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Title: Ulysses

Author: James Joyce

Release date: July 1, 2003 [eBook #4300]
Most recently updated: November 27, 2025

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4300

Credits: EBook produced by Col Choat.

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ULYSSES ***

Ulysses

by James Joyce

Contents

—I—

[1]
[2]
[3]

— II —

[4]
[5]
[6]
[7]
[8]
[9]
[ 10 ]
[ 11 ]
[ 12 ]
[ 13 ]
[ 14 ]
[ 15 ]

— III —

[ 16 ]
[ 17 ]
[ 18 ]

—I—

[1]
Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of
lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. A yellow dressinggown,
ungirdled, was sustained gently behind him on the mild morning air. He
held the bowl aloft and intoned:
—Introibo ad altare Dei.
Halted, he peered down the dark winding stairs and called out coarsely:
—Come up, Kinch! Come up, you fearful jesuit!
Solemnly he came forward and mounted the round gunrest. He faced
about and blessed gravely thrice the tower, the surrounding land and the
awaking mountains. Then, catching sight of Stephen Dedalus, he bent
towards him and made rapid crosses in the air, gurgling in his throat and
shaking his head. Stephen Dedalus, displeased and sleepy, leaned his arms
on the top of the staircase and looked coldly at the shaking gurgling face
that blessed him, equine in its length, and at the light untonsured hair,
grained and hued like pale oak.
Buck Mulligan peeped an instant under the mirror and then covered the
bowl smartly.
—Back to barracks! he said sternly.
He added in a preacher’s tone:
—For this, O dearly beloved, is the genuine Christine: body and soul and
blood and ouns. Slow music, please. Shut your eyes, gents. One moment. A
little trouble about those white corpuscles. Silence, all.
He peered sideways up and gave a long slow whistle of call, then paused
awhile in rapt attention, his even white teeth glistening here and there with
gold points. Chrysostomos. Two strong shrill whistles answered through the
calm.
—Thanks, old chap, he cried briskly. That will do nicely. Switch off the
current, will you?

He skipped off the gunrest and looked gravely at his watcher, gathering
about his legs the loose folds of his gown. The plump shadowed face and
sullen oval jowl recalled a prelate, patron of arts in the middle ages. A
pleasant smile broke quietly over his lips.
—The mockery of it! he said gaily. Your absurd name, an ancient Greek!
He pointed his finger in friendly jest and went over to the parapet,
laughing to himself. Stephen Dedalus stepped up, followed him wearily
halfway and sat down on the edge of the gunrest, watching him still as he
propped his mirror on the parapet, dipped the brush in the bowl and lathered
cheeks and neck.
Buck Mulligan’s gay voice went on.
—My name is absurd too: Malachi Mulligan, two dactyls. But it has a
Hellenic ring, hasn’t it? Tripping and sunny like the buck himself. We must
go to Athens. Will you come if I can get the aunt to fork out twenty quid?
He laid the brush aside and, laughing with delight, cried:
—Will he come? The jejune jesuit!
Ceasing, he began to shave with care.
—Tell me, Mulligan, Stephen said quietly.
—Yes, my love?
—How long is Haines going to stay in this tower?
Buck Mulligan showed a shaven cheek over his right shoulder.
—God, isn’t he dreadful? he said frankly. A ponderous Saxon. He thinks
you’re not a gentleman. God, these bloody English! Bursting with money
and indigestion. Because he comes from Oxford. You know, Dedalus, you
have the real Oxford manner. He can’t make you out. O, my name for you is
the best: Kinch, the knife-blade.
He shaved warily over his chin.
—He was raving all night about a black panther, Stephen said. Where is
his guncase?
—A woful lunatic! Mulligan said. Were you in a funk?
—I was, Stephen said with energy and growing fear. Out here in the dark
with a man I don’t know raving and moaning to himself about shooting a
black panther. You saved men from drowning. I’m not a hero, however. If
he stays on here I am off.

Buck Mulligan frowned at the lather on his razorblade. He hopped down
from his perch and began to search his trouser pockets hastily.
—Scutter! he cried thickly.
He came over to the gunrest and, thrusting a hand into Stephen’s upper
pocket, said:
—Lend us a loan of your noserag to wipe my razor.
Stephen suffered him to pull out and hold up on show by its corner a
dirty crumpled handkerchief. Buck Mulligan wiped the razorblade neatly.
Then, gazing over the handkerchief, he said:
—The bard’s noserag! A new art colour for our Irish poets: snotgreen.
You can almost taste it, can’t you?
He mounted to the parapet again and gazed out over Dublin bay, his fair
oakpale hair stirring slightly.
—God! he said quietly. Isn’t the sea what Algy calls it: a great sweet
mother? The snotgreen sea. The scrotumtightening sea. Epi oinopa ponton.
Ah, Dedalus, the Greeks! I must teach you. You must read them in the
original. Thalatta! Thalatta! She is our great sweet mother. Come and look.
Stephen stood up and went over to the parapet. Leaning on it he looked
down on the water and on the mailboat clearing the harbourmouth of
Kingstown.
—Our mighty mother! Buck Mulligan said.
He turned abruptly his grey searching eyes from the sea to Stephen’s
face.
—The aunt thinks you killed your mother, he said. That’s why she won’t
let me have anything to do with you.
—Someone killed her, Stephen said gloomily.
—You could have knelt down, damn it, Kinch, when your dying mother
asked you, Buck Mulligan said. I’m hyperborean as much as you. But to
think of your mother begging you with her last breath to kneel down and
pray for her. And you refused. There is something sinister in you....
He broke off and lathered again lightly his farther cheek. A tolerant smile
curled his lips.
—But a lovely mummer! he murmured to himself. Kinch, the loveliest
mummer of them all!

He shaved evenly and with care, in silence, seriously.
Stephen, an elbow rested on the jagged granite, leaned his palm against
his brow and gazed at the fraying edge of his shiny black coat-sleeve. Pain,
that was not yet the pain of love, fretted his heart. Silently, in a dream she
had come to him after her death, her wasted body within its loose brown
graveclothes giving off an odour of wax and rosewood, her breath, that had
bent upon him, mute, reproachful, a faint odour of wetted ashes. Across the
threadbare cuffedge he saw the sea hailed as a great sweet mother by the
wellfed voice beside him. The ring of bay and skyline held a dull green
mass of liquid. A bowl of white china had stood beside her deathbed
holding the green sluggish bile which she had torn up from her rotting liver
by fits of loud groaning vomiting.
Buck Mulligan wiped again his razorblade.
—Ah, poor dogsbody! he said in a kind voice. I must give you a shirt and
a few noserags. How are the secondhand breeks?
—They fit well enough, Stephen answered.
Buck Mulligan attacked the hollow beneath his underlip.
—The mockery of it, he said contentedly. Secondleg they should be. God
knows what poxy bowsy left them off. I have a lovely pair with a hair
stripe, grey. You’ll look spiffing in them. I’m not joking, Kinch. You look
damn well when you’re dressed.
—Thanks, Stephen said. I can’t wear them if they are grey.
—He can’t wear them, Buck Mulligan told his face in the mirror.
Etiquette is etiquette. He kills his mother but he can’t wear grey trousers.
He folded his razor neatly and with stroking palps of fingers felt the
smooth skin.
Stephen turned his gaze from the sea and to the plump face with its
smokeblue mobile eyes.
—That fellow I was with in the Ship last night, said Buck Mulligan, says
you have g. p. i. He’s up in Dottyville with Connolly Norman. General
paralysis of the insane!
He swept the mirror a half circle in the air to flash the tidings abroad in
sunlight now radiant on the sea. His curling shaven lips laughed and the

edges of his white glittering teeth. Laughter seized all his strong wellknit
trunk.
—Look at yourself, he said, you dreadful bard!
Stephen bent forward and peered at the mirror held out to him, cleft by a
crooked crack. Hair on end. As he and others see me. Who chose this face
for me? This dogsbody to rid of vermin. It asks me too.
—I pinched it out of the skivvy’s room, Buck Mulligan said. It does her
all right. The aunt always keeps plainlooking servants for Malachi. Lead
him not into temptation. And her name is Ursula.
Laughing again, he brought the mirror away from Stephen’s peering
eyes.
—The rage of Caliban at not seeing his face in a mirror, he said. If Wilde
were only alive to see you!
Drawing back and pointing, Stephen said with bitterness:
—It is a symbol of Irish art. The cracked lookingglass of a servant.
Buck Mulligan suddenly linked his arm in Stephen’s and walked with
him round the tower, his razor and mirror clacking in the pocket where he
had thrust them.
—It’s not fair to tease you like that, Kinch, is it? he said kindly. God
knows you have more spirit than any of them.
Parried again. He fears the lancet of my art as I fear that of his. The cold
steel pen.
—Cracked lookingglass of a servant! Tell that to the oxy chap downstairs
and touch him for a guinea. He’s stinking with money and thinks you’re not
a gentleman. His old fellow made his tin by selling jalap to Zulus or some
bloody swindle or other. God, Kinch, if you and I could only work together
we might do something for the island. Hellenise it.
Cranly’s arm. His arm.
—And to think of your having to beg from these swine. I’m the only one
that knows what you are. Why don’t you trust me more? What have you up
your nose against me? Is it Haines? If he makes any noise here I’ll bring
down Seymour and we’ll give him a ragging worse than they gave Clive
Kempthorpe.

Young shouts of moneyed voices in Clive Kempthorpe’s rooms.
Palefaces: they hold their ribs with laughter, one clasping another. O, I shall
expire! Break the news to her gently, Aubrey! I shall die! With slit ribbons
of his shirt whipping the air he hops and hobbles round the table, with
trousers down at heels, chased by Ades of Magdalen with the tailor’s shears.
A scared calf’s face gilded with marmalade. I don’t want to be debagged!
Don’t you play the giddy ox with me!
Shouts from the open window startling evening in the quadrangle. A deaf
gardener, aproned, masked with Matthew Arnold’s face, pushes his mower
on the sombre lawn watching narrowly the dancing motes of grasshalms.
To ourselves... new paganism... omphalos.
—Let him stay, Stephen said. There’s nothing wrong with him except at
night.
—Then what is it? Buck Mulligan asked impatiently. Cough it up. I’m
quite frank with you. What have you against me now?
They halted, looking towards the blunt cape of Bray Head that lay on the
water like the snout of a sleeping whale. Stephen freed his arm quietly.
—Do you wish me to tell you? he asked.
—Yes, what is it? Buck Mulligan answered. I don’t remember anything.
He looked in Stephen’s face as he spoke. A light wind passed his brow,
fanning softly his fair uncombed hair and stirring silver points of anxiety in
his eyes.
Stephen, depressed by his own voice, said:
—Do you remember the first day I went to your house after my mother’s
death?
Buck Mulligan frowned quickly and said:
—What? Where? I can’t remember anything. I remember only ideas and
sensations. Why? What happened in the name of God?
—You were making tea, Stephen said, and went across the landing to get
more hot water. Your mother and some visitor came out of the
drawingroom. She asked you who was in your room.
—Yes? Buck Mulligan said. What did I say? I forget.
—You said, Stephen answered, O, it’s only Dedalus whose mother is
beastly dead.

A flush which made him seem younger and more engaging rose to Buck
Mulligan’s cheek.
—Did I say that? he asked. Well? What harm is that?
He shook his constraint from him nervously.
—And what is death, he asked, your mother’s or yours or my own? You
saw only your mother die. I see them pop off every day in the Mater and
Richmond and cut up into tripes in the dissectingroom. It’s a beastly thing
and nothing else. It simply doesn’t matter. You wouldn’t kneel down to pray
for your mother on her deathbed when she asked you. Why? Because you
have the cursed jesuit strain in you, only it’s injected the wrong way. To me
it’s all a mockery and beastly. Her cerebral lobes are not functioning. She
calls the doctor sir Peter Teazle and picks buttercups off the quilt. Humour
her till it’s over. You crossed her last wish in death and yet you sulk with me
because I don’t whinge like some hired mute from Lalouette’s. Absurd! I
suppose I did say it. I didn’t mean to offend the memory of your mother.
He had spoken himself into boldness. Stephen, shielding the gaping
wounds which the words had left in his heart, said very coldly:
—I am not thinking of the offence to my mother.
—Of what then? Buck Mulligan asked.
—Of the offence to me, Stephen answered.
Buck Mulligan swung round on his heel.
—O, an impossible person! he exclaimed.
He walked off quickly round the parapet. Stephen stood at his post,
gazing over the calm sea towards the headland. Sea and headland now grew
dim. Pulses were beating in his eyes, veiling their sight, and he felt the fever
of his cheeks.
A voice within the tower called loudly:
—Are you up there, Mulligan?
—I’m coming, Buck Mulligan answered.
He turned towards Stephen and said:
—Look at the sea. What does it care about offences? Chuck Loyola,
Kinch, and come on down. The Sassenach wants his morning rashers.
His head halted again for a moment at the top of the staircase, level with
the roof:

—Don’t mope over it all day, he said. I’m inconsequent. Give up the
moody brooding.
His head vanished but the drone of his descending voice boomed out of
the stairhead:
And no more turn aside and brood
Upon love’s bitter mystery
For Fergus rules the brazen cars.

Woodshadows floated silently by through the morning peace from the
stairhead seaward where he gazed. Inshore and farther out the mirror of
water whitened, spurned by lightshod hurrying feet. White breast of the dim
sea. The twining stresses, two by two. A hand plucking the harpstrings,
merging their twining chords. Wavewhite wedded words shimmering on the
dim tide.
A cloud began to cover the sun slowly, wholly, shadowing the bay in
deeper green. It lay beneath him, a bowl of bitter waters. Fergus’ song: I
sang it alone in the house, holding down the long dark chords. Her door was
open: she wanted to hear my music. Silent with awe and pity I went to her
bedside. She was crying in her wretched bed. For those words, Stephen:
love’s bitter mystery.
Where now?
Her secrets: old featherfans, tasselled dancecards, powdered with musk, a
gaud of amber beads in her locked drawer. A birdcage hung in the sunny
window of her house when she was a girl. She heard old Royce sing in the
pantomime of Turko the Terrible and laughed with others when he sang:
I am the boy
That can enjoy
Invisibility.

Phantasmal mirth, folded away: muskperfumed.
And no more turn aside and brood.

Folded away in the memory of nature with her toys. Memories beset his
brooding brain. Her glass of water from the kitchen tap when she had
approached the sacrament. A cored apple, filled with brown sugar, roasting
for her at the hob on a dark autumn evening. Her shapely fingernails
reddened by the blood of squashed lice from the children’s shirts.

In a dream, silently, she had come to him, her wasted body within its
loose graveclothes giving off an odour of wax and rosewood, her breath,
bent over him with mute secret words, a faint odour of wetted ashes.
Her glazing eyes, staring out of death, to shake and bend my soul. On me
alone. The ghostcandle to light her agony. Ghostly light on the tortured
face. Her hoarse loud breath rattling in horror, while all prayed on their
knees. Her eyes on me to strike me down. Liliata rutilantium te
confessorum turma circumdet: iubilantium te virginum chorus excipiat.
Ghoul! Chewer of corpses!
No, mother! Let me be and let me live.
—Kinch ahoy!
Buck Mulligan’s voice sang from within the tower. It came nearer up the
staircase, calling again. Stephen, still trembling at his soul’s cry, heard
warm running sunlight and in the air behind him friendly words.
—Dedalus, come down, like a good mosey. Breakfast is ready. Haines is
apologising for waking us last night. It’s all right.
—I’m coming, Stephen said, turning.
—Do, for Jesus’ sake, Buck Mulligan said. For my sake and for all our
sakes.
His head disappeared and reappeared.
—I told him your symbol of Irish art. He says it’s very clever. Touch him
for a quid, will you? A guinea, I mean.
—I get paid this morning, Stephen said.
—The school kip? Buck Mulligan said. How much? Four quid? Lend us
one.
—If you want it, Stephen said.
—Four shining sovereigns, Buck Mulligan cried with delight. We’ll have
a glorious drunk to astonish the druidy druids. Four omnipotent sovereigns.
He flung up his hands and tramped down the stone stairs, singing out of
tune with a Cockney accent:
O, won’t we have a merry time,
Drinking whisky, beer and wine!
On coronation,
Coronation day!

O, won’t we have a merry time
On coronation day!

Warm sunshine merrying over the sea. The nickel shavingbowl shone,
forgotten, on the parapet. Why should I bring it down? Or leave it there all
day, forgotten friendship?
He went over to it, held it in his hands awhile, feeling its coolness,
smelling the clammy slaver of the lather in which the brush was stuck. So I
carried the boat of incense then at Clongowes. I am another now and yet the
same. A servant too. A server of a servant.
In the gloomy domed livingroom of the tower Buck Mulligan’s gowned
form moved briskly to and fro about the hearth, hiding and revealing its
yellow glow. Two shafts of soft daylight fell across the flagged floor from
the high barbacans: and at the meeting of their rays a cloud of coalsmoke
and fumes of fried grease floated, turning.
—We’ll be choked, Buck Mulligan said. Haines, open that door, will
you?
Stephen laid the shavingbowl on the locker. A tall figure rose from the
hammock where it had been sitting, went to the doorway and pulled open
the inner doors.
—Have you the key? a voice asked.
—Dedalus has it, Buck Mulligan said. Janey Mack, I’m choked!
He howled, without looking up from the fire:
—Kinch!
—It’s in the lock, Stephen said, coming forward.
The key scraped round harshly twice and, when the heavy door had been
set ajar, welcome light and bright air entered. Haines stood at the doorway,
looking out. Stephen haled his upended valise to the table and sat down to
wait. Buck Mulligan tossed the fry on to the dish beside him. Then he
carried the dish and a large teapot over to the table, set them down heavily
and sighed with relief.
—I’m melting, he said, as the candle remarked when... But, hush! Not a
word more on that subject! Kinch, wake up! Bread, butter, honey. Haines,
come in. The grub is ready. Bless us, O Lord, and these thy gifts. Where’s
the sugar? O, jay, there’s no milk.

