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like a bounding hare, ears flung back, chasing the shadow of a lowskimming
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, seawardpointed ears. His snout lifted barked at the
wavenoise, herds of seamorse. They serpented towards his feet, curling,
unfurling many crests, every ninth, breaking, plashing, from far, from
farther out, waves and waves.
Cocklepickers. They waded a little 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, sniffing 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 bootless
kick sent him unscathed across a spit of sand, crouched in flight. He slunk
back in a curve. Doesn't see me. Along by the edge of the mole he lolloped,
dawdled, smelt a rock and from under a cocked hindleg pissed against it. He
trotted forward and, lifting his hindleg, pissed quick short at an unsmelt
rock. The simple pleasures of the poor. His hindpaws then 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 spouse-breach, vulturing the dead.
After he woke me up last night same dream or was it? Wait. Open
hallway. Street of harlots. Remember. Haroun al Raschid. I am almosting it.
That man led me, spoke. I was not afraid. The melon he had he held against
my face. Smiled: creamfruit 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 followed: 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 Romeville. 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 dimber wapping dell. A
shefiend's whiteness under her rancid rags. Fumbally'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 tunbelly calls this, frate porcospino.
Unfallen 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 evening lands. She trudges, schlepps,
trains, drags, trascines her load. A tide westering, moondrawn, in her wake.
Tides, myriadislanded, within her, blood not mine, oinopa ponton, 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: mouth to her womb.
Oomb, allwombing tomb. His mouth moulded issuing breath, unspeeched:
ooeeehah: roar of cataractic planets, globed, blazing, roaring
wayawayawayawayawayaway. 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 scribbled words.
That's twice I forgot to take slips from the library counter.
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 borrowed 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? Who watches me here? Who ever anywhere
will read these written words? Signs on a white field. Somewhere to someone
in your flutiest 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 field. 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 stereoscope. Click does the trick. You find my
words dark. Darkness is in our souls, do you not think? Flutier. Our souls,
shame-wounded 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 blue
hell am I bringing her beyond the veil? Into the ineluctable modality of the
ineluctable visuality. She, she, she. What she? The virgin 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 jess of her
sunshade. She lives in Leeson park, with a grief and kickshaws, a lady of
letters. Talk that to someone 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 movement 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 southing
sun. I am caught in this burning scene. Pan's hour, the faunal noon. Among
gumheavy serpentplants, 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 broadtoed boots, a buck's castoffs
nebeneinander: 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 delighted 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
greengoldenly lagoons of sand, rising, 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 foampool, flower unfurling.
Under the upswelling tide he saw the writhing weeds lift languidly and
sway reluctant arms, hising up their petticoats, in whispering water swaying
and upturning coy silver fronds. Day by day: night by night: lifted, flooded
and let fall. Lord, they are weary: and, whispered to, they sigh. Saint
Ambrose heard it, sigh of leaves and waves, waiting, awaiting the fullness
of their times, diebus ac noctibus iniurias patiens ingemiscit. To no end
gathered: vainly then released, forth flowing, wending back: loom of the
moon. Weary too in sight of lovers, lascivious men, a naked woman shining in
her courts, she draws a toil of waters.
Five fathoms out there. Full fathom 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, bobbing landward, a pace a pace a porpoise.
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. A quiver of minnows, fat of a
spongy titbit, flash through the slits of his buttoned trouserfly. 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 saltblue. 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 enjoyed 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 his my sandal
shoon. Where? To evening lands. Evening will find itself.
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. Giю. For the old hag with the yellow teeth. And Monsieur Drumont,
gentleman journalist. Giю. 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
money? That one. Toothless Kinch, the superman. Why is that, I wonder, or
does it mean something perhaps?
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,
carefully. For the rest let look who will.
Behind. Perhaps there is someone.
He turned his face over a shoulder, rere regardant. Moving through the
air high spars of a threemaster, her sails brailed up on the crosstrees,
homing, upstream, silently moving, a silent ship.
MR LEOPOLD BLOOM ATE WITH RELISH THE INNER ORGANS OF BEASTS and fowls.
He liked thick giblet soup, nutty gizzards, a stuffed roast heart, liver
slices fried with crustcrumbs, fried hencod's roes. Most of all he liked
grilled mutton kidneys which gave to his palate a fine tang of faintly
scented urine.
Kidneys were in his mind as he moved about the kitchen softly, righting
her breakfast things on the humpy tray. Gelid light and air were in the
kitchen but out of doors gentle summer morning everywhere. Made him feel a
bit peckish.
The coals were reddening.
Another slice of bread and butter: three, four: right. She didn't like
her plate full. Right. He turned from the tray, lifted the kettle off the
hob and set it sideways on the fire. It sat there, dull and squat, its spout
stuck out. Cup of tea soon. Good. Mouth dry. The cat walked stiffly round a
leg of the table with tail on high.
-- Mkgnao!
-- O, there you are, Mr Bloom said, turning from the fire.
The cat mewed in answer and stalked again stiffly round a leg of the
table, mewing. Just how she stalks over my writing-table. Prr. Scratch my
head. Prr.
Mr Bloom watched curiously, kindly, the lithe black form. Clean to see:
the gloss of her sleek hide, the white button under the butt of her tail,
the green flashing eyes. He bent down to her, his hands on his knees.
-- Milk for the pussens, he said.
-- Mrkgnao! the cat cried.
They call them stupid. They understand what we say better than we
understand them. She understands all she wants to. Vindictive too. Wonder
what I look like to her. Height of a tower? No, she can jump me.
-- Afraid of the chickens she is, he said mockingly. Afraid of the
chookchooks. I never saw such a stupid pussens as the pussens.
Cruel. Her nature. Curious mice never squeal. Seem to like it.
-- Mrkrgnao! the cat said loudly.
She blinked up out of her avid shameclosing eyes, mewing plaintively
and long, showing him her milkwhite teeth. He watched the dark eyeslits
narrowing with greed till her eyes were green stones. Then he went to the
dresser, took the jug Hanlon's milkman had just filled for him, poured
warmbubbled milk on a saucer and set it slowly on the floor.
-- Gurrhr! she cried, running to lap.
He watched the bristles shining wirily in the weak light as she tipped
three times and licked lightly. Wonder is it true if you clip them they
can't mouse after. Why? They shine in the dark, perhaps, the tips. Or kind
of feelers in the dark, perhaps.
He listened to her licking lap. Ham and eggs, no. No good eggs with
this drouth. Want pure fresh water. Thursday: not a good day either for a
mutton kidney at Buckley's. Fried with butter, a shake of pepper. Better a
pork kidney at Dlugacz's. While the kettle is boiling. She lapped slower,
then licking the saucer clean. Why are their tongues so rough? To lap
better, all porous holes. Nothing she can eat? He glanced round him. No.
On quietly creaky boots he went up the staircase to the hall, paused by
the bedroom door. She might like something tasty. Thin bread and butter she
likes in the morning. Still perhaps: once in a way.
He said softly in the bare hall:
-- I am going round the corner. Be back in a minute.
And when he had heard his voice say it he added:
-- You don't want anything for breakfast?
A sleepy soft grunt answered:
-- Mn.
No. She did not want anything. He heard then a warm heavy sigh, softer,
as she turned over and the loose brass quoits of the bedstead jingled. Must
get those settled really. Pity. All the way from Gibraltar. Forgotten any
little Spanish she knew. Wonder what her father gave for it. Old style. Ah
yes, of course. Bought it at the governor's auction. Got a short knock. Hard
as nails at a bargain, old Tweedy. Yes, sir. At Plevna that was. I rose from
the ranks, sir, and I'm proud of it. Still he had brains enough to make that
corner in stamps. Now that was farseeing.
His hand took his hat from the peg over his initialled heavy overcoat,
and his lost property office secondhand waterproof. Stamps: stickyback
pictures. Daresay lots of officers are in the swim too. Course they do. The
sweated legend in the crown of his hat told him mutely: Plasto's high grade
ha. He peeped quickly inside the leather headband. White slip of paper.
Quite safe.
On the doorstep he felt in his hip pocket for the latchkey. Not there.
In the trousers I left off. Must get it. Potato I have. Creaky wardrobe. No
use disturbing her. She turned over sleepily that time. He pulled the
halldoor to after him very quietly, more, till the footleaf dropped gently
over the threshold, a limp lid. Looked shut. All right till I come back
anyhow.
He crossed to the bright side, avoiding the loose cellarflap of number
seventyfive. The sun was nearing the steeple of George's church. Be a warm
day I fancy. Specially in these black clothes feel it more. Black conducts,
reflects (refracts is it?), the heat. But I couldn't go in that light suit.
