Ulysses By JAMES JOYCE Part One STATELY, plump Buck Mulli- gan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. A yellow dressinggown, ungirdled, was sustained gently behind him by the mild morning air. He held the bowl aloft and intoned: -Introibo ad altare Dei. Halted, he peered down the dark winding stairs and called up coarse- ly: -Come up, Kinch. Come up, you fearful jesuit. Solemnly he came forward and mounted the round gunrest. He faced about and blessed gravely thrice the tower, the surrounding country and the awaking mountains. Then, catching sight of Stephen De- dalus, he bent towards him and made rapid crosses in the air, gur- gling in his throat and shaking his head. Stephen Dedalus, displeased and sleepy, leaned his arms on the top of the staircase and looked cold- ly at the shaking gurgling face that blessed him, equine in its length, and at the light untonsured hair, grained and hued like pale oak. Buck Mulligan peeped an instant under the mirror and then covered the bowl smartly. -Back to barracks, he said sternly. He added in a preacher's tone: -For this, O dearly beloved, is the genuine Christine: body and soul and blood and ouns. Slow music, please. Shut your eyes, gents. One moment. A little trouble about those white corpuscles. Silence, all. He peered sideways up and gave a long low whistle of call, then paused a while in rapt attention, his even white teeth glistening here and there with gold points. Chrysosto- mos. Two strong shrill whistles an- swered through the calm. -Thanks, old chap, he cried briskly. That will do nicely. Switch off the current, will you? He skipped off the gunrest and looked gravely at his watcher, gath- ering about his legs the loose folds of his gown. The plump shadowed face and sullen oval jowl recalled a pre- late, patron of arts in the middle ages. A pleasant smile broke quietly over his lips. -The mockery of it, he said gai- ly. Your absurd name, an ancient Greek. He pointed his finger in friendly jest and went over to the parapet, laughing to himself. Stephen De- 93 94 TWO WORLDS MONTHLY dalus stepped up, followed him wearily halfway and sat down on the edge of the gunrest, watching him still as he propped his mirror on the parapet, dipped the brush in the bowl and lathered cheeks and neck. Buck Mulligan's gay voice went on. -My name is absurd too: Mal- achi Mulligan, two dactyls. But it has a Hellenic ring, hasn't it? Trip- ping and sunny like the buck himself. We must go to Athens. Will you come if I can get the aunt to fork out twenty quid? He laid the brush aside and, laugh- ing with delight, cried: -Will he come? The jejune jesuit. Ceasing, he began to shave with care. -Tell me, Mulligan, Stephen said quietly. -Yes, my love ? -How long is Haines going to stay in this tower? Buck Mulligan showed a shaven cheek over his right shoulder. -God, isn't he dreadful? he said frankly. A ponderous Saxon. He thinks you're not a gentleman. God, these bloody English. Bursting with money and indigestion. Because he comes from Oxford. You know, Dedalus, you have the real Oxford manner. He can't make you out. O, my name for you is the best: Kinch, the knifeblade. He shaved warily over his chin. -He was raving all night about a black panther, Stephen said. Where is his guncase ? -A woful lunatic, Mulligan said. Were you in a funk? -I was, Stephen said with energy and growing fear. Out here in the dark with a man I don't know raving and moaning to himself about shoot- ing a black panther. You saved men from drowning. I'm not a hero, however. If he stays on here I am off. Buck Mulligan frowned at the lather on his razor blade. He hop- ped down from his perch and began to search his trouser pockets hastily. -Scutter, he cried thickly. He came over the gunrest and, thrusting a hand into Stephen's up- per pocket, said: -Lend us a loan of your noserag to wipe my razor. Stephen suffered him to pull out and hold up on show by its corner a dirty crumpled handkerchief. Buck Mulligan wiped the razorblade neat- ly. Then, gazing over the handker- chief, he said: -The bard's noserag. A new art color for our Irish poets: snotgreen. You can almost taste it, can't you ? He mounted to the parapet again and gazed out over Dublin bay, his fair oakpale hair stirring slightly. -God, he said quietly. Isn't the sea what Algy calls it: a grey sweet mother? The snotgreen sea. The scrotumtightening sea. Epi oinopa ponton. Ah, Dedalus, the Greeks. I must teach you. You must read them in the original. Thalatta! Thalatta! She is our grey sweet mother. Come and look. Stephen stood up and went over to the parapet. Leaning on it he looked down on the water and on the mailboat clearing the harbor mouth of Kingstown. -Our mighty mother, Buck Mul- ligan said. ULYSSES 95 He turned abruptly his great searching eyes from the sea to Stephen's face. -The aunt thinks you killed your mother, he said. That's why she won't let me have anything to do with you. -Someone killed her, Stephen said gloomily. -You could have knelt down, damn it, Kinch, when your dying mother asked you, Buck Mulligan said. I'm hyperborean as much as you. But to think of your mother begging you with her last breath to kneel down and pray for her. And you refused. There is something sinister in you . . . He broke off and lathered again lightly his farther cheek. A toler- ant smile curled his lips. -But a lovely mummer, he mur- mured to himself. Kinch, the loveli- est mummer of them all. He shaved evenly and with care, in silence, seriously. Stephen, an elbow rested on the jagged granite, leaned his palm against his brow and gazed at the fraying edge of his shiny black coat- sleeve. Pain, that was not yet the pain of love, fretted his heart. Si- lently, in a dream she had come to him after her death, her wasted body within its loose brown graveclothes giving off an odor of wax and rose- wood, her breath, that had bent upon him, mute, reproachful, a faint odor of wetted ashes. Across the thread- bare cuffedge he saw the sea hailed as a great sweet mother by the well- fed voice beside him. The ring of bay and skyline held a dull green mass of liquid. A bowl of white china had stood beside her deathbed holding the green sluggish bile which she had torn up from her rotting liver by fits of loud groaning vomit- ing. Buck Mulligan wiped again his razorblade. -Ah, poor dogsbody, he said in a kind voice. I must give you a shirt and a few noserags. How are the secondhand breeks ? -They fit well enough, Stephen answered. Buck Mulligan attacked the hol- low beneath his underlip. -The mockery of it, he said con- tentedly, secondleg they should be. God knows what poxy bowsy left them off. I have a lovely pair with a hair stripe, grey. You'll look spif- fing in them. I'm not joking, Kinch. You look damn well when you're dressed. -Thanks, Stephen said. I can't wear them if they are grey. -He can't wear them, Buck Mul- ligan told his face in the mirror. Etiquette is etiquette. He kills his mother but he can't wear grey trousers. He folded his razor neatly and with stroking palps of fingers felt the smooth skin. Stephen turned his gaze from the sea and to the plump face with its smokeblue mobile eyes. -That fellow I was with in the Ship last night, said Buck Mulligan, says you have g. p. i. He's up in Dottyville with Conolly Norman. General paralysis of the insane. He swept the mirror a half circle in the air to flash the tidings abroad in sunlight now radiant on the sea. His curling shaven lips laughed and the edges of his white glittering 96 TWO WORLDS MONTHLY teeth. Laughter seized all his strong wellknit trunk. -Look at yourself, he said, you dreadful bard. Stephen bent forward and peered at the mirror held out to him, cleft by a crooked crack, hair on end. As he and others see me. Who chose this face for me? This dogsbody to rid of vermin. It asks me too. -I pinched it out of the skivvy's room, Buck Mulligan said. It does her all right. The aunt always keeps plainlooking servants for Malachi. Lead him not into temptation. And her name is Ursula. Laughing again, he brought the mirror away from Stephen's peering eyes. -The rage of Caliban at not see- ing his face in a mirror, he said. If Wilde were only alive to see you. Drawing back and pointing, Ste- phen said with bitterness: -It is a symbol of Irish art. The cracked lookingglass of a servant. Buck Mulligan suddenly linked his arm in Stephen's and walked with him round the tower, his razor and mirror clacking in the pocket where he had thrust them. -It's not fair to tease you like that, Kinch, is it? he said kindly. God knows you have more spirit than any of them. Parried again. He fears the lan- cet of my art as I fear that of his. The cold steel pen. -Cracked lookinglass of a serv- ant. Tell that to the oxy chap downstairs and touch him for a guinea. He's stinking with money and thinks you're not a gentleman. His old fellow made his tin by selling jalap to Zulus or some bloody swin- dle or other. God, Kinch, if you and I could only work together we might do something for the island. Hel- lenise it. Cranly's arm. His arm. -And to think of your having to beg from these swine. I'm the only one that knows what you are. Why don't you trust me more? What have you up your nose against me? Is it Haines? If he makes any noise here I'll bring down Sey- mour and we'll give him a ragging worse than they gave Clive Kemp- thorpe. Young shouts of moneyed voices in Clive Kempthorpe's rooms. Pale- faces: they hold their ribs with laughter, one clasping another, O, I shall expire ! Break the news to her gently, Aubrey ! I shall die ! With slit ribbons of his shirt whipping the air he hops and hobbles round the table, with trousers down at heels, chased by Ades of Magdalen with the tailor's shears. A scared calf's face gilded with marmalade. Don't you play the giddy ox with me! Shouts from the open window startling evening in the quadrangle. A deaf gardener, aproned, masked with Matthew Arnold's face, pushes his mower on the sombre lawn watching narrowly the dancing motes of grasshalms. To ourselves. . . new pagan- ism . . . omphalos. -Let him stay, Stephen said. There's nothing wrong with him ex- cept at night. -Then what is it? Buck Mulli- gan asked impatiendy. Cough it up. I'm quite frank with you. What have you against me now ? ULYSSES 97 They halted, looking towards the blunt cape of Bray Head that lay on the water like the snout of a sleeping whale. Stephen freed his arm quietly. -Do you wish me to tell you ? he asked. -Yes, what is it? Buck Mulli- gan answered. I don't remember anything. He looked in Stephen's face as he spoke. A light wind passed his brow, fanning softly his fair un- combed hair and stirring silver points of anxiety in his eyes. Stephen, depressed by his own voice, said: -Do you remember the first day I went to your house after my moth- er's death? Buck Mulligan frowned quickly and said: -What? Where? I can't re- anything. I remember only ideas and sensations. Why? What hap- pened in the name of God? -You were making tea, Stephen said, and I went across the landing to get more hot water. Your mother and some visitor came out of the drawing room. She asked you who was in your room. -Yes? Buck Mulligan said. What did I say? I forget. -You said, Stephen answered, O, it's only Dedalus whose mother is beastly dead. A flush which made him seem younger and more engaging rose to Buck Mulligan's cheek. -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 dissecting room. 