr Bloom said, suffering his grip. Are you hurt? I’m in a
hurry.

—Knee, Lenehan said.

He made a comic face and whined, rubbing his knee:

—The accumulation of the anno Domini.

—Sorry, Mr Bloom said.

He went to the door and, holding it ajar, paused. J. J. O’Molloy slapped the
heavy pages over. The noise of two shrill voices, a mouthorgan, echoed in the
bare hallway from the newsboys squatted on the doorsteps:

We are the boys of Wexford
Who fought with heart and hand.

EXIT BLOOM

—I’m just running round to Bachelor’s walk, Mr Bloom said, about this ad
of Keyes’s. Want to fix it up. They tell me he’s round there in Dillon’s.

He looked indecisively for a moment at their faces. The editor who, leaning
against the mantelshelf, had propped his head on his hand, suddenly stretched
forth an arm amply.

—Begone! he said. The world is before you.

—Back in no time, Mr Bloom said, hurrying out.

J. J. O’Molloy took the tissues from Lenehan’s hand and read them, blowing them
apart gently, without comment.

—He’ll get that advertisement, the professor said, staring through his
blackrimmed spectacles over the crossblind. Look at the young scamps after him.

—Show. Where? Lenehan cried, running to the window.

A STREET CORTÈGE

Both smiled over the crossblind at the file of capering newsboys in Mr Bloom’s
wake, the last zigzagging white on the breeze a mocking kite, a tail of white
bowknots.

—Look at the young guttersnipe behind him hue and cry, Lenehan said, and
you’ll kick. O, my rib risible! Taking off his flat spaugs and the walk. Small
nines. Steal upon larks.

He began to mazurka in swift caricature across the floor on sliding feet past
the fireplace to J. J. O’Molloy who placed the tissues in his receiving hands.

—What’s that? Myles Crawford said with a start. Where are the other two
gone?

—Who? the professor said, turning. They’re gone round to the Oval for a
drink. Paddy Hooper is there with Jack Hall. Came over last night.

—Come on then, Myles Crawford said. Where’s my hat?

He walked jerkily into the office behind, parting the vent of his jacket,
jingling his keys in his back pocket. They jingled then in the air and against
the wood as he locked his desk drawer.

—He’s pretty well on, professor MacHugh said in a low voice.

—Seems to be, J. J. O’Molloy said, taking out a cigarettecase in
murmuring meditation, but it is not always as it seems. Who has the most
matches?

THE CALUMET OF PEACE

He offered a cigarette to the professor and took one himself. Lenehan promptly
struck a match for them and lit their cigarettes in turn. J. J. O’Molloy opened
his case again and offered it.

—Thanky vous, Lenehan said, helping himself.

The editor came from the inner office, a straw hat awry on his brow. He
declaimed in song, pointing sternly at professor MacHugh:

’Twas rank and fame that tempted thee,
’Twas empire charmed thy heart.

The professor grinned, locking his long lips.

—Eh? You bloody old Roman empire? Myles Crawford said.

He took a cigarette from the open case. Lenehan, lighting it for him with quick
grace, said:

—Silence for my brandnew riddle!

—Imperium romanum, J. J. O’Molloy said gently. It sounds nobler
than British or Brixton. The word reminds one somehow of fat in the fire.

Myles Crawford blew his first puff violently towards the ceiling.

—That’s it, he said. We are the fat. You and I are the fat in the fire.
We haven’t got the chance of a snowball in hell.

THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME

—Wait a moment, professor MacHugh said, raising two quiet claws. We
mustn’t be led away by words, by sounds of words. We think of Rome, imperial,
imperious, imperative.

He extended elocutionary arms from frayed stained shirtcuffs, pausing:

—What was their civilisation? Vast, I allow: but vile. Cloacae: sewers.
The Jews in the wilderness and on the mountaintop said: It is meet to be
here. Let us build an altar to Jehovah. The Roman, like the Englishman who
follows in his footsteps, brought to every new shore on which he set his foot
(on our shore he never set it) only his cloacal obsession. He gazed about him
in his toga and he said: It is meet to be here. Let us construct a
watercloset.

—Which they accordingly did do, Lenehan said. Our old ancient ancestors,
as we read in the first chapter of Guinness’s, were partial to the running
stream.

—They were nature’s gentlemen, J. J. O’Molloy murmured. But we have also
Roman law.

—And Pontius Pilate is its prophet, professor MacHugh responded.

—Do you know that story about chief baron Palles? J. J. O’Molloy asked.
It was at the royal university dinner. Everything was going swimmingly …

—First my riddle, Lenehan said. Are you ready?

Mr O’Madden Burke, tall in copious grey of Donegal tweed, came in from the
hallway. Stephen Dedalus, behind him, uncovered as he entered.

—Entrez, mes enfants! Lenehan cried.

—I escort a suppliant, Mr O’Madden Burke said melodiously. Youth led by
Experience visits Notoriety.

—How do you do? the editor said, holding out a hand. Come in. Your
governor is just gone.

???

Lenehan said to all:

—Silence! What opera resembles a railwayline? Reflect, ponder,
excogitate, reply.

Stephen handed over the typed sheets, pointing to the title and signature.

—Who? the editor asked.

Bit torn off.

—Mr Garrett Deasy, Stephen said.

—That old pelters, the editor said. Who tore it? Was he short taken?

On swift sail flaming
From storm and south
He comes, pale vampire,
Mouth to my mouth.

—Good day, Stephen, the professor said, coming to peer over their
shoulders. Foot and mouth? Are you turned…?

Bullockbefriending bard.

SHINDY IN WELLKNOWN RESTAURANT

—Good day, sir, Stephen answered blushing. The letter is not mine. Mr
Garrett Deasy asked me to…

—O, I know him, Myles Crawford said, and I knew his wife too. The
bloodiest old tartar God ever made. By Jesus, she had the foot and mouth
disease and no mistake! The night she threw the soup in the waiter’s face in
the Star and Garter. Oho!

A woman brought sin into the world. For Helen, the runaway wife of Menelaus,
ten years the Greeks. O’Rourke, prince of Breffni.

—Is he a widower? Stephen asked.

—Ay, a grass one, Myles Crawford said, his eye running down the
typescript. Emperor’s horses. Habsburg. An Irishman saved his life on the
ramparts of Vienna. Don’t you forget! Maximilian Karl O’Donnell, graf von
Tirconnell in Ireland. Sent his heir over to make the king an Austrian
fieldmarshal now. Going to be trouble there one day. Wild geese. O yes, every
time. Don’t you forget that!

—The moot point is did he forget it, J. J. O’Molloy said quietly, turning
a horseshoe paperweight. Saving princes is a thank you job.

Professor MacHugh turned on him.

—And if not? he said.

—I’ll tell you how it was, Myles Crawford began. A Hungarian it was one
day…

LOST CAUSES NOBLE MARQUESS MENTIONED

—We were always loyal to lost causes, the professor said. Success for us
is the death of the intellect and of the imagination. We were never loyal to
the successful. We serve them. I teach the blatant Latin language. I speak the
tongue of a race the acme of whose mentality is the maxim: time is money.
Material domination. Dominus! Lord! Where is the spirituality? Lord
Jesus? Lord Salisbury? A sofa in a westend club. But the Greek!

KYRIE ELEISON!

A smile of light brightened his darkrimmed eyes, lengthened his long lips.

—The Greek! he said again. Kyrios! Shining word! The vowels the
Semite and the Saxon know not. Kyrie! The radiance of the intellect. I
ought to profess Greek, the language of the mind. Kyrie eleison! The
closetmaker and the cloacamaker will never be lords of our spirit. We are liege
subjects of the catholic chivalry of Europe that foundered at Trafalgar and of
the empire of the spirit, not an imperium, that went under with the
Athenian fleets at Aegospotami. Yes, yes. They went under. Pyrrhus, misled by
an oracle, made a last attempt to retrieve the fortunes of Greece. Loyal to a
lost cause.

He strode away from them towards the window.

—They went forth to battle, Mr O’Madden Burke said greyly, but they
always fell.

—Boohoo! Lenehan wept with a little noise. Owing to a brick received in
the latter half of the matinée. Poor, poor, poor Pyrrhus!

He whispered then near Stephen’s ear:

LENEHAN’S LIMERICK

—There’s a ponderous pundit MacHugh
Who wears goggles of ebony hue.
As he mostly sees double
To wear them why trouble?
I can’t see the Joe Miller. Can you?

In mourning for Sallust, Mulligan says. Whose mother is beastly dead.

Myles Crawford crammed the sheets into a sidepocket.

—That’ll be all right, he said. I’ll read the rest after. That’ll be all
right.

Lenehan extended his hands in protest.

—But my riddle! he said. What opera is like a railwayline?

—Opera? Mr O’Madden Burke’s sphinx face reriddled.

Lenehan announced gladly:

—The Rose of Castile. See the wheeze? Rows of cast steel. Gee!

He poked Mr O’Madden Burke mildly in the spleen. Mr O’Madden Burke fell back
with grace on his umbrella, feigning a gasp.

—Help! he sighed. I feel a strong weakness.

Lenehan, rising to tiptoe, fanned his face rapidly with the rustling tissues.

The professor, returning by way of the files, swept his hand across Stephen’s
and Mr O’Madden Burke’s loose ties.

—Paris, past and present, he said. You look like communards.

—Like fellows who had blown up the Bastile, J. J. O’Molloy said in quiet
mockery. Or was it you shot the lord lieutenant of Finland between you? You
look as though you had done the deed. General Bobrikoff.

OMNIUM GATHERUM

—We were only thinking about it, Stephen said.

—All the talents, Myles Crawford said. Law, the classics…

—The turf, Lenehan put in.

—Literature, the press.

—If Bloom were here, the professor said. The gentle art of advertisement.

—And Madam Bloom, Mr O’Madden Burke added. The vocal muse. Dublin’s prime
favourite.

Lenehan gave a loud cough.

—Ahem! he said very softly. O, for a fresh of breath air! I caught a cold
in the park. The gate was open.

“YOU CAN DO IT!”

The editor laid a nervous hand on Stephen’s shoulder.

—I want you to write something for me, he said. Something with a bite in
it. You can do it. I see it in your face. In the lexicon of youth…

See it in your face. See it in your eye. Lazy idle little schemer.

—Foot and mouth disease! the editor cried in scornful invective. Great
nationalist meeting in Borris-in-Ossory. All balls! Bulldosing the public! Give
them something with a bite in it. Put us all into it, damn its soul. Father,
Son and Holy Ghost and Jakes M’Carthy.

—We can all supply mental pabulum, Mr O’Madden Burke said.

Stephen raised his eyes to the bold unheeding stare.

—He wants you for the pressgang, J. J. O’Molloy said.

THE GREAT GALLAHER

—You can do it, Myles Crawford repeated, clenching his hand in emphasis.
Wait a minute. We’ll paralyse Europe as Ignatius Gallaher used to say when he
was on the shaughraun, doing billiardmarking in the Clarence. Gallaher, that
was a pressman for you. That was a pen. You know how he made his mark? I’ll
tell you. That was the smartest piece of journalism ever known. That was in
eightyone, sixth of May, time of the invincibles, murder in the Phoenix park,
before you were born, I suppose. I’ll show you.

He pushed past them to the files.

—Look at here, he said turning. The New York World cabled for a
special. Remember that time?

Professor MacHugh nodded.

—New York World, the editor said, excitedly pushing back his straw
hat. Where it took place. Tim Kelly, or Kavanagh I mean. Joe Brady and the rest
of them. Where Skin-the-Goat drove the car. Whole route, see?

—Skin-the-Goat, Mr O’Madden Burke said. Fitzharris. He has that cabman’s
shelter, they say, down there at Butt bridge. Holohan told me. You know
Holohan?

—Hop and carry one, is it? Myles Crawford said.

—And poor Gumley is down there too, so he told me, minding stones for the
corporation. A night watchman.

Stephen turned in surprise.

—Gumley? he said. You don’t say so? A friend of my father’s, is it?

—Never mind Gumley, Myles Crawford cried angrily. Let Gumley mind the
stones, see they don’t run away. Look at here. What did Ignatius Gallaher do?
I’ll tell you. Inspiration of genius. Cabled right away. Have you Weekly
Freeman of 17 March? Right. Have you got that?

He flung back pages of the files and stuck his finger on a point.

—Take page four, advertisement for Bransome’s coffee, let us say. Have
you got that? Right.

The telephone whirred.

A DISTANT VOICE

—I’ll answer it, the professor said, going.

—B is parkgate. Good.

His finger leaped and struck point after point, vibrating.

—T is viceregal lodge. C is where murder took place. K is Knockmaroon
gate.

The loose flesh of his neck shook like a cock’s wattles. An illstarched dicky
jutted up and with a rude gesture he thrust it back into his waistcoat.

—Hello? Evening Telegraph here… Hello?… Who’s there?… Yes…
Yes… Yes.

—F to P is the route Skin-the-Goat drove the car for an alibi, Inchicore,
Roundtown, Windy Arbour, Palmerston Park, Ranelagh. F.A.B.P. Got that? X is
Davy’s publichouse in upper Leeson street.

The professor came to the inner door.

—Bloom is at the telephone, he said.

—Tell him go to hell, the editor said promptly. X is Davy’s publichouse,
see?

CLEVER, VERY

—Clever, Lenehan said. Very.

—Gave it to them on a hot plate, Myles Crawford said, the whole bloody
history.

Nightmare from which you will never awake.

—I saw it, the editor said proudly. I was present. Dick Adams, the
besthearted bloody Corkman the Lord ever put the breath of life in, and myself.

Lenehan bowed to a shape of air, announcing:

—Madam, I’m Adam. And Able was I ere I saw Elba.

—History! Myles Crawford cried. The Old Woman of Prince’s street was
there first. There was weeping and gnashing of teeth over that. Out of an
advertisement. Gregor Grey made the design for it. That gave him the leg up.
Then Paddy Hooper worked Tay Pay who took him on to the Star. Now he’s
got in with Blumenfeld. That’s press. That’s talent. Pyatt! He was all their
daddies!

—The father of scare journalism, Lenehan confirmed, and the
brother-in-law of Chris Callinan.

—Hello?… Are you there?… Yes, he’s here still. Come across yourself.

—Where do you find a pressman like that now, eh? the editor cried.

He flung the pages down.

—Clamn dever, Lenehan said to Mr O’Madden Burke.

—Very smart, Mr O’Madden Burke said.

Professor MacHugh came from the inner office.

—Talking about the invincibles, he said, did you see that some hawkers
were up before the recorder…

—O yes, J. J. O’Molloy said eagerly. Lady Dudley was walking home through
the park to see all the trees that were blown down by that cyclone last year
and thought she’d buy a view of Dublin. And it turned out to be a commemoration
postcard of Joe Brady or Number One or Skin-the-Goat. Right outside the
viceregal lodge, imagine!

—They’re only in the hook and eye department, Myles Crawford said. Psha!
Press and the bar! Where have you a man now at the bar like those fellows, like
Whiteside, like Isaac Butt, like silvertongued O’Hagan. Eh? Ah, bloody
nonsense. Psha! Only in the halfpenny place.

His mouth continued to twitch unspeaking in nervous curls of disdain.

Would anyone wish that mouth for her kiss? How do you know? Why did you write
it then?

RHYMES AND REASONS

Mouth, south. Is the mouth south someway? Or the south a mouth? Must be some.
South, pout, out, shout, drouth. Rhymes: two men dressed the same, looking the
same, two by two.

…………………… la tua pace
……………… che parlar ti piace
Mentre che il vento, come fa, si tace.

He saw them three by three, approaching girls, in green, in rose, in russet,
entwining, per l’aer perso, in mauve, in purple, quella pacifica
oriafiamma, gold of oriflamme, di rimirar fè più ardenti. But I old
men, penitent, leadenfooted, underdarkneath the night: mouth south: tomb womb.

—Speak up for yourself, Mr O’Madden Burke said.

SUFFICIENT FOR THE DAY…

J. J. O’Molloy, smiling palely, took up the gage.

—My dear Myles, he said, flinging his cigarette aside, you put a false
construction on my words. I hold no brief, as at present advised, for the third
profession qua profession but your Cork legs are running away with you.
Why not bring in Henry Grattan and Flood and Demosthenes and Edmund Burke?
Ignatius Gallaher we all know and his Chapelizod boss, Harmsworth of the
farthing press, and his American cousin of the Bowery guttersheet not to
mention Paddy Kelly’s Budget, Pue’s Occurrences and our watchful
friend The Skibbereen Eagle. Why bring in a master of forensic eloquence
like Whiteside? Sufficient for the day is the newspaper thereof.

LINKS WITH BYGONE DAYS OF YORE

—Grattan and Flood wrote for this very paper, the editor cried in his
face. Irish volunteers. Where are you now? Established 1763. Dr Lucas. Who have
you now like John Philpot Curran? Psha!

—Well, J. J. O’Molloy said, Bushe K.C., for example.

—Bushe? the editor said. Well, yes: Bushe, yes. He has a strain of it in
his blood. Kendal Bushe or I mean Seymour Bushe.

—He would have been on the bench long ago, the professor said, only for
…. But no matter.

J. J. O’Molloy turned to Stephen and said quietly and slowly:

—One of the most polished periods I think I ever listened to in my life
fell from the lips of Seymour Bushe. It was in that case of fratricide, the
Childs murder case. Bushe defended him.

And in the porches of mine ear did pour.

By the way how did he find that out? He died in his sleep. Or the other story,
beast with two backs?

—What was that? the professor asked.

ITALIA, MAGISTRA ARTIUM

—He spoke on the law of evidence, J. J. O’Molloy said, of Roman justice
as contrasted with the earlier Mosaic code, the lex talionis. And he
cited the Moses of Michelangelo in the vatican.

—Ha.

—A few wellchosen words, Lenehan prefaced. Silence!

Pause. J. J. O’Molloy took out his cigarettecase.

False lull. Something quite ordinary.

Messenger took out his matchbox thoughtfully and lit his cigar.

I have often thought since on looking back over that strange time that it was
that small act, trivial in itself, that striking of that match, that determined
the whole aftercourse of both our lives.

A POLISHED PERIOD

J. J. O’Molloy resumed, moulding his words:

—He said of it: that stony effigy in frozen music, horned and
terrible, of the human form divine, that eternal symbol of wisdom and of
prophecy which, if aught that the imagination or the hand of sculptor has
wrought in marble of soultransfigured and of soultransfiguring deserves to
live, deserves to live.

His slim hand with a wave graced echo and fall.

—Fine! Myles Crawford said at once.

—The divine afflatus, Mr O’Madden Burke said.

—You like it? J. J. O’Molloy asked Stephen.

Stephen, his blood wooed by grace of language and gesture, blushed. He took a
cigarette from the case. J. J. O’Molloy offered his case to Myles Crawford.
Lenehan lit their cigarettes as before and took his trophy, saying:

—Muchibus thankibus.

A MAN OF HIGH MORALE

—Professor Magennis was speaking to me about you, J. J. O’Molloy said to
Stephen. What do you think really of that hermetic crowd, the opal hush poets:
A. E. the mastermystic? That Blavatsky woman started it. She was a nice old bag
of tricks. A. E. has been telling some yankee interviewer that you came to him
in the small hours of the morning to ask him about planes of consciousness.
Magennis thinks you must have been pulling A. E.’s leg. He is a man of the very
highest morale, Magennis.

Speaking about me. What did he say? What did he say? What did he say about me?
Don’t ask.

—No, thanks, professor MacHugh said, waving the cigarettecase aside. Wait
a moment. Let me say one thing. The finest display of oratory I ever heard was
a speech made by John F Taylor at the college historical society. Mr Justice
Fitzgibbon, the present lord justice of appeal, had spoken and the paper under
debate was an essay (new for those days), advocating the revival of the Irish
tongue.

He turned towards Myles Crawford and said:

—You know Gerald Fitzgibbon. Then you can imagine the style of his
discourse.

—He is sitting with Tim Healy, J. J. O’Molloy said, rumour has it, on the
Trinity college estates commission.

—He is sitting with a sweet thing, Myles Crawford said, in a child’s
frock. Go on. Well?

—It was the speech, mark you, the professor said, of a finished orator,
full of courteous haughtiness and pouring in chastened diction I will not say
the vials of his wrath but pouring the proud man’s contumely upon the new
movement. It was then a new movement. We were weak, therefore worthless.

He closed his long thin lips an instant but, eager to be on, raised an
outspanned hand to his spectacles and, with trembling thumb and ringfinger
touching lightly the black rims, steadied them to a new focus.

IMPROMPTU

In ferial tone he addressed J. J. O’Molloy:

—Taylor had come there, you must know, from a sickbed. That he had
prepared his speech I do not believe for there was not even one shorthandwriter
in the hall. His dark lean face had a growth of shaggy beard round it. He wore
a loose white silk neckcloth and altogether he looked (though he was not) a
dying man.

His gaze turned at once but slowly from J. J. O’Molloy’s towards Stephen’s face
and then bent at once to the ground, seeking. His unglazed linen collar
appeared behind his bent head, soiled by his withering hair. Still seeking, he
said:

—When Fitzgibbon’s speech had ended John F Taylor rose to reply. Briefly,
as well as I can bring them to mind, his words were these.

He raised his head firmly. His eyes bethought themselves once more. Witless
shellfish swam in the gross lenses to and fro, seeking outlet.

He began:

—Mr Chairman, ladies and gentlemen: Great was my admiration in
listening to the remarks addressed to the youth of Ireland a moment since by my
learned friend. It seemed to me that I had been transported into a country far
away from this country, into an age remote from this age, that I stood in
ancient Egypt and that I was listening to the speech of some highpriest of that
land addressed to the youthful Moses.

His listeners held their cigarettes poised to hear, their smokes ascending in
frail stalks that flowered with his speech. And let our crooked smokes.
Noble words coming. Look out. Could you try your hand at it yourself?

—And it seemed to me that I heard the voice of that Egyptian
highpriest raised in a tone of like haughtiness and like pride. I heard his
words and their meaning was revealed to me.

FROM THE FATHERS

It was revealed to me that those things are good which yet are corrupted which
neither if they were supremely good nor unless they were good could be
corrupted. Ah, curse you! That’s saint Augustine.

—Why will you jews not accept our culture, our religion and our
language? You are a tribe of nomad herdsmen: we are a mighty people. You have
no cities nor no wealth: our cities are hives of humanity and our galleys,
trireme and quadrireme, laden with all manner merchandise furrow the waters of
the known globe. You have but emerged from primitive conditions: we have a
literature, a priesthood, an agelong history and a polity.

Nile.

Child, man, effigy.

By the Nilebank the babemaries kneel, cradle of bulrushes: a man supple in
combat: stonehorned, stonebearded, heart of stone.

—You pray to a local and obscure idol: our temples, majestic and
mysterious, are the abodes of Isis and Osiris, of Horus and Ammon Ra. Yours
serfdom, awe and humbleness: ours thunder and the seas. Israel is weak and few
are her children: Egypt is an host and terrible are her arms. Vagrants and
daylabourers are you called: the world trembles at our name.

A dumb belch of hunger cleft his speech. He lifted his voice above it boldly:

—But, ladies and gentlemen, had the youthful Moses listened to and
accepted that view of life, had he bowed his head and bowed his will and bowed
his spirit before that arrogant admonition he would never have brought the
chosen people out of their house of bondage, nor followed the pillar of the
cloud by day. He would never have spoken with the Eternal amid lightnings on
Sinai’s mountaintop nor ever have come down with the light of inspiration
shining in his countenance and bearing in his arms the tables of the law,
graven in the language of the outlaw.

He ceased and looked at them, enjoying a silence.

OMINOUS—FOR HIM!

J. J. O’Molloy said not without regret:

—And yet he died without having entered the land of promise.

—A—sudden—at—the—moment—though—from—lingering—illness—often—previously—expectorated—demise, Lenehan added. And with a great future behind him.

The troop of bare feet was heard rushing along the hallway and pattering up the
staircase.

—That is oratory, the professor said uncontradicted.

Gone with the wind. Hosts at Mullaghmast and Tara of the kings. Miles of ears
of porches. The tribune’s words, howled and scattered to the four winds. A
people sheltered within his voice. Dead noise. Akasic records of all that ever
anywhere wherever was. Love and laud him: me no more.

I have money.

—Gentlemen, Stephen said. As the next motion on the agenda paper may I
suggest that the house do now adjourn?

—You take my breath away. It is not perchance a French compliment? Mr
O’Madden Burke asked. ’Tis the hour, methinks, when the winejug, metaphorically
speaking, is most grateful in Ye ancient hostelry.

—That it be and hereby is resolutely resolved. All that are in favour say
ay, Lenehan announced. The contrary no. I declare it carried. To which
particular boosing shed…? My casting vote is: Mooney’s!

He led the way, admonishing:

—We will sternly refuse to partake of strong waters, will we not? Yes, we
will not. By no manner of means.

Mr O’Madden Burke, following close, said with an ally’s lunge of his umbrella:

—Lay on, Macduff!

—Chip of the old block! the editor cried, clapping Stephen on the
shoulder. Let us go. Where are those blasted keys?

He fumbled in his pocket pulling out the crushed typesheets.

—Foot and mouth. I know. That’ll be all right. That’ll go in. Where are
they? That’s all right.

He thrust the sheets back and went into the inner office.

LET US HOPE

J. J. O’Molloy, about to follow him in, said quietly to Stephen:

—I hope you will live to see it published. Myles, one moment.

He went into the inner office, closing the door behind him.

—Come along, Stephen, the professor said. That is fine, isn’t it? It has
the prophetic vision. Fuit Ilium! The sack of windy Troy. Kingdoms of
this world. The masters of the Mediterranean are fellaheen today.

The first newsboy came pattering down the stairs at their heels and rushed out
into the street, yelling:

—Racing special!

Dublin. I have much, much to learn.

They turned to the left along Abbey street.

—I have a vision too, Stephen said.

—Yes? the professor said, skipping to get into step. Crawford will
follow.

Another newsboy shot past them, yelling as he ran:

—Racing special!

DEAR DIRTY DUBLIN

Dubliners.

—Two Dublin vestals, Stephen said, elderly and pious, have lived fifty
and fiftythree years in Fumbally’s lane.

—Where is that? the professor asked.

—Off Blackpitts, Stephen said.

Damp night reeking of hungry dough. Against the wall. Face glistering tallow
under her fustian shawl. Frantic hearts. Akasic records. Quicker, darlint!

On now. Dare it. Let there be life.

—They want to see the views of Dublin from the top of Nelson’s pillar.
They save up three and tenpence in a red tin letterbox moneybox. They shake out
the threepenny bits and sixpences and coax out the pennies with the blade of a
knife. Two and three in silver and one and seven in coppers. They put on their
bonnets and best clothes and take their umbrellas for fear it may come on to
rain.

—Wise virgins, professor MacHugh said.

LIFE ON THE RAW

—They buy one and fourpenceworth of brawn and four slices of panloaf at
the north city diningrooms in Marlborough street from Miss Kate Collins,
proprietress… They purchase four and twenty ripe plums from a girl at the
foot of Nelson’s pillar to take off the thirst of the brawn. They give two
threepenny bits to the gentleman at the turnstile and begin to waddle slowly up
the winding staircase, grunting, encouraging each other, afraid of the dark,
panting, one asking the other have you the brawn, praising God and the Blessed
Virgin, threatening to come down, peeping at the airslits. Glory be to God.
They had no idea it was that high.

Their names are Anne Kearns and Florence MacCabe. Anne Kearns has the lumbago
for which she rubs on Lourdes water, given her by a lady who got a bottleful
from a passionist father. Florence MacCabe takes a crubeen and a bottle of
double X for supper every Saturday.

—Antithesis, the professor said nodding twice. Vestal virgins. I can see
them. What’s keeping our friend?

He turned.

A bevy of scampering newsboys rushed down the steps, scattering in all
directions, yelling, their white papers fluttering. Hard after them Myles
Crawford appeared on the steps, his hat aureoling his scarlet face, talking
with J. J. O’Molloy.

—Come along, the professor cried, waving his arm.

He set off again to walk by Stephen’s side.

RETURN OF BLOOM

—Yes, he said. I see them.

Mr Bloom, breathless, caught in a whirl of wild newsboys near the offices of
the Irish Catholic and Dublin Penny Journal, called:

—Mr Crawford! A moment!

—Telegraph! Racing special!

—What is it? Myles Crawford said, falling back a pace.

A newsboy cried in Mr Bloom’s face:

—Terrible tragedy in Rathmines! A child bit by a bellows!

INTERVIEW WITH THE EDITOR

—Just this ad, Mr Bloom said, pushing through towards the steps, puffing,
and taking the cutting from his pocket. I spoke with Mr Keyes just now. He’ll
give a renewal for two months, he says. After he’ll see. But he wants a par to
call attention in the Telegraph too, the Saturday pink. And he wants it
copied if it’s not too late I told councillor Nannetti from the Kilkenny
People. I can have access to it in the national library. House of keys,
don’t you see? His name is Keyes. It’s a play on the name. But he practically
promised he’d give the renewal. But he wants just a little puff. What will I
tell him, Mr Crawford?

K.M.A.

—Will you tell him he can kiss my arse? Myles Crawford said throwing out
his arm for emphasis. Tell him that straight from the stable.

