III
PREPARATORY
to anything else Mr Bloom brushed off the greater bulk of the shavings and
handed Stephen the hat and ashplant and bucked him up generally in orthodox
Samaritan fashion, which he very badly needed.
His (Stephen's) mind was not exactly what you would call wandering but a
bit unsteady and on his expressed desire for some beverage to drink Mr Bloom,
in view of the hour it was and there being no pumps of Vartry water available
for their ablutions, let alone drinking purposes, hit upon an expedient by suggesting,
off the reel, the propriety of the cabman's shelter, as it was called, hardly a
stonesthrow away near Butt Bridge, where they might hit upon some drinkables in
the shape of a milk and soda or a mineral.
But how to get there was the rub.
For the nonce he was rather nonplussed but inasmuch as they duty plainly
devolved upon him to take some measures on the subject he pondered suitable
ways and means during which Stephen repeatedly yawned. So far as he could see he was rather pale in
the face so that it occurred to him as highly advisable to get a conveyance of
some description which would answer in their then condition, both of them being
e.d. ed, particularly Stephen, always assuming that there was such a thing to
be found. Accordingly, after a few such
preliminaries, as, in spite of his having forgotten to take up his rather
soapsuddy handkerchief after it had done yeoman service in the shaving line,
brushing, they both walked together along Beaver street, or, more properly,
lane, as far as the farrier's and the distinctly fetid atmosphere of the livery
stables at the corner of Montgomery [Foley] street where they made tracks to
the left from thence debouching into Amiens Street round by the corner of Dan
Bergin's. But, as he confidently
anticipated, there was not a sign of a Jehu plying for hire anywhere to be seen
except a fourwheeler, probably engaged by some fellows inside on the spree,
outside the North Star Hotel and there was no symptom of its budging a quarter
of an inch when Mr Bloom, who was anything but a professional whistler,
endeavoured to hail it by emitting a kind of a whistle, holding his arms arched
over his head, twice.
This was a quandary but, bringing
commonsense to bear on it, evidently there was nothing for it but put a good face
on the matter and foot it which they accordingly
did. So, bevelling around by Mullet's
and the Signal House, which they shortly reached, they proceeded perforce in
the direction of Amiens street railway terminus [Connolly station], Mr Bloom
being handicapped by the circumstance that one of the back buttons of his
trousers had, to vary the timehonoured adage, gone the way of all buttons,
though, entering thoroughly into the spirit of the thing, he heroically made
light of the mischance. So, as neither of
them were particularly pressed for time, as it happened, and the temperature
refreshing since it cleared up after the second visitation of Jupiter Pluvius,
they dandered along past by where the empty vehicle was waiting without a fare
or a jarvey. As it so happened a Dublin
United Tramways Company's sandstrewer happening to be returning the elder man
recounted to his companion à propos of the incident his own truly
miraculous escape of some little while back.
They passed the main entrance of the Great Northern railway station, the
starting point for Belfast, where of course all traffic was suspended at that
late hour, and, passing the back door of the morgue (a not very enticing
locality, not to say gruesome to a degree, more especially at night), ultimately
gained the Dock Tavern and in due course turned into Store street, famous for
it C division police station. Between
this point and the high, at present unlit, warehouses of Beresford Place
Stephen thought to think of Ibsen, associated with Baird's, the stonecutter's,
in his mind somehow in Talbot Place, first turning on the right, while the
other, who was acting as his fidus Achates, inhaled with internal
satisfaction the smell of James Rourke's city bakery, situated quite close to
where they were, the very palatable odour indeed of our daily bread, of all
commodities of the public the primary and most indispensable. Bread, the staff of life, earn your bread, O
tell me where is fancy bread? At
Rourke's the baker's, it is said.
En route, to his taciturn, and, not
to put too fine a point on it, not yet perfectly sober companion, Mr Bloom, who
at all events, was in complete possession of his faculties, never more so, in
fact disgustingly sober, spoke a word of caution 're' the dangers of nighttown,
women of ill fame and swell mobsmen, which, barely permissible once in a while,
though not as a habitual practice, was of the nature of a regular deathtrap for
young fellows of his age particularly if they had acquired drinking habits
under the influence of liquor unless you knew a little juijitsu for every
contingency as even a fellow on the broad of his back could administer a nasty
kick if you didn't look out. Highly
providential was the appearance on the scene of Corny Kelleher when Stephen was
blissfully unconscious that, but for that man in the gap turning up at the
eleventh hour, the finis might have been that he might have been a candidate
for the accident ward, or, failing that, the Bridewell and an appearance in the
court next day before Mr Tobias, or, he being the solicitor, rather old Wall,
he meant to say, or Malony which simply spelt ruin for a chap when it got
bruited about. The reason he mentioned
the fact was that a lot of those policemen, whom he cordially disliked, were
admittedly unscrupulous in the service of the Crown and, as Mr Bloom put it,
recalling a case or two in the A Division in
- And that one was Judas, said Stephen,
who up to then had said nothing whatsoever of any kind.
Discussing these and kindred topics they
made a beeline across the back of the Customhouse and passed under the Loop
Line [Butt] bridge when a brazier of coke burning in front of a sentrybox, or
something like one, attracted their rather lagging footsteps. Stephen of his own accord stopped for no
special reason to look at the heap of barren cobblestones and by the light
emanating form the brazier he could just make out the darker figure of the
corporation watchman inside the gloom of the sentrybox. He began to remember that this had happened,
or had been mentioned as having happened, before but it cost him no small
effort before he remembered that he recognised in the sentry a quondam friend
of his father's, Gumley. To avoid a
meeting he drew nearer to the pillars of the railway bridge.
- Someone saluted you, Mr Bloom said.
A figure of middle height on the prowl,
evidently, under the arches saluted again, calling: Night! Stephen, of course, started rather
dizzily and stopped to return the compliment.
Mr Bloom, actuated by motives of inherent delicacy, inasmuch as he
always believed in minding his own business, moved off but nevertheless
remained on the qui vive with just a shade of anxiety though not
funkyish in the least. Although unusual
in the Dublin area, he knew that it was not by any means unknown for
desperadoes who had next to nothing to live on to be about waylaying and
generally terrorising peaceable pedestrians by placing a pistol at their head
in some secluded spot outside the city proper, famished loiterers of the Thames
embankment category they might be hanging about there or simply marauders ready
to decamp with whatever boodle they could in one fell swoop at a moment's notice,
your money or your life, leaving you there to point a moral, gagged and
garotted.
Stephen, that is when the accosting figure
came to close quarters, though he was not in any over sober state himself,
recognised Corley's breath redolent of rotten cornjuice. Lord John Corley, some called him, and his
genealogy came about in this wise. He
was the eldest son of Inspector Corley of the G Division, lately deceased, who
had married a certain Katherine Brophy, the daughter of a Louth farmer. His grandfather, Patrick Michael Corley, of
New Ross, had married the widow of a publican there whose maiden name had been
Katherine (also) Talbot. Rumour had it,
though not proved, that she descended from the house of the Lords Talbot de
Malahide in whose mansion, really an unquestionably fine residence of its kind
and well worth seeing, his mother or aunt or some relative had enjoyed the
distinction of being in service in the washkitchen. This, therefore, was the reason why the still
comparatively young though dissolute man who now addressed Stephen was spoken
of by some with facetious proclivities as Lord John Corley.
Taking Stephen on one side he had the
customary doleful ditty to tell. Not as
much as a farthing to purchase a night's lodgings. His friends had all deserted him. Furthermore, he had a row with Lenehan and
called him to Stephen a mean bloody swab with a sprinkling of other uncalledfor
expressions. He was out of a job and implored
of Stephen to tell him where on God's earth he could get something, anything at
all to do. No, it was the daughter of
the mother in the washkitchen that was fostersister to the heir of the house or
else they were connected through the mother in some way, both occurrences
happening at the same time if the whole thing wasn't a complete fabrication
from start to finish. Anyhow, he was all
in.
- I wouldn't ask you, only, pursued he, on my solemn oath and God knows I'm on the rocks.
- There'll be a job tomorrow or the next
day, Stephen told him, in a boys' school at Dalkey for a gentleman usher. Mr Garret Deasy. Try it.
You may mention my name.
- Ah, God, Corley replied, sure I couldn't
teach in a school, man. I was never one
of your bright ones, he added with a half laugh. Got stuck twice in the
junior at the Christian Brothers.
- I have no place to sleep myself, Stephen
informed him.
Corley, at the first go-off, was inclined
to suspect it was something to do with Stephen being fired out of his digs for
bringing in a bloody tart off the street.
There was a dosshouse in Marlborough street, Mrs Maloney's, but it was
only a tanner touch and full of undesirables but M'Conachie told him you got a
decent enough do in the Brazen Head over in Winetavern street (which was
distantly suggestive to the person addressed of friar Bacon) for a bob. He was starving too, though he hadn't said a
word about it.
Though this sort of thing went on every
other night or very near it still Stephen's feelings got the better of him in a
sense though he knew that Corley's brandnew rigmarole, on a par with the
others, was hardly deserving of much credence.
However, haud ignarus malorum miseris succurrere disco, etcetera,
as the Latin poet remarks, especially as luck would have it he got paid his
screw after every middle of the month on the sixteenth which was the date of
the month as a matter of fact though a good bit of the wherewithal was
demolished. But the cream of the joke
was nothing would get it out of Corley's head that he was living in affluence
and hadn't a thing to do but hand out the needful - whereas. He put his hand in a pocket anyhow, not with
the idea of finding any food there, but thinking he might lend him anything up
to a bob or so in lieu so that he might endeavour at all events and get sufficient
to eat. But the result was in the
negative for, to his chagrin, he found his cash missing. A few broken biscuits were all the result of
his investigation. He tried his hardest
to recollect for the moment whether he had lost, as well he might have, or
left, because in that contingency it was not a pleasant lookout, very much the
reverse, in fact. He was altogether too
fagged out to institute a thorough search though he tried to recollect about
biscuits he dimly remembered. Who now
exactly gave them, or where was, or did he buy?
However, in another pocket he came across what he surmised in the dark
were pennies, erroneously, however, as it turned out.
- Those are halfcrowns, man, Corley
corrected him.
And so in point of fact they turned out to
be. Stephen lent him one of them.
- Thanks, Corley answered. You're a gentleman. I'll pay you back some time. Who's that with you? I saw him a few times in the Bleeding Horse
in
Subsequently, being not quite so down in
the mouth after the two-and-six he got, he informed Stephen about a fellow by
the name of Bags Comisky that he said Stephen knew well out of Fullam's, the
shipchandler's bookkeeper there, that used to be often round in Nagle's back
with O'Mara and a little chap with a stutter the name of Tighe. Anyhow, he was lagged the night before last
and fined ten bob for a drink and disorderly and refusing to go with the
constable.
Mr Bloom in the meanwhile kept dodging
about in the vicinity of the cobblestones near the brazier of coke in front of
the corporation watchman's sentrybox, who, evidently a glutton for work, it
struck him, was having a quiet forty winks for all intents and purposes on his
own private account while Dublin slept.
He threw an odd eye at the same time now and then at Stephen's anything
but immaculately attired interlocutor as if he had seen that nobleman somewhere
or other though where he was not in a position to truthfully state nor had he
the remotest idea when. Being a
levelheaded individual who could give points to not a few in point of shrewd
observation, he also remarked on his very dilapidated hat and slouchy wearing
apparel generally, testifying to a chronic impecuniosity. Probably he was one of his hangerson but for
the matter of that it was merely a question of one preying on his nextdoor
neighbour all round, in every deep, so to put it, a deeper depth and for the
matter of that if the man in the street chanced to be in the dock himself penal
servitude, with or without the option of a fine, would be a very 'rare avis'
altogether. In any case he had a
consummate amount of cool assurance intercepting people at that hour of the
night or morning. Pretty thick that was
certainly.
The pair parted company and Stephen
rejoined Mr Bloom, who, with his practised eye, was not without perceiving that
he had succumbed to the blandiloquence of the other parasite. Alluding to the encounter he said,
laughingly, Stephen, that is:
- He's down on his luck. He asked me to ask you to ask somebody named
Boylan, a billsticker, to give him a job as a sandwichman.
At this intelligence, in which he
seemingly evinced little interest, Mr Bloom gazed abstractedly for the space of
a half a second or so in the direction of a bucket dredger, rejoicing in the
farfamed name of Eblana, moored alongside Customhouse Quay and quite possibly
out of repair, whereupon he observed evasively:
- Everybody gets their own ration of luck,
they say. Now you mention it his face
was familiar to me. But leaving that for
the moment, how much did you part with, he queried, if I am not too
inquisitive?
- Half-a-crown, Stephen responded. I daresay he needs it to sleep somewhere.