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 mock- ery and beastly. Her cerebral lobes are not functioning. She calls the doctor Sir Peter Teazle and picks buttercups off the quilt. Humor 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. Ab- surd! I suppose I did say it. I didn't mean to offend the memory of your mother. He had spoken himself into bold- ness. 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 Mulli- gan asked. -Of the offence to me, Stephen answered. Buck Mulligan swung round on his heel. -O, an impossible person I he ex- claimed. He walked off quickly round the parapet. Stephen stood at his post, gazing over the calm sea toward 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; 98 TWO WORLDS MONTHLY -Are you up there, Mulligan? -I'm coming, Buck Mulligan an- swered. He turned toward 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 mo- ment 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 light- shod hurrying feet. White breast of the dim sea. The twining stresses, two by two. A hand plucking the harpstring merging their twining chords. Wavewhite wedded words shimmering on the dim tide. A cloud began to cover the sun slowly, shadowing the bay in deeper green. It lay behind 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 feather fans, tas- seled 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: muskper fumed. And no more turn aside and brood. Folded away in the memory o nature with her toys. Memories be- set 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 fin- gernails 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 odor of wax and rosewood, her breath bent over him with mute secret words, a faint odor 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 ruti- lantium te confessorum turma cir- cumdet: jubilantium 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, 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, turn- ing. -Do, for Jesus' sake, Buck Mul- ligan said. For my sake and for all our sakes. His head disappeared and reap- peared. -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 Mulli- gan 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 tramp- ed down the stone stairs, singing out of tune with a Cockney accent: O, won't we have a merry time, Drinking whiskey, 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 a while, 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 gown- ed form moved briskly about the hearth to and fro, hiding and reveal- ing 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 Mulli- gan 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 sit- ting, 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. 100 TWO WORLDS MONTHLY 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 Mulli- gan tossed the fry on to the dish be- side 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. 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 door- way 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 slap- ped it out on three plates, saying: -In nomine Patris et Filii et Spi- ritus 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 wa- ter. -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 im- paled on his knife. -That's folk, he said very earn- estly, 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 grave- ly. -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 Ma- binogion. Mother Grogan was, one imagines, a kinswoman of Mary Ann. ULYSSES 101 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 hoars- ened rasping voice as he hewed again vigorously at the loaf: -For old Mary Ann She doesn't care a damn. But, fusing 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 frequendy 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 measure- ful 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 day- break 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 messen- ger from the secret morning. To serve or to upbraid, whether he could not tell: but scorned to beg her favor. -It is indeed, ma'am, Buck Mul- ligan said, pouring milk into their cups. -Taste it, sir, she said. He drank at her bidding. -If we could only live on good food like that, he said to her some- what loudly, we wouldn't have the country full of rotten teeth and rot- ten guts. Living in a logswamp, eating cheap food and the streets paved with dust, horsedung and con- sumptives' spits. -Are you a medical student, sir? the old woman asked. -I am, ma'am, Buck Mulligan answered. Stephen listened in scornful si- lence. She bows her old head to a voice that speaks to her loudly, her bonesetter, her medicineman: me she slights. To the voice that will shrive and oil for the grave all there is of her but her woman's unclean loins, of man's flesh made not in God's likeness, the serpent's prey. And to the loud voice that now bids her be silent with wondering unsteady eyes. -Do you understand what he says? Stephen asked her. 102 TWO WORLDS MONTHLY -Is it French you are talking, sir? the old woman said to Haines. Haines spoke to her again a longer speech, confidently. -Irish, Buck Mulligan said. Is there Gaelic on you? -I thought it was Irish, she said, by the sound of it. Are you from west, sir? -I am an Englishman, Haines answered. -He's English, Buck Mulligan said, and he thinks we ought to speak Irish in Ireland. -Sure we ought to, the old wom- an said, and I'm ashamed I don't speak the language myself. I'm told it's a grand language by them that knows. -Grand is no name for it, said Buck Mulligan. Wonderful entire- ly. Fill us out some more tea, Kinch. Would you like a cup, ma'am? -No, thank you, sir, the old woman said, slipping the ring of the milkcan on her forearm and about to go- Haines said to her: -Have you your bill? We had better pay her, Mulligan, hadn't we ? Stephen filled again the three cups. -Bill, sir? she said, halting. Well, it's seven mornings a pint at two pence is seven twos is a shilling and twopence over and these three mornings a quart at fourpence is three quarts is a shilling and one and two is two and two, sir. Buck Mulligan sighed and having filled his mouth with a crust thickly buttered on both sides, stretched forth his legs and began to search his trouser pockets. -Pay up and look pleasant, Haines said to him smiling. Stephen filled a third cup, a spoon- ful of tea coloring faintly the thick rich milk. Buck Mulligan brought up a florin, twisted it round in his fingers and cried: -A miracle ! He passed it along the table to- ward the old woman, saying: -Ask nothing more of me, sweet. All I can give you I give. Stephen laid the coin in her un- eager hand. -We'll owe twopence, he said. -Time enough, sir, she said, tak- ing the coin. Time enough. Good morning, sir. She curtseyed and went out, fol- lowed by Buck Mulligan's tender chant: -Heart of my heart, were it more, More would be laid at your feet. He turned to Stephen and said: -Seriously, Dedalus. I'm stony. Hurry out to your school kip and bring us back some money. Today the bards must drink and junket. Ire- land expects that every man this day will do his duty. -That reminds me, Haines said, rising, that I have to visit your na- tional library today. -Our swim first, Buck Mulligan said. He turned to Stephen and asked blandly: -Is this the day for your monthly wash, Kinch ? Then he said to Haines : -The unclean bard makes a point of washing once a month. -All Ireland is washed by the gulfstream, Stephen said as he let honey trickle over a slice of the loaf. ULYSSES 103 Haines from the corner where he was knotting easily a scarf about the loose collar of his tennis shirt spoke: -I intend to make a collection of your sayings if you will let me. Speaking to me. They wash and tub and scrub. Agenbite of inwit. Conscience. Yet here's a spot. -That one about the cracked lookingglass of a servant being the symbol of Irish art is deuced good. Buck Mulligan kicked Stephen's foot under the table and said with warmth of tone: -Wait till you hear him on Ham- let, Haines. -Well, I mean it, Haines said, still speaking to Stephen. I was just thinking of it when that poor old creature came in. -Would I make money by it? Stephen asked. Haines laughed and, as he took his soft grey hat from the holdfast of the hammock, said: -I don't know, I'm sure. He strolled out of the doorway. Buck Mulligan bent across to Ste- phen and said with coarse vigor: -You put your hoof in it now. What did you say that for? -Well? Stephen said. The prob- lem is to get money. From whom ? From the milkwoman or from him. It's a toss up, I think. -I blow him out about you, Buck Mulligan said, and then you come along with your lousy leer and your gloomy jesuit jibes. -I see little hope, Stephen said, from her or from him. Buck Mulligan sighed tragically and laid his hand on Stephen's arm. -From me, Kinch, he said. In a suddenly changed tone he added: -To tell you the God's truth I think you're right. Damn all else they are good for. Why don't you play them as I do? To hell with them all. Let us get out of the kip. He stood up, gravely ungirdled and disrobed himself of his gown, saying resignedly: -Mulligan is stripped of his gar- ments. He emptied his pockets on to the table. -There's your snotrag, he said. And putting on his stiff collar and rebellious tie, he spoke to them, chid- ing them, and to his dangling watch- chain. His hands plunged and rum- maged in his trunk while he called for a clean handkerchief. Agenbite of inwit. God, we'll simply have to dress the character. I want puce gloves and green boots. Contra- diction. Do I contradict myself? Very well, then, I contradict myself. Mercurial Malachi. A limp black missile flew out of his talking hands. -And there's your Latin quarter hat, he said. Stephen picked it up and put it on. Haines called to them from the door- way: -Are you coming, you fellows? -I'm ready, Buck Mulligan an- swered, going towards the door. Come out, Kinch. You have eaten all we left, I suppose. Resigned he passed out with grave words and gait, saying, wellnigh with sorrow: -And going forth he met Butter- ly. Stephen, taking his ashplant from its leaningplace, followed them out and, as they went down the ladder, 104 TWO WORLDS MONTHLY pulled to the slow iron door and locked it. He put the huge key in his inner pocket. At the foot of the ladder Buck Mulligan asked: -Did you bring the key? -I have it, Stephen said, preced- ing them. He walked on. Behind him he heard Buck Mulligan club with his heavy bathtowel the leader shoots of ferns or grasses. -Down, sir. How dare you, sir. Haines asked. -Do you pay rent for this tower? -Twelve quid, Buck Mulligan said. -To the secretary of state for war, Stephen added over his shoul- der. They halted while Haines sur- veyed the tower and said at last: -Rather bleak in wintertime, I should say. Martello you call it? -Billy Pitt had them built, Buck Mulligan said, when the French were on the sea. But ours is the ompha- los. -What is your idea of Hamlet? Haines asked Stephen. -No, no, Buck Mulligan shout- ed in