Ulysses
groaning to have a child tugged out of her. One born every second
somewhere. Other dying every second. Since I fed the birds five
minutes. Three hundred kicked the bucket. Other three hundred born,
washing the blood off, all are washed in the blood of the lamb, bawling
maaaaaa.
Cityful passing away, other cityful coming, passing away too: other
coming on, passing on. Houses, lines of houses, streets, miles of
pavements, piledup bricks, stones. Changing hands. This owner, that.
Landlord never dies they say. Other steps into his shoes when he gets
his notice to quit. They buy the place up with gold and still they have
all the gold. Swindle in it somewhere. Piled up in cities, worn away
age after age. Pyramids in sand. Built on bread and onions. Slaves
Chinese wall. Babylon. Big stones left. Round towers. Rest rubble,
sprawling suburbs, jerrybuilt. Kerwan’s mushroom houses built of
breeze. Shelter, for the night.
No-one is anything.
This is the very worst hour of the day. Vitality. Dull, gloomy: hate
this hour. Feel as if I had been eaten and spewed.
Provost’s house. The reverend Dr Salmon: tinned salmon. Well tinned in
there. Like a mortuary chapel. Wouldn’t live in it if they paid me.
Hope they have liver and bacon today. Nature abhors a vacuum.
The sun freed itself slowly and lit glints of light among the
silverware opposite in Walter Sexton’s window by which John Howard
Parnell passed, unseeing.
There he is: the brother. Image of him. Haunting face. Now that’s a
coincidence. Course hundreds of times you think of a person and don’t
meet him. Like a man walking in his sleep. No-one knows him. Must be a
corporation meeting today. They say he never put on the city marshal’s
uniform since he got the job. Charley Kavanagh used to come out on his
high horse, cocked hat, puffed, powdered and shaved. Look at the
woebegone walk of him. Eaten a bad egg. Poached eyes on ghost. I have a
pain. Great man’s brother: his brother’s brother. He’d look nice on the
city charger. Drop into the D.B.C. probably for his coffee, play chess
there. His brother used men as pawns. Let them all go to pot. Afraid to
pass a remark on him. Freeze them up with that eye of his. That’s the
fascination: the name. All a bit touched. Mad Fanny and his other
sister Mrs Dickinson driving about with scarlet harness. Bolt upright
like surgeon M’Ardle. Still David Sheehy beat him for south Meath.
Apply for the Chiltern Hundreds and retire into public life. The
patriot’s banquet. Eating orangepeels in the park. Simon Dedalus said
when they put him in parliament that Parnell would come back from the
grave and lead him out of the house of commons by the arm.
—Of the twoheaded octopus, one of whose heads is the head upon which
the ends of the world have forgotten to come while the other speaks
with a Scotch accent. The tentacles...
They passed from behind Mr Bloom along the curbstone. Beard and
bicycle. Young woman.
And there he is too. Now that’s really a coincidence: second time.
Coming events cast their shadows before. With the approval of the
eminent poet, Mr Geo. Russell. That might be Lizzie Twigg with him. A.
E.: what does that mean? Initials perhaps. Albert Edward, Arthur
Edmund, Alphonsus Eb Ed El Esquire. What was he saying? The ends of the
world with a Scotch accent. Tentacles: octopus. Something occult:
symbolism. Holding forth. She’s taking it all in. Not saying a word. To
aid gentleman in literary work.
His eyes followed the high figure in homespun, beard and bicycle, a
listening woman at his side. Coming from the vegetarian. Only
weggebobbles and fruit. Don’t eat a beefsteak. If you do the eyes of
that cow will pursue you through all eternity. They say it’s healthier.
Windandwatery though. Tried it. Keep you on the run all day. Bad as a
bloater. Dreams all night. Why do they call that thing they gave me
nutsteak? Nutarians. Fruitarians. To give you the idea you are eating
rumpsteak. Absurd. Salty too. They cook in soda. Keep you sitting by
the tap all night.
Her stockings are loose over her ankles. I detest that: so tasteless.
Those literary etherial people they are all. Dreamy, cloudy,
symbolistic. Esthetes they are. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was that
kind of food you see produces the like waves of the brain the poetical.
For example one of those policemen sweating Irish stew into their
shirts you couldn’t squeeze a line of poetry out of him. Don’t know
what poetry is even. Must be in a certain mood.
The dreamy cloudy gull
Waves o’er the waters dull.
He crossed at Nassau street corner and stood before the window of
Yeates and Son, pricing the fieldglasses. Or will I drop into old
Harris’s and have a chat with young Sinclair? Wellmannered fellow.
Probably at his lunch. Must get those old glasses of mine set right.
Goerz lenses six guineas. Germans making their way everywhere. Sell on
easy terms to capture trade. Undercutting. Might chance on a pair in
the railway lost property office. Astonishing the things people leave
behind them in trains and cloakrooms. What do they be thinking about?
Women too. Incredible. Last year travelling to Ennis had to pick up
that farmer’s daughter’s bag and hand it to her at Limerick junction.
Unclaimed money too. There’s a little watch up there on the roof of the
bank to test those glasses by.
His lids came down on the lower rims of his irides. Can’t see it. If
you imagine it’s there you can almost see it. Can’t see it.
He faced about and, standing between the awnings, held out his right
hand at arm’s length towards the sun. Wanted to try that often. Yes:
completely. The tip of his little finger blotted out the sun’s disk.
Must be the focus where the rays cross. If I had black glasses.
Interesting. There was a lot of talk about those sunspots when we were
in Lombard street west. Looking up from the back garden. Terrific
explosions they are. There will be a total eclipse this year: autumn
some time.
