ULYSSES

by James Joyce




-- I --

Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of
lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. A yellow dressinggown,
ungirdled, was sustained gently behind him on the mild morning air. He
held the bowl aloft and intoned:

--_Introibo ad altare Dei_.

Halted, he peered down the dark winding stairs and called out coarsely:

--Come up, Kinch! Come up, you fearful jesuit!

Solemnly he came forward and mounted the round gunrest. He faced about
and blessed gravely thrice the tower, the surrounding land and the
awaking mountains. Then, catching sight of Stephen Dedalus, he bent
towards him and made rapid crosses in the air, gurgling in his throat
and shaking his head. Stephen Dedalus, displeased and sleepy, leaned
his arms on the top of the staircase and looked coldly at the shaking
gurgling face that blessed him, equine in its length, and at the light
untonsured hair, grained and hued like pale oak.

Buck Mulligan peeped an instant under the mirror and then covered the
bowl smartly.

--Back to barracks! he said sternly.

He added in a preacher's tone:

--For this, O dearly beloved, is the genuine Christine: body and soul
and blood and ouns. Slow music, please. Shut your eyes, gents. One
moment. A little trouble about those white corpuscles. Silence, all.

He peered sideways up and gave a long slow whistle of call, then paused
awhile in rapt attention, his even white teeth glistening here and there
with gold points. Chrysostomos. Two strong shrill whistles answered
through the calm.

--Thanks, old chap, he cried briskly. That will do nicely. Switch off
the current, will you?

He skipped off the gunrest and looked gravely at his watcher, gathering
about his legs the loose folds of his gown. The plump shadowed face and
sullen oval jowl recalled a prelate, patron of arts in the middle ages.
A pleasant smile broke quietly over his lips.

--The mockery of it! he said gaily. Your absurd name, an ancient Greek!

He pointed his finger in friendly jest and went over to the parapet,
laughing to himself. Stephen Dedalus stepped up, followed him wearily
halfway and sat down on the edge of the gunrest, watching him still as
he propped his mirror on the parapet, dipped the brush in the bowl and
lathered cheeks and neck.

Buck Mulligan's gay voice went on.

--My name is absurd too: Malachi Mulligan, two dactyls. But it has a
Hellenic ring, hasn't it? Tripping and sunny like the buck himself.
We must go to Athens. Will you come if I can get the aunt to fork out
twenty quid?

He laid the brush aside and, laughing with delight, cried:

--Will he come? The jejune jesuit!

Ceasing, he began to shave with care.

--Tell me, Mulligan, Stephen said quietly.

--Yes, my love?

--How long is Haines going to stay in this tower?

Buck Mulligan showed a shaven cheek over his right shoulder.

--God, isn't he dreadful? he said frankly. A ponderous Saxon. He thinks
you're not a gentleman. God, these bloody English! Bursting with money
and indigestion. Because he comes from Oxford. You know, Dedalus, you
have the real Oxford manner. He can't make you out. O, my name for you
is the best: Kinch, the knife-blade.

He shaved warily over his chin.

--He was raving all night about a black panther, Stephen said. Where is
his guncase?

--A woful lunatic! Mulligan said. Were you in a funk?

--I was, Stephen said with energy and growing fear. Out here in the dark
with a man I don't know raving and moaning to himself about shooting a
black panther. You saved men from drowning. I'm not a hero, however. If
he stays on here I am off.

Buck Mulligan frowned at the lather on his razorblade. He hopped down
from his perch and began to search his trouser pockets hastily.

--Scutter! he cried thickly.

He came over to the gunrest and, thrusting a hand into Stephen's upper
pocket, said:

--Lend us a loan of your noserag to wipe my razor.

Stephen suffered him to pull out and hold up on show by its corner a
dirty crumpled handkerchief. Buck Mulligan wiped the razorblade neatly.
Then, gazing over the handkerchief, he said:

--The bard's noserag! A new art colour for our Irish poets: snotgreen.
You can almost taste it, can't you?

He mounted to the parapet again and gazed out over Dublin bay, his fair
oakpale hair stirring slightly.

--God! he said quietly. Isn't the sea what Algy calls it: a great
sweet mother? The snotgreen sea. The scrotumtightening sea. _Epi oinopa
ponton_. Ah, Dedalus, the Greeks! I must teach you. You must read them
in the original. _Thalatta! Thalatta_! She is our great sweet mother.
Come and look.

Stephen stood up and went over to the parapet. Leaning on it he looked
down on the water and on the mailboat clearing the harbourmouth of
Kingstown.

--Our mighty mother! Buck Mulligan said.

He turned abruptly his grey searching eyes from the sea to Stephen's
face.

--The aunt thinks you killed your mother, he said. That's why she won't
let me have anything to do with you.

--Someone killed her, Stephen said gloomily.

--You could have knelt down, damn it, Kinch, when your dying mother
asked you, Buck Mulligan said. I'm hyperborean as much as you. But to
think of your mother begging you with her last breath to kneel down and
pray for her. And you refused. There is something sinister in you...

He broke off and lathered again lightly his farther cheek. A tolerant
smile curled his lips.

--But a lovely mummer! he murmured to himself. Kinch, the loveliest
mummer of them all!

He shaved evenly and with care, in silence, seriously.

Stephen, an elbow rested on the jagged granite, leaned his palm against
his brow and gazed at the fraying edge of his shiny black coat-sleeve.
Pain, that was not yet the pain of love, fretted his heart. Silently, in
a dream she had come to him after her death, her wasted body within its
loose brown graveclothes giving off an odour of wax and rosewood, her
breath, that had bent upon him, mute, reproachful, a faint odour of
wetted ashes. Across the threadbare cuffedge he saw the sea hailed as a
great sweet mother by the wellfed voice beside him. The ring of bay
and skyline held a dull green mass of liquid. A bowl of white china had
stood beside her deathbed holding the green sluggish bile which she had
torn up from her rotting liver by fits of loud groaning vomiting.

Buck Mulligan wiped again his razorblade.

--Ah, poor dogsbody! he said in a kind voice. I must give you a shirt
and a few noserags. How are the secondhand breeks?

--They fit well enough, Stephen answered.

Buck Mulligan attacked the hollow beneath his underlip.

--The mockery of it, he said contentedly. Secondleg they should be. God
knows what poxy bowsy left them off. I have a lovely pair with a hair
stripe, grey. You'll look spiffing in them. I'm not joking, Kinch. You
look damn well when you're dressed.

--Thanks, Stephen said. I can't wear them if they are grey.

--He can't wear them, Buck Mulligan told his face in the mirror.
Etiquette is etiquette. He kills his mother but he can't wear grey
trousers.

He folded his razor neatly and with stroking palps of fingers felt the
smooth skin.

Stephen turned his gaze from the sea and to the plump face with its
smokeblue mobile eyes.

--That fellow I was with in the Ship last night, said Buck Mulligan,
says you have g.p.i. He's up in Dottyville with Connolly Norman. General
paralysis of the insane!

He swept the mirror a half circle in the air to flash the tidings abroad
in sunlight now radiant on the sea. His curling shaven lips laughed and
the edges of his white glittering teeth. Laughter seized all his strong
wellknit trunk.

--Look at yourself, he said, you dreadful bard!

Stephen bent forward and peered at the mirror held out to him, cleft by
a crooked crack. Hair on end. As he and others see me. Who chose this
face for me? This dogsbody to rid of vermin. It asks me too.

--I pinched it out of the skivvy's room, Buck Mulligan said. It does her
all right. The aunt always keeps plainlooking servants for Malachi. Lead
him not into temptation. And her name is Ursula.

Laughing again, he brought the mirror away from Stephen's peering eyes.

--The rage of Caliban at not seeing his face in a mirror, he said. If
Wilde were only alive to see you!

Drawing back and pointing, Stephen said with bitterness:

--It is a symbol of Irish art. The cracked looking-glass of a servant.

Buck Mulligan suddenly linked his arm in Stephen's and walked with him
round the tower, his razor and mirror clacking in the pocket where he
had thrust them.

