Ulysses
—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.