Make a picnic of it. His eyelids sank quietly often as he walked in happy
warmth. Boland's breadvan delivering with trays our daily but she prefers
yesterday's loaves turnovers crisp crowns hot. Makes you feel young.
Somewhere in the east: early morning: set off at dawn, travel round in front
of the sun, steal a day's march on him. Keep it up for ever never grow a day
older technically. Walk along a strand, strange land, come to a city gate,
sentry there, old ranker too, old Tweedy's big moustaches leaning on a long
kind of a spear. Wander through awned streets. Turbaned faces going by. Dark
caves of carpet shops, big man, Turko the terrible, seated crosslegged
smoking a coiled pipe. Cries of sellers in the streets. Drink water scented
with fennel, sherbet. Wander along all day. Might meet a robber or two.
Well, meet him. Getting on to sundown. The shadows of the mosques along the
pillars: priest with a scroll rolled up. A shiver of the trees, signal, the
evening wind. I pass on. Fading gold sky. A mother watches from her doorway.
She calls her children home in their dark language. High wall: beyond
strings twanged. Night sky moon, violet, colour of Molly's new garters.
Strings. Listen. A girl playing one of these instruments what do you call
them: dulcimers. I pass.
Probably not a bit like it really. Kind of stuff you read: in the track
of the sun. Sunburst on the titlepage. He smiled, pleasing himself. What
Arthur Griffith said about the headpiece over the Freeman leader: a homerule
sun rising up in the northwest from the laneway behind the bank of Ireland.
He prolonged his pleased smile. Ikey touch that: homerule sun rising up in
the northwest.
He approached Larry O'Rourke's. From the cellar grating floated up the
flabby gush of porter. Through the open doorway the bar squirted out whiffs
of ginger, teadust, biscuitmush. Good house, however: just the end of the
city traffic. For instance M'Auley's down there: n. g. as position. Of
course if they ran a tramline along the North Circular from the cattle
market to the quays value would go up like a shot.
Bald head over the blind. Cute old codger. No use canvassing him for an
ad. Still he knows his own business best. There he Is, sure enough, my bold
Larry, leaning against the sugarbin in his shirtsleeves watching the aproned
curate swab up with mop and bucket. Simon Dedalus takes him off to a tee
with his eyes screwed up. Do you know what I'm going to tell you? What's
that, Mr O'Rourke? Do you know what? The Russians, they'd only be an eight
o'clock breakfast for the Japanese.
Stop and say a word: about the funeral perhaps. Sad thing about poor
Dignam, Mr O'Rourke.
Turning into Dorset street he said freshly in greeting through the
doorway:
-- Good day, Mr O'Rourke.
-- Good day to you.
-- Lovely weather, sir.
-- 'Tis all that.
Where do they get the money? Coming up redheaded curates from the
county Leitrim, rinsing empties and old man in the cellar. Then, lo and
behold, they blossom out as Adam Findlaters or Dan Tallons. Then think of
the competition. General thirst. Good puzzle would be cross Dublin without
passing a pub. Save it they can't. Off the drunks perhaps. Put down three
and carry five. What is that? A bob here and there, dribs and drabs. On the
wholesale orders perhaps. Doing a double shuffle with the town travellers.
Square it with the boss and we'll split the job, see?
How much would that tot to off the porter in the month? Say ten barrels
of stuff. Say he got ten per cent off. O more. Ten. Fifteen. He passed Saint
Joseph's, National school. Brats' clamour. Windows open. Fresh air helps
memory. Or a lilt. Ahbeesee defeegee kelomen opeecue rustyouvee double you.
Boys are they? Yes. Inishturk. Inishark. Inishboffin. At their joggerfry.
Mine. Slieve Bloom.
He halted before Dlugacz's window, staring at the hanks of sausages,
polonies, black and white. Fifty multiplied by. The figures whitened in his
mind unsolved: displeased, he let them fade. The shiny links packed with
forcemeat fed his gaze and he breathed in tranquilly the lukewarm breath of
cooked spicy pig's blood.
A kidney oozed bloodgouts on the willowpatterned dish: the last. He
stood by the nextdoor girl at the counter. Would she buy it too, calling the
items from a slip in her hand. Chapped: washing soda. And a pound and a half
of Denny's sausages. His eyes rested on her vigorous hips. Woods his name
is. Wonder what he does. Wife is oldfish. New blood. No followers allowed.
Strong pair of arms. Whacking a carpet on the clothesline. She does whack
it, by George. The way her crooked skirt swings at each whack.
The ferreteyed porkbutcher folded the sausages he had snipped off with
blotchy fingers, sausagepink. Sound meat there like a stallfed heifer.
He took up a page from the pile of cut sheets. The model farm at
Kinnereth on the lakeshore of Tiberias. Can become ideal winter sanatorium.
Moses Montefiore. I thought he was. Farmhouse, wall round it, blurred cattle
cropping. He held the page from him: interesting: read it nearer, the
blurred cropping cattle, the page rustling. A young white heifer. Those
mornings in the cattlemarket the beasts lowing in their pens, branded sheep,
flop and fall of dung, the breeders in hobnailed boots trudging through the
litter, slapping a palm on a ripemeated hindquarter, there's a prime one,
unpeeled switches in their hands. He held the page aslant patiently, bending
his senses and his will, his soft subject gaze at rest. The crooked skirt
swinging whack by whack by whack.
The porkbutcher snapped two sheets from the pile, wrapped up her prime
sausages and made a red grimace.
-- Now, my miss, he said.
She tendered a coin, smiling boldly, holding her thick wrist out.
-- Thank you, my miss. And one shilling threepence change. For you,
please?
Mr Bloom pointed quickly. To catch up and walk behind her if she went
slowly, behind her moving hams. Pleasant to see first thing in the morning.
Hurry up, damn it. Make hay while the sun shines. She stood outside the shop
in sunlight and sauntered lazily to the right. He sighed down his nose: they
never understand. Sodachapped hands. Crusted toenails too. Brown scapulars
in tatters, defending her both ways. The sting of disregard glowed to weak
pleasure within his breast. For another a constable off duty cuddled her in
Eccles Lane. They like them sizeable. Prime sausage. O please, Mr Policeman,
I'm lost in the wood.
-- Threepence, please.
His hand accepted the moist tender gland and slid it into a sidepocket.
Then it fetched up three coins from his trousers' pocket and laid them on
the rubber prickles. They lay, were read quickly and quickly slid, disc by
disc, into the till.
-- Thank you, sir. Another time.
A speck of eager fire from foxeyes thanked him. He withdrew his gaze
after an instant. No: better not: another time.
-- Good morning, he said, moving away.
-- Good morning, sir.
No sign. Gone. What matter?
He walked back along Dorset street, reading gravely. Agendath Netaim:
planter's company. To purchase vast sandy tracts from Turkish government and
plant with eucalyptus trees. Excellent for shade, fuel and construction.
Orangegroves and immense melonfields north of Jaffa. You pay eight marks and
they plant a dunam of land for you with olives, oranges, almonds or citrons.
Olives cheaper: oranges need artificial irrigation. Every year you get a
sending of the crop. Your name entered for life as owner in the book of the
union. Can pay ten down and the balance in yearly instalments.
Bleibtreustrasse 34, Berlin, W. 15.
Nothing doing. Still an idea behind it.
He looked at the cattle, blurred in silver heat. Silvered powdered
olivetrees. Quiet long days: pruning ripening. Olives are packed in jars,
eh? I have a few left from Andrews. Molly spitting them out. Knows the taste
of them now. Oranges in tissue paper packed in crates. Citrons too. Wonder
is poor Citron still alive in Saint Kevin's parade. And Mastiansky with the
old cither. Pleasant evenings we had then. Molly in Citron's basketchair.
Nice to hold, cool waxen fruit, hold in the hand, lift it to the nostrils
and smell the perfume. Like that, heavy, sweet, wild perfume. Always the
same, year after year. They fetched high prices too Moisel told me. Arbutus
place: Pleasants street: pleasant old times. Must be without a flaw, he
said. Coming all that way: Spain, Gibraltar, Mediterranean, the Levant.
Crates lined up on the quayside at Jaffa, chap ticking them off in a book,
navvies handling them in soiled dungarees. There's whatdoyoucallhim out of.
How do you? Doesn't see. Chap you know just to salute bit of a bore. His
back is like that Norwegian captain's. Wonder if I'll meet him today.
Watering cart. To provoke the rain. On earth as it is in heaven.
A cloud began to cover the sun wholly slowly wholly. Grey. Far.