--It's not fair to tease you like that, Kinch, is it? he said kindly.
God knows you have more spirit than any of them.

Parried again. He fears the lancet of my art as I fear that of his. The
cold steelpen.

--Cracked lookingglass of a servant! Tell that to the oxy chap
downstairs and touch him for a guinea. He's stinking with money and
thinks you're not a gentleman. His old fellow made his tin by selling
jalap to Zulus or some bloody swindle or other. God, Kinch, if you and I
could only work together we might do something for the island. Hellenise
it.

Cranly's arm. His arm.

--And to think of your having to beg from these swine. I'm the only one
that knows what you are. Why don't you trust me more? What have you
up your nose against me? Is it Haines? If he makes any noise here I'll
bring down Seymour and we'll give him a ragging worse than they gave
Clive Kempthorpe.

Young shouts of moneyed voices in Clive Kempthorpe's rooms. Palefaces:
they hold their ribs with laughter, one clasping another. O, I shall
expire! Break the news to her gently, Aubrey! I shall die! With slit
ribbons of his shirt whipping the air he hops and hobbles round the
table, with trousers down at heels, chased by Ades of Magdalen with the
tailor's shears. A scared calf's face gilded with marmalade. I don't
want to be debagged! Don't you play the giddy ox with me!

Shouts from the open window startling evening in the quadrangle. A deaf
gardener, aproned, masked with Matthew Arnold's face, pushes his mower
on the sombre lawn watching narrowly the dancing motes of grasshalms.

To ourselves... new paganism... omphalos.

--Let him stay, Stephen said. There's nothing wrong with him except at
night.

--Then what is it? Buck Mulligan asked impatiently. Cough it up. I'm
quite frank with you. What have you against me now?

They halted, looking towards the blunt cape of Bray Head that lay on the
water like the snout of a sleeping whale. Stephen freed his arm quietly.

--Do you wish me to tell you? he asked.

--Yes, what is it? Buck Mulligan answered. I don't remember anything.

He looked in Stephen's face as he spoke. A light wind passed his brow,
fanning softly his fair uncombed hair and stirring silver points of
anxiety in his eyes.

Stephen, depressed by his own voice, said:

--Do you remember the first day I went to your house after my mother's
death?

Buck Mulligan frowned quickly and said:

--What? Where? I can't remember anything. I remember only ideas and
sensations. Why? What happened in the name of God?

--You were making tea, Stephen said, and went across the landing to
get more hot water. Your mother and some visitor came out of the
drawingroom. She asked you who was in your room.

--Yes? Buck Mulligan said. What did I say? I forget.

--You said, Stephen answered, _O, it's only Dedalus whose mother is
beastly dead._

A flush which made him seem younger and more engaging rose to Buck
Mulligan's cheek.

--Did I say that? he asked. Well? What harm is that?

He shook his constraint from him nervously.

--And what is death, he asked, your mother's or yours or my own? You
saw only your mother die. I see them pop off every day in the Mater and
Richmond and cut up into tripes in the dissectingroom. It's a beastly
thing and nothing else. It simply doesn't matter. You wouldn't kneel
down to pray for your mother on her deathbed when she asked you. Why?
Because you have the cursed jesuit strain in you, only it's injected the
wrong way. To me it's all a mockery and beastly. Her cerebral lobes
are not functioning. She calls the doctor sir Peter Teazle and picks
buttercups off the quilt. Humour her till it's over. You crossed her
last wish in death and yet you sulk with me because I don't whinge like
some hired mute from Lalouette's. Absurd! I suppose I did say it. I
didn't mean to offend the memory of your mother.

He had spoken himself into boldness. Stephen, shielding the gaping
wounds which the words had left in his heart, said very coldly:

--I am not thinking of the offence to my mother.

--Of what then? Buck Mulligan asked.

--Of the offence to me, Stephen answered.

Buck Mulligan swung round on his heel.

--O, an impossible person! he exclaimed.

He walked off quickly round the parapet. Stephen stood at his post,
gazing over the calm sea towards the headland. Sea and headland now grew
dim. Pulses were beating in his eyes, veiling their sight, and he felt
the fever of his cheeks.

A voice within the tower called loudly:

--Are you up there, Mulligan?

--I'm coming, Buck Mulligan answered.

He turned towards Stephen and said:

--Look at the sea. What does it care about offences? Chuck Loyola,
Kinch, and come on down. The Sassenach wants his morning rashers.

His head halted again for a moment at the top of the staircase, level
with the roof:

--Don't mope over it all day, he said. I'm inconsequent. Give up the
moody brooding.

His head vanished but the drone of his descending voice boomed out of
the stairhead:

     _And no more turn aside and brood
     Upon love's bitter mystery
     For Fergus rules the brazen cars._


Woodshadows floated silently by through the morning peace from the
stairhead seaward where he gazed. Inshore and farther out the mirror of
water whitened, spurned by lightshod hurrying feet. White breast of
the dim sea. The twining stresses, two by two. A hand plucking the
harpstrings, merging their twining chords. Wavewhite wedded words
shimmering on the dim tide.

A cloud began to cover the sun slowly, wholly, shadowing the bay in
deeper green. It lay beneath him, a bowl of bitter waters. Fergus' song:
I sang it alone in the house, holding down the long dark chords. Her
door was open: she wanted to hear my music. Silent with awe and pity
I went to her bedside. She was crying in her wretched bed. For those
words, Stephen: love's bitter mystery.

Where now?

Her secrets: old featherfans, tasselled dancecards, powdered with musk,
a gaud of amber beads in her locked drawer. A birdcage hung in the sunny
window of her house when she was a girl. She heard old Royce sing in the
pantomime of Turko the Terrible and laughed with others when he sang:

     _I am the boy
     That can enjoy
     Invisibility._


Phantasmal mirth, folded away: muskperfumed.

_And no more turn aside and brood._


Folded away in the memory of nature with her toys. Memories beset his
brooding brain. Her glass of water from the kitchen tap when she had
approached the sacrament. A cored apple, filled with brown sugar,
roasting for her at the hob on a dark autumn evening. Her shapely
fingernails reddened by the blood of squashed lice from the children's
shirts.

In a dream, silently, she had come to him, her wasted body within its
loose graveclothes giving off an odour of wax and rosewood, her breath,
bent over him with mute secret words, a faint odour of wetted ashes.

Her glazing eyes, staring out of death, to shake and bend my soul. On me
alone. The ghostcandle to light her agony. Ghostly light on the tortured
face. Her hoarse loud breath rattling in horror, while all prayed on
their knees. Her eyes on me to strike me down. _Liliata rutilantium te
confessorum turma circumdet: iubilantium te virginum chorus excipiat._

Ghoul! Chewer of corpses!

No, mother! Let me be and let me live.

--Kinch ahoy!

Buck Mulligan's voice sang from within the tower. It came nearer up the
staircase, calling again. Stephen, still trembling at his soul's cry,
heard warm running sunlight and in the air behind him friendly words.

--Dedalus, come down, like a good mosey. Breakfast is ready. Haines is
apologising for waking us last night. It's all right.

--I'm coming, Stephen said, turning.

--Do, for Jesus' sake, Buck Mulligan said. For my sake and for all our
sakes.

His head disappeared and reappeared.

--I told him your symbol of Irish art. He says it's very clever. Touch
him for a quid, will you? A guinea, I mean.

--I get paid this morning, Stephen said.

--The school kip? Buck Mulligan said. How much? Four quid? Lend us one.

--If you want it, Stephen said.

--Four shining sovereigns, Buck Mulligan cried with delight. We'll
have a glorious drunk to astonish the druidy druids. Four omnipotent
sovereigns.

He flung up his hands and tramped down the stone stairs, singing out of
tune with a Cockney accent:

     _O, won't we have a merry time,
     Drinking whisky, beer and wine!
     On coronation,
     Coronation day!
     O, won't we have a merry time
     On coronation day!_


Warm sunshine merrying over the sea. The nickel shavingbowl shone,
forgotten, on the parapet. Why should I bring it down? Or leave it there
all day, forgotten friendship?