pain. I'm not equal to Thomas Aquinas and the fifty-five reasons he has made to prop it up. Wait till I have a few pints in me first. He turned to Stephen, saying as he pulled down neatly the peaks of his primrose waistcoat: -You couldn't manage it under three pints, Kinch, could you? -It has waited so long, Stephen said listlessly, it can wait longer. -You pique my curiosity, Haines said amiably. Is it some paradox? -Pooh I Buck Mulligan said. We have grown out of Wilde and paradoxes. It's quite simple. He proves by algebra that Hamlet's grandson is Shakespeare's grandfa- ther and that he himself is the ghost of his own father. -What? Haines said, beginning to point at Stephen. He himself? Buck Mulligan slung his towel stolewise round his neck and, bend- ing in loose laughter, said to Ste- phen's ear: -O, shade of Kinch the elder! Japhet in search of a father! -We're always tired in the morn- ing, Stephen said to Haines. And it is rather long to tell. Buck Mulligan, walking forward again, raised his hands. -The sacred pint alone can unbind the tongue of Dedalus, he said. -I mean to say, Haines explained to Stephen as they followed, this tower and these cliffs here remind me somehow of Elsinore. That beetles o'er his base into the sea, isn't it? Buck Mulligan turned suddenly for an instant towards Stephen but did not speak. In the bright silent instant Stephen saw his own image in cheap dusty mourning between their gay attires. -It's a wonderful tale, Haines said, bringing them to halt again. Eyes, pale as the sea the wind had freshened, paler, firm and prudent. The seas' ruler, he gazed south- ward over the bay, empty save for the smokeplume of the mailboat, vague on the bright skyline, and a sail tacking by the Muglins. -I read a theological interpreta- tion of it somewhere, he said be- mused. The Father and the Son ULYSSES 105 idea. The Son striving to be atoned with the Father. Buck Mulligan at once put on a blithe broadly smiling face. He looked at them, his wellshaped mouth open happily, his eyes, from which he had suddenly withdrawn all shrewd sense, blinking with mad gaiety. He moved a doll's head to and fro, the brims of his Panama hat quivering, and began to chant in a quiet, happy, foolish voice: - I'm the queerest young fellow that ever you heard. My mother's a Jew, my fath- er's a bird. With Joseph the joiner I can- not agree, So here's to disciples and Cal- vary. He held up a forefinger of warn- ing. - If anyone thinks that I amn't divine He'll get no free drinks when I'm making the wine But have to drink water and wish it were plain That I make when the wine be- comes water again. He tugged swiftly at Stephen's ashplant in farewell and, running forward to a brow of the cliff, flut- tered his hands at his sides like fins or wings of one about to rise in the air, and chanted: - Goodbye, now, goodbye. Write down all I said And tell Tom, Dick and Harry I rose from the dead. What's bred in the bone can- not fail me to fly And Olivet's breezy . . . Good-bye, now, goodbye. He capered before them down towards the fortyfoot hole, flutter- ing his winglike hands, leaping nimbly, Mercury's hat quivering in the fresh wind that bore back to them his brief, birdlike cries. Haines, who had been laughing guardedly, walked on beside Stephen and said: -We oughtn't to laugh, I sup- pose. He's rather blasphemous. I'm not a believer myself, that is to say. Still, his gaiety takes the harm out of it somehow, doesn't it? What did he call it? Joseph the Joiner? - The ballad of Joking Jesus, Stephen answered. - O, Haines said, you have heard it before? - Three times a day, after meals, Stephen said drily. - You're not a believer, are you? Haines asked. I mean, a believer in the narrow sense of the word. Cre- ation from nothing and miracles and a personal God. - There's only one sense of the word, it seems to me, Stephen said. Haines stopped to take out a smooth silver case in which twinkled a green stone. He sprang it open with his thumb and offered it. - Thank you, Stephen said, tak- ing a cigarette. Haines helped himself and snapped the case to. He put it back in his sidepocket and took from his waistcoatpocket a nickel tinder- box, sprang it open too, and, having lit his cigarette, held the flaming 106 TWO WORLDS MONTHLY spunk towards Stephen in the shell of his hands. -Yes, of course, he said, as they went on again. Either you believe or you don't, isn't it? Personally I couldn't stomach that idea of a personal God. You don't stand for that, I suppose? -You behold in me, Stephen said with grim displeasure, a horrible ex- ample of free thought. He walked on, waiting to be spoken to, trailing his ashplant by his side. Its ferrule followed lightly on the path, squealing at his heels. My familiar, after me, calling Steeeeeeeeeeeeeephen. A wavering line along the path. They will walk on it tonight, coming here in the dark. He wants that key. It is mine, I paid the rent. Now I eat his salt bread. Give him the key, too. All. He will ask for it. That was in his eyes. -After all, Haines began.. . . Stephen turned and saw that the cold gaze which had measured him was not all unkind. -After all, I should think you are able to free yourself. You are your own master, it seems to me. -I am the servant of two masters, Stephen said, an English and an Italian. -Italian? Haines said. A crazy queen, old and jealous. Kneel down before me. -And a third, Stephen said, there is who wants me for odd jobs. -Italian? Haines said again. What do you mean? -The imperial British state, Stephen answered, his colour rising, and the holy Roman catholic and apostolic church. Haines detached from his under- lip some fibres of tobacco before he spoke. -I can't quite understand that, he said calmly. An Irishman must think like that, I daresay. We feel in England that we have treated you rather unfairly. It seems his- tory is to blame. The proud potent titles clanged over Stephen's memory the triumph of their brazen bells: et unam ecclesiam: the slow growth and change of rite and dogma like his own rare thoughts, a chemistry of stars. Symbol of the apostles in the mass for pope Marcellus, the voices blended, singing alone loud in affir- mation: and behind their chant the vigilant angel of the church militant disarmed and menaced her here- siarchs. A horde of heresies fleeing with mitres awry: Photius and the brood of mockers of whom Mulli- gan was one, and Arius, warring his life long upon the consubstantiality of the Son with the Father, and Val- entine, spurning Christ's terrene body, and the subtle African here- siarch Sabellius who held that the Father was Himself His own Son. Words Mulligan had spoken a mo- ment since in mockery to the stranger. Idle mockery. The void awaits surely all them that weave the wind: a menace, a disarming and a worsting from those embattled angels of the church, Michael's host, who defend her ever in the hour of conflict with their lances and their shields. Hear, hear. Prolonged applause. Zut! Nom de Dieu! -Of course I'm a Britisher, Haine's voice said, and I feel as one. ULYSSES 107 I don't want to see my country fall into the hands of German jews either. That's our national prob- lem, I'm afraid, just now. Two men stood at the verge of the cliff, watching: businessman, boatman. -She's making for Bullock har- bour. The boatman nodded towards the north of the bay with some dis- dain. -There's five fathoms out there, he said. It'll be swept up that way when the tide comes in about one. It's nine days today. The man that was drowned. A sail veering about the blank bay wait- ing for a swollen bundle to bob up, roll over to the sun a puffy face, salt white. Here I am. They followed the winding path down to the creek. Buck Mulligan stood on a stone, in shirtsleeves, his unclipped tie rippling over his shoulder. A young man clinging to a spur of rock near him, moved slowly frogwise his green legs in the deep jelly of the water. -Is the brother with you, Mal- achi? -Down in Westmeath. With the Bannons. -Still there? I got a card from Bannon. Says he found a sweet young thing down there. Photo girl he calls her. -Snapshot, eh? Brief exposure. Buck Mulligan sat down to unlace his boots. An elderly man shot up near the spur of rock a blowing red face. He scrambled up by the stones, water glistening on his pate and on its garland of grey hair, water rilling over his chest and paunch and spilling jets out of his black sagging loincloth. Buck Mulligan made way for him to scramble past and, glancing at Haines and Stephen, crossed himself piously with his thumbnail at brow and lips and breastbone. -Seymour's back in town, the young man said, grasping again his spur of rock. Chucked medicine and going in for the army. -Ah, go to God, Buck Mulligan said. -Going over next week to stew. You know that red Carlisle girl, Lily? -Yes. -Spooning with him last night on the pier. The father is rotto with money. -Seymour a bleeding officer, Buck Mulligan said. He broke off in alarm, feeling his side under his flapping shirt. -My twelfth rib is gone, he cried. I'm the Uebermensch. Tooth- less Kinch and I, the supermen. He struggled out of his shirt and flung it behind him to where his clothes lay. -Are you going in here, Mala- chi? -Yes. Make room in the bed, The young man shoved himself backward through the water and reached the middle of the creek in two long, clean strokes. Haines sat down on a stone, smoking. -Are you not coming in, Buck Mulligan asked. -Later on, Haines said. Not on my breakfast. Stephen turned away. -I'm going, Mulligan, he said. -Give us that key, Kinch, Buck 108 TWO WORLDS MONTHLY Mulligan said, to keep my chemise flat. Stephen handed him the key. Buck Mulligan laid it across his heaped clothes. -And twopence, he said, for a pint. Throw it there. Stephen threw two pennies on the soft heap. Dressing, undressing. Buck Mulligan erect, with joined hands before him, said solemnly: -He who stealeth from the poor lendeth to the Lord. Thus spake Zarathustra. His plump body plunged. -We'll see you again, Haines said, turning as Stephen walked up the path and smiling at wild Irish. Horn of a bull, hoof of a horse, smile of a Saxon. -The Ship, Buck Mulligan cried. Half twelve. -Good, Stephen said. He walked along the upwardcurv- ing path. Liliata rutilantium. Turma circumdet. Jubilantium te virginum The priest's grey nimbus in a niche where he dressed discreedy. I will not sleep here tonight. Home also I cannot go. A voice, sweettoned and sustained, called to him from the sea. Turning the curve he waved his hand. It called again. A sleek brown head, a seal's, far out on the water, round. Usurper. II YOU, Cochrane, what city sent for him? -Tarentum, sir. -Very good. Well ? -There was a battle, sir. -Very good. Where? The boy's face asked the blank window. Fabled by the daughters of mem- ory. And yet it was in some way if not as memory fabled it. A phrase, then, of impatience, thud of Blake's wings of excess. I hear the ruin of all space, shattered glass and toppling masonry, and time one livid final flame. What's left us then? -I forget the place, sir. 279 B. C. -Asculum, Stephen said, glanc- ing at the name and date in the gore- scarred book. -Yes, sir. And he said: Another