- Needs, Mr Bloom ejaculated,
professing not the least surprise at the intelligence, I can quite credit the
assertion and I guarantee he invariably does.
Everyone according to his needs and everyone according
to his deeds. But talking about
things in general, where, added he with a smile, will you sleep yourself? Walking to Sandycove is out of the question
and, even supposing you did, you won't get in after what occurred at Westland
Row [Pearse] station. Simply fag out
there for nothing. I don't mean to
presume to dictate to you in the slightest degree but why did you leave your
father's house?
- To seek misfortune, was Stephen's
answer.
- I met your respected father on a recent
occasion, Mr Bloom diplomatically returned.
Today, in fact, or, to be strictly accurate, on
yesterday. Where does he live at
present? I gathered in the course of
conversation that he had moved.
- I believe he is in Dublin somewhere,
Stephen answered unconcernedly. Why?
- A gifted man, Mr Bloom said of Mr
Dedalus senior, in more respects than one a born raconteur if ever there
was one. He takes great pride, quite
legitimately, out of you. You could go
back, perhaps, he hazarded, still thinking of the very unpleasant scene at
Westland Row terminus when it was perfectly evident that the other two,
Mulligan, that is, and that English tourist friend of his, who eventually
euchred their third companion, were patently trying, as if the whole bally
station belonged to them, to give Stephen the slip in the confusion.
There was no response forthcoming to the
suggestion, however, such as it was, Stephen's mind's eye being too busily
engaged in repicturing his family hearth the last time he saw it, with his
sister, Dilly, sitting by the ingle, her hair hanging down, waiting for some
weak Trinidad shell cocoa that was in the sootcoated kettle to be done so that
she and he could drink it with the oatmeal water for milk after the Friday
hearings they had eaten at two a penny, with an egg apiece for Maggy, Boody and
Katey, the cat meanwhile under the mangle devouring a mess of eggshells and
charred fish heads and bones on a square of brown paper in accordance with the
third precept of the church to fast and abstain on the days commanded, it being
quarter tense or, if not, ember days or something like that.
- No, Mr Bloom repeated again, I wouldn't personally
repose much trust in that boon companion of yours who contributes the humorous
element, Dr Mulligan, as a guide, philosopher, and friend, if I were in your
shoes. He knows which side his bread is
buttered on though in all probability he never realised what it is to be
without regular meals. Of course you
didn't notice as much as I did but it wouldn't occasion me the least surprise
to learn that a pinch of tobacco or some narcotic was put in your drink for
some ulterior object.
He understood, however, from all he heard,
that Dr Mulligan was a versatile allround man, by no means confined to medicine
only, who was rapidly coming to the fore in his line and, if the report was
verified, bade fair to enjoy a flourishing practice in the not too distant
future as a tony medical practitioner drawing a handsome fee for his services
in addition to which professional status his rescue of that man from certain
drowning by artificial respiration and what they call first aid at Skerries, or
Malahide was it? was, he was bound to admit, an exceedingly plucky deed which
he could not too highly praise, so that frankly he was utterly at a loss to
fathom what earthly reason could be at the back of it except he put it down to
sheer cussedness or jealousy, pure and simple.
- Except it simply amounts to one thing
and he is what they call picking your brains, he ventured to throw out.
The guarded glance of half solicitude,
half curiosity, augmented by friendliness, which he gave at Stephen's at
present morose expression of features did not throw a flood of light, none at
all in fact, on the problem as to whether he had let himself be badly
bamboozled, to judge by two or three lowspirited remarks he let drop, or, the
other way about, saw through the affair, and, for some reason or other best
known to himself, allowed matters to more or less ... Grinding poverty did have
that effect and he more than conjectured that, high educational abilities
though he possessed, he experienced no little difficulty in making both ends meet.
Adjacent to the men's public urinal he
perceived an icecream car round which a group of presumably Italians in heated
altercation were getting rid of voluble expressions in their vivacious language
in a particularly animated way, there being some little differences between the
parties.
- Putana madonna,
che ci dia i quattrini! Ho ragione? Culo rotto!
- Intendiamoci. Mezzo sovrano piu ...
- Dice lui, pero.
- Farabutto! Mortacci sui!
Mr Bloom and Stephen entered the cabman's
shelter, an unpretentious wooden structure, where, prior to then, he had
rarely, if ever, been before; the former having previously whispered to the
latter a few hints anent the keeper of it, said to be the once famous
Skin-the-Goat, Fitzharris, the invincible, though he wouldn't vouch for the
actual facts, which quite possibly there was not one vestige of truth in. A few moments later saw our two noctambules
safely seated in a discreet corner, only to be greeted by stares from the
decidedly miscellaneous collection of waifs and strays and other nondescript
specimens of the genus homo, already there engaged in eating and
drinking, diversified by conversation, for whom they
seemingly formed an object of marked curiosity.
- Now touching a cup of coffee, Mr Bloom
ventured to plausibly suggest to break the ice, it
occurs to me you ought to sample something in the shape of solid food, say a
roll of some description.
Accordingly his first act was with
characteristic sangfroid to order these commodities quietly. The hoi polloi of jarvies or
stevedores, or whatever they were, after a cursory examination, turned their
eyes, apparently dissatisfied, away, though one redbearded bibulous individual,
a portion of whose hair was greyish, a sailor, presumably, still stared for
some appreciable time before transferring his rapt attention to the floor.
Mr Bloom, availing himself of the right of
free speech, he having just a bowing acquaintance with the language in dispute
though, to be sure, rather in a quandary over voglio, remarked to his protégé
in an audible tone of voice, apropos of the battle royal in the street
which was still raging fast and furious:
- A beautiful language. I mean for singing purposes. Who do you not write your poetry in that
language? Bella poetria! it is so melodious and full.
Belladonna voglio.
Stephen, who was trying his dead best to
yawn, if he could, suffering from dead lassitude generally, replied:
- To fill the ear of a cow elephant. They were haggling over money.
- Is that so? Mr Bloom asked. Of course, he subjoined pensively, at the
inward reflection of there being more languages to start with than were
absolutely necessary, it may be only the southern glamour that surrounds it.
The keeper of the shelter in the middle of
this tête-à-tête put a boiling swimming cup of a choice concoction
labelled coffee on the table and a rather antediluvian specimen of a bun, or so
it seemed, after which he beat a retreat to his counter. Mr Bloom determining to have a good square
look at him later on so as not to appear to ... for which reason he encouraged
Stephen to proceed with his eyes while he did the honours by surreptitiously
pushing the cup of what was temporarily supposed to be called coffee gradually
nearer him.
- Sounds are impostures, Stephen said
after a pause of some little time. Like
names,
- Yes, to be sure, Mr Bloom unaffectedly
concurred. Of course. Our name was changed too, he added, pushing
the socalled roll across.
The redbearded sailor, who had his weather
eye on the newcomers, boarded Stephen, whom he had singled out for attention in
particular, squarely by asking:
- And what might your name be?
Just in the nick of time Mr Bloom touched
his companion's boot but Stephen, apparently disregarding the warm pressure,
from an unexpected quarter, answered:
- Dedalus.
The sailor stared at him heavily from a
pair of drowsy baggy eyes, rather bunged up from excessive use of booze,
preferably good old Hollands and water.
- You know Simon Dedalus? he asked at length.
- I've heard of him, Stephen said.
Mr Bloom was all at sea for a moment,
seeing the others evidently eavesdropping too.
- He's Irish, the seaman bold affirmed,
staring still in much the same way and nodding.
All Irish.
- All too Irish, Stephen rejoined.
As for Mr Bloom he could neither make head
nor tail of the whole business and he was just asking himself what possible connection
when the sailor, of his own accord, turned to the other occupants of the
shelter with the remark:
- I seen him shoot two eggs off two
bottles at fifty yards over his shoulder.
The left hand dead shot.
Though he was slightly hampered by an occasional
stammer and his gestures being also clumsy as it was still he did his best to
explain.
- Bottle out there, say. Fifty yards measured. Eggs on the bottles. Cocks his gun over his
shoulder. Aims.
He turned his body half round, shut up his
right eye completely, then he screwed his features up some way sideways and
glared out into the night with an unprepossessing cast of countenance.
- Pom, he then shouted once.
The entire audience waited, anticipating
an additional detonation, there being still a further egg.
- Pom, he shouted twice.
Egg two evidently demolished, he nodded
and winked, adding bloodthirstily:
-
Never missed nor he never will.
A silence ensued till Mr Bloom for
agreeableness' sake just felt like asking him whether it was for a marksmanship
competition like the Bisley.
- Beg pardon, the sailor said.
- Long ago? Mr Bloom pursued without
flinching a hairsbreadth.
- Why, the sailor replied, relaxing to a
certain extent under the magic influence of diamond cut diamond, it might be a
matter of ten years. He toured the wide
world with Hengler's Royal Circus. I seen him do that in
- Curious coincidence, Mr Bloom confided
to Stephen unobtrusively.
- Murphy's my name, the sailor continued,
W.B. Murphy, of Carrigaloe. Know where
that is?
- Queenstown Harbour, Stephen replied.
- That's right, the sailor said.
Mr Bloom could easily picture his advent
on this scene - the homecoming to the mariner's roadside shieling after having
diddled Davy Jones - a rainy night with a blind moon. Across the world for a
wife. Quite a number of stories
there were on that particular Alice Ben Bolt topic, Enoch Arden and Rip van
Winkle and does anybody hereabouts remember Caoc O'Leary, a favourite and most
trying declamation piece, by the way, of poor John Casey and a bit of perfect
poetry in its own small way? Never about
the runaway wife coming back, however much devoted to the absentee. The face at the window! Judge of his astonishment
when he finally did breast the tape and the awful truth dawned upon him anent
his better half, wrecked in his affections. You little expected me but I've come to stay
and make a fresh start. There she sits,
a grass widow, at the selfsame fireside.
Believes me dead. Rocked in the cradle of the
deep. And there sits uncle Chubb
or Tonkin, as the case might be, the publican of the Crown and Anchor, in
shirtsleeves, eating rumpsteak and onions.
No chair for father. Boo! The wind!
Her brandnew arrival is on her knee, 'post mortem' child. With a high ro! and
a randy ro! and my galloping tearing tandy O! Bow to the inevitable. Grin and bear it. I remain with much love your brokenhearted
husband, W.B. Murphy.
The sailor, who scarcely seemed to be a
Dublin resident, turned to one of the jarvies with the request:
- You don't happen to have such a thing as
a spare chaw about you, do you?
The jarvey addressed, as it happened, had
not but the keeper took a die of plug from his good jacket hanging on a nail
and the desired object was passed from hand to hand.
- Thank you, the sailor said.
He deposited the quid in his gob and,
chewing, and with some slow stammers, proceeded:
- We come up this morning eleven
o'clock. The
threemaster 'Rosvean' from
In confirmation of which statement he
extricated from an inside pocket and handed to his neighbours a not very
cleanlooking folded document.
- You must have seen a fair share of the
world, the keeper remarked, leaning on the counter.
- Why, the sailor answered, upon
reflection upon it, I've circumnavigated a bit since I first joined on. I was in the Red Sea. I was in China and North America and South
America. I seen
icebergs plenty, growlers. I was
in Stockholm and the Black Sea, the Dardanelles, under Captain Dalton the best
bloody man that ever scuttled a ship. I seen
- You seen queer sights, don't be talking,
put in a jarvey.
- Why, the sailor said, shifting his
partially chewed plug, I seen queer things too, ups and downs. I seen a crocodile bite the fluke of an
anchor same as I chew that quid.
He took out of his mouth the pulpy quid
and, lodging it between his teeth, bit ferociously.
- Khaan!
Like that. And I
seen maneaters in
He fumbled out a picture postcard from his
inside pocket, which seemed to be in its way a species of repository, and
pushed it along the table. The printed
matter on it stated: Choza de Indios.
Beni, Bolivia.
All focused their attention on the scene
exhibited, at a group of savage women in striped loincloths, squatted,
blinking, suckling, frowning, sleeping, amid a swarm of infants (there must
have been quite a score of them) outside some primitive shanties of osier.
- Chews coca all day long, the
communicative tarpaulin added. Stomachs
like breadgraters. Cuts off their
diddies when they can't bear no more children. See them there stark ballocknaked eating a
dead horse's liver raw.
His postcard proved a centre of attraction
for Messrs the greenhorns for several minutes, if not more.
- Know how to keep them off? he inquired genially.
Nobody volunteering a statement, he
winked, saying:
- Glass.
That boggles 'em. Glass.
My Bloom, without evincing surprise,
unostentatiously turned over the card to peruse the partially obliterated address
and postmark. It ran as follows: Tarjeta
Postal. Señor A.