A bit nervy. Look out for squalls. All off for a drink. Arm in arm. Lenehan’s
yachting cap on the cadge beyond. Usual blarney. Wonder is that young Dedalus
the moving spirit. Has a good pair of boots on him today. Last time I saw him
he had his heels on view. Been walking in muck somewhere. Careless chap. What
was he doing in Irishtown?

—Well, Mr Bloom said, his eyes returning, if I can get the design I
suppose it’s worth a short par. He’d give the ad, I think. I’ll tell him…

K.M.R.I.A.

—He can kiss my royal Irish arse, Myles Crawford cried loudly over his
shoulder. Any time he likes, tell him.

While Mr Bloom stood weighing the point and about to smile he strode on
jerkily.

RAISING THE WIND

—Nulla bona, Jack, he said, raising his hand to his chin. I’m up
to here. I’ve been through the hoop myself. I was looking for a fellow to back
a bill for me no later than last week. Sorry, Jack. You must take the will for
the deed. With a heart and a half if I could raise the wind anyhow.

J. J. O’Molloy pulled a long face and walked on silently. They caught up on the
others and walked abreast.

—When they have eaten the brawn and the bread and wiped their twenty
fingers in the paper the bread was wrapped in they go nearer to the railings.

—Something for you, the professor explained to Myles Crawford. Two old
Dublin women on the top of Nelson’s pillar.

SOME COLUMN!—THAT’S WHAT WADDLER ONE SAID

—That’s new, Myles Crawford said. That’s copy. Out for the waxies’
Dargle. Two old trickies, what?

—But they are afraid the pillar will fall, Stephen went on. They see the
roofs and argue about where the different churches are: Rathmines’ blue dome,
Adam and Eve’s, saint Laurence O’Toole’s. But it makes them giddy to look so
they pull up their skirts…

THOSE SLIGHTLY RAMBUNCTIOUS FEMALES

—Easy all, Myles Crawford said. No poetic licence. We’re in the
archdiocese here.

—And settle down on their striped petticoats, peering up at the statue of
the onehandled adulterer.

—Onehandled adulterer! the professor cried. I like that. I see the idea.
I see what you mean.

DAMES DONATE DUBLIN’S CITS SPEEDPILLS VELOCITOUS AEROLITHS, BELIEF

—It gives them a crick in their necks, Stephen said, and they are too
tired to look up or down or to speak. They put the bag of plums between them
and eat the plums out of it, one after another, wiping off with their
handkerchiefs the plumjuice that dribbles out of their mouths and spitting the
plumstones slowly out between the railings.

He gave a sudden loud young laugh as a close. Lenehan and Mr O’Madden Burke,
hearing, turned, beckoned and led on across towards Mooney’s.

—Finished? Myles Crawford said. So long as they do no worse.

SOPHIST WALLOPS HAUGHTY HELEN SQUARE ON PROBOSCIS. SPARTANS GNASH MOLARS.
ITHACANS VOW PEN IS CHAMP.

—You remind me of Antisthenes, the professor said, a disciple of Gorgias,
the sophist. It is said of him that none could tell if he were bitterer against
others or against himself. He was the son of a noble and a bondwoman. And he
wrote a book in which he took away the palm of beauty from Argive Helen and
handed it to poor Penelope.

Poor Penelope. Penelope Rich.

They made ready to cross O’Connell street.

HELLO THERE, CENTRAL!

At various points along the eight lines tramcars with motionless trolleys stood
in their tracks, bound for or from Rathmines, Rathfarnham, Blackrock, Kingstown
and Dalkey, Sandymount Green, Ringsend and Sandymount Tower, Donnybrook,
Palmerston Park and Upper Rathmines, all still, becalmed in short circuit.
Hackney cars, cabs, delivery waggons, mailvans, private broughams, aerated
mineral water floats with rattling crates of bottles, rattled, rolled,
horsedrawn, rapidly.

WHAT?—AND LIKEWISE—WHERE?

—But what do you call it? Myles Crawford asked. Where did they get the
plums?

VIRGILIAN, SAYS PEDAGOGUE. SOPHOMORE PLUMPS FOR OLD MAN MOSES.

—Call it, wait, the professor said, opening his long lips wide to
reflect. Call it, let me see. Call it: deus nobis hæc otia fecit.

—No, Stephen said. I call it A Pisgah Sight of Palestine or The
Parable of The Plums.

—I see, the professor said.

He laughed richly.

—I see, he said again with new pleasure. Moses and the promised land. We
gave him that idea, he added to J. J. O’Molloy.

HORATIO IS CYNOSURE THIS FAIR JUNE DAY

J. J. O’Molloy sent a weary sidelong glance towards the statue and held his
peace.

—I see, the professor said.

He halted on sir John Gray’s pavement island and peered aloft at Nelson through
the meshes of his wry smile.

DIMINISHED DIGITS PROVE TOO TITILLATING FOR FRISKY FRUMPS. ANNE WIMBLES, FLO
WANGLES—YET CAN YOU BLAME THEM?

—Onehandled adulterer, he said smiling grimly. That tickles me, I must
say.

—Tickled the old ones too, Myles Crawford said, if the God Almighty’s
truth was known.

[ 8 ]

Pineapple rock, lemon platt, butter scotch. A sugarsticky girl shovelling
scoopfuls of creams for a christian brother. Some school treat. Bad for their
tummies. Lozenge and comfit manufacturer to His Majesty the King. God. Save.
Our. Sitting on his throne sucking red jujubes white.

A sombre Y. M. C. A. young man, watchful among the warm sweet fumes of Graham
Lemon’s, placed a throwaway in a hand of Mr Bloom.

Heart to heart talks.

Bloo… Me? No.

Blood of the Lamb.

His slow feet walked him riverward, reading. Are you saved? All are washed in
the blood of the lamb. God wants blood victim. Birth, hymen, martyr, war,
foundation of a building, sacrifice, kidney burntoffering, druids’ altars.
Elijah is coming. Dr John Alexander Dowie restorer of the church in Zion is
coming.

Is coming! Is coming!! Is coming!!!
All heartily welcome.

Paying game. Torry and Alexander last year. Polygamy. His wife will put the
stopper on that. Where was that ad some Birmingham firm the luminous crucifix.
Our Saviour. Wake up in the dead of night and see him on the wall, hanging.
Pepper’s ghost idea. Iron Nails Ran In.

Phosphorus it must be done with. If you leave a bit of codfish for instance. I
could see the bluey silver over it. Night I went down to the pantry in the
kitchen. Don’t like all the smells in it waiting to rush out. What was it she
wanted? The Malaga raisins. Thinking of Spain. Before Rudy was born. The
phosphorescence, that bluey greeny. Very good for the brain.

From Butler’s monument house corner he glanced along Bachelor’s walk. Dedalus’
daughter there still outside Dillon’s auctionrooms. Must be selling off some
old furniture. Knew her eyes at once from the father. Lobbing about waiting for
him. Home always breaks up when the mother goes. Fifteen children he had. Birth
every year almost. That’s in their theology or the priest won’t give the poor
woman the confession, the absolution. Increase and multiply. Did you ever hear
such an idea? Eat you out of house and home. No families themselves to feed.
Living on the fat of the land. Their butteries and larders. I’d like to see
them do the black fast Yom Kippur. Crossbuns. One meal and a collation for fear
he’d collapse on the altar. A housekeeper of one of those fellows if you could
pick it out of her. Never pick it out of her. Like getting £. s. d. out of him.
Does himself well. No guests. All for number one. Watching his water. Bring
your own bread and butter. His reverence: mum’s the word.

Good Lord, that poor child’s dress is in flitters. Underfed she looks too.
Potatoes and marge, marge and potatoes. It’s after they feel it. Proof of the
pudding. Undermines the constitution.

As he set foot on O’Connell bridge a puffball of smoke plumed up from the
parapet. Brewery barge with export stout. England. Sea air sours it, I heard.
Be interesting some day get a pass through Hancock to see the brewery. Regular
world in itself. Vats of porter wonderful. Rats get in too. Drink themselves
bloated as big as a collie floating. Dead drunk on the porter. Drink till they
puke again like christians. Imagine drinking that! Rats: vats. Well, of course,
if we knew all the things.

Looking down he saw flapping strongly, wheeling between the gaunt quaywalls,
gulls. Rough weather outside. If I threw myself down? Reuben J’s son must have
swallowed a good bellyful of that sewage. One and eightpence too much. Hhhhm.
It’s the droll way he comes out with the things. Knows how to tell a story too.

They wheeled lower. Looking for grub. Wait.

He threw down among them a crumpled paper ball. Elijah thirtytwo feet per sec
is com. Not a bit. The ball bobbed unheeded on the wake of swells, floated
under by the bridgepiers. Not such damn fools. Also the day I threw that stale
cake out of the Erin’s King picked it up in the wake fifty yards astern. Live
by their wits. They wheeled, flapping.

The hungry famished gull
Flaps o’er the waters dull.

That is how poets write, the similar sounds. But then Shakespeare has no
rhymes: blank verse. The flow of the language it is. The thoughts. Solemn.

Hamlet, I am thy father’s spirit
Doomed for a certain time to walk the earth.

—Two apples a penny! Two for a penny!

His gaze passed over the glazed apples serried on her stand. Australians they
must be this time of year. Shiny peels: polishes them up with a rag or a
handkerchief.

Wait. Those poor birds.

He halted again and bought from the old applewoman two Banbury cakes for a
penny and broke the brittle paste and threw its fragments down into the Liffey.
See that? The gulls swooped silently, two, then all from their heights,
pouncing on prey. Gone. Every morsel.

Aware of their greed and cunning he shook the powdery crumb from his hands.
They never expected that. Manna. Live on fish, fishy flesh they have, all
seabirds, gulls, seagoose. Swans from Anna Liffey swim down here sometimes to
preen themselves. No accounting for tastes. Wonder what kind is swanmeat.
Robinson Crusoe had to live on them.

They wheeled flapping weakly. I’m not going to throw any more. Penny quite
enough. Lot of thanks I get. Not even a caw. They spread foot and mouth disease
too. If you cram a turkey say on chestnutmeal it tastes like that. Eat pig like
pig. But then why is it that saltwater fish are not salty? How is that?

His eyes sought answer from the river and saw a rowboat rock at anchor on the
treacly swells lazily its plastered board.

Kino’s
11/—
Trousers

Good idea that. Wonder if he pays rent to the corporation. How can you own
water really? It’s always flowing in a stream, never the same, which in the
stream of life we trace. Because life is a stream. All kinds of places are good
for ads. That quack doctor for the clap used to be stuck up in all the
greenhouses. Never see it now. Strictly confidential. Dr Hy Franks. Didn’t cost
him a red like Maginni the dancing master self advertisement. Got fellows to
stick them up or stick them up himself for that matter on the q. t. running in
to loosen a button. Flybynight. Just the place too. POST NO BILLS. POST 110
PILLS. Some chap with a dose burning him.

If he…?

O!

Eh?

No… No.

No, no. I don’t believe it. He wouldn’t surely?

No, no.

Mr Bloom moved forward, raising his troubled eyes. Think no more about that.
After one. Timeball on the ballastoffice is down. Dunsink time. Fascinating
little book that is of sir Robert Ball’s. Parallax. I never exactly understood.
There’s a priest. Could ask him. Par it’s Greek: parallel, parallax. Met him
pike hoses she called it till I told her about the transmigration. O rocks!

Mr Bloom smiled O rocks at two windows of the ballastoffice. She’s right after
all. Only big words for ordinary things on account of the sound. She’s not
exactly witty. Can be rude too. Blurt out what I was thinking. Still, I don’t
know. She used to say Ben Dollard had a base barreltone voice. He has legs like
barrels and you’d think he was singing into a barrel. Now, isn’t that wit. They
used to call him big Ben. Not half as witty as calling him base barreltone.
Appetite like an albatross. Get outside of a baron of beef. Powerful man he was
at stowing away number one Bass. Barrel of Bass. See? It all works out.

A procession of whitesmocked sandwichmen marched slowly towards him along the
gutter, scarlet sashes across their boards. Bargains. Like that priest they are
this morning: we have sinned: we have suffered. He read the scarlet letters on
their five tall white hats: H. E. L. Y. S. Wisdom Hely’s. Y lagging behind drew
a chunk of bread from under his foreboard, crammed it into his mouth and
munched as he walked. Our staple food. Three bob a day, walking along the
gutters, street after street. Just keep skin and bone together, bread and
skilly. They are not Boyl: no, M’Glade’s men. Doesn’t bring in any business
either. I suggested to him about a transparent showcart with two smart girls
sitting inside writing letters, copybooks, envelopes, blottingpaper. I bet that
would have caught on. Smart girls writing something catch the eye at once.
Everyone dying to know what she’s writing. Get twenty of them round you if you
stare at nothing. Have a finger in the pie. Women too. Curiosity. Pillar of
salt. Wouldn’t have it of course because he didn’t think of it himself first.
Or the inkbottle I suggested with a false stain of black celluloid. His ideas
for ads like Plumtree’s potted under the obituaries, cold meat department. You
can’t lick ’em. What? Our envelopes. Hello, Jones, where are you going? Can’t
stop, Robinson, I am hastening to purchase the only reliable inkeraser
Kansell, sold by Hely’s Ltd, 85 Dame street. Well out of that ruck I am.
Devil of a job it was collecting accounts of those convents. Tranquilla
convent. That was a nice nun there, really sweet face. Wimple suited her small
head. Sister? Sister? I am sure she was crossed in love by her eyes. Very hard
to bargain with that sort of a woman. I disturbed her at her devotions that
morning. But glad to communicate with the outside world. Our great day, she
said. Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. Sweet name too: caramel. She knew I, I
think she knew by the way she. If she had married she would have changed. I
suppose they really were short of money. Fried everything in the best butter
all the same. No lard for them. My heart’s broke eating dripping. They like
buttering themselves in and out. Molly tasting it, her veil up. Sister? Pat
Claffey, the pawnbroker’s daughter. It was a nun they say invented barbed wire.

He crossed Westmoreland street when apostrophe S had plodded by. Rover
cycleshop. Those races are on today. How long ago is that? Year Phil Gilligan
died. We were in Lombard street west. Wait: was in Thom’s. Got the job in
Wisdom Hely’s year we married. Six years. Ten years ago: ninetyfour he died yes
that’s right the big fire at Arnott’s. Val Dillon was lord mayor. The Glencree
dinner. Alderman Robert O’Reilly emptying the port into his soup before the
flag fell. Bobbob lapping it for the inner alderman. Couldn’t hear what the
band played. For what we have already received may the Lord make us. Milly was
a kiddy then. Molly had that elephantgrey dress with the braided frogs.
Mantailored with selfcovered buttons. She didn’t like it because I sprained my
ankle first day she wore choir picnic at the Sugarloaf. As if that. Old
Goodwin’s tall hat done up with some sticky stuff. Flies’ picnic too. Never put
a dress on her back like it. Fitted her like a glove, shoulders and hips. Just
beginning to plump it out well. Rabbitpie we had that day. People looking after
her.

Happy. Happier then. Snug little room that was with the red wallpaper.
Dockrell’s, one and ninepence a dozen. Milly’s tubbing night. American soap I
bought: elderflower. Cosy smell of her bathwater. Funny she looked soaped all
over. Shapely too. Now photography. Poor papa’s daguerreotype atelier he told
me of. Hereditary taste.

He walked along the curbstone.

Stream of life. What was the name of that priestylooking chap was always
squinting in when he passed? Weak eyes, woman. Stopped in Citron’s saint
Kevin’s parade. Pen something. Pendennis? My memory is getting. Pen …? Of
course it’s years ago. Noise of the trams probably. Well, if he couldn’t
remember the dayfather’s name that he sees every day.

Bartell d’Arcy was the tenor, just coming out then. Seeing her home after
practice. Conceited fellow with his waxedup moustache. Gave her that song
Winds that blow from the south.

Windy night that was I went to fetch her there was that lodge meeting on about
those lottery tickets after Goodwin’s concert in the supperroom or oakroom of
the Mansion house. He and I behind. Sheet of her music blew out of my hand
against the High school railings. Lucky it didn’t. Thing like that spoils the
effect of a night for her. Professor Goodwin linking her in front. Shaky on his
pins, poor old sot. His farewell concerts. Positively last appearance on any
stage. May be for months and may be for never. Remember her laughing at the
wind, her blizzard collar up. Corner of Harcourt road remember that gust.
Brrfoo! Blew up all her skirts and her boa nearly smothered old Goodwin. She
did get flushed in the wind. Remember when we got home raking up the fire and
frying up those pieces of lap of mutton for her supper with the Chutney sauce
she liked. And the mulled rum. Could see her in the bedroom from the hearth
unclamping the busk of her stays: white.

Swish and soft flop her stays made on the bed. Always warm from her. Always
liked to let her self out. Sitting there after till near two taking out her
hairpins. Milly tucked up in beddyhouse. Happy. Happy. That was the night…

—O, Mr Bloom, how do you do?

—O, how do you do, Mrs Breen?

—No use complaining. How is Molly those times? Haven’t seen her for ages.

—In the pink, Mr Bloom said gaily. Milly has a position down in
Mullingar, you know.

—Go away! Isn’t that grand for her?

—Yes. In a photographer’s there. Getting on like a house on fire. How are
all your charges?

—All on the baker’s list, Mrs Breen said.

How many has she? No other in sight.

—You’re in black, I see. You have no…

—No, Mr Bloom said. I have just come from a funeral.

Going to crop up all day, I foresee. Who’s dead, when and what did he die of?
Turn up like a bad penny.

—O, dear me, Mrs Breen said. I hope it wasn’t any near relation.

May as well get her sympathy.

—Dignam, Mr Bloom said. An old friend of mine. He died quite suddenly,
poor fellow. Heart trouble, I believe. Funeral was this morning.

Your funeral’s tomorrow
While you’re coming through the rye.
Diddlediddle dumdum
Diddlediddle…

—Sad to lose the old friends, Mrs Breen’s womaneyes said melancholily.

Now that’s quite enough about that. Just: quietly: husband.

—And your lord and master?

Mrs Breen turned up her two large eyes. Hasn’t lost them anyhow.

—O, don’t be talking! she said. He’s a caution to rattlesnakes. He’s in
there now with his lawbooks finding out the law of libel. He has me
heartscalded. Wait till I show you.

Hot mockturtle vapour and steam of newbaked jampuffs rolypoly poured out from
Harrison’s. The heavy noonreek tickled the top of Mr Bloom’s gullet. Want to
make good pastry, butter, best flour, Demerara sugar, or they’d taste it with
the hot tea. Or is it from her? A barefoot arab stood over the grating,
breathing in the fumes. Deaden the gnaw of hunger that way. Pleasure or pain is
it? Penny dinner. Knife and fork chained to the table.

Opening her handbag, chipped leather. Hatpin: ought to have a guard on those
things. Stick it in a chap’s eye in the tram. Rummaging. Open. Money. Please
take one. Devils if they lose sixpence. Raise Cain. Husband barging. Where’s
the ten shillings I gave you on Monday? Are you feeding your little brother’s
family? Soiled handkerchief: medicinebottle. Pastille that was fell. What is
she?…

—There must be a new moon out, she said. He’s always bad then. Do you
know what he did last night?

Her hand ceased to rummage. Her eyes fixed themselves on him, wide in alarm,
yet smiling.

—What? Mr Bloom asked.

Let her speak. Look straight in her eyes. I believe you. Trust me.

—Woke me up in the night, she said. Dream he had, a nightmare.

Indiges.

—Said the ace of spades was walking up the stairs.

—The ace of spades! Mr Bloom said.

She took a folded postcard from her handbag.

—Read that, she said. He got it this morning.

—What is it? Mr Bloom asked, taking the card. U. P.?

—U. p: up, she said. Someone taking a rise out of him. It’s a great shame
for them whoever he is.

—Indeed it is, Mr Bloom said.

She took back the card, sighing.

—And now he’s going round to Mr Menton’s office. He’s going to take an
action for ten thousand pounds, he says.

She folded the card into her untidy bag and snapped the catch.

Same blue serge dress she had two years ago, the nap bleaching. Seen its best
days. Wispish hair over her ears. And that dowdy toque: three old grapes to
take the harm out of it. Shabby genteel. She used to be a tasty dresser. Lines
round her mouth. Only a year or so older than Molly.

See the eye that woman gave her, passing. Cruel. The unfair sex.

He looked still at her, holding back behind his look his discontent. Pungent
mockturtle oxtail mulligatawny. I’m hungry too. Flakes of pastry on the gusset
of her dress: daub of sugary flour stuck to her cheek. Rhubarb tart with
liberal fillings, rich fruit interior. Josie Powell that was. In Luke Doyle’s
long ago. Dolphin’s Barn, the charades. U. p: up.

Change the subject.

—Do you ever see anything of Mrs Beaufoy? Mr Bloom asked.

—Mina Purefoy? she said.

Philip Beaufoy I was thinking. Playgoers’ Club. Matcham often thinks of the
masterstroke. Did I pull the chain? Yes. The last act.

—Yes.

—I just called to ask on the way in is she over it. She’s in the lying-in
hospital in Holles street. Dr Horne got her in. She’s three days bad now.

—O, Mr Bloom said. I’m sorry to hear that.

—Yes, Mrs Breen said. And a houseful of kids at home. It’s a very stiff
birth, the nurse told me.

—O, Mr Bloom said.

His heavy pitying gaze absorbed her news. His tongue clacked in compassion.
Dth! Dth!

—I’m sorry to hear that, he said. Poor thing! Three days! That’s terrible
for her.

Mrs Breen nodded.

—She was taken bad on the Tuesday…

Mr Bloom touched her funnybone gently, warning her:

—Mind! Let this man pass.

A bony form strode along the curbstone from the river staring with a rapt gaze
into the sunlight through a heavystringed glass. Tight as a skullpiece a tiny
hat gripped his head. From his arm a folded dustcoat, a stick and an umbrella
dangled to his stride.

—Watch him, Mr Bloom said. He always walks outside the lampposts. Watch!

—Who is he if it’s a fair question? Mrs Breen asked. Is he dotty?

—His name is Cashel Boyle O’Connor Fitzmaurice Tisdall Farrell, Mr Bloom
said smiling. Watch!

—He has enough of them, she said. Denis will be like that one of these
days.

She broke off suddenly.

—There he is, she said. I must go after him. Goodbye. Remember me to
Molly, won’t you?

—I will, Mr Bloom said.

He watched her dodge through passers towards the shopfronts. Denis Breen in
skimpy frockcoat and blue canvas shoes shuffled out of Harrison’s hugging two
heavy tomes to his ribs. Blown in from the bay. Like old times. He suffered her
to overtake him without surprise and thrust his dull grey beard towards her,
his loose jaw wagging as he spoke earnestly.

Meshuggah. Off his chump.

Mr Bloom walked on again easily, seeing ahead of him in sunlight the tight
skullpiece, the dangling stickumbrelladustcoat. Going the two days. Watch him!
Out he goes again. One way of getting on in the world. And that other old mosey
lunatic in those duds. Hard time she must have with him.

U. p: up. I’ll take my oath that’s Alf Bergan or Richie Goulding. Wrote it for
a lark in the Scotch house I bet anything. Round to Menton’s office. His oyster
eyes staring at the postcard. Be a feast for the gods.

He passed the Irish Times. There might be other answers lying there.
Like to answer them all. Good system for criminals. Code. At their lunch now.
Clerk with the glasses there doesn’t know me. O, leave them there to simmer.
Enough bother wading through fortyfour of them. Wanted, smart lady typist to
aid gentleman in literary work. I called you naughty darling because I do not
like that other world. Please tell me what is the meaning. Please tell me what
perfume does your wife. Tell me who made the world. The way they spring those
questions on you. And the other one Lizzie Twigg. My literary efforts have had
the good fortune to meet with the approval of the eminent poet A. E. (Mr Geo.
Russell). No time to do her hair drinking sloppy tea with a book of poetry.

Best paper by long chalks for a small ad. Got the provinces now. Cook and
general, exc. cuisine, housemaid kept. Wanted live man for spirit counter.
Resp. girl (R.C.) wishes to hear of post in fruit or pork shop. James Carlisle
made that. Six and a half per cent dividend. Made a big deal on Coates’s
shares. Ca’ canny. Cunning old Scotch hunks. All the toady news. Our gracious
and popular vicereine. Bought the Irish Field now. Lady Mountcashel has
quite recovered after her confinement and rode out with the Ward Union
staghounds at the enlargement yesterday at Rathoath. Uneatable fox. Pothunters
too. Fear injects juices make it tender enough for them. Riding astride. Sit
her horse like a man. Weightcarrying huntress. No sidesaddle or pillion for
her, not for Joe. First to the meet and in at the death. Strong as a brood mare
some of those horsey women. Swagger around livery stables. Toss off a glass of
brandy neat while you’d say knife. That one at the Grosvenor this morning. Up
with her on the car: wishswish. Stonewall or fivebarred gate put her mount to
it. Think that pugnosed driver did it out of spite. Who is this she was like? O
yes! Mrs Miriam Dandrade that sold me her old wraps and black underclothes in
the Shelbourne hotel. Divorced Spanish American. Didn’t take a feather out of
her my handling them. As if I was her clotheshorse. Saw her in the viceregal
party when Stubbs the park ranger got me in with Whelan of the Express.
Scavenging what the quality left. High tea. Mayonnaise I poured on the plums
thinking it was custard. Her ears ought to have tingled for a few weeks after.
Want to be a bull for her. Born courtesan. No nursery work for her, thanks.

Poor Mrs Purefoy! Methodist husband. Method in his madness. Saffron bun and
milk and soda lunch in the educational dairy. Y. M. C. A. Eating with a
stopwatch, thirtytwo chews to the minute. And still his muttonchop whiskers
grew. Supposed to be well connected. Theodore’s cousin in Dublin Castle. One
tony relative in every family. Hardy annuals he presents her with. Saw him out
at the Three Jolly Topers marching along bareheaded and his eldest boy carrying
one in a marketnet. The squallers. Poor thing! Then having to give the breast
year after year all hours of the night. Selfish those t.t’s are. Dog in the
manger. Only one lump of sugar in my tea, if you please.

He stood at Fleet street crossing. Luncheon interval. A sixpenny at Rowe’s?
Must look up that ad in the national library. An eightpenny in the Burton.
Better. On my way.

He walked on past Bolton’s Westmoreland house. Tea. Tea. Tea. I forgot to tap
Tom Kernan.

Sss. Dth, dth, dth! Three days imagine groaning on a bed with a vinegared
handkerchief round her forehead, her belly swollen out. Phew! Dreadful simply!
Child’s head too big: forceps. Doubled up inside her trying to butt its way out
blindly, groping for the way out. Kill me that would. Lucky Molly got over hers
lightly. They ought to invent something to stop that. Life with hard labour.
Twilight sleep idea: queen Victoria was given that. Nine she had. A good layer.
Old woman that lived in a shoe she had so many children. Suppose he was
consumptive. Time someone thought about it instead of gassing about the what
was it the pensive bosom of the silver effulgence. Flapdoodle to feed fools on.
They could easily have big establishments whole thing quite painless out of all
the taxes give every child born five quid at compound interest up to twentyone
five per cent is a hundred shillings and five tiresome pounds multiply by
twenty decimal system encourage people to put by money save hundred and ten and
a bit twentyone years want to work it out on paper come to a tidy sum more than
you think.

Not stillborn of course. They are not even registered. Trouble for nothing.

Funny sight two of them together, their bellies out. Molly and Mrs Moisel.
Mothers’ meeting. Phthisis retires for the time being, then returns. How flat
they look all of a sudden after. Peaceful eyes. Weight off their mind. Old Mrs
Thornton was a jolly old soul. All my babies, she said. The spoon of pap in her
mouth before she fed them. O, that’s nyumnyum. Got her hand crushed by old Tom
Wall’s son. His first bow to the public. Head like a prize pumpkin. Snuffy Dr
Murren. People knocking them up at all hours. For God’ sake, doctor. Wife in
her throes. Then keep them waiting months for their fee. To attendance on your
wife. No gratitude in people. Humane doctors, most of them.

Before the huge high door of the Irish house of parliament a flock of pigeons
flew. Their little frolic after meals. Who will we do it on? I pick the fellow
in black. Here goes. Here’s good luck. Must be thrilling from the air. Apjohn,
myself and Owen Goldberg up in the trees near Goose green playing the monkeys.
Mackerel they called me.

A squad of constables debouched from College street, marching in Indian file.
Goosestep. Foodheated faces, sweating helmets, patting their truncheons. After
their feed with a good load of fat soup under their belts. Policeman’s lot is
oft a happy one. They split up in groups and scattered, saluting, towards their
beats. Let out to graze. Best moment to attack one in pudding time. A punch in
his dinner. A squad of others, marching irregularly, rounded Trinity railings
making for the station. Bound for their troughs. Prepare to receive cavalry.
Prepare to receive soup.

He crossed under Tommy Moore’s roguish finger. They did right to put him up
over a urinal: meeting of the waters. Ought to be places for women. Running
into cakeshops. Settle my hat straight. There is not in this wide world a
vallee. Great song of Julia Morkan’s. Kept her voice up to the very last.
Pupil of Michael Balfe’s, wasn’t she?