He went over to it, held it in his hands awhile, feeling its coolness,
smelling the clammy slaver of the lather in which the brush was stuck.
So I carried the boat of incense then at Clongowes. I am another now and
yet the same. A servant too. A server of a servant.

In the gloomy domed livingroom of the tower Buck Mulligan's gowned form
moved briskly to and fro about the hearth, hiding and revealing its
yellow glow. Two shafts of soft daylight fell across the flagged floor
from the high barbacans: and at the meeting of their rays a cloud of
coalsmoke and fumes of fried grease floated, turning.

--We'll be choked, Buck Mulligan said. Haines, open that door, will you?

Stephen laid the shavingbowl on the locker. A tall figure rose from the
hammock where it had been sitting, went to the doorway and pulled open
the inner doors.

--Have you the key? a voice asked.

--Dedalus has it, Buck Mulligan said. Janey Mack, I'm choked!

He howled, without looking up from the fire:

--Kinch!

--It's in the lock, Stephen said, coming forward.

The key scraped round harshly twice and, when the heavy door had been
set ajar, welcome light and bright air entered. Haines stood at the
doorway, looking out. Stephen haled his upended valise to the table and
sat down to wait. Buck Mulligan tossed the fry on to the dish beside
him. Then he carried the dish and a large teapot over to the table, set
them down heavily and sighed with relief.

--I'm melting, he said, as the candle remarked when... But, hush! Not a
word more on that subject! Kinch, wake up! Bread, butter, honey. Haines,
come in. The grub is ready. Bless us, O Lord, and these thy gifts.
Where's the sugar? O, jay, there's no milk.

Stephen fetched the loaf and the pot of honey and the buttercooler from
the locker. Buck Mulligan sat down in a sudden pet.

--What sort of a kip is this? he said. I told her to come after eight.

--We can drink it black, Stephen said thirstily. There's a lemon in the
locker.

--O, damn you and your Paris fads! Buck Mulligan said. I want Sandycove
milk.

Haines came in from the doorway and said quietly:

--That woman is coming up with the milk.

--The blessings of God on you! Buck Mulligan cried, jumping up from his
chair. Sit down. Pour out the tea there. The sugar is in the bag. Here,
I can't go fumbling at the damned eggs.

He hacked through the fry on the dish and slapped it out on three
plates, saying:

--_In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti._

Haines sat down to pour out the tea.

--I'm giving you two lumps each, he said. But, I say, Mulligan, you do
make strong tea, don't you?

Buck Mulligan, hewing thick slices from the loaf, said in an old woman's
wheedling voice:

--When I makes tea I makes tea, as old mother Grogan said. And when I
makes water I makes water.

--By Jove, it is tea, Haines said.

Buck Mulligan went on hewing and wheedling:

--_So I do, Mrs Cahill,_ says she. _Begob, ma'am,_ says Mrs Cahill, _God
send you don't make them in the one pot._

He lunged towards his messmates in turn a thick slice of bread, impaled
on his knife.

--That's folk, he said very earnestly, for your book, Haines. Five
lines of text and ten pages of notes about the folk and the fishgods of
Dundrum. Printed by the weird sisters in the year of the big wind.

He turned to Stephen and asked in a fine puzzled voice, lifting his
brows:

--Can you recall, brother, is mother Grogan's tea and water pot spoken
of in the Mabinogion or is it in the Upanishads?

--I doubt it, said Stephen gravely.

--Do you now? Buck Mulligan said in the same tone. Your reasons, pray?

--I fancy, Stephen said as he ate, it did not exist in or out of the
Mabinogion. Mother Grogan was, one imagines, a kinswoman of Mary Ann.

Buck Mulligan's face smiled with delight.

--Charming! he said in a finical sweet voice, showing his white teeth
and blinking his eyes pleasantly. Do you think she was? Quite charming!

Then, suddenly overclouding all his features, he growled in a hoarsened
rasping voice as he hewed again vigorously at the loaf:

     _--For old Mary Ann
     She doesn't care a damn.
     But, hising up her petticoats..._


He crammed his mouth with fry and munched and droned.

The doorway was darkened by an entering form.

--The milk, sir!

--Come in, ma'am, Mulligan said. Kinch, get the jug.

An old woman came forward and stood by Stephen's elbow.

--That's a lovely morning, sir, she said. Glory be to God.

--To whom? Mulligan said, glancing at her. Ah, to be sure!

Stephen reached back and took the milkjug from the locker.

--The islanders, Mulligan said to Haines casually, speak frequently of
the collector of prepuces.

--How much, sir? asked the old woman.

--A quart, Stephen said.

He watched her pour into the measure and thence into the jug rich white
milk, not hers. Old shrunken paps. She poured again a measureful and
a tilly. Old and secret she had entered from a morning world, maybe
a messenger. She praised the goodness of the milk, pouring it out.
Crouching by a patient cow at daybreak in the lush field, a witch on her
toadstool, her wrinkled fingers quick at the squirting dugs. They lowed
about her whom they knew, dewsilky cattle. Silk of the kine and poor old
woman, names given her in old times. A wandering crone, lowly form of
an immortal serving her conqueror and her gay betrayer, their common
cuckquean, a messenger from the secret morning. To serve or to upbraid,
whether he could not tell: but scorned to beg her favour.

--It is indeed, ma'am, Buck Mulligan said, pouring milk into their cups.

--Taste it, sir, she said.

He drank at her bidding.

--If we could live on good food like that, he said to her somewhat
loudly, we wouldn't have the country full of rotten teeth and rotten
guts. Living in a bogswamp, eating cheap food and the streets paved with
dust, horsedung and consumptives' spits.

--Are you a medical student, sir? the old woman asked.

--I am, ma'am, Buck Mulligan answered.

--Look at that now, she said.

Stephen listened in scornful silence. She bows her old head to a voice
that speaks to her loudly, her bonesetter, her medicineman: me she
slights. To the voice that will shrive and oil for the grave all there
is of her but her woman's unclean loins, of man's flesh made not in
God's likeness, the serpent's prey. And to the loud voice that now bids
her be silent with wondering unsteady eyes.

--Do you understand what he says? Stephen asked her.

--Is it French you are talking, sir? the old woman said to Haines.

Haines spoke to her again a longer speech, confidently.

--Irish, Buck Mulligan said. Is there Gaelic on you?

--I thought it was Irish, she said, by the sound of it. Are you from the
west, sir?

--I am an Englishman, Haines answered.

--He's English, Buck Mulligan said, and he thinks we ought to speak
Irish in Ireland.

--Sure we ought to, the old woman said, and I'm ashamed I don't speak
the language myself. I'm told it's a grand language by them that knows.

--Grand is no name for it, said Buck Mulligan. Wonderful entirely. Fill
us out some more tea, Kinch. Would you like a cup, ma'am?

--No, thank you, sir, the old woman said, slipping the ring of the
milkcan on her forearm and about to go.

Haines said to her:

--Have you your bill? We had better pay her, Mulligan, hadn't we?

Stephen filled again the three cups.

--Bill, sir? she said, halting. Well, it's seven mornings a pint at
twopence is seven twos is a shilling and twopence over and these three
mornings a quart at fourpence is three quarts is a shilling. That's a
shilling and one and two is two and two, sir.

Buck Mulligan sighed and, having filled his mouth with a crust thickly
buttered on both sides, stretched forth his legs and began to search his
trouser pockets.

--Pay up and look pleasant, Haines said to him, smiling.

Stephen filled a third cup, a spoonful of tea colouring faintly the
thick rich milk. Buck Mulligan brought up a florin, twisted it round in
his fingers and cried:

--A miracle!

He passed it along the table towards the old woman, saying:

--Ask nothing more of me, sweet. All I can give you I give.

Stephen laid the coin in her uneager hand.

--We'll owe twopence, he said.

--Time enough, sir, she said, taking the coin. Time enough. Good
morning, sir.