Boudin, Galeria Becche,
Also, without being actually positive, it
struck him a great field was to be opened up in the line of opening up new
routes to keep pace with the times apropos of the Fishguard-Rosslare
route which, it was mooted, was once more on the tapis in the
circumlocution departments with the usual quantity of red tape and
dillydallying of effete fogeydom and dunderheads generally. A great opportunity there certainly was for
push and enterprise to meet the travelling needs of the public at large, the
average man, i.e. Brown, Robinson and Co.
It was a subject of regret and absurd as
well on the face of it and no small blame to our vaunted society that the man
in the street, when the system really needed toning up, for a matter of a
couple of paltry pounds, was debarred from seeing more of the world they lived
in instead of being always cooped up since my old stick-in-the-mud took me for
a wife. After all, hang it, they had
their eleven and more humdrum months of it and merited a radical change of venue
after the grind of city life in the summertime, for choice, when Dame
Nature is at her spectacular best, constituting nothing short of a new lease of
life. There were equally excellent
opportunities for vacationists in the home island, delightful sylvan spots for
rejuvenation, offering a plethora of attractions as well as a bracing tonic for
the system in and around Dublin and its picturesque environs, even,
Poulaphouca, to which there was a steam tram, but also farther away from the
madding crowd, in Wicklow, rightly termed the garden of Ireland, an ideal
neighbourhood for elderly wheelmen, so long as it didn't come down, and in the
wilds of Donegal, where if report spoke true, the coup d'oeil was
exceedingly grand, though the lastnamed locality was not easily getatable
[accessible] so that the influx of visitors was not as yet all that it might be
considering the signal benefits to be derived form it, while Howth with its
historic associations and otherwise, Silken Thomas, Grace O'Malley, George IV,
rhododendrons several hundred feet above sealevel was a favourite haunt with
all sorts and conditions of men, especially in the spring when young men's
fancy, though it had its own toll of deaths by falling off the cliffs by design
or accidentally, usually, by the way, on their left leg, it being only about
three quarters of an hour's run from the pillar. Because of course uptodate tourist travelling
was as yet merely in its infancy, so to speak, and the accommodation left much
to be desired. Interesting to fathom, it
seemed to him, from a motive of curiosity pure and simple, was whether it was
the traffic that created the route or vice-versa or the two sides in fact. He turned back the other side of the card
picture and passed it along to Stephen.
- I seen a Chinese one time, related the
doughty narrator, that had little pills like putty and he put them in the water
and they opened, and every pill was something different. One was a ship, another was a house, another was a flower.
Cooks rats in your soup, he appetisingly added, the Chinese does.
Possibly perceiving an expression of
dubiosity on their faces, the globetrotter went on adhering to his adventures.
- And I seen a man killed in Trieste by an
Italian chap. Knife in
his back. Knife like that.
Whilst speaking he produced a dangerous
looking claspknife, quite in keeping with his character, and held it in the
striking position.
- In a knockingshop it was count of a
tryon between two smugglers. Fellow hid
behind a door, come up behind him. Like
that. Prepare to meet your God,
says he. Chuck! It went into his back up to the butt.
His heavy glance, drowsily roaming about,
kind of defied their further questions even should they by any chance want
to. That's a good bit of steel, repeated
he, examining his formidable stiletto.
After which harrowing dénouement
sufficient to appal the stoutest he snapped the blade to and stowed the weapon
in question away as before in his chamber of horrors, otherwise pocket.
- They're great for the cold steel,
somebody who was evidently quite in the dark said for the benefit of them
all. That was why they thought the park murders of the invincibles was done by foreigners on account
of them using knives.
At this remark, passed obviously in the
spirit of where ignorance is bliss, Mr Bloom and Stephen, each in his
own particular way, both instinctively exchanged meaningful glances, in a
religious silence of the strictly entre nous variety however, towards
where Skin-the-Goat, alias the keeper, was drawing spurts of liquid form
his boiler affair. His inscrutable face,
which was really a work of art, a perfect study in itself, beggaring
description, conveyed the impression that he didn't understand one jot of what
was going on. Funny
very.
There ensued a somewhat lengthy
pause. One man was reading by fits and
stars a stained-by-coffee evening journal; another, the card with the natives choza de; another, the seaman's
discharge. Mr Bloom, so far a he was
personally concerned, was just pondering in pensive mood. He vividly recollected when the occurrence
alluded to took place as well as yesterday, some score of years previously, in
the days of the land troubles when it took the civilised world by storm,
figuratively speaking, early in the eighties, eightyone to be correct, when he
was just turned fifteen.
- Ay, boss, the sailor broke in. Give us back them
papers.
The request being complied with, he clawed
them up with a scrape.
- Have you seen the Rock of Gibraltar? Mr
Bloom inquired.
The sailor grimaced, chewing, in a way
that might be read as yes, ay, or no.
- Ah, you've touched there too, Mr Bloom
said, Europa point, thinking he had in the hope that the rover might possibly
by some reminiscences but he failed to do so, simply letting spurt a jet of
spew into the sawdust, and shook his head with a sort of lazy scorn.
- What year would that be about? Mr Bloom
interpolated. Can you recall the boats?
Our soi-disant sailor munched
heavily awhile, hungrily, before answering.
- I'm tired of all them
rocks in the sea, he said, and boats and ships.
Salt junk all the time.
Tired, seemingly, he ceased. His questioner, perceiving that he was not
likely to get a great deal of change out of such a wily old customer, fell to
woolgathering on the enormous dimensions of the water about the globe. Suffice it to say that, as a casual glance at
the map revealed, it covered fully three fourths of it and he fully realised
accordingly what it meant, to rule the waves.
On more than one occasion - a dozen at the lowest - near the North Bull
at Dollymount he had remarked a superannuated old salt, evidently derelict,
seated habitually near the not particularly redolent sea on the wall, staring
quite obliviously at it and it at him, dreaming of fresh woods and pastures new
as someone somewhere sings. And it left
him wondering why. Possibly he had tried
to find out the secret for himself, floundering up and down the antipodes and
all that sort of thing and over and under - well, not exactly under, tempting
the fates. And the odds were twenty to
nil there was really no secret about it at all.
Nevertheless, without going into the minutiae of the business,
the eloquent fact remained that the sea was there in all its glory and in the
natural course of things somebody or other had to sail on it and fly in the
face of providence though it merely went to show how people usually contrived
to load that sort of onus on to the other fellow like the hell idea and the
lottery and insurance, which were run on identically the same lines so that for
that very reason, if no other, lifeboat Sunday was a very laudable institution
to which the public at large, no matter where living, inland or seaside, as the
case might be, having it brought home to them like that, should extend its
gratitude also to the harbourmasters and coastguard service who had to man the
rigging and push off and out amid the elements, whatever the season, when duty
called Ireland expects that every man and so on, and sometimes had a
terrible time of it in the wintertime not forgetting the Irish lights, Kish and
others, liable to capsize at any moment rounding which he once with his
daughter had experienced some remarkably choppy, not to say stormy, weather.
- There was a fellow sailed with me in the
Rover, the old seadog, himself a rover, proceeded. Went ashore and took up a soft job as
gentleman's valet at six quid a month. Them are his trousers I've on me and he gave me an oilskin
and that jackknife. I'm game for that
job, shaving and brushup. I hate roaming
about. There's my son now, Danny, run
off to sea and his mother got him took in a draper's in Cork where he could be
drawing easy money.
- What age is he? queried one hearer who,
by the way, seen form the side, bore a distant resemblance to Henry Campbell,
the townclerk, away from the carking cares of office, unwashed, of course, and
in a seedy getup and a strong suspicion of nosepaint about the nasal appendage.
- Why, the sailor answered with a slow
puzzled utterance. My
son Danny? He'd be about eighteen
now, way I figure it.
The Skibbereen father hereupon tore open
his grey or unclean anyhow shirt with his two hands and scratched away at his
chest on which was to be seen an image tattooed in blue Chinese ink, intended
to represent an anchor.
- There was lice
in that bunk in
Seeing they were all looking at his chest,
he accommodatingly dragged his shirt more open so that, on top of the
timehonoured symbol of the mariner's hope and rest, they had a full view of the
figure 16 and a young man's sideface looking frowningly rather.
- Tattoo, the exhibitor explained. That was done when we were lying becalmed off
Odessa in the Black Sea under Captain Dalton.
Fellow the name of Antonio done that. There he is himself, a Greek.
- Did it hurt much doing it? one asked the sailor.
That worthy, however, was busily engaged
in collecting round the someway in his.
Squeezing or ...
- See here, he said, showing Antonio. There he is, cursing the mate. And there he is now, he added. The same fellow, pulling
the skin with his fingers, some special knack evidently, and he laughing at a
yarn.
And in point of fact the young man named
Antonio's livid face did actually look like forced smiling and the curious
effect excited the unreserved admiration of everybody, including Skin-the-Goat
who this time stretched over.
- Ay, ay, sighed the
sailor, looking down on his manly chest.
He's gone too. Ate
by sharks after. Ay, ay.
He let go of the skin so that the profile
resumed the normal expression of before.
- Neat bit of work, longshoreman one said.
- And what's the number for? loafer number two queried.
- Eaten alive? a
third asked the sailor.
- Ay, ay, sighed again the latter
personage, more cheerily this time, with some sort of a half smile, for a brief
duration only, in the direction of the questioner about the number. A Greek he was.
And then he added, with rather gallowsbird
humour, considering his alleged end:
-
As bad as old Antonio,
For he left me on my ownio.
The face of a streetwalker, glazed and
haggard under a black straw hat, peered askew round the door of the shelter,
palpably reconnoitring on her own with the object of bringing more grist to her
mill. Mr Bloom, scarcely knowing which
way to look, turned away on the moment, flusterfied but outwardly calm, and
picking up from the table the pink sheet of the Abbey street organ which the
jarvey, if such he was, had laid aside, he picked it up and looked at the pink
of the paper though why pink? His reason
for so doing was he recognised on the moment round the door the same face he
had caught a fleeting glimpse of that afternoon on Ormond Quay, the partially
idiotic female, namely, of the lane, who knew the lady in the brown costume
does be with you (Mrs B.), and begged the chance of his washing. Also why washing, which seemed rather vague
than not?
Your washing. Still, candour compelled him to admit that he
had washed his wife's undergarments when soiled in Holles Street and women
would and did too a man's similar garments initialled with Bewley and Draper's
marking ink (hers were, that is), if they really loved him, that is to
say. Love me, love my dirty shirt. Still, just then, being on tenterhooks, he
desired the female's room more than her company so it came as a genuine relief
when the keeper made her a rude sign to take herself off. Round the side of the Evening Telegraph he
just caught a fleeting glimpse of her face round the side of the door with a
kind of demented glassy grin showing that she was not exactly all there,
viewing with evident amusement the group of gazers round Skipper Murphy's
nautical chest and then there was no more of her.
- The gunboat, the keeper said.
- It beats me, Mr Bloom confided to
Stephen, medically I am speaking, how a wretched creature like that from the
Lock Hospital, reeking with disease, can be barefaced enough to solicit or how
any man in his sober senses, if he values his health in the least. Unfortunate creature! Of course, I suppose some man is ultimately
responsible for her condition. Still no
matter what the cause is from ...
Stephen had not noticed her and shrugged
his shoulders, merely remarking:
- In this country people sell much more
than she ever had and do a roaring trade.
Fear not them that sell the body but have not power to buy the
soul. She is a bad merchant. She buys dear and sells cheap.
The elder man, though not by any manner of
means an old maid or a prude, said that it was nothing short of a crying
scandal that ought to be put a stop to instanter to say that women of
that stamp (quite apart from any oldmaidish squeamishness on the subject), a
necessary evil, were not licensed and medically inspected by the proper
authorities, a thing he could truthfully state he, as a paterfamilias,
was a stalwart advocate of from the very first start. Whoever embarked on a policy of the sort, he
said, and ventilated the matter thoroughly would confer a lasting boon on
everybody concerned.
- You, as a good catholic, he observed,
talking of body and soul, believe in the soul.
Or do you mean the intelligence, the brainpower as such, as distinct
from any outside object, the table, let us say, that cup? I believe in that myself because it has been
explained by competent men as the convolutions of the grey matter. Otherwise we would never have such inventions
as X rays, for instance. Do you?
Thus cornered, Stephen had to make a
superhuman effort of memory to try and concentrate and remember before he could
say:
- They tell me on the best authority it is
a simple substance and therefore incorruptible.
It would be immortal, I understand, but for the possibility of its
annihilation by its First Cause, Who, from all I can hear, is quite capable of
adding that to the number of His other practical jokes, corruptio per se and
corruptio per accidens both being excluded by court etiquette.
Mr Bloom thoroughly acquiesced in the
general gist of this though the mystical finesse involved was a bit out of his
sublunary depth. Still he felt bound to
enter a demurrer on the head of simple, promptly rejoining:
- Simple?
