Ulysses
Is that?... Blueribboned hat... Idly writing... What? Looked?...
The curving balustrade: smoothsliding Mincius.
Puck Mulligan, panamahelmeted, went step by step, iambing, trolling:
John Eglinton, my jo, John,
Why won’t you wed a wife?
He spluttered to the air:
—O, the chinless Chinaman! Chin Chon Eg Lin Ton. We went over to their
playbox, Haines and I, the plumbers’ hall. Our players are creating a
new art for Europe like the Greeks or M. Maeterlinck. Abbey Theatre! I
smell the pubic sweat of monks.
He spat blank.
Forgot: any more than he forgot the whipping lousy Lucy gave him. And
left the _femme de trente ans._ And why no other children born? And his
first child a girl?
Afterwit. Go back.
The dour recluse still there (he has his cake) and the douce youngling,
minion of pleasure, Phedo’s toyable fair hair.
Eh... I just eh... wanted... I forgot... he...
—Longworth and M’Curdy Atkinson were there...
Puck Mulligan footed featly, trilling:
I hardly hear the purlieu cry
Or a Tommy talk as I pass one by
Before my thoughts begin to run
On F. M’Curdy Atkinson,
The same that had the wooden leg
And that filibustering filibeg
That never dared to slake his drouth,
Magee that had the chinless mouth.
Being afraid to marry on earth
They masturbated for all they were worth.
Jest on. Know thyself.
Halted, below me, a quizzer looks at me. I halt.
—Mournful mummer, Buck Mulligan moaned. Synge has left off wearing
black to be like nature. Only crows, priests and English coal are
black.
A laugh tripped over his lips.
—Longworth is awfully sick, he said, after what you wrote about that
old hake Gregory. O you inquisitional drunken jewjesuit! She gets you a
job on the paper and then you go and slate her drivel to Jaysus.
Couldn’t you do the Yeats touch?
He went on and down, mopping, chanting with waving graceful arms:
—The most beautiful book that has come out of our country in my time.
One thinks of Homer.
He stopped at the stairfoot.
—I have conceived a play for the mummers, he said solemnly.
The pillared Moorish hall, shadows entwined. Gone the nine men’s
morrice with caps of indices.
In sweetly varying voices Buck Mulligan read his tablet:
_Everyman His Own Wife
or
A Honeymoon in the Hand
(a national immorality in three orgasms)
by
Ballocky Mulligan._
He turned a happy patch’s smirk to Stephen, saying:
—The disguise, I fear, is thin. But listen.
He read, _marcato:_
—Characters:
TOBY TOSTOFF (a ruined Pole)
CRAB (a bushranger)
MEDICAL DICK )
and ) (two birds with one stone)
MEDICAL DAVY )
MOTHER GROGAN (a watercarrier)
FRESH NELLY
and
ROSALIE (the coalquay whore).
He laughed, lolling a to and fro head, walking on, followed by Stephen:
and mirthfully he told the shadows, souls of men:
—O, the night in the Camden hall when the daughters of Erin had to lift
their skirts to step over you as you lay in your mulberrycoloured,
multicoloured, multitudinous vomit!
—The most innocent son of Erin, Stephen said, for whom they ever lifted
them.
About to pass through the doorway, feeling one behind, he stood aside.
Part. The moment is now. Where then? If Socrates leave his house today,
if Judas go forth tonight. Why? That lies in space which I in time must
come to, ineluctably.
My will: his will that fronts me. Seas between.
A man passed out between them, bowing, greeting.
—Good day again, Buck Mulligan said.
The portico.
Here I watched the birds for augury. Ængus of the birds. They go, they
come. Last night I flew. Easily flew. Men wondered. Street of harlots
after. A creamfruit melon he held to me. In. You will see.
—The wandering jew, Buck Mulligan whispered with clown’s awe. Did you
see his eye? He looked upon you to lust after you. I fear thee, ancient
mariner. O, Kinch, thou art in peril. Get thee a breechpad.
Manner of Oxenford.
Day. Wheelbarrow sun over arch of bridge.
A dark back went before them, step of a pard, down, out by the gateway,
under portcullis barbs.
They followed.
Offend me still. Speak on.
Kind air defined the coigns of houses in Kildare street. No birds.
Frail from the housetops two plumes of smoke ascended, pluming, and in
a flaw of softness softly were blown.
Cease to strive. Peace of the druid priests of Cymbeline: hierophantic:
from wide earth an altar.
Laud we the gods
And let our crooked smokes climb to their nostrils
From our bless’d altars.
[ 10 ]
The superior, the very reverend John Conmee S. J. reset his smooth
watch in his interior pocket as he came down the presbytery steps. Five
to three. Just nice time to walk to Artane. What was that boy’s name
again? Dignam. Yes. _Vere dignum et iustum est._ Brother Swan was the
person to see. Mr Cunningham’s letter. Yes. Oblige him, if possible.
Good practical catholic: useful at mission time.
A onelegged sailor, swinging himself onward by lazy jerks of his
crutches, growled some notes. He jerked short before the convent of the
sisters of charity and held out a peaked cap for alms towards the very
reverend John Conmee S. J. Father Conmee blessed him in the sun for his
purse held, he knew, one silver crown.
Father Conmee crossed to Mountjoy square. He thought, but not for long,
of soldiers and sailors, whose legs had been shot off by cannonballs,
ending their days in some pauper ward, and of cardinal Wolsey’s words:
_If I had served my God as I have served my king He would not have
abandoned me in my old days._ He walked by the treeshade of
sunnywinking leaves: and towards him came the wife of Mr David Sheehy
M.P.
—Very well, indeed, father. And you, father?