He gazed after the last broad tunic. Nasty customers to tackle. Jack Power
could a tale unfold: father a G man. If a fellow gave them trouble being lagged
they let him have it hot and heavy in the bridewell. Can’t blame them after all
with the job they have especially the young hornies. That horsepoliceman the
day Joe Chamberlain was given his degree in Trinity he got a run for his money.
My word he did! His horse’s hoofs clattering after us down Abbey street. Lucky
I had the presence of mind to dive into Manning’s or I was souped. He did come
a wallop, by George. Must have cracked his skull on the cobblestones. I
oughtn’t to have got myself swept along with those medicals. And the Trinity
jibs in their mortarboards. Looking for trouble. Still I got to know that young
Dixon who dressed that sting for me in the Mater and now he’s in Holles street
where Mrs Purefoy. Wheels within wheels. Police whistle in my ears still. All
skedaddled. Why he fixed on me. Give me in charge. Right here it began.

—Up the Boers!

—Three cheers for De Wet!

—We’ll hang Joe Chamberlain on a sourapple tree.

Silly billies: mob of young cubs yelling their guts out. Vinegar hill. The
Butter exchange band. Few years’ time half of them magistrates and civil
servants. War comes on: into the army helterskelter: same fellows used to.
Whether on the scaffold high.

Never know who you’re talking to. Corny Kelleher he has Harvey Duff in his eye.
Like that Peter or Denis or James Carey that blew the gaff on the invincibles.
Member of the corporation too. Egging raw youths on to get in the know all the
time drawing secret service pay from the castle. Drop him like a hot potato.
Why those plainclothes men are always courting slaveys. Easily twig a man used
to uniform. Squarepushing up against a backdoor. Maul her a bit. Then the next
thing on the menu. And who is the gentleman does be visiting there? Was the
young master saying anything? Peeping Tom through the keyhole. Decoy duck.
Hotblooded young student fooling round her fat arms ironing.

—Are those yours, Mary?

—I don’t wear such things… Stop or I’ll tell the missus on you. Out
half the night.

—There are great times coming, Mary. Wait till you see.

—Ah, gelong with your great times coming.

Barmaids too. Tobaccoshopgirls.

James Stephens’ idea was the best. He knew them. Circles of ten so that a
fellow couldn’t round on more than his own ring. Sinn Fein. Back out you get
the knife. Hidden hand. Stay in. The firing squad. Turnkey’s daughter got him
out of Richmond, off from Lusk. Putting up in the Buckingham Palace hotel under
their very noses. Garibaldi.

You must have a certain fascination: Parnell. Arthur Griffith is a squareheaded
fellow but he has no go in him for the mob. Or gas about our lovely land.
Gammon and spinach. Dublin Bakery Company’s tearoom. Debating societies. That
republicanism is the best form of government. That the language question should
take precedence of the economic question. Have your daughters inveigling them
to your house. Stuff them up with meat and drink. Michaelmas goose. Here’s a
good lump of thyme seasoning under the apron for you. Have another quart of
goosegrease before it gets too cold. Halffed enthusiasts. Penny roll and a walk
with the band. No grace for the carver. The thought that the other chap pays
best sauce in the world. Make themselves thoroughly at home. Show us over those
apricots, meaning peaches. The not far distant day. Homerule sun rising up in
the northwest.

His smile faded as he walked, a heavy cloud hiding the sun slowly, shadowing
Trinity’s surly front. Trams passed one another, ingoing, outgoing, clanging.
Useless words. Things go on same, day after day: squads of police marching out,
back: trams in, out. Those two loonies mooching about. Dignam carted off. Mina
Purefoy swollen belly on a bed groaning to have a child tugged out of her. One
born every second somewhere. Other dying every second. Since I fed the birds
five minutes. Three hundred kicked the bucket. Other three hundred born,
washing the blood off, all are washed in the blood of the lamb, bawling
maaaaaa.

Cityful passing away, other cityful coming, passing away too: other coming on,
passing on. Houses, lines of houses, streets, miles of pavements, piledup
bricks, stones. Changing hands. This owner, that. Landlord never dies they say.
Other steps into his shoes when he gets his notice to quit. They buy the place
up with gold and still they have all the gold. Swindle in it somewhere. Piled
up in cities, worn away age after age. Pyramids in sand. Built on bread and
onions. Slaves Chinese wall. Babylon. Big stones left. Round towers. Rest
rubble, sprawling suburbs, jerrybuilt. Kerwan’s mushroom houses built of
breeze. Shelter, for the night.

No-one is anything.

This is the very worst hour of the day. Vitality. Dull, gloomy: hate this hour.
Feel as if I had been eaten and spewed.

Provost’s house. The reverend Dr Salmon: tinned salmon. Well tinned in there.
Like a mortuary chapel. Wouldn’t live in it if they paid me. Hope they have
liver and bacon today. Nature abhors a vacuum.

The sun freed itself slowly and lit glints of light among the silverware
opposite in Walter Sexton’s window by which John Howard Parnell passed,
unseeing.

There he is: the brother. Image of him. Haunting face. Now that’s a
coincidence. Course hundreds of times you think of a person and don’t meet him.
Like a man walking in his sleep. No-one knows him. Must be a corporation
meeting today. They say he never put on the city marshal’s uniform since he got
the job. Charley Kavanagh used to come out on his high horse, cocked hat,
puffed, powdered and shaved. Look at the woebegone walk of him. Eaten a bad
egg. Poached eyes on ghost. I have a pain. Great man’s brother: his brother’s
brother. He’d look nice on the city charger. Drop into the D.B.C. probably for
his coffee, play chess there. His brother used men as pawns. Let them all go to
pot. Afraid to pass a remark on him. Freeze them up with that eye of his.
That’s the fascination: the name. All a bit touched. Mad Fanny and his other
sister Mrs Dickinson driving about with scarlet harness. Bolt upright like
surgeon M’Ardle. Still David Sheehy beat him for south Meath. Apply for the
Chiltern Hundreds and retire into public life. The patriot’s banquet. Eating
orangepeels in the park. Simon Dedalus said when they put him in parliament
that Parnell would come back from the grave and lead him out of the house of
commons by the arm.

—Of the twoheaded octopus, one of whose heads is the head upon which the
ends of the world have forgotten to come while the other speaks with a Scotch
accent. The tentacles…

They passed from behind Mr Bloom along the curbstone. Beard and bicycle. Young
woman.

And there he is too. Now that’s really a coincidence: second time. Coming
events cast their shadows before. With the approval of the eminent poet, Mr
Geo. Russell. That might be Lizzie Twigg with him. A. E.: what does that mean?
Initials perhaps. Albert Edward, Arthur Edmund, Alphonsus Eb Ed El Esquire.
What was he saying? The ends of the world with a Scotch accent. Tentacles:
octopus. Something occult: symbolism. Holding forth. She’s taking it all in.
Not saying a word. To aid gentleman in literary work.

His eyes followed the high figure in homespun, beard and bicycle, a listening
woman at his side. Coming from the vegetarian. Only weggebobbles and fruit.
Don’t eat a beefsteak. If you do the eyes of that cow will pursue you through
all eternity. They say it’s healthier. Windandwatery though. Tried it. Keep you
on the run all day. Bad as a bloater. Dreams all night. Why do they call that
thing they gave me nutsteak? Nutarians. Fruitarians. To give you the idea you
are eating rumpsteak. Absurd. Salty too. They cook in soda. Keep you sitting by
the tap all night.

Her stockings are loose over her ankles. I detest that: so tasteless. Those
literary etherial people they are all. Dreamy, cloudy, symbolistic. Esthetes
they are. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was that kind of food you see produces
the like waves of the brain the poetical. For example one of those policemen
sweating Irish stew into their shirts you couldn’t squeeze a line of poetry out
of him. Don’t know what poetry is even. Must be in a certain mood.

The dreamy cloudy gull
Waves o’er the waters dull.

He crossed at Nassau street corner and stood before the window of Yeates and
Son, pricing the fieldglasses. Or will I drop into old Harris’s and have a chat
with young Sinclair? Wellmannered fellow. Probably at his lunch. Must get those
old glasses of mine set right. Goerz lenses six guineas. Germans making their
way everywhere. Sell on easy terms to capture trade. Undercutting. Might chance
on a pair in the railway lost property office. Astonishing the things people
leave behind them in trains and cloakrooms. What do they be thinking about?
Women too. Incredible. Last year travelling to Ennis had to pick up that
farmer’s daughter’s bag and hand it to her at Limerick junction. Unclaimed
money too. There’s a little watch up there on the roof of the bank to test
those glasses by.

His lids came down on the lower rims of his irides. Can’t see it. If you
imagine it’s there you can almost see it. Can’t see it.

He faced about and, standing between the awnings, held out his right hand at
arm’s length towards the sun. Wanted to try that often. Yes: completely. The
tip of his little finger blotted out the sun’s disk. Must be the focus where
the rays cross. If I had black glasses. Interesting. There was a lot of talk
about those sunspots when we were in Lombard street west. Looking up from the
back garden. Terrific explosions they are. There will be a total eclipse this
year: autumn some time.

Now that I come to think of it that ball falls at Greenwich time. It’s the
clock is worked by an electric wire from Dunsink. Must go out there some first
Saturday of the month. If I could get an introduction to professor Joly or
learn up something about his family. That would do to: man always feels
complimented. Flattery where least expected. Nobleman proud to be descended
from some king’s mistress. His foremother. Lay it on with a trowel. Cap in hand
goes through the land. Not go in and blurt out what you know you’re not to:
what’s parallax? Show this gentleman the door.

Ah.

His hand fell to his side again.

Never know anything about it. Waste of time. Gasballs spinning about, crossing
each other, passing. Same old dingdong always. Gas: then solid: then world:
then cold: then dead shell drifting around, frozen rock, like that pineapple
rock. The moon. Must be a new moon out, she said. I believe there is.

He went on by la maison Claire.

Wait. The full moon was the night we were Sunday fortnight exactly there is a
new moon. Walking down by the Tolka. Not bad for a Fairview moon. She was
humming. The young May moon she’s beaming, love. He other side of her. Elbow,
arm. He. Glowworm’s la-amp is gleaming, love. Touch. Fingers. Asking. Answer.
Yes.

Stop. Stop. If it was it was. Must.

Mr Bloom, quickbreathing, slowlier walking passed Adam court.

With a keep quiet relief his eyes took note this is the street here middle of
the day of Bob Doran’s bottle shoulders. On his annual bend, M’Coy said. They
drink in order to say or do something or cherchez la femme. Up in the
Coombe with chummies and streetwalkers and then the rest of the year sober as a
judge.

Yes. Thought so. Sloping into the Empire. Gone. Plain soda would do him good.
Where Pat Kinsella had his Harp theatre before Whitbred ran the Queen’s. Broth
of a boy. Dion Boucicault business with his harvestmoon face in a poky bonnet.
Three Purty Maids from School. How time flies, eh? Showing long red pantaloons
under his skirts. Drinkers, drinking, laughed spluttering, their drink against
their breath. More power, Pat. Coarse red: fun for drunkards: guffaw and smoke.
Take off that white hat. His parboiled eyes. Where is he now? Beggar somewhere.
The harp that once did starve us all.

I was happier then. Or was that I? Or am I now I? Twentyeight I was. She
twentythree. When we left Lombard street west something changed. Could never
like it again after Rudy. Can’t bring back time. Like holding water in your
hand. Would you go back to then? Just beginning then. Would you? Are you not
happy in your home you poor little naughty boy? Wants to sew on buttons for me.
I must answer. Write it in the library.

Grafton street gay with housed awnings lured his senses. Muslin prints,
silkdames and dowagers, jingle of harnesses, hoofthuds lowringing in the baking
causeway. Thick feet that woman has in the white stockings. Hope the rain mucks
them up on her. Countrybred chawbacon. All the beef to the heels were in.
Always gives a woman clumsy feet. Molly looks out of plumb.

He passed, dallying, the windows of Brown Thomas, silk mercers. Cascades of
ribbons. Flimsy China silks. A tilted urn poured from its mouth a flood of
bloodhued poplin: lustrous blood. The huguenots brought that here. La causa
è santa! Tara tara. Great chorus that. Taree tara. Must be washed in
rainwater. Meyerbeer. Tara: bom bom bom.

Pincushions. I’m a long time threatening to buy one. Sticking them all over the
place. Needles in window curtains.

He bared slightly his left forearm. Scrape: nearly gone. Not today anyhow. Must
go back for that lotion. For her birthday perhaps. Junejulyaugseptember eighth.
Nearly three months off. Then she mightn’t like it. Women won’t pick up pins.
Say it cuts lo.

Gleaming silks, petticoats on slim brass rails, rays of flat silk stockings.

Useless to go back. Had to be. Tell me all.

High voices. Sunwarm silk. Jingling harnesses. All for a woman, home and
houses, silkwebs, silver, rich fruits spicy from Jaffa. Agendath Netaim. Wealth
of the world.

A warm human plumpness settled down on his brain. His brain yielded. Perfume of
embraces all him assailed. With hungered flesh obscurely, he mutely craved to
adore.

Duke street. Here we are. Must eat. The Burton. Feel better then.

He turned Combridge’s corner, still pursued. Jingling, hoofthuds. Perfumed
bodies, warm, full. All kissed, yielded: in deep summer fields, tangled pressed
grass, in trickling hallways of tenements, along sofas, creaking beds.

—Jack, love!

—Darling!

—Kiss me, Reggy!

—My boy!

—Love!

His heart astir he pushed in the door of the Burton restaurant. Stink gripped
his trembling breath: pungent meatjuice, slush of greens. See the animals feed.

Men, men, men.

Perched on high stools by the bar, hats shoved back, at the tables calling for
more bread no charge, swilling, wolfing gobfuls of sloppy food, their eyes
bulging, wiping wetted moustaches. A pallid suetfaced young man polished his
tumbler knife fork and spoon with his napkin. New set of microbes. A man with
an infant’s saucestained napkin tucked round him shovelled gurgling soup down
his gullet. A man spitting back on his plate: halfmasticated gristle: gums: no
teeth to chewchewchew it. Chump chop from the grill. Bolting to get it over.
Sad booser’s eyes. Bitten off more than he can chew. Am I like that? See
ourselves as others see us. Hungry man is an angry man. Working tooth and jaw.
Don’t! O! A bone! That last pagan king of Ireland Cormac in the schoolpoem
choked himself at Sletty southward of the Boyne. Wonder what he was eating.
Something galoptious. Saint Patrick converted him to Christianity. Couldn’t
swallow it all however.

—Roast beef and cabbage.

—One stew.

Smells of men. Spat-on sawdust, sweetish warmish cigarettesmoke, reek of plug,
spilt beer, men’s beery piss, the stale of ferment.

His gorge rose.

Couldn’t eat a morsel here. Fellow sharpening knife and fork to eat all before
him, old chap picking his tootles. Slight spasm, full, chewing the cud. Before
and after. Grace after meals. Look on this picture then on that. Scoffing up
stewgravy with sopping sippets of bread. Lick it off the plate, man! Get out of
this.

He gazed round the stooled and tabled eaters, tightening the wings of his nose.

—Two stouts here.

—One corned and cabbage.

That fellow ramming a knifeful of cabbage down as if his life depended on it.
Good stroke. Give me the fidgets to look. Safer to eat from his three hands.
Tear it limb from limb. Second nature to him. Born with a silver knife in his
mouth. That’s witty, I think. Or no. Silver means born rich. Born with a knife.
But then the allusion is lost.

An illgirt server gathered sticky clattering plates. Rock, the head bailiff,
standing at the bar blew the foamy crown from his tankard. Well up: it splashed
yellow near his boot. A diner, knife and fork upright, elbows on table, ready
for a second helping stared towards the foodlift across his stained square of
newspaper. Other chap telling him something with his mouth full. Sympathetic
listener. Table talk. I munched hum un thu Unchster Bunk un Munchday. Ha? Did
you, faith?

Mr Bloom raised two fingers doubtfully to his lips. His eyes said:

—Not here. Don’t see him.

Out. I hate dirty eaters.

He backed towards the door. Get a light snack in Davy Byrne’s. Stopgap. Keep me
going. Had a good breakfast.

—Roast and mashed here.

—Pint of stout.

Every fellow for his own, tooth and nail. Gulp. Grub. Gulp. Gobstuff.

He came out into clearer air and turned back towards Grafton street. Eat or be
eaten. Kill! Kill!

Suppose that communal kitchen years to come perhaps. All trotting down with
porringers and tommycans to be filled. Devour contents in the street. John
Howard Parnell example the provost of Trinity every mother’s son don’t talk of
your provosts and provost of Trinity women and children cabmen priests parsons
fieldmarshals archbishops. From Ailesbury road, Clyde road, artisans’
dwellings, north Dublin union, lord mayor in his gingerbread coach, old queen
in a bathchair. My plate’s empty. After you with our incorporated drinkingcup.
Like sir Philip Crampton’s fountain. Rub off the microbes with your
handkerchief. Next chap rubs on a new batch with his. Father O’Flynn would make
hares of them all. Have rows all the same. All for number one. Children
fighting for the scrapings of the pot. Want a souppot as big as the Phoenix
park. Harpooning flitches and hindquarters out of it. Hate people all round
you. City Arms hotel table d’hôte she called it. Soup, joint and sweet.
Never know whose thoughts you’re chewing. Then who’d wash up all the plates and
forks? Might be all feeding on tabloids that time. Teeth getting worse and
worse.

After all there’s a lot in that vegetarian fine flavour of things from the
earth garlic of course it stinks after Italian organgrinders crisp of onions
mushrooms truffles. Pain to the animal too. Pluck and draw fowl. Wretched
brutes there at the cattlemarket waiting for the poleaxe to split their skulls
open. Moo. Poor trembling calves. Meh. Staggering bob. Bubble and squeak.
Butchers’ buckets wobbly lights. Give us that brisket off the hook. Plup.
Rawhead and bloody bones. Flayed glasseyed sheep hung from their haunches,
sheepsnouts bloodypapered snivelling nosejam on sawdust. Top and lashers going
out. Don’t maul them pieces, young one.

Hot fresh blood they prescribe for decline. Blood always needed. Insidious.
Lick it up smokinghot, thick sugary. Famished ghosts.

Ah, I’m hungry.

He entered Davy Byrne’s. Moral pub. He doesn’t chat. Stands a drink now and
then. But in leapyear once in four. Cashed a cheque for me once.

What will I take now? He drew his watch. Let me see now. Shandygaff?

—Hello, Bloom, Nosey Flynn said from his nook.

—Hello, Flynn.

—How’s things?

—Tiptop… Let me see. I’ll take a glass of burgundy and… let me see.

Sardines on the shelves. Almost taste them by looking. Sandwich? Ham and his
descendants musterred and bred there. Potted meats. What is home without
Plumtree’s potted meat? Incomplete. What a stupid ad! Under the obituary
notices they stuck it. All up a plumtree. Dignam’s potted meat. Cannibals would
with lemon and rice. White missionary too salty. Like pickled pork. Expect the
chief consumes the parts of honour. Ought to be tough from exercise. His wives
in a row to watch the effect. There was a right royal old nigger. Who ate or
something the somethings of the reverend Mr MacTrigger. With it an abode of
bliss. Lord knows what concoction. Cauls mouldy tripes windpipes faked and
minced up. Puzzle find the meat. Kosher. No meat and milk together. Hygiene
that was what they call now. Yom Kippur fast spring cleaning of inside. Peace
and war depend on some fellow’s digestion. Religions. Christmas turkeys and
geese. Slaughter of innocents. Eat drink and be merry. Then casual wards full
after. Heads bandaged. Cheese digests all but itself. Mity cheese.

—Have you a cheese sandwich?

—Yes, sir.

Like a few olives too if they had them. Italian I prefer. Good glass of
burgundy take away that. Lubricate. A nice salad, cool as a cucumber, Tom
Kernan can dress. Puts gusto into it. Pure olive oil. Milly served me that
cutlet with a sprig of parsley. Take one Spanish onion. God made food, the
devil the cooks. Devilled crab.

—Wife well?

—Quite well, thanks… A cheese sandwich, then. Gorgonzola, have you?

—Yes, sir.

Nosey Flynn sipped his grog.

—Doing any singing those times?

Look at his mouth. Could whistle in his own ear. Flap ears to match. Music.
Knows as much about it as my coachman. Still better tell him. Does no harm.
Free ad.

—She’s engaged for a big tour end of this month. You may have heard
perhaps.

—No. O, that’s the style. Who’s getting it up?

The curate served.

—How much is that?

—Seven d., sir… Thank you, sir.

Mr Bloom cut his sandwich into slender strips. Mr MacTrigger. Easier
than the dreamy creamy stuff. His five hundred wives. Had the time of their
lives.

—Mustard, sir?

—Thank you.

He studded under each lifted strip yellow blobs. Their lives. I have it.
It grew bigger and bigger and bigger.

—Getting it up? he said. Well, it’s like a company idea, you see. Part
shares and part profits.

—Ay, now I remember, Nosey Flynn said, putting his hand in his pocket to
scratch his groin. Who is this was telling me? Isn’t Blazes Boylan mixed up in
it?

A warm shock of air heat of mustard hanched on Mr Bloom’s heart. He raised his
eyes and met the stare of a bilious clock. Two. Pub clock five minutes fast.
Time going on. Hands moving. Two. Not yet.

His midriff yearned then upward, sank within him, yearned more longly,
longingly.

Wine.

He smellsipped the cordial juice and, bidding his throat strongly to speed it,
set his wineglass delicately down.

—Yes, he said. He’s the organiser in point of fact.

No fear: no brains.

Nosey Flynn snuffled and scratched. Flea having a good square meal.

—He had a good slice of luck, Jack Mooney was telling me, over that
boxingmatch Myler Keogh won again that soldier in the Portobello barracks. By
God, he had the little kipper down in the county Carlow he was telling me…

Hope that dewdrop doesn’t come down into his glass. No, snuffled it up.

—For near a month, man, before it came off. Sucking duck eggs by God till
further orders. Keep him off the boose, see? O, by God, Blazes is a hairy chap.

Davy Byrne came forward from the hindbar in tuckstitched shirtsleeves, cleaning
his lips with two wipes of his napkin. Herring’s blush. Whose smile upon each
feature plays with such and such replete. Too much fat on the parsnips.

—And here’s himself and pepper on him, Nosey Flynn said. Can you give us
a good one for the Gold cup?

—I’m off that, Mr Flynn, Davy Byrne answered. I never put anything on a
horse.

—You’re right there, Nosey Flynn said.

Mr Bloom ate his strips of sandwich, fresh clean bread, with relish of disgust
pungent mustard, the feety savour of green cheese. Sips of his wine soothed his
palate. Not logwood that. Tastes fuller this weather with the chill off.

Nice quiet bar. Nice piece of wood in that counter. Nicely planed. Like the way
it curves there.

—I wouldn’t do anything at all in that line, Davy Byrne said. It ruined
many a man, the same horses.

Vintners’ sweepstake. Licensed for the sale of beer, wine and spirits for
consumption on the premises. Heads I win tails you lose.

—True for you, Nosey Flynn said. Unless you’re in the know. There’s no
straight sport going now. Lenehan gets some good ones. He’s giving Sceptre
today. Zinfandel’s the favourite, Lord Howard de Walden’s, won at Epsom. Morny
Cannon is riding him. I could have got seven to one against Saint Amant a
fortnight before.

—That so? Davy Byrne said…

He went towards the window and, taking up the pettycash book, scanned its
pages.

—I could, faith, Nosey Flynn said, snuffling. That was a rare bit of
horseflesh. Saint Frusquin was her sire. She won in a thunderstorm,
Rothschild’s filly, with wadding in her ears. Blue jacket and yellow cap. Bad
luck to big Ben Dollard and his John O’Gaunt. He put me off it. Ay.

He drank resignedly from his tumbler, running his fingers down the flutes.

—Ay, he said, sighing.

Mr Bloom, champing, standing, looked upon his sigh. Nosey numbskull. Will I
tell him that horse Lenehan? He knows already. Better let him forget. Go and
lose more. Fool and his money. Dewdrop coming down again. Cold nose he’d have
kissing a woman. Still they might like. Prickly beards they like. Dogs’ cold
noses. Old Mrs Riordan with the rumbling stomach’s Skye terrier in the City
Arms hotel. Molly fondling him in her lap. O, the big doggybowwowsywowsy!

Wine soaked and softened rolled pith of bread mustard a moment mawkish cheese.
Nice wine it is. Taste it better because I’m not thirsty. Bath of course does
that. Just a bite or two. Then about six o’clock I can. Six. Six. Time will be
gone then. She…

Mild fire of wine kindled his veins. I wanted that badly. Felt so off colour.
His eyes unhungrily saw shelves of tins: sardines, gaudy lobsters’ claws. All
the odd things people pick up for food. Out of shells, periwinkles with a pin,
off trees, snails out of the ground the French eat, out of the sea with bait on
a hook. Silly fish learn nothing in a thousand years. If you didn’t know risky
putting anything into your mouth. Poisonous berries. Johnny Magories. Roundness
you think good. Gaudy colour warns you off. One fellow told another and so on.
Try it on the dog first. Led on by the smell or the look. Tempting fruit. Ice
cones. Cream. Instinct. Orangegroves for instance. Need artificial irrigation.
Bleibtreustrasse. Yes but what about oysters. Unsightly like a clot of phlegm.
Filthy shells. Devil to open them too. Who found them out? Garbage, sewage they
feed on. Fizz and Red bank oysters. Effect on the sexual. Aphrodis. He was in
the Red Bank this morning. Was he oysters old fish at table perhaps he young
flesh in bed no June has no ar no oysters. But there are people like things
high. Tainted game. Jugged hare. First catch your hare. Chinese eating eggs
fifty years old, blue and green again. Dinner of thirty courses. Each dish
harmless might mix inside. Idea for a poison mystery. That archduke Leopold was
it no yes or was it Otto one of those Habsburgs? Or who was it used to eat the
scruff off his own head? Cheapest lunch in town. Of course aristocrats, then
the others copy to be in the fashion. Milly too rock oil and flour. Raw pastry
I like myself. Half the catch of oysters they throw back in the sea to keep up
the price. Cheap no-one would buy. Caviare. Do the grand. Hock in green
glasses. Swell blowout. Lady this. Powdered bosom pearls. The élite. Crème
de la crème. They want special dishes to pretend they’re. Hermit with a
platter of pulse keep down the stings of the flesh. Know me come eat with me.
Royal sturgeon high sheriff, Coffey, the butcher, right to venisons of the
forest from his ex. Send him back the half of a cow. Spread I saw down in the
Master of the Rolls’ kitchen area. Whitehatted chef like a rabbi.
Combustible duck. Curly cabbage à la duchesse de Parme. Just as well to
write it on the bill of fare so you can know what you’ve eaten. Too many drugs
spoil the broth. I know it myself. Dosing it with Edwards’ desiccated soup.
Geese stuffed silly for them. Lobsters boiled alive. Do ptake some ptarmigan.
Wouldn’t mind being a waiter in a swell hotel. Tips, evening dress, halfnaked
ladies. May I tempt you to a little more filleted lemon sole, miss Dubedat?
Yes, do bedad. And she did bedad. Huguenot name I expect that. A miss Dubedat
lived in Killiney, I remember. Du de la is French. Still it’s the same
fish perhaps old Micky Hanlon of Moore street ripped the guts out of making
money hand over fist finger in fishes’ gills can’t write his name on a cheque
think he was painting the landscape with his mouth twisted. Moooikill A Aitcha
Ha ignorant as a kish of brogues, worth fifty thousand pounds.

Stuck on the pane two flies buzzed, stuck.

Glowing wine on his palate lingered swallowed. Crushing in the winepress grapes
of Burgundy. Sun’s heat it is. Seems to a secret touch telling me memory.
Touched his sense moistened remembered. Hidden under wild ferns on Howth below
us bay sleeping: sky. No sound. The sky. The bay purple by the Lion’s head.
Green by Drumleck. Yellowgreen towards Sutton. Fields of undersea, the lines
faint brown in grass, buried cities. Pillowed on my coat she had her hair,
earwigs in the heather scrub my hand under her nape, you’ll toss me all. O
wonder! Coolsoft with ointments her hand touched me, caressed: her eyes upon me
did not turn away. Ravished over her I lay, full lips full open, kissed her
mouth. Yum. Softly she gave me in my mouth the seedcake warm and chewed.
Mawkish pulp her mouth had mumbled sweetsour of her spittle. Joy: I ate it:
joy. Young life, her lips that gave me pouting. Soft warm sticky gumjelly lips.
Flowers her eyes were, take me, willing eyes. Pebbles fell. She lay still. A
goat. No-one. High on Ben Howth rhododendrons a nannygoat walking surefooted,
dropping currants. Screened under ferns she laughed warmfolded. Wildly I lay on
her, kissed her: eyes, her lips, her stretched neck beating, woman’s breasts
full in her blouse of nun’s veiling, fat nipples upright. Hot I tongued her.
She kissed me. I was kissed. All yielding she tossed my hair. Kissed, she
kissed me.

Me. And me now.

Stuck, the flies buzzed.