She curtseyed and went out, followed by Buck Mulligan's tender chant:

     _--Heart of my heart, were it more,
     More would be laid at your feet._


He turned to Stephen and said:

--Seriously, Dedalus. I'm stony. Hurry out to your school kip and bring
us back some money. Today the bards must drink and junket. Ireland
expects that every man this day will do his duty.

--That reminds me, Haines said, rising, that I have to visit your
national library today.

--Our swim first, Buck Mulligan said.

He turned to Stephen and asked blandly:

--Is this the day for your monthly wash, Kinch?

Then he said to Haines:

--The unclean bard makes a point of washing once a month.

--All Ireland is washed by the gulfstream, Stephen said as he let honey
trickle over a slice of the loaf.

Haines from the corner where he was knotting easily a scarf about the
loose collar of his tennis shirt spoke:

--I intend to make a collection of your sayings if you will let me.

Speaking to me. They wash and tub and scrub. Agenbite of inwit.
Conscience. Yet here's a spot.

--That one about the cracked lookingglass of a servant being the symbol
of Irish art is deuced good.

Buck Mulligan kicked Stephen's foot under the table and said with warmth
of tone:

--Wait till you hear him on Hamlet, Haines.

--Well, I mean it, Haines said, still speaking to Stephen. I was just
thinking of it when that poor old creature came in.

--Would I make any money by it? Stephen asked.

Haines laughed and, as he took his soft grey hat from the holdfast of
the hammock, said:

--I don't know, I'm sure.

He strolled out to the doorway. Buck Mulligan bent across to Stephen and
said with coarse vigour:

--You put your hoof in it now. What did you say that for?

--Well? Stephen said. The problem is to get money. From whom? From the
milkwoman or from him. It's a toss up, I think.

--I blow him out about you, Buck Mulligan said, and then you come along
with your lousy leer and your gloomy jesuit jibes.

--I see little hope, Stephen said, from her or from him.

Buck Mulligan sighed tragically and laid his hand on Stephen's arm.

--From me, Kinch, he said.

In a suddenly changed tone he added:

--To tell you the God's truth I think you're right. Damn all else they
are good for. Why don't you play them as I do? To hell with them all.
Let us get out of the kip.

He stood up, gravely ungirdled and disrobed himself of his gown, saying
resignedly:

--Mulligan is stripped of his garments.

He emptied his pockets on to the table.

--There's your snotrag, he said.

And putting on his stiff collar and rebellious tie he spoke to them,
chiding them, and to his dangling watchchain. His hands plunged and
rummaged in his trunk while he called for a clean handkerchief. God,
we'll simply have to dress the character. I want puce gloves and
green boots. Contradiction. Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I
contradict myself. Mercurial Malachi. A limp black missile flew out of
his talking hands.

--And there's your Latin quarter hat, he said.

Stephen picked it up and put it on. Haines called to them from the
doorway:

--Are you coming, you fellows?

--I'm ready, Buck Mulligan answered, going towards the door. Come out,
Kinch. You have eaten all we left, I suppose. Resigned he passed out
with grave words and gait, saying, wellnigh with sorrow:

--And going forth he met Butterly.

Stephen, taking his ashplant from its leaningplace, followed them out
and, as they went down the ladder, pulled to the slow iron door and
locked it. He put the huge key in his inner pocket.

At the foot of the ladder Buck Mulligan asked:

--Did you bring the key?

--I have it, Stephen said, preceding them.

He walked on. Behind him he heard Buck Mulligan club with his heavy
bathtowel the leader shoots of ferns or grasses.

--Down, sir! How dare you, sir!

Haines asked:

--Do you pay rent for this tower?

--Twelve quid, Buck Mulligan said.

--To the secretary of state for war, Stephen added over his shoulder.

They halted while Haines surveyed the tower and said at last:

--Rather bleak in wintertime, I should say. Martello you call it?

--Billy Pitt had them built, Buck Mulligan said, when the French were on
the sea. But ours is the _omphalos_.

--What is your idea of Hamlet? Haines asked Stephen.

--No, no, Buck Mulligan shouted in pain. I'm not equal to Thomas Aquinas
and the fiftyfive reasons he has made out to prop it up. Wait till I
have a few pints in me first.

He turned to Stephen, saying, as he pulled down neatly the peaks of his
primrose waistcoat:

--You couldn't manage it under three pints, Kinch, could you?

--It has waited so long, Stephen said listlessly, it can wait longer.

--You pique my curiosity, Haines said amiably. Is it some paradox?

--Pooh! Buck Mulligan said. We have grown out of Wilde and paradoxes.
It's quite simple. He proves by algebra that Hamlet's grandson is
Shakespeare's grandfather and that he himself is the ghost of his own
father.

--What? Haines said, beginning to point at Stephen. He himself?

Buck Mulligan slung his towel stolewise round his neck and, bending in
loose laughter, said to Stephen's ear:

--O, shade of Kinch the elder! Japhet in search of a father!

--We're always tired in the morning, Stephen said to Haines. And it is
rather long to tell.

Buck Mulligan, walking forward again, raised his hands.

--The sacred pint alone can unbind the tongue of Dedalus, he said.

--I mean to say, Haines explained to Stephen as they followed, this
tower and these cliffs here remind me somehow of Elsinore. _That beetles
o'er his base into the sea,_ isn't it?

Buck Mulligan turned suddenly for an instant towards Stephen but did
not speak. In the bright silent instant Stephen saw his own image in
cheap dusty mourning between their gay attires.

--It's a wonderful tale, Haines said, bringing them to halt again.

Eyes, pale as the sea the wind had freshened, paler, firm and prudent.
The seas' ruler, he gazed southward over the bay, empty save for the
smokeplume of the mailboat vague on the bright skyline and a sail
tacking by the Muglins.

--I read a theological interpretation of it somewhere, he said bemused.
The Father and the Son idea. The Son striving to be atoned with the
Father.

Buck Mulligan at once put on a blithe broadly smiling face. He looked
at them, his wellshaped mouth open happily, his eyes, from which he had
suddenly withdrawn all shrewd sense, blinking with mad gaiety. He moved
a doll's head to and fro, the brims of his Panama hat quivering, and
began to chant in a quiet happy foolish voice:

     _--I'm the queerest young fellow that ever you heard.
     My mother's a jew, my father's a bird.
     With Joseph the joiner I cannot agree.
     So here's to disciples and Calvary._


He held up a forefinger of warning.

     _--If anyone thinks that I amn't divine
     He'll get no free drinks when I'm making the wine
     But have to drink water and wish it were plain
     That i make when the wine becomes water again._


He tugged swiftly at Stephen's ashplant in farewell and, running forward
to a brow of the cliff, fluttered his hands at his sides like fins or
wings of one about to rise in the air, and chanted:

     _--Goodbye, now, goodbye! Write down all I said
     And tell Tom, Dick and Harry I rose from the dead.
     What's bred in the bone cannot fail me to fly
     And Olivet's breezy... Goodbye, now, goodbye!_


He capered before them down towards the fortyfoot hole, fluttering his
winglike hands, leaping nimbly, Mercury's hat quivering in the fresh
wind that bore back to them his brief birdsweet cries.

Haines, who had been laughing guardedly, walked on beside Stephen and
said:

--We oughtn't to laugh, I suppose. He's rather blasphemous. I'm not a
believer myself, that is to say. Still his gaiety takes the harm out of
it somehow, doesn't it? What did he call it? Joseph the Joiner?

--The ballad of joking Jesus, Stephen answered.

--O, Haines said, you have heard it before?

--Three times a day, after meals, Stephen said drily.

--You're not a believer, are you? Haines asked. I mean, a believer in
the narrow sense of the word. Creation from nothing and miracles and a
personal God.

--There's only one sense of the word, it seems to me, Stephen said.

Haines stopped to take out a smooth silver case in which twinkled a
green stone. He sprang it open with his thumb and offered it.

--Thank you, Stephen said, taking a cigarette.

