Ulysses
hat in the sun: flicker, flick.
—Wife well, I suppose? M’Coy’s changed voice said.
—O, yes, Mr Bloom said. Tiptop, thanks.
He unrolled the newspaper baton idly and read idly:
What is home without
Plumtree’s Potted Meat?
Incomplete.
With it an abode of bliss.
—My missus has just got an engagement. At least it’s not settled yet.
Valise tack again. By the way no harm. I’m off that, thanks.
Mr Bloom turned his largelidded eyes with unhasty friendliness.
—My wife too, he said. She’s going to sing at a swagger affair in the
Ulster Hall, Belfast, on the twentyfifth.
—That so? M’Coy said. Glad to hear that, old man. Who’s getting it up?
Mrs Marion Bloom. Not up yet. Queen was in her bedroom eating bread
and. No book. Blackened court cards laid along her thigh by sevens.
Dark lady and fair man. Letter. Cat furry black ball. Torn strip of
envelope.
Love’s
Old
Sweet
Song
Comes lo-ove’s old...
—It’s a kind of a tour, don’t you see, Mr Bloom said thoughtfully.
_Sweeeet song_. There’s a committee formed. Part shares and part
profits.
M’Coy nodded, picking at his moustache stubble.
—O, well, he said. That’s good news.
He moved to go.
—Well, glad to see you looking fit, he said. Meet you knocking around.
—Yes, Mr Bloom said.
—Tell you what, M’Coy said. You might put down my name at the funeral,
will you? I’d like to go but I mightn’t be able, you see. There’s a
drowning case at Sandycove may turn up and then the coroner and myself
would have to go down if the body is found. You just shove in my name
if I’m not there, will you?
—I’ll do that, Mr Bloom said, moving to get off. That’ll be all right.
—Right, M’Coy said brightly. Thanks, old man. I’d go if I possibly
could. Well, tolloll. Just C. P. M’Coy will do.
—That will be done, Mr Bloom answered firmly.
Didn’t catch me napping that wheeze. The quick touch. Soft mark. I’d
like my job. Valise I have a particular fancy for. Leather. Capped
corners, rivetted edges, double action lever lock. Bob Cowley lent him
his for the Wicklow regatta concert last year and never heard tidings
of it from that good day to this.
Mr Bloom, strolling towards Brunswick street, smiled. My missus has
just got an. Reedy freckled soprano. Cheeseparing nose. Nice enough in
its way: for a little ballad. No guts in it. You and me, don’t you
know: in the same boat. Softsoaping. Give you the needle that would.
Can’t he hear the difference? Think he’s that way inclined a bit.
Against my grain somehow. Thought that Belfast would fetch him. I hope
that smallpox up there doesn’t get worse. Suppose she wouldn’t let
herself be vaccinated again. Your wife and my wife.
Wonder is he pimping after me?
Mr Bloom stood at the corner, his eyes wandering over the multicoloured
hoardings. Cantrell and Cochrane’s Ginger Ale (Aromatic). Clery’s
Summer Sale. No, he’s going on straight. Hello. _Leah_ tonight. Mrs
Bandmann Palmer. Like to see her again in that. _Hamlet_ she played
last night. Male impersonator. Perhaps he was a woman. Why Ophelia
committed suicide. Poor papa! How he used to talk of Kate Bateman in
that. Outside the Adelphi in London waited all the afternoon to get in.
Year before I was born that was: sixtyfive. And Ristori in Vienna. What
is this the right name is? By Mosenthal it is. Rachel, is it? No. The
scene he was always talking about where the old blind Abraham
recognises the voice and puts his fingers on his face.
Nathan’s voice! His son’s voice! I hear the voice of Nathan who left
his father to die of grief and misery in my arms, who left the house of
his father and left the God of his father.
Every word is so deep, Leopold.
Poor papa! Poor man! I’m glad I didn’t go into the room to look at his
face. That day! O, dear! O, dear! Ffoo! Well, perhaps it was best for
him.
Mr Bloom went round the corner and passed the drooping nags of the
hazard. No use thinking of it any more. Nosebag time. Wish I hadn’t met
that M’Coy fellow.
He came nearer and heard a crunching of gilded oats, the gently
champing teeth. Their full buck eyes regarded him as he went by, amid
the sweet oaten reek of horsepiss. Their Eldorado. Poor jugginses! Damn
all they know or care about anything with their long noses stuck in
nosebags. Too full for words. Still they get their feed all right and
their doss. Gelded too: a stump of black guttapercha wagging limp
between their haunches. Might be happy all the same that way. Good poor
brutes they look. Still their neigh can be very irritating.
He drew the letter from his pocket and folded it into the newspaper he
carried. Might just walk into her here. The lane is safer.
He passed the cabman’s shelter. Curious the life of drifting cabbies.
All weathers, all places, time or setdown, no will of their own.
_Voglio e non_. Like to give them an odd cigarette. Sociable. Shout a
few flying syllables as they pass. He hummed:
Là ci darem la mano
La la lala la la.
He turned into Cumberland street and, going on some paces, halted in
the lee of the station wall. No-one. Meade’s timberyard. Piled balks.
Ruins and tenements. With careful tread he passed over a hopscotch
court with its forgotten pickeystone. Not a sinner. Near the timberyard
a squatted child at marbles, alone, shooting the taw with a cunnythumb.
A wise tabby, a blinking sphinx, watched from her warm sill. Pity to
disturb them. Mohammed cut a piece out of his mantle not to wake her.
Open it. And once I played marbles when I went to that old dame’s
school. She liked mignonette. Mrs Ellis’s. And Mr? He opened the letter
within the newspaper.