No, not like that. A barren land, bare waste. Vulcanic lake, the dead
sea: no fish, weedless, sunk deep in the earth. No wind would lift those
waves, grey metal, poisonous foggy waters. Brimstone they called it raining
down: the cities of the plain: Sodom, Gomorrah, Edom. All dead names. A dead
sea in a dead land, grey and old. Old now. It bore the oldest, the first
race. A bent hag crossed from Cassidy's clutching a noggin bottle by the
neck. The oldest people. Wandered far away over all the earth, captivity to
captivity, multiplying, dying, being born everywhere. It lay there now. Now
it could bear no more. Dead: an old woman's: the grey sunken cunt of the
world.
Desolation.
Grey horror seared his flesh. Folding the page into his pocket he
turned into Eccles Street, hurrying homeward. Cold oils slid along his
veins, chilling his blood: age crusting him with a salt cloak. Well, I am
here now. Morning mouth bad images. Got up wrong side of the bed. Must begin
again those Sandow's exercises. On the hands down. Blotchy brown brick
houses. Number eighty still unlet. Why is that? Valuation is only
twenty-eight. Towers, Battersby, North, MacArthur: parlour windows plastered
with bills. Plasters on a sore eye. To smell the gentle smoke of tea, fume
of the pan, sizzling butter. Be near her ample bedwarmed flesh. Yes, yes.
Quick warm sunlight came running from Berkeley Road, swiftly, in slim
sandals, along the brightening footpath. Runs, she runs to meet me, a girl
with gold hair on the wind.
Two letters and a card lay on the hallfloor. He stopped and gathered
them. Mrs Marion Bloom. His quick heart slowed at once. Bold hand. Mrs
Marion.
-- Poldy!
Entering the bedroom he halfclosed his eyes and walked through warm
yellow twilight towards her tousled head.
-- Who are the letters for?
He looked at them. Mullingar. Milly.
-- A letter for me from Milly, he said carefully, and a card to you.
And a letter for you.
He laid her card and letter on the twill bedspread near the curve of
her knees.
-- Do you want the blind up?
Letting the blind up by gentle tugs halfway his backward eye saw her
glance at the letter and tuck it under her pillow.
-- That do? he asked, turning.
She was reading the card, propped on her elbow.
-- She got the things, she said.
He waited till she had laid the card aside and curled herself back
slowly with a snug sigh.
-- Hurry up with that tea, she said. I'm parched.
-- The kettle is boiling, he said.
But he delayed to clear the chair: her striped petticoat, tossed soiled
linen: and lifted all in an armful on to the foot of the bed.
As he went down the kitchen stairs she called:
-- Poldy!
-- What?
-- Scald the teapot.
On the boil sure enough: a plume of steam from the spout. He scalded
and rinsed out the teapot and put in four full spoons of tea, tilting the
kettle then to let water flow in. Having set it to draw, he took off the
kettle and crushed the pan flat on the live coals and watched the lump of
butter slide and melt. While he unwrapped the kidney the cat mewed hungrily
against him. Give her too much meat she won't mouse. Say they won't eat
pork. Kosher. Here. He let the bloodsmeared paper fall to her and dropped
the kidney amid the sizzling butter sauce. Pepper. He sprinkled it through
his fingers, ringwise, from the chipped eggcup.
Then he slit open his letter, glancing down the page and over. Thanks:
new tam: Mr Coghlan: lough Owel picnic: young student: Blazes Boylan's
seaside girls.
The tea was drawn. He filled his own moustachecup, sham crown Derby,
smiling. Silly Milly's birthday gift. Only five she was then. No wait: four.
I gave her the amberoid necklace she broke. Putting pieces of folded brown
paper in the letterbox for her. He smiled, pouring.
O Milly Bloom, you are my darling.
You are my looking glass from night to morning.
I'd rather have you without a farthing
Than Katey Keogh with her ass and garden.
Poor old professor Goodwin. Dreadful old case. Still he was a courteous
old chap. Oldfashioned way he used to bow Molly off the platform. And the
little mirror in his silk hat. The night Milly brought it into the parlour.
O, look what I found in professor Goodwin's hat! All we laughed. Sex
breaking out even then. Pert little piece she was.
He prodded a fork into the kidney and slapped it over: then fitted the
teapot on the tray. Its hump bumped as he took it up. Everything on it?
Bread and butter, four, sugar, spoon, her cream. Yes. He carried it
upstairs, his thumb hooked in the teapot handle.
Nudging the door open with his knee he carried the tray in and set it
on the chair by the bedhead.
-- What a time you were, she said.
She set the brasses jingling as she raised herself briskly, an elbow on
the pillow. He looked calmly down on her bulk and between her large soft
bubs, sloping within her nightdress like a shegoat's udder. The warmth of
her couched body rose on the air, mingling with the fragrance of the tea she
poured.
A strip of torn envelope peeped from under the dimpled pillow. In the
act of going he stayed to straighten the bedspread.
-- Who was the letter from? he asked.
Bold hand. Marion.
-- O, Boylan, she said. He's bringing the programme.
-- What are you singing?
-- La ci darem with J. C. Doyle, she said, and Love's Old Sweet Song.
Her full lips, drinking, smiled. Rather stale smell that incense leaves
next day. Like foul flowerwater.
-- Would you like the window open a little?
She doubled a slice of bread into her mouth, asking:
-- What time is the funeral?
-- Eleven, I think, he answered. I didn't see the paper.
Following the pointing of her finger he took up a leg of her soiled
drawers from the bed. No? Then, a twisted grey garter looped round a
stocking: rumpled, shiny sole.
-- No: that book.
Other stocking. Her petticoat.
-- It must have fell down, she said.
He felt here and there. Voglio e non vorvez. Wonder if she pronounces
that right: voglio. Not in the bed. Must have slid down. He stooped and
lifted the valance. The book, fallen, sprawled against the bulge of the
orange-keyed chamberpot.
-- Show here, she said. I put a mark in it. There's a word I wanted to
ask you.
She swallowed a draught of tea from her cup held by nothandle and,
having wiped her fingertips smartly on the blanket, began to search the text
with the hairpin till she reached the word.
-- Met him what? he asked.
-- Here, she said. What does that mean?
He leaned downwards and read near her polished thumbnail.
-- Metempsychosis?
-- Yes. Who's he when he's at home?
-- Metempsychosis, he said, frowning. It's Greek: from the Greek. That
means the transmigration of souls.
-- O, rocks! she said. Tell us in plain words.
He smiled, glancing askance at her mocking eye. The same young eyes.
The first night after the charades. Dolphin's Barn. He turned over the
smudged pages. Ruby: the Pride of the Ring. Hello. Illustration. Fierce
Italian with carriagewhip. Must be Ruby pride of the on the floor naked.
Sheet kindly lent. The monster Maffei desisted and flung his victim from him
with an oath. Cruelty behind it all. Doped animals. Trapeze at Hengler's.
Had to look the other way. Mob gaping. Break your neck and we'll break our
sides. Families of them. Bone them young so they metempsychosis. That we
live after death. Our souls. That a man's soul after he dies. Dignam's
soul...
-- Did you finish it? he asked.
-- Yes, she said. There's nothing smutty in it. Is she in love with the
first fellow all the time?
-- Never read it. Do you want another?
-- Yes. Get another of Paul de Kock's. Nice name he has.
She poured more tea into her cup, watching its flow sideways.
Must get that Capel street library book renewed or they'll write to
Kearney, my guarantor. Reincarnation: that's the word.
-- Some people believe, he said, that we go on living in another body
after death, that we lived before. They call it reincarnation. That we all
lived before on the earth thousands of years ago or some other planet. They
say we have forgotten it. Some say they remember their past lives.
The sluggish cream wound curdling spirals through her tea. Better
remind her of the word: metempsychosis. An example would be better. An
example.
The Bath of the Nymph over the bed. Given away with the Easter number
of Photo Bits: Splendid masterpiece in art colours. Tea before you put milk
in. Not unlike her with her hair down: slimmer. Three and six I gave for the
frame. She said it would look nice over the bed. Naked nymphs: Greece: and
for instance all the people that lived then.
He turned the pages back.
-- Metempsychosis, he said, is what the ancient Greeks called it. They
used to believe you could be changed into an animal or a tree, for instance.
What they called nymphs, for example.
Her spoon ceased to stir up the sugar. She gazed straight before her,
inhaling through her arched nostrils.
-- There's a smell of burn, she said. Did you leave anything on the
fire?
-- The kidney! he cried suddenly.