I shouldn't think that is the proper word. Of course, I grant you, to concede a point, you do knock across a simple soul once in a blue
moon. But what i am anxious to arrive at
is it is one thing for instance to invent those rays Röntgen did, or the
telescope like Edison, though I believe it was before his time, Galileo was the
man I mean. The same applies to the
laws, for example, of a farreaching natural phenomenon such as electricity but
it's a horse of quite another colour to say you believe in the existence of a supernatural
God.
- O, that, Stephen expostulated, has been
proved conclusively by several of the best known passages in Holy Writ, apart
form circumstantial evidence.
On this knotty point, however, the views
of the pair, poles apart as they were, both in schooling and everything
else, with the marked difference in their respective ages, clashed.
- Has been? the
more experienced of the two objected, sticking to his original point. I'm not so sure about that. That's a matter of every man's opinion and,
without dragging in the sectarian side of the business,
I beg to differ with you in toto there.
My belief is, to tell you the candid truth, that those bits were genuine
forgeries all of them put in by monks most probably or it's the big question of
our national poet over again, who precisely wrote them, like Hamlet and
Bacon, as you who know your Shakespeare infinitely better than I, of course I
needn't tell you. Can't you drink that
coffee, by the way? Let me stir it and
take a piece of that bun. It’s like one
of our skipper's bricks disguised.
Still, no-one can give what he hasn't got. Try a bit.
- Couldn't, Stephen contrived to get out,
his mental organs for the moment refusing to dictate further.
Faultfinding being a proverbially bad hat,
Mr Bloom thought well to stir, or try to, the clotted sugar from the bottom and
reflected with something approaching acrimony on the Coffee Palace and its
temperance (and lucrative) work. To be
sure, it was a legitimate object and beyond yea or nay did a world of
good. Shelters such as the present one
they were in run on teetotal lines for vagrants at night, concerts, dramatic
evenings, and useful lectures (admittance free) by qualified men for the lower
orders. On the other hand, he had a distinct and
painful recollection they paid his wife, Madam Marion Tweedy who had been
prominently associated with it at one time, a very modest remuneration indeed
for her pianoplaying. The idea, he was
strongly inclined to believe, was to do good and net a
profit, there being no competition to speak of.
Sulphate of copper poison, SO4 or something in some dried peas he
remembered reading of in a cheap eatinghouse somewhere but he couldn't remember
when it was or where. Anyhow,
inspection, medical inspection, of all eatables, seemed to him more than ever
necessary which possibly accounted for the vogue of Dr Tibble's Vi-Cocoa on
account of the medical analysis involved.
- Have a shot at it now,
he ventured to say of the coffee after being stirred.
Thus prevailed on to at any rate taste it,
Stephen lifted the heavy mug from the brown puddle - it clopped out of it when
taken up - by the handle and took a sip of the offending beverage.
- Still, it's
solid food, his good genius urged, I'm a stickler for solid food, his one and
only reason being not gormandising in the least but regular meals as the sine
qua non for any kind of proper work, mental or manual. You ought to eat more solid food. You would feel a different man.
- Liquids I can eat, Stephen said. But oblige me by taking away that knife. I can't look at the point of it. It reminds me of Roman history.
Mr Bloom promptly did as suggested and
removed the incriminated article, a blunt hornhandled ordinary knife with
nothing particularly Roman or antique about it to the lay eye, observing that
the point was the least conspicuous point about it.
- Our mutual friend's stories are like
himself, Mr Bloom, apropos of knives, remarked to his confidante
sotto voce. Do you think they are
genuine? He could spin those yarns for
hours on end all night long and lie like old boots. Look at him.
Yet still, though his eyes were thick with
sleep and sea air, life was full of a host of things and coincidences of a
terrible nature and it was quite within the bounds of possibility that it was
not an entire fabrication though at first blush there was not much inherent
probability in all the spoof he got off his chest being strictly accurate
gospel.
He had been meantime taking stock of the
individual in front of him and Sherlockholmesing him up, ever since he clapped
eyes on him. though
a wellpreserved man of no little stamina, if a trifle prone to baldness, there
was something spurious in the cut of his jib that suggested a fail delivery and
it required no violent stretch of imagination to associate such a weirdlooking
specimen with the oakum and treadmill fraternity. He might even have done for his man,
supposing it was his own case he told, as people often did about others,
namely, that he killed him himself and had served his four or five goodlooking
years in durance vile to say nothing of the Antonio personage (no relation to
the dramatic personage of identical name who sprang from the pen of our
national poet) who expiated his crimes in the melodramatic manner above
described. On the other hand he might be
only bluffing, a pardonable weakness, because meeting unmistakable mugs, Dublin
residents, like those jarvies waiting news from abroad, would tempt any ancient
mariner who sailed the ocean seas to draw the long bow about the schooner Hesperus
and etctera. And when all was said and
done, the lies a fellow told about himself couldn't probably hold a proverbial
candle to the wholesale whoppers other fellows coined about him.
- Mind you, I'm not saying that it's all a
pure invention, he resumed. Analogous
scenes are occasionally, if not often, met with. Giants, though, that is rather a far cry you
see once in away. Marcella,
the midget queen. In those
waxworks in Henry street I myself saw some Aztecs, as they are called, sitting
bowlegged. They couldn't straighten
their legs if you paid them because the muscles here, you see, he proceeded,
indicating on his companion the brief outline, the sinews, or whatever you like
to call them, behind the right knee, were utterly powerless from sitting that way
so long cramped up, being adored as gods.
There's an example again of simple souls.
However, reverting to friend Sinbad and
his horrifying adventures (who reminded him a bit of Ludwig, alias
Ledwidge, when he occupied the boards of the Gaiety when Michael Gunn was
identified with the management in the Flying Dutchman, a stupendous
success, and his host of admirers came in large numbers, everyone simply
flocking to hear him though ships of any sort, phantom or the reverse, on the
stage usually fell a bit flat as also did trains), there was nothing
intrinsically incompatible about it, he conceded. On the contrary, that stab in the back touch
was quite in keeping with those Italianos, though candidly he was none the less
free to admit those ice creamers and friers in the fish way, not to mention the
chip potato variety and so forth, over in little Italy there, near the Coombe,
were sober thrifty hardworking fellows except perhaps a bit too given to
pothunting the harmless necessary animal of the feline persuasion of others at
night so as to have a good old succulent tuck in with garlic de rigueur off
him or her next day on the quiet and, he added, on the cheap.
- Spaniards, for instance, he continued,
passionate temperaments like that, impetuous as Old Nick, are given to taking
the law into their own hands and give you your quietus double quick with those
poignards they carry in the abdomen. It
comes from the great heat, climate generally.
My wife is, so to speak, Spanish, half, that is. Point of fact she could actually claim
Spanish nationality if she wanted, having been born in (technically) Spain,
i.e. Gibraltar. She has the Spanish
type. Quite dark,
regular brunette, black. I, for
one, certainly believe climate accounts for character. That's why I asked you if you wrote your
poetry in Italian.
- The temperaments at the door, Stephen
interposed with, were very passionate about ten shillings. Roberto ruba roba sua.
- Quite so, Mr Bloom dittoed.
- Then, Stephen said, staring and rambling
on to himself or some unknown listener somewhere, we have the impetuosity of
Dante and the isosceles triangle, Miss Portinari, he fell in love with and
Leonardo and san Tommaso Mastino.
- It's in the blood, Mr Bloom acceded at
once. All are washed in the blood of the
sun. Coincidence, I just happened to be
in the Kildare street Museum today, shortly prior to our meeting, if I can so
call it, and I was just looking at those antique statues there. The splendid proportions of
hips, bosom. You simply don't
knock against those kind of women here. An exception here and
there. Handsome, yes, pretty in a
way you find, but what I'm talking about is the female form. Besides, they have so little taste in dress,
most of them, which greatly enhances a woman's natural beauty, no matter what
you say. Rumpled stockings - it may be,
possibly is, a foible of mine, but still it's a thing I simply hate to see.
Interest, however, was starting to flag
somewhat all round and the others got on to talking about accidents at sea, ships
lost in a fog, collisions with icebergs, all that sort of thing. Shipahoy, of course, had his
own say to say. He had doubled
the Cape a few odd times and weathered a monsoon, a kind of wind, in the China
seas and through all those perils of the deep there was one thing, he declared,
stood to him, or words to that effect, a pious medal he had that saved him.
So then after that they drifted on to the
wreck of Daunt's rock, wreck of that illfated Norwegian barque - nobody could
think of her name for the moment till the jarvey who had really quite a look of
Henry Campbell remembered it, Palme, on Booterstown Strand, that was the
talk of the town that year (Albert William Quill wrote a fine piece of original
verse of distinctive merit on the topic for the Irish Times) breakers
running over her and crowds and crowds on the shore in commotion petrified with
horror. Then someone said something
about the case of the s.s. Lady Cairns of
At this stage an incident happened. It having become necessary for him to unfurl
a reef, the sailor vacated his seat.
- Let me cross your bows, mate, he said to
his neighbour, who was just gently dropping off into a peaceful calm.
He made tracks heavily, slowly, with a
dumpy sort of a gait to the door, stepped heavily down the one step there was
out of the shelter and bore due left.
While he was in the act of getting his bearings, Mr Bloom, who noticed
when he stood up that he had two flasks of presumably ship's rum sticking one
out of each pocket for the private consumption of his burning interior, saw him
produce a bottle and uncork it, or unscrew, and, applying its nozzle to his
lips, take a good old delectable swig out of it with a gurgling noise. The irrepressible Bloom, who also had a
shrewd suspicion that the old stager went out on a manoeuvre after the
counterattraction in the shape of a female, who, however, had disappeared to
all intents and purposes, could, by straining, just perceive him, when duly
refreshed by his rum puncheon exploit, gazing up at the piers and girders of
the Loop Line, rather out of his depth, as of course it was radically altered
since his last visit and greatly improved.
Some person or persons invisible directed him to the male urinal erected
by the cleansing committee all over the place for the purpose but, after a
brief space of time during which silence reigned supreme, the sailor, evidently
giving it a wide berth, eased himself close at hand, the noise of his
bilgewater some little time subsequently splashing on the ground where it
apparently woke a horse of the cabrank.
A hoof scooped anuway for new foothold
after sleep and harness jingled.
Slightly disturbed in his sentrybox by the brazier of live coke, the
watcher of the corporation, who, though now broken down and fast breaking up,
was none other in stern reality than the Gumley aforesaid, now practically on
the parish rates, given the temporary job by Pat Tobin in all human
probability, from dictates of humanity, knowing him before - shifted about and
shuffled in his box before composing his limbs again in the arms of
Morpheus. A truly amazing piece of hard
times in its most virulent form on a fellow most respectably connected and
familiarised with decent home comforts all his life who came in for a cool £100
a year at one time which of course the doublebarrelled ass proceeded to make
general ducks and drakes of. And there
he was at the end of his tether after having often painted the town tolerably
pink, without a beggarly stiver. He
drank, needless to be told, and it pointed only once more a moral when he might
quite easily be in a large way of business if - a big if, however - he had
contrived to cure himself of his particular partiality.
All, meantime, were loudly lamenting the
falling off in Irish shipping, coastwise and foreign as well, which was all
part and parcel of the same thing. A
Palgrave Murphy boat was put off the ways at Alexandra Basin, the only launch
that year. Right enough the harbours
were there only no ships ever called.
There were wrecks and wrecks, the keeper
said, who was evidently au fait.
What he wanted to ascertain was why that ship ran bang against the only rock in
Galway Bay when the Galway Harbour scheme was mooted by a Mr Worthington or
some name like that, eh? Ask her
captain, he advised them, how much palmoil the British Government gave him for
that day's work. Captain
John Lever of the Lever line.
- Am I right, skipper?
he queried of the sailor now returning after his
private potation and the rest of his exertions.
That worthy, picking up the scent of the
fagend of the song or words, growled in wouldbe music, but with great vim, some
kind of chanty or other in seconds or thirds.
Mr Bloom's sharp ears heard him then expectorate the plug probably
(which it was), so that he must have lodged it for the time being in his fist
while he did the drinking and making water jobs and found it a bit sour after
the liquid fire in question. Anyhow in
he rolled after his successful libation-cum-potation, introducing an atmosphere
of drink into the soiree, boisterously trolling, like a veritable son of
a seacook:
-
The biscuits was as hard as brass,
And the beef as salt as
O Johnny Lever!
Johnny Lever, O!
After which effusion the redoubtable
specimen duly arrived on the scene and, regaining his seat, he sank rather than
sat heavily on the form provided.