victory like that and we are done for. That phrase the world had re- membered. A dull ease of the mind. From a hill above a corpsestrewn plain a general speaking to his offi- cers, leaned upon his spear. Any general to any officers. They lend ear. -You, Armstrong, Stephen said. What was the end of Pyrrhus? -End of Pyrrhus, sir? -I know, sir. Ask me, sir. Comyn said. -Wait. You, Armstrong. Do you know anything about Pyrrhus? A bag of figrolls lay snugly in Armstrong's satchel. He curled them between his palms at whiles and swallowed them softly. Crumbs ULYSSES 109 adhered to the tissues of his lips. A sweetened boy's breath. Welloff people, proud that their eldest son was in the navy. Vico Road, Dalkey. -Pyrrhus, sir? Pyrrhus, a pier. All laughed. Mirthless, high ma- licious laughter. Armstrong looked round at his classmates, silly glee in profile. In a moment they will laugh more loudly, aware of my lack of rule and of the fees their papas pay. -Tell me now, Stephen said, poking the boy's shoulder with the book, what is a pier. -A pier sir, Armstrong said. A thing out in the waves. A kind of bridge. Kingstown pier, sir. Some laughed again: mirthless but with meaning. Two in the back bench whispered. Yes. They knew: had never learned nor ever been in- nocent. All. With envy he watched their faces. Edith, Ethel, Gerty, Lily. Their likes: their breaths, too, sweetened with tea and jam, their bracelets tittering in the struggle. -Kingstown pier, Stephen said. Yes, a disappointed bridge. The words troubled their gaze. -How, sir? Comyn asked. A bridge is across a river. For Haines's chapbook. No-one here to hear. Tonight deftly amid wild drink and talk, to pierce the polished mail of his mind. What then? A jester at the court of his master, indulged and disesteemed, winning a clement master's praise. Why had they chosen all that part? Not wholly for the smooth caress. For them too history was a tale like any other too often heard, their land a pawnshop. Had Pyrrhus not fallen by a bel- dam's hand in Argos or Julius Cae- sar not been knifed to death. They are not to be thought away. Time has branded them and fettered they are lodged in the room of the infinite possibilities they have ousted. But can those have been possible seeing that they never were ? Or was that only possible which came to pass? Weave, weaver of the wind. -Tell us a story, sir. -Oh, do, sir. A ghoststory. -Where do you begin in this? Stephen asked, opening another book. -Weep no more, Comyn said., -Go on then, Talbot. -And the history, sir? -After, Stephen said. Go on, Talbot. A swarthy boy opened a book and propped it nimbly under the breast- work of his satchel. He recited jerks of verse with odd glances at the text: -Weep no more, woful shep- herd, weep no more For Lycidas, your sorrow, is not dead, Sunk though he be beneath the watery floor. . . . It must be a movement then, an actuality of the possible as possible. Aristotle's phrase formed itself within the gabbled verses and floated out into the studious silence of the library of Saint Genevieve where he had read, sheltered from the sin of Paris, night by night. By his elbow a delicate Siamese conned a hand- book of strategy. Fed and feeding brains about me: under glowlamps, impaled, with faintly beating feelers: 110 TWO WORLDS MONTHLY and in my mind's darkness a sloth of the underworld, reluctant, shy of brightness, shifting her dragon scaly folds. Thought is the thought of thought. Tranquil brightness. The soul is in a manner all that is: the soul is the form of forms. Tran- quillity sudden, vast, candescent: form of forms. Talbot repeated: -Through the dear might of Him that walked the waves. Through the dear might. . . . -Turn over, Stephen said quiet- ly. I don't see anything. -What, sir? Talbot asked simply, bending forward. His hand turned the page over. He leaned back and went on again, having just remembered. Of him that walked the waves. Here also over these craven hearts his shadow lies and on the scoffer's heart and lips and on mine. It lies upon their eager faces who offered him a coin of tribute. To Caesar what is Caesar's, to God what is God's. A long look from dark eyes, a riddling sentence to be woven and woven on the church's looms. Ay. Riddle me, riddle me, randy ro. My father gave me seeds to sow. Talbot slid his closed book into his satchel. -Have I heard all? Stephen asked. -Yes, sir. Hockey at ten, sir. -Half day, sir. Thursday. -Who can answer a riddle? Stephen asked. They bundled their books away, pencils clacking, pages rustling. Crowding together they strapped and buckled their satchels, all gabbling gaily: -A riddle, sir. Ask me, sir. -O, ask me, sir. -A hard one, sir. -This is the riddle, Stephen said: The cock crew The sky was blue; The bells in heaven Were striking eleven. 'Tis time for this poor soul To go to heaven. What is that? -What, sir? -Again, sir. We didn't hear. Their eyes grew bigger as the lines were repeated. After a silence Cochrane said: -What is it, sir? We give it up. Stephen, his throat itching, an- swered : -The fox burying his grand- mother under a hollybush. He stood up and gave a shout of nervous laughter to which their cries echoed dismay. A stick struck the door and a voice in the corridor called: -Hockey! They broke asunder, sidling out of their benches, leaping them. Quickly they were gone and from the lumberroom came the rattle of. sticks and clamour of their boots and tongues. Sargent, who alone had lingered, came forward slowly, showing an open copybook. His tangled hair and scraggy neck gave witness of un- readiness and through his misty ULYSSES 111 glasses weak eyes looked up, plead- ing. On his cheek, dull and blood- less, a soft stain of ink lay, date- shaped, recent and damp as a snail's bed. He held out his copybook. The word Sums was written on the head- line. Beneath were sloping figures and at the loot a crooked signature with blind loops and a blot. Cyril Sargent: his name and seal. -Mr. Deasy told me to write them out all again, he said, and show them to you, sir. Stephen touched the edges of the book. Futility. -Do you understand how to do them now? he asked. -Numbers eleven to fifteen, Sar- gent answered. Mr. Deasy said I was to copy them off the board, sir. -Can you do them yourself? Stephen asked. -No, sir. "Ugly and futile: lean neck and tangled hair and a stain of ink, a snail's bed. Yet someone had loved him, borne him in her arms and in her heart. But for her the race of the world would have trampled him under foot, a squashed, boneless snail. She had loved his weak, wa- tery blood drained from her own. Was that then, real? The only true thing in life? His mother's pros- trate body the fiery Columbanus in holy zeal bestrode. She was no more: the trembling skeleton of a twig burnt in the fire, an odour of rosewood and wetted ashes. She had saved him from being trampled under foot and had gone, scarcely having been. A poor soul gone to heaven: and on a heath beneath winking stars a fox, red reek of ra- pine in his fur, with merciless bright eyes scraped in the earth, listened, scraped up the earth, listened, scraped and scraped. Sitting at his side Stephen solved out the problem. He proves by algebra that Shakespeare's ghost is Hamlet's grandfather. Sargent peered askance through his slanted glasses. Hockeysticks rattled in the lumberroom; the hollow knock of a ball and calls from the field. Across the page the symbols moved in grave morrice, in the mum- mery of their letters, wearing quaint caps of squares and cubes. Give hands, traverse, bow to partner: so: imps of fancy of the Moors. Gone too from the world, Averroes and Moses Maimonides, dark men in mien and movement, flashing in their mocking mirrors the obscure soul of the world, a darkness shining in brightness which brightness could not comprehend. -Do you understand now? Can you work the second for yourself? -Yes, sir. In long, shaky strokes Sargent copied the data. Waiting always for a word of help his hand moved faithfully the unsteady symbols, a faint hue of shame flickering behind his dull skin. Amor matris: subjec- tive and objective genitive. With her weak blood and wheysour milk she had fed him and hid from sight of others his swaddling bands. Like him was I, these sloping shoulders, this gracelessness. My childhood bends beside me. Too far for me to lay a hand there once or lightly. Mine is far and his secret as our eyes. Secrets, silent, stony, sit in the dark palaces of both our 112 TWO WORLDS MONTHLY hearts: secrets weary of their tyran- ny: tyrants willing to be dethroned. The sum was done. -It is very simple, Stephen said, as he stood up. -Yes, sir. Thanks, Sargent an- swered. He dried the page with a sheet of thin blottingpaper and carried his copybook back to his desk. -You had better get your stick and go out to the others, Stephen said as he followed towards the door the boy's graceless form. -Yes, sir. In the corridor his name was heard, called from the playfield. -Sargent ! -Run on, Stephen said. Mr. Deasy is calling you. He stood in the porch and watched the laggard hurry towards the scrappy field where sharp voices were in strife. They were sorted in teams and Mr. Deasy came stepping over wisps of grass with gaitered feet. When he had reached the schoolhouse voices again contending called to him. He turned his angry white moustache. -What is it now? he cried con- tinually without listening. -Cochrane and Halliday are on the same side, sir, Stephen cried. -Will you wait in my study for a moment, Mr. Deasy said, till I restore order here. And as he stepped fussily back across the field his old man's voice cried sternly: -What is the matter? What is it now? Their sharp voices cried about him on all sides: their many forms closed round him, the garish sun- shine bleaching the honey of his ill- dyed head. Stale smoky air hung in the study with the smell of drab, abraded leather of its chairs. As on the first day he bargained with me here. As it was in the beginning, is now. On the sideboard the tray of Stuart coins, base treasure of a bog: and ever shall be. And snug in their spooncase of purple plush, faded, the twelve apostles having preached to all the gentiles: world without end. A hasty step over the stone porch and in the corridor. Blowing out his rare moustache Mr. Deasy halted at the table. -First, our little financial settle- ment, he said. He brought out of his coat a pocketbook bound by a leather thong. It slapped open and he took from it two notes, one of joined halves, and laid them carefully on the table. -Two, he said, strapping and stowing his pocketbook away. And now his strongroom for the gold. Stephen's embarrassed hand moved over the shells heaped in the cold stone mortar: whelks and money cowries and leopard shells: and this, whorled as an emir's tur- ban, and this, the scallop of Saint James. An old pilgrim's hoard, dead treasure, hollow shells. A sovereign fell, bright and new, on the soft pile of the tablecloth. -Three, Mr. Deasy said, turning his little savingsbox about in his hand. These are handy things to have. See. This is for sovereigns. This is for shillings, sixpences, half- crowns. And here crowns. See. ULYSSES 113 He shot from it two crowns and