He fitted the book roughly into his inner pocket and, stubbing his toes
against the broken commode, hurried out towards the smell, stepping hastily
down the stairs with a flurried stork's legs. Pungent smoke shot up in an
angry Jet from a side of the pan. By prodding a prong of the fork under the
kidney he detached it and turned it turtle on its back. Only a little
burned. He tossed it off the pan on to a plate and let the scanty brown
gravy trickle over it.
Cup of tea now. He sat down, cut and buttered a slice of the loaf. He
shore away the burnt flesh and flung it to the cat. Then he put a forkful
into his mouth, chewing with discernment the toothsome pliant meat. Done to
a turn. A mouthful of tea. Then he cut away dies of bread, sopped one in the
gravy and put it in his mouth. What was that about some young student and a
picnic? He creased out the letter at his side, reading it slowly as he
chewed, sopping another die of bread in the gravy and raising it to his
mouth.
Dearest Papli,
Thanks ever so much for the lovely birthday present. It suits me
splendid. Everyone says I'm quite the belle in my new tam. I got mummy's
lovely box of creams and am writing. They are lovely. I am getting on
swimming in the photo business now. Mr Coghlan took one of me and Mrs will
send when developed. We did great biz yesterday. Fair day and all the beef
to the heels were in. We are going to lough Owel on Monday with a few
friends to make a scrap picnic. Give my love to mummy and to yourself a big
kiss and thanks. I hear them at the piano downstairs. There is to be a
concert in the Greville Arms on Saturday. There is a young student comes
here some evenings named Bannon his cousins or something are big swells he
sings Boylan's (I was on the pop of writing Blazes Boylan's) song about
those seaside girls. Tell him silly Milly sends my best respects. Must now
close with fondest love.
Your fond daughter, MILLY.
P.S. Excuse bad writing, am in a hurry. Byby.
M.
Fifteen yesterday. Curious, fifteenth of the month too. Her first
birthday away from home. Separation. Remember the summer morning she was
born, running to knock up Mrs Thornton in Denzille street. Jolly old woman.
Lots of babies she must have helped into the world. She knew from the first
poor little Rudy wouldn't live. Well, God is good, sir. She knew at once. He
would be eleven now if he had lived.
His vacant face stared pitying at the postscript. Excuse bad writing.
Hurry. Piano downstairs. Coming out of her shell. Row with her in the XL
Cafи about the bracelet. Wouldn't eat her cakes or speak or look. Saucebox.
He sopped other dies of bread in the gravy and ate piece after piece of
kidney. Twelve and six a week. Not much. Still, she might do worse. Music
hall stage. Young student. He drank a draught of cooler tea to wash down his
meal. Then he read the letter again: twice.
O well: she knows how to mind herself. But if not? No, nothing has
happened. Of course it might. Wait in any case till it does. A wild piece of
goods. Her slim legs running up the staircase. Destiny. Ripening now. Vain:
very.
He smiled with troubled affection at the kitchen window.
Day I caught her in the street pinching her cheeks to make them red.
An&Aelig;mic a little. Was given milk too long. On the Erin's King that day
round the Kish. Damned old tub pitching about. Not a bit funky. Her pale
blue scarf loose in the wind with her hair.
All dimpled cheek's and curls,
Your head it simply swirls.
Seaside girls. Torn envelope. Hands stuck in his trousers pockets,
jarvey off for the day, singing. Friend of the family. Swurls, he says. Pier
with lamps, summer evening, band,
Those girls, those girls,
Those lovely seaside girls'
Milly too. Young kisses: the first. Far away now past. Mrs Marion.
Reading lying back now, counting the strands of her hair, smiling, braiding.
A soft qualm regret, flowed down his backbone, increasing. Will happen,
yes. Prevent. Useless: can't move. Girl's sweet light lips. Will happen too.
He felt the flowing qualm spread over him. Useless to move now. Lips kissed,
kissing kissed. Full gluey woman's lips.
Better where she is down there: away. Occupy her. Wanted a dog to pass
the time. Might take a trip down there. August bank holiday, only two and
six return. Six weeks off however. Might work a press pass. Or through
M'Coy.
The cat, having cleaned all her fur, returned to the meatstained paper,
nosed at it and stalked to the door. She looked back at him, mewing. Wants
to go out. Wait before a door sometime it will open. Let her wait. Has the
fidgets. Electric. Thunder in the air. Was washing at her ear with her back
to the fire too.
He felt heavy, full: then a gentle loosening of his bowels. He stood
up, undoing the waistband of his trousers. The cat mewed to him.
-- Miaow! he said in answer. Wait till I'm ready.
Heaviness: hot day coming. Too much trouble to fag up the stairs to the
landing.
A paper. He liked to read at stool. Hope no ape comes knocking just as
I'm.
In the table drawer he found an old number of Titbits. He folded it
under his armpit, went to the door and opened it. The cat went up in soft
bounds. Ah, wanted to go upstairs, curl up in a ball on the bed.
Listening, he heard her voice:
-- Come, come, pussy. Come.
He went out through the backdoor into the garden: stood to listen
towards the next garden. No sound. Perhaps hanging clothes out to dry. The
maid was in the garden. Fine morning.
He bent down to regard a lean file of spearmint growing by the wall.
Make a summerhouse here. Scarlet runners. Virginia creepers. Want to manure
the whole place over, scabby soil. A coat of liver of sulphur. All soil like
that without dung. Household slops. Loam, what is this that is? The hens in
the next garden: their droppings are very good top dressing. Best of all
though are the cattle, especially when they are fed on those oilcakes. Mulch
of dung. Best thing to clean ladies' kid gloves. Dirty cleans. Ashes too.
Reclaim the whole place. Grow peas in that corner there. Lettuce. Always
have fresh greens then. Still gardens have their drawbacks. That bee or
bluebottle here Whitmonday.
He walked on. Where is my hat, by the way? Must have put it back on the
peg. Or hanging up on the floor. Funny, I don't remember that. Hallstand too
full. Four umbrellas, her rain cloak. Picking up the letters. Drago's
shopbell ringing. Queer I was just thinking that moment. Brown brilliantined
hair over his collar. Just had a wash and brushup. Wonder have I time for a
bath this morning. Tara street. Chap in the paybox there got away James
Stephens they say. O'Brien.
Deep voice that fellow Dlugacz has. Agenda what is it? Now, my miss.
Enthusiast.
He kicked open the crazy door of the jakes. Better be careful not to
get these trousers dirty for the funeral. He went in, bowing his head under
the low lintel. Leaving the door ajar, amid the stench of mouldy limewash
and stale cobwebs he undid his braces. Before sitting down he peered through
a chink up at the nextdoor window. The king was in his counting house.
Nobody.
Asquat on the cuckstool he folded out his paper turning its pages over
on his bared knees. Something new and easy. No great hurry. Keep it a bit.
Our prize titbit. Matcham's Masterstrike. Written by Mr Philip Beaufoy,
Playgoers' club, London. Payment at the rate of one guinea a column has been
made to the writer. Three and a half. Three pounds three. Three pounds
thirteen and six.
Quietly he read, restraining himself, the first column and, yielding
but resisting, began the second. Midway, his last resistance yielding, he
allowed his bowels to ease themselves quietly as he read, reading still
patiently, that slight constipation of yesterday quite gone. Hope it's not
too big bring on piles again. No, just right. So. Ah! Costive one tabloid of
cascara sagrada. Life might be so. It did not move or touch him but it was
something quick and neat. Print anything now. Silly season. He read on,
seated calm above his own rising smell. Neat certainly. Matcham often thinks
of the master-stroke by which he won the laughing witch who now. Begins and
ends morally. Hand in hand. Smart. He glanced back through what he had read
and, while feeling his water flow quietly, he envied kindly Mr Beaufoy who
had written it and received payment of three pounds thirteen and six.
Might manage a sketch. By Mr and Mrs L. M. Bloom. Invent a story for
some proverb which? Time I used to try jotting down on my cuff what she said
dressing. Dislike dressing together. Nicked myself shaving. Biting her
nether Hip, hooking the placket of her skirt. Timing her. 9.15. Did Roberts
pay you yet? 9.20. What had Gretta Conroy on? 9.23. What possessed me to buy
this comb? 9.24. I'm swelled after that cabbage. A speck of dust on the
patent leather of her boot.
Rubbing smartly in turn each welt against her stocking calf. Morning
after the bazaar dance when May's band played Ponchielli's dance of the
hours. Explain that morning hours, noon, then evening coming on, then night
hours. Washing her teeth. That was the first night. Her head dancing. Her
fansticks clicking. Is that Boylan well off? He has money. Why? I noticed he
had a good smell off his breath dancing. No use humming then. Allude to it.
Strange kind of music that last night. The mirror was in shadow. She rubbed
her handglass briskly on her woollen vest against her full wagging bub.