Skin-the-Goat, assuming he was he,
evidently with an axe to grind, was airing his grievances in a forcible-feeble
philippic anent the natural resources of Ireland, or something of that sort,
which he described in his lengthy dissertation as the richest country bar none
on the face of God's earth, far and away superior to England, with coal in
large quantities, six million pounds' worth of pork exported every year, ten
millions between butter and eggs, and all the riches drained out of it by
England levying taxes on the poor people that paid through the nose always, and
gobbling up the best meat in the market, and a lot more surplus steam in the
same vein. Their conversation
accordingly became general and all agreed that that was a fact. You could grow any mortal thing in Irish
soil, he stated, and there was Colonel Everard down there in Cavan growing
tobacco. Where would you find anywhere the
like of Irish bacon? But a day of
reckoning, he stated crescendo with no uncertain voice - thoroughly
monopolising all the conversation - was in store for mighty England, despite
her power of pelf on account of her crimes.
There would be a fall and the greatest fall in history. The Germans and the Japs were going to have
their little lookin, he affirmed. The
Boers were the beginning of the end.
Brummagem England was toppling already and her downfall would be
Ireland, her Achilles heel, which he explained to them about the vulnerable
point of Achilles, the Greek hero - a point his auditors at once seized as he
completely gripped their attention by showing the tendon referred to on his
boot. His advice to every Irishman was:
stay in the land of your birth and work for Ireland and live for Ireland. Ireland, Parnell said, could not spare a
single one of her sons.
Silence all round marked the termination
of his finale. The impervious
navigator heard these lurid tidings undismayed.
- Take a bit of doing, boss, retaliated
that rough diamond palpably a bit peeved in response to the foregoing truism.
To which cold douche, referring to
downfall and so on, the keeper concurred but nevertheless held to his main
view.
- Who's the best troops
in the army? the grizzled old veteran irately
interrogated. And the
best jumpers and racers? And the
best admirals and generals we've got?
Tell me that.
- The Irish for choice, retorted the cabby
like Campbell, facial blemishes apart.
- That's right, the old tarpaulin
corroborated. The
Irish catholic peasant. He's the
backbone of our empire. You know Jem
Mullins?
While allowing him his individual
opinions, as every man, the keeper added he cared nothing for any empire, ours
or his, and considered no Irishman worthy of his salt that served it. Then they began to have a few irascible
words, when it waxed hotter, both, needless to say, appealing to the listeners
who followed the passage of arms with
interest so long as they didn't indulge in recriminations and come to blows.
From inside information extending over a
series of years Mr Bloom was rather inclined to poohpooh the suggestion as
egregious baldersash for, pending that consummation devoutly to be or not to be
wished for, he was fully cognisant of the fact that their neighbours across the
channel, unless they were much bigger fools than he took them for, rather
concealed their strength than the opposite.
It was quite on a par with the quixotic idea in certain quarters that in
a hundred million years the coal seam of the sister island would be played out
and if, as time went on, that turned out to be how the cat jumped all he could
personally say on the matter was that as a host of contingencies, equally
relevant to the issue, might occur ere then it was highly advisable in the
interim to try to make the most of both countries, even though poles
apart. Another little interesting point,
the amours of whores and chummies, to put it in common parlance, reminded him
Irish soldiers had as often fought for England as against her, more so, in
fact. And now, why? So the scene between the pair of them, the
licensee of the place, rumoured to be or have been Fitzharris, the famous
invincible, and the other, obviously bogus, reminded him forcibly as being on
all fours with the confidence trick, supposing, that is, it was prearranged, as
the lookeron, a student of the human soul, if anything, the others seeing least
of the game. And as for the lessee or
keeper, who probably wasn't the other person at all, he (Bloom) couldn't help
feeling, and most properly, it was better to give people like that the goby
unless you were a blithering idiot altogether and refuse to have anything to do
with them as a golden rule in private life and their felonsetting, there always
being the offchance of a Dannyman coming forward and turning queen's evidence -
or king's now - like Denis or Peter Carey, an idea he utterly repudiated. Quite apart from that, he disliked those
careers of wrongdoing and crime on principle.
Yet, though such criminal propensities had never been an inmate of his
bosom in any shape or form, he certainly did feel, and no denying it (while
inwardly remaining what he was), a certain kind of admiration for a man who had
actually brandished a knife, cold steel, with the courage of his political
convictions though, personally, he would never be a party to any such thing,
off the same bat as those love vendettas of the south - have her or swing for
her - when the husband frequently, after some words passed between the two concerning
her relations with the other lucky mortal (the man having had the pair
watched), inflicted fatal injuries on his adored one as a result of an
alternative postnuptial liaison by plunging his knife into her until it
just struck him that Fitz, nicknamed Skin-the-Goat, merely drove the car for
the actual perpetrators of the outrage and so was not, if he was reliably
informed, actually party to the ambush which, in point of fact, was the plea
some legal luminary saved his skin on.
In any case that was very ancient history by now and as for our friend,
the pseudo Skin-the-etcetera, he had transparently outlived his welcome. He ought to have either died naturally or on
the scaffold high. Like actresses,
always farewell - positively last performance then come up smiling again. Generous to a fault, of
course, temperamental, no economising or any idea of the sort, always snapping
at the bone for the shadow. So
similarly he had a very shrewd suspicion that Mr Johnny Lever got rid of some
£.s.d. in the course of his perambulations round the docks in the congenial
atmosphere of the Old Ireland tavern, come back to Erin and so on. Then as for the others, he had heard not so
long before the same identical lingo, as he told Stephen how he simply but
effectually silenced the offender.
- He took umbrage at something or other,
that muchinjured but on the whole eventempered person declared, I let
slip. He called me a jew,
and in a heated fashion, offensively. So
I, without deviating from plain facts in the least, told him his God, I mean
Christ, was a jew too, and all his family, like me,
though in reality I'm not. That was once
for him. A soft answer turns away
wrath. He hadn't a word to say for
himself as everyone saw. Am I not right?
He turned a long you are wrong gaze on
Stephen of timorous dark pride at the soft impeachment, with a glance also of
entreaty for he seemed to glean in a kind of a way that it wasn't all exactly ...
- Ex quibus, Stephen mumbled in a
noncommittal accent, their two or four eyes conversing, Christus or
Bloom his name is, or, after all, any other, secundum carnem.
- Of course, Mr Bloom proceeded to
stipulate, you must look at both sides of the question. It is hard to lay down any hard and fast rules
as to right and wrong but room for improvement all round there certainly is
though every country, they say, our own distressful included, has the
government it deserves. But with a little goodwill all round. It's all very fine to boast of mutual superiority
but what about mutual equality? I resent
violence or intolerance in any shape or form.
It never reaches anything or stops anything. A revolution must come on the due instalments
plan. It's a patent absurdity on the
face of it to hate people because they live round the corner and speak another
vernacular, so to speak.
- Memorable bloody bridge battle and seven
minutes' war, Stephen assented, between Skinner's alley and Ormond market.
- Yes, Mr Bloom thoroughly agreed,
entirely endorsing the remark, that was overwhelmingly right and the whole
world was overwhelmingly full of that sort of thing.
- You just took the words out of my mouth,
he said. A hocuspocus of conflicting
evidence that candidly you couldn't remotely ...
All those wretched quarrels, in his humble
opinion, stirring up bad blood - bump of combativeness or gland of some kind,
erroneously supposed to be about a punctilio of honour and a flag - were very
largely a question of the money question which was at the back of everything,
greed and jealousy, people never knowing when to stop.
- They accuse - remarked he audibly. He turned away from the others, who probably
... and spoke nearer to, so as the others ... in case they
...
- Jews, he softly imparted in an aside in
Stephen's ear, are accused of ruining.
Not a vestige of truth in it, I can safely say. History - would you be surprised to learn? -
proves up to the hilt
Over his untasteable apology for a cup of
coffee, listening to this synopsis of things in general, Stephen stared at
nothing in particular. He could hear, of
course, all kinds of words changing colour like those crabs about Ringsend in
the morning, burrowing quickly into all colours of different sorts of the same
sand where they had a home somewhere beneath or seemed to. Then he looked up and saw the eyes that said
or didn't say the words the voice he heard said - if you work.
- Count me out,
he managed to remark, meaning to work.
The eyes were surprised by this
observation, because as he, the person who owned them pro. tem.
observed, or, rather, his voice speaking did: All must
work, have to, together.
- I mean, of course, the other hastened to
affirm, work in the widest possible sense.
Also literary labour, not merely for the kudos of the
thing. Writing for the newspapers which is the readiest channel nowadays. That's work too. Important work. After all, from the little I know of you,
after all the money expended on your education, you are entitled to recoup
yourself and command your price. You
have every bit as much right to live by your pen in pursuit of your philosophy
as the peasant has. What? You both belong to Ireland, the brain and the
brawn. Each is equally important.
- You suspect, Stephen retorted with a
sort of half laugh, that I may be important because I belong to the faubourg
Saint-Patrice called Ireland for short.
- I would go a step farther, Mr Bloom
insinuated.
- But I suspect,
Stephen interrupted, that
- What belongs? queried
Mr Bloom, bending, fancying he was perhaps under some misapprehension. Excuse me.
Unfortunately I didn't catch the latter portion. What was it you? ...
Stephen, patently crosstempered, repeated
and shoved aside his mug of coffee, or whatever you like to call it, none too
politely, adding:
- We can't change the country. Let us change the subject.
At this pertinent suggestion, Mr Bloom, to
change the subject, looked down, but in a quandary, as he couldn't tell exactly
what construction to put on 'belongs to' which sounded rather a far cry. The rebuke of some kind was clearer than the
other part. Needless to say, the fumes
of his recent orgy spoke then with some asperity in a curious bitter way,
foreign to his sober state. Probably the
home life, to which Mr Bloom attached the utmost importance, had not been all
that was needful or he hadn't been familiarised with the right sort of
people. With a touch of fear for the
young man beside him, whom he furtively scrutinised with an air of some
consternation remembering he had just come back from Paris, the eyes more
especially reminding him forcibly of father and sister, failing to throw much
light on the subject, however, he brought to mind instances of cultural fellows
that promised so brilliantly, nipped in the bud of premature decay, and nobody
to blame but themselves. For instance,
there was the case of O'Callaghan, for one, the half crazy faddist respectably
connected, though of inadequate means, with his mad vagaries, among whose other
gay doings when rotto and making himself a nuisance to everybody all round he
was in the habit of ostentatiously sporting in public a suit of brown paper (a
fact). And then the usual dénouement
after the fun had gone on fast and furious he got landed into hot water and had
to be spirited away by a few friends, after a strong hint to a blind horse from
John Mallon of Lower Castle Yard, so as not to be made amenable under section
two of the Criminal Law Amendment Act, certain names of those subpoenaed being
handed in but not divulged, for reasons which will occur to anyone with a pick
of brains. Briefly, putting two and two
together, six sixteen, which he pointedly turned a deaf ear to, Antonio and so
forth, jockeys and esthetes and the tattoo which was all the go in the
seventies or thereabouts, even in the House of Lords, because early in life the
occupant of the throne, then heir apparent, the other members of the upper ten
and other high personages simply following in the footsteps of the head of the
state, he reflected about the errors of notorieties and crowned heads running
counter to morality such as the Cornwall case a number of years before under
their veneer in a way scarcely intended by nature, a thing good Mrs Grundy as
the law stands was terribly down on, though not for the reason they thought
they were probably, whatever it was, except women chiefly, who were always
fiddling more or less at one another, it being largely a matter of dress and
all the rest of it. Ladies who like
distinctive underclothing should, and every welltailored man must, trying to
make the gap wider between them by innuendo and give more of a genuine fillip
to acts of impropriety between the two, she unbuttoned his and then he untied
her, mind the pin, whereas savages in the cannibal islands, say, at ninety
degrees in the shade not caring a continental.
However, reverting to the original, there were on the other hand others
who had forced their way to the top from the lowest rung by the aid of their
bootstraps. Sheer force of natural
genius, that. With
brains, sir.
For which and further reasons he felt it
was interest and duty even to wait on and profit by the unlookedfor occasion,
though why, he could not exactly tell, being, as it was, already several
shillings to the bad, having, in fact, let himself in for it. Still, to cultivate the acquaintance of
someone of no uncommon calibre who could provide food for reflection would
amply repay any small ... Intellectual stimulation as such was, he felt, from
time to time a firstrate tonic for the mind.
Added to which was the coincidence of meeting, discussion, dance, row,
old salt, of the here today and gone tomorrow type, night loafers, the whole
galaxy of events, all went to make up a miniature cameo of the world we live
in, especially as the lives of the submerged tenth, viz., coalminers, divers,
scavengers, etc., were very much under the microscope lately. To improve the shining hour he wondered
whether he might meet with anything approaching the same luck as Mr Philip
Beaufoy if taken down in writing.
Suppose he were to pen something out of the common groove (as he fully
intended doing) at the rate of one guinea per column, My Experiences,
let us say, in a Cabman's Shelter.
