Ulysses
in her shift on the bed. Know her smell in a thousand. Bathwater too.
Reminds me of strawberries and cream. Wonder where it is really. There
or the armpits or under the neck. Because you get it out of all holes
and corners. Hyacinth perfume made of oil of ether or something.
Muskrat. Bag under their tails. One grain pour off odour for years.
Dogs at each other behind. Good evening. Evening. How do you sniff? Hm.
Hm. Very well, thank you. Animals go by that. Yes now, look at it that
way. We’re the same. Some women, instance, warn you off when they have
their period. Come near. Then get a hogo you could hang your hat on.
Like what? Potted herrings gone stale or. Boof! Please keep off the
grass.
Perhaps they get a man smell off us. What though? Cigary gloves long
John had on his desk the other day. Breath? What you eat and drink
gives that. No. Mansmell, I mean. Must be connected with that because
priests that are supposed to be are different. Women buzz round it like
flies round treacle. Railed off the altar get on to it at any cost. The
tree of forbidden priest. O, father, will you? Let me be the first to.
That diffuses itself all through the body, permeates. Source of life.
And it’s extremely curious the smell. Celery sauce. Let me.
Mr Bloom inserted his nose. Hm. Into the. Hm. Opening of his waistcoat.
Almonds or. No. Lemons it is. Ah no, that’s the soap.
O by the by that lotion. I knew there was something on my mind. Never
went back and the soap not paid. Dislike carrying bottles like that hag
this morning. Hynes might have paid me that three shillings. I could
mention Meagher’s just to remind him. Still if he works that paragraph.
Two and nine. Bad opinion of me he’ll have. Call tomorrow. How much do
I owe you? Three and nine? Two and nine, sir. Ah. Might stop him giving
credit another time. Lose your customers that way. Pubs do. Fellows run
up a bill on the slate and then slinking around the back streets into
somewhere else.
Here’s this nobleman passed before. Blown in from the bay. Just went as
far as turn back. Always at home at dinnertime. Looks mangled out: had
a good tuck in. Enjoying nature now. Grace after meals. After supper
walk a mile. Sure he has a small bank balance somewhere, government
sit. Walk after him now make him awkward like those newsboys me today.
Still you learn something. See ourselves as others see us. So long as
women don’t mock what matter? That’s the way to find out. Ask yourself
who is he now. _The Mystery Man on the Beach_, prize titbit story by Mr
Leopold Bloom. Payment at the rate of one guinea per column. And that
fellow today at the graveside in the brown macintosh. Corns on his
kismet however. Healthy perhaps absorb all the. Whistle brings rain
they say. Must be some somewhere. Salt in the Ormond damp. The body
feels the atmosphere. Old Betty’s joints are on the rack. Mother
Shipton’s prophecy that is about ships around they fly in the
twinkling. No. Signs of rain it is. The royal reader. And distant hills
seem coming nigh.
Howth. Bailey light. Two, four, six, eight, nine. See. Has to change or
they might think it a house. Wreckers. Grace Darling. People afraid of
the dark. Also glowworms, cyclists: lightingup time. Jewels diamonds
flash better. Women. Light is a kind of reassuring. Not going to hurt
you. Better now of course than long ago. Country roads. Run you through
the small guts for nothing. Still two types there are you bob against.
Scowl or smile. Pardon! Not at all. Best time to spray plants too in
the shade after the sun. Some light still. Red rays are longest.
Roygbiv Vance taught us: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo,
violet. A star I see. Venus? Can’t tell yet. Two. When three it’s
night. Were those nightclouds there all the time? Looks like a phantom
ship. No. Wait. Trees are they? An optical illusion. Mirage. Land of
the setting sun this. Homerule sun setting in the southeast. My native
land, goodnight.
Dew falling. Bad for you, dear, to sit on that stone. Brings on white
fluxions. Never have little baby then less he was big strong fight his
way up through. Might get piles myself. Sticks too like a summer cold,
sore on the mouth. Cut with grass or paper worst. Friction of the
position. Like to be that rock she sat on. O sweet little, you don’t
know how nice you looked. I begin to like them at that age. Green
apples. Grab at all that offer. Suppose it’s the only time we cross
legs, seated. Also the library today: those girl graduates. Happy
chairs under them. But it’s the evening influence. They feel all that.
Open like flowers, know their hours, sunflowers, Jerusalem artichokes,
in ballrooms, chandeliers, avenues under the lamps. Nightstock in Mat
Dillon’s garden where I kissed her shoulder. Wish I had a full length
oilpainting of her then. June that was too I wooed. The year returns.
History repeats itself. Ye crags and peaks I’m with you once again.
Life, love, voyage round your own little world. And now? Sad about her
lame of course but must be on your guard not to feel too much pity.
They take advantage.
All quiet on Howth now. The distant hills seem. Where we. The
rhododendrons. I am a fool perhaps. He gets the plums, and I the
plumstones. Where I come in. All that old hill has seen. Names change:
that’s all. Lovers: yum yum.
Tired I feel now. Will I get up? O wait. Drained all the manhood out of
me, little wretch. She kissed me. Never again. My youth. Only once it
comes. Or hers. Take the train there tomorrow. No. Returning not the
same. Like kids your second visit to a house. The new I want. Nothing
new under the sun. Care of P. O. Dolphin’s Barn. Are you not happy in
your? Naughty darling. At Dolphin’s barn charades in Luke Doyle’s
house. Mat Dillon and his bevy of daughters: Tiny, Atty, Floey, Maimy,
Louy, Hetty. Molly too. Eightyseven that was. Year before we. And the
old major, partial to his drop of spirits. Curious she an only child, I
an only child. So it returns. Think you’re escaping and run into
yourself. Longest way round is the shortest way home. And just when he
and she. Circus horse walking in a ring. Rip van Winkle we played. Rip:
tear in Henny Doyle’s overcoat. Van: breadvan delivering. Winkle:
cockles and periwinkles. Then I did Rip van Winkle coming back. She
leaned on the sideboard watching. Moorish eyes. Twenty years asleep in
Sleepy Hollow. All changed. Forgotten. The young are old. His gun rusty
from the dew.