Stephen fetched the loaf and the pot of honey and the buttercooler from
the locker. Buck Mulligan sat down in a sudden pet.
—What sort of a kip is this? he said. I told her to come after eight.
—We can drink it black, Stephen said thirstily. There’s a lemon in the
locker.
—O, damn you and your Paris fads! Buck Mulligan said. I want
Sandycove milk.
Haines came in from the doorway and said quietly:
—That woman is coming up with the milk.
—The blessings of God on you! Buck Mulligan cried, jumping up from
his chair. Sit down. Pour out the tea there. The sugar is in the bag. Here, I
can’t go fumbling at the damned eggs.
He hacked through the fry on the dish and slapped it out on three plates,
saying:
—In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti.
Haines sat down to pour out the tea.
—I’m giving you two lumps each, he said. But, I say, Mulligan, you do
make strong tea, don’t you?
Buck Mulligan, hewing thick slices from the loaf, said in an old woman’s
wheedling voice:
—When I makes tea I makes tea, as old mother Grogan said. And when I
makes water I makes water.
—By Jove, it is tea, Haines said.
Buck Mulligan went on hewing and wheedling:
—So I do, Mrs Cahill, says she. Begob, ma’am, says Mrs Cahill, God
send you don’t make them in the one pot.
He lunged towards his messmates in turn a thick slice of bread, impaled
on his knife.
—That’s folk, he said very earnestly, for your book, Haines. Five lines of
text and ten pages of notes about the folk and the fishgods of Dundrum.
Printed by the weird sisters in the year of the big wind.
He turned to Stephen and asked in a fine puzzled voice, lifting his brows:

—Can you recall, brother, is mother Grogan’s tea and water pot spoken
of in the Mabinogion or is it in the Upanishads?
—I doubt it, said Stephen gravely.
—Do you now? Buck Mulligan said in the same tone. Your reasons,
pray?
—I fancy, Stephen said as he ate, it did not exist in or out of the
Mabinogion. Mother Grogan was, one imagines, a kinswoman of Mary
Ann.
Buck Mulligan’s face smiled with delight.
—Charming! he said in a finical sweet voice, showing his white teeth and
blinking his eyes pleasantly. Do you think she was? Quite charming!
Then, suddenly overclouding all his features, he growled in a hoarsened
rasping voice as he hewed again vigorously at the loaf:
—For old Mary Ann
She doesn’t care a damn.
But, hising up her petticoats...
He crammed his mouth with fry and munched and droned.
The doorway was darkened by an entering form.
—The milk, sir!
—Come in, ma’am, Mulligan said. Kinch, get the jug.
An old woman came forward and stood by Stephen’s elbow.
—That’s a lovely morning, sir, she said. Glory be to God.
—To whom? Mulligan said, glancing at her. Ah, to be sure!
Stephen reached back and took the milkjug from the locker.
—The islanders, Mulligan said to Haines casually, speak frequently of
the collector of prepuces.
—How much, sir? asked the old woman.
—A quart, Stephen said.
He watched her pour into the measure and thence into the jug rich white
milk, not hers. Old shrunken paps. She poured again a measureful and a
tilly. Old and secret she had entered from a morning world, maybe a
messenger. She praised the goodness of the milk, pouring it out. Crouching
by a patient cow at daybreak in the lush field, a witch on her toadstool, her

wrinkled fingers quick at the squirting dugs. They lowed about her whom
they knew, dewsilky cattle. Silk of the kine and poor old woman, names
given her in old times. A wandering crone, lowly form of an immortal
serving her conqueror and her gay betrayer, their common cuckquean, a
messenger from the secret morning. To serve or to upbraid, whether he
could not tell: but scorned to beg her favour.
—It is indeed, ma’am, Buck Mulligan said, pouring milk into their cups.
—Taste it, sir, she said.
He drank at her bidding.
—If we could live on good food like that, he said to her somewhat
loudly, we wouldn’t have the country full of rotten teeth and rotten guts.
Living in a bogswamp, eating cheap food and the streets paved with dust,
horsedung and consumptives’ spits.
—Are you a medical student, sir? the old woman asked.
—I am, ma’am, Buck Mulligan answered.
—Look at that now, she said.
Stephen listened in scornful silence. She bows her old head to a voice
that speaks to her loudly, her bonesetter, her medicineman: me she slights.
To the voice that will shrive and oil for the grave all there is of her but her
woman’s unclean loins, of man’s flesh made not in God’s likeness, the
serpent’s prey. And to the loud voice that now bids her be silent with
wondering unsteady eyes.
—Do you understand what he says? Stephen asked her.
—Is it French you are talking, sir? the old woman said to Haines.
Haines spoke to her again a longer speech, confidently.
—Irish, Buck Mulligan said. Is there Gaelic on you?
—I thought it was Irish, she said, by the sound of it. Are you from the
west, sir?
—I am an Englishman, Haines answered.
—He’s English, Buck Mulligan said, and he thinks we ought to speak
Irish in Ireland.
—Sure we ought to, the old woman said, and I’m ashamed I don’t speak
the language myself. I’m told it’s a grand language by them that knows.

—Grand is no name for it, said Buck Mulligan. Wonderful entirely. Fill
us out some more tea, Kinch. Would you like a cup, ma’am?
—No, thank you, sir, the old woman said, slipping the ring of the
milkcan on her forearm and about to go.
Haines said to her:
—Have you your bill? We had better pay her, Mulligan, hadn’t we?
Stephen filled again the three cups.
—Bill, sir? she said, halting. Well, it’s seven mornings a pint at twopence
is seven twos is a shilling and twopence over and these three mornings a
quart at fourpence is three quarts is a shilling. That’s a shilling and one and
two is two and two, sir.
Buck Mulligan sighed and, having filled his mouth with a crust thickly
buttered on both sides, stretched forth his legs and began to search his
trouser pockets.
—Pay up and look pleasant, Haines said to him, smiling.
Stephen filled a third cup, a spoonful of tea colouring faintly the thick
rich milk. Buck Mulligan brought up a florin, twisted it round in his fingers
and cried:
—A miracle!
He passed it along the table towards the old woman, saying:
—Ask nothing more of me, sweet. All I can give you I give.
Stephen laid the coin in her uneager hand.
—We’ll owe twopence, he said.
—Time enough, sir, she said, taking the coin. Time enough. Good
morning, sir.
She curtseyed and went out, followed by Buck Mulligan’s tender chant:
—Heart of my heart, were it more,
More would be laid at your feet.
He turned to Stephen and said:
—Seriously, Dedalus. I’m stony. Hurry out to your school kip and bring
us back some money. Today the bards must drink and junket. Ireland
expects that every man this day will do his duty.

—That reminds me, Haines said, rising, that I have to visit your national
library today.
—Our swim first, Buck Mulligan said.
He turned to Stephen and asked blandly:
—Is this the day for your monthly wash, Kinch?
Then he said to Haines:
—The unclean bard makes a point of washing once a month.
—All Ireland is washed by the gulfstream, Stephen said as he let honey
trickle over a slice of the loaf.
Haines from the corner where he was knotting easily a scarf about the
loose collar of his tennis shirt spoke:
—I intend to make a collection of your sayings if you will let me.
Speaking to me. They wash and tub and scrub. Agenbite of inwit.
Conscience. Yet here’s a spot.
—That one about the cracked lookingglass of a servant being the symbol
of Irish art is deuced good.
Buck Mulligan kicked Stephen’s foot under the table and said with
warmth of tone:
—Wait till you hear him on Hamlet, Haines.
—Well, I mean it, Haines said, still speaking to Stephen. I was just
thinking of it when that poor old creature came in.
—Would I make any money by it? Stephen asked.
Haines laughed and, as he took his soft grey hat from the holdfast of the
hammock, said:
—I don’t know, I’m sure.
He strolled out to the doorway. Buck Mulligan bent across to Stephen
and said with coarse vigour:
—You put your hoof in it now. What did you say that for?
—Well? Stephen said. The problem is to get money. From whom? From
the milkwoman or from him. It’s a toss up, I think.
—I blow him out about you, Buck Mulligan said, and then you come
along with your lousy leer and your gloomy jesuit jibes.
—I see little hope, Stephen said, from her or from him.

Buck Mulligan sighed tragically and laid his hand on Stephen’s arm.
—From me, Kinch, he said.
In a suddenly changed tone he added:
—To tell you the God’s truth I think you’re right. Damn all else they are
good for. Why don’t you play them as I do? To hell with them all. Let us get
out of the kip.
He stood up, gravely ungirdled and disrobed himself of his gown, saying
resignedly:
—Mulligan is stripped of his garments.
He emptied his pockets on to the table.
—There’s your snotrag, he said.
And putting on his stiff collar and rebellious tie he spoke to them, chiding
them, and to his dangling watchchain. His hands plunged and rummaged in
his trunk while he called for a clean handkerchief. God, we’ll simply have
to dress the character. I want puce gloves and green boots. Contradiction.
Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself. Mercurial
Malachi. A limp black missile flew out of his talking hands.
—And there’s your Latin quarter hat, he said.
Stephen picked it up and put it on. Haines called to them from the
doorway:
—Are you coming, you fellows?
—I’m ready, Buck Mulligan answered, going towards the door. Come
out, Kinch. You have eaten all we left, I suppose. Resigned he passed out
with grave words and gait, saying, wellnigh with sorrow:
—And going forth he met Butterly.
Stephen, taking his ashplant from its leaningplace, followed them out
and, as they went down the ladder, pulled to the slow iron door and locked
it. He put the huge key in his inner pocket.
At the foot of the ladder Buck Mulligan asked:
—Did you bring the key?
—I have it, Stephen said, preceding them.
He walked on. Behind him he heard Buck Mulligan club with his heavy
bathtowel the leader shoots of ferns or grasses.

—Down, sir! How dare you, sir!
Haines asked:
—Do you pay rent for this tower?
—Twelve quid, Buck Mulligan said.
—To the secretary of state for war, Stephen added over his shoulder.
They halted while Haines surveyed the tower and said at last:
—Rather bleak in wintertime, I should say. Martello you call it?
—Billy Pitt had them built, Buck Mulligan said, when the French were
on the sea. But ours is the omphalos.
—What is your idea of Hamlet? Haines asked Stephen.
—No, no, Buck Mulligan shouted in pain. I’m not equal to Thomas
Aquinas and the fiftyfive reasons he has made out to prop it up. Wait till I
have a few pints in me first.
He turned to Stephen, saying, as he pulled down neatly the peaks of his
primrose waistcoat:
—You couldn’t manage it under three pints, Kinch, could you?
—It has waited so long, Stephen said listlessly, it can wait longer.
—You pique my curiosity, Haines said amiably. Is it some paradox?
—Pooh! Buck Mulligan said. We have grown out of Wilde and
paradoxes. It’s quite simple. He proves by algebra that Hamlet’s grandson is
Shakespeare’s grandfather and that he himself is the ghost of his own father.
—What? Haines said, beginning to point at Stephen. He himself?
Buck Mulligan slung his towel stolewise round his neck and, bending in
loose laughter, said to Stephen’s ear:
—O, shade of Kinch the elder! Japhet in search of a father!
—We’re always tired in the morning, Stephen said to Haines. And it is
rather long to tell.
Buck Mulligan, walking forward again, raised his hands.
—The sacred pint alone can unbind the tongue of Dedalus, he said.
—I mean to say, Haines explained to Stephen as they followed, this
tower and these cliffs here remind me somehow of Elsinore. That beetles
o’er his base into the sea, isn’t it?

Buck Mulligan turned suddenly for an instant towards Stephen but did
not speak. In the bright silent instant Stephen saw his own image in cheap
dusty mourning between their gay attires.
—It’s a wonderful tale, Haines said, bringing them to halt again.
Eyes, pale as the sea the wind had freshened, paler, firm and prudent. The
seas’ ruler, he gazed southward over the bay, empty save for the
smokeplume of the mailboat vague on the bright skyline and a sail tacking
by the Muglins.
—I read a theological interpretation of it somewhere, he said bemused.
The Father and the Son idea. The Son striving to be atoned with the Father.
Buck Mulligan at once put on a blithe broadly smiling face. He looked at
them, his wellshaped mouth open happily, his eyes, from which he had
suddenly withdrawn all shrewd sense, blinking with mad gaiety. He moved
a doll’s head to and fro, the brims of his Panama hat quivering, and began to
chant in a quiet happy foolish voice:
—I’m the queerest young fellow that ever you heard.
My mother’s a jew, my father’s a bird.
With Joseph the joiner I cannot agree.
So here’s to disciples and Calvary.
He held up a forefinger of warning.
—If anyone thinks that I amn’t divine
He’ll get no free drinks when I’m making the wine
But have to drink water and wish it were plain
That I make when the wine becomes water again.
He tugged swiftly at Stephen’s ashplant in farewell and, running forward
to a brow of the cliff, fluttered his hands at his sides like fins or wings of
one about to rise in the air, and chanted:
—Goodbye, now, goodbye! Write down all I said
And tell Tom, Dick and Harry I rose from the dead.
What’s bred in the bone cannot fail me to fly
And Olivet’s breezy... Goodbye, now, goodbye!
He capered before them down towards the fortyfoot hole, fluttering his
winglike hands, leaping nimbly, Mercury’s hat quivering in the fresh wind
that bore back to them his brief birdsweet cries.

Haines, who had been laughing guardedly, walked on beside Stephen and
said:
—We oughtn’t to laugh, I suppose. He’s rather blasphemous. I’m not a
believer myself, that is to say. Still his gaiety takes the harm out of it
somehow, doesn’t it? What did he call it? Joseph the Joiner?
—The ballad of joking Jesus, Stephen answered.
—O, Haines said, you have heard it before?
—Three times a day, after meals, Stephen said drily.
—You’re not a believer, are you? Haines asked. I mean, a believer in the
narrow sense of the word. Creation from nothing and miracles and a
personal God.
—There’s only one sense of the word, it seems to me, Stephen said.
Haines stopped to take out a smooth silver case in which twinkled a
green stone. He sprang it open with his thumb and offered it.
—Thank you, Stephen said, taking a cigarette.
Haines helped himself and snapped the case to. He put it back in his
sidepocket and took from his waistcoatpocket a nickel tinderbox, sprang it
open too, and, having lit his cigarette, held the flaming spunk towards
Stephen in the shell of his hands.
—Yes, of course, he said, as they went on again. Either you believe or
you don’t, isn’t it? Personally I couldn’t stomach that idea of a personal
God. You don’t stand for that, I suppose?
—You behold in me, Stephen said with grim displeasure, a horrible
example of free thought.
He walked on, waiting to be spoken to, trailing his ashplant by his side.
Its ferrule followed lightly on the path, squealing at his heels. My familiar,
after me, calling, Steeeeeeeeeeeephen! A wavering line along the path. They
will walk on it tonight, coming here in the dark. He wants that key. It is
mine. I paid the rent. Now I eat his salt bread. Give him the key too. All. He
will ask for it. That was in his eyes.
—After all, Haines began...
Stephen turned and saw that the cold gaze which had measured him was
not all unkind.

—After all, I should think you are able to free yourself. You are your own
master, it seems to me.
—I am a servant of two masters, Stephen said, an English and an Italian.
—Italian? Haines said.
A crazy queen, old and jealous. Kneel down before me.
—And a third, Stephen said, there is who wants me for odd jobs.
—Italian? Haines said again. What do you mean?
—The imperial British state, Stephen answered, his colour rising, and the
holy Roman catholic and apostolic church.
Haines detached from his underlip some fibres of tobacco before he
spoke.
—I can quite understand that, he said calmly. An Irishman must think
like that, I daresay. We feel in England that we have treated you rather
unfairly. It seems history is to blame.
The proud potent titles clanged over Stephen’s memory the triumph of
their brazen bells: et unam sanctam catholicam et apostolicam ecclesiam:
the slow growth and change of rite and dogma like his own rare thoughts, a
chemistry of stars. Symbol of the apostles in the mass for pope Marcellus,
the voices blended, singing alone loud in affirmation: and behind their chant
the vigilant angel of the church militant disarmed and menaced her
heresiarchs. A horde of heresies fleeing with mitres awry: Photius and the
brood of mockers of whom Mulligan was one, and Arius, warring his life
long upon the consubstantiality of the Son with the Father, and Valentine,
spurning Christ’s terrene body, and the subtle African heresiarch Sabellius
who held that the Father was Himself His own Son. Words Mulligan had
spoken a moment since in mockery to the stranger. Idle mockery. The void
awaits surely all them that weave the wind: a menace, a disarming and a
worsting from those embattled angels of the church, Michael’s host, who
defend her ever in the hour of conflict with their lances and their shields.
Hear, hear! Prolonged applause. Zut! Nom de Dieu!
—Of course I’m a Britisher, Haines’s voice said, and I feel as one. I don’t
want to see my country fall into the hands of German jews either. That’s our
national problem, I’m afraid, just now.
Two men stood at the verge of the cliff, watching: businessman, boatman.

—She’s making for Bullock harbour.
The boatman nodded towards the north of the bay with some disdain.
—There’s five fathoms out there, he said. It’ll be swept up that way when
the tide comes in about one. It’s nine days today.
The man that was drowned. A sail veering about the blank bay waiting
for a swollen bundle to bob up, roll over to the sun a puffy face, saltwhite.
Here I am.
They followed the winding path down to the creek. Buck Mulligan stood
on a stone, in shirtsleeves, his unclipped tie rippling over his shoulder. A
young man clinging to a spur of rock near him, moved slowly frogwise his
green legs in the deep jelly of the water.
—Is the brother with you, Malachi?
—Down in Westmeath. With the Bannons.
—Still there? I got a card from Bannon. Says he found a sweet young
thing down there. Photo girl he calls her.
—Snapshot, eh? Brief exposure.
Buck Mulligan sat down to unlace his boots. An elderly man shot up near
the spur of rock a blowing red face. He scrambled up by the stones, water
glistening on his pate and on its garland of grey hair, water rilling over his
chest and paunch and spilling jets out of his black sagging loincloth.
Buck Mulligan made way for him to scramble past and, glancing at
Haines and Stephen, crossed himself piously with his thumbnail at brow
and lips and breastbone.
—Seymour’s back in town, the young man said, grasping again his spur
of rock. Chucked medicine and going in for the army.
—Ah, go to God! Buck Mulligan said.
—Going over next week to stew. You know that red Carlisle girl, Lily?
—Yes.
—Spooning with him last night on the pier. The father is rotto with
money.
—Is she up the pole?
—Better ask Seymour that.
—Seymour a bleeding officer! Buck Mulligan said.

He nodded to himself as he drew off his trousers and stood up, saying
tritely:
—Redheaded women buck like goats.
He broke off in alarm, feeling his side under his flapping shirt.
—My twelfth rib is gone, he cried. I’m the Übermensch. Toothless Kinch
and I, the supermen.
He struggled out of his shirt and flung it behind him to where his clothes
lay.
—Are you going in here, Malachi?
—Yes. Make room in the bed.
The young man shoved himself backward through the water and reached
the middle of the creek in two long clean strokes. Haines sat down on a
stone, smoking.
—Are you not coming in? Buck Mulligan asked.
—Later on, Haines said. Not on my breakfast.
Stephen turned away.
—I’m going, Mulligan, he said.
—Give us that key, Kinch, Buck Mulligan said, to keep my chemise flat.
Stephen handed him the key. Buck Mulligan laid it across his heaped
clothes.
—And twopence, he said, for a pint. Throw it there.
Stephen threw two pennies on the soft heap. Dressing, undressing. Buck
Mulligan erect, with joined hands before him, said solemnly:
—He who stealeth from the poor lendeth to the Lord. Thus spake
Zarathustra.
His plump body plunged.
—We’ll see you again, Haines said, turning as Stephen walked up the
path and smiling at wild Irish.
Horn of a bull, hoof of a horse, smile of a Saxon.
—The Ship, Buck Mulligan cried. Half twelve.
—Good, Stephen said.
He walked along the upwardcurving path.