The pink edition, extra sporting, of the Telegraph,
tell a graphic lie, lay, as luck would have it, beside his elbow and as he was
just puzzling again, far from satisfied, over a country belonging to him and
the preceding rebus the vessel came from Bridgewater and the postcard was
addressed to A. Boudin, find the captain's age, his eyes went aimlessly over
the respective captions which came under his special province, the allembracing
give us this day our daily press. First
he got a bit of a start but it turned out to be only something about somebody
named H. du Boyes, agent for typewriters or something like that. Great battle Tokio. Lovemaking in Irish £200
damages. Gordon Bennett. Emigration swindle. Letter from His Grace William +. Ascot Throwaway recalls Derby of '92
when Captain Marshall's dark horse, Sir Hugo, captured the blue riband
at long odds. New York disaster,
thousand lives lost. Foot
and Mouth. Funeral
of the late Mr Patrick Dignam.
So to change the subject he read about
Dignam, R.I.P., which, he reflected, was anything but a gay sendoff.
- This morning (Hynes put it in, of
course), the remains of the late Mr Patrick Dignam were removed from his
residence, no. 9 Newbridge Avenue, Sandymount, for interment in Glasnevin. The deceased gentleman was a most popular and
genial personality in city life and his demise, after a brief illness, came as
a great shock to citizens of all classes by whom he is deeply regretted. The obsequies, at which many friends of the
deceased were present, were carried out (certainly Hynes wrote it with a
nudge from Corny) by Messrs. H.J. O'Neill & Son, 164 North Strand
road. The mourners included: Patk.
Dignam (son), Bernard Corrigan (brother-in-law), John Henry Menton, solr.,
Martin Cunningham, John Power eatondph 1/8 ador dorador douradora (must be
where he called Monks the dayfather about Keyes's ad), Thomas Kernan, Simon
Dedalus, Stephen Dedalus, B.A., Edward J. Lambert, Cornelius Kelleher, Joseph
M'C. Hynes, L. Boom, C.P. M'Coy, - M'Intosh, and several
others.
Nettled not a little by L. Boom (as
it incorrectly stated) and the line of botched type, but ticked to death
simultaneously by C.P. M'Coy and Stephen Dedalus, B.A., who were conspicuous,
needless to say, by their total absence (to say nothing of M'Intosh), L. Boom
pointed it out to his companion B.A., engaged in stifling another yawn, half
nervousness, not forgetting the usual crop of nonsensical howlers of misprints.
- Is that first epistle to the Hebrews, he
asked, as soon as his bottom jaw would let him, in? Text: open thy mouth and put they foot in it.
- It is, really, Mr Bloom said (though
first he fancied he alluded to the archbishop till he added about foot and
mouth with which there could be no possible connection) overjoyed to set his
mind at rest and a bit flabbergasted at Myles Crawford's after all managing the
thing, there.
While the other was reading it on page two
Boom (to give him for the nonce his new misnomer) whiled away a few odd leisure
moments in fits and starts with the account of the third event at Ascot on page
three, his sidevalue 1,000 sovs., with 3,000 sovs. in
specie added for entire colts and fillies, Mr F. Alexander's Throwaway,
b.h. by Rightaway, 5 yrs, 9st 4lbs, Thrale (W. Lane) 1. Lord Howard de Walden's Zinfandel (M. Cannon) 2. Mr W. Bass's Sceptre, 3. Betting 5
to 4 on Zinfandel, 20 to 1 Throwaway (off). Throwaway and Zinfandel
stood close order. It was
anybody's race then the rank outsider drew to the fore got long lead, beating
lord Howard de Walden's chestnut colt and Mr W. Bass's bay filly Sceptre
on a 2½ mile course. Winner trained by
Braine so that Lenehan's version of the business was all pure buncombe. Secured the verdict
cleverly by a length. 1,000 sovs., with 3,000 in specie.
Also ran J. de Bremond's (French horse Bantam Lyons was anxiously
inquiring after not in yet but expected any minute) Maximum II. Different ways of bringing
off a coup. Lovemaking
damages. Though
that halfbaked
- There was every indication they would
arrive at that, Mr Bloom said.
- Who? the other,
whose hand by the way was hurt, said.
One morning you would open the paper, the
cabman affirmed, and read, Return of Parnell. He bet them what they liked. A Dublin fusilier was in that shelter one
night and said he saw him in South Africa.
Pride it was killed him. He ought
to have done away with himself or lain low for a time after Committee Room
No.15 until he was his old self again with no-one to point a finger at
him. Then they would all to a man have
gone down on their marrowbones to him to come back when he had recovered his
senses. Dead he wasn't. Simply absconded somewhere. The coffin they brought over was full of
stones. He changed his name to De Wet,
the Boer general. He made a mistake to
fight the priests. And so forth and so
on.
All the same, Bloom (properly so dubbed)
was rather surprised at their memories for in nine cases out of ten it was a
case of tarbarrels, and not singly but in their thousands, and then complete
oblivion because it was twenty odd years.
Highly unlikely, of course, there was even a shadow of truth in the
stories and, even supposing, he thought a return highly inadvisable, all things
considered. Something evidently riled
them in his death. Either he petered out
too tamely of acute pneumonia just when his various different political
arrangements were nearing completion or whether it transpired he owed his death
to his having neglected to change his boots and clothes after a wetting when a
cold resulted and failing to consult a specialist he being confined to his room
till he eventually died of it amid widespread regret before a fortnight was at
an end or quite possibly they were distressed to find the job was taken out of
their hands. Of course nobody being
acquainted with his movements even before, there was absolutely no clue as to
his whereabouts which were decidedly of the Alice, where art thou order
even prior to his starting to go under several aliases such as Fox and Stewart,
so the remark which emanated from friend cabby might be within the bounds of
possibility. Naturally then, it would
prey on his mind as a born leader of men, which undoubtedly he was, and a
commanding figure, a sixfooter or at any rate five feet ten or eleven in his
stockinged feet, whereas Messrs So-and-So who, though they weren't even a patch
on the former man, ruled the roost after their redeeming features were very few
and far between. It certainly pointed a
moral, the idol with feet of clay. And then seventytwo of his trusty henchmen rounding on him with
mutual mudslinging. And the identical same with murderers. You had to come back - that haunting sense
kind of drew you - to show the understudy in the title rôle how to. He saw him once on the auspicious occasion
when they broke up the type in the Insuppressible or was it United
Ireland, a privilege he keenly appreciated, and, in point of fact, handed
him his silk hat when it was knocked off and he said Thank you, excited
as he undoubtedly was under his frigid expression notwithstanding the little
misadventure mentioned between the cup and the lip - what's bred in the
bone. Still, as regards return, you were
a lucky dog if they didn't set the terrier at you directly you got back. Then a lot of shillyshally usually
followed. Tom for and
Dick and Harry against. And then,
number one, you came up against the man in possession and had to produce your
credentials, like the claimant in the Tichborne case. Roger Charles Tichborne, Bella was the
boat's name to the best of his recollection he, the heir, went down in, as the
evidence went to show, and there was a tattoo mark too in Indian ink, Lord
Bellew, was it? As he might very easily
have picked up the details form some pal on board ship and then, when got up to
tally with the description given, introduce himself with, Excuse me, my name
is So-and-So or some such commonplace remark. A more prudent course, Mr Bloom said to the
not over effusive, in fact like the distinguished personage under discussion
beside him, would have been to sound the lie of the land first.
- That bitch, that English whore, did for
him, the shebeen proprietor commented.
She put the first nail in his coffin.
- Fine lump of a woman, all the same, the soi-disant
townclerk, Henry Campbell remarked, and plenty of her. I seen her picture
in a barber's. Her husband was a captain
or an officer.
- Ay, Skin-the-Goat amusingly added. He was, and a cottonball one.
This gratuitous contribution of a humorous
character occasioned a fair amount of laughter among his entourage. As regards Bloom, he, without the faintest
suspicion of a smile, merely gazed in the direction of the door and reflected
upon the historic story which had aroused extraordinary interest at the time
when the facts, to make matters worse, were made public with the usual
affectionate letters that passed between them, full of sweet nothings. First, it was strictly platonic till nature
intervened and an attachment sprang up between them, till bit by bit matters
came to a climax and the matter became the talk of the town till the staggering
blow came as a welcome intelligence to not a few evildisposed however, who were
resolved upon encouraging his downfall though the thing was public property all
along though not to anything like the sensational extent that it subsequently
blossomed into. Since their names were
coupled, though, since he was her declared favourite, where was the particular
necessity to proclaim it to the rank and file from the housetops, the fact
namely, that he had shared her bedroom, which came out in the witnessbox on
oath when a thrill went through the packed court literally electrifying
everybody in the shape of witnesses swearing to having witnessed him on such
and such a particular date in the act of scrambling out of an upstairs
apartment with the assistance of a ladder in night apparel, having gained
admittance in the same fashion, a fact that the weeklies, addicted to the
lubric a little, simply called shoals of money out of. Whereas the simple fact of the case was it
was simply a case of the husband not being up to the scratch with nothing in
common between them beyond the name and then a real man arriving on the scene,
strong to the verge of weakness, falling a victim to
her siren charms and forgetting home ties.
The usual sequel, to bask in the loved one's smiles. The eternal question of the life connubial,
needless to say, cropped up. Can real
love, supposing there happens to be another chap in the case, exist between
married folk? Though
it was no concern of theirs absolutely if he regarded her with affection
carried away by a wave of folly.
A magnificent specimen of manhood he was truly, augmented obviously by
gifts of a high order as compared with the other military supernoumerary, that
is (who was just the usual everyday farewell, my gallant captain kind of
an individual in the light dragoons, the 18th hussars to be accurate), and
inflammable doubtless (the fallen leader, that is, not the other) in his own
peculiar way which she of course, woman, quickly perceived as highly likely to
carve his way to fame, which he almost bid fair to do till the priests and
ministers of the gospel as a whole, his erstwhile staunch adherents and his
beloved evicted tenants for whom he had done yeoman service in the rural parts
of the country by taking up the cudgels on their behalf in a way that exceeded
their most sanguine expectations, very effectually cooked his matrimonial
goose, thereby heaping coals of fire on his head, much in the same way as the
fabled ass's kick. Looking back now in a
retrospective kind of arrangement, all seemed a kind of dream. And the coming back was the worst thing you
ever did because it went without saying you would feel out of place as things
always moved with the times. Why, as he
reflected, Irishtown Strand, a locality he had not been in for quite a number
of years, looked different somehow since, as it happened,he
went to reside on the north side. North
or south however, it was just the wellknown case of hot passion, pure and
simple, upsetting the applecart with a vengeance and just bore out the very
thing he was saying, as she also was Spanish or half so, types that wouldn't do
things by halves, passionate abandon of the south, casting every shred of
decency to the winds.
- Just bears out what I was saying, he
with glowing bosom said to Stephen. And,
if I don't greatly mistake, she was Spanish too.
- The king of Spain's daughter, Stephen
answered, adding something or other rather muddled about farewell and adieu to
you Spanish onions and the first land called the Deadman and from Ramhead to
Scilly was so and so many ...
- Was she? Bloom ejaculated surprised,
though not astonished by any means. I
never heard that rumour before.
Possible, especially there it was, as she lived there. So,
Carefully avoiding a book in his pocket Sweets
of, which reminded him by the by of that Capel street library book out of
date, he took out his pocketbook and, turning over the various contents
rapidly, finally he ...
- Do you consider, by the by, he said,
thoughtfully selecting a faded photo which he laid on the table, that a Spanish
type?
Stephen, obviously addressed, looked down
on the photo showing a large sized lady, with her fleshy charms on evidence in
an open fashion, as she was in the full bloom of womanhood, in evening dress
cut ostentatiously low for the occasion to give a liberal display of bosom,
with more than vision of breasts, her full lips parted, and some perfect teeth,
standing near, ostensibly with gravity, a piano, on the rest of which was In
old Madrid, a ballad, pretty in its way, which was then all the vogue. Her (the lady's) eyes, dark, large, looked at
Stephen, about to smile about something to be admired, Lafayette of Westmoreland
street, Dublin's premier photographic artist, being responsible for the
esthetic execution.
- Mrs Bloom, my wife the prima donna,
Madam Marion Tweedy, Bloom indicated. Taken a few years since.
In or about '96. Very like her
then.