Now that I come to think of it that ball falls at Greenwich time. It’s
the clock is worked by an electric wire from Dunsink. Must go out there
some first Saturday of the month. If I could get an introduction to
professor Joly or learn up something about his family. That would do
to: man always feels complimented. Flattery where least expected.
Nobleman proud to be descended from some king’s mistress. His
foremother. Lay it on with a trowel. Cap in hand goes through the land.
Not go in and blurt out what you know you’re not to: what’s parallax?
Show this gentleman the door.
Ah.
His hand fell to his side again.
Never know anything about it. Waste of time. Gasballs spinning about,
crossing each other, passing. Same old dingdong always. Gas: then
solid: then world: then cold: then dead shell drifting around, frozen
rock, like that pineapple rock. The moon. Must be a new moon out, she
said. I believe there is.
He went on by la maison Claire.
Wait. The full moon was the night we were Sunday fortnight exactly
there is a new moon. Walking down by the Tolka. Not bad for a Fairview
moon. She was humming. The young May moon she’s beaming, love. He other
side of her. Elbow, arm. He. Glowworm’s la-amp is gleaming, love.
Touch. Fingers. Asking. Answer. Yes.
Stop. Stop. If it was it was. Must.
Mr Bloom, quickbreathing, slowlier walking passed Adam court.
With a keep quiet relief his eyes took note this is the street here
middle of the day of Bob Doran’s bottle shoulders. On his annual bend,
M’Coy said. They drink in order to say or do something or _cherchez la
femme_. Up in the Coombe with chummies and streetwalkers and then the
rest of the year sober as a judge.
Yes. Thought so. Sloping into the Empire. Gone. Plain soda would do him
good. Where Pat Kinsella had his Harp theatre before Whitbred ran the
Queen’s. Broth of a boy. Dion Boucicault business with his harvestmoon
face in a poky bonnet. Three Purty Maids from School. How time flies,
eh? Showing long red pantaloons under his skirts. Drinkers, drinking,
laughed spluttering, their drink against their breath. More power, Pat.
Coarse red: fun for drunkards: guffaw and smoke. Take off that white
hat. His parboiled eyes. Where is he now? Beggar somewhere. The harp
that once did starve us all.
I was happier then. Or was that I? Or am I now I? Twentyeight I was.
She twentythree. When we left Lombard street west something changed.
Could never like it again after Rudy. Can’t bring back time. Like
holding water in your hand. Would you go back to then? Just beginning
then. Would you? Are you not happy in your home you poor little naughty
boy? Wants to sew on buttons for me. I must answer. Write it in the
library.
Grafton street gay with housed awnings lured his senses. Muslin prints,
silkdames and dowagers, jingle of harnesses, hoofthuds lowringing in
the baking causeway. Thick feet that woman has in the white stockings.
Hope the rain mucks them up on her. Countrybred chawbacon. All the beef
to the heels were in. Always gives a woman clumsy feet. Molly looks out
of plumb.
He passed, dallying, the windows of Brown Thomas, silk mercers.
Cascades of ribbons. Flimsy China silks. A tilted urn poured from its
mouth a flood of bloodhued poplin: lustrous blood. The huguenots
brought that here. _La causa è santa!_ Tara tara. Great chorus that.
Taree tara. Must be washed in rainwater. Meyerbeer. Tara: bom bom bom.
Pincushions. I’m a long time threatening to buy one. Sticking them all
over the place. Needles in window curtains.
He bared slightly his left forearm. Scrape: nearly gone. Not today
anyhow. Must go back for that lotion. For her birthday perhaps.
Junejulyaugseptember eighth. Nearly three months off. Then she mightn’t
like it. Women won’t pick up pins. Say it cuts lo.
Gleaming silks, petticoats on slim brass rails, rays of flat silk
stockings.
Useless to go back. Had to be. Tell me all.
High voices. Sunwarm silk. Jingling harnesses. All for a woman, home
and houses, silkwebs, silver, rich fruits spicy from Jaffa. Agendath
Netaim. Wealth of the world.
A warm human plumpness settled down on his brain. His brain yielded.
Perfume of embraces all him assailed. With hungered flesh obscurely, he
mutely craved to adore.
Duke street. Here we are. Must eat. The Burton. Feel better then.
He turned Combridge’s corner, still pursued. Jingling, hoofthuds.
Perfumed bodies, warm, full. All kissed, yielded: in deep summer
fields, tangled pressed grass, in trickling hallways of tenements,
along sofas, creaking beds.
—Jack, love!
—Darling!
—Kiss me, Reggy!
—My boy!
—Love!
His heart astir he pushed in the door of the Burton restaurant. Stink
gripped his trembling breath: pungent meatjuice, slush of greens. See
the animals feed.
Men, men, men.
Perched on high stools by the bar, hats shoved back, at the tables
calling for more bread no charge, swilling, wolfing gobfuls of sloppy
food, their eyes bulging, wiping wetted moustaches. A pallid suetfaced
young man polished his tumbler knife fork and spoon with his napkin.
New set of microbes. A man with an infant’s saucestained napkin tucked
round him shovelled gurgling soup down his gullet. A man spitting back
on his plate: halfmasticated gristle: gums: no teeth to chewchewchew
it. Chump chop from the grill. Bolting to get it over. Sad booser’s
eyes. Bitten off more than he can chew. Am I like that? See ourselves
as others see us. Hungry man is an angry man. Working tooth and jaw.
Don’t! O! A bone! That last pagan king of Ireland Cormac in the
schoolpoem choked himself at Sletty southward of the Boyne. Wonder what
he was eating. Something galoptious. Saint Patrick converted him to
Christianity. Couldn’t swallow it all however.
—Roast beef and cabbage.
—One stew.