Ulysses
Lambert’s brother over the way, Sam? What? Yes. He’s as like it as damn
it. No. The windscreen of that motorcar in the sun there. Just a flash
like that. Damn like him.
Aham! Hot spirit of juniper juice warmed his vitals and his breath.
Good drop of gin, that was. His frocktails winked in bright sunshine to
his fat strut.
Down there Emmet was hanged, drawn and quartered. Greasy black rope.
Dogs licking the blood off the street when the lord lieutenant’s wife
drove by in her noddy.
Bad times those were. Well, well. Over and done with. Great topers too.
Fourbottle men.
Let me see. Is he buried in saint Michan’s? Or no, there was a midnight
burial in Glasnevin. Corpse brought in through a secret door in the
wall. Dignam is there now. Went out in a puff. Well, well. Better turn
down here. Make a detour.
Mr Kernan turned and walked down the slope of Watling street by the
corner of Guinness’s visitors’ waitingroom. Outside the Dublin
Distillers Company’s stores an outside car without fare or jarvey
stood, the reins knotted to the wheel. Damn dangerous thing. Some
Tipperary bosthoon endangering the lives of the citizens. Runaway
horse.
Denis Breen with his tomes, weary of having waited an hour in John
Henry Menton’s office, led his wife over O’Connell bridge, bound for
the office of Messrs Collis and Ward.
Mr Kernan approached Island street.
Times of the troubles. Must ask Ned Lambert to lend me those
reminiscences of sir Jonah Barrington. When you look back on it all now
in a kind of retrospective arrangement. Gaming at Daly’s. No
cardsharping then. One of those fellows got his hand nailed to the
table by a dagger. Somewhere here lord Edward Fitzgerald escaped from
major Sirr. Stables behind Moira house.
Damn good gin that was.
Fine dashing young nobleman. Good stock, of course. That ruffian, that
sham squire, with his violet gloves gave him away. Course they were on
the wrong side. They rose in dark and evil days. Fine poem that is:
Ingram. They were gentlemen. Ben Dollard does sing that ballad
touchingly. Masterly rendition.
_At the siege of Ross did my father fall._
A cavalcade in easy trot along Pembroke quay passed, outriders leaping,
leaping in their, in their saddles. Frockcoats. Cream sunshades.
Mr Kernan hurried forward, blowing pursily.
His Excellency! Too bad! Just missed that by a hair. Damn it! What a
pity!
* * *
Stephen Dedalus watched through the webbed window the lapidary’s
fingers prove a timedulled chain. Dust webbed the window and the
showtrays. Dust darkened the toiling fingers with their vulture nails.
Dust slept on dull coils of bronze and silver, lozenges of cinnabar, on
rubies, leprous and winedark stones.
Born all in the dark wormy earth, cold specks of fire, evil, lights
shining in the darkness. Where fallen archangels flung the stars of
their brows. Muddy swinesnouts, hands, root and root, gripe and wrest
them.
She dances in a foul gloom where gum bums with garlic. A sailorman,
rustbearded, sips from a beaker rum and eyes her. A long and seafed
silent rut. She dances, capers, wagging her sowish haunches and her
hips, on her gross belly flapping a ruby egg.
Old Russell with a smeared shammy rag burnished again his gem, turned
it and held it at the point of his Moses’ beard. Grandfather ape
gloating on a stolen hoard.
And you who wrest old images from the burial earth? The brainsick words
of sophists: Antisthenes. A lore of drugs. Orient and immortal wheat
standing from everlasting to everlasting.
Two old women fresh from their whiff of the briny trudged through
Irishtown along London bridge road, one with a sanded tired umbrella,
one with a midwife’s bag in which eleven cockles rolled.
The whirr of flapping leathern bands and hum of dynamos from the
powerhouse urged Stephen to be on. Beingless beings. Stop! Throb always
without you and the throb always within. Your heart you sing of. I
between them. Where? Between two roaring worlds where they swirl, I.