Beside the young man he looked also at the
photo of the lady now his legal wife who, he intimated, was the accomplished
daughter of Major Brain Tweedy and displayed at an early age remarkable
proficiency as a singer having even made her bow to the public when her years numbered
barely sweet sixteen. As for the face,
it was a speaking likeness in expression but it did not do justice to her
figure, which came in for a lot of notice usually and which did not come out to
the best advantage in that getup. She
could without difficulty, he said, have posed for the ensemble, not to dwell on
certain opulent curves of the ... He dwelt, being a bit of an artist in his
spare time, on the female form in general developmentally because, as it so
happened, no later than that afternoon, he had seen those Grecian statues,
perfectly developed as works of art, in the National Museum. Marble could give the original, shoulders,
back, all the symmetry. All the rest, yes, Puritanism. It does though, St Joseph's sovereign ...
whereas no photo could, because it simply wasn't art, in a word.
The spirit moving him, he would much have
liked to follow Jack Tar's good example and leave the likeness there for a very
few minutes to speak for itself on the plea he ... so that the other could
drink in the beauty for himself, her stage presence being, frankly, a treat in
itself which the camera could not at all do justice to. But it was scarcely professional etiquette
so, though it was a warm pleasant sort of a night now yet wonderfully cool for the season considering, for sunshine after storm
... And he did feel a kind of need there and then to follow suit like a kind of
inward voice and satisfy a possible need by moving a motion. Nevertheless, he sat tight, just viewing the
slightly soiled photo creased by opulent curves, none the worse for wear,
however, and looked away thoughtfully with the intention of not further
increasing the other's possible embarrassment while gauging her symmetry of
heaving embonpoint. In fact, the
slight soiling was only an added charm, like the case of linen slightly soiled,
good as new, much better, in fact, with the starch out. Suppose she was gone when he?... I looked for the lamp which she told me came into his
mind but merely as a passing fancy of his because he then recollected the
morning littered bed etcetera and the book about Ruby with met him pike hoses (sic)
in it which must have fell down sufficiently appropriately beside the
domestic chamberpot with apologies to Lindley Murray.
The vicinity of the young man he certainly
relished, educated, distingué, and impulsive into the bargain, far and
away the pick of the bunch, though you wouldn't think he had it in him ... yet
you would. Besides he said the picture
was handsome which, say what you like, it was, though at the moment she was
distinctly stouter. And
why not? An awful lot of
makebelieve went on about that sort of thing involving a lifelong slur with the
usual splash page of letterpress about the same old matrimonial tangle alleging
misconduct with professional golfer or the newest stage favourite instead of
being honest and aboveboard about the whole business. How they were fated to meet and an attachment
sprang up between the two so that their names were coupled in the public eye
was told in court with letters containing the habitual mushy and compromising
expressions, leaving no loophole, to show that they openly cohabited two or
three times a week at some wellknown seaside hotel and relations, when the
thing ran its normal course, became in due course intimate. Then the decree nisi and the King's
Proctor to show cause why and, he failing to quash it,
nisi was made absolute. But as
for that, the two misdemeanants, wrapped up as they largely were in one
another, could safely afford to ignore it as they very largely did till the
matter was put in the hands of a solicitor, who filed a petition for the party
wronged in due course. He, Bloom,
enjoyed the distinction of being close to Erin's uncrowned king in the flesh when
the thing occurred on the historic fracas when the fallen leader's - who
notoriously stuck to his guns to the last drop even when clothed in the mantle
of adultery - (leader's) trusty henchmen to the number of ten or a dozen or
possibly even more than that penetrated into the printing works of the Insuppressible
or no it was United Ireland (a by no means, by the by, appropriate
appellative) and broke up the typecases with hammers or something like that all
on account of some scurrilous effusions from the facile pens of the O'Brienite
scribes at the usual mudslinging occupation, reflecting on the erstwhile
tribune's private morals. Though
palpably a radically altered man, he was still a commanding figure, though
carelessly garbed as usual, with that look of settled purpose which went a long
way with the shillyshallyers till they discovered to their vast discomfiture
that their idol had feet of clay, after placing him upon a pedestal, which she,
however, was the first to perceive. As
those were particularly hot times in the general hullaballoo Bloom sustained a
minor injury from a nasty prod of some chap's elbow in the crowd that of course
congregated lodging some place about the pit of the stomach, fortunately not of
a grave character. His hat (Parnell's)
was inadvertently knocked off and, as a matter of strict history, Bloom was the
man who picked it up in the crush after witnessing the occurrence meaning to
return it to him (and return it to him he did with the utmost celerity) who,
panting and hatless and whose thoughts were miles away from his hat at the
time, being a gentleman born with a stake in the country, he, as a matter of
fact, having gone into it more for the kudos of the thing than anything else,
what's bred in the bone, instilled into him in infancy at his mother's knee in
the shape of knowing what good form was came out at once because he turned
round to the donor and thanked him with perfect aplomb, saying: Thank
you, sir, though in a very different tone of voice from the ornament of the
legal profession whose headgear Bloom also set to rights earlier in the course
of the day, history repeating itself with a difference; after the burial of a
mutual friend when they had left him alone in his glory after the grim task of
having committed his remains to the
grave.
On the other hand what incensed him more
inwardly was the blatant jokes of the cabmen and so on, who passed it all off
as a jest, laughing immoderately, pretending to understand everything, the why
and the wherefore, and in reality not knowing their own minds, it being a case
for the two parties themselves unless it ensued that the legitimate husband
happened to be a party to it owing to some anonymous letter from the usual boy
Jones, who happened to come across them at the crucial moment in a loving
position locked in one another's arms drawing attention to their illicit
proceedings and leading up to a domestic rumpus and the erring fair one begging
forgiveness of her lord and master upon her knees and promising to sever the
connection and not receive his visits any more if only the aggrieved husband
would overlook the matter and let bygones be bygones, with tears in her eyes,
though possibly with her tongue in her fair cheek at the same time, as quite
possibly there were several others. He
personally, being of a sceptical bias, believed, and didn't make the smallest
bones about saying so either, that man, or men in the plural, were always
hanging around on the waiting list about a lady, even supposing she was the
best wife in the world and they got on fairly well together for the sake of
argument, when, neglecting her duties, she chose to be tired of wedded life,
and was on for a little flutter in polite debauchery to press their attentions
on her with improper intent, the upshot being that her affections centred on
another, the cause of many liaisons between still attractive married
women getting on for fair and forty and younger men, no doubt as several famous
cases of feminine infatuation proved up to the hilt.
It
was a thousand pities a young fellow blessed with an allowance of brains, as
his neighbour obviously was, should waste his valuable time with profligate
women, who might present him with a nice dose to last him his lifetime. In the nature of single blessedness he would
one day take unto himself a wife when Miss Right came on the scene but in the
interim ladies' society was a conditio sine qua non though he had the
gravest possible doubts, not that he wanted in the smallest to pump Stephen
about Miss Ferguson (who was very possibly the particularly lodestar who brought
him down to Irishtown so early in the morning), as to whether he would find
much satisfaction basking in the boy and girl courtship idea and the company of
smirking misses without a penny to their names bi- or tri-weekly with the
orthodox preliminary canter of complimentpaying and walking out leading up to
fond lovers' ways and flowers and chocs.
To think of him house and homeless, rooked by some landlady worse than
any stepmother, was really too bad at his age.
The queer things he popped out suddenly with attracted the elder man who
was several years the other's senior or like his father. But something substantial he certainly ought
to eat, were it only an eggflip made on unadulterated maternal nutriment or, failing
that, the homely Humpty Dumpty boiled.
- At what o'clock did you dine? he questioned of the slim form and tired though unwrinkled
face.
- Some time yesterday, Stephen said.
- Yesterday, exclaimed Bloom till he
remembered it was already tomorrow, Friday.
Ah, you mean it's after twelve!
- The day before yesterday, Stephen said,
improving on himself.
Literally astounded at this piece of
intelligence, Bloom reflected. Though
they didn't see eye to eye in everything, a certain analogy there somehow was,
as if both their minds were travelling, so to speak, in the one train of
thought. At his age when dabbling in
politics roughly some score of years previously when he had been a quasi aspirant
to parliamentary honours in the Buckshot Foster days he too recollected in
retrospect (which was a source of keen satisfaction in itself) he had a
sneaking regard for those same ultra ideas.
For instance, when the evicted tenants' question, then at its first
inception, bulked largely in people's minds though, it goes without saying, not
contributing a copper or pinning his faith absolutely to its dictums, some of
which wouldn't exactly hold water, he at the outset in principle, at all
events, was in thorough sympathy with peasant possessions, as voicing the trend
of modern opinion, a partiality, however, which, realising his mistaken, he was
subsequently partially cured of, and even was twitted with going a step further
than Michael Davitt in the striking views he at one time inculcated as a
backtothelander, which was one reason he strongly resented the innuendo put
upon him in so barefaced a fashion at the gathering of the clans in Barney
Kiernan's so that he, though often considerably misunderstood and the least
pugnacious of mortals, be it repeated, departed from his customary habit to
give him (metaphorically) one in the gizzard though so far as politics
themselves were concerned, he was only too conscious of the casualties
invariably resulting from propaganda and displays of mutual animosity and the
misery and suffering it entailed as a foregone conclusion on fine young
fellows, chiefly, destruction of the fittest, in a word.
Anyhow, upon weighing the pros and cons,
getting on for one as it was, it was high time to be retiring for the
night. The crux was it was a bit risky
to bring him home as eventualities might possibly ensue (somebody having a
temper of her own sometimes) and spoil the hash altogether as on the night he
misguidedly brought home a dog (breed unknown) with a lame paw, not that the
cases were either identical or the reverse, though he had hurt his hand too, to
Ontario Terrace, as he very distinctly remembered, having been there, so to
speak. On the other hand it was
altogether far and away too late for Sandymount or Sandycove suggestion so that
he was in some perplexity as to which of the two alternatives ... Everything
pointed to the fact that it behoved him to avail himself to the full of the
opportunity, all things considered. His
initial impression was that he was a bit standoffish or not over effusive but
it grew on him someway. For one thing he
mightn't what you call jump at the idea, if approached, and what mostly worried
him was he didn't know how to lead up to it or word it exactly, supposing he
did entertain the proposal, as it would afford him very great personal pleasure
if he would allow him to help to put coin in his way or some wardrobe, if found
suitable. At all events he wound up by
concluding, eschewing for the nonce hidebound precedent, a cup of Epps's cocoa
and a shakedown for the night plus the use of a rug or two and overcoat doubled
into a pillow. At least he would be in
safe hands and as warm as a toast on a trivet.
He failed to perceive any very vast amount of harm in that always with
the proviso no rumpus of any sort was kicked up. A move had to be made because that merry old
soul, the grasswidower in question, who appeared to be glued to the spot,
didn't appear in any particular hurry to wend his way home to his dearly
beloved Queenstown and it was highly likely some sponger's bawdyhouse of
retired beauties off Sheriff street lower would be the best clue to that
equivocal character's whereabouts for a few days to come, alternately racking
their feelings (the mermaids') with sixchamber revolver anecdotes verging on
the tropical calculated to freeze the marrow of anybody's bones and mauling
their largesized charms betweenwhiles with rough and tumble gusto to the
accompaniment of large potations of potheen and the usual blarney about himself
for as to who he in reality was let XX equal my right name and address, as Mr
Algebra remarks passim. At the
same time he inwardly chuckled over his repartee to the blood and ouns champion
about his God being a jew. People could put up with being bitten by a
wolf but what properly riled them was a bite from a sheep. The most vulnerable point too of tender
Achilles, your God was a jew, because mostly they
appeared to imagine he came from Carrick-on-Shannon or somewhere about in the
- I propose, our hero eventually
suggested, after mature reflection while prudently pocketing her photo, as it's
rather stuffy here, you just come with me and talk things over. My diggings are quite close in the
vicinity. You can't drink that stuff. Wait, I'll just pay this lot.
The best plan clearly being to clear out,
the remainder being plain sailing, he beckoned, while prudently pocketing the
photo, to the keeper of the shanty, who didn't seem to ...
- Yes, that's the best, he assured
Stephen, to whom for the matter of that Brazen Head or him or anywhere else was
all more or less ...
All kinds of Utopian plans were flashing
through his (Bloom's) busy brain.
Education (the genuine article), literature, journalism, prize titbits,
up to date billing, hydros and concert tours in English watering resorts packed
with theatres, turning money away, duets in Italian with the accent perfectly
true to nature and a quantity of other things, no necessity of course to tell
the world and his wife from the housetops about it and a slice of luck. An opening was all was wanted. Because he more than suspected he had his
father's voice to bank his hopes on which it was quite on the cards he had so
it would be just as well, by the way no harm, to trail the conversation in the
direction of that particular red herring just to ...
The cabby read out of the paper he had got
hold of that the former viceroy, earl Cadagan, had presided at the cabdriver's
association dinner in London somewhere.
Silence with a yawn or two accompanied this thrilling announcement. Then the old specimen in the corner who
appeared to have some spark of vitality left read out that Sir Anthony
MacDonnell had left Euston for the chief secretary's lodge or words to that
effect. To which absorbing piece of
intelligence echo answered why.