His downcast eyes followed the silent veining of the oaken slab. Beauty: it
curves: curves are beauty. Shapely goddesses, Venus, Juno: curves the world
admires. Can see them library museum standing in the round hall, naked
goddesses. Aids to digestion. They don’t care what man looks. All to see. Never
speaking. I mean to say to fellows like Flynn. Suppose she did Pygmalion and
Galatea what would she say first? Mortal! Put you in your proper place.
Quaffing nectar at mess with gods golden dishes, all ambrosial. Not like a
tanner lunch we have, boiled mutton, carrots and turnips, bottle of Allsop.
Nectar imagine it drinking electricity: gods’ food. Lovely forms of women
sculped Junonian. Immortal lovely. And we stuffing food in one hole and out
behind: food, chyle, blood, dung, earth, food: have to feed it like stoking an
engine. They have no. Never looked. I’ll look today. Keeper won’t see. Bend
down let something fall see if she.

Dribbling a quiet message from his bladder came to go to do not to do there to
do. A man and ready he drained his glass to the lees and walked, to men too
they gave themselves, manly conscious, lay with men lovers, a youth enjoyed
her, to the yard.

When the sound of his boots had ceased Davy Byrne said from his book:

—What is this he is? Isn’t he in the insurance line?

—He’s out of that long ago, Nosey Flynn said. He does canvassing for the
Freeman.

—I know him well to see, Davy Byrne said. Is he in trouble?

—Trouble? Nosey Flynn said. Not that I heard of. Why?

—I noticed he was in mourning.

—Was he? Nosey Flynn said. So he was, faith. I asked him how was all at
home. You’re right, by God. So he was.

—I never broach the subject, Davy Byrne said humanely, if I see a
gentleman is in trouble that way. It only brings it up fresh in their minds.

—It’s not the wife anyhow, Nosey Flynn said. I met him the day before
yesterday and he coming out of that Irish farm dairy John Wyse Nolan’s wife has
in Henry street with a jar of cream in his hand taking it home to his better
half. She’s well nourished, I tell you. Plovers on toast.

—And is he doing for the Freeman? Davy Byrne said.

Nosey Flynn pursed his lips.

—He doesn’t buy cream on the ads he picks up. You can make bacon of that.

—How so? Davy Byrne asked, coming from his book.

Nosey Flynn made swift passes in the air with juggling fingers. He winked.

—He’s in the craft, he said.

—Do you tell me so? Davy Byrne said.

—Very much so, Nosey Flynn said. Ancient free and accepted order. He’s an
excellent brother. Light, life and love, by God. They give him a leg up. I was
told that by a—well, I won’t say who.

—Is that a fact?

—O, it’s a fine order, Nosey Flynn said. They stick to you when you’re
down. I know a fellow was trying to get into it. But they’re as close as damn
it. By God they did right to keep the women out of it.

Davy Byrne smiledyawnednodded all in one:

—Iiiiiichaaaaaaach!

—There was one woman, Nosey Flynn said, hid herself in a clock to find
out what they do be doing. But be damned but they smelt her out and swore her
in on the spot a master mason. That was one of the saint Legers of Doneraile.

Davy Byrne, sated after his yawn, said with tearwashed eyes:

—And is that a fact? Decent quiet man he is. I often saw him in here and
I never once saw him—you know, over the line.

—God Almighty couldn’t make him drunk, Nosey Flynn said firmly. Slips off
when the fun gets too hot. Didn’t you see him look at his watch? Ah, you
weren’t there. If you ask him to have a drink first thing he does he outs with
the watch to see what he ought to imbibe. Declare to God he does.

—There are some like that, Davy Byrne said. He’s a safe man, I’d say.

—He’s not too bad, Nosey Flynn said, snuffling it up. He’s been known to
put his hand down too to help a fellow. Give the devil his due. O, Bloom has
his good points. But there’s one thing he’ll never do.

His hand scrawled a dry pen signature beside his grog.

—I know, Davy Byrne said.

—Nothing in black and white, Nosey Flynn said.

Paddy Leonard and Bantam Lyons came in. Tom Rochford followed frowning, a
plaining hand on his claret waistcoat.

—Day, Mr Byrne.

—Day, gentlemen.

They paused at the counter.

—Who’s standing? Paddy Leonard asked.

—I’m sitting anyhow, Nosey Flynn answered.

—Well, what’ll it be? Paddy Leonard asked.

—I’ll take a stone ginger, Bantam Lyons said.

—How much? Paddy Leonard cried. Since when, for God’ sake? What’s yours,
Tom?

—How is the main drainage? Nosey Flynn asked, sipping.

For answer Tom Rochford pressed his hand to his breastbone and hiccupped.

—Would I trouble you for a glass of fresh water, Mr Byrne? he said.

—Certainly, sir.

Paddy Leonard eyed his alemates.

—Lord love a duck, he said. Look at what I’m standing drinks to! Cold
water and gingerpop! Two fellows that would suck whisky off a sore leg. He has
some bloody horse up his sleeve for the Gold cup. A dead snip.

—Zinfandel is it? Nosey Flynn asked.

Tom Rochford spilt powder from a twisted paper into the water set before him.

—That cursed dyspepsia, he said before drinking.

—Breadsoda is very good, Davy Byrne said.

Tom Rochford nodded and drank.

—Is it Zinfandel?

—Say nothing! Bantam Lyons winked. I’m going to plunge five bob on my
own.

—Tell us if you’re worth your salt and be damned to you, Paddy Leonard
said. Who gave it to you?

Mr Bloom on his way out raised three fingers in greeting.

—So long! Nosey Flynn said.

The others turned.

—That’s the man now that gave it to me, Bantam Lyons whispered.

—Prrwht! Paddy Leonard said with scorn. Mr Byrne, sir, we’ll take two of
your small Jamesons after that and a…

—Stone ginger, Davy Byrne added civilly.

—Ay, Paddy Leonard said. A suckingbottle for the baby.

Mr Bloom walked towards Dawson street, his tongue brushing his teeth smooth.
Something green it would have to be: spinach, say. Then with those Röntgen rays
searchlight you could.

At Duke lane a ravenous terrier choked up a sick knuckly cud on the
cobblestones and lapped it with new zest. Surfeit. Returned with thanks having
fully digested the contents. First sweet then savoury. Mr Bloom coasted warily.
Ruminants. His second course. Their upper jaw they move. Wonder if Tom Rochford
will do anything with that invention of his? Wasting time explaining it to
Flynn’s mouth. Lean people long mouths. Ought to be a hall or a place where
inventors could go in and invent free. Course then you’d have all the cranks
pestering.

He hummed, prolonging in solemn echo the closes of the bars:

Don Giovanni, a cenar teco
M’invitasti.

Feel better. Burgundy. Good pick me up. Who distilled first? Some chap in the
blues. Dutch courage. That Kilkenny People in the national library now I
must.

Bare clean closestools waiting in the window of William Miller, plumber, turned
back his thoughts. They could: and watch it all the way down, swallow a pin
sometimes come out of the ribs years after, tour round the body changing
biliary duct spleen squirting liver gastric juice coils of intestines like
pipes. But the poor buffer would have to stand all the time with his insides
entrails on show. Science.

—A cenar teco.

What does that teco mean? Tonight perhaps.

Don Giovanni, thou hast me invited
To come to supper tonight,
The rum the rumdum.

Doesn’t go properly.

Keyes: two months if I get Nannetti to. That’ll be two pounds ten about two
pounds eight. Three Hynes owes me. Two eleven. Prescott’s dyeworks van over
there. If I get Billy Prescott’s ad: two fifteen. Five guineas about. On the
pig’s back.

Could buy one of those silk petticoats for Molly, colour of her new garters.

Today. Today. Not think.

Tour the south then. What about English wateringplaces? Brighton, Margate.
Piers by moonlight. Her voice floating out. Those lovely seaside girls. Against
John Long’s a drowsing loafer lounged in heavy thought, gnawing a crusted
knuckle. Handy man wants job. Small wages. Will eat anything.

Mr Bloom turned at Gray’s confectioner’s window of unbought tarts and passed
the reverend Thomas Connellan’s bookstore. Why I left the church of Rome?
Birds’ Nest. Women run him. They say they used to give pauper children soup
to change to protestants in the time of the potato blight. Society over the way
papa went to for the conversion of poor jews. Same bait. Why we left the church
of Rome.

A blind stripling stood tapping the curbstone with his slender cane. No tram in
sight. Wants to cross.

—Do you want to cross? Mr Bloom asked.

The blind stripling did not answer. His wallface frowned weakly. He moved his
head uncertainly.

—You’re in Dawson street, Mr Bloom said. Molesworth street is opposite.
Do you want to cross? There’s nothing in the way.

The cane moved out trembling to the left. Mr Bloom’s eye followed its line and
saw again the dyeworks’ van drawn up before Drago’s. Where I saw his
brillantined hair just when I was. Horse drooping. Driver in John Long’s.
Slaking his drouth.

—There’s a van there, Mr Bloom said, but it’s not moving. I’ll see you
across. Do you want to go to Molesworth street?

—Yes, the stripling answered. South Frederick street.

—Come, Mr Bloom said.

He touched the thin elbow gently: then took the limp seeing hand to guide it
forward.

Say something to him. Better not do the condescending. They mistrust what you
tell them. Pass a common remark.

—The rain kept off.

No answer.

Stains on his coat. Slobbers his food, I suppose. Tastes all different for him.
Have to be spoonfed first. Like a child’s hand, his hand. Like Milly’s was.
Sensitive. Sizing me up I daresay from my hand. Wonder if he has a name. Van.
Keep his cane clear of the horse’s legs: tired drudge get his doze. That’s
right. Clear. Behind a bull: in front of a horse.

—Thanks, sir.

Knows I’m a man. Voice.

—Right now? First turn to the left.

The blind stripling tapped the curbstone and went on his way, drawing his cane
back, feeling again.

Mr Bloom walked behind the eyeless feet, a flatcut suit of herringbone tweed.
Poor young fellow! How on earth did he know that van was there? Must have felt
it. See things in their forehead perhaps: kind of sense of volume. Weight or
size of it, something blacker than the dark. Wonder would he feel it if
something was removed. Feel a gap. Queer idea of Dublin he must have, tapping
his way round by the stones. Could he walk in a beeline if he hadn’t that cane?
Bloodless pious face like a fellow going in to be a priest.

Penrose! That was that chap’s name.

Look at all the things they can learn to do. Read with their fingers. Tune
pianos. Or we are surprised they have any brains. Why we think a deformed
person or a hunchback clever if he says something we might say. Of course the
other senses are more. Embroider. Plait baskets. People ought to help.
Workbasket I could buy for Molly’s birthday. Hates sewing. Might take an
objection. Dark men they call them.

Sense of smell must be stronger too. Smells on all sides, bunched together.
Each street different smell. Each person too. Then the spring, the summer:
smells. Tastes? They say you can’t taste wines with your eyes shut or a cold in
the head. Also smoke in the dark they say get no pleasure.

And with a woman, for instance. More shameless not seeing. That girl passing
the Stewart institution, head in the air. Look at me. I have them all on. Must
be strange not to see her. Kind of a form in his mind’s eye. The voice,
temperatures: when he touches her with his fingers must almost see the lines,
the curves. His hands on her hair, for instance. Say it was black, for
instance. Good. We call it black. Then passing over her white skin. Different
feel perhaps. Feeling of white.

Postoffice. Must answer. Fag today. Send her a postal order two shillings, half
a crown. Accept my little present. Stationer’s just here too. Wait. Think over
it.

With a gentle finger he felt ever so slowly the hair combed back above his
ears. Again. Fibres of fine fine straw. Then gently his finger felt the skin of
his right cheek. Downy hair there too. Not smooth enough. The belly is the
smoothest. No-one about. There he goes into Frederick street. Perhaps to
Levenston’s dancing academy piano. Might be settling my braces.

Walking by Doran’s publichouse he slid his hand between his waistcoat and
trousers and, pulling aside his shirt gently, felt a slack fold of his belly.
But I know it’s whitey yellow. Want to try in the dark to see.

He withdrew his hand and pulled his dress to.

Poor fellow! Quite a boy. Terrible. Really terrible. What dreams would he have,
not seeing? Life a dream for him. Where is the justice being born that way? All
those women and children excursion beanfeast burned and drowned in New York.
Holocaust. Karma they call that transmigration for sins you did in a past life
the reincarnation met him pike hoses. Dear, dear, dear. Pity, of course: but
somehow you can’t cotton on to them someway.

Sir Frederick Falkiner going into the freemasons’ hall. Solemn as Troy. After
his good lunch in Earlsfort terrace. Old legal cronies cracking a magnum. Tales
of the bench and assizes and annals of the bluecoat school. I sentenced him to
ten years. I suppose he’d turn up his nose at that stuff I drank. Vintage wine
for them, the year marked on a dusty bottle. Has his own ideas of justice in
the recorder’s court. Wellmeaning old man. Police chargesheets crammed with
cases get their percentage manufacturing crime. Sends them to the rightabout.
The devil on moneylenders. Gave Reuben J a great strawcalling. Now he’s really
what they call a dirty jew. Power those judges have. Crusty old topers in wigs.
Bear with a sore paw. And may the Lord have mercy on your soul.

Hello, placard. Mirus bazaar. His Excellency the lord lieutenant. Sixteenth.
Today it is. In aid of funds for Mercer’s hospital. The Messiah was
first given for that. Yes. Handel. What about going out there: Ballsbridge.
Drop in on Keyes. No use sticking to him like a leech. Wear out my welcome.
Sure to know someone on the gate.

Mr Bloom came to Kildare street. First I must. Library.

Straw hat in sunlight. Tan shoes. Turnedup trousers. It is. It is.

His heart quopped softly. To the right. Museum. Goddesses. He swerved to the
right.

Is it? Almost certain. Won’t look. Wine in my face. Why did I? Too heady. Yes,
it is. The walk. Not see. Get on.

Making for the museum gate with long windy steps he lifted his eyes. Handsome
building. Sir Thomas Deane designed. Not following me?

Didn’t see me perhaps. Light in his eyes.

The flutter of his breath came forth in short sighs. Quick. Cold statues: quiet
there. Safe in a minute.

No. Didn’t see me. After two. Just at the gate.

My heart!

His eyes beating looked steadfastly at cream curves of stone. Sir Thomas Deane
was the Greek architecture.

Look for something I.

His hasty hand went quick into a pocket, took out, read unfolded Agendath
Netaim. Where did I?

Busy looking.

He thrust back quick Agendath.

Afternoon she said.

I am looking for that. Yes, that. Try all pockets. Handker. Freeman.
Where did I? Ah, yes. Trousers. Potato. Purse. Where?

Hurry. Walk quietly. Moment more. My heart.

His hand looking for the where did I put found in his hip pocket soap lotion
have to call tepid paper stuck. Ah soap there I yes. Gate.

Safe!

[ 9 ]

Urbane, to comfort them, the quaker librarian purred:

—And we have, have we not, those priceless pages of Wilhelm
Meister. A great poet on a great brother poet. A hesitating soul taking
arms against a sea of troubles, torn by conflicting doubts, as one sees in real
life.

He came a step a sinkapace forward on neatsleather creaking and a step backward
a sinkapace on the solemn floor.

A noiseless attendant setting open the door but slightly made him a noiseless
beck.

—Directly, said he, creaking to go, albeit lingering. The beautiful
ineffectual dreamer who comes to grief against hard facts. One always feels
that Goethe’s judgments are so true. True in the larger analysis.

Twicreakingly analysis he corantoed off. Bald, most zealous by the door he gave
his large ear all to the attendant’s words: heard them: and was gone.

Two left.

—Monsieur de la Palice, Stephen sneered, was alive fifteen minutes before
his death.

—Have you found those six brave medicals, John Eglinton asked with
elder’s gall, to write Paradise Lost at your dictation? The Sorrows
of Satan he calls it.

Smile. Smile Cranly’s smile.

First he tickled her
Then he patted her
Then he passed the female catheter
For he was a medical
Jolly old medi…

—I feel you would need one more for Hamlet. Seven is dear to the
mystic mind. The shining seven W.B. calls them.

Glittereyed his rufous skull close to his greencapped desklamp sought the face
bearded amid darkgreener shadow, an ollav, holyeyed. He laughed low: a sizar’s
laugh of Trinity: unanswered.

Orchestral Satan, weeping many a rood
Tears such as angels weep.
Ed egli avea del cul fatto trombetta.

He holds my follies hostage.

Cranly’s eleven true Wicklowmen to free their sireland. Gaptoothed Kathleen,
her four beautiful green fields, the stranger in her house. And one more to
hail him: ave, rabbi: the Tinahely twelve. In the shadow of the glen he
cooees for them. My soul’s youth I gave him, night by night. God speed. Good
hunting.

Mulligan has my telegram.

Folly. Persist.

—Our young Irish bards, John Eglinton censured, have yet to create a
figure which the world will set beside Saxon Shakespeare’s Hamlet though I
admire him, as old Ben did, on this side idolatry.

—All these questions are purely academic, Russell oracled out of his
shadow. I mean, whether Hamlet is Shakespeare or James I or Essex. Clergymen’s
discussions of the historicity of Jesus. Art has to reveal to us ideas,
formless spiritual essences. The supreme question about a work of art is out of
how deep a life does it spring. The painting of Gustave Moreau is the painting
of ideas. The deepest poetry of Shelley, the words of Hamlet bring our minds
into contact with the eternal wisdom, Plato’s world of ideas. All the rest is
the speculation of schoolboys for schoolboys.

A. E. has been telling some yankee interviewer. Wall, tarnation strike me!

—The schoolmen were schoolboys first, Stephen said superpolitely.
Aristotle was once Plato’s schoolboy.

—And has remained so, one should hope, John Eglinton sedately said. One
can see him, a model schoolboy with his diploma under his arm.

He laughed again at the now smiling bearded face.

Formless spiritual. Father, Word and Holy Breath. Allfather, the heavenly man.
Hiesos Kristos, magician of the beautiful, the Logos who suffers in us at every
moment. This verily is that. I am the fire upon the altar. I am the sacrificial
butter.

Dunlop, Judge, the noblest Roman of them all, A.E., Arval, the Name Ineffable,
in heaven hight: K.H., their master, whose identity is no secret to adepts.
Brothers of the great white lodge always watching to see if they can help. The
Christ with the bridesister, moisture of light, born of an ensouled virgin,
repentant sophia, departed to the plane of buddhi. The life esoteric is not for
ordinary person. O.P. must work off bad karma first. Mrs Cooper Oakley once
glimpsed our very illustrious sister H.P.B.’s elemental.

O, fie! Out on’t! Pfuiteufel! You naughtn’t to look, missus, so you
naughtn’t when a lady’s ashowing of her elemental.

Mr Best entered, tall, young, mild, light. He bore in his hand with grace a
notebook, new, large, clean, bright.

—That model schoolboy, Stephen said, would find Hamlet’s musings about
the afterlife of his princely soul, the improbable, insignificant and
undramatic monologue, as shallow as Plato’s.

John Eglinton, frowning, said, waxing wroth:

—Upon my word it makes my blood boil to hear anyone compare Aristotle
with Plato.

—Which of the two, Stephen asked, would have banished me from his
commonwealth?

Unsheathe your dagger definitions. Horseness is the whatness of allhorse.
Streams of tendency and eons they worship. God: noise in the street: very
peripatetic. Space: what you damn well have to see. Through spaces smaller than
red globules of man’s blood they creepycrawl after Blake’s buttocks into
eternity of which this vegetable world is but a shadow. Hold to the now, the
here, through which all future plunges to the past.

Mr Best came forward, amiable, towards his colleague.

—Haines is gone, he said.

—Is he?

—I was showing him Jubainville’s book. He’s quite enthusiastic, don’t you
know, about Hyde’s Lovesongs of Connacht. I couldn’t bring him in to
hear the discussion. He’s gone to Gill’s to buy it.

Bound thee forth, my booklet, quick
To greet the callous public.
Writ, I ween, ’twas not my wish
In lean unlovely English.

—The peatsmoke is going to his head, John Eglinton opined.

We feel in England. Penitent thief. Gone. I smoked his baccy. Green twinkling
stone. An emerald set in the ring of the sea.

—People do not know how dangerous lovesongs can be, the auric egg of
Russell warned occultly. The movements which work revolutions in the world are
born out of the dreams and visions in a peasant’s heart on the hillside. For
them the earth is not an exploitable ground but the living mother. The rarefied
air of the academy and the arena produce the sixshilling novel, the musichall
song. France produces the finest flower of corruption in Mallarmé but the
desirable life is revealed only to the poor of heart, the life of Homer’s
Phæacians.

From these words Mr Best turned an unoffending face to Stephen.

—Mallarmé, don’t you know, he said, has written those wonderful prose
poems Stephen MacKenna used to read to me in Paris. The one about
Hamlet. He says: il se promène, lisant au livre de lui-même,
don’t you know, reading the book of himself. He describes Hamlet
given in a French town, don’t you know, a provincial town. They advertised it.

His free hand graciously wrote tiny signs in air.

Hamlet
ou
Le Distrait
Pièce de Shakespeare

He repeated to John Eglinton’s newgathered frown:

—Pièce de Shakespeare, don’t you know. It’s so French. The French
point of view. Hamlet ou…

—The absentminded beggar, Stephen ended.

John Eglinton laughed.

—Yes, I suppose it would be, he said. Excellent people, no doubt, but
distressingly shortsighted in some matters.

Sumptuous and stagnant exaggeration of murder.

—A deathsman of the soul Robert Greene called him, Stephen said. Not for
nothing was he a butcher’s son, wielding the sledded poleaxe and spitting in
his palms. Nine lives are taken off for his father’s one. Our Father who art in
purgatory. Khaki Hamlets don’t hesitate to shoot. The bloodboltered shambles in
act five is a forecast of the concentration camp sung by Mr Swinburne.

Cranly, I his mute orderly, following battles from afar.

Whelps and dams of murderous foes whom none
But we had spared…

Between the Saxon smile and yankee yawp. The devil and the deep sea.

—He will have it that Hamlet is a ghoststory, John Eglinton said
for Mr Best’s behoof. Like the fat boy in Pickwick he wants to make our flesh
creep.

List! List! O List!

My flesh hears him: creeping, hears.

If thou didst ever…

—What is a ghost? Stephen said with tingling energy. One who has faded
into impalpability through death, through absence, through change of manners.
Elizabethan London lay as far from Stratford as corrupt Paris lies from virgin
Dublin. Who is the ghost from limbo patrum, returning to the world that
has forgotten him? Who is King Hamlet?

John Eglinton shifted his spare body, leaning back to judge.

Lifted.

—It is this hour of a day in mid June, Stephen said, begging with a swift
glance their hearing. The flag is up on the playhouse by the bankside. The bear
Sackerson growls in the pit near it, Paris garden. Canvasclimbers who sailed
with Drake chew their sausages among the groundlings.

Local colour. Work in all you know. Make them accomplices.

—Shakespeare has left the huguenot’s house in Silver street and walks by
the swanmews along the riverbank. But he does not stay to feed the pen chivying
her game of cygnets towards the rushes. The swan of Avon has other thoughts.

Composition of place. Ignatius Loyola, make haste to help me!

—The play begins. A player comes on under the shadow, made up in the
castoff mail of a court buck, a wellset man with a bass voice. It is the ghost,
the king, a king and no king, and the player is Shakespeare who has studied
Hamlet all the years of his life which were not vanity in order to play
the part of the spectre. He speaks the words to Burbage, the young player who
stands before him beyond the rack of cerecloth, calling him by a name:

Hamlet, I am thy father’s spirit,

bidding him list. To a son he speaks, the son of his soul, the prince, young
Hamlet and to the son of his body, Hamnet Shakespeare, who has died in
Stratford that his namesake may live for ever.

Is it possible that that player Shakespeare, a ghost by absence, and in the
vesture of buried Denmark, a ghost by death, speaking his own words to his own
son’s name (had Hamnet Shakespeare lived he would have been prince Hamlet’s
twin), is it possible, I want to know, or probable that he did not draw or
foresee the logical conclusion of those premises: you are the dispossessed son:
I am the murdered father: your mother is the guilty queen, Ann Shakespeare,
born Hathaway?

—But this prying into the family life of a great man, Russell began
impatiently.

Art thou there, truepenny?

—Interesting only to the parish clerk. I mean, we have the plays. I mean
when we read the poetry of King Lear what is it to us how the poet
lived? As for living our servants can do that for us, Villiers de l’Isle has
said. Peeping and prying into greenroom gossip of the day, the poet’s drinking,
the poet’s debts. We have King Lear: and it is immortal.

Mr Best’s face, appealed to, agreed.

Flow over them with your waves and with your waters,
Mananaan, Mananaan MacLir…

How now, sirrah, that pound he lent you when you were hungry?

Marry, I wanted it.

Take thou this noble.

Go to! You spent most of it in Georgina Johnson’s bed, clergyman’s daughter.
Agenbite of inwit.

Do you intend to pay it back?

O, yes.

When? Now?

Well… No.

When, then?

I paid my way. I paid my way.

Steady on. He’s from beyant Boyne water. The northeast corner. You owe it.

Wait. Five months. Molecules all change. I am other I now. Other I got pound.

Buzz. Buzz.

But I, entelechy, form of forms, am I by memory because under everchanging
forms.

I that sinned and prayed and fasted.

A child Conmee saved from pandies.

I, I and I. I.

A.E.I.O.U.

—Do you mean to fly in the face of the tradition of three centuries? John
Eglinton’s carping voice asked. Her ghost at least has been laid for ever. She
died, for literature at least, before she was born.

—She died, Stephen retorted, sixtyseven years after she was born. She saw
him into and out of the world. She took his first embraces. She bore his
children and she laid pennies on his eyes to keep his eyelids closed when he
lay on his deathbed.

Mother’s deathbed. Candle. The sheeted mirror. Who brought me into this world
lies there, bronzelidded, under few cheap flowers. Liliata rutilantium.

I wept alone.

John Eglinton looked in the tangled glowworm of his lamp.

—The world believes that Shakespeare made a mistake, he said, and got out
of it as quickly and as best he could.

—Bosh! Stephen said rudely. A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors
are volitional and are the portals of discovery.

Portals of discovery opened to let in the quaker librarian, softcreakfooted,
bald, eared and assiduous.

—A shrew, John Eglinton said shrewdly, is not a useful portal of
discovery, one should imagine. What useful discovery did Socrates learn from
Xanthippe?

—Dialectic, Stephen answered: and from his mother how to bring thoughts
into the world. What he learnt from his other wife Myrto (absit nomen!),
Socratididion’s Epipsychidion, no man, not a woman, will ever know. But neither
the midwife’s lore nor the caudlelectures saved him from the archons of Sinn
Fein and their naggin of hemlock.

—But Ann Hathaway? Mr Best’s quiet voice said forgetfully. Yes, we seem
to be forgetting her as Shakespeare himself forgot her.

His look went from brooder’s beard to carper’s skull, to remind, to chide them
not unkindly, then to the baldpink lollard costard, guiltless though maligned.

—He had a good groatsworth of wit, Stephen said, and no truant memory. He
carried a memory in his wallet as he trudged to Romeville whistling The girl
I left behind me. If the earthquake did not time it we should know where to
place poor Wat, sitting in his form, the cry of hounds, the studded bridle and
her blue windows. That memory, Venus and Adonis, lay in the bedchamber
of every light-of-love in London. Is Katharine the shrew illfavoured? Hortensio
calls her young and beautiful. Do you think the writer of Antony and
Cleopatra, a passionate pilgrim, had his eyes in the back of his head that
he chose the ugliest doxy in all Warwickshire to lie withal? Good: he left her
and gained the world of men. But his boywomen are the women of a boy. Their
life, thought, speech are lent them by males. He chose badly? He was chosen, it
seems to me. If others have their will Ann hath a way. By cock, she was to
blame. She put the comether on him, sweet and twentysix. The greyeyed goddess
who bends over the boy Adonis, stooping to conquer, as prologue to the swelling
act, is a boldfaced Stratford wench who tumbles in a cornfield a lover younger
than herself.

And my turn? When?

Come!

—Ryefield, Mr Best said brightly, gladly, raising his new book, gladly,
brightly.

He murmured then with blond delight for all:

Between the acres of the rye
These pretty countryfolk would lie.

Paris: the wellpleased pleaser.

A tall figure in bearded homespun rose from shadow and unveiled its cooperative
watch.

—I am afraid I am due at the Homestead.

Whither away? Exploitable ground.

—Are you going? John Eglinton’s active eyebrows asked. Shall we see you
at Moore’s tonight? Piper is coming.

—Piper! Mr Best piped. Is Piper back?

Peter Piper pecked a peck of pick of peck of pickled pepper.

—I don’t know if I can. Thursday. We have our meeting. If I can get away
in time.

Yogibogeybox in Dawson chambers. Isis Unveiled. Their Pali book we tried
to pawn. Crosslegged under an umbrel umbershoot he thrones an Aztec logos,
functioning on astral levels, their oversoul, mahamahatma. The faithful
hermetists await the light, ripe for chelaship, ringroundabout him. Louis H.
Victory. T. Caulfield Irwin. Lotus ladies tend them i’the eyes, their pineal
glands aglow. Filled with his god, he thrones, Buddh under plantain. Gulfer of
souls, engulfer. Hesouls, shesouls, shoals of souls. Engulfed with wailing
creecries, whirled, whirling, they bewail.

In quintessential triviality
For years in this fleshcase a shesoul dwelt.

