eymour that.
- Seymour a bleeding officer, Buck Mulligan said.
He nodded to himself as he drew off his trousers and stood up, saying
tritely:
- Redheaded women buck like goats.
He broke off in alarm, feeling his side under his flapping shirt.
- My twelfth rib is gone, he cried. I'm the Uebermensch. Toothless
Kinch and I, the supermen.
He struggled out of his shirt and flung it behind him to where his
clothes lay.
- Are you going in here, Malachi?
- Yes. Make room in !he bed.
The young man shoved himself backward through the water and reached the
middle of the creek in two long clean strokes. Haines sat down on a stone,
smoking.
- Are you not coming in? Buck Mulligan asked.
- Later on, Haines said. Not on my breakfast. Stephen turned away.
- I'm going, Mulligan, he said.
- Give us that key, Kinch, Buck Mulligan said, to keep my chemise flat.
Stephen handed him the key. Buck Mulligan laid it across his heaped
clothes.
- And twopence, he said, for a pint. Throw it there.
Stephen threw two pennies on the soft heap. Dressing, undressing. Buck
Mulligan erect, with joined hands before him, said solemnly:
- He who stealeth from the poor lendeth to the Lord. Thus spake
Zarathustra.
His plump body plunged.
- We'll see you again, Haines said, turning as Stephen walked up the
path and smiling at wild Irish.
Horn of a bull, hoof of a horse, smile of a Saxon.
- The Ship, Buck Mulligan cried. Half twelve.
- Good, Stephen said.
He walked along the upwardcurving path.
Liliata rutilantium.
Turnia circumdet.
Iubilantium te virginum
The priest's grey nimbus in a niche where he dressed discreetly. I will
not sleep here tonight. Home also I cannot go.
A voice, sweettoned and sustained, called to him from the sea. Turning
the curve he waved his hand. It called again. A sleek brown head, a seal's,
far out on the water, round.
Usurper.
Ulysses 2: Nestor
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 forgot 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
tissues 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 waves. A kind of
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.
-- Oh, 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 history, 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 shepherd, 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. Tranquillity 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 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 under foot,
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 under foot 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 shady 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 desk.
-- 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 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 cried.
-- 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 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: 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, Kohler, three guineas, Mrs McKernan, 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.
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, some
times 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
important 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 spear spikes 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 Merzsteg, 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, if not dead by now.
The harlot's cry from street to street
Shall weave old England's winding sheet.
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. Gabbles 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 the 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 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 a while 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.
Ulysses 3: Proteus
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 end 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 on 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 around 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 air 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 de 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. Lantern jaws. 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, bald poll! 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.
Dringdringl 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! 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 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 year, 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.
He coasted them, walking warily. A porter-bottle 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 Jisus by M. Leo Taxil. Lent it to
his friend.
-- C'est tordant, vows savez. Moi je suis socialiste. Je ne crois pas
en l'existence de Dieu. Faut pas le dire yu mon phre.
-- Il croit?
-- Mon phre, 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. Fermi. Hired dog! Shoot him to
bloody bits with a bang shotgun, bits man spattered walls all brass buttons.
Bits all khrrr