- Give us a squint at that literature,
grandfather, the ancient mariner put in, manifesting some natural impatience.
- And welcome, answered the elderly party
thus addressed.
The sailor lugged out from a case he had a
pair of greenish goggles which he very slowly hooked over his nose and both
ears.
- Are you bad in the eyes? the sympathetic personage like the town clerk queried.
- Why, answered the seafarer with the
tartan beard, who seemingly was a bit of a literary cove in his own small way,
staring out of seagreen portholes as you might well describe them as, I uses
goggles reading. Sand in the
Thereupon he pawed the journal open and
pored upon Lord only knows what, found drowned or the exploits of King Willow,
Iremonger having made a hundred and something second wicket not out for Notts,
during which time (completely regardless of Ire) the keeper was intensely
occupied loosening an apparently new or secondhand boot which manifestly
pinched him, as he muttered against whoever it was sold it, all of them who
were sufficiently awake enough to be picked out by their facial expressions,
that is to say, either simply looking on glumly or passing a trivial remark.
To cut a long story short Bloom, grasping
the situation, was the first to rise to his feet so as not to outstay their
welcome having first and foremost, being as good as his word that he would foot
the bill for the occasion, taken the wise precaution to unobtrusively motion to
mine host as a parting shot a scarcely perceptible sign when the others were
not looking to the effect that the amount due was forthcoming, making a grand
total of fourpence (the amount he deposited unobtrusively in four coppers,
literally the last of the Mohicans) he having previously spotted on the printed
pricelist for all who ran to read opposite to him in unmistakable figures,
coffee 2d., confectionery do., and honestly well worth twice the money once in
a way, as Wetherup used to remark.
- Come, he counselled, to close the séance.
Seeing that the ruse worked and the coast
was clear, they left the shelter or shanty together and the élite
society of oilskin and company whom nothing short of an earthquake would move
out of their dolce far niente.
Stephen, who confessed to still feeling poorly and fagged out, paused at
the, for a moment ... the door to ...
- One thing I never understood, he said,
to be original on the spur of the moment, why they put tables upside down at
night, I mean chairs upside down on the tables in cafés.
To which impromptu the neverfailing Bloom
replied without a moment's hesitation, saying straight off:
- To sweep the floor in the morning.
So saying he skipped around nimbly,
considering frankly, at the same time apologetic, to get on his companion's
right, a habit of his, by the by, the right side of being, in classical idiom,
his tender Achilles. The night air was
certainly now a treat to breathe though Stephen was a bit weak on his pins.
- It will (the
air) do you good, Bloom said, meaning also the walk, in a moment. The only thing is to walk then you'll feel a
different man. It's not far. Lean on me.
Accordingly he passed his left arm in
Stephen's right and led him on accordingly.
- Yes, Stephen said uncertainly, because
he thought he felt a strange kind of flesh of a different man approach him,
sinewless and wobbly and all that.
Anyhow, they passed the sentrybox with
stones, brazier, etc. where the municipal supernumerary, ex-Gumley, was still
to all intents and purposes wrapped in the arms of Murphy, as the adage has it,
dreaming of fresh fields and pastures new.
And apropos of coffin of stones, the analogy was not at all bad, as it was in fact a
stoning to death on the part of seventytwo out of eighty odd constituencies
that ratted at the time of the split and chiefly the belauded peasant class,
probably the selfsame evicted tenants he had put in their holdings.
So they passed on to chatting about music,
a form of art for which Bloom, as a pure amateur, possessed the greatest love,
as they made tracks arm-in-arm across Beresford place. Wagnerian music, though confessedly grand in
its way, was a bit too heavy for Bloom and hard to follow at the first go-off
but the music of Mercadante's Huguenots, Meyerbeer's Seven Last Words
on the Cross, and Mozart's Twelfth Mass, he simply revelled in, the Gloria
in that being to his mind the acme of first class music as such, literally
knocking everything else into a cocked hat.
He infinitely preferred the sacred music of the catholic
church to anything the opposite shop could offer in that line such as
those Moody and Sankey hymns or Bid me to live and I will live thy
protestant to be. He also yielded to
none of his admiration of Rossini's Stabat Mater, a work simply
abounding in immortal numbers, in which his wife, Madam Marion Tweedy, made a
hit, a veritable sensation, he might safely say greatly adding to her other
laurels and putting the others totally in the shade in the jesuit fathers'
church in Upper Gardiner street, the sacred edifice being thronged to the doors
to hear her with virtuosos, or virtuosi rather. There was the unanimous opinion that there
was none to come up to her and, suffice it to say in a place of worship for
music of a sacred character, there was a generally voiced desire for an
encore. On the whole, though favouring
preferably light opera of the Don Giovanni description, and Martha,
a gem in its line, he had a penchant, though with only a surface
knowledge, for the severe classical school such as Mendelssohn. And talking of that, taking it for granted he
knew all about the old favourites, he mentioned par excellence Lionel's
air in Martha, M'appari, which, curiously enough, he heard, or overheard,
to be more accurate, on yesterday, a privilege he keenly appreciated, from the
lips of Stephen's respected father, sung to perfection, a study of the number,
in fact, which made all the others take a back seat. Stephen, in reply to a politely put query,
said he didn't but launched out into praises of Shakespeare's songs, at least
of in or about that period, the lutenist Dowland who lived in Fetter Lane near
Gerard the herbalist, whose anno ludendo hausi, Doulandus, an instrument
he was contemplating purchasing from Mr Arnold Dolmetsch, whom Bloom did not
quite recall, though the name certainly sounded familiar, for sixtyfive guineas
and Farnaby and son with their dux and comes conceits and Byrd
(William), who played the virginals, he said, in the Queen's Chapel or anywhere
else he found them and one Tomkins who made toys or airs and John Bull.
On the roadway which they were approaching
whilst still speaking beyond the swing chain, a horse, dragging a sweeper,
paced on the paven ground, brushing a long swathe of mire up so that with the
noise Bloom was not perfectly certain whether he had caught aright the allusion
to sixtyfive guineas and John Bull. He
inquired if it was John Bull the political celebrity of that ilk, as it struck
him, the two identical names, as a striking coincidence.
By the chains, the horse slowly swerved to
turn, which perceiving, Bloom, who was keeping a sharp lookout as usual plucked
the other's sleeve gently, jocosely remarking:
- Our lives are in peril tonight. Beware of the steamroller.
They thereupon stopped. Bloom looked at the head of a horse not worth
anything like sixtyfive guineas, suddenly in evidence in the dark quite near,
so that it seemed new, a different grouping of bones and even flesh, because
palpably it was a fourwalker, a hipshaker, a blackbuttocker, a taildangler, a
headhanger, putting his hind foot foremost the while the lord of his creation
sat on the perch, busy with his thoughts.
But such a good poor brute, he was sorry he hadn't a lump of sugar but,
as he wisely reflected, you could scarcely be prepared for every emergency that
might crop up. He was just a big foolish
nervous noodly kind of a horse, without a second care in the world. But even a dog, he reflected, take that
mongrel in Barney Kiernan's, of the same size, would be a holy horror to
face. But it was no animal's fault in
particular if he was built that way like the camel, ship of the desert,
distilling grapes into potheen in his hump.
Nine tenths of them all could be caged or trained, nothing beyond the
art of man barring the bees; whale with a harpoon hairpin, alligator, tickle
the small of his back and he sees the joke; chalk a circle for a rooster;
tiger, my eagle eye. These timely
reflections anent the brutes of the field occupied his mind, somewhat
distracted from Stephen's words, while the ship of the street was manoeuvring
and Stephen went on about the highly interesting old ...
- What's this I was saying? Ah, yes!
My wife, he intimated, plunging in medias res, would have the
greatest pleasure in making your acquaintance as she is passionately attached
to music of any kind.
He looked sideways in a friendly fashion
at the sideface of Stephen, image of his mother, which was not quite the same
as the usual blackguard type they unquestionably had an indubitable hankering
after as he was perhaps not that way built.
Still, supposing he had his father's gift,
as he more than suspected, it opened up new vistas of his mind, such as Lady
Fingall's Irish industries concert on the preceding Monday, and aristocracy in
general.
Exquisite variations he was now describing
on an air Youth here has End by Jans Pieter Sweelinck, a Dutchman of
Amsterdam where the frows come from.
Even more he liked an old German song of Johannes Jeep about the
clear sea and the voices of sirens, sweet murderers of men, which boggled Bloom
a bit:
Von der Sirenen Listigkeit
Tun die Poeten
dichten.
These opening bars he sang and translated extempore. Bloom, nodding, said he perfectly understood
and begged him to go on by all means, which he did.
A phenomenally beautiful tenor voice like
that, the rarest of boons, if properly handled by some recognised authority on
voice production such as Barraclough and being able to read music into the
bargain, command its own price where baritones were ten a penny and procure for
its fortunate possessor in the near future an entrée into fashionable
houses in the best residential quarters, of financial magnates in a large way
of business and titled people where, with his university degree of B.A. (a huge
ad in its way) and gentlemanly bearing to all the more influence the good
impression he would infallibly score a distinct success, being blessed with
brains which also could be utilised for the purpose and other requisites, if
his clothes were properly attended to, so as to the better worm his way into
their good graces as he, a youthful tyro in society's sartorial niceties,
hardly understood how a little thing like that could militate against you. It was in fact only a matter of months and he
could easily foresee him participating in their musical and artistic conversaziones
during the festivities of the Christmas season, for choice, causing a slight
flutter in the dovecotes of the fair sex and being made a lot of by ladies out
for sensation, cases of which, as he happened to know, were on record, in fact,
without giving the show away, he himself once upon a time, if he cared to,
could easily have ... Added to which of course, would be the pecuniary
emolument by no means to be sneezed at, going hand in hand with his tuition
fees. Not, he parenthesised, that for
the sake of filthy lucre he need necessarily embrace the lyric platform as a
walk in life for any lengthy space of time but a step in the required direction
it was, beyond yea or nay, and both monetarily and mentally it contained no
reflection on his dignity in the smallest and it often turned in uncommonly
handy to be handed a cheque at a muchneeded moment when every little
helped. Besides, though taste latterly
had deteriorated to a degree, original music like that, different from the
conventional rut, would rapidly have a great vogue, as it would be a decided
novelty for Dublin's musical world after the usual hackneyed run of catchy
tenor solos foisted on a confiding public by Ivan St Austell and Hilton St Just
and their genus omne. Yes, beyond
a shadow of a doubt, he could, with all the cards in his hand and he had a
capital opening to make a name for himself and win a high place in the city's
esteem where he could command a stiff figure and, booking ahead, give a grand
concert for the patrons of the King street house, given a backerup, if one were
forthcoming to kick him upstairs, so to speak - a big if, however - with
some impetus of the goahead sort to obviate the inevitable procrastination
which often tripped up a too much feted prince of good fellows and it need not
detract from the other by one iota as, being his own master, he would have
heaps of time to practise literature in his spare moments when desirous of so
doing without its clashing with his vocal career or containing anything
derogatory whatsoever as it was a matter for himself alone. In fact, he had the ball at his feet and that
was the very reason why the other, possessed of a remarkably sharp nose for
smelling a rat of any sort, hung on to him at all.
The horse was just then ... and later on,
at a propitious opportunity he purposed (Bloom did), without anyway prying into
his private affairs on the fools step in where angels principle advising
him to sever his connections with a certain budding practitioner, who, he
noticed, was prone to disparage, and even, to a slight extent, with some
hilarious pretext,when not present, deprecate him, or whatever you like to call
it, in Bloom's humble opinion, threw a nasty sidelight on that side of a
person's character - no pun intended.
The horse, having reached the end of his
tether, so to speak, halted, and, rearing high a proud feathering tail, added
his quota by letting fall on the floor, which the brush would soon brush up and
polish, three smoking globes of turds.
Slowly, three times, one after another, from a full crupper, he mired. And humanely his driver waited till he (or
she) had ended, patient in his scythed car.
Side by side Bloom, profiting by the contretemps,
with Stephen passed through the gap of chains, divided by the upright, and,
stepping over a strand of mire, went across towards
Und alle Schiffe brücken.
The driver never said a word, good, bad or
indifferent. He merely watched the two
figures, as he sat on his lowbacked car, both black - one full, one lean - walk
towards the railway bridge, to be married by Father Maher. As they walked, they at times stopped and
walked again, continuing their tête-à-tête (which of course he was
utterly out of), about sirens, enemies of man's reason, mingled with a number
of other topics of the same category, usurpers, historical cases of the kind
while the man in the sweeper car or you might as well call it in the sleeper
car who in any case couldn't possibly hear because they were too far simply sat
in his seat near the end of lower Gardiner street and looked after their
lowbacked car.