A flower. I think it’s a. A yellow flower with flattened petals. Not
annoyed then? What does she say?
Dear Henry
I got your last letter to me and thank you very much for it. I am sorry
you did not like my last letter. Why did you enclose the stamps? I am
awfully angry with you. I do wish I could punish you for that. I called
you naughty boy because I do not like that other world. Please tell me
what is the real meaning of that word? Are you not happy in your home
you poor little naughty boy? I do wish I could do something for you.
Please tell me what you think of poor me. I often think of the
beautiful name you have. Dear Henry, when will we meet? I think of you
so often you have no idea. I have never felt myself so much drawn to a
man as you. I feel so bad about. Please write me a long letter and tell
me more. Remember if you do not I will punish you. So now you know what
I will do to you, you naughty boy, if you do not wrote. O how I long to
meet you. Henry dear, do not deny my request before my patience are
exhausted. Then I will tell you all. Goodbye now, naughty darling, I
have such a bad headache. today. and write _by return_ to your longing
Martha
P. S. Do tell me what kind of perfume does your wife use. I want to
know.
He tore the flower gravely from its pinhold smelt its almost no smell
and placed it in his heart pocket. Language of flowers. They like it
because no-one can hear. Or a poison bouquet to strike him down. Then
walking slowly forward he read the letter again, murmuring here and
there a word. Angry tulips with you darling manflower punish your
cactus if you don’t please poor forgetmenot how I long violets to dear
roses when we soon anemone meet all naughty nightstalk wife Martha’s
perfume. Having read it all he took it from the newspaper and put it
back in his sidepocket.
Weak joy opened his lips. Changed since the first letter. Wonder did
she wrote it herself. Doing the indignant: a girl of good family like
me, respectable character. Could meet one Sunday after the rosary.
Thank you: not having any. Usual love scrimmage. Then running round
corners. Bad as a row with Molly. Cigar has a cooling effect. Narcotic.
Go further next time. Naughty boy: punish: afraid of words, of course.
Brutal, why not? Try it anyhow. A bit at a time.
Fingering still the letter in his pocket he drew the pin out of it.
Common pin, eh? He threw it on the road. Out of her clothes somewhere:
pinned together. Queer the number of pins they always have. No roses
without thorns.
Flat Dublin voices bawled in his head. Those two sluts that night in
the Coombe, linked together in the rain.
O, Mairy lost the pin of her drawers.
She didn’t know what to do
To keep it up,
To keep it up.
It? Them. Such a bad headache. Has her roses probably. Or sitting all
day typing. Eyefocus bad for stomach nerves. What perfume does your
wife use. Now could you make out a thing like that?
To keep it up.
Martha, Mary. I saw that picture somewhere I forget now old master or
faked for money. He is sitting in their house, talking. Mysterious.
Also the two sluts in the Coombe would listen.
To keep it up.
Nice kind of evening feeling. No more wandering about. Just loll there:
quiet dusk: let everything rip. Forget. Tell about places you have
been, strange customs. The other one, jar on her head, was getting the
supper: fruit, olives, lovely cool water out of a well, stonecold like
the hole in the wall at Ashtown. Must carry a paper goblet next time I
go to the trottingmatches. She listens with big dark soft eyes. Tell
her: more and more: all. Then a sigh: silence. Long long long rest.
Going under the railway arch he took out the envelope, tore it swiftly
in shreds and scattered them towards the road. The shreds fluttered
away, sank in the dank air: a white flutter, then all sank.
Henry Flower. You could tear up a cheque for a hundred pounds in the
same way. Simple bit of paper. Lord Iveagh once cashed a sevenfigure
cheque for a million in the bank of Ireland. Shows you the money to be
made out of porter. Still the other brother lord Ardilaun has to change
his shirt four times a day, they say. Skin breeds lice or vermin. A
million pounds, wait a moment. Twopence a pint, fourpence a quart,
eightpence a gallon of porter, no, one and fourpence a gallon of
porter. One and four into twenty: fifteen about. Yes, exactly. Fifteen
millions of barrels of porter.
What am I saying barrels? Gallons. About a million barrels all the
same.
An incoming train clanked heavily above his head, coach after coach.
Barrels bumped in his head: dull porter slopped and churned inside. The
bungholes sprang open and a huge dull flood leaked out, flowing
together, winding through mudflats all over the level land, a lazy
pooling swirl of liquor bearing along wideleaved flowers of its froth.
He had reached the open backdoor of All Hallows. Stepping into the
porch he doffed his hat, took the card from his pocket and tucked it
again behind the leather headband. Damn it. I might have tried to work
M’Coy for a pass to Mullingar.
Same notice on the door. Sermon by the very reverend John Conmee S. J.
on saint Peter Claver S. J. and the African Mission. Prayers for the
conversion of Gladstone they had too when he was almost unconscious.
The protestants are the same. Convert Dr William J. Walsh D.D. to the
true religion. Save China’s millions. Wonder how they explain it to the
heathen Chinee. Prefer an ounce of opium. Celestials. Rank heresy for
them. Buddha their god lying on his side in the museum. Taking it easy
with hand under his cheek. Josssticks burning. Not like Ecce Homo.
Crown of thorns and cross. Clever idea Saint Patrick the shamrock.
Chopsticks? Conmee: Martin Cunningham knows him: distinguishedlooking.
Sorry I didn’t work him about getting Molly into the choir instead of
that Father Farley who looked a fool but wasn’t. They’re taught that.
He’s not going out in bluey specs with the sweat rolling off him to
baptise blacks, is he? The glasses would take their fancy, flashing.