Shatter them, one and both. But stun myself too in the blow. Shatter me
you who can. Bawd and butcher were the words. I say! Not yet awhile. A
look around.
Yes, quite true. Very large and wonderful and keeps famous time. You
say right, sir. A Monday morning, ’twas so, indeed.
Stephen went down Bedford row, the handle of the ash clacking against
his shoulderblade. In Clohissey’s window a faded 1860 print of Heenan
boxing Sayers held his eye. Staring backers with square hats stood
round the roped prizering. The heavyweights in tight loincloths
proposed gently each to other his bulbous fists. And they are
throbbing: heroes’ hearts.
He turned and halted by the slanted bookcart.
—Twopence each, the huckster said. Four for sixpence.
Tattered pages. _The Irish Beekeeper. Life and Miracles of the Curé of
Ars. Pocket Guide to Killarney._
I might find here one of my pawned schoolprizes. _Stephano Dedalo,
alumno optimo, palmam ferenti._
Father Conmee, having read his little hours, walked through the hamlet
of Donnycarney, murmuring vespers.
Binding too good probably. What is this? Eighth and ninth book of
Moses. Secret of all secrets. Seal of King David. Thumbed pages: read
and read. Who has passed here before me? How to soften chapped hands.
Recipe for white wine vinegar. How to win a woman’s love. For me this.
Say the following talisman three times with hands folded:
—_Se el yilo nebrakada femininum! Amor me solo! Sanktus! Amen._
Who wrote this? Charms and invocations of the most blessed abbot Peter
Salanka to all true believers divulged. As good as any other abbot’s
charms, as mumbling Joachim’s. Down, baldynoddle, or we’ll wool your
wool.
—What are you doing here, Stephen?
Dilly’s high shoulders and shabby dress.
Shut the book quick. Don’t let see.
—What are you doing? Stephen said.
A Stuart face of nonesuch Charles, lank locks falling at its sides. It
glowed as she crouched feeding the fire with broken boots. I told her
of Paris. Late lieabed under a quilt of old overcoats, fingering a
pinchbeck bracelet, Dan Kelly’s token. _Nebrakada femininum._
—What have you there? Stephen asked.
—I bought it from the other cart for a penny, Dilly said, laughing
nervously. Is it any good?
My eyes they say she has. Do others see me so? Quick, far and daring.
Shadow of my mind.
He took the coverless book from her hand. Chardenal’s French primer.
—What did you buy that for? he asked. To learn French?
She nodded, reddening and closing tight her lips.
Show no surprise. Quite natural.
—Here, Stephen said. It’s all right. Mind Maggy doesn’t pawn it on you.
I suppose all my books are gone.
—Some, Dilly said. We had to.
She is drowning. Agenbite. Save her. Agenbite. All against us. She will
drown me with her, eyes and hair. Lank coils of seaweed hair around me,
my heart, my soul. Salt green death.
We.
Agenbite of inwit. Inwit’s agenbite.
Misery! Misery!
* * *
—Hello, Simon, Father Cowley said. How are things?
—Hello, Bob, old man, Mr Dedalus answered, stopping.
They clasped hands loudly outside Reddy and Daughter’s. Father Cowley
brushed his moustache often downward with a scooping hand.
—What’s the best news? Mr Dedalus said.
—Why then not much, Father Cowley said. I’m barricaded up, Simon, with
two men prowling around the house trying to effect an entrance.
—Jolly, Mr Dedalus said. Who is it?
—O, Father Cowley said. A certain gombeen man of our acquaintance.
—With a broken back, is it? Mr Dedalus asked.
—The same, Simon, Father Cowley answered. Reuben of that ilk. I’m just
waiting for Ben Dollard. He’s going to say a word to long John to get
him to take those two men off. All I want is a little time.
He looked with vague hope up and down the quay, a big apple bulging in
his neck.
—I know, Mr Dedalus said, nodding. Poor old bockedy Ben! He’s always
doing a good turn for someone. Hold hard!