Haines helped himself and snapped the case to. He put it back in his
sidepocket and took from his waistcoatpocket a nickel tinderbox, sprang
it open too, and, having lit his cigarette, held the flaming spunk
towards Stephen in the shell of his hands.

--Yes, of course, he said, as they went on again. Either you believe
or you don't, isn't it? Personally I couldn't stomach that idea of a
personal God. You don't stand for that, I suppose?

--You behold in me, Stephen said with grim displeasure, a horrible
example of free thought.

He walked on, waiting to be spoken to, trailing his ashplant by his
side. Its ferrule followed lightly on the path, squealing at his heels.
My familiar, after me, calling, Steeeeeeeeeeeephen! A wavering line
along the path. They will walk on it tonight, coming here in the dark.
He wants that key. It is mine. I paid the rent. Now I eat his salt
bread. Give him the key too. All. He will ask for it. That was in his
eyes.

--After all, Haines began...

Stephen turned and saw that the cold gaze which had measured him was not
all unkind.

--After all, I should think you are able to free yourself. You are your
own master, it seems to me.

--I am a servant of two masters, Stephen said, an English and an
Italian.

--Italian? Haines said.

A crazy queen, old and jealous. Kneel down before me.

--And a third, Stephen said, there is who wants me for odd jobs.

--Italian? Haines said again. What do you mean?

--The imperial British state, Stephen answered, his colour rising, and
the holy Roman catholic and apostolic church.

Haines detached from his underlip some fibres of tobacco before he
spoke.

--I can quite understand that, he said calmly. An Irishman must think
like that, I daresay. We feel in England that we have treated you rather
unfairly. It seems history is to blame.

The proud potent titles clanged over Stephen's memory the triumph
of their brazen bells: _et unam sanctam catholicam et apostolicam
ecclesiam:_ the slow growth and change of rite and dogma like his own
rare thoughts, a chemistry of stars. Symbol of the apostles in the
mass for pope Marcellus, the voices blended, singing alone loud in
affirmation: and behind their chant the vigilant angel of the church
militant disarmed and menaced her heresiarchs. A horde of heresies
fleeing with mitres awry: Photius and the brood of mockers of
whom Mulligan was one, and Arius, warring his life long upon the
consubstantiality of the Son with the Father, and Valentine, spurning
Christ's terrene body, and the subtle African heresiarch Sabellius who
held that the Father was Himself His own Son. Words Mulligan had spoken
a moment since in mockery to the stranger. Idle mockery. The void
awaits surely all them that weave the wind: a menace, a disarming and a
worsting from those embattled angels of the church, Michael's host,
who defend her ever in the hour of conflict with their lances and their
shields.

Hear, hear! Prolonged applause. _Zut! Nom de Dieu!_

--Of course I'm a Britisher, Haines's voice said, and I feel as one. I
don't want to see my country fall into the hands of German jews either.
That's our national problem, I'm afraid, just now.

Two men stood at the verge of the cliff, watching: businessman, boatman.

--She's making for Bullock harbour.

The boatman nodded towards the north of the bay with some disdain.

--There's five fathoms out there, he said. It'll be swept up that way
when the tide comes in about one. It's nine days today.

The man that was drowned. A sail veering about the blank bay waiting
for a swollen bundle to bob up, roll over to the sun a puffy face,
saltwhite. Here I am.

They followed the winding path down to the creek. Buck Mulligan stood on
a stone, in shirtsleeves, his unclipped tie rippling over his shoulder.
A young man clinging to a spur of rock near him, moved slowly frogwise
his green legs in the deep jelly of the water.

--Is the brother with you, Malachi?

--Down in Westmeath. With the Bannons.

--Still there? I got a card from Bannon. Says he found a sweet young
thing down there. Photo girl he calls her.

--Snapshot, eh? Brief exposure.

Buck Mulligan sat down to unlace his boots. An elderly man shot up near
the spur of rock a blowing red face. He scrambled up by the stones,
water glistening on his pate and on its garland of grey hair, water
rilling over his chest and paunch and spilling jets out of his black
sagging loincloth.

Buck Mulligan made way for him to scramble past and, glancing at Haines
and Stephen, crossed himself piously with his thumbnail at brow and lips
and breastbone.

--Seymour's back in town, the young man said, grasping again his spur of
rock. Chucked medicine and going in for the army.

--Ah, go to God! Buck Mulligan said.

--Going over next week to stew. You know that red Carlisle girl, Lily?

--Yes.

--Spooning with him last night on the pier. The father is rotto with
money.

--Is she up the pole?

--Better ask Seymour that.

--Seymour a bleeding officer! Buck Mulligan said.

He nodded to himself as he drew off his trousers and stood up, saying
tritely:

--Redheaded women buck like goats.

He broke off in alarm, feeling his side under his flapping shirt.

--My twelfth rib is gone, he cried. I'm the _Uebermensch._ Toothless
Kinch and I, the supermen.

He struggled out of his shirt and flung it behind him to where his
clothes lay.

--Are you going in here, Malachi?

--Yes. Make room in the bed.

The young man shoved himself backward through the water and reached
the middle of the creek in two long clean strokes. Haines sat down on a
stone, smoking.

--Are you not coming in? Buck Mulligan asked.

--Later on, Haines said. Not on my breakfast.

Stephen turned away.

--I'm going, Mulligan, he said.

--Give us that key, Kinch, Buck Mulligan said, to keep my chemise flat.

Stephen handed him the key. Buck Mulligan laid it across his heaped
clothes.

--And twopence, he said, for a pint. Throw it there.

Stephen threw two pennies on the soft heap. Dressing, undressing. Buck
Mulligan erect, with joined hands before him, said solemnly:

--He who stealeth from the poor lendeth to the Lord. Thus spake
Zarathustra.

His plump body plunged.

--We'll see you again, Haines said, turning as Stephen walked up the
path and smiling at wild Irish.

Horn of a bull, hoof of a horse, smile of a Saxon.

--The Ship, Buck Mulligan cried. Half twelve.

--Good, Stephen said.

He walked along the upwardcurving path.

     _Liliata rutilantium.
     Turma circumdet.
     Iubilantium te virginum._


The priest's grey nimbus in a niche where he dressed discreetly. I will
not sleep here tonight. Home also I cannot go.

A voice, sweettoned and sustained, called to him from the sea. Turning
the curve he waved his hand. It called again. A sleek brown head, a
seal's, far out on the water, round.

Usurper.



--You, Cochrane, what city sent for him?

--Tarentum, sir.

--Very good. Well?

--There was a battle, sir.

--Very good. Where?

The boy's blank face asked the blank window.

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

--I forget the place, sir. 279 B. C.

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

--Yes, sir. And he said: _Another victory like that and we are done
for._

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

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

--End of Pyrrhus, sir?

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

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

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

--Pyrrhus, sir? Pyrrhus, a pier.

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

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

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

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

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

The words troubled their gaze.

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

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

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

--Tell us a story, sir.

--O, do, sir. A ghoststory.

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

-_-Weep no more,_ Comyn said.

--Go on then, Talbot.

--And the story, sir?

--After, Stephen said. Go on, Talbot.

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

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


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

Talbot repeated:

     _--Through the dear might of Him that walked the waves,
     Through the dear might..._


--Turn over, Stephen said quietly. I don't see anything.

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

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

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


Talbot slid his closed book into his satchel.

--Have I heard all? Stephen asked.

--Yes, sir. Hockey at ten, sir.

--Half day, sir. Thursday.

--Who can answer a riddle? Stephen asked.

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

--A riddle, sir? Ask me, sir.

--O, ask me, sir.

--A hard one, sir.

--This is the riddle, Stephen said:

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


What is that?

--What, sir?

--Again, sir. We didn't hear.

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

--What is it, sir? We give it up.

Stephen, his throat itching, answered:

--The fox burying his grandmother under a hollybush.

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

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

--Hockey!

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

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

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

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

Stephen touched the edges of the book. Futility.

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

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

--Can you do them yourself? Stephen asked.

