Ulysses
Irishman worthy of his salt that served it. Then they began to have a
few irascible words when it waxed hotter, both, needless to say,
appealing to the listeners who followed the passage of arms with
interest so long as they didn’t indulge in recriminations and come to
blows.
From inside information extending over a series of years Mr Bloom was
rather inclined to poohpooh the suggestion as egregious balderdash for,
pending that consummation devoutly to be or not to be wished for, he
was fully cognisant of the fact that their neighbours across the
channel, unless they were much bigger fools than he took them for,
rather concealed their strength than the opposite. It was quite on a
par with the quixotic idea in certain quarters that in a hundred
million years the coal seam of the sister island would be played out
and if, as time went on, that turned out to be how the cat jumped all
he could personally say on the matter was that as a host of
contingencies, equally relevant to the issue, might occur ere then it
was highly advisable in the interim to try to make the most of both
countries even though poles apart. Another little interesting point,
the amours of whores and chummies, to put it in common parlance,
reminded him Irish soldiers had as often fought for England as against
her, more so, in fact. And now, why? So the scene between the pair of
them, the licensee of the place rumoured to be or have been Fitzharris,
the famous invincible, and the other, obviously bogus, reminded him
forcibly as being on all fours with the confidence trick, supposing,
that is, it was prearranged as the lookeron, a student of the human
soul if anything, the others seeing least of the game. And as for the
lessee or keeper, who probably wasn’t the other person at all, he (B.)
couldn’t help feeling and most properly it was better to give people
like that the goby unless you were a blithering idiot altogether and
refuse to have anything to do with them as a golden rule in private
life and their felonsetting, there always being the offchance of a
Dannyman coming forward and turning queen’s evidence or king’s now like
Denis or Peter Carey, an idea he utterly repudiated. Quite apart from
that he disliked those careers of wrongdoing and crime on principle.
Yet, though such criminal propensities had never been an inmate of his
bosom in any shape or form, he certainly did feel and no denying it
(while inwardly remaining what he was) a certain kind of admiration for
a man who had actually brandished a knife, cold steel, with the courage
of his political convictions (though, personally, he would never be a
party to any such thing), off the same bat as those love vendettas of
the south, have her or swing for her, when the husband frequently,
after some words passed between the two concerning her relations with
the other lucky mortal (he having had the pair watched), inflicted
fatal injuries on his adored one as a result of an alternative
postnuptial _liaison_ by plunging his knife into her, until it just
struck him that Fitz, nicknamed Skin-the-Goat, merely drove the car for
the actual perpetrators of the outrage and so was not, if he was
reliably informed, actually party to the ambush which, in point of
fact, was the plea some legal luminary saved his skin on. In any case
that was very ancient history by now and as for our friend, the pseudo
Skin-the-etcetera, he had transparently outlived his welcome. He ought
to have either died naturally or on the scaffold high. Like actresses,
always farewell positively last performance then come up smiling again.
Generous to a fault of course, temperamental, no economising or any
idea of the sort, always snapping at the bone for the shadow. So
similarly he had a very shrewd suspicion that Mr Johnny Lever got rid
of some £. s. d. in the course of his perambulations round the docks in
the congenial atmosphere of the _Old Ireland_ tavern, come back to Erin
and so on. Then as for the other he had heard not so long before the
same identical lingo as he told Stephen how he simply but effectually
silenced the offender.
—He took umbrage at something or other, that muchinjured but on the
whole eventempered person declared, I let slip. He called me a jew and
in a heated fashion offensively. So I without deviating from plain
facts in the least told him his God, I mean Christ, was a jew too and
all his family like me though in reality I’m not. That was one for him.
A soft answer turns away wrath. He hadn’t a word to say for himself as
everyone saw. Am I not right?
He turned a long you are wrong gaze on Stephen of timorous dark pride
at the soft impeachment with a glance also of entreaty for he seemed to
glean in a kind of a way that it wasn’t all exactly.
—_Ex quibus_, Stephen mumbled in a noncommittal accent, their two or
four eyes conversing, _Christus_ or Bloom his name is or after all any
other, _secundum carnem_.
—Of course, Mr B. proceeded to stipulate, you must look at both sides
of the question. It is hard to lay down any hard and fast rules as to
right and wrong but room for improvement all round there certainly is
though every country, they say, our own distressful included, has the
government it deserves. But with a little goodwill all round. It’s all
very fine to boast of mutual superiority but what about mutual
equality. I resent violence and intolerance in any shape or form. It
never reaches anything or stops anything. A revolution must come on the
due instalments plan. It’s a patent absurdity on the face of it to hate
people because they live round the corner and speak another vernacular,
in the next house so to speak.
—Memorable bloody bridge battle and seven minutes’ war, Stephen
assented, between Skinner’s alley and Ormond market.
Yes, Mr Bloom thoroughly agreed, entirely endorsing the remark, that
was overwhelmingly right. And the whole world was full of that sort of
thing.