two shillings. -Three twelve, he said. I think you'll find that's right. -Thank you, sir, Stephen said, gathering the money together with shy haste and putting it all in a pocket of his trousers. -No thanks at all, Mr. Deasy said. You have earned it. Stephen's hand, free again, went back to the hollow shells. Symbols too, of beauty and of power. A lump in my pocket. Symbols soiled by greed and misery. -Don't carry it like that, Mr. Deasy said. You'll pull it out some- where and lose it. You just buy one of these machines. You'll find them very handy. Answer something. -Mine would be often empty, Stephen said. The same room and hour, the same wisdom: and I the same. Three times now. Three nooses round me here. Well, I can break them in this instant if I will. -Because you don't save, Mr. Deasy said, pointing his finger. You don't know yet what money is. Money is power, when you have lived as long as I have. I know, I know. If youth but knew. But what does Shakespeare say? Put but money in thy purse. -Iago, Stephen murmured. He lifted his gaze from the idle shells to the old man's stare. -He knew what money was, Mr. Deasy said. He made money. A poet but an Englishman, too. Do you know what is the pride of the English? Do you know what is the proudest word you will ever hear from an Englishmen's mouth? The seas' ruler. His seacold eyes looked on the empty bay: history is to blame: on me and my words, un- hating. -That on his empire, Stephen said, the sun never sets. -Ba! Mr. Deasy cried. That's not English. A French Celt said that. He tapped his savingsbox against his thumbnail. -I will tell you, he said solemnly, what is his proudest boast. I paid my way. Good man, good man. -I paid my way. I never bor- rowed a shilling in my life. Can you feel that? I owe nothing. Can you? Mulligan, nine pounds, three pair of socks, one pair brogues, ties. Curran, ten guineas. McCann, one guinea. Fred Ryan, two shillings. Temple, two lunches. Russell, one guinea. Cousins, ten shillings. Bob Reynolds, half a guinea. Kohler, three guineas. Mrs. McKernan, five weeks' board. The lump I have is useless. -For the moment, no, Stephen answered. Mr. Deasy laughed with rich de- light, putting back his savingsbox. -I knew you couldn't, he said joyously. But one day you must feel it. We are a generous people but we must also be just. -I fear those big words, Stephen said, which make us so unhappy. Mr. Deasy stared sternly for some moments over the mantelpiece at the shapely bulk of a man in tar- tan fillibegs: Albert Edward, Prince of Wales. 114 TWO WORLDS MONTHLY -You think me an old fogey and an old tory, his thoughtful voice said. I saw three generations since. O'Connell's time. I remember the famine. Do you know that the orange lodges agitated for repeal of the union twenty years before O'Connell did or before the prelates of your communion denounced him as a demagogue? You fenians for- get some things. Glorious, pious and immortal memory. The lodge of Diamond in Armagh the splendid behung with corpses of papishes. Hoarse, masked and armed, the planters cov- enant. The black north and true blue bible. Croppies lie down. Stephen sketched a brief gesture. -I have rebel blood in me too, Mr. Deasy said. On the spindle side. But I am descended from sir John Blackwood, who voted for the union. We are all Irish, all kings' sons. -Alas, Stephen said. -Per vias rectos, Mr. Deasy said firmly, was his motto. He voted for it and put on his topboots to ride to Dublin from the Ards of Down to do so. Lal the ral the ra The rocky road to Dublin A gruff squire on horseback with shiny topboots. Soft day, sir John. Soft day, your honour. . . . Day.... Day.... Two topboots jog dangling on to Dublin. Lal the ral the ra, lal the ral the raddy. -That reminds me, Mr. Deasy said. You can do me a favour, Mr. Dedalus, with some of your literary friends. I have a letter here for the press. Sit down a moment. I have just to copy the end. He went to the desk near the window, pulled in his chair twice and read off some words from the sheet on the drum of his typewriter. -Sit down. Excuse me, he said over his shoulder, the dictates of common sense. Just a moment. He peered from under his shaggy brows at the manuscript by his el- bow and, muttering, began to prod the stiff buttons of the keyboard slowly, some times blowing as he screwed up the drum to erase an error. Stephen seated himself noiselessly before the princely presence. Framed around the walls images of vanished horses stood in homage, their meek heads poised in air: lord Hastings' Repulse, the duke of Westminster's Shotover, the duke of Beaufort's Ceylon, prix de Paris, 1866. Elfin riders sat them, watchful of a sign. He saw their speeds, backing king's colours, and shouted with the shouts of vanished crowds. -Full stop, Mr. Deasy bade his keys. But prompt ventilation of this important question. . . . Where Cranly led me to get rich quick, hunting his winners among the mudsplashed brakes, amid the bawls of bookies on their pitches and reek of the canteen, over the motley slush. Even money Fair Rebel: ten to one the field. Dicers and thimbleriggers we hurried by after the hoofs, the vying caps and jackets and past the meatfaced woman, a butcher's dame, nuzzling thirstily her clove of orange. Shouts rang shrill from the boys' playfield and a whining whistle. ULYSSES 115 Again: a goal. I am among them, among their battling bodies in a medley, the joust of life. You mean that knockkneed mother's darling who seems to be slightly crawsick? Jousts. Time shocked rebounds, shock by shock. Jousts, slush and uproar of battles, the frozen death- spew of the slain, a shout of spear spikes baited with men's bloodied guts. -Now then, Mr. Deasy said, ris- ing. He came to the table, pinning to- gether his sheets. Stephen stood up. -I have put the matter into a nutshell, Mr. Deasy said. It's about the foot and mouth disease. Just look through it. There can be no two opinions on the matter May I trespass on your valuable space. That doctrine of laissez faire which so often in our history. Our cattle trade. The way of all our old industries. Liverpool ring which jockeyed the Galway harbour scheme. European conflagration. Grain supplies through the narrow waters of the channel. The pluter- perfect imperturbability of the de- partment of agriculture. Pardoned a classical allusion. Cassandra. By a woman who was no better than she should be. To come to the point at issue. -I don't mince words, do I? Mr. Deasy asked as Stephen read on. Foot and mouth disease. Known as Koch's preparation. Serum and virus. Percentage of salted horses. Rinderpest. Emperor's horses at Morzsteg, lower Austria. Veterin- ary surgeons. Mr. Henry Black- wood Price. Courteous offer a fair trial. Dictates of common sense. Allimportant question. In every sense of the word take the bull by the horns. Thanking you for the hospitality of your columns. -I want that to be printed and read, Mr. Deasy said. You will see at the next outbreak they will put an embargo on Irish cattle. And it can be cured. It is cured. My cousin, Blackwood Price, writes to me it is regularly treated and cured in Austria by cattledoctors there. They offer to come over here. I am trying to work up influence with the department. Now I'm going to try publicity. I am surrounded by diffi- culties, by . . . intrigues by . .. back- stairs influence by . . . He raised his forefinger and beat the air oldly before his voice spoke. -Mark my words, Mr. Dedalus, he said. England is in the hands of the jews. In all the highest places: her finance, her press. And they are the signs of a nation's decay. Wherever they gather they eat up the nation's vital strength. I have seen it coming these years. As sure as we are standing here the jew mer- chants are already at their work of destruction. Old England is dying. He stepped swiftly off, his eyes coming to blue life as they passed a broad sunbeam. He faced about and back again. -Dying, he said, if not dead by now. The harlot's cry from street to street. Shall weave old England's wind- ing sheet. His eyes open wide in vision stared sternly across the sunbeam in which he halted. 116 TWO WORLDS MONTHLY -A merchant, Stephen said, is one who buys cheap and sells dear, jew or gentile, is he not? -They sinned against the light, Mr. Deasy said gravely. And you can see the darkness in their eyes. And that is why they are wanderers on the earth to this day. On the steps of the Paris Stock Exchange the goldskinned men quot- ing prices on their gemmed fingers. Gabble of geese. They swarmed loud, uncouth about the temple, their heads thickplotting under maladroit silk hats. Not theirs: these clothes, this speech, these gestures. Their full, slow eyes belied the words, the gestures eager and unoffending, but knew the rancours massed about them and knew their zeal was vain. Vain patience to heap and hoard. Time surely would scatter all. A hoard heaped by the roadside: plun- dered and passing on. Their eyes knew the years of wandering and, patient, knew the dishonours of their flesh. -Who has not? Stephen said. -What do you mean? Mr. Deasy asked. He came forward a pace and stood by the table. His underjaw fell sideways open uncertainly. Is this old wisdom? He waits to hear from me. -History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake. From the playfield the boys raised a shout. A whirring whistle: goal. What if that nightmare gave you a back kick? -The ways of the Creator are not our ways, Mr. Deasy said. All history moves towards one great goal, the manifestation of God. Stephen jerked his thumb towards the window, saying: -That is God. Hooray! Ay! Whrrwhee! -What? Mr. Deasy asked. -A shout in the street, Stephen answered, shrugging his shoulders. Mr. Deasy looked down and held for a while the wings of his nose tweaked between his fingers. Look- ing up again he set them free. -I am happier than you are, he said. We have committed many errors and many sins. A woman brought sin into the world. For a woman who was no better than she should be, Helen, the runaway wife of Menelaus, ten years the Greeks made war on Troy. A faithless wife first brought the strangers to our shore here, MacMurrough's wife and her leman O'Rourke, prince of Breffni. A woman too brought Parnell low. Many errors, many failures but not the one sin. I am a straggler now at the end of my days. But I will fight for the right till the end. For Ulster will fight And Ulster will be right. Stephen raised the sheets in his hand. -Well, sir, he began. -I foresee, Mr. Deasy said, that you will not remain here very long at this work. You were not born to be a teacher, I think. Perhaps I am wrong. -A learner rather, Stephen said. And here what will you learn more? ULYSSES 117 Mr. Deasy shook his head. -Who knows ? he said. To learn one must be humble. But life is the great teacher. Stephen rustled the sheets again. -As regards these, he began. -Yes, Mr. Deasy said. You have two copies there. If you can have them published at once. Telegraph. Irish Homestead. -I will try, Stephen said, and let you know tomorrow. I know two editors slightly. -That will do, Mr. Deasy said briskly. I wrote last night to Mr. Field, M. P. There is a meeting of