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, seawardpointed ears. His snout lifted barked at the
wavenoise, herds of seamorse. They serpented towards his feet, curling,
unfurling many crests, every ninth, breaking, plashing, from far, from
farther out, waves and waves.
Cocklepickers. They waded a little 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, sniffing 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 bootless
kick sent him unscathed across a spit of sand, crouched in flight. He slunk
back in a curve. Doesn't see me. Along by the edge of the mole he lolloped,
dawdled, smelt a rock and from under a cocked hindleg pissed against it. He
trotted forward and, lifting his hindleg, pissed quick short at an unsmelt
rock. The simple pleasures of the poor. His hindpaws then 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 spouse-breach, vulturing the dead.
After he woke me up last night same dream or was it? Wait. Open
hallway. Street of harlots. Remember. Haroun al Raschid. I am almosting it.
That man led me, spoke. I was not afraid. The melon he had he held against
my face. Smiled: creamfruit 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 followed: 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 Romeville. 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 dimber wapping dell. A
shefiend's whiteness under her rancid rags. Fumbally'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 tunbelly calls this, frate porcospino.
Unfallen 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 evening lands. She trudges, schlepps,
trains, drags, trascines her load. A tide westering, moondrawn, in her wake.
Tides, myriadislanded, within her, blood not mine, oinopa ponton, 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: mouth to her womb.
Oomb, allwombing tomb. His mouth moulded issuing breath, unspeeched:
ooeeehah: roar of cataractic planets, globed, blazing, roaring
wayawayawayawayawayaway. 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 scribbled words.
That's twice I forgot to take slips from the library counter.
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 borrowed 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? Who watches me here? Who ever anywhere
will read these written words? Signs on a white field. Somewhere to someone
in your flutiest 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 field. 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 stereoscope. Click does the trick. You find my
words dark. Darkness is in our souls, do you not think? Flutier. Our souls,
shame-wounded 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 blue
hell am I bringing her beyond the veil? Into the ineluctable modality of the
ineluctable visuality. She, she, she. What she? The virgin 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 jess of her
sunshade. She lives in Leeson park, with a grief and kickshaws, a lady of
letters. Talk that to someone 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 movement 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 southing
sun. I am caught in this burning scene. Pan's hour, the faunal noon. Among
gumheavy serpentplants, 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 broadtoed boots, a buck's castoffs
nebeneinander: 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 delighted 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
greengoldenly lagoons of sand, rising, 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 foampool, flower unfurling.
Under the upswelling tide he saw the writhing weeds lift languidly and
sway reluctant arms, hising up their petticoats, in whispering water swaying
and upturning coy silver fronds. Day by day: night by night: lifted, flooded
and let fall. Lord, they are weary: and, whispered to, they sigh. Saint
Ambrose heard it, sigh of leaves and waves, waiting, awaiting the fullness
of their times, diebus ac noctibus iniurias patiens ingemiscit. To no end
gathered: vainly then released, forth flowing, wending back: loom of the
moon. Weary too in sight of lovers, lascivious men, a naked woman shining in
her courts, she draws a toil of waters.
Five fathoms out there. Full fathom 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, bobbing landward, a pace a pace a porpoise.
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. A quiver of minnows, fat of a
spongy titbit, flash through the slits of his buttoned trouserfly. 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 saltblue. 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 enjoyed 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 his my sandal
shoon. Where? To evening lands. Evening will find itself.
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. Giю. For the old hag with the yellow teeth. And Monsieur Drumont,
gentleman journalist. Giю. 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
money? That one. Toothless Kinch, the superman. Why is that, I wonder, or
does it mean something perhaps?
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,
carefully. For the rest let look who will.
Behind. Perhaps there is someone.
He turned his face over a shoulder, rere regardant. Moving through the
air high spars of a threemaster, her sails brailed up on the crosstrees,
homing, upstream, silently moving, a silent ship.
MR LEOPOLD BLOOM ATE WITH RELISH THE INNER ORGANS OF BEASTS and fowls.
He liked thick giblet soup, nutty gizzards, a stuffed roast heart, liver
slices fried with crustcrumbs, fried hencod's roes. Most of all he liked
grilled mutton kidneys which gave to his palate a fine tang of faintly
scented urine.
Kidneys were in his mind as he moved about the kitchen softly, righting
her breakfast things on the humpy tray. Gelid light and air were in the
kitchen but out of doors gentle summer morning everywhere. Made him feel a
bit peckish.
The coals were reddening.
Another slice of bread and butter: three, four: right. She didn't like
her plate full. Right. He turned from the tray, lifted the kettle off the
hob and set it sideways on the fire. It sat there, dull and squat, its spout
stuck out. Cup of tea soon. Good. Mouth dry. The cat walked stiffly round a
leg of the table with tail on high.
-- Mkgnao!
-- O, there you are, Mr Bloom said, turning from the fire.
The cat mewed in answer and stalked again stiffly round a leg of the
table, mewing. Just how she stalks over my writing-table. Prr. Scratch my
head. Prr.
Mr Bloom watched curiously, kindly, the lithe black form. Clean to see:
the gloss of her sleek hide, the white button under the butt of her tail,
the green flashing eyes. He bent down to her, his hands on his knees.
-- Milk for the pussens, he said.
-- Mrkgnao! the cat cried.
They call them stupid. They understand what we say better than we
understand them. She understands all she wants to. Vindictive too. Wonder
what I look like to her. Height of a tower? No, she can jump me.
-- Afraid of the chickens she is, he said mockingly. Afraid of the
chookchooks. I never saw such a stupid pussens as the pussens.
Cruel. Her nature. Curious mice never squeal. Seem to like it.
-- Mrkrgnao! the cat said loudly.
She blinked up out of her avid shameclosing eyes, mewing plaintively
and long, showing him her milkwhite teeth. He watched the dark eyeslits
narrowing with greed till her eyes were green stones. Then he went to the
dresser, took the jug Hanlon's milkman had just filled for him, poured
warmbubbled milk on a saucer and set it slowly on the floor.
-- Gurrhr! she cried, running to lap.
He watched the bristles shining wirily in the weak light as she tipped
three times and licked lightly. Wonder is it true if you clip them they
can't mouse after. Why? They shine in the dark, perhaps, the tips. Or kind
of feelers in the dark, perhaps.
He listened to her licking lap. Ham and eggs, no. No good eggs with
this drouth. Want pure fresh water. Thursday: not a good day either for a
mutton kidney at Buckley's. Fried with butter, a shake of pepper. Better a
pork kidney at Dlugacz's. While the kettle is boiling. She lapped slower,
then licking the saucer clean. Why are their tongues so rough? To lap
better, all porous holes. Nothing she can eat? He glanced round him. No.
On quietly creaky boots he went up the staircase to the hall, paused by
the bedroom door. She might like something tasty. Thin bread and butter she
likes in the morning. Still perhaps: once in a way.
He said softly in the bare hall:
-- I am going round the corner. Be back in a minute.
And when he had heard his voice say it he added:
-- You don't want anything for breakfast?
A sleepy soft grunt answered:
-- Mn.
No. She did not want anything. He heard then a warm heavy sigh, softer,
as she turned over and the loose brass quoits of the bedstead jingled. Must
get those settled really. Pity. All the way from Gibraltar. Forgotten any
little Spanish she knew. Wonder what her father gave for it. Old style. Ah
yes, of course. Bought it at the governor's auction. Got a short knock. Hard
as nails at a bargain, old Tweedy. Yes, sir. At Plevna that was. I rose from
the ranks, sir, and I'm proud of it. Still he had brains enough to make that
corner in stamps. Now that was farseeing.
His hand took his hat from the peg over his initialled heavy overcoat,
and his lost property office secondhand waterproof. Stamps: stickyback
pictures. Daresay lots of officers are in the swim too. Course they do. The
sweated legend in the crown of his hat told him mutely: Plasto's high grade
ha. He peeped quickly inside the leather headband. White slip of paper.
Quite safe.
On the doorstep he felt in his hip pocket for the latchkey. Not there.
In the trousers I left off. Must get it. Potato I have. Creaky wardrobe. No
use disturbing her. She turned over sleepily that time. He pulled the
halldoor to after him very quietly, more, till the footleaf dropped gently
over the threshold, a limp lid. Looked shut. All right till I come back
anyhow.
He crossed to the bright side, avoiding the loose cellarflap of number
seventyfive. The sun was nearing the steeple of George's church. Be a warm
day I fancy. Specially in these black clothes feel it more. Black conducts,
reflects (refracts is it?), the heat. But I couldn't go in that light suit.