Liliata rutilantium.
Turma circumdet.
Iubilantium te virginum.

The priest’s grey nimbus in a niche where he dressed discreetly. I will not
sleep here tonight. Home also I cannot go.
A voice, sweettoned and sustained, called to him from the sea. Turning
the curve he waved his hand. It called again. A sleek brown head, a seal’s,
far out on the water, round.
Usurper.

[2]
—You, Cochrane, what city sent for him?
—Tarentum, sir.
—Very good. Well?
—There was a battle, sir.
—Very good. Where?
The boy’s blank face asked the blank window.
Fabled by the daughters of memory. And yet it was in some way if not as
memory fabled it. A phrase, then, of impatience, thud of Blake’s wings of
excess. I hear the ruin of all space, shattered glass and toppling masonry,
and time one livid final flame. What’s left us then?
—I forget the place, sir. 279 B. C.
—Asculum, Stephen said, glancing at the name and date in the
gorescarred book.
—Yes, sir. And he said: Another victory like that and we are done for.
That phrase the world had remembered. A dull ease of the mind. From a
hill above a corpsestrewn plain a general speaking to his officers, leaned
upon his spear. Any general to any officers. They lend ear.
—You, Armstrong, Stephen said. What was the end of Pyrrhus?
—End of Pyrrhus, sir?
—I know, sir. Ask me, sir, Comyn said.
—Wait. You, Armstrong. Do you know anything about Pyrrhus?
A bag of figrolls lay snugly in Armstrong’s satchel. He curled them
between his palms at whiles and swallowed them softly. Crumbs adhered to
the tissue of his lips. A sweetened boy’s breath. Welloff people, proud that
their eldest son was in the navy. Vico Road, Dalkey.
—Pyrrhus, sir? Pyrrhus, a pier.

All laughed. Mirthless high malicious laughter. Armstrong looked round
at his classmates, silly glee in profile. In a moment they will laugh more
loudly, aware of my lack of rule and of the fees their papas pay.
—Tell me now, Stephen said, poking the boy’s shoulder with the book,
what is a pier.
—A pier, sir, Armstrong said. A thing out in the water. A kind of a bridge.
Kingstown pier, sir.
Some laughed again: mirthless but with meaning. Two in the back bench
whispered. Yes. They knew: had never learned nor ever been innocent. All.
With envy he watched their faces: Edith, Ethel, Gerty, Lily. Their likes:
their breaths, too, sweetened with tea and jam, their bracelets tittering in the
struggle.
—Kingstown pier, Stephen said. Yes, a disappointed bridge.
The words troubled their gaze.
—How, sir? Comyn asked. A bridge is across a river.
For Haines’s chapbook. No-one here to hear. Tonight deftly amid wild
drink and talk, to pierce the polished mail of his mind. What then? A jester
at the court of his master, indulged and disesteemed, winning a clement
master’s praise. Why had they chosen all that part? Not wholly for the
smooth caress. For them too history was a tale like any other too often
heard, their land a pawnshop.
Had Pyrrhus not fallen by a beldam’s hand in Argos or Julius Caesar not
been knifed to death. They are not to be thought away. Time has branded
them and fettered they are lodged in the room of the infinite possibilities
they have ousted. But can those have been possible seeing that they never
were? Or was that only possible which came to pass? Weave, weaver of the
wind.
—Tell us a story, sir.
—O, do, sir. A ghoststory.
—Where do you begin in this? Stephen asked, opening another book.
—Weep no more, Comyn said.
—Go on then, Talbot.
—And the story, sir?
—After, Stephen said. Go on, Talbot.

A swarthy boy opened a book and propped it nimbly under the
breastwork of his satchel. He recited jerks of verse with odd glances at the
text:
—Weep no more, woful shepherds, weep no more
For Lycidas, your sorrow, is not dead,
Sunk though he be beneath the watery floor...
It must be a movement then, an actuality of the possible as possible.
Aristotle’s phrase formed itself within the gabbled verses and floated out
into the studious silence of the library of Saint Genevieve where he had
read, sheltered from the sin of Paris, night by night. By his elbow a delicate
Siamese conned a handbook of strategy. Fed and feeding brains about me:
under glowlamps, impaled, with faintly beating feelers: and in my mind’s
darkness a sloth of the underworld, reluctant, shy of brightness, shifting her
dragon scaly folds. Thought is the thought of thought. Tranquil brightness.
The soul is in a manner all that is: the soul is the form of forms. Tranquility
sudden, vast, candescent: form of forms.
Talbot repeated:
—Through the dear might of Him that walked the waves,
Through the dear might...
—Turn over, Stephen said quietly. I don’t see anything.
—What, sir? Talbot asked simply, bending forward.
His hand turned the page over. He leaned back and went on again, having
just remembered. Of him that walked the waves. Here also over these
craven hearts his shadow lies and on the scoffer’s heart and lips and on
mine. It lies upon their eager faces who offered him a coin of the tribute. To
Caesar what is Caesar’s, to God what is God’s. A long look from dark eyes,
a riddling sentence to be woven and woven on the church’s looms. Ay.
Riddle me, riddle me, randy ro.
My father gave me seeds to sow.

Talbot slid his closed book into his satchel.
—Have I heard all? Stephen asked.
—Yes, sir. Hockey at ten, sir.
—Half day, sir. Thursday.
—Who can answer a riddle? Stephen asked.

They bundled their books away, pencils clacking, pages rustling.
Crowding together they strapped and buckled their satchels, all gabbling
gaily:
—A riddle, sir? Ask me, sir.
—O, ask me, sir.
—A hard one, sir.
—This is the riddle, Stephen said:
The cock crew,
The sky was blue:
The bells in heaven
Were striking eleven.
’Tis time for this poor soul
To go to heaven.

What is that?
—What, sir?
—Again, sir. We didn’t hear.
Their eyes grew bigger as the lines were repeated. After a silence
Cochrane said:
—What is it, sir? We give it up.
Stephen, his throat itching, answered:
—The fox burying his grandmother under a hollybush.
He stood up and gave a shout of nervous laughter to which their cries
echoed dismay.
A stick struck the door and a voice in the corridor called:
—Hockey!
They broke asunder, sidling out of their benches, leaping them. Quickly
they were gone and from the lumberroom came the rattle of sticks and
clamour of their boots and tongues.
Sargent who alone had lingered came forward slowly, showing an open
copybook. His tangled hair and scraggy neck gave witness of unreadiness
and through his misty glasses weak eyes looked up pleading. On his cheek,
dull and bloodless, a soft stain of ink lay, dateshaped, recent and damp as a
snail’s bed.

He held out his copybook. The word Sums was written on the headline.
Beneath were sloping figures and at the foot a crooked signature with blind
loops and a blot. Cyril Sargent: his name and seal.
—Mr Deasy told me to write them out all again, he said, and show them
to you, sir.
Stephen touched the edges of the book. Futility.
—Do you understand how to do them now? he asked.
—Numbers eleven to fifteen, Sargent answered. Mr Deasy said I was to
copy them off the board, sir.
—Can you do them yourself? Stephen asked.
—No, sir.
Ugly and futile: lean neck and tangled hair and a stain of ink, a snail’s
bed. Yet someone had loved him, borne him in her arms and in her heart.
But for her the race of the world would have trampled him underfoot, a
squashed boneless snail. She had loved his weak watery blood drained from
her own. Was that then real? The only true thing in life? His mother’s
prostrate body the fiery Columbanus in holy zeal bestrode. She was no
more: the trembling skeleton of a twig burnt in the fire, an odour of
rosewood and wetted ashes. She had saved him from being trampled
underfoot and had gone, scarcely having been. A poor soul gone to heaven:
and on a heath beneath winking stars a fox, red reek of rapine in his fur,
with merciless bright eyes scraped in the earth, listened, scraped up the
earth, listened, scraped and scraped.
Sitting at his side Stephen solved out the problem. He proves by algebra
that Shakespeare’s ghost is Hamlet’s grandfather. Sargent peered askance
through his slanted glasses. Hockeysticks rattled in the lumberroom: the
hollow knock of a ball and calls from the field.
Across the page the symbols moved in grave morrice, in the mummery of
their letters, wearing quaint caps of squares and cubes. Give hands, traverse,
bow to partner: so: imps of fancy of the Moors. Gone too from the world,
Averroes and Moses Maimonides, dark men in mien and movement,
flashing in their mocking mirrors the obscure soul of the world, a darkness
shining in brightness which brightness could not comprehend.
—Do you understand now? Can you work the second for yourself?
—Yes, sir.

In long shaky strokes Sargent copied the data. Waiting always for a word
of help his hand moved faithfully the unsteady symbols, a faint hue of
shame flickering behind his dull skin. Amor matris: subjective and
objective genitive. With her weak blood and wheysour milk she had fed him
and hid from sight of others his swaddling bands.
Like him was I, these sloping shoulders, this gracelessness. My
childhood bends beside me. Too far for me to lay a hand there once or
lightly. Mine is far and his secret as our eyes. Secrets, silent, stony sit in the
dark palaces of both our hearts: secrets weary of their tyranny: tyrants,
willing to be dethroned.
The sum was done.
—It is very simple, Stephen said as he stood up.
—Yes, sir. Thanks, Sargent answered.
He dried the page with a sheet of thin blottingpaper and carried his
copybook back to his bench.
—You had better get your stick and go out to the others, Stephen said as
he followed towards the door the boy’s graceless form.
—Yes, sir.
In the corridor his name was heard, called from the playfield.
—Sargent!
—Run on, Stephen said. Mr Deasy is calling you.
He stood in the porch and watched the laggard hurry towards the scrappy
field where sharp voices were in strife. They were sorted in teams and Mr
Deasy came away stepping over wisps of grass with gaitered feet. When he
had reached the schoolhouse voices again contending called to him. He
turned his angry white moustache.
—What is it now? he cried continually without listening.
—Cochrane and Halliday are on the same side, sir, Stephen said.
—Will you wait in my study for a moment, Mr Deasy said, till I restore
order here.
And as he stepped fussily back across the field his old man’s voice cried
sternly:
—What is the matter? What is it now?

Their sharp voices cried about him on all sides: their many forms closed
round him, the garish sunshine bleaching the honey of his illdyed head.
Stale smoky air hung in the study with the smell of drab abraded leather
of its chairs. As on the first day he bargained with me here. As it was in the
beginning, is now. On the sideboard the tray of Stuart coins, base treasure
of a bog: and ever shall be. And snug in their spooncase of purple plush,
faded, the twelve apostles having preached to all the gentiles: world without
end.
A hasty step over the stone porch and in the corridor. Blowing out his
rare moustache Mr Deasy halted at the table.
—First, our little financial settlement, he said.
He brought out of his coat a pocketbook bound by a leather thong. It
slapped open and he took from it two notes, one of joined halves, and laid
them carefully on the table.
—Two, he said, strapping and stowing his pocketbook away.
And now his strongroom for the gold. Stephen’s embarrassed hand
moved over the shells heaped in the cold stone mortar: whelks and money
cowries and leopard shells: and this, whorled as an emir’s turban, and this,
the scallop of saint James. An old pilgrim’s hoard, dead treasure, hollow
shells.
A sovereign fell, bright and new, on the soft pile of the tablecloth.
—Three, Mr Deasy said, turning his little savingsbox about in his hand.
These are handy things to have. See. This is for sovereigns. This is for
shillings. Sixpences, halfcrowns. And here crowns. See.
He shot from it two crowns and two shillings.
—Three twelve, he said. I think you’ll find that’s right.
—Thank you, sir, Stephen said, gathering the money together with shy
haste and putting it all in a pocket of his trousers.
—No thanks at all, Mr Deasy said. You have earned it.
Stephen’s hand, free again, went back to the hollow shells. Symbols too
of beauty and of power. A lump in my pocket: symbols soiled by greed and
misery.
—Don’t carry it like that, Mr Deasy said. You’ll pull it out somewhere
and lose it. You just buy one of these machines. You’ll find them very

handy.
Answer something.
—Mine would be often empty, Stephen said.
The same room and hour, the same wisdom: and I the same. Three times
now. Three nooses round me here. Well? I can break them in this instant if I
will.
—Because you don’t save, Mr Deasy said, pointing his finger. You don’t
know yet what money is. Money is power. When you have lived as long as I
have. I know, I know. If youth but knew. But what does Shakespeare say?
Put but money in thy purse.
—Iago, Stephen murmured.
He lifted his gaze from the idle shells to the old man’s stare.
—He knew what money was, Mr Deasy said. He made money. A poet,
yes, but an Englishman too. Do you know what is the pride of the English?
Do you know what is the proudest word you will ever hear from an
Englishman’s mouth?
The seas’ ruler. His seacold eyes looked on the empty bay: it seems
history is to blame: on me and on my words, unhating.
—That on his empire, Stephen said, the sun never sets.
—Ba! Mr Deasy cried. That’s not English. A French Celt said that. He
tapped his savingsbox against his thumbnail.
—I will tell you, he said solemnly, what is his proudest boast. I paid my
way.
Good man, good man.
—I paid my way. I never borrowed a shilling in my life. Can you feel
that? I owe nothing. Can you?
Mulligan, nine pounds, three pairs of socks, one pair brogues, ties.
Curran, ten guineas. McCann, one guinea. Fred Ryan, two shillings.
Temple, two lunches. Russell, one guinea, Cousins, ten shillings, Bob
Reynolds, half a guinea, Koehler, three guineas, Mrs MacKernan, five
weeks’ board. The lump I have is useless.
—For the moment, no, Stephen answered.
Mr Deasy laughed with rich delight, putting back his savingsbox.

—I knew you couldn’t, he said joyously. But one day you must feel it.
We are a generous people but we must also be just.
—I fear those big words, Stephen said, which make us so unhappy.
Mr Deasy stared sternly for some moments over the mantelpiece at the
shapely bulk of a man in tartan fillibegs: Albert Edward, prince of Wales.
—You think me an old fogey and an old tory, his thoughtful voice said. I
saw three generations since O’Connell’s time. I remember the famine in
’46. Do you know that the orange lodges agitated for repeal of the union
twenty years before O’Connell did or before the prelates of your
communion denounced him as a demagogue? You fenians forget some
things.
Glorious, pious and immortal memory. The lodge of Diamond in Armagh
the splendid behung with corpses of papishes. Hoarse, masked and armed,
the planters’ covenant. The black north and true blue bible. Croppies lie
down.
Stephen sketched a brief gesture.
—I have rebel blood in me too, Mr Deasy said. On the spindle side. But I
am descended from sir John Blackwood who voted for the union. We are all
Irish, all kings’ sons.
—Alas, Stephen said.
—Per vias rectas, Mr Deasy said firmly, was his motto. He voted for it
and put on his topboots to ride to Dublin from the Ards of Down to do so.
Lal the ral the ra
The rocky road to Dublin.

A gruff squire on horseback with shiny topboots. Soft day, sir John! Soft
day, your honour!... Day!... Day!... Two topboots jog dangling on to Dublin.
Lal the ral the ra. Lal the ral the raddy.
—That reminds me, Mr Deasy said. You can do me a favour, Mr
Dedalus, with some of your literary friends. I have a letter here for the
press. Sit down a moment. I have just to copy the end.
He went to the desk near the window, pulled in his chair twice and read
off some words from the sheet on the drum of his typewriter.
—Sit down. Excuse me, he said over his shoulder, the dictates of
common sense. Just a moment.

He peered from under his shaggy brows at the manuscript by his elbow
and, muttering, began to prod the stiff buttons of the keyboard slowly,
sometimes blowing as he screwed up the drum to erase an error.
Stephen seated himself noiselessly before the princely presence. Framed
around the walls images of vanished horses stood in homage, their meek
heads poised in air: lord Hastings’ Repulse, the duke of Westminster’s
Shotover, the duke of Beaufort’s Ceylon, prix de Paris, 1866. Elfin riders
sat them, watchful of a sign. He saw their speeds, backing king’s colours,
and shouted with the shouts of vanished crowds.
—Full stop, Mr Deasy bade his keys. But prompt ventilation of this
allimportant question...
Where Cranly led me to get rich quick, hunting his winners among the
mudsplashed brakes, amid the bawls of bookies on their pitches and reek of
the canteen, over the motley slush. Even money Fair Rebel. Ten to one the
field. Dicers and thimbleriggers we hurried by after the hoofs, the vying
caps and jackets and past the meatfaced woman, a butcher’s dame, nuzzling
thirstily her clove of orange.
Shouts rang shrill from the boys’ playfield and a whirring whistle.
Again: a goal. I am among them, among their battling bodies in a medley,
the joust of life. You mean that knockkneed mother’s darling who seems to
be slightly crawsick? Jousts. Time shocked rebounds, shock by shock.
Jousts, slush and uproar of battles, the frozen deathspew of the slain, a
shout of spearspikes baited with men’s bloodied guts.
—Now then, Mr Deasy said, rising.
He came to the table, pinning together his sheets. Stephen stood up.
—I have put the matter into a nutshell, Mr Deasy said. It’s about the foot
and mouth disease. Just look through it. There can be no two opinions on
the matter.
May I trespass on your valuable space. That doctrine of laissez faire
which so often in our history. Our cattle trade. The way of all our old
industries. Liverpool ring which jockeyed the Galway harbour scheme.
European conflagration. Grain supplies through the narrow waters of the
channel. The pluterperfect imperturbability of the department of agriculture.
Pardoned a classical allusion. Cassandra. By a woman who was no better
than she should be. To come to the point at issue.

—I don’t mince words, do I? Mr Deasy asked as Stephen read on.
Foot and mouth disease. Known as Koch’s preparation. Serum and virus.
Percentage of salted horses. Rinderpest. Emperor’s horses at Mürzsteg,
lower Austria. Veterinary surgeons. Mr Henry Blackwood Price. Courteous
offer a fair trial. Dictates of common sense. Allimportant question. In every
sense of the word take the bull by the horns. Thanking you for the
hospitality of your columns.
—I want that to be printed and read, Mr Deasy said. You will see at the
next outbreak they will put an embargo on Irish cattle. And it can be cured.
It is cured. My cousin, Blackwood Price, writes to me it is regularly treated
and cured in Austria by cattledoctors there. They offer to come over here. I
am trying to work up influence with the department. Now I’m going to try
publicity. I am surrounded by difficulties, by... intrigues by... backstairs
influence by...
He raised his forefinger and beat the air oldly before his voice spoke.
—Mark my words, Mr Dedalus, he said. England is in the hands of the
jews. In all the highest places: her finance, her press. And they are the signs
of a nation’s decay. Wherever they gather they eat up the nation’s vital
strength. I have seen it coming these years. As sure as we are standing here
the jew merchants are already at their work of destruction. Old England is
dying.
He stepped swiftly off, his eyes coming to blue life as they passed a
broad sunbeam. He faced about and back again.
—Dying, he said again, if not dead by now.
The harlot’s cry from street to street
Shall weave old England’s windingsheet.