Ba. What is that flying about? Swallow? Bat probably. Thinks I’m a
tree, so blind. Have birds no smell? Metempsychosis. They believed you
could be changed into a tree from grief. Weeping willow. Ba. There he
goes. Funny little beggar. Wonder where he lives. Belfry up there. Very
likely. Hanging by his heels in the odour of sanctity. Bell scared him
out, I suppose. Mass seems to be over. Could hear them all at it. Pray
for us. And pray for us. And pray for us. Good idea the repetition.
Same thing with ads. Buy from us. And buy from us. Yes, there’s the
light in the priest’s house. Their frugal meal. Remember about the
mistake in the valuation when I was in Thom’s. Twentyeight it is. Two
houses they have. Gabriel Conroy’s brother is curate. Ba. Again. Wonder
why they come out at night like mice. They’re a mixed breed. Birds are
like hopping mice. What frightens them, light or noise? Better sit
still. All instinct like the bird in drouth got water out of the end of
a jar by throwing in pebbles. Like a little man in a cloak he is with
tiny hands. Weeny bones. Almost see them shimmering, kind of a bluey
white. Colours depend on the light you see. Stare the sun for example
like the eagle then look at a shoe see a blotch blob yellowish. Wants
to stamp his trademark on everything. Instance, that cat this morning
on the staircase. Colour of brown turf. Say you never see them with
three colours. Not true. That half tabbywhite tortoiseshell in the
_City Arms_ with the letter em on her forehead. Body fifty different
colours. Howth a while ago amethyst. Glass flashing. That’s how that
wise man what’s his name with the burning glass. Then the heather goes
on fire. It can’t be tourists’ matches. What? Perhaps the sticks dry
rub together in the wind and light. Or broken bottles in the furze act
as a burning glass in the sun. Archimedes. I have it! My memory’s not
so bad.
Ba. Who knows what they’re always flying for. Insects? That bee last
week got into the room playing with his shadow on the ceiling. Might be
the one bit me, come back to see. Birds too. Never find out. Or what
they say. Like our small talk. And says she and says he. Nerve they
have to fly over the ocean and back. Lots must be killed in storms,
telegraph wires. Dreadful life sailors have too. Big brutes of
oceangoing steamers floundering along in the dark, lowing out like
seacows. _Faugh a ballagh!_ Out of that, bloody curse to you! Others in
vessels, bit of a handkerchief sail, pitched about like snuff at a wake
when the stormy winds do blow. Married too. Sometimes away for years at
the ends of the earth somewhere. No ends really because it’s round.
Wife in every port they say. She has a good job if she minds it till
Johnny comes marching home again. If ever he does. Smelling the tail
end of ports. How can they like the sea? Yet they do. The anchor’s
weighed. Off he sails with a scapular or a medal on him for luck. Well.
And the tephilim no what’s this they call it poor papa’s father had on
his door to touch. That brought us out of the land of Egypt and into
the house of bondage. Something in all those superstitions because when
you go out never know what dangers. Hanging on to a plank or astride of
a beam for grim life, lifebelt round him, gulping salt water, and
that’s the last of his nibs till the sharks catch hold of him. Do fish
ever get seasick?
Then you have a beautiful calm without a cloud, smooth sea, placid,
crew and cargo in smithereens, Davy Jones’ locker, moon looking down so
peaceful. Not my fault, old cockalorum.
A last lonely candle wandered up the sky from Mirus bazaar in search of
funds for Mercer’s hospital and broke, drooping, and shed a cluster of
violet but one white stars. They floated, fell: they faded. The
shepherd’s hour: the hour of folding: hour of tryst. From house to
house, giving his everwelcome double knock, went the nine o’clock
postman, the glowworm’s lamp at his belt gleaming here and there
through the laurel hedges. And among the five young trees a hoisted
lintstock lit the lamp at Leahy’s terrace. By screens of lighted
windows, by equal gardens a shrill voice went crying, wailing: _Evening
Telegraph, stop press edition! Result of the Gold Cup races!_ and from
the door of Dignam’s house a boy ran out and called. Twittering the bat
flew here, flew there. Far out over the sands the coming surf crept,
grey. Howth settled for slumber, tired of long days, of yumyum
rhododendrons (he was old) and felt gladly the night breeze lift,
ruffle his fell of ferns. He lay but opened a red eye unsleeping, deep
and slowly breathing, slumberous but awake. And far on Kish bank the
anchored lightship twinkled, winked at Mr Bloom.
Life those chaps out there must have, stuck in the same spot. Irish
Lights board. Penance for their sins. Coastguards too. Rocket and
breeches buoy and lifeboat. Day we went out for the pleasure cruise in
the Erin’s King, throwing them the sack of old papers. Bears in the
zoo. Filthy trip. Drunkards out to shake up their livers. Puking
overboard to feed the herrings. Nausea. And the women, fear of God in
their faces. Milly, no sign of funk. Her blue scarf loose, laughing.
Don’t know what death is at that age. And then their stomachs clean.
But being lost they fear. When we hid behind the tree at Crumlin. I
didn’t want to. Mamma! Mamma! Babes in the wood. Frightening them with