—They say we are to have a literary surprise, the quaker librarian said,
friendly and earnest. Mr Russell, rumour has it, is gathering together a sheaf
of our younger poets’ verses. We are all looking forward anxiously.

Anxiously he glanced in the cone of lamplight where three faces, lighted,
shone.

See this. Remember.

Stephen looked down on a wide headless caubeen, hung on his ashplanthandle over
his knee. My casque and sword. Touch lightly with two index fingers.
Aristotle’s experiment. One or two? Necessity is that in virtue of which it is
impossible that one can be otherwise. Argal, one hat is one hat.

Listen.

Young Colum and Starkey. George Roberts is doing the commercial part. Longworth
will give it a good puff in the Express. O, will he? I liked Colum’s
Drover. Yes, I think he has that queer thing genius. Do you think he has
genius really? Yeats admired his line: As in wild earth a Grecian vase.
Did he? I hope you’ll be able to come tonight. Malachi Mulligan is coming too.
Moore asked him to bring Haines. Did you hear Miss Mitchell’s joke about Moore
and Martyn? That Moore is Martyn’s wild oats? Awfully clever, isn’t it? They
remind one of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza. Our national epic has yet to be
written, Dr Sigerson says. Moore is the man for it. A knight of the rueful
countenance here in Dublin. With a saffron kilt? O’Neill Russell? O, yes, he
must speak the grand old tongue. And his Dulcinea? James Stephens is doing some
clever sketches. We are becoming important, it seems.

Cordelia. Cordoglio. Lir’s loneliest daughter.

Nookshotten. Now your best French polish.

—Thank you very much, Mr Russell, Stephen said, rising. If you will be so
kind as to give the letter to Mr Norman…

—O, yes. If he considers it important it will go in. We have so much
correspondence.

—I understand, Stephen said. Thanks.

God ild you. The pigs’ paper. Bullockbefriending.

Synge has promised me an article for Dana too. Are we going to be read?
I feel we are. The Gaelic league wants something in Irish. I hope you will come
round tonight. Bring Starkey.

Stephen sat down.

The quaker librarian came from the leavetakers. Blushing, his mask said:

—Mr Dedalus, your views are most illuminating.

He creaked to and fro, tiptoing up nearer heaven by the altitude of a chopine,
and, covered by the noise of outgoing, said low:

—Is it your view, then, that she was not faithful to the poet?

Alarmed face asks me. Why did he come? Courtesy or an inward light?

—Where there is a reconciliation, Stephen said, there must have been
first a sundering.

—Yes.

Christfox in leather trews, hiding, a runaway in blighted treeforks, from hue
and cry. Knowing no vixen, walking lonely in the chase. Women he won to him,
tender people, a whore of Babylon, ladies of justices, bully tapsters’ wives.
Fox and geese. And in New Place a slack dishonoured body that once was comely,
once as sweet, as fresh as cinnamon, now her leaves falling, all, bare,
frighted of the narrow grave and unforgiven.

—Yes. So you think…

The door closed behind the outgoer.

Rest suddenly possessed the discreet vaulted cell, rest of warm and brooding
air.

A vestal’s lamp.

Here he ponders things that were not: what Cæsar would have lived to do had he
believed the soothsayer: what might have been: possibilities of the possible as
possible: things not known: what name Achilles bore when he lived among women.

Coffined thoughts around me, in mummycases, embalmed in spice of words. Thoth,
god of libraries, a birdgod, moonycrowned. And I heard the voice of that
Egyptian highpriest. In painted chambers loaded with tilebooks.

They are still. Once quick in the brains of men. Still: but an itch of death is
in them, to tell me in my ear a maudlin tale, urge me to wreak their will.

—Certainly, John Eglinton mused, of all great men he is the most
enigmatic. We know nothing but that he lived and suffered. Not even so much.
Others abide our question. A shadow hangs over all the rest.

—But Hamlet is so personal, isn’t it? Mr Best pleaded. I mean, a
kind of private paper, don’t you know, of his private life. I mean, I don’t
care a button, don’t you know, who is killed or who is guilty…

He rested an innocent book on the edge of the desk, smiling his defiance. His
private papers in the original. Ta an bad ar an tir. Taim in mo shagart.
Put beurla on it, littlejohn.

Quoth littlejohn Eglinton:

—I was prepared for paradoxes from what Malachi Mulligan told us but I
may as well warn you that if you want to shake my belief that Shakespeare is
Hamlet you have a stern task before you.

Bear with me.

Stephen withstood the bane of miscreant eyes glinting stern under wrinkled
brows. A basilisk. E quando vede l’uomo l’attosca. Messer Brunetto, I
thank thee for the word.

—As we, or mother Dana, weave and unweave our bodies, Stephen said, from
day to day, their molecules shuttled to and fro, so does the artist weave and
unweave his image. And as the mole on my right breast is where it was when I
was born, though all my body has been woven of new stuff time after time, so
through the ghost of the unquiet father the image of the unliving son looks
forth. In the intense instant of imagination, when the mind, Shelley says, is a
fading coal, that which I was is that which I am and that which in possibility
I may come to be. So in the future, the sister of the past, I may see myself as
I sit here now but by reflection from that which then I shall be.

Drummond of Hawthornden helped you at that stile.

—Yes, Mr Best said youngly. I feel Hamlet quite young. The bitterness
might be from the father but the passages with Ophelia are surely from the son.

Has the wrong sow by the lug. He is in my father. I am in his son.

—That mole is the last to go, Stephen said, laughing.

John Eglinton made a nothing pleasing mow.

—If that were the birthmark of genius, he said, genius would be a drug in
the market. The plays of Shakespeare’s later years which Renan admired so much
breathe another spirit.

—The spirit of reconciliation, the quaker librarian breathed.

—There can be no reconciliation, Stephen said, if there has not been a
sundering.

Said that.

—If you want to know what are the events which cast their shadow over the
hell of time of King Lear, Othello, Hamlet, Troilus and Cressida, look
to see when and how the shadow lifts. What softens the heart of a man,
shipwrecked in storms dire, Tried, like another Ulysses, Pericles, prince of
Tyre?

Head, redconecapped, buffeted, brineblinded.

—A child, a girl, placed in his arms, Marina.

—The leaning of sophists towards the bypaths of apocrypha is a constant
quantity, John Eglinton detected. The highroads are dreary but they lead to the
town.

Good Bacon: gone musty. Shakespeare Bacon’s wild oats. Cypherjugglers going the
highroads. Seekers on the great quest. What town, good masters? Mummed in
names: A. E., eon: Magee, John Eglinton. East of the sun, west of the moon:
Tir na n-og. Booted the twain and staved.

How many miles to Dublin?
Three score and ten, sir.
Will we be there by candlelight?

—Mr Brandes accepts it, Stephen said, as the first play of the closing
period.

—Does he? What does Mr Sidney Lee, or Mr Simon Lazarus as some aver his
name is, say of it?

—Marina, Stephen said, a child of storm, Miranda, a wonder, Perdita, that
which was lost. What was lost is given back to him: his daughter’s child. My
dearest wife, Pericles says, was like this maid. Will any man love
the daughter if he has not loved the mother?

—The art of being a grandfather, Mr Best gan murmur. L’art d’être
grand…

—Will he not see reborn in her, with the memory of his own youth added,
another image?

Do you know what you are talking about? Love, yes. Word known to all men.
Amor vero aliquid alicui bonum vult unde et ea quae concupiscimus …

—His own image to a man with that queer thing genius is the standard of
all experience, material and moral. Such an appeal will touch him. The images
of other males of his blood will repel him. He will see in them grotesque
attempts of nature to foretell or to repeat himself.

The benign forehead of the quaker librarian enkindled rosily with hope.

—I hope Mr Dedalus will work out his theory for the enlightenment of the
public. And we ought to mention another Irish commentator, Mr George Bernard
Shaw. Nor should we forget Mr Frank Harris. His articles on Shakespeare in the
Saturday Review were surely brilliant. Oddly enough he too draws for us
an unhappy relation with the dark lady of the sonnets. The favoured rival is
William Herbert, earl of Pembroke. I own that if the poet must be rejected such
a rejection would seem more in harmony with—what shall I say?—our
notions of what ought not to have been.

Felicitously he ceased and held a meek head among them, auk’s egg, prize of
their fray.

He thous and thees her with grave husbandwords. Dost love, Miriam? Dost love
thy man?

—That may be too, Stephen said. There’s a saying of Goethe’s which Mr
Magee likes to quote. Beware of what you wish for in youth because you will get
it in middle life. Why does he send to one who is a buonaroba, a bay
where all men ride, a maid of honour with a scandalous girlhood, a lordling to
woo for him? He was himself a lord of language and had made himself a coistrel
gentleman and he had written Romeo and Juliet. Why? Belief in himself
has been untimely killed. He was overborne in a cornfield first (ryefield, I
should say) and he will never be a victor in his own eyes after nor play
victoriously the game of laugh and lie down. Assumed dongiovannism will not
save him. No later undoing will undo the first undoing. The tusk of the boar
has wounded him there where love lies ableeding. If the shrew is worsted yet
there remains to her woman’s invisible weapon. There is, I feel in the words,
some goad of the flesh driving him into a new passion, a darker shadow of the
first, darkening even his own understanding of himself. A like fate awaits him
and the two rages commingle in a whirlpool.

They list. And in the porches of their ears I pour.

—The soul has been before stricken mortally, a poison poured in the porch
of a sleeping ear. But those who are done to death in sleep cannot know the
manner of their quell unless their Creator endow their souls with that
knowledge in the life to come. The poisoning and the beast with two backs that
urged it King Hamlet’s ghost could not know of were he not endowed with
knowledge by his creator. That is why the speech (his lean unlovely English) is
always turned elsewhere, backward. Ravisher and ravished, what he would but
would not, go with him from Lucrece’s bluecircled ivory globes to Imogen’s
breast, bare, with its mole cinquespotted. He goes back, weary of the creation
he has piled up to hide him from himself, an old dog licking an old sore. But,
because loss is his gain, he passes on towards eternity in undiminished
personality, untaught by the wisdom he has written or by the laws he has
revealed. His beaver is up. He is a ghost, a shadow now, the wind by Elsinore’s
rocks or what you will, the sea’s voice, a voice heard only in the heart of him
who is the substance of his shadow, the son consubstantial with the father.

—Amen! was responded from the doorway.

Hast thou found me, O mine enemy?

Entr’acte.

A ribald face, sullen as a dean’s, Buck Mulligan came forward, then blithe in
motley, towards the greeting of their smiles. My telegram.

—You were speaking of the gaseous vertebrate, if I mistake not? he asked
of Stephen.

Primrosevested he greeted gaily with his doffed Panama as with a bauble.

They make him welcome. Was Du verlachst wirst Du noch dienen.

Brood of mockers: Photius, pseudomalachi, Johann Most.

He Who Himself begot middler the Holy Ghost and Himself sent Himself,
Agenbuyer, between Himself and others, Who, put upon by His fiends, stripped
and whipped, was nailed like bat to barndoor, starved on crosstree, Who let Him
bury, stood up, harrowed hell, fared into heaven and there these nineteen
hundred years sitteth on the right hand of His Own Self but yet shall come in
the latter day to doom the quick and dead when all the quick shall be dead
already.

He lifts his hands. Veils fall. O, flowers! Bells with bells with bells
aquiring.

—Yes, indeed, the quaker librarian said. A most instructive discussion.
Mr Mulligan, I’ll be bound, has his theory too of the play and of Shakespeare.
All sides of life should be represented.

He smiled on all sides equally.

Buck Mulligan thought, puzzled:

—Shakespeare? he said. I seem to know the name.

A flying sunny smile rayed in his loose features.

—To be sure, he said, remembering brightly. The chap that writes like
Synge.

Mr Best turned to him.

—Haines missed you, he said. Did you meet him? He’ll see you after at the
D. B. C. He’s gone to Gill’s to buy Hyde’s Lovesongs of Connacht.

—I came through the museum, Buck Mulligan said. Was he here?

—The bard’s fellowcountrymen, John Eglinton answered, are rather tired
perhaps of our brilliancies of theorising. I hear that an actress played Hamlet
for the fourhundredandeighth time last night in Dublin. Vining held that the
prince was a woman. Has no-one made him out to be an Irishman? Judge Barton, I
believe, is searching for some clues. He swears (His Highness not His Lordship)
by saint Patrick.

—The most brilliant of all is that story of Wilde’s, Mr Best said,
lifting his brilliant notebook. That Portrait of Mr W. H. where he
proves that the sonnets were written by a Willie Hughes, a man all hues.

—For Willie Hughes, is it not? the quaker librarian asked.

Or Hughie Wills? Mr William Himself. W. H.: who am I?

—I mean, for Willie Hughes, Mr Best said, amending his gloss easily. Of
course it’s all paradox, don’t you know, Hughes and hews and hues, the colour,
but it’s so typical the way he works it out. It’s the very essence of Wilde,
don’t you know. The light touch.

His glance touched their faces lightly as he smiled, a blond ephebe. Tame
essence of Wilde.

You’re darned witty. Three drams of usquebaugh you drank with Dan Deasy’s
ducats.

How much did I spend? O, a few shillings.

For a plump of pressmen. Humour wet and dry.

Wit. You would give your five wits for youth’s proud livery he pranks in.
Lineaments of gratified desire.

There be many mo. Take her for me. In pairing time. Jove, a cool ruttime send
them. Yea, turtledove her.

Eve. Naked wheatbellied sin. A snake coils her, fang in’s kiss.

—Do you think it is only a paradox? the quaker librarian was asking. The
mocker is never taken seriously when he is most serious.

They talked seriously of mocker’s seriousness.

Buck Mulligan’s again heavy face eyed Stephen awhile. Then, his head wagging,
he came near, drew a folded telegram from his pocket. His mobile lips read,
smiling with new delight.

—Telegram! he said. Wonderful inspiration! Telegram! A papal bull!

He sat on a corner of the unlit desk, reading aloud joyfully:

—The sentimentalist is he who would enjoy without incurring the
immense debtorship for a thing done. Signed: Dedalus. Where did you launch
it from? The kips? No. College Green. Have you drunk the four quid? The aunt is
going to call on your unsubstantial father. Telegram! Malachi Mulligan, The
Ship, lower Abbey street. O, you peerless mummer! O, you priestified Kinchite!

Joyfully he thrust message and envelope into a pocket but keened in a querulous
brogue:

—It’s what I’m telling you, mister honey, it’s queer and sick we were,
Haines and myself, the time himself brought it in. ’Twas murmur we did for a
gallus potion would rouse a friar, I’m thinking, and he limp with leching. And
we one hour and two hours and three hours in Connery’s sitting civil waiting
for pints apiece.

He wailed:

—And we to be there, mavrone, and you to be unbeknownst sending us your
conglomerations the way we to have our tongues out a yard long like the drouthy
clerics do be fainting for a pussful.

Stephen laughed.

Quickly, warningfully Buck Mulligan bent down.

—The tramper Synge is looking for you, he said, to murder you. He heard
you pissed on his halldoor in Glasthule. He’s out in pampooties to murder you.

—Me! Stephen exclaimed. That was your contribution to literature.

Buck Mulligan gleefully bent back, laughing to the dark eavesdropping ceiling.

—Murder you! he laughed.

Harsh gargoyle face that warred against me over our mess of hash of lights in
rue Saint-André-des-Arts. In words of words for words, palabras. Oisin with
Patrick. Faunman he met in Clamart woods, brandishing a winebottle. C’est
vendredi saint! Murthering Irish. His image, wandering, he met. I mine. I
met a fool i’the forest.

—Mr Lyster, an attendant said from the door ajar.

—… in which everyone can find his own. So Mr Justice Madden in his
Diary of Master William Silence has found the hunting terms… Yes? What
is it?

—There’s a gentleman here, sir, the attendant said, coming forward and
offering a card. From the Freeman. He wants to see the files of the
Kilkenny People for last year.

—Certainly, certainly, certainly. Is the gentleman?…

He took the eager card, glanced, not saw, laid down unglanced, looked, asked,
creaked, asked:

—Is he?… O, there!

Brisk in a galliard he was off, out. In the daylit corridor he talked with
voluble pains of zeal, in duty bound, most fair, most kind, most honest
broadbrim.

—This gentleman? Freeman’s Journal? Kilkenny People? To be sure.
Good day, sir. Kilkenny… We have certainly…

A patient silhouette waited, listening.

—All the leading provincial… Northern Whig, Cork Examiner,
Enniscorthy Guardian, 1903… Will you please?… Evans, conduct this
gentleman… If you just follow the atten… Or, please allow me… This way…
Please, sir…

Voluble, dutiful, he led the way to all the provincial papers, a bowing dark
figure following his hasty heels.

The door closed.

—The sheeny! Buck Mulligan cried.

He jumped up and snatched the card.

—What’s his name? Ikey Moses? Bloom.

He rattled on:

—Jehovah, collector of prepuces, is no more. I found him over in the
museum where I went to hail the foamborn Aphrodite. The Greek mouth that has
never been twisted in prayer. Every day we must do homage to her. Life of
life, thy lips enkindle.

Suddenly he turned to Stephen:

—He knows you. He knows your old fellow. O, I fear me, he is Greeker than
the Greeks. His pale Galilean eyes were upon her mesial groove. Venus
Kallipyge. O, the thunder of those loins! The god pursuing the maiden
hid.

—We want to hear more, John Eglinton decided with Mr Best’s approval. We
begin to be interested in Mrs S. Till now we had thought of her, if at all, as
a patient Griselda, a Penelope stayathome.

—Antisthenes, pupil of Gorgias, Stephen said, took the palm of beauty
from Kyrios Menelaus’ brooddam, Argive Helen, the wooden mare of Troy in whom a
score of heroes slept, and handed it to poor Penelope. Twenty years he lived in
London and, during part of that time, he drew a salary equal to that of the
lord chancellor of Ireland. His life was rich. His art, more than the art of
feudalism as Walt Whitman called it, is the art of surfeit. Hot herringpies,
green mugs of sack, honeysauces, sugar of roses, marchpane, gooseberried
pigeons, ringocandies. Sir Walter Raleigh, when they arrested him, had half a
million francs on his back including a pair of fancy stays. The gombeenwoman
Eliza Tudor had underlinen enough to vie with her of Sheba. Twenty years he
dallied there between conjugial love and its chaste delights and scortatory
love and its foul pleasures. You know Manningham’s story of the burgher’s wife
who bade Dick Burbage to her bed after she had seen him in Richard III
and how Shakespeare, overhearing, without more ado about nothing, took the cow
by the horns and, when Burbage came knocking at the gate, answered from the
capon’s blankets: William the conqueror came before Richard III. And the
gay lakin, mistress Fitton, mount and cry O, and his dainty birdsnies, lady
Penelope Rich, a clean quality woman is suited for a player, and the punks of
the bankside, a penny a time.

Cours la Reine. Encore vingt sous. Nous ferons de petites cochonneries.
Minette? Tu veux?

—The height of fine society. And sir William Davenant of Oxford’s mother
with her cup of canary for any cockcanary.

Buck Mulligan, his pious eyes upturned, prayed:

—Blessed Margaret Mary Anycock!

—And Harry of six wives’ daughter. And other lady friends from neighbour
seats as Lawn Tennyson, gentleman poet, sings. But all those twenty years what
do you suppose poor Penelope in Stratford was doing behind the diamond panes?

Do and do. Thing done. In a rosery of Fetter lane of Gerard, herbalist, he
walks, greyedauburn. An azured harebell like her veins. Lids of Juno’s eyes,
violets. He walks. One life is all. One body. Do. But do. Afar, in a reek of
lust and squalor, hands are laid on whiteness.

Buck Mulligan rapped John Eglinton’s desk sharply.

—Whom do you suspect? he challenged.

—Say that he is the spurned lover in the sonnets. Once spurned twice
spurned. But the court wanton spurned him for a lord, his dearmylove.

Love that dare not speak its name.

—As an Englishman, you mean, John sturdy Eglinton put in, he loved a
lord.

Old wall where sudden lizards flash. At Charenton I watched them.

—It seems so, Stephen said, when he wants to do for him, and for all
other and singular uneared wombs, the holy office an ostler does for the
stallion. Maybe, like Socrates, he had a midwife to mother as he had a shrew to
wife. But she, the giglot wanton, did not break a bedvow. Two deeds are rank in
that ghost’s mind: a broken vow and the dullbrained yokel on whom her favour
has declined, deceased husband’s brother. Sweet Ann, I take it, was hot in the
blood. Once a wooer, twice a wooer.

Stephen turned boldly in his chair.

—The burden of proof is with you not with me, he said frowning. If you
deny that in the fifth scene of Hamlet he has branded her with infamy
tell me why there is no mention of her during the thirtyfour years between the
day she married him and the day she buried him. All those women saw their men
down and under: Mary, her goodman John, Ann, her poor dear Willun, when he went
and died on her, raging that he was the first to go, Joan, her four brothers,
Judith, her husband and all her sons, Susan, her husband too, while Susan’s
daughter, Elizabeth, to use granddaddy’s words, wed her second, having killed
her first.

O, yes, mention there is. In the years when he was living richly in royal
London to pay a debt she had to borrow forty shillings from her father’s
shepherd. Explain you then. Explain the swansong too wherein he has commended
her to posterity.

He faced their silence.

To whom thus Eglinton: You mean the will.
But that has been explained, I believe, by jurists.
She was entitled to her widow’s dower
At common law. His legal knowledge was great
Our judges tell us.
Him Satan fleers,
Mocker:
And therefore he left out her name
From the first draft but he did not leave out
The presents for his granddaughter, for his daughters,
For his sister, for his old cronies in Stratford
And in London. And therefore when he was urged,
As I believe, to name her
He left her his
Secondbest
Bed.

Punkt.

Leftherhis
Secondbest
Leftherhis
Bestabed
Secabest
Leftabed.

Woa!

—Pretty countryfolk had few chattels then, John Eglinton observed, as
they have still if our peasant plays are true to type.

—He was a rich country gentleman, Stephen said, with a coat of arms and
landed estate at Stratford and a house in Ireland yard, a capitalist
shareholder, a bill promoter, a tithefarmer. Why did he not leave her his best
bed if he wished her to snore away the rest of her nights in peace?

—It is clear that there were two beds, a best and a secondbest, Mr
Secondbest Best said finely.

—Separatio a mensa et a thalamo, bettered Buck Mulligan and was
smiled on.

—Antiquity mentions famous beds, Second Eglinton puckered, bedsmiling.
Let me think.

—Antiquity mentions that Stagyrite schoolurchin and bald heathen sage,
Stephen said, who when dying in exile frees and endows his slaves, pays tribute
to his elders, wills to be laid in earth near the bones of his dead wife and
bids his friends be kind to an old mistress (don’t forget Nell Gwynn Herpyllis)
and let her live in his villa.

—Do you mean he died so? Mr Best asked with slight concern. I mean…

—He died dead drunk, Buck Mulligan capped. A quart of ale is a dish for a
king. O, I must tell you what Dowden said!

—What? asked Besteglinton.

William Shakespeare and company, limited. The people’s William. For terms
apply: E. Dowden, Highfield house…

—Lovely! Buck Mulligan suspired amorously. I asked him what he thought of
the charge of pederasty brought against the bard. He lifted his hands and said:
All we can say is that life ran very high in those days. Lovely!

Catamite.

—The sense of beauty leads us astray, said beautifulinsadness Best to
ugling Eglinton.

Steadfast John replied severe:

—The doctor can tell us what those words mean. You cannot eat your cake
and have it.

Sayest thou so? Will they wrest from us, from me, the palm of beauty?

—And the sense of property, Stephen said. He drew Shylock out of his own
long pocket. The son of a maltjobber and moneylender he was himself a
cornjobber and moneylender, with ten tods of corn hoarded in the famine riots.
His borrowers are no doubt those divers of worship mentioned by Chettle
Falstaff who reported his uprightness of dealing. He sued a fellowplayer for
the price of a few bags of malt and exacted his pound of flesh in interest for
every money lent. How else could Aubrey’s ostler and callboy get rich quick?
All events brought grist to his mill. Shylock chimes with the jewbaiting that
followed the hanging and quartering of the queen’s leech Lopez, his jew’s heart
being plucked forth while the sheeny was yet alive: Hamlet and
Macbeth with the coming to the throne of a Scotch philosophaster with a
turn for witchroasting. The lost armada is his jeer in Love’s Labour
Lost. His pageants, the histories, sail fullbellied on a tide of Mafeking
enthusiasm. Warwickshire jesuits are tried and we have a porter’s theory of
equivocation. The Sea Venture comes home from Bermudas and the play
Renan admired is written with Patsy Caliban, our American cousin. The sugared
sonnets follow Sidney’s. As for fay Elizabeth, otherwise carrotty Bess, the
gross virgin who inspired The Merry Wives of Windsor, let some meinherr
from Almany grope his life long for deephid meanings in the depths of the
buckbasket.

I think you’re getting on very nicely. Just mix up a mixture of
theolologicophilolological. Mingo, minxi, mictum, mingere.

—Prove that he was a jew, John Eglinton dared, expectantly. Your dean of
studies holds he was a holy Roman.

Sufflaminandus sum.

—He was made in Germany, Stephen replied, as the champion French polisher
of Italian scandals.

—A myriadminded man, Mr Best reminded. Coleridge called him myriadminded.

Amplius. In societate humana hoc est maxime necessarium ut sit amicitia
inter multos.

—Saint Thomas, Stephen began…

—Ora pro nobis, Monk Mulligan groaned, sinking to a chair.

There he keened a wailing rune.

—Pogue mahone! Acushla machree! It’s destroyed we are from this
day! It’s destroyed we are surely!

All smiled their smiles.

—Saint Thomas, Stephen smiling said, whose gorbellied works I enjoy
reading in the original, writing of incest from a standpoint different from
that of the new Viennese school Mr Magee spoke of, likens it in his wise and
curious way to an avarice of the emotions. He means that the love so given to
one near in blood is covetously withheld from some stranger who, it may be,
hungers for it. Jews, whom christians tax with avarice, are of all races the
most given to intermarriage. Accusations are made in anger. The christian laws
which built up the hoards of the jews (for whom, as for the lollards, storm was
shelter) bound their affections too with hoops of steel. Whether these be sins
or virtues old Nobodaddy will tell us at doomsday leet. But a man who holds so
tightly to what he calls his rights over what he calls his debts will hold
tightly also to what he calls his rights over her whom he calls his wife. No
sir smile neighbour shall covet his ox or his wife or his manservant or his
maidservant or his jackass.

—Or his jennyass, Buck Mulligan antiphoned.

—Gentle Will is being roughly handled, gentle Mr Best said gently.

—Which will? gagged sweetly Buck Mulligan. We are getting mixed.

—The will to live, John Eglinton philosophised, for poor Ann, Will’s
widow, is the will to die.

—Requiescat! Stephen prayed.

What of all the will to do?
It has vanished long ago…

—She lies laid out in stark stiffness in that secondbest bed, the mobled
queen, even though you prove that a bed in those days was as rare as a motorcar
is now and that its carvings were the wonder of seven parishes. In old age she
takes up with gospellers (one stayed with her at New Place and drank a quart of
sack the town council paid for but in which bed he slept it skills not to ask)
and heard she had a soul. She read or had read to her his chapbooks preferring
them to the Merry Wives and, loosing her nightly waters on the jordan,
she thought over Hooks and Eyes for Believers’ Breeches and The most
Spiritual Snuffbox to Make the Most Devout Souls Sneeze. Venus has twisted
her lips in prayer. Agenbite of inwit: remorse of conscience. It is an age of
exhausted whoredom groping for its god.

—History shows that to be true, inquit Eglintonus Chronolologos.
The ages succeed one another. But we have it on high authority that a man’s
worst enemies shall be those of his own house and family. I feel that Russell
is right. What do we care for his wife or father? I should say that only family
poets have family lives. Falstaff was not a family man. I feel that the fat
knight is his supreme creation.

Lean, he lay back. Shy, deny thy kindred, the unco guid. Shy, supping with the
godless, he sneaks the cup. A sire in Ultonian Antrim bade it him. Visits him
here on quarter days. Mr Magee, sir, there’s a gentleman to see you. Me? Says
he’s your father, sir. Give me my Wordsworth. Enter Magee Mor Matthew, a rugged
rough rugheaded kern, in strossers with a buttoned codpiece, his nether stocks
bemired with clauber of ten forests, a wand of wilding in his hand.

Your own? He knows your old fellow. The widower.

Hurrying to her squalid deathlair from gay Paris on the quayside I touched his
hand. The voice, new warmth, speaking. Dr Bob Kenny is attending her. The eyes
that wish me well. But do not know me.

—A father, Stephen said, battling against hopelessness, is a necessary
evil. He wrote the play in the months that followed his father’s death. If you
hold that he, a greying man with two marriageable daughters, with thirtyfive
years of life, nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita, with fifty of
experience, is the beardless undergraduate from Wittenberg then you must hold
that his seventyyear old mother is the lustful queen. No. The corpse of John
Shakespeare does not walk the night. From hour to hour it rots and rots. He
rests, disarmed of fatherhood, having devised that mystical estate upon his
son. Boccaccio’s Calandrino was the first and last man who felt himself with
child. Fatherhood, in the sense of conscious begetting, is unknown to man. It
is a mystical estate, an apostolic succession, from only begetter to only
begotten. On that mystery and not on the madonna which the cunning Italian
intellect flung to the mob of Europe the church is founded and founded
irremovably because founded, like the world, macro and microcosm, upon the
void. Upon incertitude, upon unlikelihood. Amor matris, subjective and
objective genitive, may be the only true thing in life. Paternity may be a
legal fiction. Who is the father of any son that any son should love him or he
any son?