the cattletraders' association today at the City Arms Hotel. I asked him to lay my letter before the meet- ing. You see if you can get it into your two papers. What are they? -The Evening Telegraph. . . . -That will do, Mr. Deasy said. There is no time to lose. Now I have to answer that letter from my cousin. -Good morning, sir, Stephen said, putting the sheets in his pocket. Thank you. -Not at all, Mr. Deasy said as he searched the papers on his desk. I like to break a lance with you, old as I am. -Good morning, sir, Stephen said again, bowing to his bent back. He went out by the open porch and down the gravel path under the trees, hearing the cries of voices . and crack of sticks from the play- field. The lions couchant on the pil- lars as he passed out through the gate; toothless terrors. Still I will help him in his fight. Mulligan will dub me a new name: the bullockbe- friending bard. -Mr. Dedalus! Running after me. No more let- ters, I hope. -Just one moment. -Yes, sir, Stephen said, turning back at the gate. Mr. Deasy halted, breathing hard and swallowing his breath. -I just wanted to say, he said. Ireland, they say, has the honour of being the only country which never persecuted the jews. Do you know that? No. And do you know why? He frowned sternly on the bright air. -Why, sir, Stephen asked, begin- ning to smile. -Because she never let them in, Mr. Deasy said solemnly. A coughball of laughter leaped from his throat dragging after it a rattling chain of phlegm. He turned back quickly, coughing, laughing, his lifted arms waving to the air. -She never let them in, he cried again through his laughter as he stamped on gaitered feet over the gravel of the path. That's why. On his wise shoulders through the checkerwork of leaves the sun flung spangles, dancing coins. INELUCTABLE modality of the visible: at least that if no more, thought through my eyes. Signa- tures of all things I am here to read, seaspawn and seawreck, the nearing tide, that rusty boot. Snotgreen, blue- silver, rust: coloured signs. Limits of the diaphane. But he adds: in bodies. III 118 TWO WORLDS MONTHLY Then he was aware of them bodies before of them coloured. How? By knocking his sconce against them, sure. Go easy. Bald he was and a millionaire, maestro di color che san- no. Limit of the diaphane in. Why in? Diaphane, a diaphane. If you can put your five fingers through it, it is a gate, if not a door. Shut your eyes and see. Stephen closed his eyes to hear his boots crush crackling wrack and shells. You are walking through it howsomever. I am, a stride at a time. A very short space of time through very short times of space. Five, six: the nacheinander. Exact- ly: and that is the ineluctable modal- ity of the audible. Open your eyes. No. Jesus! If I fell over a cliff that beetles o'er his base, fell through the nebeneinander ineluctably. I am get- ting on nicely in the dark. My ash sword hangs at my side. Tap with it: they do. My two feet in his boots are at the end of his legs, nebenein- ander. Sounds solid: made by the mallet of Los Demiurgos. Am I walking into eternity along Sandy- mount strand? Crush, crack, crick, crick. Wild sea money. Dominie Deasy kens them a'. Won't you come to Sandymount, Madeline the mare? Rhythm begins, you see. I hear. A catalectic tetrameter of iambs marching. No, agallop: 'define the mare. Open your eyes now. I will. One moment. Has all vanished since? If I open and am for ever in the black adiaphane. Basta/ I will see if I can see. See now. There all the time with- out you: and ever shall be, world without end. They came down the steps from Leahy's terrace prudently, Frauen- zimmer: and down the shelving shore flabbily their splayed feet sink- ing in the silted sand. Like me, like Algy, coming down to our mighty mother. Number one swung lourd- ily her midwife's bag, the other's gamp poked in the beach. From the liberties, out for the day. Mrs. Florence MacCabe, relict of the late Patk MacCabe, deeply lamented, of Bride Street. One of her sisterhood lugged me squealing into life. Cre- ation from nothing. What has she in the bag? A misbirth with a trail- ing navelcord, hushed in ruddy wool. The cords of all link back, strand- entwining cable of all flesh. That is why mystic monks. Will you be as gods? Gaze in your omphalos. Hello. Kinch here. Put me on to Edenville. Aleph, alpha: nought, nought, one. Spouse and helpmate of Adam Kadmon: Heva, naked Eve. She had no navel. Gaze. Belly without blemish, bulging big, a buckler of taut vellum, no, whiteheaped corn, orient and immortal, standing from everlasting to everlasting. Womb of sin. Wombed in sin darkness I was too, made not begotten. By them, the man with my voice and my eyes and a ghostwoman with ashes on her breath. They clasped and sundered, did the coupler's will. From before the ages He willed me and now may not will me away or ever. A lex eterna stays about Him. Is that then the divine substance wherein Father ULYSSES 119 and Son are consubstantial? Where is poor dear Arius to try conclu- sions? Warring his life long on the contransmagnificandjewbangtantiai- ity. Illstarred heresiarch. In a Greek watercloset he breathed his last: euthanasia. With beaded mitre and with crozier, stalled upon his throne, widower of a widowed see. Airs romped around him, nipping and eager airs. They are coming, waves. The whitemaned seahorses, champing, brightwindbridled, the steeds of Mananaan. I mustn't forget his letter for the press. And after? The Ship, half twelve. By the way go easy with that money like a good young imbecile. Yes, I must. His pace slackened. Here. Am I going to Aunt Sara's or not? My consubstantial father's voice. Did you see anything of your artist brother Stephen lately? No? Sure he's not down in Strasburg terrace with his aunt Sally? Couldn't he fly a bit higher than that, eh? And and and and tell us Stephen, how is un- cle Si? O weeping God, the things I married into. De boys up in de hayloft. The drunken little cost- drawer and his brother, the cornet player. Highly respectable gondo- liers. And skeweyed Walter sirring his father, no less. Sir. Yes, sir. No, sir. Jesus wept: and no won- der, by Christ. I pull the wheezy bell of their shuttered cottage: and wait. They take me for a dun, peer out from a coign of vantage. -It's Stephen, sir. -Let him in. Let Stephen in. A bolt drawn back and Walter welcomes me. -We thought you were someone else. In his broad bed nuncle Richie, pillowed and blanketed, extends over the hillock of his knees a sturdy fore- arm. Cleanchested. He has washed the upper moiety. -Morrow, nephew. He lays aside the lapboard where- on he drafts his bills of cost for the eyes of Master Goff and Master Shapland Tandy, filing consents and common searches and a writ of Duces Tecum. A bogoak frame over his bald head: Wilde's Requiescat. The drone of his misleading whistle brings Walter back. -Yes, sir? -Malt for Richie and Stephen, tell mother. Where is she? -Bathing Crissie, sir. Papa's little bedpal. Lump of love. -No, uncle Richie. . . . -Call me Richie. Damn your li- thia waters. It lowers. Whusky ! -Uncle Richie, really. . . . -Sit down or by the law Harry I'll knock you down. Walter squints vainly for a chair. -He has nothing to sit down on, sir. -He has nowhere to put it, you mug. Bring in our Chippendale chair. Would you like a bite of something? None of your damned lawdeedaw air here; the rich of a rasher fried with a herring? Sure? So much the better. We have noth- ing in the house but backache pills. All'erta! He drones bars of Ferrando's aria di sortita. The grandest num- ber, Stephen, in the whole opera. Listen. 120 TWO WORLDS MONTHLY His tuneful whistle sounds again, finely shaded, with rushes of the air, his fists bigdrumming on his padded knees. This wind is sweeter. Houses of decay, mine, his and all. You told the Clongowes gentry you had an uncle a judge and an uncle a general in the army. Come out of them, Stephen. Beauty is not there. Nor in the stagnant bay of Marsh's library where you read the fading prophecies of Joachim Ab- bas. For whom ? The hundredhead- ed rabble of the cathedral close. A hater of his kind ran from them to the wood of madness, his mane foaming in the moon, his eyeballs stars. Houyhnhnm, horsenostrilled. The oval equine faces, Temple, Buck Mulligan, Foxy Campbell, Lantern jaws. Abbas father, furi- ous dean what offence laid fire to their brains? Paff! Descende, calve, ut ne nimium decalveris. A garland of gray hair on his comminated head see him me clambering down to the footpace (descende), clutching a monstrance, basiliskeyed. Get down, bald poll! A choir gives back men- ace and echo, assisting about the al- tar's horns, the snorted Latin of jackpriests moving burly in their albs, tonsured and oiled fat with the fat of kidneys of wheat. And at the same instant perhaps a priest round the corner is elevat- ing it. Dringdring! And two streets off another locking it into a pyx. Dringadring! And in a ladychapel another taking housel all to his own cheek. Dringdring! Down, up, for- ward, back. Dan Occam thought of that, invincible doctor. A misty Eng- lish morning the imp hypostasis tic- kled his brain. Bringing his host down and kneeling he heard twine with his second bell the first bell in the transept (he is lifting his) and, rising, heard (now I am lifting) their two bells (he is kneeling) twang in diphthong. Cousin Stephen, you will never be a saint. Isle of saints. You were awfully holy, weren't you? You prayed to the Blessed Virgin that you might not have a red nose. You prayed to the devil in Serpentine avenue that the fubsy widow in front might lift her clothes still more from the wet street. O si, certo! Sell your soul for that, do, dyed rags pinned round a squaw. More tell me, more still! On the top of the Howth tram alone crying to the rain: naked women! What about that, eh? What about what? What else were they invented for? Reading two pages apiece of seven books every night, eh ? I was young. You bowed to yourself in the mirror, stopping forward to applause earn- estly, striking face. Hurray for the Goddamned idiot! Hray! No one saw: tell no one. Books you were going to write with letters for ti- tles. Have you read his F? O yes, but I prefer Q. Yes, but W is wonderful. O yes, W. Remem- ber your epiphanies on green oval leaves, deeply deep, copies to be sent if you died to all the great libraries of the world, including Alexandria? Someone was to read them there after a few thousand years, a mahamanvantara. Pico della Mirandola like. Ay, very like a whale. When one reads these strange pages of one long gone one ULYSSES 121 feels that one is at one with one who once. . . . The grainy sand had gone from under his feet. His boots trod again a damp crackling mast, razorshells, squeaking pebbles, that on the un- numbered pebbles beats, wood sieved by the shipworm, lost Armada. Un- wholesome sandflats waited to suck his treading soles, breathing upward sewage breath. He coasted them, walking warily. A porterbottle stood up, stogged to its waist, in the cakey sand dough. A sentinel: isle of the shore; at the land a maze of dark cunning nets; farther away chalkscrawled backdoors and on the higher beach a dryingline with