JAMES JOYCE - ULYSSES

Fraidrine. Two pieces of silver he lent me. Tide you over. Economics.

– For a guinea, Stephen said, you can publish this interview.

Buck Mulligan stood up from his laughing scribbling, laughing: and then gravely said, honeying malice:

– I called upon the bard Kinch at his summer residence in upper Mecklenburgh street and found him deep in the study of the Summa contra Gentiles in the company of two gonorrheal ladies, Fresh Nelly and Rosalie, the coalquay whore.

He broke away.

– Come, Kinch. Come, wandering Aengus of the birds.

Come, Kinch. You have eaten all we left. Ay. I will serve you your orts and offals.

Stephen rose.

Life is many days. This will end.

– We shall see you tonight, John Eglinton said. Notre ami Moore says Malachi Mulligan must be there.

Buck Mulligan flaunted his slip and panama.

– Monsieur Moore, he said, lecturer on French letters to the youth of Ireland. I’ll be there. Come, Kinch, the bards must drink. Can you walk straight?

Laughing, he ….

Swill till eleven. Irish nights entertainment.

Lubber ….

Stephen followed a lubber …

One day in the national library we had a discussion. Shakes. After. His lub back: I followed. I gall his kibe.

Stephen, greeting, then all amort, followed a lubber jester, a wellkempt head, newbarbered, out of the vaulted cell into a shattering daylight of no thought.

What have I learned? Of them? Of me?

Walk like Haines now.

The constant readers’ room. In the readers’ book Cashel Boyle O’Connor Fitzmaurice Tisdall Farrell parafes his polysyllables. Item: was Hamlet mad? The quaker’s pate godlily with a priesteen in booktalk.

– O please do, sir ….. I shall be most pleased ….

Amused Buck Mulligan mused in pleasant murmur with himself, selfnodding:

– A pleased bottom.

The turnstile.

Is that …? Blueribboned hat …? Idly writing …? What? …. Looked …?

The curving balustrade: smoothsliding Mincius.

Puck Mulligan, panamahelmeted, went step by step, iambing, trolling:

– John Eglinton, my jo, John,

Why won’t you wed a wife?

He spluttered to the air:

– O, the chinless Chinaman! Chin Chon Eg Lin Ton. We went over to their playbox, Haines and I, the plumbers’ hall. Our players are creating a new art for Europe like the Greeks or M. Maeterlinck. Abbey Theatre! I smell the pubic sweat of monks.

He spat blank.

Forgot: any more than he forgot the whipping lousy Lucy gave him.

And left the femme de trente ans . And why no other children born? And his first child a girl?

Afterwit. Go back.

The dour recluse still there (he has his cake) and the douce youngling, minion of pleasure, Phedo’s toyable fair hair.

Eh … I just eh …. wanted … I forgot … eh …

– Longworth and M‘Curdy Atkinson were there …

Puck Mulligan footed featly, trilling:

– I hardly hear the purlieu cry

Or a Tommy talk as I pass one by

Before my thoughts begin to run

On F. M‘Curdy Atkinson,

The same that had the wooden leg

And that filibustering filibeg

That never dared to slake his drouth,

Magee that had the chinless mouth.

Being afraid to marry on earth

They masturbated for all they were worth.

Jest on. Know thyself.

Halted, below me, a quizzer looks at me. I halt.

– Mournful mummer, Buck Mulligan moaned. Synge has left off wearing black to be like nature. Only crows, priests and English coal are black.

A laugh tripped over his lips.

– Longworth is awfully sick, he said, after what you wrote about that old hake Gregory. O you inquisitional drunken jewjesuit! She gets you a job on the paper and then you go and slate her drivel to Jaysus. Couldn’t you do the Yeats touch?

He went on and down, mopping, chanting with waving graceful arms:

– The most beautiful book that has come out of our country in my time.

One thinks of Homer.

He stopped at the stairfoot.

– I have conceived a play for the mummers, he said solemnly.

The pillared Moorish hall, shadows entwined. Gone the nine men’s morrice with caps of indices.

In sweetly varying voices Buck Mulligan read his tablet:

– Everyman His Own Wife

or

A Honeymoon in the Hand

(a national immorality in three orgasms)

by

Ballocky Mulligan

He turned a happy patch’s smirk to Stephen, saying:

– The disguise, I fear, is thin. But listen.

He read, marcato:

– Characters:

TOBY TOSTOFF (a ruined Pole)

CRAB (a bushranger)

MEDICAL DICK

u

and

y

(two birds with one stone)

MEDICAL DAVY

?

MOTHER GROGAN (a watercarrier)

FRESH NELLY

and

ROSALIE (the coalquay whore).

He laughed, lolling a to and fro head, walking on, followed by Stephen: and mirthfully he told the shadows, souls of men:

– O, the night in the Camden hall when the daughters of Erin had to lift their skirts to step over you as you lay in your mulberrycoloured, multicoloured, multitudinous vomit!

– The most innocent son of Erin, Stephen said, for whom they ever lifted them.

About to pass through the doorway, feeling one behind, he stood aside.

Part. The moment is now. Where then? If Socrates leave his house today, if Judas go forth tonight. Why? That lies in space which I in time must come to, ineluctably.

My will: his will that fronts me. Seas between.

A man passed out between them, bowing, greeting.

– Good day again, Buck Mulligan said.

The portico.

Here I watched the birds for augury. Aengus of the birds. They go, they come. Last night I flew. Easily flew. Men wondered. Street of harlots after. A creamfruit melon he held to me. In. You will see.

– The wandering jew, Buck Mulligan whispered with clown’s awe. Did you see his eye? He looked upon you to lust after you. I fear thee, ancient mariner. O, Kinch, thou art in peril. Get thee a breechpad.

Manner of Oxenford.

Day. Wheelbarrow sun over arch of bridge.

A dark back went before them, step of a pard, down, out by the gateway, under portcullis barbs.

They followed.

Offend me still. Speak on.

Kind air defined the coigns of houses in Kildare street. No birds. Frail from the housetops two plumes of smoke ascended, pluming, and in a flaw of softness softly were blown.

Cease to strive. Peace of the druid priests of Cymbeline: hierophantic: from wide earth an altar.

Laud we the gods

And let our crooked smokes climb to their nostrils

From our bless’d altars.

* The superior, the very reverend John Conmee S. J. reset his smooth watch in his interior pocket as he came down the presbytery steps. Five to three. Just nice time to walk to Artane. What was that boy’s name again? Dignam. Yes. Vere dignum et iustum est . Brother Swan was the person to see. Mr Cunningham’s letter. Yes. Oblige him, if possible. Good practical catholic: useful at mission time.

A onelegged sailor, swinging himself onward by lazy jerks of his crutches, growled some notes. He jerked short before the convent of the sisters of charity and held out a peaked cap for alms towards the very reverend John Conmee S. J. Father Conmee blessed him in the sun for his purse held, he knew, one silver crown.

Father Conmee crossed to Mountjoy square. He thought, but not for long, of soldiers and sailors, whose legs had been shot off by cannonballs, ending their days in some pauper ward, and of cardinal Wolsey’s words: If I had served my God as I have served my king He would not have abandoned me in my old days . He walked by the treeshade of sunnywinking leaves: and towards him came the wife of Mr David Sheehy M. P.