Make a picnic of it. His eyelids sank quietly often as he walked in happy
warmth. Boland's breadvan delivering with trays our daily but she prefers
yesterday's loaves turnovers crisp crowns hot. Makes you feel young.
Somewhere in the east: early morning: set off at dawn, travel round in front
of the sun, steal a day's march on him. Keep it up for ever never grow a day
older technically. Walk along a strand, strange land, come to a city gate,
sentry there, old ranker too, old Tweedy's big moustaches leaning on a long
kind of a spear. Wander through awned streets. Turbaned faces going by. Dark
caves of carpet shops, big man, Turko the terrible, seated crosslegged
smoking a coiled pipe. Cries of sellers in the streets. Drink water scented
with fennel, sherbet. Wander along all day. Might meet a robber or two.
Well, meet him. Getting on to sundown. The shadows of the mosques along the
pillars: priest with a scroll rolled up. A shiver of the trees, signal, the
evening wind. I pass on. Fading gold sky. A mother watches from her doorway.
She calls her children home in their dark language. High wall: beyond
strings twanged. Night sky moon, violet, colour of Molly's new garters.
Strings. Listen. A girl playing one of these instruments what do you call
them: dulcimers. I pass.
Probably not a bit like it really. Kind of stuff you read: in the track
of the sun. Sunburst on the titlepage. He smiled, pleasing himself. What
Arthur Griffith said about the headpiece over the Freeman leader: a homerule
sun rising up in the northwest from the laneway behind the bank of Ireland.
He prolonged his pleased smile. Ikey touch that: homerule sun rising up in
the northwest.
He approached Larry O'Rourke's. From the cellar grating floated up the
flabby gush of porter. Through the open doorway the bar squirted out whiffs
of ginger, teadust, biscuitmush. Good house, however: just the end of the
city traffic. For instance M'Auley's down there: n. g. as position. Of
course if they ran a tramline along the North Circular from the cattle
market to the quays value would go up like a shot.
Bald head over the blind. Cute old codger. No use canvassing him for an
ad. Still he knows his own business best. There he Is, sure enough, my bold
Larry, leaning against the sugarbin in his shirtsleeves watching the aproned
curate swab up with mop and bucket. Simon Dedalus takes him off to a tee
with his eyes screwed up. Do you know what I'm going to tell you? What's
that, Mr O'Rourke? Do you know what? The Russians, they'd only be an eight
o'clock breakfast for the Japanese.
Stop and say a word: about the funeral perhaps. Sad thing about poor
Dignam, Mr O'Rourke.
Turning into Dorset street he said freshly in greeting through the
doorway:
-- Good day, Mr O'Rourke.
-- Good day to you.
-- Lovely weather, sir.
-- 'Tis all that.
Where do they get the money? Coming up redheaded curates from the
county Leitrim, rinsing empties and old man in the cellar. Then, lo and
behold, they blossom out as Adam Findlaters or Dan Tallons. Then think of
the competition. General thirst. Good puzzle would be cross Dublin without
passing a pub. Save it they can't. Off the drunks perhaps. Put down three
and carry five. What is that? A bob here and there, dribs and drabs. On the
wholesale orders perhaps. Doing a double shuffle with the town travellers.
Square it with the boss and we'll split the job, see?
How much would that tot to off the porter in the month? Say ten barrels
of stuff. Say he got ten per cent off. O more. Ten. Fifteen. He passed Saint
Joseph's, National school. Brats' clamour. Windows open. Fresh air helps
memory. Or a lilt. Ahbeesee defeegee kelomen opeecue rustyouvee double you.
Boys are they? Yes. Inishturk. Inishark. Inishboffin. At their joggerfry.
Mine. Slieve Bloom.
He halted before Dlugacz's window, staring at the hanks of sausages,
polonies, black and white. Fifty multiplied by. The figures whitened in his
mind unsolved: displeased, he let them fade. The shiny links packed with
forcemeat fed his gaze and he breathed in tranquilly the lukewarm breath of
cooked spicy pig's blood.
A kidney oozed bloodgouts on the willowpatterned dish: the last. He
stood by the nextdoor girl at the counter. Would she buy it too, calling the
items from a slip in her hand. Chapped: washing soda. And a pound and a half
of Denny's sausages. His eyes rested on her vigorous hips. Woods his name
is. Wonder what he does. Wife is oldfish. New blood. No followers allowed.
Strong pair of arms. Whacking a carpet on the clothesline. She does whack
it, by George. The way her crooked skirt swings at each whack.
The ferreteyed porkbutcher folded the sausages he had snipped off with
blotchy fingers, sausagepink. Sound meat there like a stallfed heifer.
He took up a page from the pile of cut sheets. The model farm at
Kinnereth on the lakeshore of Tiberias. Can become ideal winter sanatorium.
Moses Montefiore. I thought he was. Farmhouse, wall round it, blurred cattle
cropping. He held the page from him: interesting: read it nearer, the
blurred cropping cattle, the page rustling. A young white heifer. Those
mornings in the cattlemarket the beasts lowing in their pens, branded sheep,
flop and fall of dung, the breeders in hobnailed boots trudging through the
litter, slapping a palm on a ripemeated hindquarter, there's a prime one,
unpeeled switches in their hands. He held the page aslant patiently, bending
his senses and his will, his soft subject gaze at rest. The crooked skirt
swinging whack by whack by whack.
The porkbutcher snapped two sheets from the pile, wrapped up her prime
sausages and made a red grimace.
-- Now, my miss, he said.
She tendered a coin, smiling boldly, holding her thick wrist out.
-- Thank you, my miss. And one shilling threepence change. For you,
please?
Mr Bloom pointed quickly. To catch up and walk behind her if she went
slowly, behind her moving hams. Pleasant to see first thing in the morning.
Hurry up, damn it. Make hay while the sun shines. She stood outside the shop
in sunlight and sauntered lazily to the right. He sighed down his nose: they
never understand. Sodachapped hands. Crusted toenails too. Brown scapulars
in tatters, defending her both ways. The sting of disregard glowed to weak
pleasure within his breast. For another a constable off duty cuddled her in
Eccles Lane. They like them sizeable. Prime sausage. O please, Mr Policeman,
I'm lost in the wood.
-- Threepence, please.
His hand accepted the moist tender gland and slid it into a sidepocket.
Then it fetched up three coins from his trousers' pocket and laid them on
the rubber prickles. They lay, were read quickly and quickly slid, disc by
disc, into the till.
-- Thank you, sir. Another time.
A speck of eager fire from foxeyes thanked him. He withdrew his gaze
after an instant. No: better not: another time.
-- Good morning, he said, moving away.
-- Good morning, sir.
No sign. Gone. What matter?
He walked back along Dorset street, reading gravely. Agendath Netaim:
planter's company. To purchase vast sandy tracts from Turkish government and
plant with eucalyptus trees. Excellent for shade, fuel and construction.
Orangegroves and immense melonfields north of Jaffa. You pay eight marks and
they plant a dunam of land for you with olives, oranges, almonds or citrons.
Olives cheaper: oranges need artificial irrigation. Every year you get a
sending of the crop. Your name entered for life as owner in the book of the
union. Can pay ten down and the balance in yearly instalments.
Bleibtreustrasse 34, Berlin, W. 15.
Nothing doing. Still an idea behind it.
He looked at the cattle, blurred in silver heat. Silvered powdered
olivetrees. Quiet long days: pruning ripening. Olives are packed in jars,
eh? I have a few left from Andrews. Molly spitting them out. Knows the taste
of them now. Oranges in tissue paper packed in crates. Citrons too. Wonder
is poor Citron still alive in Saint Kevin's parade. And Mastiansky with the
old cither. Pleasant evenings we had then. Molly in Citron's basketchair.
Nice to hold, cool waxen fruit, hold in the hand, lift it to the nostrils
and smell the perfume. Like that, heavy, sweet, wild perfume. Always the
same, year after year. They fetched high prices too Moisel told me. Arbutus
place: Pleasants street: pleasant old times. Must be without a flaw, he
said. Coming all that way: Spain, Gibraltar, Mediterranean, the Levant.
Crates lined up on the quayside at Jaffa, chap ticking them off in a book,
navvies handling them in soiled dungarees. There's whatdoyoucallhim out of.
How do you? Doesn't see. Chap you know just to salute bit of a bore. His
back is like that Norwegian captain's. Wonder if I'll meet him today.
Watering cart. To provoke the rain. On earth as it is in heaven.
A cloud began to cover the sun wholly slowly wholly. Grey. Far.