two crucified shirts. Ringsend: wigwams of brown steersmen and master mar- iners. Human shells. He halted. I have passed the way to aunt Sara's. Am I not going there? Seems not. No one about. He turned northeast and crossed the firmer sand towards the Pigeon- house. -Qui vous a mis dans cette fichue position? -C'est le pigeon, Joseph. Patrice, home on furlough, lapped warm milk with me in the bar Mac- Mahon. Son of the wild goose, Kevin Egan of Paris. My father's a bird, he lapped the sweet lait chaud with pink young tongue, plump bunny's face. Lap, lapin. He hopes to win the gros lots. About the na- ture of women he read in Michelet. But he must send me La Vie de Jesus by M. Leo Taxil. Lent it to his friend. -C'est tordant, vous savez. Moi je suis socialiste. Je ne crois pas en l'existence de Dieu. Faut pas de dire, a mon pere. -II croit? -Mon pere, oui. Schluss. He laps. My Latin quarter hat. God, we simply must dress the character. I want puce gloves. You were a stu- dent, weren't you? Of what in the other devil's name? Paysayenn. P. C. N., you know: physiques, chim- iques et naturelles. Aha. Eating your goatsworth of mou en civet, fleshpots of Egypt, elbowed by belch- ing cabmen. Just say in the most nat- ural tone: when I was in Paris, boul' Mich', I used to. Yes, used to carry punched tickets to prove an alibi if they arrested you for murder some- where. Justice. On the night of the seventeenth of February, 1904, the prisoner was seen by two witnesses. Other fellow did it: other me. Hat, tie, overcoat, nose. Lui, c'est moi. You seem to have enjoyed your- self. Proudly walking. Whom were you trying to walk like? Forget: a dispossessed. With mother's money order, eight shillings, the banging door of the post office slammed in your face by the usher. Hunger toothache. Encore deux minutes. Look clock. Must get. Fermi. Hired dog! Shoot him to bloody bits with a bang shotgun, bits man spattered walls all brass buttons. Bits all khrrrrklak in place clack back. Not hurt? O, that's all right. Shake hands. See what I meant, see? O, that's all right. Shake a shake. O, that's all only all right. You were going to do wonders, what? Missionary to Europe after fiery Columbanus. Fiacre and Sco- 122 TWO WORLDS MONTHLY tus on their creepystools in heaven spilt from their pintpots, loudlatin- laughing: Euge! Euge! Pretending to speak broken English as you dragged your valise, porter three- pence, across the slimy pier at New- haven. Comment? Rich booty you brought back; Le Tutu, five tattered numbers of Pantalon Blanc et Cu- lotte Rouge, a blue French telegram, curiosity to show: -Mother dying come home fa- ther. The aunt thinks you killed your mother. That's why she won't. Then here's a health to Mulli- gan's aunt And I'll tell you the reason why. She always kept things decent in The Hannigan famileye. His feet marched in sudden proud rhythm over the sand furrows, along by the boulders of the south wall. He stared at them proudly, piled stone mammoth skulls. Gold light on sea, on sand, on boulders. The sun is there, the slender trees, the lemon houses. Paris rawly waking, crude sun- light on her lemon streets. Moist pith of farls of bread, the froggreen wormwood, her matin incense, court the air. Belluomo rises from the bed of his wife's lover's wife, the kerchiefed housewife is astir, a sau- cer of acetic acid in her hands. In Rodot's Yvonne and Madeleine newmake there tumbled beauties, shattering with gold teeth chaussons of pastry, their mouths yellowed with the pus of flan breton. Faces of Paris men go by, their well- pleased pleasers, curled conquista- dores. Noon slumbers. Kevin Egan rolls gunpowder cigarettes through fin- gers smeared with printer's ink, sip- ping his green fairy as Patrice his white. About us gobblers fork spiced beans down their gullets. Un demi setier! A jet of coffee steam from the burnished caldron. She serves me at his beck. Il est Irlandais. Hollandais? Non fromage. Deux irlandais, nous, Irlande, vous savez? Ah, oui! She thought you wanted a cheese hollandais. Your postpran- dial, do you know that word ? Post- prandial. There was a fellow I knew once in Barcelona, queer fel- low, used to call it his postprandial. Well: slainte! Around the slabbed tables the tangle of wined breaths and grumbling gorges. His breath hangs over our saucestained plates, the green fairy's fang thrusting be- tween his lips. Of Ireland, the Dal- cassians, of hopes, conspiracies, of Arthur Griffith now. To yoke me as his yokefellow, our crimes our common cause. You're your father's son. I know the voice. His fustian shirt, sanguineflowered, trembles its Spanish tassels at his secrets. M. Drumont, famous journalist, Dru- mont, know what he called queen Victoria? Old hag with the yellow teeth. Vieille ogresse with the dents jaunes. Maude Gonne, beautiful wo- man, La Patrie, M. Millevoye, Fe- lix Faure, know how he died? Li- centious men. The blue fuse burns deadly be- tween hands and burns clear. Loose tobacco shreds catch fire: a flame and acrid smoke light our corner. Raw facebones under his peep of day boy's hat How the head centre got away, authentic version. Got up ULYSSES 123 as a young bride, man, veil, orange- blossoms, drove out the road to Malahide. Did, faith. Of lost lead- ers, the betrayed, wild escapes. Dis- guises, clutched at, gone, not here. Spurned lover. I was a strapping young gossoon at that time, I tell you, I'll show you my likeness one day. I was, faith. Lover, for her love he prowled with colonel Rich- ard Burke, tanist of his sept, under the walls of Clerkenwell and, crouching, saw a flame of vengeance hurl them upward in the fog. Shat- tered glass and toppling masonry. In gay Paree he hides, Egan of Paris, unsought by any save by me. Making his day's stations, the dingy printingcase, his three taverns, the Montmartre lair he sleeps short night in, rue de la Goutte-d'Or, damascened with flyblown faces of the gone. Loveless, landless, wife- less. She is quite nicey comfy with- out her outcast man, madame, in rue Git-le-Coeur, canary and two buck lodgers. Peachy cheeks, a zebra skirt, frisky as a young thing's. Spurned and undespairing. Tell Pat you saw me, won't you? I wanted to get poor Pat a job one time. Mon fils, soldier of France. I taught him to sing. The boys of Kilkenny are stout roaring blades. Know that old lady? I taught Patrice that Old Kilkenny: saint Canice, Strong- bow's castle on the Nore. Goes like this. O, O. He takes me, Nap- er Tandy, by the hand. O, O the "boys of Kilkenny . . . Weak wasting hand on mine. They have forgotten Kevin Egan, not he them. Remembering thee, O Sion. He had come nearer the edge of the sea and wet sand slapped his boots. The new air greeted him, harping in wild nerves, wind of wild air of seeds of brightness. Here, I am not walking out to the Kish light- ship, am I ? He stood suddenly, his feet beginning to sink slowly in the quaking soil. Turn back. Turning, he scanned the shore south, his feet sinking again slowly in new sockets. The cold domed room of the tower waits. Through the barbacans the shafts of light are moving ever, slowly ever as my feet are sinking, creeping duskward over the dial floor. Blue dusk, nightfall, deep blue night. In the darkness of the dome they wait, their pushedback chairs, my obelisk valise, around a board of abandoned platters. Who to clear it? He has the key. I will not sleep there when this night comes. A shut door of a silent tower entombing their blind bodies, the panthersahib and his pointer. Call: no answer. He lifted his feet up from the suck and turned back by the mole of boulders. Take all, keep all. My soul walks with me, form of forms. So in the moon's midwatches I pace the path above the rocks, in sable silvered, hearing Elsi- nore's tempting flood. The flood is following me. I can watch it flow past from here. Get back then by the Poolbeg road to the strand here. He climbed over the sedge and eely oarweeds and sat on a stool of rock, resting his ashplant in a grike. A bloated carcass of a dog lay lolled on bladderwrack. Before him 124 TWO WORLDS MONTHLY the gunwale of a boat, sunk in sand. Un coche enable, Louis Veuillot called Gautier's prose. These heavy sands are language tide and wind have silted here. And there, the stoneheaps of dead builders, a war- ren of weasel rats. Hide gold there. Try it. You have some. Sands and stones. Heavy of the past. Sir Lout's toys. Mind you don't get one bang on the ear. I'm the bloody well gigant rolls all them bloody well boulders, bones for my stepping- stones. Feefawfum. I zmellz de bloodz odz an Iridzman. A point, live dog, grew into sight running across the sweep of sand. Lord, is he going to attack me ? Re- spect his liberty. You will not be master of others or their slave. I have my stick. Sit tight. From farther away, walking shoreward across from the crested tide, figures, two. The two maries. They have tucked it safe mong the bulrushes. Peekaboo. I see you. No, the dog. He is running back to them. Who ? Galleys of the Lochlanns ran here to beach, in quest of prey, their blood-beaked prows riding low on a molten pewter surf. Dane vikings, torcs of tomahawks aglitter on their breasts when Malachi wore the col- lar of gold. A school of turlehide whales stranded in hot noon, spout- ing, hobbling in the shallows. Then from the starving cagework city a horde of jerkined dwarfs, my people, with flayers' knives, running, scaling, hacking in green blubbery whale- meat. Famine, plague and slaugh- ters. Their blood is in me, their lusts my waves. I moved among them on the frozen Liffey, that I, a changeling, among the spluttering resin fires. I spoke to no-one: none to me. The dog's bark ran towards him, stopped, ran back. Dog of my ene- my. I just simply stood pale, silent, bayed about. Terribilia meditans. A primrose doublet, fortune's knave, smiled on my fear. For that are you pining, the bark of their applause? Pretenders: live their lives. The Bruce's brother, Thomas Fitzgerald, silken knight, Perkin Warbeck, York's false scion, in breeches of silk of whiterose ivory, wonder of a day, and Lambert Simnel, with a tail of nans and sutlers, a scullion crowned. All kings' sons. Paradise of pre- tenders then and now. He saved men from drowning and you shake at a cur's yelping. But the courtiers who mocked Guido in Or san Mi- chele were in their own house. House of . . . We don't want any of your medieval abstrusiosiries. Would you do what he did? A boat would be near, a lifebuoy. Naturlich, put there for you. Would you or would you not? The man that was drowned nine days ago off Maiden's rock. They are waiting for him now. The truth, spit it out. I would want to. I would try. I am not a strong swimmer. Water cold soft. When I put my face into it in the basin at Clongowes. Can't see! who's be- hind me ? Out quickly, quickly! Do you see the tide flowing quickly in on all sides, sheeting the lows of sands quickly, shellcocoacolored ? If I had land under my feet. I want his life still to be his, mine to be mine. A drowning man. His hu- man eyes scream to me out of hor- ror of his death. I . . . With him together down ... I could not save her. Waters: bitter death: lost. A woman and a man. I see her skirties. Pinned