His eyes open wide in vision stared sternly across the sunbeam in which
he halted.
—A merchant, Stephen said, is one who buys cheap and sells dear, jew or
gentile, is he not?
—They sinned against the light, Mr Deasy said gravely. And you can see
the darkness in their eyes. And that is why they are wanderers on the earth
to this day.

On the steps of the Paris stock exchange the goldskinned men quoting
prices on their gemmed fingers. Gabble of geese. They swarmed loud,
uncouth about the temple, their heads thickplotting under maladroit silk
hats. Not theirs: these clothes, this speech, these gestures. Their full slow
eyes belied the words, the gestures eager and unoffending, but knew the
rancours massed about them and knew their zeal was vain. Vain patience to
heap and hoard. Time surely would scatter all. A hoard heaped by the
roadside: plundered and passing on. Their eyes knew their years of
wandering and, patient, knew the dishonours of their flesh.
—Who has not? Stephen said.
—What do you mean? Mr Deasy asked.
He came forward a pace and stood by the table. His underjaw fell
sideways open uncertainly. Is this old wisdom? He waits to hear from me.
—History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.
From the playfield the boys raised a shout. A whirring whistle: goal.
What if that nightmare gave you a back kick?
—The ways of the Creator are not our ways, Mr Deasy said. All human
history moves towards one great goal, the manifestation of God.
Stephen jerked his thumb towards the window, saying:
—That is God.
Hooray! Ay! Whrrwhee!
—What? Mr Deasy asked.
—A shout in the street, Stephen answered, shrugging his shoulders.
Mr Deasy looked down and held for awhile the wings of his nose
tweaked between his fingers. Looking up again he set them free.
—I am happier than you are, he said. We have committed many errors
and many sins. A woman brought sin into the world. For a woman who was
no better than she should be, Helen, the runaway wife of Menelaus, ten
years the Greeks made war on Troy. A faithless wife first brought the
strangers to our shore here, MacMurrough’s wife and her leman, O’Rourke,
prince of Breffni. A woman too brought Parnell low. Many errors, many
failures but not the one sin. I am a struggler now at the end of my days. But
I will fight for the right till the end.

For Ulster will fight
And Ulster will be right.

Stephen raised the sheets in his hand.
—Well, sir, he began.
—I foresee, Mr Deasy said, that you will not remain here very long at
this work. You were not born to be a teacher, I think. Perhaps I am wrong.
—A learner rather, Stephen said.
And here what will you learn more?
Mr Deasy shook his head.
—Who knows? he said. To learn one must be humble. But life is the
great teacher.
Stephen rustled the sheets again.
—As regards these, he began.
—Yes, Mr Deasy said. You have two copies there. If you can have them
published at once.
Telegraph. Irish Homestead.
—I will try, Stephen said, and let you know tomorrow. I know two
editors slightly.
—That will do, Mr Deasy said briskly. I wrote last night to Mr Field,
M.P. There is a meeting of the cattletraders’ association today at the City
Arms hotel. I asked him to lay my letter before the meeting. You see if you
can get it into your two papers. What are they?
—The Evening Telegraph...
—That will do, Mr Deasy said. There is no time to lose. Now I have to
answer that letter from my cousin.
—Good morning, sir, Stephen said, putting the sheets in his pocket.
Thank you.
—Not at all, Mr Deasy said as he searched the papers on his desk. I like
to break a lance with you, old as I am.
—Good morning, sir, Stephen said again, bowing to his bent back.
He went out by the open porch and down the gravel path under the trees,
hearing the cries of voices and crack of sticks from the playfield. The lions
couchant on the pillars as he passed out through the gate: toothless terrors.

Still I will help him in his fight. Mulligan will dub me a new name: the
bullockbefriending bard.
—Mr Dedalus!
Running after me. No more letters, I hope.
—Just one moment.
—Yes, sir, Stephen said, turning back at the gate.
Mr Deasy halted, breathing hard and swallowing his breath.
—I just wanted to say, he said. Ireland, they say, has the honour of being
the only country which never persecuted the jews. Do you know that? No.
And do you know why?
He frowned sternly on the bright air.
—Why, sir? Stephen asked, beginning to smile.
—Because she never let them in, Mr Deasy said solemnly.
A coughball of laughter leaped from his throat dragging after it a rattling
chain of phlegm. He turned back quickly, coughing, laughing, his lifted
arms waving to the air.
—She never let them in, he cried again through his laughter as he
stamped on gaitered feet over the gravel of the path. That’s why.
On his wise shoulders through the checkerwork of leaves the sun flung
spangles, dancing coins.

[3]
Ineluctable modality of the visible: at least that if no more, thought
through my eyes. Signatures of all things I am here to read, seaspawn and
seawrack, the nearing tide, that rusty boot. Snotgreen, bluesilver, rust:
coloured signs. Limits of the diaphane. But he adds: in bodies. Then he was
aware of them bodies before of them coloured. How? By knocking his
sconce against them, sure. Go easy. Bald he was and a millionaire, maestro
di color che sanno. Limit of the diaphane in. Why in? Diaphane, adiaphane.
If you can put your five fingers through it it is a gate, if not a door. Shut
your eyes and see.
Stephen closed his eyes to hear his boots crush crackling wrack and
shells. You are walking through it howsomever. I am, a stride at a time. A
very short space of time through very short times of space. Five, six: the
nacheinander. Exactly: and that is the ineluctable modality of the audible.
Open your eyes. No. Jesus! If I fell over a cliff that beetles o’er his base,
fell through the nebeneinander ineluctably! I am getting on nicely in the
dark. My ash sword hangs at my side. Tap with it: they do. My two feet in
his boots are at the ends of his legs, nebeneinander. Sounds solid: made by
the mallet of Los Demiurgos. Am I walking into eternity along Sandymount
strand? Crush, crack, crick, crick. Wild sea money. Dominie Deasy kens
them a’.
Won’t you come to Sandymount,
Madeline the mare?

Rhythm begins, you see. I hear. A catalectic tetrameter of iambs
marching. No, agallop: deline the mare.
Open your eyes now. I will. One moment. Has all vanished since? If I
open and am for ever in the black adiaphane. Basta! I will see if I can see.
See now. There all the time without you: and ever shall be, world without
end.

They came down the steps from Leahy’s terrace prudently,
Frauenzimmer: and down the shelving shore flabbily, their splayed feet
sinking in the silted sand. Like me, like Algy, coming down to our mighty
mother. Number one swung lourdily her midwife’s bag, the other’s gamp
poked in the beach. From the liberties, out for the day. Mrs Florence
MacCabe, relict of the late Patk MacCabe, deeply lamented, of Bride Street.
One of her sisterhood lugged me squealing into life. Creation from nothing.
What has she in the bag? A misbirth with a trailing navelcord, hushed in
ruddy wool. The cords of all link back, strandentwining cable of all flesh.
That is why mystic monks. Will you be as gods? Gaze in your omphalos.
Hello. Kinch here. Put me on to Edenville. Aleph, alpha: nought, nought,
one.
Spouse and helpmate of Adam Kadmon: Heva, naked Eve. She had no
navel. Gaze. Belly without blemish, bulging big, a buckler of taut vellum,
no, whiteheaped corn, orient and immortal, standing from everlasting to
everlasting. Womb of sin.
Wombed in sin darkness I was too, made not begotten. By them, the man
with my voice and my eyes and a ghostwoman with ashes on her breath.
They clasped and sundered, did the coupler’s will. From before the ages He
willed me and now may not will me away or ever. A lex eterna stays about
Him. Is that then the divine substance wherein Father and Son are
consubstantial? Where is poor dear Arius to try conclusions? Warring his
life long upon the contransmagnificandjewbangtantiality. Illstarred
heresiarch! In a Greek watercloset he breathed his last: euthanasia. With
beaded mitre and with crozier, stalled upon his throne, widower of a
widowed see, with upstiffed omophorion, with clotted hinderparts.
Airs romped round him, nipping and eager airs. They are coming, waves.
The whitemaned seahorses, champing, brightwindbridled, the steeds of
Mananaan.
I mustn’t forget his letter for the press. And after? The Ship, half twelve.
By the way go easy with that money like a good young imbecile. Yes, I
must.
His pace slackened. Here. Am I going to aunt Sara’s or not? My
consubstantial father’s voice. Did you see anything of your artist brother
Stephen lately? No? Sure he’s not down in Strasburg terrace with his aunt
Sally? Couldn’t he fly a bit higher than that, eh? And and and and tell us,

Stephen, how is uncle Si? O, weeping God, the things I married into! De
boys up in de hayloft. The drunken little costdrawer and his brother, the
cornet player. Highly respectable gondoliers! And skeweyed Walter sirring
his father, no less! Sir. Yes, sir. No, sir. Jesus wept: and no wonder, by
Christ!
I pull the wheezy bell of their shuttered cottage: and wait. They take me
for a dun, peer out from a coign of vantage.
—It’s Stephen, sir.
—Let him in. Let Stephen in.
A bolt drawn back and Walter welcomes me.
—We thought you were someone else.
In his broad bed nuncle Richie, pillowed and blanketed, extends over the
hillock of his knees a sturdy forearm. Cleanchested. He has washed the
upper moiety.
—Morrow, nephew.
He lays aside the lapboard whereon he drafts his bills of costs for the
eyes of master Goff and master Shapland Tandy, filing consents and
common searches and a writ of Duces Tecum. A bogoak frame over his bald
head: Wilde’s Requiescat. The drone of his misleading whistle brings
Walter back.
—Yes, sir?
—Malt for Richie and Stephen, tell mother. Where is she?
—Bathing Crissie, sir.
Papa’s little bedpal. Lump of love.
—No, uncle Richie...
—Call me Richie. Damn your lithia water. It lowers. Whusky!
—Uncle Richie, really...
—Sit down or by the law Harry I’ll knock you down.
Walter squints vainly for a chair.
—He has nothing to sit down on, sir.
—He has nowhere to put it, you mug. Bring in our chippendale chair.
Would you like a bite of something? None of your damned lawdeedaw airs

here. The rich of a rasher fried with a herring? Sure? So much the better. We
have nothing in the house but backache pills.
All’erta!
He drones bars of Ferrando’s aria di sortita. The grandest number,
Stephen, in the whole opera. Listen.
His tuneful whistle sounds again, finely shaded, with rushes of the air, his
fists bigdrumming on his padded knees.
This wind is sweeter.
Houses of decay, mine, his and all. You told the Clongowes gentry you
had an uncle a judge and an uncle a general in the army. Come out of them,
Stephen. Beauty is not there. Nor in the stagnant bay of Marsh’s library
where you read the fading prophecies of Joachim Abbas. For whom? The
hundredheaded rabble of the cathedral close. A hater of his kind ran from
them to the wood of madness, his mane foaming in the moon, his eyeballs
stars. Houyhnhnm, horsenostrilled. The oval equine faces, Temple, Buck
Mulligan, Foxy Campbell, Lanternjaws. Abbas father, furious dean, what
offence laid fire to their brains? Paff! Descende, calve, ut ne nimium
decalveris. A garland of grey hair on his comminated head see him me
clambering down to the footpace (descende!), clutching a monstrance,
basiliskeyed. Get down, baldpoll! A choir gives back menace and echo,
assisting about the altar’s horns, the snorted Latin of jackpriests moving
burly in their albs, tonsured and oiled and gelded, fat with the fat of kidneys
of wheat.
And at the same instant perhaps a priest round the corner is elevating it.
Dringdring! And two streets off another locking it into a pyx. Dringadring!
And in a ladychapel another taking housel all to his own cheek. Dringdring!
Down, up, forward, back. Dan Occam thought of that, invincible doctor. A
misty English morning the imp hypostasis tickled his brain. Bringing his
host down and kneeling he heard twine with his second bell the first bell in
the transept (he is lifting his) and, rising, heard (now I am lifting) their two
bells (he is kneeling) twang in diphthong.
Cousin Stephen, you will never be a saint. Isle of saints. You were
awfully holy, weren’t you? You prayed to the Blessed Virgin that you might
not have a red nose. You prayed to the devil in Serpentine avenue that the
fubsy widow in front might lift her clothes still more from the wet street. O
si, certo! Sell your soul for that, do, dyed rags pinned round a squaw. More

tell me, more still! On the top of the Howth tram alone crying to the rain:
Naked women! Naked women! What about that, eh?
What about what? What else were they invented for?
Reading two pages apiece of seven books every night, eh? I was young.
You bowed to yourself in the mirror, stepping forward to applause earnestly,
striking face. Hurray for the Goddamned idiot! Hray! No-one saw: tell no-
one. Books you were going to write with letters for titles. Have you read his
F? O yes, but I prefer Q. Yes, but W is wonderful. O yes, W. Remember
your epiphanies written on green oval leaves, deeply deep, copies to be sent
if you died to all the great libraries of the world, including Alexandria?
Someone was to read them there after a few thousand years, a
mahamanvantara. Pico della Mirandola like. Ay, very like a whale. When
one reads these strange pages of one long gone one feels that one is at one
with one who once...
The grainy sand had gone from under his feet. His boots trod again a
damp crackling mast, razorshells, squeaking pebbles, that on the
unnumbered pebbles beats, wood sieved by the shipworm, lost Armada.
Unwholesome sandflats waited to suck his treading soles, breathing upward
sewage breath, a pocket of seaweed smouldered in seafire under a midden
of man’s ashes. He coasted them, walking warily. A porterbottle stood up,
stogged to its waist, in the cakey sand dough. A sentinel: isle of dreadful
thirst. Broken hoops on the shore; at the land a maze of dark cunning nets;
farther away chalkscrawled backdoors and on the higher beach a dryingline
with two crucified shirts. Ringsend: wigwams of brown steersmen and
master mariners. Human shells.
He halted. I have passed the way to aunt Sara’s. Am I not going there?
Seems not. No-one about. He turned northeast and crossed the firmer sand
towards the Pigeonhouse.
—Qui vous a mis dans cette fichue position?
—C’est le pigeon, Joseph.
Patrice, home on furlough, lapped warm milk with me in the bar
MacMahon. Son of the wild goose, Kevin Egan of Paris. My father’s a bird,
he lapped the sweet lait chaud with pink young tongue, plump bunny’s
face. Lap, lapin. He hopes to win in the gros lots. About the nature of
women he read in Michelet. But he must send me La Vie de Jésus by M.
Léo Taxil. Lent it to his friend.

—C’est tordant, vous savez. Moi, je suis socialiste. Je ne crois pas en
l’existence de Dieu. Faut pas le dire à mon père.
—Il croit?
—Mon père, oui.
Schluss. He laps.
My Latin quarter hat. God, we simply must dress the character. I want
puce gloves. You were a student, weren’t you? Of what in the other devil’s
name? Paysayenn. P. C. N., you know: physiques, chimiques et naturelles.
Aha. Eating your groatsworth of mou en civet, fleshpots of Egypt, elbowed
by belching cabmen. Just say in the most natural tone: when I was in Paris;
boul’ Mich’, I used to. Yes, used to carry punched tickets to prove an alibi if
they arrested you for murder somewhere. Justice. On the night of the
seventeenth of February 1904 the prisoner was seen by two witnesses.
Other fellow did it: other me. Hat, tie, overcoat, nose. Lui, c’est moi. You
seem to have enjoyed yourself.
Proudly walking. Whom were you trying to walk like? Forget: a
dispossessed. With mother’s money order, eight shillings, the banging door
of the post office slammed in your face by the usher. Hunger toothache.
Encore deux minutes. Look clock. Must get. Fermé. Hired dog! Shoot him
to bloody bits with a bang shotgun, bits man spattered walls all brass
buttons. Bits all khrrrrklak in place clack back. Not hurt? O, that’s all right.
Shake hands. See what I meant, see? O, that’s all right. Shake a shake. O,
that’s all only all right.
You were going to do wonders, what? Missionary to Europe after fiery
Columbanus. Fiacre and Scotus on their creepystools in heaven spilt from
their pintpots, loudlatinlaughing: Euge! Euge! Pretending to speak broken
English as you dragged your valise, porter threepence, across the slimy pier
at Newhaven. Comment? Rich booty you brought back; Le Tutu, five
tattered numbers of Pantalon Blanc et Culotte Rouge; a blue French
telegram, curiosity to show:
—Mother dying come home father.
The aunt thinks you killed your mother. That’s why she won’t.
Then here’s a health to Mulligan’s aunt
And I’ll tell you the reason why.
She always kept things decent in
The Hannigan famileye.