No, not like that. A barren land, bare waste. Vulcanic lake, the dead
sea: no fish, weedless, sunk deep in the earth. No wind would lift those
waves, grey metal, poisonous foggy waters. Brimstone they called it raining
down: the cities of the plain: Sodom, Gomorrah, Edom. All dead names. A dead
sea in a dead land, grey and old. Old now. It bore the oldest, the first
race. A bent hag crossed from Cassidy's clutching a noggin bottle by the
neck. The oldest people. Wandered far away over all the earth, captivity to
captivity, multiplying, dying, being born everywhere. It lay there now. Now
it could bear no more. Dead: an old woman's: the grey sunken cunt of the
world.
Desolation.
Grey horror seared his flesh. Folding the page into his pocket he
turned into Eccles Street, hurrying homeward. Cold oils slid along his
veins, chilling his blood: age crusting him with a salt cloak. Well, I am
here now. Morning mouth bad images. Got up wrong side of the bed. Must begin
again those Sandow's exercises. On the hands down. Blotchy brown brick
houses. Number eighty still unlet. Why is that? Valuation is only
twenty-eight. Towers, Battersby, North, MacArthur: parlour windows plastered
with bills. Plasters on a sore eye. To smell the gentle smoke of tea, fume
of the pan, sizzling butter. Be near her ample bedwarmed flesh. Yes, yes.
Quick warm sunlight came running from Berkeley Road, swiftly, in slim
sandals, along the brightening footpath. Runs, she runs to meet me, a girl
with gold hair on the wind.
Two letters and a card lay on the hallfloor. He stopped and gathered
them. Mrs Marion Bloom. His quick heart slowed at once. Bold hand. Mrs
Marion.
-- Poldy!
Entering the bedroom he halfclosed his eyes and walked through warm
yellow twilight towards her tousled head.
-- Who are the letters for?
He looked at them. Mullingar. Milly.
-- A letter for me from Milly, he said carefully, and a card to you.
And a letter for you.
He laid her card and letter on the twill bedspread near the curve of
her knees.
-- Do you want the blind up?
Letting the blind up by gentle tugs halfway his backward eye saw her
glance at the letter and tuck it under her pillow.
-- That do? he asked, turning.
She was reading the card, propped on her elbow.
-- She got the things, she said.
He waited till she had laid the card aside and curled herself back
slowly with a snug sigh.
-- Hurry up with that tea, she said. I'm parched.
-- The kettle is boiling, he said.
But he delayed to clear the chair: her striped petticoat, tossed soiled
linen: and lifted all in an armful on to the foot of the bed.
As he went down the kitchen stairs she called:
-- Poldy!
-- What?
-- Scald the teapot.
On the boil sure enough: a plume of steam from the spout. He scalded
and rinsed out the teapot and put in four full spoons of tea, tilting the
kettle then to let water flow in. Having set it to draw, he took off the
kettle and crushed the pan flat on the live coals and watched the lump of
butter slide and melt. While he unwrapped the kidney the cat mewed hungrily
against him. Give her too much meat she won't mouse. Say they won't eat
pork. Kosher. Here. He let the bloodsmeared paper fall to her and dropped
the kidney amid the sizzling butter sauce. Pepper. He sprinkled it through
his fingers, ringwise, from the chipped eggcup.
Then he slit open his letter, glancing down the page and over. Thanks:
new tam: Mr Coghlan: lough Owel picnic: young student: Blazes Boylan's
seaside girls.
The tea was drawn. He filled his own moustachecup, sham crown Derby,
smiling. Silly Milly's birthday gift. Only five she was then. No wait: four.
I gave her the amberoid necklace she broke. Putting pieces of folded brown
paper in the letterbox for her. He smiled, pouring.
O Milly Bloom, you are my darling.
You are my looking glass from night to morning.
I'd rather have you without a farthing
Than Katey Keogh with her ass and garden.
Poor old professor Goodwin. Dreadful old case. Still he was a courteous
old chap. Oldfashioned way he used to bow Molly off the platform. And the
little mirror in his silk hat. The night Milly brought it into the parlour.
O, look what I found in professor Goodwin's hat! All we laughed. Sex
breaking out even then. Pert little piece she was.
He prodded a fork into the kidney and slapped it over: then fitted the
teapot on the tray. Its hump bumped as he took it up. Everything on it?
Bread and butter, four, sugar, spoon, her cream. Yes. He carried it
upstairs, his thumb hooked in the teapot handle.
Nudging the door open with his knee he carried the tray in and set it
on the chair by the bedhead.
-- What a time you were, she said.
She set the brasses jingling as she raised herself briskly, an elbow on
the pillow. He looked calmly down on her bulk and between her large soft
bubs, sloping within her nightdress like a shegoat's udder. The warmth of
her couched body rose on the air, mingling with the fragrance of the tea she
poured.
A strip of torn envelope peeped from under the dimpled pillow. In the
act of going he stayed to straighten the bedspread.
-- Who was the letter from? he asked.
Bold hand. Marion.
-- O, Boylan, she said. He's bringing the programme.
-- What are you singing?
-- La ci darem with J. C. Doyle, she said, and Love's Old Sweet Song.
Her full lips, drinking, smiled. Rather stale smell that incense leaves
next day. Like foul flowerwater.
-- Would you like the window open a little?
She doubled a slice of bread into her mouth, asking:
-- What time is the funeral?
-- Eleven, I think, he answered. I didn't see the paper.
Following the pointing of her finger he took up a leg of her soiled
drawers from the bed. No? Then, a twisted grey garter looped round a
stocking: rumpled, shiny sole.
-- No: that book.
Other stocking. Her petticoat.
-- It must have fell down, she said.
He felt here and there. Voglio e non vorvez. Wonder if she pronounces
that right: voglio. Not in the bed. Must have slid down. He stooped and
lifted the valance. The book, fallen, sprawled against the bulge of the
orange-keyed chamberpot.
-- Show here, she said. I put a mark in it. There's a word I wanted to
ask you.
She swallowed a draught of tea from her cup held by nothandle and,
having wiped her fingertips smartly on the blanket, began to search the text
with the hairpin till she reached the word.
-- Met him what? he asked.
-- Here, she said. What does that mean?
He leaned downwards and read near her polished thumbnail.
-- Metempsychosis?
-- Yes. Who's he when he's at home?
-- Metempsychosis, he said, frowning. It's Greek: from the Greek. That
means the transmigration of souls.
-- O, rocks! she said. Tell us in plain words.
He smiled, glancing askance at her mocking eye. The same young eyes.
The first night after the charades. Dolphin's Barn. He turned over the
smudged pages. Ruby: the Pride of the Ring. Hello. Illustration. Fierce
Italian with carriagewhip. Must be Ruby pride of the on the floor naked.
Sheet kindly lent. The monster Maffei desisted and flung his victim from him
with an oath. Cruelty behind it all. Doped animals. Trapeze at Hengler's.
Had to look the other way. Mob gaping. Break your neck and we'll break our
sides. Families of them. Bone them young so they metempsychosis. That we
live after death. Our souls. That a man's soul after he dies. Dignam's
soul...
-- Did you finish it? he asked.
-- Yes, she said. There's nothing smutty in it. Is she in love with the
first fellow all the time?
-- Never read it. Do you want another?
-- Yes. Get another of Paul de Kock's. Nice name he has.
She poured more tea into her cup, watching its flow sideways.
Must get that Capel street library book renewed or they'll write to
Kearney, my guarantor. Reincarnation: that's the word.
-- Some people believe, he said, that we go on living in another body
after death, that we lived before. They call it reincarnation. That we all
lived before on the earth thousands of years ago or some other planet. They
say we have forgotten it. Some say they remember their past lives.
The sluggish cream wound curdling spirals through her tea. Better
remind her of the word: metempsychosis. An example would be better. An
example.
The Bath of the Nymph over the bed. Given away with the Easter number
of Photo Bits: Splendid masterpiece in art colours. Tea before you put milk
in. Not unlike her with her hair down: slimmer. Three and six I gave for the
frame. She said it would look nice over the bed. Naked nymphs: Greece: and
for instance all the people that lived then.
He turned the pages back.
-- Metempsychosis, he said, is what the ancient Greeks called it. They
used to believe you could be changed into an animal or a tree, for instance.
What they called nymphs, for example.
Her spoon ceased to stir up the sugar. She gazed straight before her,
inhaling through her arched nostrils.
-- There's a smell of burn, she said. Did you leave anything on the
fire?
-- The kidney! he cried suddenly.
He fitted the book roughly into his inner pocket and, stubbing his toes
against the broken commode, hurried out towards the smell, stepping hastily
down the stairs with a flurried stork's legs. Pungent smoke shot up in an
angry Jet from a side of the pan. By prodding a prong of the fork under the
kidney he detached it and turned it turtle on its back. Only a little
burned. He tossed it off the pan on to a plate and let the scanty brown
gravy trickle over it.