up, I bet. Their dog ambled about a bank of dwindling sand, trotting, sniffing on all sides. Looking for something lost in a past life. Suddenly he made off like a bounding hare, ears flung back, chasing the shadow of a low- skimming gull. The man's shrieked whistle struck his limp ears. He turned, bounded back, came nearer trotted on twinkling shanks. On a field tenney a buck, trippant, proper, unattired. At the lacefringe of the tide he halted with stiff forehoofs, seaward pointed ears. His snout lifted barked at the wavenoise, herds of seamorse. They serpented towards his feet, curtling, unfurling many crests, every ninth, breaking, plashing, from far, from farther out, waves and waves. Cocklepickers. They waded a lit- tle way in the water and, stooping, soused their bags, and, lifting them again, waded out. The dog yelped running to them, reared up and pawed them, dropping on all fours, again reared up at them with mute bearish fawning. Unheeded he kept by them as they came towards the drier sand, a rag of wolf's tongue redpanting from his jaws. His speckled body ambled ahead of them and then loped off at a calf's gallop. The carcass lay on his path. He stopped, sniffed, stalked round it, brother, nosing closer, went round it, sniffling rapidly like a dog all over the dead dog's bedraggled fell. Dogskull, dogsniff, eyes on the ground, moves to one great goal. Ah, poor dogsbody. Here lies poor dogsbody's body. -Tatters ! Out of that, you mongrel. The cry brought him skulking back to his master and a blunt boot- less kick sent him unscathed across a pit of sand, crouched in flight. He slunk back in a curve. Doesn't see me. His hindpaws scattered sand: then his forepaws dabbled and delved. Something he buried there, his grandmother. He rooted in the sand, dabbling, delving and stopped to listen to the air, scraped up the sand again with a fury of his claws, soon ceasing, a pard, a panther, got in spousebreach, vulturing the dead. After he woke me up last night same dream or was it? Wait. Open hallway. Street of harlots. Remem- ber. Haroun al Raschid. I am al- mosting it. That man led me, spoke. I was not afraid. The melon he had he held against my face. Smiled: cream fruit smell. That was the rule, said. In. Come. Red carpet spread. You will see who. Shouldering their bags they trudged, the red Egyptians. His blued feet out of turnedup trousers slapped the clammy sand, a dull brick muffler strangling his unshaven neck. With woman steps she fol- lowed: the ruffian and his strolling mort. Spoils slung at her back. Loose sand and shellgrit crusted her bare feet. About her windraw face her hair trailed. Behind her lord his helpmate, bing awast, to Rome- ville. When night hides her body's flaws calling under her brown shawl from an archway where dogs have mired. Her fancyman is treating two Royal Dublins in O'Loughlin's of Blackpitts. Buss her, wap in rogue's rum lingo, for, O, my dimbcr ULYSSES 125 TWO WORLDS MONTHLY 126 wapping dell. A shefiend's white- ness under her rancid rags. Fum- bally's lane that night: the tanyard smells. White thy fambles, red thy gan And thy quarrons dainty is. Couch a hogshead with me then. In the darkmans clip and kiss. Morose delectation Aquinas tun- belly calls this, frate porcospino. Un- fallen Adam rode and not rutted. Call away let him: thy quarrons dainty is. Language no whit worse than his. Monkwords, marybeads jabber on their girdles: roguewords, tough nuggets patter in their pockets. Passing now. A side-eye at my Hamlet hat. If I were suddenly naked here as I sit? I am not. Across the sands of all the world, followed by the sun's flaming sword, to the west, trekking to eve- ning lands. She trudges, schlepps, trains, drags, trascines her load. A tide westering, moondrawn, in her wake. Tides, myriadislanded, with- in her, blood not mine, oinopa pon- ton, a winedark sea. Behold the handmaid of the moon. In sleep the wet sign calls her hour, bids her rise. Bridebed, childbed, bed of death, ghostcandled. Omnis caro ad te veniet. He comes, pale vampire through storm his eyes, his bat sails bloodying the sea, mouth to her mouth's kiss. Here. Put a pin in that chap, will you? My tablets. Mouth to her kiss. No. Must be two of em. Glue em well. Mouth to her mouth's kiss. His lips lipped and mouthed fleshless lips of air. His mouth moulded issuing breath, unspeeched: ooeeelah: roar of cataractic planets, globed, blazing, roaring, wayaway- awayawayawayaway. Paper. The banknotes, blast them. Old Deasy's letter. Here. Thanking you for hospitality tear the blank end off. Turning his back to the sun he bent over far to a table of rock and scrib- bled words. That's twice I forgot to take slips from the library coun- ter. His shadow lay over the rocks as he bent, ending. Why not endless till the farthest star? Darkly they are there behind this light, darkness shining in the brightness, delta of Cassiopeia, worlds. Me sits there with his augur's rod of ash, in bor- rowed sandals, by day beside a livid sea, unbeheld, in violet night walking beneath a reign of uncouth stars, I throw this ended shadow from me, manshape ineluctable, call it back. Endless, would it be mine, form of my form? Signs on a white field. Somewhere to someone in your fluti- est voice. The good bishop of Cloyne took the veil of the temple out of his shovel hat: veil of space with coloured emblems hatched on its fields. Hold hard. Coloured on a flat: yes, that's right. Flat I see, then think distance, near, far, flat I see, east, back. Ah, see now: Falls back suddenly, frozen in stereo- scope. Click does the trick. You find my words dark. Darkness is in our souls, do you not think? Flutier. Our souls, shamewounded by our sins, cling to us yet more, a woman to her lover clinging, the more the more. She trusts me, her hand gentle, the longlashed eyes. Now where the ULYSSES 127 blue hell am I bringing her beyond the veil? Into the ineluctable mo- dality of the ineluctable visuality. She, she, she. What she ? The vir- gin at Hodges Figgis' window on Monday looking in for one of the alphabet books you were going to write. Keen glance you gave her. Wrist through the braided jesse of her sunshade. She lives in Leeson park, with a grief and kickshaws, a lady of letters. Talk that to some one else, Stevie: a pickmeup. Bet she wears those curse of God stays suspenders and yellow stockings, darned with lumpy wool. Talk about apple dumplings, piuttosto. Where are your wits? Touch me. Soft eyes. Soft soft soft hand. I am lonely here. O, touch me soon, now. What is that word known to all men? I am quiet here alone. Sad too. Touch, touch me. He lay back at full stretch over the sharp rocks, cramming the scribbled note and pencil into a pocket, his hat tilted down on his eyes. That is Kevin Egan's move- ment I made nodding for his nap, sabbath sleep. Et vidit Deus. Et erant valde bona. Alo! Bonjour, welcome as the flowers in May. Under its leaf he watched through peacocktwittering lashes the south- ing sun. I am caught in this burn- ing scene. Pan's hour, the faunal noon. Among gumheavy serpent- plants, milkoozing fruits, where on the tawny waters leaves lie wide. Pain is far. And no more turn aside and brood. His gaze brooded on his broad toed boots, a buck's castoffs neben- einander. He counted the creases of rucked leather wherein another's foot had nested warm. The foot that beat the ground in tripudium, foot I dislove. But you were de- lighted when Esther Osvalt's shoe went on you: girl I knew in Paris. Tiens, quel petit pied! Staunch friend, a brother soul: Wilde's love that dare not speak its name. He now will leave me. And the blame ? As I am. As I am. All or not at all. In long lassoes from the Cock lake the water flowed full, covering green-goldenly lagoons of sand, ris- ing, flowing. My ashplant will float away. I shall wait. No, they will pass on, passing chafing against the low rocks, swirling, passing. Better get this job over quick. Listen: a fourworded wavespeech: seesoo, hrss, rsseeiss ooos. Vehement breath of waters amid seasnakes, rearing horses, rocks. In cups of rocks it slops: flop, slop, slap: bounded in barrels. And, spent, its speech ceases. It flows purling, widely flowing, floating foam-pool, flower unfurling. Under the upswelling tide he saw the writhing weeds lift languidly and sway reluctant arms, hising up their petticoats, in whispering water sway- ing and upturning coy silver fronds. Day by day: night by night: lifted, flooded and let fall. Lord, they an weary: and, whispered to, they sigh. Saint Ambrose heard it, sigh of leaves and waves, waiting, await- ing the fullness of their times, diebus ac noctibus iniurias patiens ingemis- cit. To no end gathered: vainly then released, forth flowing, wending back: loom of the moon. Weary too in sight of lovers, lascivious 128 TWO WORLDS MONTHLY men, a naked woman shining in her courts, she draws a toil of waters. Five fathoms out there. Full fath? om five thy father lies. At one he said. Found drowned. High water at Dublin bar. Driving before it a loose drift of rubble, fanshoals of fishes, silly shells. A corpse rising saltwhite from the undertow, bob- bing landward, a pace a pace a por- poise. There he is. Hook it quick. Sunk though he be beneath the watery floor. We have. him. Easy now. Bag of corpsegas sopping in foul brine. God becomes man becomes fish becomes barnacle goose becomes featherbed mountain. Dead breaths I living breathe, tread dead dust, devour a urinous offal from all dead. Hauled stark over the gunwale he breathes upward the stench of his green grave, his leprous nosehole snoring to the sun. A seachange this, brown eyes salt- blue. Seadeath, mildest of all deaths known to man. Old Father Ocean. Prix de Paris: beware of imitations. Just you give it a fair trial. We en- joyed ourselves immensely. Come. I thirst. Clouding over. No black clouds anywhere, are there? Thunderstorm. Allbright he falls, proud lightning of the intellect, Lucifer, dico, qui nescit occasum. No. My cockle hat and staff and hismy sandal shoon. Where? To evening lands. Evening will find it- self. He took the hilt of his ashplant, lunging with it softly, dallying still. Yes, evening will find itself in me, without me. All days make their end. By the way next when is it? Tuesday will be the longest day. Of all the glad new year, mother, the rum tum tiddledy tum. Lawn Tennyson, gentleman poet. Gia. For the old hag with the yellow teeth. And Monsieur Drumont, gentleman jour- nalist. Gia. My teeth are very bad. Why, I wonder? Feel. That one is going too. Shells. Ought I go to a dentist, I wonder, with that mon- ey? That one. Toothless Kinch, the superman. Why is that, I won- der, or does it mean something per- haps? My handkerchief. He threw it. I remember. Did I not take it up ? His hand groped vainly in his pockets. No, I didn't. Better buy one. He laid the dry snot picked from his nostril on a ledge of rock, care- fully. For the rest let look who will. Behind. Perhaps there is some- one. He turned his face over a shoul- der, rere regardant. Moving through the air high spars of a three- master, her sails brailed up on the crosstrees, homing, upstream, silent- ly moving, a silent ship. (To be continued in the next issue)