--No, sir.

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

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

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

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

--Yes, sir.

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

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

The sum was done.

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

--Yes, sir. Thanks, Sargent answered.

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

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

--Yes, sir.

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

--Sargent!

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

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

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

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

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

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

--What is the matter? What is it now?

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

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

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

--First, our little financial settlement, he said.

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

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

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

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

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

He shot from it two crowns and two shillings.

--Three twelve, he said. I think you'll find that's right.

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

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

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

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

Answer something.

--Mine would be often empty, Stephen said.

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

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

--Iago, Stephen murmured.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Good man, good man.

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

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

--For the moment, no, Stephen answered.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Stephen sketched a brief gesture.

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

--Alas, Stephen said.

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

     _Lal the ral the ra
     The rocky road to Dublin._


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

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

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

--Sit down. Excuse me, he said over his shoulder, _the dictates of
common sense._ Just a moment.

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

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

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

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

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

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

--Now then, Mr Deasy said, rising.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

     _The harlot's cry from street to street
     Shall weave old England's windingsheet._


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

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

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

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

--Who has not? Stephen said.

--What do you mean? Mr Deasy asked.

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

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

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

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

Stephen jerked his thumb towards the window, saying:

--That is God.

Hooray! Ay! Whrrwhee!

--What? Mr Deasy asked.

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

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

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

     _For Ulster will fight
     And Ulster will be right._


Stephen raised the sheets in his hand.

--Well, sir, he began...

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

--A learner rather, Stephen said.

And here what will you learn more?

Mr Deasy shook his head.

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

Stephen rustled the sheets again.

--As regards these, he began.

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

_ Telegraph. Irish Homestead._

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

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

_--The Evening Telegraph..._

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

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

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

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

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

--Mr Dedalus!

Running after me. No more letters, I hope.

--Just one moment.

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

Mr Deasy halted, breathing hard and swallowing his breath.

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

He frowned sternly on the bright air.

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

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

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

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

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


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


Stephen closed his eyes to hear his boots crush crackling wrack and
shells. You are walking through it howsomever. I am, a stride at a time.
A very short space of time through very short times of space. Five, six:
the _nacheinander_. Exactly: and that is the ineluctable modality of the
audible. Open your eyes. No. Jesus! If I fell over a cliff that beetles
o'er his base, fell through the _nebeneinander_ ineluctably! I am
getting on nicely in the dark. My ash sword hangs at my side. Tap with
it: they do. My two feet in his boots are at the ends of his legs,
_nebeneinander_. Sounds solid: made by the mallet of _Los Demiurgos_.
Am I walking into eternity along Sandymount strand? Crush, crack, crick,
crick. Wild sea money. Dominie Deasy kens them a'. Won't you come to
Sandymount, Madeline the mare?


Rhythm begins, you see. I hear. Acatalectic tetrameter of iambs
marching. No, agallop: _deline the mare_.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yes, I must.

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

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

--It's Stephen, sir.

--Let him in. Let Stephen in.

A bolt drawn back and Walter welcomes me.

--We thought you were someone else.

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

--Morrow, nephew.

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

--Yes, sir?

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

--Bathing Crissie, sir.

Papa's little bedpal. Lump of love.

--No, uncle Richie...

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

--Uncle Richie, really...

--Sit down or by the law Harry I'll knock you down.

Walter squints vainly for a chair.

--He has nothing to sit down on, sir.

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

_All'erta_!

He drones bars of Ferrando's _aria di sortita_. The grandest number,
Stephen, in the whole opera. Listen.

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

This wind is sweeter.

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

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

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

What about what? What else were they invented for?

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

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

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

_--Qui vous a mis dans cette fichue position?_

_--c'est le pigeon, Joseph._

Patrice, home on furlough, lapped warm milk with me in the bar MacMahon.
Son of the wild goose, Kevin Egan of Paris. My father's a bird, he
lapped the sweet _lait chaud_ with pink young tongue, plump bunny's
face. Lap, _lapin._ He hopes to win in the _gros lots_. About the nature
of women he read in Michelet. But he must send me _La Vie de Jesus_ by
M. Leo Taxil. Lent it to his friend.

_--C'est tordant, vous savez. Moi, je suis socialiste. Je ne crois pas
en l'existence de Dieu. Faut pas le dire a mon p-re._

_--Il croit?_

_--Mon pere, oui._

_Schluss_. He laps.

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

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

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

--Mother dying come home father.

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

     _O, O THE BOYS OF
     KILKENNY..._


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

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

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

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

A bloated carcass of a dog lay lolled on bladderwrack. Before him the
gunwale of a boat, sunk in sand. _Un coche ensable_ 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. _Natuerlich_, put there for you.
Would you or would you not? The man that was drowned nine days ago off
Maiden's rock. They are waiting for him now. The truth, spit it out. I
would want to. I would try. I am not a strong swimmer. Water cold soft.
When I put my face into it in the basin at Clongowes. Can't see! Who's
behind me? Out quickly, quickly! Do you see the tide flowing quickly in
on all sides, sheeting the lows of sand quickly, shellcocoacoloured? If
I had land under my feet. I want his life still to be his, mine to be
mine. A drowning man. His human eyes scream to me out of horror of his
death. I... With him together down... I could not save her. Waters:
bitter death: lost.

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

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

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

--Tatters! Out of that, you mongrel!

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

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

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

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


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

Passing now.

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

Here. Put a pin in that chap, will you? My tablets. Mouth to her kiss.

No. Must be two of em. Glue em well. Mouth to her mouth's kiss.

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

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

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

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

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

     _And no more turn aside and brood._

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Behind. Perhaps there is someone.

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




-- II --

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

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

The coals were reddening.

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

--Mkgnao!

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

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

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

--Milk for the pussens, he said.

--Mrkgnao! the cat cried.

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

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

Cruel. Her nature. Curious mice never squeal. Seem to like it.

--Mrkrgnao! the cat said loudly.

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

--Gurrhr! she cried, running to lap.

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

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

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

He said softly in the bare hall:

--I'm going round the corner. Be back in a minute.

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

--You don't want anything for breakfast?

A sleepy soft grunt answered:

--Mn.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

--Good day, Mr O'Rourke.

--Good day to you.

--Lovely weather, sir.

--'Tis all that.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

--Now, my miss, he said.

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

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

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

--Threepence, please.

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

--Thank you, sir. Another time.

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

--Good morning, he said, moving away.

--Good morning, sir.

No sign. Gone. What matter?

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

Nothing doing. Still an idea behind it.

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

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

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

Desolation.

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

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

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

--Poldy!

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

--Who are the letters for?

He looked at them. Mullingar. Milly.

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

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

--Do you want the blind up?

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

--That do? he asked, turning.

She was reading the card, propped on her elbow.

--She got the things, she said.

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

--Hurry up with that tea, she said. I'm parched.

--The kettle is boiling, he said.

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

As he went down the kitchen stairs she called:

--Poldy!

--What?

--Scald the teapot.

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

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

The tea was drawn. He filled his own moustachecup, sham crown

Derby, smiling. Silly Milly's birthday gift. Only five she was then. No,
wait: four. I gave her the amberoid necklace she broke. Putting pieces
of folded brown paper in the letterbox for her. He smiled, pouring.

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


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

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

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

--What a time you were! she said.

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

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

--Who was the letter from? he asked.

Bold hand. Marion.

--O, Boylan, she said. He's bringing the programme.

--What are you singing?

--_La ci darem_ with J. C. Doyle, she said, and _Love's Old Sweet Song_.

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

--Would you like the window open a little?

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

--What time is the funeral?

--Eleven, I think, he answered. I didn't see the paper.

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

--No: that book.

Other stocking. Her petticoat.

--It must have fell down, she said.

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

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

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

--Met him what? he asked.

--Here, she said. What does that mean?

He leaned downward and read near her polished thumbnail.

--Metempsychosis?

--Yes. Who's he when he's at home?

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

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

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

--Did you finish it? he asked.