His feet marched in sudden proud rhythm over the sand furrows, along
by the boulders of the south wall. He stared at them proudly, piled stone
mammoth skulls. Gold light on sea, on sand, on boulders. The sun is there,
the slender trees, the lemon houses.
Paris rawly waking, crude sunlight on her lemon streets. Moist pith of
farls of bread, the froggreen wormwood, her matin incense, court the air.
Belluomo rises from the bed of his wife’s lover’s wife, the kerchiefed
housewife is astir, a saucer of acetic acid in her hand. In Rodot’s Yvonne
and Madeleine newmake their tumbled beauties, shattering with gold teeth
chaussons of pastry, their mouths yellowed with the pus of flan bréton.
Faces of Paris men go by, their wellpleased pleasers, curled conquistadores.
Noon slumbers. Kevin Egan rolls gunpowder cigarettes through fingers
smeared with printer’s ink, sipping his green fairy as Patrice his white.
About us gobblers fork spiced beans down their gullets. Un demi sétier! A
jet of coffee steam from the burnished caldron. She serves me at his beck. Il
est irlandais. Hollandais? Non fromage. Deux irlandais, nous, Irlande, vous
savez ah, oui! She thought you wanted a cheese hollandais. Your
postprandial, do you know that word? Postprandial. There was a fellow I
knew once in Barcelona, queer fellow, used to call it his postprandial. Well:
slainte! Around the slabbed tables the tangle of wined breaths and
grumbling gorges. His breath hangs over our saucestained plates, the green
fairy’s fang thrusting between his lips. Of Ireland, the Dalcassians, of
hopes, conspiracies, of Arthur Griffith now, A E, pimander, good shepherd
of men. To yoke me as his yokefellow, our crimes our common cause.
You’re your father’s son. I know the voice. His fustian shirt,
sanguineflowered, trembles its Spanish tassels at his secrets. M. Drumont,
famous journalist, Drumont, know what he called queen Victoria? Old hag
with the yellow teeth. Vieille ogresse with the dents jaunes. Maud Gonne,
beautiful woman, La Patrie, M. Millevoye, Félix Faure, know how he died?
Licentious men. The froeken, bonne à tout faire, who rubs male nakedness
in the bath at Upsala. Moi faire, she said, Tous les messieurs. Not this
Monsieur, I said. Most licentious custom. Bath a most private thing. I
wouldn’t let my brother, not even my own brother, most lascivious thing.
Green eyes, I see you. Fang, I feel. Lascivious people.
The blue fuse burns deadly between hands and burns clear. Loose
tobaccoshreds catch fire: a flame and acrid smoke light our corner. Raw

facebones under his peep of day boy’s hat. How the head centre got away,
authentic version. Got up as a young bride, man, veil, orangeblossoms,
drove out the road to Malahide. Did, faith. Of lost leaders, the betrayed,
wild escapes. Disguises, clutched at, gone, not here.
Spurned lover. I was a strapping young gossoon at that time, I tell you.
I’ll show you my likeness one day. I was, faith. Lover, for her love he
prowled with colonel Richard Burke, tanist of his sept, under the walls of
Clerkenwell and, crouching, saw a flame of vengeance hurl them upward in
the fog. Shattered glass and toppling masonry. In gay Paree he hides, Egan
of Paris, unsought by any save by me. Making his day’s stations, the dingy
printingcase, his three taverns, the Montmartre lair he sleeps short night in,
rue de la Goutte-d’Or, damascened with flyblown faces of the gone.
Loveless, landless, wifeless. She is quite nicey comfy without her outcast
man, madame in rue Gît-le-Cœur, canary and two buck lodgers. Peachy
cheeks, a zebra skirt, frisky as a young thing’s. Spurned and undespairing.
Tell Pat you saw me, won’t you? I wanted to get poor Pat a job one time.
Mon fils, soldier of France. I taught him to sing The boys of Kilkenny are
stout roaring blades. Know that old lay? I taught Patrice that. Old
Kilkenny: saint Canice, Strongbow’s castle on the Nore. Goes like this. O,
O. He takes me, Napper Tandy, by the hand.
O, O the boys of
Kilkenny...

Weak wasting hand on mine. They have forgotten Kevin Egan, not he
them. Remembering thee, O Sion.
He had come nearer the edge of the sea and wet sand slapped his boots.
The new air greeted him, harping in wild nerves, wind of wild air of seeds
of brightness. Here, I am not walking out to the Kish lightship, am I? He
stood suddenly, his feet beginning to sink slowly in the quaking soil. Turn
back.
Turning, he scanned the shore south, his feet sinking again slowly in new
sockets. The cold domed room of the tower waits. Through the barbacans
the shafts of light are moving ever, slowly ever as my feet are sinking,
creeping duskward over the dial floor. Blue dusk, nightfall, deep blue night.
In the darkness of the dome they wait, their pushedback chairs, my obelisk
valise, around a board of abandoned platters. Who to clear it? He has the
key. I will not sleep there when this night comes. A shut door of a silent

tower, entombing their blind bodies, the panthersahib and his pointer. Call:
no answer. He lifted his feet up from the suck and turned back by the mole
of boulders. Take all, keep all. My soul walks with me, form of forms. So in
the moon’s midwatches I pace the path above the rocks, in sable silvered,
hearing Elsinore’s tempting flood.
The flood is following me. I can watch it flow past from here. Get back
then by the Poolbeg road to the strand there. He climbed over the sedge and
eely oarweeds and sat on a stool of rock, resting his ashplant in a grike.
A bloated carcass of a dog lay lolled on bladderwrack. Before him the
gunwale of a boat, sunk in sand. Un coche ensablé Louis Veuillot called
Gautier’s prose. These heavy sands are language tide and wind have silted
here. And these, the stoneheaps of dead builders, a warren of weasel rats.
Hide gold there. Try it. You have some. Sands and stones. Heavy of the
past. Sir Lout’s toys. Mind you don’t get one bang on the ear. I’m the
bloody well gigant rolls all them bloody well boulders, bones for my
steppingstones. Feefawfum. I zmellz de bloodz odz an Iridzman.
A point, live dog, grew into sight running across the sweep of sand. Lord,
is he going to attack me? Respect his liberty. You will not be master of
others or their slave. I have my stick. Sit tight. From farther away, walking
shoreward across from the crested tide, figures, two. The two maries. They
have tucked it safe mong the bulrushes. Peekaboo. I see you. No, the dog.
He is running back to them. Who?
Galleys of the Lochlanns ran here to beach, in quest of prey, their
bloodbeaked prows riding low on a molten pewter surf. Dane vikings, torcs
of tomahawks aglitter on their breasts when Malachi wore the collar of
gold. A school of turlehide whales stranded in hot noon, spouting, hobbling
in the shallows. Then from the starving cagework city a horde of jerkined
dwarfs, my people, with flayers’ knives, running, scaling, hacking in green
blubbery whalemeat. Famine, plague and slaughters. Their blood is in me,
their lusts my waves. I moved among them on the frozen Liffey, that I, a
changeling, among the spluttering resin fires. I spoke to no-one: none to me.
The dog’s bark ran towards him, stopped, ran back. Dog of my enemy. I
just simply stood pale, silent, bayed about. Terribilia meditans. A primrose
doublet, fortune’s knave, smiled on my fear. For that are you pining, the
bark of their applause? Pretenders: live their lives. The Bruce’s brother,
Thomas Fitzgerald, silken knight, Perkin Warbeck, York’s false scion, in

breeches of silk of whiterose ivory, wonder of a day, and Lambert Simnel,
with a tail of nans and sutlers, a scullion crowned. All kings’ sons. Paradise
of pretenders then and now. He saved men from drowning and you shake at
a cur’s yelping. But the courtiers who mocked Guido in Or san Michele
were in their own house. House of... We don’t want any of your medieval
abstrusiosities. Would you do what he did? A boat would be near, a
lifebuoy. Natürlich, put there for you. Would you or would you not? The
man that was drowned nine days ago off Maiden’s rock. They are waiting
for him now. The truth, spit it out. I would want to. I would try. I am not a
strong swimmer. Water cold soft. When I put my face into it in the basin at
Clongowes. Can’t see! Who’s behind me? Out quickly, quickly! Do you see
the tide flowing quickly in on all sides, sheeting the lows of sand quickly,
shellcocoacoloured? If I had land under my feet. I want his life still to be
his, mine to be mine. A drowning man. His human eyes scream to me out of
horror of his death. I... With him together down... I could not save her.
Waters: bitter death: lost.
A woman and a man. I see her skirties. Pinned up, I bet.
Their dog ambled about a bank of dwindling sand, trotting, sniffing on all
sides. Looking for something lost in a past life. Suddenly he made off like a
bounding hare, ears flung back, chasing the shadow of a lowskimming gull.
The man’s shrieked whistle struck his limp ears. He turned, bounded back,
came nearer, trotted on twinkling shanks. On a field tenney a buck, trippant,
proper, unattired. At the lacefringe of the tide he halted with stiff forehoofs,
seawardpointed ears. His snout lifted barked at the wavenoise, herds of
seamorse. They serpented towards his feet, curling, unfurling many crests,
every ninth, breaking, plashing, from far, from farther out, waves and
waves.
Cocklepickers. They waded a little way in the water and, stooping,
soused their bags and, lifting them again, waded out. The dog yelped
running to them, reared up and pawed them, dropping on all fours, again
reared up at them with mute bearish fawning. Unheeded he kept by them as
they came towards the drier sand, a rag of wolf’s tongue redpanting from
his jaws. His speckled body ambled ahead of them and then loped off at a
calf’s gallop. The carcass lay on his path. He stopped, sniffed, stalked round
it, brother, nosing closer, went round it, sniffling rapidly like a dog all over
the dead dog’s bedraggled fell. Dogskull, dogsniff, eyes on the ground,

moves to one great goal. Ah, poor dogsbody! Here lies poor dogsbody’s
body.
—Tatters! Out of that, you mongrel!
The cry brought him skulking back to his master and a blunt bootless
kick sent him unscathed across a spit of sand, crouched in flight. He slunk
back in a curve. Doesn’t see me. Along by the edge of the mole he lolloped,
dawdled, smelt a rock and from under a cocked hindleg pissed against it. He
trotted forward and, lifting again his hindleg, pissed quick short at an
unsmelt rock. The simple pleasures of the poor. His hindpaws then scattered
the sand: then his forepaws dabbled and delved. Something he buried there,
his grandmother. He rooted in the sand, dabbling, delving and stopped to
listen to the air, scraped up the sand again with a fury of his claws, soon
ceasing, a pard, a panther, got in spousebreach, vulturing the dead.
After he woke me last night same dream or was it? Wait. Open hallway.
Street of harlots. Remember. Haroun al Raschid. I am almosting it. That
man led me, spoke. I was not afraid. The melon he had he held against my
face. Smiled: creamfruit smell. That was the rule, said. In. Come. Red
carpet spread. You will see who.
Shouldering their bags they trudged, the red Egyptians. His blued feet out
of turnedup trousers slapped the clammy sand, a dull brick muffler
strangling his unshaven neck. With woman steps she followed: the ruffian
and his strolling mort. Spoils slung at her back. Loose sand and shellgrit
crusted her bare feet. About her windraw face hair trailed. Behind her lord,
his helpmate, bing awast to Romeville. When night hides her body’s flaws
calling under her brown shawl from an archway where dogs have mired.
Her fancyman is treating two Royal Dublins in O’Loughlin’s of Blackpitts.
Buss her, wap in rogues’ rum lingo, for, O, my dimber wapping dell! A
shefiend’s whiteness under her rancid rags. Fumbally’s lane that night: the
tanyard smells.
White thy fambles, red thy gan
And thy quarrons dainty is.
Couch a hogshead with me then.
In the darkmans clip and kiss.

Morose delectation Aquinas tunbelly calls this, frate porcospino.
Unfallen Adam rode and not rutted. Call away let him: thy quarrons dainty

is. Language no whit worse than his. Monkwords, marybeads jabber on
their girdles: roguewords, tough nuggets patter in their pockets.
Passing now.
A side eye at my Hamlet hat. If I were suddenly naked here as I sit? I am
not. Across the sands of all the world, followed by the sun’s flaming sword,
to the west, trekking to evening lands. She trudges, schlepps, trains, drags,
trascines her load. A tide westering, moondrawn, in her wake. Tides,
myriadislanded, within her, blood not mine, oinopa ponton, a winedark sea.
Behold the handmaid of the moon. In sleep the wet sign calls her hour, bids
her rise. Bridebed, childbed, bed of death, ghostcandled. Omnis caro ad te
veniet. He comes, pale vampire, through storm his eyes, his bat sails
bloodying the sea, mouth to her mouth’s kiss.
Here. Put a pin in that chap, will you? My tablets. Mouth to her kiss. No.
Must be two of em. Glue em well. Mouth to her mouth’s kiss.
His lips lipped and mouthed fleshless lips of air: mouth to her moomb.
Oomb, allwombing tomb. His mouth moulded issuing breath, unspeeched:
ooeeehah: roar of cataractic planets, globed, blazing, roaring
wayawayawayawayaway. Paper. The banknotes, blast them. Old Deasy’s
letter. Here. Thanking you for the hospitality tear the blank end off. Turning
his back to the sun he bent over far to a table of rock and scribbled words.
That’s twice I forgot to take slips from the library counter.
His shadow lay over the rocks as he bent, ending. Why not endless till the
farthest star? Darkly they are there behind this light, darkness shining in the
brightness, delta of Cassiopeia, worlds. Me sits there with his augur’s rod of
ash, in borrowed sandals, by day beside a livid sea, unbeheld, in violet night
walking beneath a reign of uncouth stars. I throw this ended shadow from
me, manshape ineluctable, call it back. Endless, would it be mine, form of
my form? Who watches me here? Who ever anywhere will read these
written words? Signs on a white field. Somewhere to someone in your
flutiest voice. The good bishop of Cloyne took the veil of the temple out of
his shovel hat: veil of space with coloured emblems hatched on its field.
Hold hard. Coloured on a flat: yes, that’s right. Flat I see, then think
distance, near, far, flat I see, east, back. Ah, see now! Falls back suddenly,
frozen in stereoscope. Click does the trick. You find my words dark.
Darkness is in our souls do you not think? Flutier. Our souls,

shamewounded by our sins, cling to us yet more, a woman to her lover
clinging, the more the more.
She trusts me, her hand gentle, the longlashed eyes. Now where the blue
hell am I bringing her beyond the veil? Into the ineluctable modality of the
ineluctable visuality. She, she, she. What she? The virgin at Hodges Figgis’
window on Monday looking in for one of the alphabet books you were
going to write. Keen glance you gave her. Wrist through the braided jesse of
her sunshade. She lives in Leeson park with a grief and kickshaws, a lady of
letters. Talk that to someone else, Stevie: a pickmeup. Bet she wears those
curse of God stays suspenders and yellow stockings, darned with lumpy
wool. Talk about apple dumplings, piuttosto. Where are your wits?
Touch me. Soft eyes. Soft soft soft hand. I am lonely here. O, touch me
soon, now. What is that word known to all men? I am quiet here alone. Sad
too. Touch, touch me.
He lay back at full stretch over the sharp rocks, cramming the scribbled
note and pencil into a pocket, his hat tilted down on his eyes. That is Kevin
Egan’s movement I made, nodding for his nap, sabbath sleep. Et vidit Deus.
Et erant valde bona. Alo! Bonjour. Welcome as the flowers in May. Under
its leaf he watched through peacocktwittering lashes the southing sun. I am
caught in this burning scene. Pan’s hour, the faunal noon. Among gumheavy
serpentplants, milkoozing fruits, where on the tawny waters leaves lie wide.
Pain is far.
And no more turn aside and brood.

His gaze brooded on his broadtoed boots, a buck’s castoffs,
nebeneinander. He counted the creases of rucked leather wherein another’s
foot had nested warm. The foot that beat the ground in tripudium, foot I
dislove. But you were delighted when Esther Osvalt’s shoe went on you:
girl I knew in Paris. Tiens, quel petit pied! Staunch friend, a brother soul:
Wilde’s love that dare not speak its name. His arm: Cranly’s arm. He now
will leave me. And the blame? As I am. As I am. All or not at all.
In long lassoes from the Cock lake the water flowed full, covering
greengoldenly lagoons of sand, rising, flowing. My ashplant will float
away. I shall wait. No, they will pass on, passing, chafing against the low
rocks, swirling, passing. Better get this job over quick. Listen: a fourworded
wavespeech: seesoo, hrss, rsseeiss, ooos. Vehement breath of waters amid

seasnakes, rearing horses, rocks. In cups of rocks it slops: flop, slop, slap:
bounded in barrels. And, spent, its speech ceases. It flows purling, widely
flowing, floating foampool, flower unfurling.
Under the upswelling tide he saw the writhing weeds lift languidly and
sway reluctant arms, hising up their petticoats, in whispering water swaying
and upturning coy silver fronds. Day by day: night by night: lifted, flooded
and let fall. Lord, they are weary; and, whispered to, they sigh. Saint
Ambrose heard it, sigh of leaves and waves, waiting, awaiting the fullness
of their times, diebus ac noctibus iniurias patiens ingemiscit. To no end
gathered; vainly then released, forthflowing, wending back: loom of the
moon. Weary too in sight of lovers, lascivious men, a naked woman shining
in her courts, she draws a toil of waters.
Five fathoms out there. Full fathom five thy father lies. At one, he said.
Found drowned. High water at Dublin bar. Driving before it a loose drift of
rubble, fanshoals of fishes, silly shells. A corpse rising saltwhite from the
undertow, bobbing a pace a pace a porpoise landward. There he is. Hook it
quick. Pull. Sunk though he be beneath the watery floor. We have him. Easy
now.
Bag of corpsegas sopping in foul brine. A quiver of minnows, fat of a
spongy titbit, flash through the slits of his buttoned trouserfly. God becomes
man becomes fish becomes barnacle goose becomes featherbed mountain.
Dead breaths I living breathe, tread dead dust, devour a urinous offal from
all dead. Hauled stark over the gunwale he breathes upward the stench of
his green grave, his leprous nosehole snoring to the sun.
A seachange this, brown eyes saltblue. Seadeath, mildest of all deaths
known to man. Old Father Ocean. Prix de Paris: beware of imitations. Just
you give it a fair trial. We enjoyed ourselves immensely.
Come. I thirst. Clouding over. No black clouds anywhere, are there?
Thunderstorm. Allbright he falls, proud lightning of the intellect, Lucifer,
dico, qui nescit occasum. No. My cockle hat and staff and hismy sandal
shoon. Where? To evening lands. Evening will find itself.
He took the hilt of his ashplant, lunging with it softly, dallying still. Yes,
evening will find itself in me, without me. All days make their end. By the
way next when is it Tuesday will be the longest day. Of all the glad new
year, mother, the rum tum tiddledy tum. Lawn Tennyson, gentleman poet.
Già. For the old hag with the yellow teeth. And Monsieur Drumont,

gentleman journalist. Già. My teeth are very bad. Why, I wonder. Feel. That
one is going too. Shells. Ought I go to a dentist, I wonder, with that money?
That one. This. Toothless Kinch, the superman. Why is that, I wonder, or
does it mean something perhaps?
My handkerchief. He threw it. I remember. Did I not take it up?
His hand groped vainly in his pockets. No, I didn’t. Better buy one.
He laid the dry snot picked from his nostril on a ledge of rock, carefully.
For the rest let look who will.
Behind. Perhaps there is someone.
He turned his face over a shoulder, rere regardant. Moving through the
air high spars of a threemaster, her sails brailed up on the crosstrees,
homing, upstream, silently moving, a silent ship.