He put on his glasses and gazed towards the metal bridge an instant.
—There he is, by God, he said, arse and pockets.
Ben Dollard’s loose blue cutaway and square hat above large slops
crossed the quay in full gait from the metal bridge. He came towards
them at an amble, scratching actively behind his coattails.
As he came near Mr Dedalus greeted:
—Hold that fellow with the bad trousers.
—Hold him now, Ben Dollard said.
Mr Dedalus eyed with cold wandering scorn various points of Ben
Dollard’s figure. Then, turning to Father Cowley with a nod, he
muttered sneeringly:
—That’s a pretty garment, isn’t it, for a summer’s day?
—Why, God eternally curse your soul, Ben Dollard growled furiously, I
threw out more clothes in my time than you ever saw.
He stood beside them beaming, on them first and on his roomy clothes
from points of which Mr Dedalus flicked fluff, saying:
—They were made for a man in his health, Ben, anyhow.
—Bad luck to the jewman that made them, Ben Dollard said. Thanks be to
God he’s not paid yet.
—And how is that _basso profondo_, Benjamin? Father Cowley asked.
Cashel Boyle O’Connor Fitzmaurice Tisdall Farrell, murmuring,
glassyeyed, strode past the Kildare street club.
Ben Dollard frowned and, making suddenly a chanter’s mouth, gave forth
a deep note.
—Aw! he said.
—That’s the style, Mr Dedalus said, nodding to its drone.
—What about that? Ben Dollard said. Not too dusty? What?
He turned to both.
—That’ll do, Father Cowley said, nodding also.
The reverend Hugh C. Love walked from the old chapterhouse of saint
Mary’s abbey past James and Charles Kennedy’s, rectifiers, attended by
Geraldines tall and personable, towards the Tholsel beyond the ford of
hurdles.
Ben Dollard with a heavy list towards the shopfronts led them forward,
his joyful fingers in the air.
—Come along with me to the subsheriff’s office, he said. I want to show
you the new beauty Rock has for a bailiff. He’s a cross between
Lobengula and Lynchehaun. He’s well worth seeing, mind you. Come along.
I saw John Henry Menton casually in the Bodega just now and it will
cost me a fall if I don’t... Wait awhile... We’re on the right lay,
Bob, believe you me.
—For a few days tell him, Father Cowley said anxiously.
Ben Dollard halted and stared, his loud orifice open, a dangling button
of his coat wagging brightbacked from its thread as he wiped away the
heavy shraums that clogged his eyes to hear aright.
—What few days? he boomed. Hasn’t your landlord distrained for rent?
—He has, Father Cowley said.
—Then our friend’s writ is not worth the paper it’s printed on, Ben
Dollard said. The landlord has the prior claim. I gave him all the
particulars. 29 Windsor avenue. Love is the name?
—That’s right, Father Cowley said. The reverend Mr Love. He’s a
minister in the country somewhere. But are you sure of that?
—You can tell Barabbas from me, Ben Dollard said, that he can put that
writ where Jacko put the nuts.
He led Father Cowley boldly forward, linked to his bulk.
—Filberts I believe they were, Mr Dedalus said, as he dropped his
glasses on his coatfront, following them.
* * *
—The youngster will be all right, Martin Cunningham said, as they
passed out of the Castleyard gate.
The policeman touched his forehead.
—God bless you, Martin Cunningham said, cheerily.
He signed to the waiting jarvey who chucked at the reins and set on
towards Lord Edward street.
Bronze by gold, Miss Kennedy’s head by Miss Douce’s head, appeared
above the crossblind of the Ormond hotel.
—Yes, Martin Cunningham said, fingering his beard. I wrote to Father
Conmee and laid the whole case before him.
—You could try our friend, Mr Power suggested backward.
—Boyd? Martin Cunningham said shortly. Touch me not.
John Wyse Nolan, lagging behind, reading the list, came after them