What the hell are you driving at?

I know. Shut up. Blast you. I have reasons.

Amplius. Adhuc. Iterum. Postea.

Are you condemned to do this?

—They are sundered by a bodily shame so steadfast that the criminal
annals of the world, stained with all other incests and bestialities, hardly
record its breach. Sons with mothers, sires with daughters, lesbic sisters,
loves that dare not speak their name, nephews with grandmothers, jailbirds with
keyholes, queens with prize bulls. The son unborn mars beauty: born, he brings
pain, divides affection, increases care. He is a new male: his growth is his
father’s decline, his youth his father’s envy, his friend his father’s enemy.

In rue Monsieur-le-Prince I thought it.

—What links them in nature? An instant of blind rut.

Am I a father? If I were?

Shrunken uncertain hand.

—Sabellius, the African, subtlest heresiarch of all the beasts of the
field, held that the Father was Himself His Own Son. The bulldog of Aquin, with
whom no word shall be impossible, refutes him. Well: if the father who has not
a son be not a father can the son who has not a father be a son? When
Rutlandbaconsouthamptonshakespeare or another poet of the same name in the
comedy of errors wrote Hamlet he was not the father of his own son
merely but, being no more a son, he was and felt himself the father of all his
race, the father of his own grandfather, the father of his unborn grandson who,
by the same token, never was born, for nature, as Mr Magee understands her,
abhors perfection.

Eglintoneyes, quick with pleasure, looked up shybrightly. Gladly glancing, a
merry puritan, through the twisted eglantine.

Flatter. Rarely. But flatter.

—Himself his own father, Sonmulligan told himself. Wait. I am big with
child. I have an unborn child in my brain. Pallas Athena! A play! The play’s
the thing! Let me parturiate!

He clasped his paunchbrow with both birthaiding hands.

—As for his family, Stephen said, his mother’s name lives in the forest
of Arden. Her death brought from him the scene with Volumnia in
Coriolanus. His boyson’s death is the deathscene of young Arthur in
King John. Hamlet, the black prince, is Hamnet Shakespeare. Who the
girls in The Tempest, in Pericles, in Winter’s Tale are we
know. Who Cleopatra, fleshpot of Egypt, and Cressid and Venus are we may guess.
But there is another member of his family who is recorded.

—The plot thickens, John Eglinton said.

The quaker librarian, quaking, tiptoed in, quake, his mask, quake, with haste,
quake, quack.

Door closed. Cell. Day.

They list. Three. They.

I you he they.

Come, mess.

STEPHEN: He had three brothers, Gilbert, Edmund, Richard. Gilbert in his old
age told some cavaliers he got a pass for nowt from Maister Gatherer one time
mass he did and he seen his brud Maister Wull the playwriter up in Lunnon in a
wrastling play wud a man on’s back. The playhouse sausage filled Gilbert’s
soul. He is nowhere: but an Edmund and a Richard are recorded in the works of
sweet William.

MAGEEGLINJOHN: Names! What’s in a name?

BEST: That is my name, Richard, don’t you know. I hope you are going to say a
good word for Richard, don’t you know, for my sake. (Laughter)

BUCKMULLIGAN: (Piano, diminuendo)

Then outspoke medical Dick
To his comrade medical Davy…

STEPHEN: In his trinity of black Wills, the villain shakebags, Iago, Richard
Crookback, Edmund in King Lear, two bear the wicked uncles’ names. Nay,
that last play was written or being written while his brother Edmund lay dying
in Southwark.

BEST: I hope Edmund is going to catch it. I don’t want Richard, my name …

(Laughter)

QUAKERLYSTER: (A tempo) But he that filches from me my good name…

STEPHEN: (Stringendo) He has hidden his own name, a fair name, William,
in the plays, a super here, a clown there, as a painter of old Italy set his
face in a dark corner of his canvas. He has revealed it in the sonnets where
there is Will in overplus. Like John o’Gaunt his name is dear to him, as dear
as the coat and crest he toadied for, on a bend sable a spear or steeled
argent, honorificabilitudinitatibus, dearer than his glory of greatest
shakescene in the country. What’s in a name? That is what we ask ourselves in
childhood when we write the name that we are told is ours. A star, a daystar, a
firedrake, rose at his birth. It shone by day in the heavens alone, brighter
than Venus in the night, and by night it shone over delta in Cassiopeia, the
recumbent constellation which is the signature of his initial among the stars.
His eyes watched it, lowlying on the horizon, eastward of the bear, as he
walked by the slumberous summer fields at midnight returning from Shottery and
from her arms.

Both satisfied. I too.

Don’t tell them he was nine years old when it was quenched.

And from her arms.

Wait to be wooed and won. Ay, meacock. Who will woo you?

Read the skies. Autontimorumenos. Bous Stephanoumenos. Where’s your
configuration? Stephen, Stephen, cut the bread even. S. D: sua donna. Già:
di lui. Gelindo risolve di non amare S. D.

—What is that, Mr Dedalus? the quaker librarian asked. Was it a celestial
phenomenon?

—A star by night, Stephen said. A pillar of the cloud by day.

What more’s to speak?

Stephen looked on his hat, his stick, his boots.

Stephanos, my crown. My sword. His boots are spoiling the shape of my
feet. Buy a pair. Holes in my socks. Handkerchief too.

—You make good use of the name, John Eglinton allowed. Your own name is
strange enough. I suppose it explains your fantastical humour.

Me, Magee and Mulligan.

Fabulous artificer. The hawklike man. You flew. Whereto? Newhaven-Dieppe,
steerage passenger. Paris and back. Lapwing. Icarus. Pater, ait.
Seabedabbled, fallen, weltering. Lapwing you are. Lapwing be.

Mr Best eagerquietly lifted his book to say:

—That’s very interesting because that brother motive, don’t you know, we
find also in the old Irish myths. Just what you say. The three brothers
Shakespeare. In Grimm too, don’t you know, the fairytales. The third brother
that always marries the sleeping beauty and wins the best prize.

Best of Best brothers. Good, better, best.

The quaker librarian springhalted near.

—I should like to know, he said, which brother you… I understand you to
suggest there was misconduct with one of the brothers… But perhaps I am
anticipating?

He caught himself in the act: looked at all: refrained.

An attendant from the doorway called:

—Mr Lyster! Father Dineen wants…

—O, Father Dineen! Directly.

Swiftly rectly creaking rectly rectly he was rectly gone.

John Eglinton touched the foil.

—Come, he said. Let us hear what you have to say of Richard and Edmund.
You kept them for the last, didn’t you?

—In asking you to remember those two noble kinsmen nuncle Richie and
nuncle Edmund, Stephen answered, I feel I am asking too much perhaps. A brother
is as easily forgotten as an umbrella.

Lapwing.

Where is your brother? Apothecaries’ hall. My whetstone. Him, then Cranly,
Mulligan: now these. Speech, speech. But act. Act speech. They mock to try you.
Act. Be acted on.

Lapwing.

I am tired of my voice, the voice of Esau. My kingdom for a drink.

On.

—You will say those names were already in the chronicles from which he
took the stuff of his plays. Why did he take them rather than others? Richard,
a whoreson crookback, misbegotten, makes love to a widowed Ann (what’s in a
name?), woos and wins her, a whoreson merry widow. Richard the conqueror, third
brother, came after William the conquered. The other four acts of that play
hang limply from that first. Of all his kings Richard is the only king
unshielded by Shakespeare’s reverence, the angel of the world. Why is the
underplot of King Lear in which Edmund figures lifted out of Sidney’s
Arcadia and spatchcocked on to a Celtic legend older than history?

—That was Will’s way, John Eglinton defended. We should not now combine a
Norse saga with an excerpt from a novel by George Meredith. Que
voulez-vous? Moore would say. He puts Bohemia on the seacoast and makes
Ulysses quote Aristotle.

—Why? Stephen answered himself. Because the theme of the false or the
usurping or the adulterous brother or all three in one is to Shakespeare, what
the poor are not, always with him. The note of banishment, banishment from the
heart, banishment from home, sounds uninterruptedly from The Two Gentlemen
of Verona onward till Prospero breaks his staff, buries it certain fathoms
in the earth and drowns his book. It doubles itself in the middle of his life,
reflects itself in another, repeats itself, protasis, epitasis, catastasis,
catastrophe. It repeats itself again when he is near the grave, when his
married daughter Susan, chip of the old block, is accused of adultery. But it
was the original sin that darkened his understanding, weakened his will and
left in him a strong inclination to evil. The words are those of my lords
bishops of Maynooth. An original sin and, like original sin, committed by
another in whose sin he too has sinned. It is between the lines of his last
written words, it is petrified on his tombstone under which her four bones are
not to be laid. Age has not withered it. Beauty and peace have not done it
away. It is in infinite variety everywhere in the world he has created, in
Much Ado about Nothing, twice in As you like It, in The
Tempest, in Hamlet, in Measure for Measure—and in all
the other plays which I have not read.

He laughed to free his mind from his mind’s bondage.

Judge Eglinton summed up.

—The truth is midway, he affirmed. He is the ghost and the prince. He is
all in all.

—He is, Stephen said. The boy of act one is the mature man of act five.
All in all. In Cymbeline, in Othello he is bawd and cuckold. He
acts and is acted on. Lover of an ideal or a perversion, like José he kills the
real Carmen. His unremitting intellect is the hornmad Iago ceaselessly willing
that the moor in him shall suffer.

—Cuckoo! Cuckoo! Cuck Mulligan clucked lewdly. O word of fear!

Dark dome received, reverbed.

—And what a character is Iago! undaunted John Eglinton exclaimed. When
all is said Dumas fils (or is it Dumas père?) is right. After God
Shakespeare has created most.

—Man delights him not nor woman neither, Stephen said. He returns after a
life of absence to that spot of earth where he was born, where he has always
been, man and boy, a silent witness and there, his journey of life ended, he
plants his mulberrytree in the earth. Then dies. The motion is ended.
Gravediggers bury Hamlet père and Hamlet fils. A king and a
prince at last in death, with incidental music. And, what though murdered and
betrayed, bewept by all frail tender hearts for, Dane or Dubliner, sorrow for
the dead is the only husband from whom they refuse to be divorced. If you like
the epilogue look long on it: prosperous Prospero, the good man rewarded,
Lizzie, grandpa’s lump of love, and nuncle Richie, the bad man taken off by
poetic justice to the place where the bad niggers go. Strong curtain. He found
in the world without as actual what was in his world within as possible.
Maeterlinck says: If Socrates leave his house today he will find the sage
seated on his doorstep. If Judas go forth tonight it is to Judas his steps will
tend. Every life is many days, day after day. We walk through ourselves,
meeting robbers, ghosts, giants, old men, young men, wives, widows,
brothers-in-love, but always meeting ourselves. The playwright who wrote the
folio of this world and wrote it badly (He gave us light first and the sun two
days later), the lord of things as they are whom the most Roman of catholics
call dio boia, hangman god, is doubtless all in all in all of us, ostler
and butcher, and would be bawd and cuckold too but that in the economy of
heaven, foretold by Hamlet, there are no more marriages, glorified man, an
androgynous angel, being a wife unto himself.

—Eureka! Buck Mulligan cried. Eureka!

Suddenly happied he jumped up and reached in a stride John Eglinton’s desk.

—May I? he said. The Lord has spoken to Malachi.

He began to scribble on a slip of paper.

Take some slips from the counter going out.

—Those who are married, Mr Best, douce herald, said, all save one, shall
live. The rest shall keep as they are.

He laughed, unmarried, at Eglinton Johannes, of arts a bachelor.

Unwed, unfancied, ware of wiles, they fingerponder nightly each his variorum
edition of The Taming of the Shrew.

—You are a delusion, said roundly John Eglinton to Stephen. You have
brought us all this way to show us a French triangle. Do you believe your own
theory?

—No, Stephen said promptly.

—Are you going to write it? Mr Best asked. You ought to make it a
dialogue, don’t you know, like the Platonic dialogues Wilde wrote.

John Eclecticon doubly smiled.

—Well, in that case, he said, I don’t see why you should expect payment
for it since you don’t believe it yourself. Dowden believes there is some
mystery in Hamlet but will say no more. Herr Bleibtreu, the man Piper
met in Berlin, who is working up that Rutland theory, believes that the secret
is hidden in the Stratford monument. He is going to visit the present duke,
Piper says, and prove to him that his ancestor wrote the plays. It will come as
a surprise to his grace. But he believes his theory.

I believe, O Lord, help my unbelief. That is, help me to believe or help me to
unbelieve? Who helps to believe? Egomen. Who to unbelieve? Other chap.

—You are the only contributor to Dana who asks for pieces of
silver. Then I don’t know about the next number. Fred Ryan wants space for an
article on economics.

Fraidrine. Two pieces of silver he lent me. Tide you over. Economics.

—For a guinea, Stephen said, you can publish this interview.

Buck Mulligan stood up from his laughing scribbling, laughing: and then gravely
said, honeying malice:

—I called upon the bard Kinch at his summer residence in upper
Mecklenburgh street and found him deep in the study of the Summa contra
Gentiles in the company of two gonorrheal ladies, Fresh Nelly and Rosalie,
the coalquay whore.

He broke away.

—Come, Kinch. Come, wandering Ængus of the birds.

Come, Kinch. You have eaten all we left. Ay. I will serve you your orts and
offals.

Stephen rose.

Life is many days. This will end.

—We shall see you tonight, John Eglinton said. Notre ami Moore
says Malachi Mulligan must be there.

Buck Mulligan flaunted his slip and panama.

—Monsieur Moore, he said, lecturer on French letters to the youth of
Ireland. I’ll be there. Come, Kinch, the bards must drink. Can you walk
straight?

Laughing, he…

Swill till eleven. Irish nights entertainment.

Lubber…

Stephen followed a lubber…

One day in the national library we had a discussion. Shakes. After. His lub
back: I followed. I gall his kibe.

Stephen, greeting, then all amort, followed a lubber jester, a wellkempt head,
newbarbered, out of the vaulted cell into a shattering daylight of no thought.

What have I learned? Of them? Of me?

Walk like Haines now.

The constant readers’ room. In the readers’ book Cashel Boyle O’Connor
Fitzmaurice Tisdall Farrell parafes his polysyllables. Item: was Hamlet mad?
The quaker’s pate godlily with a priesteen in booktalk.

—O please do, sir… I shall be most pleased…

Amused Buck Mulligan mused in pleasant murmur with himself, selfnodding:

—A pleased bottom.

The turnstile.

Is that?… Blueribboned hat… Idly writing… What? Looked?…

The curving balustrade: smoothsliding Mincius.

Puck Mulligan, panamahelmeted, went step by step, iambing, trolling:

John Eglinton, my jo, John,
Why won’t you wed a wife?

He spluttered to the air:

—O, the chinless Chinaman! Chin Chon Eg Lin Ton. We went over to their
playbox, Haines and I, the plumbers’ hall. Our players are creating a new art
for Europe like the Greeks or M. Maeterlinck. Abbey Theatre! I smell the pubic
sweat of monks.

He spat blank.

Forgot: any more than he forgot the whipping lousy Lucy gave him. And left the
femme de trente ans. And why no other children born? And his first child
a girl?

Afterwit. Go back.

The dour recluse still there (he has his cake) and the douce youngling, minion
of pleasure, Phedo’s toyable fair hair.

Eh… I just eh… wanted… I forgot… he…

—Longworth and M’Curdy Atkinson were there…

Puck Mulligan footed featly, trilling:

I hardly hear the purlieu cry
Or a Tommy talk as I pass one by
Before my thoughts begin to run
On F. M’Curdy Atkinson,
The same that had the wooden leg
And that filibustering filibeg
That never dared to slake his drouth,
Magee that had the chinless mouth.
Being afraid to marry on earth
They masturbated for all they were worth.

Jest on. Know thyself.

Halted, below me, a quizzer looks at me. I halt.

—Mournful mummer, Buck Mulligan moaned. Synge has left off wearing black
to be like nature. Only crows, priests and English coal are black.

A laugh tripped over his lips.

—Longworth is awfully sick, he said, after what you wrote about that old
hake Gregory. O you inquisitional drunken jewjesuit! She gets you a job on the
paper and then you go and slate her drivel to Jaysus. Couldn’t you do the Yeats
touch?

He went on and down, mopping, chanting with waving graceful arms:

—The most beautiful book that has come out of our country in my time. One
thinks of Homer.

He stopped at the stairfoot.

—I have conceived a play for the mummers, he said solemnly.

The pillared Moorish hall, shadows entwined. Gone the nine men’s morrice with
caps of indices.

In sweetly varying voices Buck Mulligan read his tablet:

Everyman His Own Wife
or
A Honeymoon in the Hand
(a national immorality in three orgasms)
by
Ballocky Mulligan.

He turned a happy patch’s smirk to Stephen, saying:

—The disguise, I fear, is thin. But listen.

He read, marcato:

—Characters:

     TOBY TOSTOFF (a ruined Pole)
     CRAB (a bushranger)
     MEDICAL DICK )
         and      ) (two birds with one stone)
     MEDICAL DAVY )
     MOTHER GROGAN (a watercarrier)
     FRESH NELLY
         and
     ROSALIE (the coalquay whore).

He laughed, lolling a to and fro head, walking on, followed by Stephen: and
mirthfully he told the shadows, souls of men:

—O, the night in the Camden hall when the daughters of Erin had to lift
their skirts to step over you as you lay in your mulberrycoloured,
multicoloured, multitudinous vomit!

—The most innocent son of Erin, Stephen said, for whom they ever lifted
them.

About to pass through the doorway, feeling one behind, he stood aside.

Part. The moment is now. Where then? If Socrates leave his house today, if
Judas go forth tonight. Why? That lies in space which I in time must come to,
ineluctably.

My will: his will that fronts me. Seas between.

A man passed out between them, bowing, greeting.

—Good day again, Buck Mulligan said.

The portico.

Here I watched the birds for augury. Ængus of the birds. They go, they come.
Last night I flew. Easily flew. Men wondered. Street of harlots after. A
creamfruit melon he held to me. In. You will see.

—The wandering jew, Buck Mulligan whispered with clown’s awe. Did you see
his eye? He looked upon you to lust after you. I fear thee, ancient mariner. O,
Kinch, thou art in peril. Get thee a breechpad.

Manner of Oxenford.

Day. Wheelbarrow sun over arch of bridge.

A dark back went before them, step of a pard, down, out by the gateway, under
portcullis barbs.

They followed.

Offend me still. Speak on.

Kind air defined the coigns of houses in Kildare street. No birds. Frail from
the housetops two plumes of smoke ascended, pluming, and in a flaw of softness
softly were blown.

Cease to strive. Peace of the druid priests of Cymbeline: hierophantic: from
wide earth an altar.

Laud we the gods
And let our crooked smokes climb to their nostrils

From our bless’d altars.

[ 10 ]

The superior, the very reverend John Conmee S. J. reset his smooth watch in his
interior pocket as he came down the presbytery steps. Five to three. Just nice
time to walk to Artane. What was that boy’s name again? Dignam. Yes. Vere
dignum et iustum est. Brother Swan was the person to see. Mr Cunningham’s
letter. Yes. Oblige him, if possible. Good practical catholic: useful at
mission time.

A onelegged sailor, swinging himself onward by lazy jerks of his crutches,
growled some notes. He jerked short before the convent of the sisters of
charity and held out a peaked cap for alms towards the very reverend John
Conmee S. J. Father Conmee blessed him in the sun for his purse held, he knew,
one silver crown.

Father Conmee crossed to Mountjoy square. He thought, but not for long, of
soldiers and sailors, whose legs had been shot off by cannonballs, ending their
days in some pauper ward, and of cardinal Wolsey’s words: If I had served my
God as I have served my king He would not have abandoned me in my old days.
He walked by the treeshade of sunnywinking leaves: and towards him came the
wife of Mr David Sheehy M.P.

—Very well, indeed, father. And you, father?

Father Conmee was wonderfully well indeed. He would go to Buxton probably for
the waters. And her boys, were they getting on well at Belvedere? Was that so?
Father Conmee was very glad indeed to hear that. And Mr Sheehy himself? Still
in London. The house was still sitting, to be sure it was. Beautiful weather it
was, delightful indeed. Yes, it was very probable that Father Bernard Vaughan
would come again to preach. O, yes: a very great success. A wonderful man
really.

Father Conmee was very glad to see the wife of Mr David Sheehy M.P. Iooking so
well and he begged to be remembered to Mr David Sheehy M.P. Yes, he would
certainly call.

—Good afternoon, Mrs Sheehy.

Father Conmee doffed his silk hat and smiled, as he took leave, at the jet
beads of her mantilla inkshining in the sun. And smiled yet again, in going. He
had cleaned his teeth, he knew, with arecanut paste.

Father Conmee walked and, walking, smiled for he thought on Father Bernard
Vaughan’s droll eyes and cockney voice.

—Pilate! Wy don’t you old back that owlin mob?

A zealous man, however. Really he was. And really did great good in his way.
Beyond a doubt. He loved Ireland, he said, and he loved the Irish. Of good
family too would one think it? Welsh, were they not?

O, lest he forget. That letter to father provincial.

Father Conmee stopped three little schoolboys at the corner of Mountjoy square.
Yes: they were from Belvedere. The little house. Aha. And were they good boys
at school? O. That was very good now. And what was his name? Jack Sohan. And
his name? Ger. Gallaher. And the other little man? His name was Brunny Lynam.
O, that was a very nice name to have.

Father Conmee gave a letter from his breast to Master Brunny Lynam and pointed
to the red pillarbox at the corner of Fitzgibbon street.

—But mind you don’t post yourself into the box, little man, he said.

The boys sixeyed Father Conmee and laughed:

—O, sir.

—Well, let me see if you can post a letter, Father Conmee said.

Master Brunny Lynam ran across the road and put Father Conmee’s letter to
father provincial into the mouth of the bright red letterbox. Father Conmee
smiled and nodded and smiled and walked along Mountjoy square east.

Mr Denis J Maginni, professor of dancing &c, in silk hat, slate frockcoat
with silk facings, white kerchief tie, tight lavender trousers, canary gloves
and pointed patent boots, walking with grave deportment most respectfully took
the curbstone as he passed lady Maxwell at the corner of Dignam’s court.

Was that not Mrs M’Guinness?

Mrs M’Guinness, stately, silverhaired, bowed to Father Conmee from the farther
footpath along which she sailed. And Father Conmee smiled and saluted. How did
she do?

A fine carriage she had. Like Mary, queen of Scots, something. And to think
that she was a pawnbroker! Well, now! Such a… what should he say?… such a
queenly mien.

Father Conmee walked down Great Charles street and glanced at the shutup free
church on his left. The reverend T. R. Greene B.A. will (D.V.) speak. The
incumbent they called him. He felt it incumbent on him to say a few words. But
one should be charitable. Invincible ignorance. They acted according to their
lights.

Father Conmee turned the corner and walked along the North Circular road. It
was a wonder that there was not a tramline in such an important thoroughfare.
Surely, there ought to be.

A band of satchelled schoolboys crossed from Richmond street. All raised untidy
caps. Father Conmee greeted them more than once benignly. Christian brother
boys.

Father Conmee smelt incense on his right hand as he walked. Saint Joseph’s
church, Portland row. For aged and virtuous females. Father Conmee raised his
hat to the Blessed Sacrament. Virtuous: but occasionally they were also
badtempered.

Near Aldborough house Father Conmee thought of that spendthrift nobleman. And
now it was an office or something.

Father Conmee began to walk along the North Strand road and was saluted by Mr
William Gallagher who stood in the doorway of his shop. Father Conmee saluted
Mr William Gallagher and perceived the odours that came from baconflitches and
ample cools of butter. He passed Grogan’s the Tobacconist against which
newsboards leaned and told of a dreadful catastrophe in New York. In America
those things were continually happening. Unfortunate people to die like that,
unprepared. Still, an act of perfect contrition.

Father Conmee went by Daniel Bergin’s publichouse against the window of which
two unlabouring men lounged. They saluted him and were saluted.

Father Conmee passed H. J. O’Neill’s funeral establishment where Corny Kelleher
totted figures in the daybook while he chewed a blade of hay. A constable on
his beat saluted Father Conmee and Father Conmee saluted the constable. In
Youkstetter’s, the porkbutcher’s, Father Conmee observed pig’s puddings, white
and black and red, lie neatly curled in tubes.

Moored under the trees of Charleville Mall Father Conmee saw a turfbarge, a
towhorse with pendent head, a bargeman with a hat of dirty straw seated
amidships, smoking and staring at a branch of poplar above him. It was idyllic:
and Father Conmee reflected on the providence of the Creator who had made turf
to be in bogs whence men might dig it out and bring it to town and hamlet to
make fires in the houses of poor people.

On Newcomen bridge the very reverend John Conmee S. J. of saint Francis
Xavier’s church, upper Gardiner street, stepped on to an outward bound tram.

Off an inward bound tram stepped the reverend Nicholas Dudley C. C. of saint
Agatha’s church, north William street, on to Newcomen bridge.

At Newcomen bridge Father Conmee stepped into an outward bound tram for he
disliked to traverse on foot the dingy way past Mud Island.

Father Conmee sat in a corner of the tramcar, a blue ticket tucked with care in
the eye of one plump kid glove, while four shillings, a sixpence and five
pennies chuted from his other plump glovepalm into his purse. Passing the ivy
church he reflected that the ticket inspector usually made his visit when one
had carelessly thrown away the ticket. The solemnity of the occupants of the
car seemed to Father Conmee excessive for a journey so short and cheap. Father
Conmee liked cheerful decorum.

It was a peaceful day. The gentleman with the glasses opposite Father Conmee
had finished explaining and looked down. His wife, Father Conmee supposed. A
tiny yawn opened the mouth of the wife of the gentleman with the glasses. She
raised her small gloved fist, yawned ever so gently, tiptapping her small
gloved fist on her opening mouth and smiled tinily, sweetly.

Father Conmee perceived her perfume in the car. He perceived also that the
awkward man at the other side of her was sitting on the edge of the seat.

Father Conmee at the altarrails placed the host with difficulty in the mouth of
the awkward old man who had the shaky head.

At Annesley bridge the tram halted and, when it was about to go, an old woman
rose suddenly from her place to alight. The conductor pulled the bellstrap to
stay the car for her. She passed out with her basket and a marketnet: and
Father Conmee saw the conductor help her and net and basket down: and Father
Conmee thought that, as she had nearly passed the end of the penny fare, she
was one of those good souls who had always to be told twice bless you, my
child, that they have been absolved, pray for me. But they had so
many worries in life, so many cares, poor creatures.

From the hoardings Mr Eugene Stratton grimaced with thick niggerlips at Father
Conmee.

Father Conmee thought of the souls of black and brown and yellow men and of his
sermon on saint Peter Claver S. J. and the African mission and of the
propagation of the faith and of the millions of black and brown and yellow
souls that had not received the baptism of water when their last hour came like
a thief in the night. That book by the Belgian jesuit, Le Nombre des
Élus, seemed to Father Conmee a reasonable plea. Those were millions of
human souls created by God in His Own likeness to whom the faith had not (D.V.)
been brought. But they were God’s souls, created by God. It seemed to Father
Conmee a pity that they should all be lost, a waste, if one might say.

At the Howth road stop Father Conmee alighted, was saluted by the conductor and
saluted in his turn.

The Malahide road was quiet. It pleased Father Conmee, road and name. The
joybells were ringing in gay Malahide. Lord Talbot de Malahide, immediate
hereditary lord admiral of Malahide and the seas adjoining. Then came the call
to arms and she was maid, wife and widow in one day. Those were old worldish
days, loyal times in joyous townlands, old times in the barony.

Father Conmee, walking, thought of his little book Old Times in the
Barony and of the book that might be written about jesuit houses and of
Mary Rochfort, daughter of lord Molesworth, first countess of Belvedere.

A listless lady, no more young, walked alone the shore of lough Ennel, Mary,
first countess of Belvedere, listlessly walking in the evening, not startled
when an otter plunged. Who could know the truth? Not the jealous lord Belvedere
and not her confessor if she had not committed adultery fully, eiaculatio
seminis inter vas naturale mulieris, with her husband’s brother? She would
half confess if she had not all sinned as women did. Only God knew and she and
he, her husband’s brother.

Father Conmee thought of that tyrannous incontinence, needed however for man’s
race on earth, and of the ways of God which were not our ways.

Don John Conmee walked and moved in times of yore. He was humane and honoured
there. He bore in mind secrets confessed and he smiled at smiling noble faces
in a beeswaxed drawingroom, ceiled with full fruit clusters. And the hands of a
bride and of a bridegroom, noble to noble, were impalmed by Don John Conmee.

It was a charming day.

The lychgate of a field showed Father Conmee breadths of cabbages, curtseying
to him with ample underleaves. The sky showed him a flock of small white clouds
going slowly down the wind. Moutonner, the French said. A just and
homely word.