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

--Never read it. Do you want another?

--Yes. Get another of Paul de Kock's. Nice name he has.

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

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

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

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

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

He turned the pages back.

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

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

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

--The kidney! he cried suddenly.

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

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

Dearest Papli

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

Your fond daughter, MILLY.

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

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

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

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

Vain: very.

He smiled with troubled affection at the kitchen window. Day I caught
her in the street pinching her cheeks to make them red. Anemic a little.
Was given milk too long. On the ERIN'S KING that day round the Kish.
Damned old tub pitching about. Not a bit funky. Her pale blue scarf
loose in the wind with her hair. _All dimpled cheeks and curls, Your
head it simply swirls._


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

     _Those girls, those girls,
     Those lovely seaside girls._


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

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

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

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

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

--Miaow! he said in answer. Wait till I'm ready.

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

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

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

Listening, he heard her voice:

--Come, come, pussy. Come.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Might manage a sketch. By Mr and Mrs L. M. Bloom. Invent a story for
some proverb. Which? Time I used to try jotting down on my cuff what she
said dressing. Dislike dressing together. Nicked myself shaving. Biting
her nether lip, hooking the placket of her skirt. Timing her. 9.l5.
Did Roberts pay you yet? 9.20. What had Gretta Conroy on? 9.23. What
possessed me to buy this comb? 9.24. I'm swelled after that cabbage. A
speck of dust on the patent leather of her boot.

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

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

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

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

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

     _Heigho! Heigho!
     Heigho! Heigho!
     Heigho! Heigho!_


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

Poor Dignam!


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


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

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

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

He handed the card through the brass grill.

--Are there any letters for me? he asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

--Hello, Bloom. Where are you off to?

--Hello, M'Coy. Nowhere in particular.

--How's the body?

--Fine. How are you?

--Just keeping alive, M'Coy said.

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

--Is there any... no trouble I hope? I see you're...

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

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

A photo it isn't. A badge maybe.

--E... eleven, Mr Bloom answered.

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

--I know.

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

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

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

--And he said: _Sad thing about our poor friend Paddy! What Paddy?_ I
said. _Poor little Paddy Dignam_, he said.

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

--_Why?_ I said. _What's wrong with him?_ I said.

Proud: rich: silk stockings.

--Yes, Mr Bloom said.

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

--_What's wrong with him_? He said. _He's dead_, he said. And, faith,
he filled up. _Is it Paddy Dignam_? I said. I couldn't believe it when I
heard it. I was with him no later than Friday last or Thursday was it in
the Arch. _Yes,_ he said. _He's gone. He died on Monday, poor fellow_.
Watch! Watch! Silk flash rich stockings white. Watch!

A heavy tramcar honking its gong slewed between.

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

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

--One of the best, M'Coy said.

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

--Wife well, I suppose? M'Coy's changed voice said.

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

He unrolled the newspaper baton idly and read idly:

_What is home without Plumtree's Potted Meat? Incomplete With it an
abode of bliss._

--My missus has just got an engagement. At least it's not settled yet.

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

Mr Bloom turned his largelidded eyes with unhasty friendliness.

--My wife too, he said. She's going to sing at a swagger affair in the
Ulster Hall, Belfast, on the twenty-fifth.

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

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

     _Love's
     Old
     Sweet
     Song
     Comes lo-ove's old..._

--It's a kind of a tour, don't you see, Mr Bloom said thoughtfully.
_Sweeeet song_. There's a committee formed. Part shares and part
profits.

M'Coy nodded, picking at his moustache stubble.

--O, well, he said. That's good news.

He moved to go.

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

--Yes, Mr Bloom said.

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

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

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

--That will be done, Mr Bloom answered firmly.

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

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

Wonder is he pimping after me?

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

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

Every word is so deep, Leopold.

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

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

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

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

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

     _La ci darem la mano
     La la lala la la._

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

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

Dear Henry

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

Martha

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

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

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

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

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

     _O, Mary lost the pin of her drawers.
     She didn't know what to do
     To keep it up
     To keep it up._

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

     _To keep it up._

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

     _To keep it up._

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

_Quis est homo._

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

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

--O God, our refuge and our strength...

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

The priest prayed:

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

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

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

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

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

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

--About a fortnight ago, sir?

--Yes, Mr Bloom said.

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

--Sweet almond oil and tincture of benzoin, Mr Bloom said, and then
orangeflower water...

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

--And white wax also, he said.

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

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

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

--Fourpence, sir.

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

--I'll take this one, he said. That makes three and a penny.

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

--Good, Mr Bloom said.

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

At his armpit Bantam Lyons' voice and hand said:

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

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

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

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

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

--You can keep it, Mr Bloom said.

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

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

Bantam Lyons raised his eyes suddenly and leered weakly.

--What's that? his sharp voice said.

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

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

--I'll risk it, he said. Here, thanks.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

--Come on, Simon.

--After you, Mr Bloom said.

Mr Dedalus covered himself quickly and got in, saying:

Yes, yes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mr Dedalus nodded, looking out.

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

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

--There's a friend of yours gone by, Dedalus, he said.

--Who is that?

--Your son and heir.

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

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

--Was that Mulligan cad with him? His _fidus Achates_!

--No, Mr Bloom said. He was alone.

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

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

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

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

He cried above the clatter of the wheels:

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

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

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

--Are we late? Mr Power asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

--Unless I'm greatly mistaken. What do you think, Martin?

--It struck me too, Martin Cunningham said.

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

Mr Dedalus sighed resignedly.

--After all, he said, it's the most natural thing in the world.

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

--Yes, Mr Bloom answered. He's behind with Ned Lambert and Hynes.

--And Corny Kelleher himself? Mr Power asked.

--At the cemetery, Martin Cunningham said.

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

The carriage halted short.

--What's wrong?

--We're stopped.

--Where are we?

Mr Bloom put his head out of the window.

--The grand canal, he said.

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

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

--The weather is changing, he said quietly.

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

--Wanted for the country, Mr Power said. There's the sun again coming
out.

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

--It's as uncertain as a child's bottom, he said.

--We're off again.

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

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

--O, draw him out, Martin, Mr Power said eagerly. Wait till you hear
him, Simon, on Ben Dollard's singing of _The Croppy Boy_.

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

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

--Did you read Dan Dawson's speech? Martin Cunningham asked.

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

--In the paper this morning.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He's coming in the afternoon. Her songs.

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

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

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

--Who? Mr Dedalus asked.

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

Just that moment I was thinking.

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

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

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

Mr Power asked:

--How is the concert tour getting on, Bloom?

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

--Are you going yourself?

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

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

Have you good artists?

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

--And _Madame_, Mr Power said smiling. Last but not least.

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

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

--Four bootlaces for a penny.

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

And _Madame_. Twenty past eleven. Up. Mrs Fleming is in to clean. Doing
her hair, humming. _voglio e non vorrei_. No. _vorrei e non_. Looking at
the tips of her hairs to see if they are split. _Mi trema un poco
il_. Beautiful on that _tre_ her voice is: weeping tone. A thrush. A
throstle. There is a word throstle that expresses that.

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

They passed under the hugecloaked Liberator's form.

Martin Cunningham nudged Mr Power.

--Of the tribe of Reuben, he said.

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

--In all his pristine beauty, Mr Power said.

Mr Dedalus looked after the stumping figure and said mildly:

--The devil break the hasp of your back!

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

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

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

--Well, nearly all of us.

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

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

--About the boatman? Mr Power asked.

--Yes. Isn't it awfully good?

--What is that? Mr Dedalus asked. I didn't hear it.

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

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

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

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

Mr Power sent a long laugh down his shaded nostrils.

--No, Mr Bloom said, the son himself...

Martin Cunningham thwarted his speech rudely:

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

--For God's sake! Mr Dedalus exclaimed in fright. Is he dead?

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

--Yes, Mr Bloom said. But the funny part is...

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

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

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

--Isn't it awfully good? Mr Bloom said eagerly.

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

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

Nelson's pillar.