—You just took the words out of my mouth, he said. A hocuspocus of
conflicting evidence that candidly you couldn’t remotely...
All those wretched quarrels, in his humble opinion, stirring up bad
blood, from some bump of combativeness or gland of some kind,
erroneously supposed to be about a punctilio of honour and a flag, were
very largely a question of the money question which was at the back of
everything, greed and jealousy, people never knowing when to stop.
—They accuse, remarked he audibly. He turned away from the others, who
probably… and spoke nearer to, so as the others… in case they…
—Jews, he softly imparted in an aside in Stephen’s ear, are accused of
ruining. Not a vestige of truth in it, I can safely say. History, would
you be surprised to learn, proves up to the hilt Spain decayed when the
inquisition hounded the jews out and England prospered when Cromwell,
an uncommonly able ruffian who in other respects has much to answer
for, imported them. Why? Because they are imbued with the proper
spirit. They are practical and are proved to be so. I don’t want to
indulge in any because you know the standard works on the subject and
then orthodox as you are. But in the economic, not touching religion,
domain the priest spells poverty. Spain again, you saw in the war,
compared with goahead America. Turks. It’s in the dogma. Because if
they didn’t believe they’d go straight to heaven when they die they’d
try to live better, at least so I think. That’s the juggle on which the
p.p.’s raise the wind on false pretences. I’m, he resumed with dramatic
force, as good an Irishman as that rude person I told you about at the
outset and I want to see everyone, concluded he, all creeds and classes
_pro rata_ having a comfortable tidysized income, in no niggard fashion
either, something in the neighbourhood of £ 300 per annum. That’s the
vital issue at stake and it’s feasible and would be provocative of
friendlier intercourse between man and man. At least that’s my idea for
what it’s worth. I call that patriotism. _Ubi patria_, as we learned a
smattering of in our classical days in _Alma Mater, vita bene_. Where
you can live well, the sense is, if you work.
Over his untastable apology for a cup of coffee, listening to this
synopsis of things in general, Stephen stared at nothing in particular.
He could hear, of course, all kinds of words changing colour like those
crabs about Ringsend in the morning burrowing quickly into all colours
of different sorts of the same sand where they had a home somewhere
beneath or seemed to. Then he looked up and saw the eyes that said or
didn’t say the words the voice he heard said, if you work.
—Count me out, he managed to remark, meaning work.
The eyes were surprised at this observation because as he, the person
who owned them pro tem. observed or rather his voice speaking did, all
must work, have to, together.
—I mean, of course, the other hastened to affirm, work in the widest
possible sense. Also literary labour not merely for the kudos of the
thing. Writing for the newspapers which is the readiest channel
nowadays. That’s work too. Important work. After all, from the little I
know of you, after all the money expended on your education you are
entitled to recoup yourself and command your price. You have every bit
as much right to live by your pen in pursuit of your philosophy as the
peasant has. What? You both belong to Ireland, the brain and the brawn.
Each is equally important.
—You suspect, Stephen retorted with a sort of a half laugh, that I may
be important because I belong to the _faubourg Saint Patrice_ called
Ireland for short.
—I would go a step farther, Mr Bloom insinuated.
—But I suspect, Stephen interrupted, that Ireland must be important
because it belongs to me.
—What belongs, queried Mr Bloom bending, fancying he was perhaps under
some misapprehension. Excuse me. Unfortunately, I didn’t catch the
latter portion. What was it you...?
Stephen, patently crosstempered, repeated and shoved aside his mug of
coffee or whatever you like to call it none too politely, adding:
—We can’t change the country. Let us change the subject.
At this pertinent suggestion Mr Bloom, to change the subject, looked
down but in a quandary, as he couldn’t tell exactly what construction
to put on belongs to which sounded rather a far cry. The rebuke of some
kind was clearer than the other part. Needless to say the fumes of his
recent orgy spoke then with some asperity in a curious bitter way
foreign to his sober state. Probably the homelife to which Mr B
attached the utmost importance had not been all that was needful or he
hadn’t been familiarised with the right sort of people. With a touch of
fear for the young man beside him whom he furtively scrutinised with an
air of some consternation remembering he had just come back from Paris,
the eyes more especially reminding him forcibly of father and sister,
failing to throw much light on the subject, however, he brought to mind
instances of cultured fellows that promised so brilliantly nipped in
the bud of premature decay and nobody to blame but themselves. For
instance there was the case of O’Callaghan, for one, the halfcrazy
faddist, respectably connected though of inadequate means, with his mad
vagaries among whose other gay doings when rotto and making himself a
nuisance to everybody all round he was in the habit of ostentatiously
sporting in public a suit of brown paper (a fact). And then the usual
_dénouement_ after the fun had gone on fast and furious he got landed
into hot water and had to be spirited away by a few friends, after a
strong hint to a blind horse from John Mallon of Lower Castle Yard, so
as not to be made amenable under section two of the criminal law
amendment act, certain names of those subpœnaed being handed in but not