Father Conmee was wonderfully well indeed. He would go to Buxton
probably for the waters. And her boys, were they getting on well at
Belvedere? Was that so? Father Conmee was very glad indeed to hear
that. And Mr Sheehy himself? Still in London. The house was still
sitting, to be sure it was. Beautiful weather it was, delightful
indeed. Yes, it was very probable that Father Bernard Vaughan would
come again to preach. O, yes: a very great success. A wonderful man
really.
Father Conmee was very glad to see the wife of Mr David Sheehy M.P.
looking so well and he begged to be remembered to Mr David Sheehy M.P.
Yes, he would certainly call.
—Good afternoon, Mrs Sheehy.
Father Conmee doffed his silk hat and smiled, as he took leave, at the
jet beads of her mantilla inkshining in the sun. And smiled yet again,
in going. He had cleaned his teeth, he knew, with arecanut paste.
Father Conmee walked and, walking, smiled for he thought on Father
Bernard Vaughan’s droll eyes and cockney voice.
—Pilate! Wy don’t you old back that owlin mob?
A zealous man, however. Really he was. And really did great good in his
way. Beyond a doubt. He loved Ireland, he said, and he loved the Irish.
Of good family too would one think it? Welsh, were they not?
O, lest he forget. That letter to father provincial.
Father Conmee stopped three little schoolboys at the corner of Mountjoy
square. Yes: they were from Belvedere. The little house. Aha. And were
they good boys at school? O. That was very good now. And what was his
name? Jack Sohan. And his name? Ger. Gallaher. And the other little
man? His name was Brunny Lynam. O, that was a very nice name to have.
Father Conmee gave a letter from his breast to Master Brunny Lynam and
pointed to the red pillarbox at the corner of Fitzgibbon street.
—But mind you don’t post yourself into the box, little man, he said.
The boys sixeyed Father Conmee and laughed:
—O, sir.
—Well, let me see if you can post a letter, Father Conmee said.
Master Brunny Lynam ran across the road and put Father Conmee’s letter
to father provincial into the mouth of the bright red letterbox. Father
Conmee smiled and nodded and smiled and walked along Mountjoy square
east.
Mr Denis J Maginni, professor of dancing &c, in silk hat, slate
frockcoat with silk facings, white kerchief tie, tight lavender
trousers, canary gloves and pointed patent boots, walking with grave
deportment most respectfully took the curbstone as he passed lady
Maxwell at the corner of Dignam’s court.
Was that not Mrs M’Guinness?
Mrs M’Guinness, stately, silverhaired, bowed to Father Conmee from the
farther footpath along which she sailed. And Father Conmee smiled and
saluted. How did she do?
A fine carriage she had. Like Mary, queen of Scots, something. And to
think that she was a pawnbroker! Well, now! Such a... what should he
say?... such a queenly mien.
Father Conmee walked down Great Charles street and glanced at the
shutup free church on his left. The reverend T. R. Greene B.A. will
(D.V.) speak. The incumbent they called him. He felt it incumbent on
him to say a few words. But one should be charitable. Invincible
ignorance. They acted according to their lights.
Father Conmee turned the corner and walked along the North Circular
road. It was a wonder that there was not a tramline in such an
important thoroughfare. Surely, there ought to be.
A band of satchelled schoolboys crossed from Richmond street. All
raised untidy caps. Father Conmee greeted them more than once benignly.
Christian brother boys.
Father Conmee smelt incense on his right hand as he walked. Saint
Joseph’s church, Portland row. For aged and virtuous females. Father
Conmee raised his hat to the Blessed Sacrament. Virtuous: but
occasionally they were also badtempered.
Near Aldborough house Father Conmee thought of that spendthrift
nobleman. And now it was an office or something.
Father Conmee began to walk along the North Strand road and was saluted
by Mr William Gallagher who stood in the doorway of his shop. Father
Conmee saluted Mr William Gallagher and perceived the odours that came
from baconflitches and ample cools of butter. He passed Grogan’s the
Tobacconist against which newsboards leaned and told of a dreadful
catastrophe in New York. In America those things were continually
happening. Unfortunate people to die like that, unprepared. Still, an
act of perfect contrition.
Father Conmee went by Daniel Bergin’s publichouse against the window of
which two unlabouring men lounged. They saluted him and were saluted.
Father Conmee passed H. J. O’Neill’s funeral establishment where Corny
Kelleher totted figures in the daybook while he chewed a blade of hay.
A constable on his beat saluted Father Conmee and Father Conmee saluted
the constable. In Youkstetter’s, the porkbutcher’s, Father Conmee
observed pig’s puddings, white and black and red, lie neatly curled in
tubes.
Moored under the trees of Charleville Mall Father Conmee saw a
turfbarge, a towhorse with pendent head, a bargeman with a hat of dirty
straw seated amidships, smoking and staring at a branch of poplar above
him. It was idyllic: and Father Conmee reflected on the providence of
the Creator who had made turf to be in bogs whence men might dig it out
and bring it to town and hamlet to make fires in the houses of poor
people.
On Newcomen bridge the very reverend John Conmee S. J. of saint Francis
Xavier’s church, upper Gardiner street, stepped on to an outward bound
tram.
Off an inward bound tram stepped the reverend Nicholas Dudley C. C. of
saint Agatha’s church, north William street, on to Newcomen bridge.
At Newcomen bridge Father Conmee stepped into an outward bound tram for
he disliked to traverse on foot the dingy way past Mud Island.
Father Conmee sat in a corner of the tramcar, a blue ticket tucked with
care in the eye of one plump kid glove, while four shillings, a
sixpence and five pennies chuted from his other plump glovepalm into