--Eight plums a penny! Eight for a penny!

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

Mr Dedalus sighed.

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

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

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

--Breakdown, Martin Cunningham said. Heart.

He tapped his chest sadly.

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

Mr Power gazed at the passing houses with rueful apprehension.

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

--The best death, Mr Bloom said.

Their wide open eyes looked at him.

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

No-one spoke.

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

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

--Sad, Martin Cunningham said. A child.

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

--Poor little thing, Mr Dedalus said. It's well out of it.

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

--In the midst of life, Martin Cunningham said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

     _And they call me the jewel of Asia,
     Of Asia,
     The Geisha._

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

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

No more pain. Wake no more. Nobody owns.

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

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

--God grant he doesn't upset us on the road, Mr Power said.

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

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

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

--What's wrong now?

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

--Emigrants, Mr Power said.

--Huuuh! the drover's voice cried, his switch sounding on their flanks.

Huuuh! out of that!

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

The carriage moved on through the drove.

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

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

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

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

--A poor lookout for Corny, Mr Power added.

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

--Well, there's something in that, Mr Dedalus granted.

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

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

--First round Dunphy's, Mr Dedalus said, nodding. Gordon Bennett cup.

--Praises be to God! Martin Cunningham said piously.

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

--Dunphy's, Mr Power announced as the carriage turned right.

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

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

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

Crossguns bridge: the royal canal.

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

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

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

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

--Better ask Tom Kernan, Mr Dedalus said.

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

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

The carriage steered left for Finglas road.

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

Passed.

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

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

Mr Power pointed.

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

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

--The crown had no evidence, Mr Power said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Where is that child's funeral disappeared to?

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

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

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

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

All walked after.

Martin Cunningham whispered:

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

--What? Mr Power whispered. How so?

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

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

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

--Was he insured? Mr Bloom asked.

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

--How many children did he leave?

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

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

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

--Indeed yes, Mr Bloom agreed.

Has the laugh at him now.

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

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

--Never better. How are all in Cork's own town?

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

--And how is Dick, the solid man?

--Nothing between himself and heaven, Ned Lambert answered.

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

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

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

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

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

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

--Many a good man's fault, Mr Dedalus said with a sigh.

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

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

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

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

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

_--Non intres in judicium cum servo tuo, Domine._

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

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

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

_--Et ne nos inducas in tentationem._

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

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

_--In paradisum._

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

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

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

--The O'Connell circle, Mr Dedalus said about him.

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

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

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

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

--She's better where she is, he said kindly.

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

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

--Sad occasions, Mr Kernan began politely.

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

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

They covered their heads.

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

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

Mr Kernan added:

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

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

Mr Kernan said with solemnity:

--_I am the resurrection and the life_. That touches a man's inmost
heart.

--It does, Mr Bloom said.

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

Corny Kelleher fell into step at their side.

--Everything went off A1, he said. What?

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

--As it should be, Mr Kernan said.

--What? Eh? Corny Kelleher said.

Mr Kernan assured him.

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

Ned Lambert glanced back.

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

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

He looked behind through the others.

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

Ned Lambert smiled.

--Yes, he was, he said, in Wisdom Hely's. A traveller for blottingpaper.

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

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

John Henry Menton's large eyes stared ahead.

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

--John O'Connell, Mr Power said pleased. He never forgets a friend.

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

--I am come to pay you another visit.

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

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

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

--I did not, Martin Cunningham said.

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

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

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

--And, after blinking up at the sacred figure, _Not a bloody bit like
the man_, says he. _That's not Mulcahy_, says he, _whoever done it_.

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

--That's all done with a purpose, Martin Cunningham explained to Hynes.

--I know, Hynes said. I know that.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pause.

If we were all suddenly somebody else.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

--Charley, Hynes said writing. I know. He was on the _Freeman_ once.

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

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

He looked around.

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

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

He moved away, looking about him.

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

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

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

--O, excuse me!

He stepped aside nimbly.

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

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

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

--Let us, Mr Power said.

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

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

Hynes shook his head.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rtststr! A rattle of pebbles. Wait. Stop!

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

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

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

Tail gone now.

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

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

Martin Cunningham emerged from a sidepath, talking gravely.

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

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

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

They stopped.

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

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

--There, Martin Cunningham helped, pointing also. John Henry Menton took
off his hat, bulged out the dinge and smoothed the nap with care on his
coatsleeve. He clapped the hat on his head again.

--It's all right now, Martin Cunningham said.

John Henry Menton jerked his head down in acknowledgment.

--Thank you, he said shortly.

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

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

Thank you. How grand we are this morning!


IN THE HEART OF THE HIBERNIAN METROPOLIS


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

--Rathgar and Terenure!

--Come on, Sandymount Green!

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

--Start, Palmerston Park!


THE WEARER OF THE CROWN


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

GENTLEMEN OF THE PRESS


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

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

--Just cut it out, will you? Mr Bloom said, and I'll take it round to
the _Telegraph_ office.

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

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

--I'll go through the printingworks, Mr Bloom said, taking the cut
square.

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

--Right, Mr Bloom said with a nod. I'll rub that in.

We.

WILLIAM BRAYDEN, ESQUIRE, OF OAKLANDS, SANDYMOUNT


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

--Brayden.

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

--Don't you think his face is like Our Saviour? Red Murray whispered.

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

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

--Or like Mario, Mr Bloom said.

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

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

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

THE CROZIER AND THE PEN


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

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

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

_--Freeman!_

Mr Bloom said slowly:

--Well, he is one of our saviours also.

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

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

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


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

HOW A GREAT DAILY ORGAN IS TURNED OUT


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

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

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

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

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

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

--Right: thanks, Hynes said moving off.

Mr Bloom stood in his way.

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

--Did you? Hynes asked.

--Mm, Mr Bloom said. Look sharp and you'll catch him.

--Thanks, old man, Hynes said. I'll tap him too.

He hurried on eagerly towards the _Freeman's Journal_.

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

WE SEE THE CANVASSER AT WORK


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

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

Mr Nannetti considered the cutting awhile and nodded.

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

The foreman moved his pencil towards it.

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

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

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

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

Let him take that in first.

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

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

HOUSE OF KEY(E)S


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

Better not teach him his own business.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The foreman thought for an instant.

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

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

ORTHOGRAPHICAL


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

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

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

NOTED CHURCHMAN AN OCCASIONAL CONTRIBUTOR


The foreman handed back the galleypage suddenly, saying:

--Wait. Where's the archbishop's letter? It's to be repeated in the
_Telegraph._ Where's what's his name?

He looked about him round his loud unanswering machines.

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

--Ay. Where's Monks?

--Monks!

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

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

--Monks!

--Yes, sir.

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

A DAYFATHER


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


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

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

ONLY ONCE MORE THAT SOAP


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

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

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

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

He entered softly.

ERIN, GREEN GEM OF THE SILVER SEA


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

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

--Agonising Christ, wouldn't it give you a heartburn on your arse?

Ned Lambert, seated on the table, read on:

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

--Changing his drink, Mr Dedalus said.

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

--_The pensive bosom and the overarsing leafage_. O boys! O boys!

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

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

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

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

--Just another spasm, Ned Lambert said.

--What is it? Mr Bloom asked.

--A recently discovered fragment of Cicero, professor MacHugh answered
with pomp of tone. _Our lovely land_. SHORT BUT TO THE POINT


--Whose land? Mr Bloom said simply.

--Most pertinent question, the professor said between his chews. With an
accent on the whose.

--Dan Dawson's land Mr Dedalus said.

--Is it his speech last night? Mr Bloom asked.

Ned Lambert nodded.

--But listen to this, he said.

The doorknob hit Mr Bloom in the small of the back as the door was
pushed in.

--Excuse me, J. J. O'Molloy said, entering.

Mr Bloom moved nimbly aside.

--I beg yours, he said.

--Good day, Jack.

--Come in. Come in.

--Good day.

--How are you, Dedalus?

--Well. And yourself?

J. J. O'Molloy shook his head.