Father Conmee, reading his office, watched a flock of muttoning clouds over
Rathcoffey. His thinsocked ankles were tickled by the stubble of Clongowes
field. He walked there, reading in the evening, and heard the cries of the
boys’ lines at their play, young cries in the quiet evening. He was their
rector: his reign was mild.

Father Conmee drew off his gloves and took his rededged breviary out. An ivory
bookmark told him the page.

Nones. He should have read that before lunch. But lady Maxwell had come.

Father Conmee read in secret Pater and Ave and crossed his
breast. Deus in adiutorium.

He walked calmly and read mutely the nones, walking and reading till he came to
Res in Beati immaculati: Principium verborum tuorum veritas: in
eternum omnia iudicia iustitiæ tuæ.

A flushed young man came from a gap of a hedge and after him came a young woman
with wild nodding daisies in her hand. The young man raised his cap abruptly:
the young woman abruptly bent and with slow care detached from her light skirt
a clinging twig.

Father Conmee blessed both gravely and turned a thin page of his breviary.
Sin: Principes persecuti sunt me gratis: et a verbis tuis formidavit cor
meum.

* * *

Corny Kelleher closed his long daybook and glanced with his drooping eye at a
pine coffinlid sentried in a corner. He pulled himself erect, went to it and,
spinning it on its axle, viewed its shape and brass furnishings. Chewing his
blade of hay he laid the coffinlid by and came to the doorway. There he tilted
his hatbrim to give shade to his eyes and leaned against the doorcase, looking
idly out.

Father John Conmee stepped into the Dollymount tram on Newcomen bridge.

Corny Kelleher locked his largefooted boots and gazed, his hat downtilted,
chewing his blade of hay.

Constable 57C, on his beat, stood to pass the time of day.

—That’s a fine day, Mr Kelleher.

—Ay, Corny Kelleher said.

—It’s very close, the constable said.

Corny Kelleher sped a silent jet of hayjuice arching from his mouth while a
generous white arm from a window in Eccles street flung forth a coin.

—What’s the best news? he asked.

—I seen that particular party last evening, the constable said with bated
breath.

* * *

A onelegged sailor crutched himself round MacConnell’s corner, skirting
Rabaiotti’s icecream car, and jerked himself up Eccles street. Towards Larry
O’Rourke, in shirtsleeves in his doorway, he growled unamiably:

—For England…

He swung himself violently forward past Katey and Boody Dedalus, halted and
growled:

—home and beauty.

J. J. O’Molloy’s white careworn face was told that Mr Lambert was in the
warehouse with a visitor.

A stout lady stopped, took a copper coin from her purse and dropped it into the
cap held out to her. The sailor grumbled thanks, glanced sourly at the
unheeding windows, sank his head and swung himself forward four strides.

He halted and growled angrily:

—For England…

Two barefoot urchins, sucking long liquorice laces, halted near him, gaping at
his stump with their yellowslobbered mouths.

He swung himself forward in vigorous jerks, halted, lifted his head towards a
window and bayed deeply:

—home and beauty.

The gay sweet chirping whistling within went on a bar or two, ceased. The blind
of the window was drawn aside. A card Unfurnished Apartments slipped
from the sash and fell. A plump bare generous arm shone, was seen, held forth
from a white petticoatbodice and taut shiftstraps. A woman’s hand flung forth a
coin over the area railings. It fell on the path.

One of the urchins ran to it, picked it up and dropped it into the minstrel’s
cap, saying:

—There, sir.

* * *

Katey and Boody Dedalus shoved in the door of the closesteaming kitchen.

—Did you put in the books? Boody asked.

Maggy at the range rammed down a greyish mass beneath bubbling suds twice with
her potstick and wiped her brow.

—They wouldn’t give anything on them, she said.

Father Conmee walked through Clongowes fields, his thinsocked ankles tickled by
stubble.

—Where did you try? Boody asked.

—M’Guinness’s.

Boody stamped her foot and threw her satchel on the table.

—Bad cess to her big face! she cried.

Katey went to the range and peered with squinting eyes.

—What’s in the pot? she asked.

—Shirts, Maggy said.

Boody cried angrily:

—Crickey, is there nothing for us to eat?

Katey, lifting the kettlelid in a pad of her stained skirt, asked:

—And what’s in this?

A heavy fume gushed in answer.

—Peasoup, Maggy said.

—Where did you get it? Katey asked.

—Sister Mary Patrick, Maggy said.

The lacquey rang his bell.

—Barang!

Boody sat down at the table and said hungrily:

—Give us it here.

Maggy poured yellow thick soup from the kettle into a bowl. Katey, sitting
opposite Boody, said quietly, as her fingertip lifted to her mouth random
crumbs:

—A good job we have that much. Where’s Dilly?

—Gone to meet father, Maggy said.

Boody, breaking big chunks of bread into the yellow soup, added:

—Our father who art not in heaven.

Maggy, pouring yellow soup in Katey’s bowl, exclaimed:

—Boody! For shame!

A skiff, a crumpled throwaway, Elijah is coming, rode lightly down the Liffey,
under Loopline bridge, shooting the rapids where water chafed around the
bridgepiers, sailing eastward past hulls and anchorchains, between the
Customhouse old dock and George’s quay.

* * *

The blond girl in Thornton’s bedded the wicker basket with rustling fibre.
Blazes Boylan handed her the bottle swathed in pink tissue paper and a small
jar.

—Put these in first, will you? he said.

—Yes, sir, the blond girl said. And the fruit on top.

—That’ll do, game ball, Blazes Boylan said.

She bestowed fat pears neatly, head by tail, and among them ripe shamefaced
peaches.

Blazes Boylan walked here and there in new tan shoes about the fruitsmelling
shop, lifting fruits, young juicy crinkled and plump red tomatoes, sniffing
smells.

H. E. L. Y.’S filed before him, tallwhitehatted, past Tangier lane, plodding
towards their goal.

He turned suddenly from a chip of strawberries, drew a gold watch from his fob
and held it at its chain’s length.

—Can you send them by tram? Now?

A darkbacked figure under Merchants’ arch scanned books on the hawker’s cart.

—Certainly, sir. Is it in the city?

—O, yes, Blazes Boylan said. Ten minutes.

The blond girl handed him a docket and pencil.

—Will you write the address, sir?

Blazes Boylan at the counter wrote and pushed the docket to her.

—Send it at once, will you? he said. It’s for an invalid.

—Yes, sir. I will, sir.

Blazes Boylan rattled merry money in his trousers’ pocket.

—What’s the damage? he asked.

The blond girl’s slim fingers reckoned the fruits.

Blazes Boylan looked into the cut of her blouse. A young pullet. He took a red
carnation from the tall stemglass.

—This for me? he asked gallantly.

The blond girl glanced sideways at him, got up regardless, with his tie a bit
crooked, blushing.

—Yes, sir, she said.

Bending archly she reckoned again fat pears and blushing peaches.

Blazes Boylan looked in her blouse with more favour, the stalk of the red
flower between his smiling teeth.

—May I say a word to your telephone, missy? he asked roguishly.

* * *

—Ma! Almidano Artifoni said.

He gazed over Stephen’s shoulder at Goldsmith’s knobby poll.

Two carfuls of tourists passed slowly, their women sitting fore, gripping the
handrests. Palefaces. Men’s arms frankly round their stunted forms. They looked
from Trinity to the blind columned porch of the bank of Ireland where pigeons
roocoocooed.

—Anch’io ho avuto di queste idee, Almidano Artifoni said,
quand’ ero giovine come Lei. Eppoi mi sono convinto che il mondo è una
bestia. È peccato. Perchè la sua voce… sarebbe un cespite di rendita, via.
Invece, Lei si sacrifica.

—Sacrifizio incruento, Stephen said smiling, swaying his ashplant
in slow swingswong from its midpoint, lightly.

—Speriamo, the round mustachioed face said pleasantly. Ma, dia
retta a me. Ci rifletta.

By the stern stone hand of Grattan, bidding halt, an Inchicore tram unloaded
straggling Highland soldiers of a band.

—Ci rifletterò, Stephen said, glancing down the solid trouserleg.

—Ma, sul serio, eh? Almidano Artifoni said.

His heavy hand took Stephen’s firmly. Human eyes. They gazed curiously an
instant and turned quickly towards a Dalkey tram.

—Eccolo, Almidano Artifoni said in friendly haste. Venga a
trovarmi e ci pensi. Addio, caro.

—Arrivederla, maestro, Stephen said, raising his hat when his hand
was freed. E grazie.

—Di che? Almidano Artifoni said. Scusi, eh? Tante belle
cose!

Almidano Artifoni, holding up a baton of rolled music as a signal, trotted on
stout trousers after the Dalkey tram. In vain he trotted, signalling in vain
among the rout of barekneed gillies smuggling implements of music through
Trinity gates.

* * *

Miss Dunne hid the Capel street library copy of The Woman in White far
back in her drawer and rolled a sheet of gaudy notepaper into her typewriter.

Too much mystery business in it. Is he in love with that one, Marion? Change it
and get another by Mary Cecil Haye.

The disk shot down the groove, wobbled a while, ceased and ogled them: six.

Miss Dunne clicked on the keyboard:

—16 June 1904.

Five tallwhitehatted sandwichmen between Monypeny’s corner and the slab where
Wolfe Tone’s statue was not, eeled themselves turning H. E. L. Y.’S and plodded
back as they had come.

Then she stared at the large poster of Marie Kendall, charming soubrette, and,
listlessly lolling, scribbled on the jotter sixteens and capital esses. Mustard
hair and dauby cheeks. She’s not nicelooking, is she? The way she’s holding up
her bit of a skirt. Wonder will that fellow be at the band tonight. If I could
get that dressmaker to make a concertina skirt like Susy Nagle’s. They kick out
grand. Shannon and all the boatclub swells never took his eyes off her. Hope to
goodness he won’t keep me here till seven.

The telephone rang rudely by her ear.

—Hello. Yes, sir. No, sir. Yes, sir. I’ll ring them up after five. Only
those two, sir, for Belfast and Liverpool. All right, sir. Then I can go after
six if you’re not back. A quarter after. Yes, sir. Twentyseven and six. I’ll
tell him. Yes: one, seven, six.

She scribbled three figures on an envelope.

—Mr Boylan! Hello! That gentleman from Sport was in looking for
you. Mr Lenehan, yes. He said he’ll be in the Ormond at four. No, sir. Yes,
sir. I’ll ring them up after five.

* * *

Two pink faces turned in the flare of the tiny torch.

—Who’s that? Ned Lambert asked. Is that Crotty?

—Ringabella and Crosshaven, a voice replied groping for foothold.

—Hello, Jack, is that yourself? Ned Lambert said, raising in salute his
pliant lath among the flickering arches. Come on. Mind your steps there.

The vesta in the clergyman’s uplifted hand consumed itself in a long soft flame
and was let fall. At their feet its red speck died: and mouldy air closed round
them.

—How interesting! a refined accent said in the gloom.

—Yes, sir, Ned Lambert said heartily. We are standing in the historic
council chamber of saint Mary’s abbey where silken Thomas proclaimed himself a
rebel in 1534. This is the most historic spot in all Dublin. O’Madden Burke is
going to write something about it one of these days. The old bank of Ireland
was over the way till the time of the union and the original jews’ temple was
here too before they built their synagogue over in Adelaide road. You were
never here before, Jack, were you?

—No, Ned.

—He rode down through Dame walk, the refined accent said, if my memory
serves me. The mansion of the Kildares was in Thomas court.

—That’s right, Ned Lambert said. That’s quite right, sir.

—If you will be so kind then, the clergyman said, the next time to allow
me perhaps…

—Certainly, Ned Lambert said. Bring the camera whenever you like. I’ll
get those bags cleared away from the windows. You can take it from here or from
here.

In the still faint light he moved about, tapping with his lath the piled
seedbags and points of vantage on the floor.

From a long face a beard and gaze hung on a chessboard.

—I’m deeply obliged, Mr Lambert, the clergyman said. I won’t trespass on
your valuable time…

—You’re welcome, sir, Ned Lambert said. Drop in whenever you like. Next
week, say. Can you see?

—Yes, yes. Good afternoon, Mr Lambert. Very pleased to have met you.

—Pleasure is mine, sir, Ned Lambert answered.

He followed his guest to the outlet and then whirled his lath away among the
pillars. With J. J. O’Molloy he came forth slowly into Mary’s abbey where
draymen were loading floats with sacks of carob and palmnut meal, O’Connor,
Wexford.

He stood to read the card in his hand.

—The reverend Hugh C. Love, Rathcoffey. Present address: Saint Michael’s,
Sallins. Nice young chap he is. He’s writing a book about the Fitzgeralds he
told me. He’s well up in history, faith.

The young woman with slow care detached from her light skirt a clinging twig.

—I thought you were at a new gunpowder plot, J. J. O’Molloy said.

Ned Lambert cracked his fingers in the air.

—God! he cried. I forgot to tell him that one about the earl of Kildare
after he set fire to Cashel cathedral. You know that one? I’m bloody sorry I
did it, says he, but I declare to God I thought the archbishop was
inside. He mightn’t like it, though. What? God, I’ll tell him anyhow. That
was the great earl, the Fitzgerald Mor. Hot members they were all of them, the
Geraldines.

The horses he passed started nervously under their slack harness. He slapped a
piebald haunch quivering near him and cried:

—Woa, sonny!

He turned to J. J. O’Molloy and asked:

—Well, Jack. What is it? What’s the trouble? Wait awhile. Hold hard.

With gaping mouth and head far back he stood still and, after an instant,
sneezed loudly.

—Chow! he said. Blast you!

—The dust from those sacks, J. J. O’Molloy said politely.

—No, Ned Lambert gasped, I caught a… cold night before… blast your
soul… night before last… and there was a hell of a lot of draught…

He held his handkerchief ready for the coming…

—I was… Glasnevin this morning… poor little… what do you call
him… Chow!… Mother of Moses!

* * *

Tom Rochford took the top disk from the pile he clasped against his claret
waistcoat.

—See? he said. Say it’s turn six. In here, see. Turn Now On.

He slid it into the left slot for them. It shot down the groove, wobbled a
while, ceased, ogling them: six.

Lawyers of the past, haughty, pleading, beheld pass from the consolidated
taxing office to Nisi Prius court Richie Goulding carrying the costbag of
Goulding, Collis and Ward and heard rustling from the admiralty division of
king’s bench to the court of appeal an elderly female with false teeth smiling
incredulously and a black silk skirt of great amplitude.

—See? he said. See now the last one I put in is over here: Turns Over.
The impact. Leverage, see?

He showed them the rising column of disks on the right.

—Smart idea, Nosey Flynn said, snuffling. So a fellow coming in late can
see what turn is on and what turns are over.

—See? Tom Rochford said.

He slid in a disk for himself: and watched it shoot, wobble, ogle, stop: four.
Turn Now On.

—I’ll see him now in the Ormond, Lenehan said, and sound him. One good
turn deserves another.

—Do, Tom Rochford said. Tell him I’m Boylan with impatience.

—Goodnight, M’Coy said abruptly. When you two begin…

Nosey Flynn stooped towards the lever, snuffling at it.

—But how does it work here, Tommy? he asked.

—Tooraloo, Lenehan said. See you later.

He followed M’Coy out across the tiny square of Crampton court.

—He’s a hero, he said simply.

—I know, M’Coy said. The drain, you mean.

—Drain? Lenehan said. It was down a manhole.

They passed Dan Lowry’s musichall where Marie Kendall, charming soubrette,
smiled on them from a poster a dauby smile.

Going down the path of Sycamore street beside the Empire musichall Lenehan
showed M’Coy how the whole thing was. One of those manholes like a bloody
gaspipe and there was the poor devil stuck down in it, half choked with sewer
gas. Down went Tom Rochford anyhow, booky’s vest and all, with the rope round
him. And be damned but he got the rope round the poor devil and the two were
hauled up.

—The act of a hero, he said.

At the Dolphin they halted to allow the ambulance car to gallop past them for
Jervis street.

—This way, he said, walking to the right. I want to pop into Lynam’s to
see Sceptre’s starting price. What’s the time by your gold watch and chain?

M’Coy peered into Marcus Tertius Moses’ sombre office, then at O’Neill’s clock.

—After three, he said. Who’s riding her?

—O. Madden, Lenehan said. And a game filly she is.

While he waited in Temple bar M’Coy dodged a banana peel with gentle pushes of
his toe from the path to the gutter. Fellow might damn easy get a nasty fall
there coming along tight in the dark.

The gates of the drive opened wide to give egress to the viceregal cavalcade.

—Even money, Lenehan said returning. I knocked against Bantam Lyons in
there going to back a bloody horse someone gave him that hasn’t an earthly.
Through here.

They went up the steps and under Merchants’ arch. A darkbacked figure scanned
books on the hawker’s cart.

—There he is, Lenehan said.

—Wonder what he’s buying, M’Coy said, glancing behind.

—Leopoldo or the Bloom is on the Rye, Lenehan said.

—He’s dead nuts on sales, M’Coy said. I was with him one day and he
bought a book from an old one in Liffey street for two bob. There were fine
plates in it worth double the money, the stars and the moon and comets with
long tails. Astronomy it was about.

Lenehan laughed.

—I’ll tell you a damn good one about comets’ tails, he said. Come over in
the sun.

They crossed to the metal bridge and went along Wellington quay by the
riverwall.

Master Patrick Aloysius Dignam came out of Mangan’s, late Fehrenbach’s,
carrying a pound and a half of porksteaks.

—There was a long spread out at Glencree reformatory, Lenehan said
eagerly. The annual dinner, you know. Boiled shirt affair. The lord mayor was
there, Val Dillon it was, and sir Charles Cameron and Dan Dawson spoke and
there was music. Bartell d’Arcy sang and Benjamin Dollard…

—I know, M’Coy broke in. My missus sang there once.

—Did she? Lenehan said.

A card Unfurnished Apartments reappeared on the windowsash of number 7
Eccles street.

He checked his tale a moment but broke out in a wheezy laugh.

—But wait till I tell you, he said. Delahunt of Camden street had the
catering and yours truly was chief bottlewasher. Bloom and the wife were there.
Lashings of stuff we put up: port wine and sherry and curacoa to which we did
ample justice. Fast and furious it was. After liquids came solids. Cold joints
galore and mince pies…

—I know, M’Coy said. The year the missus was there…

Lenehan linked his arm warmly.

—But wait till I tell you, he said. We had a midnight lunch too after all
the jollification and when we sallied forth it was blue o’clock the morning
after the night before. Coming home it was a gorgeous winter’s night on the
Featherbed Mountain. Bloom and Chris Callinan were on one side of the car and I
was with the wife on the other. We started singing glees and duets: Lo, the
early beam of morning. She was well primed with a good load of Delahunt’s
port under her bellyband. Every jolt the bloody car gave I had her bumping up
against me. Hell’s delights! She has a fine pair, God bless her. Like that.

He held his caved hands a cubit from him, frowning:

—I was tucking the rug under her and settling her boa all the time. Know
what I mean?

His hands moulded ample curves of air. He shut his eyes tight in delight, his
body shrinking, and blew a sweet chirp from his lips.

—The lad stood to attention anyhow, he said with a sigh. She’s a gamey
mare and no mistake. Bloom was pointing out all the stars and the comets in the
heavens to Chris Callinan and the jarvey: the great bear and Hercules and the
dragon, and the whole jingbang lot. But, by God, I was lost, so to speak, in
the milky way. He knows them all, faith. At last she spotted a weeny weeshy one
miles away. And what star is that, Poldy? says she. By God, she had
Bloom cornered. That one, is it? says Chris Callinan, sure that’s
only what you might call a pinprick. By God, he wasn’t far wide of the
mark.

Lenehan stopped and leaned on the riverwall, panting with soft laughter.

—I’m weak, he gasped.

M’Coy’s white face smiled about it at instants and grew grave. Lenehan walked
on again. He lifted his yachtingcap and scratched his hindhead rapidly. He
glanced sideways in the sunlight at M’Coy.

—He’s a cultured allroundman, Bloom is, he said seriously. He’s not one
of your common or garden… you know… There’s a touch of the artist about old
Bloom.

* * *

Mr Bloom turned over idly pages of The Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk,
then of Aristotle’s Masterpiece. Crooked botched print. Plates: infants
cuddled in a ball in bloodred wombs like livers of slaughtered cows. Lots of
them like that at this moment all over the world. All butting with their skulls
to get out of it. Child born every minute somewhere. Mrs Purefoy.

He laid both books aside and glanced at the third: Tales of the Ghetto
by Leopold von Sacher Masoch.

—That I had, he said, pushing it by.

The shopman let two volumes fall on the counter.

—Them are two good ones, he said.

Onions of his breath came across the counter out of his ruined mouth. He bent
to make a bundle of the other books, hugged them against his unbuttoned
waistcoat and bore them off behind the dingy curtain.

On O’Connell bridge many persons observed the grave deportment and gay apparel
of Mr Denis J Maginni, professor of dancing &c.

Mr Bloom, alone, looked at the titles. Fair Tyrants by James Lovebirch.
Know the kind that is. Had it? Yes.

He opened it. Thought so.

A woman’s voice behind the dingy curtain. Listen: the man.

No: she wouldn’t like that much. Got her it once.

He read the other title: Sweets of Sin. More in her line. Let us see.

He read where his finger opened.

—All the dollarbills her husband gave her were spent in the stores on
wondrous gowns and costliest frillies. For him! For Raoul!

Yes. This. Here. Try.

—Her mouth glued on his in a luscious voluptuous kiss while his hands
felt for the opulent curves inside her déshabillé.

Yes. Take this. The end.

—You are late, he spoke hoarsely, eying her with a suspicious glare.

The beautiful woman threw off her sabletrimmed wrap, displaying her queenly
shoulders and heaving embonpoint. An imperceptible smile played round her
perfect lips as she turned to him calmly.

Mr Bloom read again: The beautiful woman.

Warmth showered gently over him, cowing his flesh. Flesh yielded amply amid
rumpled clothes: whites of eyes swooning up. His nostrils arched themselves for
prey. Melting breast ointments (for him! For Raoul!). Armpits’ oniony
sweat. Fishgluey slime (her heaving embonpoint!). Feel! Press! Crished!
Sulphur dung of lions!

Young! Young!

An elderly female, no more young, left the building of the courts of chancery,
king’s bench, exchequer and common pleas, having heard in the lord chancellor’s
court the case in lunacy of Potterton, in the admiralty division the summons,
exparte motion, of the owners of the Lady Cairns versus the owners of the
barque Mona, in the court of appeal reservation of judgment in the case of
Harvey versus the Ocean Accident and Guarantee Corporation.

Phlegmy coughs shook the air of the bookshop, bulging out the dingy curtains.
The shopman’s uncombed grey head came out and his unshaven reddened face,
coughing. He raked his throat rudely, puked phlegm on the floor. He put his
boot on what he had spat, wiping his sole along it, and bent, showing a
rawskinned crown, scantily haired.

Mr Bloom beheld it.

Mastering his troubled breath, he said:

—I’ll take this one.

The shopman lifted eyes bleared with old rheum.

—Sweets of Sin, he said, tapping on it. That’s a good one.

* * *

The lacquey by the door of Dillon’s auctionrooms shook his handbell twice again
and viewed himself in the chalked mirror of the cabinet.

Dilly Dedalus, loitering by the curbstone, heard the beats of the bell, the
cries of the auctioneer within. Four and nine. Those lovely curtains. Five
shillings. Cosy curtains. Selling new at two guineas. Any advance on five
shillings? Going for five shillings.

The lacquey lifted his handbell and shook it:

—Barang!

Bang of the lastlap bell spurred the halfmile wheelmen to their sprint. J. A.
Jackson, W. E. Wylie, A. Munro and H. T. Gahan, their stretched necks wagging,
negotiated the curve by the College library.

Mr Dedalus, tugging a long moustache, came round from Williams’s row. He halted
near his daughter.

—It’s time for you, she said.

—Stand up straight for the love of the lord Jesus, Mr Dedalus said. Are
you trying to imitate your uncle John, the cornetplayer, head upon shoulder?
Melancholy God!

Dilly shrugged her shoulders. Mr Dedalus placed his hands on them and held them
back.

—Stand up straight, girl, he said. You’ll get curvature of the spine. Do
you know what you look like?

He let his head sink suddenly down and forward, hunching his shoulders and
dropping his underjaw.

—Give it up, father, Dilly said. All the people are looking at you.

Mr Dedalus drew himself upright and tugged again at his moustache.

—Did you get any money? Dilly asked.

—Where would I get money? Mr Dedalus said. There is no-one in Dublin
would lend me fourpence.

—You got some, Dilly said, looking in his eyes.

—How do you know that? Mr Dedalus asked, his tongue in his cheek.

Mr Kernan, pleased with the order he had booked, walked boldly along James’s
street.

—I know you did, Dilly answered. Were you in the Scotch house now?

—I was not, then, Mr Dedalus said, smiling. Was it the little nuns taught
you to be so saucy? Here.

He handed her a shilling.

—See if you can do anything with that, he said.

—I suppose you got five, Dilly said. Give me more than that.

—Wait awhile, Mr Dedalus said threateningly. You’re like the rest of
them, are you? An insolent pack of little bitches since your poor mother died.
But wait awhile. You’ll all get a short shrift and a long day from me. Low
blackguardism! I’m going to get rid of you. Wouldn’t care if I was stretched
out stiff. He’s dead. The man upstairs is dead.

He left her and walked on. Dilly followed quickly and pulled his coat.

—Well, what is it? he said, stopping.

The lacquey rang his bell behind their backs.

—Barang!

—Curse your bloody blatant soul, Mr Dedalus cried, turning on him.

The lacquey, aware of comment, shook the lolling clapper of his bell but
feebly:

—Bang!

Mr Dedalus stared at him.

—Watch him, he said. It’s instructive. I wonder will he allow us to talk.

—You got more than that, father, Dilly said.

—I’m going to show you a little trick, Mr Dedalus said. I’ll leave you
all where Jesus left the jews. Look, there’s all I have. I got two shillings
from Jack Power and I spent twopence for a shave for the funeral.

He drew forth a handful of copper coins, nervously.

—Can’t you look for some money somewhere? Dilly said.

Mr Dedalus thought and nodded.

—I will, he said gravely. I looked all along the gutter in O’Connell
street. I’ll try this one now.

—You’re very funny, Dilly said, grinning.

—Here, Mr Dedalus said, handing her two pennies. Get a glass of milk for
yourself and a bun or a something. I’ll be home shortly.

He put the other coins in his pocket and started to walk on.

The viceregal cavalcade passed, greeted by obsequious policemen, out of
Parkgate.

—I’m sure you have another shilling, Dilly said.

The lacquey banged loudly.

Mr Dedalus amid the din walked off, murmuring to himself with a pursing mincing
mouth gently:

—The little nuns! Nice little things! O, sure they wouldn’t do anything!
O, sure they wouldn’t really! Is it little sister Monica!

* * *

From the sundial towards James’s gate walked Mr Kernan, pleased with the order
he had booked for Pulbrook Robertson, boldly along James’s street, past
Shackleton’s offices. Got round him all right. How do you do, Mr Crimmins?
First rate, sir. I was afraid you might be up in your other establishment in
Pimlico. How are things going? Just keeping alive. Lovely weather we’re having.
Yes, indeed. Good for the country. Those farmers are always grumbling. I’ll
just take a thimbleful of your best gin, Mr Crimmins. A small gin, sir. Yes,
sir. Terrible affair that General Slocum explosion. Terrible, terrible!
A thousand casualties. And heartrending scenes. Men trampling down women and
children. Most brutal thing. What do they say was the cause? Spontaneous
combustion. Most scandalous revelation. Not a single lifeboat would float and
the firehose all burst. What I can’t understand is how the inspectors ever
allowed a boat like that… Now, you’re talking straight, Mr Crimmins. You know
why? Palm oil. Is that a fact? Without a doubt. Well now, look at that. And
America they say is the land of the free. I thought we were bad here.

I smiled at him. America, I said quietly, just like that. What is it?
The sweepings of every country including our own. Isn’t that true? That’s a
fact.

Graft, my dear sir. Well, of course, where there’s money going there’s always
someone to pick it up.

Saw him looking at my frockcoat. Dress does it. Nothing like a dressy
appearance. Bowls them over.

—Hello, Simon, Father Cowley said. How are things?

—Hello, Bob, old man, Mr Dedalus answered, stopping.

Mr Kernan halted and preened himself before the sloping mirror of Peter
Kennedy, hairdresser. Stylish coat, beyond a doubt. Scott of Dawson street.
Well worth the half sovereign I gave Neary for it. Never built under three
guineas. Fits me down to the ground. Some Kildare street club toff had it
probably. John Mulligan, the manager of the Hibernian bank, gave me a very
sharp eye yesterday on Carlisle bridge as if he remembered me.

Aham! Must dress the character for those fellows. Knight of the road.
Gentleman. And now, Mr Crimmins, may we have the honour of your custom again,
sir. The cup that cheers but not inebriates, as the old saying has it.

North wall and sir John Rogerson’s quay, with hulls and anchorchains, sailing
westward, sailed by a skiff, a crumpled throwaway, rocked on the ferrywash,
Elijah is coming.