— II —

[4]
Mr Leopold Bloom ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls.
He liked thick giblet soup, nutty gizzards, a stuffed roast heart, liverslices
fried with crustcrumbs, fried hencods’ roes. Most of all he liked grilled
mutton kidneys which gave to his palate a fine tang of faintly scented urine.
Kidneys were in his mind as he moved about the kitchen softly, righting
her breakfast things on the humpy tray. Gelid light and air were in the
kitchen but out of doors gentle summer morning everywhere. Made him
feel a bit peckish.
The coals were reddening.
Another slice of bread and butter: three, four: right. She didn’t like her
plate full. Right. He turned from the tray, lifted the kettle off the hob and set
it sideways on the fire. It sat there, dull and squat, its spout stuck out. Cup
of tea soon. Good. Mouth dry. The cat walked stiffly round a leg of the table
with tail on high.
—Mkgnao!
—O, there you are, Mr Bloom said, turning from the fire.
The cat mewed in answer and stalked again stiffly round a leg of the
table, mewing. Just how she stalks over my writingtable. Prr. Scratch my
head. Prr.
Mr Bloom watched curiously, kindly the lithe black form. Clean to see:
the gloss of her sleek hide, the white button under the butt of her tail, the
green flashing eyes. He bent down to her, his hands on his knees.
—Milk for the pussens, he said.
—Mrkgnao! the cat cried.
They call them stupid. They understand what we say better than we
understand them. She understands all she wants to. Vindictive too. Cruel.
Her nature. Curious mice never squeal. Seem to like it. Wonder what I look
like to her. Height of a tower? No, she can jump me.

—Afraid of the chickens she is, he said mockingly. Afraid of the
chookchooks. I never saw such a stupid pussens as the pussens.
—Mrkrgnao! the cat said loudly.
She blinked up out of her avid shameclosing eyes, mewing plaintively
and long, showing him her milkwhite teeth. He watched the dark eyeslits
narrowing with greed till her eyes were green stones. Then he went to the
dresser, took the jug Hanlon’s milkman had just filled for him, poured
warmbubbled milk on a saucer and set it slowly on the floor.
—Gurrhr! she cried, running to lap.
He watched the bristles shining wirily in the weak light as she tipped
three times and licked lightly. Wonder is it true if you clip them they can’t
mouse after. Why? They shine in the dark, perhaps, the tips. Or kind of
feelers in the dark, perhaps.
He listened to her licking lap. Ham and eggs, no. No good eggs with this
drouth. Want pure fresh water. Thursday: not a good day either for a mutton
kidney at Buckley’s. Fried with butter, a shake of pepper. Better a pork
kidney at Dlugacz’s. While the kettle is boiling. She lapped slower, then
licking the saucer clean. Why are their tongues so rough? To lap better, all
porous holes. Nothing she can eat? He glanced round him. No.
On quietly creaky boots he went up the staircase to the hall, paused by
the bedroom door. She might like something tasty. Thin bread and butter
she likes in the morning. Still perhaps: once in a way.
He said softly in the bare hall:
—I’m going round the corner. Be back in a minute.
And when he had heard his voice say it he added:
—You don’t want anything for breakfast?
A sleepy soft grunt answered:
—Mn.
No. She didn’t want anything. He heard then a warm heavy sigh, softer,
as she turned over and the loose brass quoits of the bedstead jingled. Must
get those settled really. Pity. All the way from Gibraltar. Forgotten any little
Spanish she knew. Wonder what her father gave for it. Old style. Ah yes! of
course. Bought it at the governor’s auction. Got a short knock. Hard as nails
at a bargain, old Tweedy. Yes, sir. At Plevna that was. I rose from the ranks,

sir, and I’m proud of it. Still he had brains enough to make that corner in
stamps. Now that was farseeing.
His hand took his hat from the peg over his initialled heavy overcoat and
his lost property office secondhand waterproof. Stamps: stickyback
pictures. Daresay lots of officers are in the swim too. Course they do. The
sweated legend in the crown of his hat told him mutely: Plasto’s high grade
ha. He peeped quickly inside the leather headband. White slip of paper.
Quite safe.
On the doorstep he felt in his hip pocket for the latchkey. Not there. In
the trousers I left off. Must get it. Potato I have. Creaky wardrobe. No use
disturbing her. She turned over sleepily that time. He pulled the halldoor to
after him very quietly, more, till the footleaf dropped gently over the
threshold, a limp lid. Looked shut. All right till I come back anyhow.
He crossed to the bright side, avoiding the loose cellarflap of number
seventyfive. The sun was nearing the steeple of George’s church. Be a
warm day I fancy. Specially in these black clothes feel it more. Black
conducts, reflects, (refracts is it?), the heat. But I couldn’t go in that light
suit. Make a picnic of it. His eyelids sank quietly often as he walked in
happy warmth. Boland’s breadvan delivering with trays our daily but she
prefers yesterday’s loaves turnovers crisp crowns hot. Makes you feel
young. Somewhere in the east: early morning: set off at dawn. Travel round
in front of the sun, steal a day’s march on him. Keep it up for ever never
grow a day older technically. Walk along a strand, strange land, come to a
city gate, sentry there, old ranker too, old Tweedy’s big moustaches, leaning
on a long kind of a spear. Wander through awned streets. Turbaned faces
going by. Dark caves of carpet shops, big man, Turko the terrible, seated
crosslegged, smoking a coiled pipe. Cries of sellers in the streets. Drink
water scented with fennel, sherbet. Dander along all day. Might meet a
robber or two. Well, meet him. Getting on to sundown. The shadows of the
mosques among the pillars: priest with a scroll rolled up. A shiver of the
trees, signal, the evening wind. I pass on. Fading gold sky. A mother
watches me from her doorway. She calls her children home in their dark
language. High wall: beyond strings twanged. Night sky, moon, violet,
colour of Molly’s new garters. Strings. Listen. A girl playing one of those
instruments what do you call them: dulcimers. I pass.

Probably not a bit like it really. Kind of stuff you read: in the track of the
sun. Sunburst on the titlepage. He smiled, pleasing himself. What Arthur
Griffith said about the headpiece over the Freeman leader: a homerule sun
rising up in the northwest from the laneway behind the bank of Ireland. He
prolonged his pleased smile. Ikey touch that: homerule sun rising up in the
northwest.
He approached Larry O’Rourke’s. From the cellar grating floated up the
flabby gush of porter. Through the open doorway the bar squirted out whiffs
of ginger, teadust, biscuitmush. Good house, however: just the end of the
city traffic. For instance M’Auley’s down there: n. g. as position. Of course
if they ran a tramline along the North Circular from the cattlemarket to the
quays value would go up like a shot.
Baldhead over the blind. Cute old codger. No use canvassing him for an
ad. Still he knows his own business best. There he is, sure enough, my bold
Larry, leaning against the sugarbin in his shirtsleeves watching the aproned
curate swab up with mop and bucket. Simon Dedalus takes him off to a tee
with his eyes screwed up. Do you know what I’m going to tell you? What’s
that, Mr O’Rourke? Do you know what? The Russians, they’d only be an
eight o’clock breakfast for the Japanese.
Stop and say a word: about the funeral perhaps. Sad thing about poor
Dignam, Mr O’Rourke.
Turning into Dorset street he said freshly in greeting through the
doorway:
—Good day, Mr O’Rourke.
—Good day to you.
—Lovely weather, sir.
—’Tis all that.
Where do they get the money? Coming up redheaded curates from the
county Leitrim, rinsing empties and old man in the cellar. Then, lo and
behold, they blossom out as Adam Findlaters or Dan Tallons. Then think of
the competition. General thirst. Good puzzle would be cross Dublin without
passing a pub. Save it they can’t. Off the drunks perhaps. Put down three
and carry five. What is that, a bob here and there, dribs and drabs. On the
wholesale orders perhaps. Doing a double shuffle with the town travellers.
Square it you with the boss and we’ll split the job, see?

How much would that tot to off the porter in the month? Say ten barrels
of stuff. Say he got ten per cent off. O more. Fifteen. He passed Saint
Joseph’s National school. Brats’ clamour. Windows open. Fresh air helps
memory. Or a lilt. Ahbeesee defeegee kelomen opeecue rustyouvee
doubleyou. Boys are they? Yes. Inishturk. Inishark. Inishboffin. At their
joggerfry. Mine. Slieve Bloom.
He halted before Dlugacz’s window, staring at the hanks of sausages,
polonies, black and white. Fifteen multiplied by. The figures whitened in his
mind, unsolved: displeased, he let them fade. The shiny links, packed with
forcemeat, fed his gaze and he breathed in tranquilly the lukewarm breath
of cooked spicy pigs’ blood.
A kidney oozed bloodgouts on the willowpatterned dish: the last. He
stood by the nextdoor girl at the counter. Would she buy it too, calling the
items from a slip in her hand? Chapped: washingsoda. And a pound and a
half of Denny’s sausages. His eyes rested on her vigorous hips. Woods his
name is. Wonder what he does. Wife is oldish. New blood. No followers
allowed. Strong pair of arms. Whacking a carpet on the clothesline. She
does whack it, by George. The way her crooked skirt swings at each whack.
The ferreteyed porkbutcher folded the sausages he had snipped off with
blotchy fingers, sausagepink. Sound meat there: like a stallfed heifer.
He took a page up from the pile of cut sheets: the model farm at
Kinnereth on the lakeshore of Tiberias. Can become ideal winter
sanatorium. Moses Montefiore. I thought he was. Farmhouse, wall round it,
blurred cattle cropping. He held the page from him: interesting: read it
nearer, the title, the blurred cropping cattle, the page rustling. A young
white heifer. Those mornings in the cattlemarket, the beasts lowing in their
pens, branded sheep, flop and fall of dung, the breeders in hobnailed boots
trudging through the litter, slapping a palm on a ripemeated hindquarter,
there’s a prime one, unpeeled switches in their hands. He held the page
aslant patiently, bending his senses and his will, his soft subject gaze at rest.
The crooked skirt swinging, whack by whack by whack.
The porkbutcher snapped two sheets from the pile, wrapped up her prime
sausages and made a red grimace.
—Now, my miss, he said.
She tendered a coin, smiling boldly, holding her thick wrist out.

—Thank you, my miss. And one shilling threepence change. For you,
please?
Mr Bloom pointed quickly. To catch up and walk behind her if she went
slowly, behind her moving hams. Pleasant to see first thing in the morning.
Hurry up, damn it. Make hay while the sun shines. She stood outside the
shop in sunlight and sauntered lazily to the right. He sighed down his nose:
they never understand. Sodachapped hands. Crusted toenails too. Brown
scapulars in tatters, defending her both ways. The sting of disregard glowed
to weak pleasure within his breast. For another: a constable off duty
cuddling her in Eccles’ Lane. They like them sizeable. Prime sausage. O
please, Mr Policeman, I’m lost in the wood.
—Threepence, please.
His hand accepted the moist tender gland and slid it into a sidepocket.
Then it fetched up three coins from his trousers’ pocket and laid them on the
rubber prickles. They lay, were read quickly and quickly slid, disc by disc,
into the till.
—Thank you, sir. Another time.
A speck of eager fire from foxeyes thanked him. He withdrew his gaze
after an instant. No: better not: another time.
—Good morning, he said, moving away.
—Good morning, sir.
No sign. Gone. What matter?
He walked back along Dorset street, reading gravely. Agendath Netaim:
planters’ company. To purchase waste sandy tracts from Turkish
government and plant with eucalyptus trees. Excellent for shade, fuel and
construction. Orangegroves and immense melonfields north of Jaffa. You
pay eighty marks and they plant a dunam of land for you with olives,
oranges, almonds or citrons. Olives cheaper: oranges need artificial
irrigation. Every year you get a sending of the crop. Your name entered for
life as owner in the book of the union. Can pay ten down and the balance in
yearly instalments. Bleibtreustrasse 34, Berlin, W. 15.
Nothing doing. Still an idea behind it.
He looked at the cattle, blurred in silver heat. Silverpowdered olivetrees.
Quiet long days: pruning, ripening. Olives are packed in jars, eh? I have a
few left from Andrews. Molly spitting them out. Knows the taste of them

now. Oranges in tissue paper packed in crates. Citrons too. Wonder is poor
Citron still in Saint Kevin’s parade. And Mastiansky with the old cither.
Pleasant evenings we had then. Molly in Citron’s basketchair. Nice to hold,
cool waxen fruit, hold in the hand, lift it to the nostrils and smell the
perfume. Like that, heavy, sweet, wild perfume. Always the same, year after
year. They fetched high prices too, Moisel told me. Arbutus place: Pleasants
street: pleasant old times. Must be without a flaw, he said. Coming all that
way: Spain, Gibraltar, Mediterranean, the Levant. Crates lined up on the
quayside at Jaffa, chap ticking them off in a book, navvies handling them
barefoot in soiled dungarees. There’s whatdoyoucallhim out of. How do
you? Doesn’t see. Chap you know just to salute bit of a bore. His back is
like that Norwegian captain’s. Wonder if I’ll meet him today. Watering cart.
To provoke the rain. On earth as it is in heaven.
A cloud began to cover the sun slowly, wholly. Grey. Far.
No, not like that. A barren land, bare waste. Vulcanic lake, the dead sea:
no fish, weedless, sunk deep in the earth. No wind could lift those waves,
grey metal, poisonous foggy waters. Brimstone they called it raining down:
the cities of the plain: Sodom, Gomorrah, Edom. All dead names. A dead
sea in a dead land, grey and old. Old now. It bore the oldest, the first race. A
bent hag crossed from Cassidy’s, clutching a naggin bottle by the neck. The
oldest people. Wandered far away over all the earth, captivity to captivity,
multiplying, dying, being born everywhere. It lay there now. Now it could
bear no more. Dead: an old woman’s: the grey sunken cunt of the world.
Desolation.
Grey horror seared his flesh. Folding the page into his pocket he turned
into Eccles street, hurrying homeward. Cold oils slid along his veins,
chilling his blood: age crusting him with a salt cloak. Well, I am here now.
Yes, I am here now. Morning mouth bad images. Got up wrong side of the
bed. Must begin again those Sandow’s exercises. On the hands down.
Blotchy brown brick houses. Number eighty still unlet. Why is that?
Valuation is only twentyeight. Towers, Battersby, North, MacArthur:
parlour windows plastered with bills. Plasters on a sore eye. To smell the
gentle smoke of tea, fume of the pan, sizzling butter. Be near her ample
bedwarmed flesh. Yes, yes.
Quick warm sunlight came running from Berkeley road, swiftly, in slim
sandals, along the brightening footpath. Runs, she runs to meet me, a girl

with gold hair on the wind.
Two letters and a card lay on the hallfloor. He stooped and gathered
them. Mrs Marion Bloom. His quickened heart slowed at once. Bold hand.
Mrs Marion.
—Poldy!
Entering the bedroom he halfclosed his eyes and walked through warm
yellow twilight towards her tousled head.
—Who are the letters for?
He looked at them. Mullingar. Milly.
—A letter for me from Milly, he said carefully, and a card to you. And a
letter for you.
He laid her card and letter on the twill bedspread near the curve of her
knees.
—Do you want the blind up?
Letting the blind up by gentle tugs halfway his backward eye saw her
glance at the letter and tuck it under her pillow.
—That do? he asked, turning.
She was reading the card, propped on her elbow.
—She got the things, she said.
He waited till she had laid the card aside and curled herself back slowly
with a snug sigh.
—Hurry up with that tea, she said. I’m parched.
—The kettle is boiling, he said.
But he delayed to clear the chair: her striped petticoat, tossed soiled
linen: and lifted all in an armful on to the foot of the bed.
As he went down the kitchen stairs she called:
—Poldy!
—What?
—Scald the teapot.
On the boil sure enough: a plume of steam from the spout. He scalded
and rinsed out the teapot and put in four full spoons of tea, tilting the kettle
then to let the water flow in. Having set it to draw he took off the kettle,
crushed the pan flat on the live coals and watched the lump of butter slide

and melt. While he unwrapped the kidney the cat mewed hungrily against
him. Give her too much meat she won’t mouse. Say they won’t eat pork.
Kosher. Here. He let the bloodsmeared paper fall to her and dropped the
kidney amid the sizzling butter sauce. Pepper. He sprinkled it through his
fingers ringwise from the chipped eggcup.
Then he slit open his letter, glancing down the page and over. Thanks:
new tam: Mr Coghlan: lough Owel picnic: young student: Blazes Boylan’s
seaside girls.
The tea was drawn. He filled his own moustachecup, sham crown Derby,
smiling. Silly Milly’s birthday gift. Only five she was then. No, wait: four. I
gave her the amberoid necklace she broke. Putting pieces of folded brown
paper in the letterbox for her. He smiled, pouring.
O, Milly Bloom, you are my darling.
You are my lookingglass from night to morning.
I’d rather have you without a farthing
Than Katey Keogh with her ass and garden.

Poor old professor Goodwin. Dreadful old case. Still he was a courteous
old chap. Oldfashioned way he used to bow Molly off the platform. And the
little mirror in his silk hat. The night Milly brought it into the parlour. O,
look what I found in professor Goodwin’s hat! All we laughed. Sex
breaking out even then. Pert little piece she was.
He prodded a fork into the kidney and slapped it over: then fitted the
teapot on the tray. Its hump bumped as he took it up. Everything on it?
Bread and butter, four, sugar, spoon, her cream. Yes. He carried it upstairs,
his thumb hooked in the teapot handle.
Nudging the door open with his knee he carried the tray in and set it on
the chair by the bedhead.
—What a time you were! she said.
She set the brasses jingling as she raised herself briskly, an elbow on the
pillow. He looked calmly down on her bulk and between her large soft
bubs, sloping within her nightdress like a shegoat’s udder. The warmth of
her couched body rose on the air, mingling with the fragrance of the tea she
poured.
A strip of torn envelope peeped from under the dimpled pillow. In the act
of going he stayed to straighten the bedspread.

—Who was the letter from? he asked.
Bold hand. Marion.
—O, Boylan, she said. He’s bringing the programme.
—What are you singing?
—Là ci darem with J. C. Doyle, she said, and Love’s Old Sweet Song.
Her full lips, drinking, smiled. Rather stale smell that incense leaves next
day. Like foul flowerwater.
—Would you like the window open a little?
She doubled a slice of bread into her mouth, asking:
—What time is the funeral?
—Eleven, I think, he answered. I didn’t see the paper.
Following the pointing of her finger he took up a leg of her soiled
drawers from the bed. No? Then, a twisted grey garter looped round a
stocking: rumpled, shiny sole.
—No: that book.
Other stocking. Her petticoat.
—It must have fell down, she said.
He felt here and there. Voglio e non vorrei. Wonder if she pronounces that
right: voglio. Not in the bed. Must have slid down. He stooped and lifted the
valance. The book, fallen, sprawled against the bulge of the orangekeyed
chamberpot.
—Show here, she said. I put a mark in it. There’s a word I wanted to ask
you.
She swallowed a draught of tea from her cup held by nothandle and,
having wiped her fingertips smartly on the blanket, began to search the text
with the hairpin till she reached the word.
—Met him what? he asked.
—Here, she said. What does that mean?
He leaned downward and read near her polished thumbnail.
—Metempsychosis?
—Yes. Who’s he when he’s at home?