Cup of tea now. He sat down, cut and buttered a slice of the loaf. He
shore away the burnt flesh and flung it to the cat. Then he put a forkful
into his mouth, chewing with discernment the toothsome pliant meat. Done to
a turn. A mouthful of tea. Then he cut away dies of bread, sopped one in the
gravy and put it in his mouth. What was that about some young student and a
picnic? He creased out the letter at his side, reading it slowly as he
chewed, sopping another die of bread in the gravy and raising it to his
mouth.
Dearest Papli,
Thanks ever so much for the lovely birthday present. It suits me
splendid. Everyone says I'm quite the belle in my new tam. I got mummy's
lovely box of creams and am writing. They are lovely. I am getting on
swimming in the photo business now. Mr Coghlan took one of me and Mrs will
send when developed. We did great biz yesterday. Fair day and all the beef
to the heels were in. We are going to lough Owel on Monday with a few
friends to make a scrap picnic. Give my love to mummy and to yourself a big
kiss and thanks. I hear them at the piano downstairs. There is to be a
concert in the Greville Arms on Saturday. There is a young student comes
here some evenings named Bannon his cousins or something are big swells he
sings Boylan's (I was on the pop of writing Blazes Boylan's) song about
those seaside girls. Tell him silly Milly sends my best respects. Must now
close with fondest love.
Your fond daughter, MILLY.
P.S. Excuse bad writing, am in a hurry. Byby.
M.
Fifteen yesterday. Curious, fifteenth of the month too. Her first
birthday away from home. Separation. Remember the summer morning she was
born, running to knock up Mrs Thornton in Denzille street. Jolly old woman.
Lots of babies she must have helped into the world. She knew from the first
poor little Rudy wouldn't live. Well, God is good, sir. She knew at once. He
would be eleven now if he had lived.
His vacant face stared pitying at the postscript. Excuse bad writing.
Hurry. Piano downstairs. Coming out of her shell. Row with her in the XL
Cafи about the bracelet. Wouldn't eat her cakes or speak or look. Saucebox.
He sopped other dies of bread in the gravy and ate piece after piece of
kidney. Twelve and six a week. Not much. Still, she might do worse. Music
hall stage. Young student. He drank a draught of cooler tea to wash down his
meal. Then he read the letter again: twice.
O well: she knows how to mind herself. But if not? No, nothing has
happened. Of course it might. Wait in any case till it does. A wild piece of
goods. Her slim legs running up the staircase. Destiny. Ripening now. Vain:
very.
He smiled with troubled affection at the kitchen window.
Day I caught her in the street pinching her cheeks to make them red.
An&Aelig;mic a little. Was given milk too long. On the Erin's King that day
round the Kish. Damned old tub pitching about. Not a bit funky. Her pale
blue scarf loose in the wind with her hair.
All dimpled cheek's and curls,
Your head it simply swirls.
Seaside girls. Torn envelope. Hands stuck in his trousers pockets,
jarvey off for the day, singing. Friend of the family. Swurls, he says. Pier
with lamps, summer evening, band,
Those girls, those girls,
Those lovely seaside girls'
Milly too. Young kisses: the first. Far away now past. Mrs Marion.
Reading lying back now, counting the strands of her hair, smiling, braiding.
A soft qualm regret, flowed down his backbone, increasing. Will happen,
yes. Prevent. Useless: can't move. Girl's sweet light lips. Will happen too.
He felt the flowing qualm spread over him. Useless to move now. Lips kissed,
kissing kissed. Full gluey woman's lips.
Better where she is down there: away. Occupy her. Wanted a dog to pass
the time. Might take a trip down there. August bank holiday, only two and
six return. Six weeks off however. Might work a press pass. Or through
M'Coy.
The cat, having cleaned all her fur, returned to the meatstained paper,
nosed at it and stalked to the door. She looked back at him, mewing. Wants
to go out. Wait before a door sometime it will open. Let her wait. Has the
fidgets. Electric. Thunder in the air. Was washing at her ear with her back
to the fire too.
He felt heavy, full: then a gentle loosening of his bowels. He stood
up, undoing the waistband of his trousers. The cat mewed to him.
-- Miaow! he said in answer. Wait till I'm ready.
Heaviness: hot day coming. Too much trouble to fag up the stairs to the
landing.
A paper. He liked to read at stool. Hope no ape comes knocking just as
I'm.
In the table drawer he found an old number of Titbits. He folded it
under his armpit, went to the door and opened it. The cat went up in soft
bounds. Ah, wanted to go upstairs, curl up in a ball on the bed.
Listening, he heard her voice:
-- Come, come, pussy. Come.
He went out through the backdoor into the garden: stood to listen
towards the next garden. No sound. Perhaps hanging clothes out to dry. The
maid was in the garden. Fine morning.
He bent down to regard a lean file of spearmint growing by the wall.
Make a summerhouse here. Scarlet runners. Virginia creepers. Want to manure
the whole place over, scabby soil. A coat of liver of sulphur. All soil like
that without dung. Household slops. Loam, what is this that is? The hens in
the next garden: their droppings are very good top dressing. Best of all
though are the cattle, especially when they are fed on those oilcakes. Mulch
of dung. Best thing to clean ladies' kid gloves. Dirty cleans. Ashes too.
Reclaim the whole place. Grow peas in that corner there. Lettuce. Always
have fresh greens then. Still gardens have their drawbacks. That bee or
bluebottle here Whitmonday.
He walked on. Where is my hat, by the way? Must have put it back on the
peg. Or hanging up on the floor. Funny, I don't remember that. Hallstand too
full. Four umbrellas, her rain cloak. Picking up the letters. Drago's
shopbell ringing. Queer I was just thinking that moment. Brown brilliantined
hair over his collar. Just had a wash and brushup. Wonder have I time for a
bath this morning. Tara street. Chap in the paybox there got away James
Stephens they say. O'Brien.
Deep voice that fellow Dlugacz has. Agenda what is it? Now, my miss.
Enthusiast.
He kicked open the crazy door of the jakes. Better be careful not to
get these trousers dirty for the funeral. He went in, bowing his head under
the low lintel. Leaving the door ajar, amid the stench of mouldy limewash
and stale cobwebs he undid his braces. Before sitting down he peered through
a chink up at the nextdoor window. The king was in his counting house.
Nobody.
Asquat on the cuckstool he folded out his paper turning its pages over
on his bared knees. Something new and easy. No great hurry. Keep it a bit.
Our prize titbit. Matcham's Masterstrike. Written by Mr Philip Beaufoy,
Playgoers' club, London. Payment at the rate of one guinea a column has been
made to the writer. Three and a half. Three pounds three. Three pounds
thirteen and six.
Quietly he read, restraining himself, the first column and, yielding
but resisting, began the second. Midway, his last resistance yielding, he
allowed his bowels to ease themselves quietly as he read, reading still
patiently, that slight constipation of yesterday quite gone. Hope it's not
too big bring on piles again. No, just right. So. Ah! Costive one tabloid of
cascara sagrada. Life might be so. It did not move or touch him but it was
something quick and neat. Print anything now. Silly season. He read on,
seated calm above his own rising smell. Neat certainly. Matcham often thinks
of the master-stroke by which he won the laughing witch who now. Begins and
ends morally. Hand in hand. Smart. He glanced back through what he had read
and, while feeling his water flow quietly, he envied kindly Mr Beaufoy who
had written it and received payment of three pounds thirteen and six.
Might manage a sketch. By Mr and Mrs L. M. Bloom. Invent a story for
some proverb which? Time I used to try jotting down on my cuff what she said
dressing. Dislike dressing together. Nicked myself shaving. Biting her
nether Hip, hooking the placket of her skirt. Timing her. 9.15. Did Roberts
pay you yet? 9.20. What had Gretta Conroy on? 9.23. What possessed me to buy
this comb? 9.24. I'm swelled after that cabbage. A speck of dust on the
patent leather of her boot.
Rubbing smartly in turn each welt against her stocking calf. Morning
after the bazaar dance when May's band played Ponchielli's dance of the
hours. Explain that morning hours, noon, then evening coming on, then night
hours. Washing her teeth. That was the first night. Her head dancing. Her
fansticks clicking. Is that Boylan well off? He has money. Why? I noticed he
had a good smell off his breath dancing. No use humming then. Allude to it.
Strange kind of music that last night. The mirror was in shadow. She rubbed
her handglass briskly on her woollen vest against her full wagging bub.