Mr Kernan glanced in farewell at his image. High colour, of course. Grizzled
moustache. Returned Indian officer. Bravely he bore his stumpy body forward on
spatted feet, squaring his shoulders. Is that Ned Lambert’s brother over the
way, Sam? What? Yes. He’s as like it as damn it. No. The windscreen of that
motorcar in the sun there. Just a flash like that. Damn like him.

Aham! Hot spirit of juniper juice warmed his vitals and his breath. Good drop
of gin, that was. His frocktails winked in bright sunshine to his fat strut.

Down there Emmet was hanged, drawn and quartered. Greasy black rope. Dogs
licking the blood off the street when the lord lieutenant’s wife drove by in
her noddy.

Bad times those were. Well, well. Over and done with. Great topers too.
Fourbottle men.

Let me see. Is he buried in saint Michan’s? Or no, there was a midnight burial
in Glasnevin. Corpse brought in through a secret door in the wall. Dignam is
there now. Went out in a puff. Well, well. Better turn down here. Make a
detour.

Mr Kernan turned and walked down the slope of Watling street by the corner of
Guinness’s visitors’ waitingroom. Outside the Dublin Distillers Company’s
stores an outside car without fare or jarvey stood, the reins knotted to the
wheel. Damn dangerous thing. Some Tipperary bosthoon endangering the lives of
the citizens. Runaway horse.

Denis Breen with his tomes, weary of having waited an hour in John Henry
Menton’s office, led his wife over O’Connell bridge, bound for the office of
Messrs Collis and Ward.

Mr Kernan approached Island street.

Times of the troubles. Must ask Ned Lambert to lend me those reminiscences of
sir Jonah Barrington. When you look back on it all now in a kind of
retrospective arrangement. Gaming at Daly’s. No cardsharping then. One of those
fellows got his hand nailed to the table by a dagger. Somewhere here lord
Edward Fitzgerald escaped from major Sirr. Stables behind Moira house.

Damn good gin that was.

Fine dashing young nobleman. Good stock, of course. That ruffian, that sham
squire, with his violet gloves gave him away. Course they were on the wrong
side. They rose in dark and evil days. Fine poem that is: Ingram. They were
gentlemen. Ben Dollard does sing that ballad touchingly. Masterly rendition.

At the siege of Ross did my father fall.

A cavalcade in easy trot along Pembroke quay passed, outriders leaping, leaping
in their, in their saddles. Frockcoats. Cream sunshades.

Mr Kernan hurried forward, blowing pursily.

His Excellency! Too bad! Just missed that by a hair. Damn it! What a pity!

* * *

Stephen Dedalus watched through the webbed window the lapidary’s fingers prove
a timedulled chain. Dust webbed the window and the showtrays. Dust darkened the
toiling fingers with their vulture nails. Dust slept on dull coils of bronze
and silver, lozenges of cinnabar, on rubies, leprous and winedark stones.

Born all in the dark wormy earth, cold specks of fire, evil, lights shining in
the darkness. Where fallen archangels flung the stars of their brows. Muddy
swinesnouts, hands, root and root, gripe and wrest them.

She dances in a foul gloom where gum bums with garlic. A sailorman,
rustbearded, sips from a beaker rum and eyes her. A long and seafed silent rut.
She dances, capers, wagging her sowish haunches and her hips, on her gross
belly flapping a ruby egg.

Old Russell with a smeared shammy rag burnished again his gem, turned it and
held it at the point of his Moses’ beard. Grandfather ape gloating on a stolen
hoard.

And you who wrest old images from the burial earth? The brainsick words of
sophists: Antisthenes. A lore of drugs. Orient and immortal wheat standing from
everlasting to everlasting.

Two old women fresh from their whiff of the briny trudged through Irishtown
along London bridge road, one with a sanded tired umbrella, one with a
midwife’s bag in which eleven cockles rolled.

The whirr of flapping leathern bands and hum of dynamos from the powerhouse
urged Stephen to be on. Beingless beings. Stop! Throb always without you and
the throb always within. Your heart you sing of. I between them. Where? Between
two roaring worlds where they swirl, I. Shatter them, one and both. But stun
myself too in the blow. Shatter me you who can. Bawd and butcher were the
words. I say! Not yet awhile. A look around.

Yes, quite true. Very large and wonderful and keeps famous time. You say right,
sir. A Monday morning, ’twas so, indeed.

Stephen went down Bedford row, the handle of the ash clacking against his
shoulderblade. In Clohissey’s window a faded 1860 print of Heenan boxing Sayers
held his eye. Staring backers with square hats stood round the roped prizering.
The heavyweights in tight loincloths proposed gently each to other his bulbous
fists. And they are throbbing: heroes’ hearts.

He turned and halted by the slanted bookcart.

—Twopence each, the huckster said. Four for sixpence.

Tattered pages. The Irish Beekeeper. Life and Miracles of the Curé of Ars.
Pocket Guide to Killarney.

I might find here one of my pawned schoolprizes. Stephano Dedalo, alumno
optimo, palmam ferenti.

Father Conmee, having read his little hours, walked through the hamlet of
Donnycarney, murmuring vespers.

Binding too good probably. What is this? Eighth and ninth book of Moses. Secret
of all secrets. Seal of King David. Thumbed pages: read and read. Who has
passed here before me? How to soften chapped hands. Recipe for white wine
vinegar. How to win a woman’s love. For me this. Say the following talisman
three times with hands folded:

—Se el yilo nebrakada femininum! Amor me solo! Sanktus! Amen.

Who wrote this? Charms and invocations of the most blessed abbot Peter Salanka
to all true believers divulged. As good as any other abbot’s charms, as
mumbling Joachim’s. Down, baldynoddle, or we’ll wool your wool.

—What are you doing here, Stephen?

Dilly’s high shoulders and shabby dress.

Shut the book quick. Don’t let see.

—What are you doing? Stephen said.

A Stuart face of nonesuch Charles, lank locks falling at its sides. It glowed
as she crouched feeding the fire with broken boots. I told her of Paris. Late
lieabed under a quilt of old overcoats, fingering a pinchbeck bracelet, Dan
Kelly’s token. Nebrakada femininum.

—What have you there? Stephen asked.

—I bought it from the other cart for a penny, Dilly said, laughing
nervously. Is it any good?

My eyes they say she has. Do others see me so? Quick, far and daring. Shadow of
my mind.

He took the coverless book from her hand. Chardenal’s French primer.

—What did you buy that for? he asked. To learn French?

She nodded, reddening and closing tight her lips.

Show no surprise. Quite natural.

—Here, Stephen said. It’s all right. Mind Maggy doesn’t pawn it on you. I
suppose all my books are gone.

—Some, Dilly said. We had to.

She is drowning. Agenbite. Save her. Agenbite. All against us. She will drown
me with her, eyes and hair. Lank coils of seaweed hair around me, my heart, my
soul. Salt green death.

We.

Agenbite of inwit. Inwit’s agenbite.

Misery! Misery!

* * *

—Hello, Simon, Father Cowley said. How are things?

—Hello, Bob, old man, Mr Dedalus answered, stopping.

They clasped hands loudly outside Reddy and Daughter’s. Father Cowley brushed
his moustache often downward with a scooping hand.

—What’s the best news? Mr Dedalus said.

—Why then not much, Father Cowley said. I’m barricaded up, Simon, with
two men prowling around the house trying to effect an entrance.

—Jolly, Mr Dedalus said. Who is it?

—O, Father Cowley said. A certain gombeen man of our acquaintance.

—With a broken back, is it? Mr Dedalus asked.

—The same, Simon, Father Cowley answered. Reuben of that ilk. I’m just
waiting for Ben Dollard. He’s going to say a word to long John to get him to
take those two men off. All I want is a little time.

He looked with vague hope up and down the quay, a big apple bulging in his
neck.

—I know, Mr Dedalus said, nodding. Poor old bockedy Ben! He’s always
doing a good turn for someone. Hold hard!

He put on his glasses and gazed towards the metal bridge an instant.

—There he is, by God, he said, arse and pockets.

Ben Dollard’s loose blue cutaway and square hat above large slops crossed the
quay in full gait from the metal bridge. He came towards them at an amble,
scratching actively behind his coattails.

As he came near Mr Dedalus greeted:

—Hold that fellow with the bad trousers.

—Hold him now, Ben Dollard said.

Mr Dedalus eyed with cold wandering scorn various points of Ben Dollard’s
figure. Then, turning to Father Cowley with a nod, he muttered sneeringly:

—That’s a pretty garment, isn’t it, for a summer’s day?

—Why, God eternally curse your soul, Ben Dollard growled furiously, I
threw out more clothes in my time than you ever saw.

He stood beside them beaming, on them first and on his roomy clothes from
points of which Mr Dedalus flicked fluff, saying:

—They were made for a man in his health, Ben, anyhow.

—Bad luck to the jewman that made them, Ben Dollard said. Thanks be to
God he’s not paid yet.

—And how is that basso profondo, Benjamin? Father Cowley asked.

Cashel Boyle O’Connor Fitzmaurice Tisdall Farrell, murmuring, glassyeyed,
strode past the Kildare street club.

Ben Dollard frowned and, making suddenly a chanter’s mouth, gave forth a deep
note.

—Aw! he said.

—That’s the style, Mr Dedalus said, nodding to its drone.

—What about that? Ben Dollard said. Not too dusty? What?

He turned to both.

—That’ll do, Father Cowley said, nodding also.

The reverend Hugh C. Love walked from the old chapterhouse of saint Mary’s
abbey past James and Charles Kennedy’s, rectifiers, attended by Geraldines tall
and personable, towards the Tholsel beyond the ford of hurdles.

Ben Dollard with a heavy list towards the shopfronts led them forward, his
joyful fingers in the air.

—Come along with me to the subsheriff’s office, he said. I want to show
you the new beauty Rock has for a bailiff. He’s a cross between Lobengula and
Lynchehaun. He’s well worth seeing, mind you. Come along. I saw John Henry
Menton casually in the Bodega just now and it will cost me a fall if I don’t…
Wait awhile… We’re on the right lay, Bob, believe you me.

—For a few days tell him, Father Cowley said anxiously.

Ben Dollard halted and stared, his loud orifice open, a dangling button of his
coat wagging brightbacked from its thread as he wiped away the heavy shraums
that clogged his eyes to hear aright.

—What few days? he boomed. Hasn’t your landlord distrained for rent?

—He has, Father Cowley said.

—Then our friend’s writ is not worth the paper it’s printed on, Ben
Dollard said. The landlord has the prior claim. I gave him all the particulars.
29 Windsor avenue. Love is the name?

—That’s right, Father Cowley said. The reverend Mr Love. He’s a minister
in the country somewhere. But are you sure of that?

—You can tell Barabbas from me, Ben Dollard said, that he can put that
writ where Jacko put the nuts.

He led Father Cowley boldly forward, linked to his bulk.

—Filberts I believe they were, Mr Dedalus said, as he dropped his glasses
on his coatfront, following them.

* * *

—The youngster will be all right, Martin Cunningham said, as they passed
out of the Castleyard gate.

The policeman touched his forehead.

—God bless you, Martin Cunningham said, cheerily.

He signed to the waiting jarvey who chucked at the reins and set on towards
Lord Edward street.

Bronze by gold, Miss Kennedy’s head by Miss Douce’s head, appeared above the
crossblind of the Ormond hotel.

—Yes, Martin Cunningham said, fingering his beard. I wrote to Father
Conmee and laid the whole case before him.

—You could try our friend, Mr Power suggested backward.

—Boyd? Martin Cunningham said shortly. Touch me not.

John Wyse Nolan, lagging behind, reading the list, came after them quickly down
Cork hill.

On the steps of the City hall Councillor Nannetti, descending, hailed Alderman
Cowley and Councillor Abraham Lyon ascending.

The castle car wheeled empty into upper Exchange street.

—Look here, Martin, John Wyse Nolan said, overtaking them at the
Mail office. I see Bloom put his name down for five shillings.

—Quite right, Martin Cunningham said, taking the list. And put down the
five shillings too.

—Without a second word either, Mr Power said.

—Strange but true, Martin Cunningham added.

John Wyse Nolan opened wide eyes.

—I’ll say there is much kindness in the jew, he quoted, elegantly.

They went down Parliament street.

—There’s Jimmy Henry, Mr Power said, just heading for Kavanagh’s.

—Righto, Martin Cunningham said. Here goes.

Outside la Maison Claire Blazes Boylan waylaid Jack Mooney’s
brother-in-law, humpy, tight, making for the liberties.

John Wyse Nolan fell back with Mr Power, while Martin Cunningham took the elbow
of a dapper little man in a shower of hail suit, who walked uncertainly, with
hasty steps past Micky Anderson’s watches.

—The assistant town clerk’s corns are giving him some trouble, John Wyse
Nolan told Mr Power.

They followed round the corner towards James Kavanagh’s winerooms. The empty
castle car fronted them at rest in Essex gate. Martin Cunningham, speaking
always, showed often the list at which Jimmy Henry did not glance.

—And long John Fanning is here too, John Wyse Nolan said, as large as
life.

The tall form of long John Fanning filled the doorway where he stood.

—Good day, Mr Subsheriff, Martin Cunningham said, as all halted and
greeted.

Long John Fanning made no way for them. He removed his large Henry Clay
decisively and his large fierce eyes scowled intelligently over all their
faces.

—Are the conscript fathers pursuing their peaceful deliberations? he said
with rich acrid utterance to the assistant town clerk.

Hell open to christians they were having, Jimmy Henry said pettishly, about
their damned Irish language. Where was the marshal, he wanted to know, to keep
order in the council chamber. And old Barlow the macebearer laid up with
asthma, no mace on the table, nothing in order, no quorum even, and Hutchinson,
the lord mayor, in Llandudno and little Lorcan Sherlock doing locum
tenens for him. Damned Irish language, language of our forefathers.

Long John Fanning blew a plume of smoke from his lips.

Martin Cunningham spoke by turns, twirling the peak of his beard, to the
assistant town clerk and the subsheriff, while John Wyse Nolan held his peace.

—What Dignam was that? long John Fanning asked.

Jimmy Henry made a grimace and lifted his left foot.

—O, my corns! he said plaintively. Come upstairs for goodness’ sake till
I sit down somewhere. Uff! Ooo! Mind!

Testily he made room for himself beside long John Fanning’s flank and passed in
and up the stairs.

—Come on up, Martin Cunningham said to the subsheriff. I don’t think you
knew him or perhaps you did, though.

With John Wyse Nolan Mr Power followed them in.

—Decent little soul he was, Mr Power said to the stalwart back of long
John Fanning ascending towards long John Fanning in the mirror.

—Rather lowsized. Dignam of Menton’s office that was, Martin Cunningham
said.

Long John Fanning could not remember him.

Clatter of horsehoofs sounded from the air.

—What’s that? Martin Cunningham said.

All turned where they stood. John Wyse Nolan came down again. From the cool
shadow of the doorway he saw the horses pass Parliament street, harness and
glossy pasterns in sunlight shimmering. Gaily they went past before his cool
unfriendly eyes, not quickly. In saddles of the leaders, leaping leaders, rode
outriders.

—What was it? Martin Cunningham asked, as they went on up the staircase.

—The lord lieutenantgeneral and general governor of Ireland, John Wyse
Nolan answered from the stairfoot.

* * *

As they trod across the thick carpet Buck Mulligan whispered behind his Panama
to Haines:

—Parnell’s brother. There in the corner.

They chose a small table near the window, opposite a longfaced man whose beard
and gaze hung intently down on a chessboard.

—Is that he? Haines asked, twisting round in his seat.

—Yes, Mulligan said. That’s John Howard, his brother, our city marshal.

John Howard Parnell translated a white bishop quietly and his grey claw went up
again to his forehead whereat it rested. An instant after, under its screen,
his eyes looked quickly, ghostbright, at his foe and fell once more upon a
working corner.

—I’ll take a mélange, Haines said to the waitress.

—Two mélanges, Buck Mulligan said. And bring us some scones and
butter and some cakes as well.

When she had gone he said, laughing:

—We call it D.B.C. because they have damn bad cakes. O, but you missed
Dedalus on Hamlet.

Haines opened his newbought book.

—I’m sorry, he said. Shakespeare is the happy huntingground of all minds
that have lost their balance.

The onelegged sailor growled at the area of 14 Nelson street:

—England expects…

Buck Mulligan’s primrose waistcoat shook gaily to his laughter.

—You should see him, he said, when his body loses its balance. Wandering
Ængus I call him.

—I am sure he has an idée fixe, Haines said, pinching his chin
thoughtfully with thumb and forefinger. Now I am speculating what it would be
likely to be. Such persons always have.

Buck Mulligan bent across the table gravely.

—They drove his wits astray, he said, by visions of hell. He will never
capture the Attic note. The note of Swinburne, of all poets, the white death
and the ruddy birth. That is his tragedy. He can never be a poet. The joy of
creation…

—Eternal punishment, Haines said, nodding curtly. I see. I tackled him
this morning on belief. There was something on his mind, I saw. It’s rather
interesting because professor Pokorny of Vienna makes an interesting point out
of that.

Buck Mulligan’s watchful eyes saw the waitress come. He helped her to unload
her tray.

—He can find no trace of hell in ancient Irish myth, Haines said, amid
the cheerful cups. The moral idea seems lacking, the sense of destiny, of
retribution. Rather strange he should have just that fixed idea. Does he write
anything for your movement?

He sank two lumps of sugar deftly longwise through the whipped cream. Buck
Mulligan slit a steaming scone in two and plastered butter over its smoking
pith. He bit off a soft piece hungrily.

—Ten years, he said, chewing and laughing. He is going to write something
in ten years.

—Seems a long way off, Haines said, thoughtfully lifting his spoon.
Still, I shouldn’t wonder if he did after all.

He tasted a spoonful from the creamy cone of his cup.

—This is real Irish cream I take it, he said with forbearance. I don’t
want to be imposed on.

Elijah, skiff, light crumpled throwaway, sailed eastward by flanks of ships and
trawlers, amid an archipelago of corks, beyond new Wapping street past Benson’s
ferry, and by the threemasted schooner Rosevean from Bridgwater with
bricks.

* * *

Almidano Artifoni walked past Holles street, past Sewell’s yard. Behind him
Cashel Boyle O’Connor Fitzmaurice Tisdall Farrell, with stickumbrelladustcoat
dangling, shunned the lamp before Mr Law Smith’s house and, crossing, walked
along Merrion square. Distantly behind him a blind stripling tapped his way by
the wall of College park.

Cashel Boyle O’Connor Fitzmaurice Tisdall Farrell walked as far as Mr Lewis
Werner’s cheerful windows, then turned and strode back along Merrion square,
his stickumbrelladustcoat dangling.

At the corner of Wilde’s house he halted, frowned at Elijah’s name announced on
the Metropolitan hall, frowned at the distant pleasance of duke’s lawn. His
eyeglass flashed frowning in the sun. With ratsteeth bared he muttered:

—Coactus volui.

He strode on for Clare street, grinding his fierce word.

As he strode past Mr Bloom’s dental windows the sway of his dustcoat brushed
rudely from its angle a slender tapping cane and swept onwards, having buffeted
a thewless body. The blind stripling turned his sickly face after the striding
form.

—God’s curse on you, he said sourly, whoever you are! You’re blinder nor
I am, you bitch’s bastard!

* * *

Opposite Ruggy O’Donohoe’s Master Patrick Aloysius Dignam, pawing the pound and
a half of Mangan’s, late Fehrenbach’s, porksteaks he had been sent for, went
along warm Wicklow street dawdling. It was too blooming dull sitting in the
parlour with Mrs Stoer and Mrs Quigley and Mrs MacDowell and the blind down and
they all at their sniffles and sipping sups of the superior tawny sherry uncle
Barney brought from Tunney’s. And they eating crumbs of the cottage fruitcake,
jawing the whole blooming time and sighing.

After Wicklow lane the window of Madame Doyle, courtdress milliner, stopped
him. He stood looking in at the two puckers stripped to their pelts and putting
up their props. From the sidemirrors two mourning Masters Dignam gaped
silently. Myler Keogh, Dublin’s pet lamb, will meet sergeantmajor Bennett, the
Portobello bruiser, for a purse of fifty sovereigns. Gob, that’d be a good
pucking match to see. Myler Keogh, that’s the chap sparring out to him with the
green sash. Two bar entrance, soldiers half price. I could easy do a bunk on
ma. Master Dignam on his left turned as he turned. That’s me in mourning. When
is it? May the twentysecond. Sure, the blooming thing is all over. He turned to
the right and on his right Master Dignam turned, his cap awry, his collar
sticking up. Buttoning it down, his chin lifted, he saw the image of Marie
Kendall, charming soubrette, beside the two puckers. One of them mots that do
be in the packets of fags Stoer smokes that his old fellow welted hell out of
him for one time he found out.

Master Dignam got his collar down and dawdled on. The best pucker going for
strength was Fitzsimons. One puck in the wind from that fellow would knock you
into the middle of next week, man. But the best pucker for science was Jem
Corbet before Fitzsimons knocked the stuffings out of him, dodging and all.

In Grafton street Master Dignam saw a red flower in a toff’s mouth and a swell
pair of kicks on him and he listening to what the drunk was telling him and
grinning all the time.

No Sandymount tram.

Master Dignam walked along Nassau street, shifted the porksteaks to his other
hand. His collar sprang up again and he tugged it down. The blooming stud was
too small for the buttonhole of the shirt, blooming end to it. He met
schoolboys with satchels. I’m not going tomorrow either, stay away till Monday.
He met other schoolboys. Do they notice I’m in mourning? Uncle Barney said he’d
get it into the paper tonight. Then they’ll all see it in the paper and read my
name printed and pa’s name.

His face got all grey instead of being red like it was and there was a fly
walking over it up to his eye. The scrunch that was when they were screwing the
screws into the coffin: and the bumps when they were bringing it downstairs.

Pa was inside it and ma crying in the parlour and uncle Barney telling the men
how to get it round the bend. A big coffin it was, and high and heavylooking.
How was that? The last night pa was boosed he was standing on the landing there
bawling out for his boots to go out to Tunney’s for to boose more and he looked
butty and short in his shirt. Never see him again. Death, that is. Pa is dead.
My father is dead. He told me to be a good son to ma. I couldn’t hear the other
things he said but I saw his tongue and his teeth trying to say it better. Poor
pa. That was Mr Dignam, my father. I hope he’s in purgatory now because he went
to confession to Father Conroy on Saturday night.

* * *

William Humble, earl of Dudley, and lady Dudley, accompanied by
lieutenantcolonel Heseltine, drove out after luncheon from the viceregal lodge.
In the following carriage were the honourable Mrs Paget, Miss de Courcy and the
honourable Gerald Ward A. D. C. in attendance.

The cavalcade passed out by the lower gate of Phoenix park saluted by
obsequious policemen and proceeded past Kingsbridge along the northern quays.
The viceroy was most cordially greeted on his way through the metropolis. At
Bloody bridge Mr Thomas Kernan beyond the river greeted him vainly from afar.
Between Queen’s and Whitworth bridges lord Dudley’s viceregal carriages passed
and were unsaluted by Mr Dudley White, B. L., M. A., who stood on Arran quay
outside Mrs M. E. White’s, the pawnbroker’s, at the corner of Arran street west
stroking his nose with his forefinger, undecided whether he should arrive at
Phibsborough more quickly by a triple change of tram or by hailing a car or on
foot through Smithfield, Constitution hill and Broadstone terminus. In the
porch of Four Courts Richie Goulding with the costbag of Goulding, Collis and
Ward saw him with surprise. Past Richmond bridge at the doorstep of the office
of Reuben J Dodd, solicitor, agent for the Patriotic Insurance Company, an
elderly female about to enter changed her plan and retracing her steps by
King’s windows smiled credulously on the representative of His Majesty. From
its sluice in Wood quay wall under Tom Devan’s office Poddle river hung out in
fealty a tongue of liquid sewage. Above the crossblind of the Ormond hotel,
gold by bronze, Miss Kennedy’s head by Miss Douce’s head watched and admired.
On Ormond quay Mr Simon Dedalus, steering his way from the greenhouse for the
subsheriff’s office, stood still in midstreet and brought his hat low. His
Excellency graciously returned Mr Dedalus’ greeting. From Cahill’s corner the
reverend Hugh C. Love, M. A., made obeisance unperceived, mindful of lords
deputies whose hands benignant had held of yore rich advowsons. On Grattan
bridge Lenehan and M’Coy, taking leave of each other, watched the carriages go
by. Passing by Roger Greene’s office and Dollard’s big red printinghouse Gerty
MacDowell, carrying the Catesby’s cork lino letters for her father who was laid
up, knew by the style it was the lord and lady lieutenant but she couldn’t see
what Her Excellency had on because the tram and Spring’s big yellow furniture
van had to stop in front of her on account of its being the lord lieutenant.
Beyond Lundy Foot’s from the shaded door of Kavanagh’s winerooms John Wyse
Nolan smiled with unseen coldness towards the lord lieutenantgeneral and
general governor of Ireland. The Right Honourable William Humble, earl of
Dudley, G. C. V. O., passed Micky Anderson’s all times ticking watches and
Henry and James’s wax smartsuited freshcheeked models, the gentleman Henry,
dernier cri James. Over against Dame gate Tom Rochford and Nosey Flynn
watched the approach of the cavalcade. Tom Rochford, seeing the eyes of lady
Dudley fixed on him, took his thumbs quickly out of the pockets of his claret
waistcoat and doffed his cap to her. A charming soubrette, great Marie
Kendall, with dauby cheeks and lifted skirt smiled daubily from her poster upon
William Humble, earl of Dudley, and upon lieutenantcolonel H. G. Heseltine, and
also upon the honourable Gerald Ward A. D. C. From the window of the D. B. C.
Buck Mulligan gaily, and Haines gravely, gazed down on the viceregal equipage
over the shoulders of eager guests, whose mass of forms darkened the chessboard
whereon John Howard Parnell looked intently. In Fownes’s street Dilly Dedalus,
straining her sight upward from Chardenal’s first French primer, saw sunshades
spanned and wheelspokes spinning in the glare. John Henry Menton, filling the
doorway of Commercial Buildings, stared from winebig oyster eyes, holding a fat
gold hunter watch not looked at in his fat left hand not feeling it. Where the
foreleg of King Billy’s horse pawed the air Mrs Breen plucked her hastening
husband back from under the hoofs of the outriders. She shouted in his ear the
tidings. Understanding, he shifted his tomes to his left breast and saluted the
second carriage. The honourable Gerald Ward A. D. C., agreeably surprised, made
haste to reply. At Ponsonby’s corner a jaded white flagon H. halted and four
tallhatted white flagons halted behind him, E.L.Y.’S, while outriders pranced
past and carriages. Opposite Pigott’s music warerooms Mr Denis J Maginni,
professor of dancing &c, gaily apparelled, gravely walked, outpassed by a
viceroy and unobserved. By the provost’s wall came jauntily Blazes Boylan,
stepping in tan shoes and socks with skyblue clocks to the refrain of My
girl’s a Yorkshire girl.

Blazes Boylan presented to the leaders’ skyblue frontlets and high action a
skyblue tie, a widebrimmed straw hat at a rakish angle and a suit of indigo
serge. His hands in his jacket pockets forgot to salute but he offered to the
three ladies the bold admiration of his eyes and the red flower between his
lips. As they drove along Nassau street His Excellency drew the attention of
his bowing consort to the programme of music which was being discoursed in
College park. Unseen brazen highland laddies blared and drumthumped after the
cortège:

But though she’s a factory lass
And wears no fancy clothes.
Baraabum.
Yet I’ve a sort of a
Yorkshire relish for
My little Yorkshire rose.
Baraabum.

Thither of the wall the quartermile flat handicappers, M. C. Green, H. Shrift,
T. M. Patey, C. Scaife, J. B. Jeffs, G. N. Morphy, F. Stevenson, C. Adderly and
W. C. Huggard, started in pursuit. Striding past Finn’s hotel Cashel Boyle
O’Connor Fitzmaurice Tisdall Farrell stared through a fierce eyeglass across
the carriages at the head of Mr M. E. Solomons in the window of the
Austro-Hungarian viceconsulate. Deep in Leinster street by Trinity’s postern a
loyal king’s man, Hornblower, touched his tallyho cap. As the glossy horses
pranced by Merrion square Master Patrick Aloysius Dignam, waiting, saw salutes
being given to the gent with the topper and raised also his new black cap with
fingers greased by porksteak paper. His collar too sprang up. The viceroy, on
his way to inaugurate the Mirus bazaar in aid of funds for Mercer’s hospital,
drove with his following towards Lower Mount street. He passed a blind
stripling opposite Broadbent’s. In Lower Mount street a pedestrian in a brown
macintosh, eating dry bread, passed swiftly and unscathed across the viceroy’s
path. At the Royal Canal bridge, from his hoarding, Mr Eugene Stratton, his
blub lips agrin, bade all comers welcome to Pembroke township. At Haddington
road corner two sanded women halted themselves, an umbrella and a bag in which
eleven cockles rolled to view with wonder the lord mayor and lady mayoress
without his golden chain. On Northumberland and Lansdowne roads His Excellency
acknowledged punctually salutes from rare male walkers, the salute of two small
schoolboys at the garden gate of the house said to have been admired by the
late queen when visiting the Irish capital with her husband, the prince
consort, in 1849 and the salute of Almidano Artifoni’s sturdy trousers
swallowed by a closing door.