—Metempsychosis, he said, frowning. It’s Greek: from the Greek. That
means the transmigration of souls.
—O, rocks! she said. Tell us in plain words.
He smiled, glancing askance at her mocking eyes. The same young eyes.
The first night after the charades. Dolphin’s Barn. He turned over the
smudged pages. Ruby: the Pride of the Ring. Hello. Illustration. Fierce
Italian with carriagewhip. Must be Ruby pride of the on the floor naked.
Sheet kindly lent. The monster Maffei desisted and flung his victim from
him with an oath. Cruelty behind it all. Doped animals. Trapeze at
Hengler’s. Had to look the other way. Mob gaping. Break your neck and
we’ll break our sides. Families of them. Bone them young so they
metamspychosis. That we live after death. Our souls. That a man’s soul
after he dies. Dignam’s soul...
—Did you finish it? he asked.
—Yes, she said. There’s nothing smutty in it. Is she in love with the first
fellow all the time?
—Never read it. Do you want another?
—Yes. Get another of Paul de Kock’s. Nice name he has.
She poured more tea into her cup, watching it flow sideways.
Must get that Capel street library book renewed or they’ll write to
Kearney, my guarantor. Reincarnation: that’s the word.
—Some people believe, he said, that we go on living in another body
after death, that we lived before. They call it reincarnation. That we all lived
before on the earth thousands of years ago or some other planet. They say
we have forgotten it. Some say they remember their past lives.
The sluggish cream wound curdling spirals through her tea. Better
remind her of the word: metempsychosis. An example would be better. An
example?
The Bath of the Nymph over the bed. Given away with the Easter number
of Photo Bits: Splendid masterpiece in art colours. Tea before you put milk
in. Not unlike her with her hair down: slimmer. Three and six I gave for the
frame. She said it would look nice over the bed. Naked nymphs: Greece:
and for instance all the people that lived then.
He turned the pages back.

—Metempsychosis, he said, is what the ancient Greeks called it. They
used to believe you could be changed into an animal or a tree, for instance.
What they called nymphs, for example.
Her spoon ceased to stir up the sugar. She gazed straight before her,
inhaling through her arched nostrils.
—There’s a smell of burn, she said. Did you leave anything on the fire?
—The kidney! he cried suddenly.
He fitted the book roughly into his inner pocket and, stubbing his toes
against the broken commode, hurried out towards the smell, stepping
hastily down the stairs with a flurried stork’s legs. Pungent smoke shot up
in an angry jet from a side of the pan. By prodding a prong of the fork
under the kidney he detached it and turned it turtle on its back. Only a little
burnt. He tossed it off the pan on to a plate and let the scanty brown gravy
trickle over it.
Cup of tea now. He sat down, cut and buttered a slice of the loaf. He
shore away the burnt flesh and flung it to the cat. Then he put a forkful into
his mouth, chewing with discernment the toothsome pliant meat. Done to a
turn. A mouthful of tea. Then he cut away dies of bread, sopped one in the
gravy and put it in his mouth. What was that about some young student and
a picnic? He creased out the letter at his side, reading it slowly as he
chewed, sopping another die of bread in the gravy and raising it to his
mouth.

Dearest Papli
Thanks ever so much for the lovely birthday present. It suits me splendid.
Everyone says I am quite the belle in my new tam. I got mummy’s lovely
box of creams and am writing. They are lovely. I am getting on swimming
in the photo business now. Mr Coghlan took one of me and Mrs. Will send
when developed. We did great biz yesterday. Fair day and all the beef to the
heels were in. We are going to lough Owel on Monday with a few friends to
make a scrap picnic. Give my love to mummy and to yourself a big kiss and
thanks. I hear them at the piano downstairs. There is to be a concert in the
Greville Arms on Saturday. There is a young student comes here some
evenings named Bannon his cousins or something are big swells and he
sings Boylan’s (I was on the pop of writing Blazes Boylan’s) song about

those seaside girls. Tell him silly Milly sends my best respects. I must now
close with fondest love
Your fond daughter
Milly
P. S. Excuse bad writing am in hurry. Byby.
M.

Fifteen yesterday. Curious, fifteenth of the month too. Her first birthday
away from home. Separation. Remember the summer morning she was
born, running to knock up Mrs Thornton in Denzille street. Jolly old
woman. Lot of babies she must have helped into the world. She knew from
the first poor little Rudy wouldn’t live. Well, God is good, sir. She knew at
once. He would be eleven now if he had lived.
His vacant face stared pityingly at the postscript. Excuse bad writing.
Hurry. Piano downstairs. Coming out of her shell. Row with her in the XL
Café about the bracelet. Wouldn’t eat her cakes or speak or look. Saucebox.
He sopped other dies of bread in the gravy and ate piece after piece of
kidney. Twelve and six a week. Not much. Still, she might do worse. Music
hall stage. Young student. He drank a draught of cooler tea to wash down
his meal. Then he read the letter again: twice.
O, well: she knows how to mind herself. But if not? No, nothing has
happened. Of course it might. Wait in any case till it does. A wild piece of
goods. Her slim legs running up the staircase. Destiny. Ripening now. Vain:
very.
He smiled with troubled affection at the kitchen window. Day I caught
her in the street pinching her cheeks to make them red. Anemic a little. Was
given milk too long. On the Erin’s King that day round the Kish. Damned
old tub pitching about. Not a bit funky. Her pale blue scarf loose in the wind
with her hair.
All dimpled cheeks and curls,
Your head it simply swirls.

Seaside girls. Torn envelope. Hands stuck in his trousers’ pockets, jarvey
off for the day, singing. Friend of the family. Swurls, he says. Pier with
lamps, summer evening, band.

Those girls, those girls,
Those lovely seaside girls.

Milly too. Young kisses: the first. Far away now past. Mrs Marion.
Reading, lying back now, counting the strands of her hair, smiling, braiding.
A soft qualm, regret, flowed down his backbone, increasing. Will happen,
yes. Prevent. Useless: can’t move. Girl’s sweet light lips. Will happen too.
He felt the flowing qualm spread over him. Useless to move now. Lips
kissed, kissing, kissed. Full gluey woman’s lips.
Better where she is down there: away. Occupy her. Wanted a dog to pass
the time. Might take a trip down there. August bank holiday, only two and
six return. Six weeks off, however. Might work a press pass. Or through
M’Coy.
The cat, having cleaned all her fur, returned to the meatstained paper,
nosed at it and stalked to the door. She looked back at him, mewing. Wants
to go out. Wait before a door sometime it will open. Let her wait. Has the
fidgets. Electric. Thunder in the air. Was washing at her ear with her back to
the fire too.
He felt heavy, full: then a gentle loosening of his bowels. He stood up,
undoing the waistband of his trousers. The cat mewed to him.
—Miaow! he said in answer. Wait till I’m ready.
Heaviness: hot day coming. Too much trouble to fag up the stairs to the
landing.
A paper. He liked to read at stool. Hope no ape comes knocking just as
I’m.
In the tabledrawer he found an old number of Titbits. He folded it under
his armpit, went to the door and opened it. The cat went up in soft bounds.
Ah, wanted to go upstairs, curl up in a ball on the bed.
Listening, he heard her voice:
—Come, come, pussy. Come.
He went out through the backdoor into the garden: stood to listen towards
the next garden. No sound. Perhaps hanging clothes out to dry. The maid
was in the garden. Fine morning.
He bent down to regard a lean file of spearmint growing by the wall.
Make a summerhouse here. Scarlet runners. Virginia creepers. Want to

manure the whole place over, scabby soil. A coat of liver of sulphur. All soil
like that without dung. Household slops. Loam, what is this that is? The
hens in the next garden: their droppings are very good top dressing. Best of
all though are the cattle, especially when they are fed on those oilcakes.
Mulch of dung. Best thing to clean ladies’ kid gloves. Dirty cleans. Ashes
too. Reclaim the whole place. Grow peas in that corner there. Lettuce.
Always have fresh greens then. Still gardens have their drawbacks. That bee
or bluebottle here Whitmonday.
He walked on. Where is my hat, by the way? Must have put it back on
the peg. Or hanging up on the floor. Funny I don’t remember that. Hallstand
too full. Four umbrellas, her raincloak. Picking up the letters. Drago’s
shopbell ringing. Queer I was just thinking that moment. Brown brillantined
hair over his collar. Just had a wash and brushup. Wonder have I time for a
bath this morning. Tara street. Chap in the paybox there got away James
Stephens, they say. O’Brien.
Deep voice that fellow Dlugacz has. Agendath what is it? Now, my miss.
Enthusiast.
He kicked open the crazy door of the jakes. Better be careful not to get
these trousers dirty for the funeral. He went in, bowing his head under the
low lintel. Leaving the door ajar, amid the stench of mouldy limewash and
stale cobwebs he undid his braces. Before sitting down he peered through a
chink up at the nextdoor windows. The king was in his countinghouse.
Nobody.
Asquat on the cuckstool he folded out his paper, turning its pages over on
his bared knees. Something new and easy. No great hurry. Keep it a bit. Our
prize titbit: Matcham’s Masterstroke. Written by Mr Philip Beaufoy,
Playgoers’ Club, London. Payment at the rate of one guinea a column has
been made to the writer. Three and a half. Three pounds three. Three
pounds, thirteen and six.
Quietly he read, restraining himself, the first column and, yielding but
resisting, began the second. Midway, his last resistance yielding, he allowed
his bowels to ease themselves quietly as he read, reading still patiently that
slight constipation of yesterday quite gone. Hope it’s not too big bring on
piles again. No, just right. So. Ah! Costive. One tabloid of cascara sagrada.
Life might be so. It did not move or touch him but it was something quick
and neat. Print anything now. Silly season. He read on, seated calm above

his own rising smell. Neat certainly. Matcham often thinks of the
masterstroke by which he won the laughing witch who now. Begins and
ends morally. Hand in hand. Smart. He glanced back through what he had
read and, while feeling his water flow quietly, he envied kindly Mr Beaufoy
who had written it and received payment of three pounds, thirteen and six.
Might manage a sketch. By Mr and Mrs L. M. Bloom. Invent a story for
some proverb. Which? Time I used to try jotting down on my cuff what she
said dressing. Dislike dressing together. Nicked myself shaving. Biting her
nether lip, hooking the placket of her skirt. Timing her. 9.15. Did Roberts
pay you yet? 9.20. What had Gretta Conroy on? 9.23. What possessed me to
buy this comb? 9.24. I’m swelled after that cabbage. A speck of dust on the
patent leather of her boot.
Rubbing smartly in turn each welt against her stockinged calf. Morning
after the bazaar dance when May’s band played Ponchielli’s dance of the
hours. Explain that: morning hours, noon, then evening coming on, then
night hours. Washing her teeth. That was the first night. Her head dancing.
Her fansticks clicking. Is that Boylan well off? He has money. Why? I
noticed he had a good rich smell off his breath dancing. No use humming
then. Allude to it. Strange kind of music that last night. The mirror was in
shadow. She rubbed her handglass briskly on her woollen vest against her
full wagging bub. Peering into it. Lines in her eyes. It wouldn’t pan out
somehow.
Evening hours, girls in grey gauze. Night hours then: black with daggers
and eyemasks. Poetical idea: pink, then golden, then grey, then black. Still,
true to life also. Day: then the night.
He tore away half the prize story sharply and wiped himself with it. Then
he girded up his trousers, braced and buttoned himself. He pulled back the
jerky shaky door of the jakes and came forth from the gloom into the air.
In the bright light, lightened and cooled in limb, he eyed carefully his
black trousers: the ends, the knees, the houghs of the knees. What time is
the funeral? Better find out in the paper.
A creak and a dark whirr in the air high up. The bells of George’s church.
They tolled the hour: loud dark iron.
Heigho! Heigho!
Heigho! Heigho!
Heigho! Heigho!

Quarter to. There again: the overtone following through the air. A third.
Poor Dignam!

[5]
By lorries along sir John Rogerson’s quay Mr Bloom walked soberly,
past Windmill lane, Leask’s the linseed crusher, the postal telegraph office.
Could have given that address too. And past the sailors’ home. He turned
from the morning noises of the quayside and walked through Lime street.
By Brady’s cottages a boy for the skins lolled, his bucket of offal linked,
smoking a chewed fagbutt. A smaller girl with scars of eczema on her
forehead eyed him, listlessly holding her battered caskhoop. Tell him if he
smokes he won’t grow. O let him! His life isn’t such a bed of roses. Waiting
outside pubs to bring da home. Come home to ma, da. Slack hour: won’t be
many there. He crossed Townsend street, passed the frowning face of
Bethel. El, yes: house of: Aleph, Beth. And past Nichols’ the undertaker. At
eleven it is. Time enough. Daresay Corny Kelleher bagged the job for
O’Neill’s. Singing with his eyes shut. Corny. Met her once in the park. In
the dark. What a lark. Police tout. Her name and address she then told with
my tooraloom tooraloom tay. O, surely he bagged it. Bury him cheap in a
whatyoumaycall. With my tooraloom, tooraloom, tooraloom, tooraloom.
In Westland row he halted before the window of the Belfast and Oriental
Tea Company and read the legends of leadpapered packets: choice blend,
finest quality, family tea. Rather warm. Tea. Must get some from Tom
Kernan. Couldn’t ask him at a funeral, though. While his eyes still read
blandly he took off his hat quietly inhaling his hairoil and sent his right
hand with slow grace over his brow and hair. Very warm morning. Under
their dropped lids his eyes found the tiny bow of the leather headband
inside his high grade ha. Just there. His right hand came down into the bowl
of his hat. His fingers found quickly a card behind the headband and
transferred it to his waistcoat pocket.
So warm. His right hand once more more slowly went over his brow and
hair. Then he put on his hat again, relieved: and read again: choice blend,
made of the finest Ceylon brands. The far east. Lovely spot it must be: the
garden of the world, big lazy leaves to float about on, cactuses, flowery
meads, snaky lianas they call them. Wonder is it like that. Those Cinghalese

lobbing about in the sun in dolce far niente, not doing a hand’s turn all day.
Sleep six months out of twelve. Too hot to quarrel. Influence of the climate.
Lethargy. Flowers of idleness. The air feeds most. Azotes. Hothouse in
Botanic gardens. Sensitive plants. Waterlilies. Petals too tired to. Sleeping
sickness in the air. Walk on roseleaves. Imagine trying to eat tripe and
cowheel. Where was the chap I saw in that picture somewhere? Ah yes, in
the dead sea floating on his back, reading a book with a parasol open.
Couldn’t sink if you tried: so thick with salt. Because the weight of the
water, no, the weight of the body in the water is equal to the weight of the
what? Or is it the volume is equal to the weight? It’s a law something like
that. Vance in High school cracking his fingerjoints, teaching. The college
curriculum. Cracking curriculum. What is weight really when you say the
weight? Thirtytwo feet per second per second. Law of falling bodies: per
second per second. They all fall to the ground. The earth. It’s the force of
gravity of the earth is the weight.
He turned away and sauntered across the road. How did she walk with
her sausages? Like that something. As he walked he took the folded
Freeman from his sidepocket, unfolded it, rolled it lengthwise in a baton
and tapped it at each sauntering step against his trouserleg. Careless air: just
drop in to see. Per second per second. Per second for every second it means.
From the curbstone he darted a keen glance through the door of the
postoffice. Too late box. Post here. No-one. In.
He handed the card through the brass grill.
—Are there any letters for me? he asked.
While the postmistress searched a pigeonhole he gazed at the recruiting
poster with soldiers of all arms on parade: and held the tip of his baton
against his nostrils, smelling freshprinted rag paper. No answer probably.
Went too far last time.
The postmistress handed him back through the grill his card with a letter.
He thanked her and glanced rapidly at the typed envelope.
Henry Flower Esq,
c/o P. O. Westland Row,
City.

Answered anyhow. He slipped card and letter into his sidepocket,
reviewing again the soldiers on parade. Where’s old Tweedy’s regiment?

Castoff soldier. There: bearskin cap and hackle plume. No, he’s a grenadier.
Pointed cuffs. There he is: royal Dublin fusiliers. Redcoats. Too showy.
That must be why the women go after them. Uniform. Easier to enlist and
drill. Maud Gonne’s letter about taking them off O’Connell street at night:
disgrace to our Irish capital. Griffith’s paper is on the same tack now: an
army rotten with venereal disease: overseas or halfseasover empire. Half
baked they look: hypnotised like. Eyes front. Mark time. Table: able. Bed:
ed. The King’s own. Never see him dressed up as a fireman or a bobby. A
mason, yes.
He strolled out of the postoffice and turned to the right. Talk: as if that
would mend matters. His hand went into his pocket and a forefinger felt its
way under the flap of the envelope, ripping it open in jerks. Women will
pay a lot of heed, I don’t think. His fingers drew forth the letter the letter
and crumpled the envelope in his pocket. Something pinned on: photo
perhaps. Hair? No.
M’Coy. Get rid of him quickly. Take me out of my way. Hate company
when you.
—Hello, Bloom. Where are you off to?
—Hello, M’Coy. Nowhere in particular.
—How’s the body?
—Fine. How are you?
—Just keeping alive, M’Coy said.
His eyes on the black tie and clothes he asked with low respect:
—Is there any... no trouble I hope? I see you’re...
—O, no, Mr Bloom said. Poor Dignam, you know. The funeral is today.
—To be sure, poor fellow. So it is. What time?
A photo it isn’t. A badge maybe.
—E...eleven, Mr Bloom answered.
—I must try to get out there, M’Coy said. Eleven, is it? I only heard it
last night. Who was telling me? Holohan. You know Hoppy?
—I know.
Mr Bloom gazed across the road at the outsider drawn up before the door
of the Grosvenor. The porter hoisted the valise up on the well. She stood
still, waiting, while the man, husband, brother, like her, searched his

pockets for change. Stylish kind of coat with that roll collar, warm for a day
like this, looks like blanketcloth. Careless stand of her with her hands in
those patch pockets. Like that haughty creature at the polo match. Women
all for caste till you touch the spot. Handsome is and handsome does.
Reserved about to yield. The honourable Mrs and Brutus is an honourable
man. Possess her once take the starch out of her.
—I was with Bob Doran, he’s on one of his periodical bends, and what
do you call him Bantam Lyons. Just down there in Conway’s we were.
Doran Lyons in Conway’s. She raised a gloved hand to her hair. In came
Hoppy. Having a wet. Drawing back his head and gazing far from beneath
his vailed eyelids he saw the bright fawn skin shine in the glare, the braided
drums. Clearly I can see today. Moisture about gives long sight perhaps.
Talking of one thing or another. Lady’s hand. Which side will she get up?
—And he said: Sad thing about our poor friend Paddy! What Paddy? I
said. Poor little Paddy Dignam, he said.
Off to the country: Broadstone probably. High brown boots with laces
dangling. Wellturned foot. What is he foostering over that change for? Sees
me looking. Eye out for other fellow always. Good fallback. Two strings to
her bow.
—Why? I said. What’s wrong with him? I said.
Proud: rich: silk stockings.
—Yes, Mr Bloom said.
He moved a little to the side of M’Coy’s talking head. Getting up in a
minute.
—What’s wrong with him? He said. He’s dead, he said. And, faith, he
filled up. Is it Paddy Dignam? I said. I couldn’t believe it when I heard it. I
was with him no later than Friday last or Thursday was it in the Arch. Yes,
he said. He’s gone. He died on Monday, poor fellow.
Watch! Watch! Silk flash rich stockings white. Watch!
A heavy tramcar honking its gong slewed between.
Lost it. Curse your noisy pugnose. Feels locked out of it. Paradise and the
peri. Always happening like that. The very moment. Girl in Eustace street
hallway Monday was it settling her garter. Her friend covering the display
of. Esprit de corps. Well, what are you gaping at?

—Yes, yes, Mr Bloom said after a dull sigh. Another gone.
—One of the best, M’Coy said.
The tram passed. They drove off towards the Loop Line bridge, her rich
gloved hand on the steel grip. Flicker, flicker: the laceflare of her hat in the
sun: flicker, flick.
—Wife well, I suppose? M’Coy’s changed voice said.
—O, yes, Mr Bloom said. Tiptop, thanks.
He unrolled the newspaper baton idly and read idly:
What is home without
Plumtree’s Potted Meat?
Incomplete.
With it an abode of bliss.

—My missus has just got an engagement. At least it’s not settled yet.
Valise tack again. By the way no harm. I’m off that, thanks.
Mr Bloom turned his largelidded eyes with unhasty friendliness.
—My wife too, he said. She’s going to sing at a swagger affair in the
Ulster Hall, Belfast, on the twentyfifth.
—That so? M’Coy said. Glad to hear that, old man. Who’s getting it up?
Mrs Marion Bloom. Not up yet. Queen was in her bedroom eating bread
and. No book. Blackened court cards laid along her thigh by sevens. Dark
lady and fair man. Letter. Cat furry black ball. Torn strip of envelope.
Love’s
Old
Sweet
Song
Comes lo-ove’s old...

—It’s a kind of a tour, don’t you see, Mr Bloom said thoughtfully.
Sweeeet song. There’s a committee formed. Part shares and part profits.
M’Coy nodded, picking at his moustache stubble.
—O, well, he said. That’s good news.
He moved to go.
—Well, glad to see you looking fit, he said. Meet you knocking around.
—Yes, Mr Bloom said.

—Tell you what, M’Coy said. You might put down my name at the
funeral, will you? I’d like to go but I mightn’t be able, you see. There’s a
drowning case at Sandycove may turn up and then the coroner and myself
would have to go down if the body is found. You just shove in my name if
I’m not there, will you?
—I’ll do that, Mr Bloom said, moving to get off. That’ll be all right.
—Right, M’Coy said brightly. Thanks, old man. I’d go if I possibly
could. Well, tolloll. Just C. P. M’Coy will do.
—That will be done, Mr Bloom answered firmly.
Didn’t catch me napping that wheeze. The quick touch. Soft mark. I’d
like my job. Valise I have a particular fancy for. Leather. Capped corners,
rivetted edges, double action lever lock. Bob Cowley lent him his for the
Wicklow regatta concert last year and never heard tidings of it from that
good day to this.
Mr Bloom, strolling towards Brunswick street, smiled. My missus has
just got an. Reedy freckled soprano. Cheeseparing nose. Nice enough in its
way: for a little ballad. No guts in it. You and me, don’t you know: in the
same boat. Softsoaping. Give you the needle that would. Can’t he hear the
difference? Think he’s that way inclined a bit. Against my grain somehow.
Thought that Belfast would fetch him. I hope that smallpox up there doesn’t
get worse. Suppose she wouldn’t let herself be vaccinated again. Your wife
and my wife.
Wonder is he pimping after me?
Mr Bloom stood at the corner, his eyes wandering over the multicoloured
hoardings. Cantrell and Cochrane’s Ginger Ale (Aromatic). Clery’s Summer
Sale. No, he’s going on straight. Hello. Leah tonight. Mrs Bandmann
Palmer. Like to see her again in that. Hamlet she played last night. Male
impersonator. Perhaps he was a woman. Why Ophelia committed suicide.
Poor papa! How he used to talk of Kate Bateman in that. Outside the
Adelphi in London waited all the afternoon to get in. Year before I was born
that was: sixtyfive. And Ristori in Vienna. What is this the right name is?
By Mosenthal it is. Rachel, is it? No. The scene he was always talking
about where the old blind Abraham recognises the voice and puts his
fingers on his face.

Nathan’s voice! His son’s voice! I hear the voice of Nathan who left his
father to die of grief and misery in my arms, who left the house of his father
and left the God of his father.
Every word is so deep, Leopold.
Poor papa! Poor man! I’m glad I didn’t go into the room to look at his
face. That day! O, dear! O, dear! Ffoo! Well, perhaps it was best for him.
Mr Bloom went round the corner and passed the drooping nags of the
hazard. No use thinking of it any more. Nosebag time. Wish I hadn’t met
that M’Coy fellow.
He came nearer and heard a crunching of gilded oats, the gently
champing teeth. Their full buck eyes regarded him as he went by, amid the
sweet oaten reek of horsepiss. Their Eldorado. Poor jugginses! Damn all
they know or care about anything with their long noses stuck in nosebags.
Too full for words. Still they get their feed all right and their doss. Gelded
too: a stump of black guttapercha wagging limp between their haunches.
Might be happy all the same that way. Good poor brutes they look. Still
their neigh can be very irritating.
He drew the letter from his pocket and folded it into the newspaper he
carried. Might just walk into her here. The lane is safer.
He passed the cabman’s shelter. Curious the life of drifting cabbies. All
weathers, all places, time or setdown, no will of their own. Voglio e non.
Like to give them an odd cigarette. Sociable. Shout a few flying syllables as
they pass. He hummed:
Là ci darem la mano
La la lala la la.

He turned into Cumberland street and, going on some paces, halted in the
lee of the station wall. No-one. Meade’s timberyard. Piled balks. Ruins and
tenements. With careful tread he passed over a hopscotch court with its
forgotten pickeystone. Not a sinner. Near the timberyard a squatted child at
marbles, alone, shooting the taw with a cunnythumb. A wise tabby, a
blinking sphinx, watched from her warm sill. Pity to disturb them.
Mohammed cut a piece out of his mantle not to wake her. Open it. And once
I played marbles when I went to that old dame’s school. She liked
mignonette. Mrs Ellis’s. And Mr? He opened the letter within the
newspaper.

A flower. I think it’s a. A yellow flower with flattened petals. Not
annoyed then? What does she say?

Dear Henry
I got your last letter to me and thank you very much for it. I am sorry you
did not like my last letter. Why did you enclose the stamps? I am awfully
angry with you. I do wish I could punish you for that. I called you naughty
boy because I do not like that other world. Please tell me what is the real
meaning of that word? Are you not happy in your home you poor little
naughty boy? I do wish I could do something for you. Please tell me what
you think of poor me. I often think of the beautiful name you have. Dear
Henry, when will we meet? I think of you so often you have no idea. I have
never felt myself so much drawn to a man as you. I feel so bad about.
Please write me a long letter and tell me more. Remember if you do not I
will punish you. So now you know what I will do to you, you naughty boy,
if you do not wrote. O how I long to meet you. Henry dear, do not deny my
request before my patience are exhausted. Then I will tell you all. Goodbye
now, naughty darling, I have such a bad headache. today. and write by
return to your longing

Martha

P. S. Do tell me what kind of perfume does your wife use. I want to
know.

He tore the flower gravely from its pinhold smelt its almost no smell and
placed it in his heart pocket. Language of flowers. They like it because no-
one can hear. Or a poison bouquet to strike him down. Then walking slowly
forward he read the letter again, murmuring here and there a word. Angry
tulips with you darling manflower punish your cactus if you don’t please
poor forgetmenot how I long violets to dear roses when we soon anemone
meet all naughty nightstalk wife Martha’s perfume. Having read it all he
took it from the newspaper and put it back in his sidepocket.
Weak joy opened his lips. Changed since the first letter. Wonder did she
wrote it herself. Doing the indignant: a girl of good family like me,
respectable character. Could meet one Sunday after the rosary. Thank you:

not having any. Usual love scrimmage. Then running round corners. Bad as
a row with Molly. Cigar has a cooling effect. Narcotic. Go further next
time. Naughty boy: punish: afraid of words, of course. Brutal, why not? Try
it anyhow. A bit at a time.
Fingering still the letter in his pocket he drew the pin out of it. Common
pin, eh? He threw it on the road. Out of her clothes somewhere: pinned
together. Queer the number of pins they always have. No roses without
thorns.
Flat Dublin voices bawled in his head. Those two sluts that night in the
Coombe, linked together in the rain.
O, Mairy lost the pin of her drawers.
She didn’t know what to do
To keep it up,
To keep it up.

It? Them. Such a bad headache. Has her roses probably. Or sitting all day
typing. Eyefocus bad for stomach nerves. What perfume does your wife
use. Now could you make out a thing like that?
To keep it up.

Martha, Mary. I saw that picture somewhere I forget now old master or
faked for money. He is sitting in their house, talking. Mysterious. Also the
two sluts in the Coombe would listen.
To keep it up.

Nice kind of evening feeling. No more wandering about. Just loll there:
quiet dusk: let everything rip. Forget. Tell about places you have been,
strange customs. The other one, jar on her head, was getting the supper:
fruit, olives, lovely cool water out of a well, stonecold like the hole in the
wall at Ashtown. Must carry a paper goblet next time I go to the
trottingmatches. She listens with big dark soft eyes. Tell her: more and
more: all. Then a sigh: silence. Long long long rest.
Going under the railway arch he took out the envelope, tore it swiftly in
shreds and scattered them towards the road. The shreds fluttered away, sank
in the dank air: a white flutter, then all sank.
Henry Flower. You could tear up a cheque for a hundred pounds in the
same way. Simple bit of paper. Lord Iveagh once cashed a sevenfigure

cheque for a million in the bank of Ireland. Shows you the money to be
made out of porter. Still the other brother lord Ardilaun has to change his
shirt four times a day, they say. Skin breeds lice or vermin. A million
pounds, wait a moment. Twopence a pint, fourpence a quart, eightpence a
gallon of porter, no, one and fourpence a gallon of porter. One and four into
twenty: fifteen about. Yes, exactly. Fifteen millions of barrels of porter.
What am I saying barrels? Gallons. About a million barrels all the same.
An incoming train clanked heavily above his head, coach after coach.
Barrels bumped in his head: dull porter slopped and churned inside. The
bungholes sprang open and a huge dull flood leaked out, flowing together,
winding through mudflats all over the level land, a lazy pooling swirl of
liquor bearing along wideleaved flowers of its froth.
He had reached the open backdoor of All Hallows. Stepping into the
porch he doffed his hat, took the card from his pocket and tucked it again
behind the leather headband. Damn it. I might have tried to work M’Coy for
a pass to Mullingar.
Same notice on the door. Sermon by the very reverend John Conmee S. J.
on saint Peter Claver S. J. and the African Mission. Prayers for the
conversion of Gladstone they had too when he was almost unconscious. The
protestants are the same. Convert Dr William J. Walsh D.D. to the true
religion. Save China’s millions. Wonder how they explain it to the heathen
Chinee. Prefer an ounce of opium. Celestials. Rank heresy for them.
Buddha their god lying on his side in the museum. Taking it easy with hand
under his cheek. Josssticks burning. Not like Ecce Homo. Crown of thorns
and cross. Clever idea Saint Patrick the shamrock. Chopsticks? Conmee:
Martin Cunningham knows him: distinguishedlooking. Sorry I didn’t work
him about getting Molly into the choir instead of that Father Farley who
looked a fool but wasn’t. They’re taught that. He’s not going out in bluey
specs with the sweat rolling off him to baptise blacks, is he? The glasses
would take their fancy, flashing. Like to see them sitting round in a ring
with blub lips, entranced, listening. Still life. Lap it up like milk, I suppose.
The cold smell of sacred stone called him. He trod the worn steps, pushed
the swingdoor and entered softly by the rere.
Something going on: some sodality. Pity so empty. Nice discreet place to
be next some girl. Who is my neighbour? Jammed by the hour to slow
music. That woman at midnight mass. Seventh heaven. Women knelt in the

benches with crimson halters round their necks, heads bowed. A batch knelt
at the altarrails. The priest went along by them, murmuring, holding the
thing in his hands. He stopped at each, took out a communion, shook a drop
or two (are they in water?) off it and put it neatly into her mouth. Her hat
and head sank. Then the next one. Her hat sank at once. Then the next one:
a small old woman. The priest bent down to put it into her mouth,
murmuring all the time. Latin. The next one. Shut your eyes and open your
mouth. What? Corpus: body. Corpse. Good idea the Latin. Stupefies them
first. Hospice for the dying. They don’t seem to chew it: only swallow it
down. Rum idea: eating bits of a corpse. Why the cannibals cotton to it.
He stood aside watching their blind masks pass down the aisle, one by
one, and seek their places. He approached a bench and seated himself in its
corner, nursing his hat and newspaper. These pots we have to wear. We
ought to have hats modelled on our heads. They were about him here and
there, with heads still bowed in their crimson halters, waiting for it to melt
in their stomachs. Something like those mazzoth: it’s that sort of bread:
unleavened shewbread. Look at them. Now I bet it makes them feel happy.
Lollipop. It does. Yes, bread of angels it’s called. There’s a big idea behind
it, kind of kingdom of God is within you feel. First communicants.
Hokypoky penny a lump. Then feel all like one family party, same in the
theatre, all in the same swim. They do. I’m sure of that. Not so lonely. In
our confraternity. Then come out a bit spreeish. Let off steam. Thing is if
you really believe in it. Lourdes cure, waters of oblivion, and the Knock
apparition, statues bleeding. Old fellow asleep near that confessionbox.
Hence those snores. Blind faith. Safe in the arms of kingdom come. Lulls
all pain. Wake this time next year.
He saw the priest stow the communion cup away, well in, and kneel an
instant before it, showing a large grey bootsole from under the lace affair he
had on. Suppose he lost the pin of his. He wouldn’t know what to do to.
Bald spot behind. Letters on his back: I.N.R.I? No: I.H.S. Molly told me
one time I asked her. I have sinned: or no: I have suffered, it is. And the
other one? Iron nails ran in.
Meet one Sunday after the rosary. Do not deny my request. Turn up with
a veil and black bag. Dusk and the light behind her. She might be here with
a ribbon round her neck and do the other thing all the same on the sly. Their
character. That fellow that turned queen’s evidence on the invincibles he

used to receive the, Carey was his name, the communion every morning.
This very church. Peter Carey, yes. No, Peter Claver I am thinking of. Denis
Carey. And just imagine that. Wife and six children at home. And plotting
that murder all the time. Those crawthumpers, now that’s a good name for
them, there’s always something shiftylooking about them. They’re not
straight men of business either. O, no, she’s not here: the flower: no, no. By
the way, did I tear up that envelope? Yes: under the bridge.
The priest was rinsing out the chalice: then he tossed off the dregs
smartly. Wine. Makes it more aristocratic than for example if he drank what
they are used to Guinness’s porter or some temperance beverage Wheatley’s
Dublin hop bitters or Cantrell and Cochrane’s ginger ale (aromatic).
Doesn’t give them any of it: shew wine: only the other. Cold comfort. Pious
fraud but quite right: otherwise they’d have one old booser worse than
another coming along, cadging for a drink. Queer the whole atmosphere of
the. Quite right. Perfectly right that is.
Mr Bloom looked back towards the choir. Not going to be any music.
Pity. Who has the organ here I wonder? Old Glynn he knew how to make
that instrument talk, the vibrato: fifty pounds a year they say he had in
Gardiner street. Molly was in fine voice that day, the Stabat Mater of
Rossini. Father Bernard Vaughan’s sermon first. Christ or Pilate? Christ, but
don’t keep us all night over it. Music they wanted. Footdrill stopped. Could
hear a pin drop. I told her to pitch her voice against that corner. I could feel
the thrill in the air, the full, the people looking up:
Quis est homo.
Some of that old sacred music splendid. Mercadante: seven last words.
Mozart’s twelfth mass: Gloria in that. Those old popes keen on music, on
art and statues and pictures of all kinds. Palestrina for example too. They
had a gay old time while it lasted. Healthy too, chanting, regular hours, then
brew liqueurs. Benedictine. Green Chartreuse. Still, having eunuchs in their
choir that was coming it a bit thick. What kind of voice is it? Must be
curious to hear after their own strong basses. Connoisseurs. Suppose they
wouldn’t feel anything after. Kind of a placid. No worry. Fall into flesh,
don’t they? Gluttons, tall, long legs. Who knows? Eunuch. One way out of
it.
He saw the priest bend down and kiss the altar and then face about and
bless all the people. All crossed themselves and stood up. Mr Bloom

glanced about him and then stood up, looking over the risen hats. Stand up
at the gospel of course. Then all settled down on their knees again and he
sat back quietly in his bench. The priest came down from the altar, holding
the thing out from him, and he and the massboy answered each other in
Latin. Then the priest knelt down and began to read off a card:
—O God, our refuge and our strength...
Mr Bloom put his face forward to catch the words. English. Throw them
the bone. I remember slightly. How long since your last mass? Glorious and
immaculate virgin. Joseph, her spouse. Peter and Paul. More interesting if
you understood what it was all about. Wonderful organisation certainly,
goes like clockwork. Confession. Everyone wants to. Then I will tell you
all. Penance. Punish me, please. Great weapon in their hands. More than
doctor or solicitor. Woman dying to. And I schschschschschsch. And did
you chachachachacha? And why did you? Look down at her ring to find an
excuse. Whispering gallery walls have ears. Husband learn to his surprise.
God’s little joke. Then out she comes. Repentance skindeep. Lovely shame.
Pray at an altar. Hail Mary and Holy Mary. Flowers, incense, candles
melting. Hide her blushes. Salvation army blatant imitation. Reformed
prostitute will address the meeting. How I found the Lord. Squareheaded
chaps those must be in Rome: they work the whole show. And don’t they
rake in the money too? Bequests also: to the P.P. for the time being in his
absolute discretion. Masses for the repose of my soul to be said publicly
with open doors. Monasteries and convents. The priest in that Fermanagh
will case in the witnessbox. No browbeating him. He had his answer pat for
everything. Liberty and exaltation of our holy mother the church. The
doctors of the church: they mapped out the whole theology of it.
The priest prayed:
—Blessed Michael, archangel, defend us in the hour of conflict. Be our
safeguard against the wickedness and snares of the devil (may God restrain
him, we humbly pray!): and do thou, O prince of the heavenly host, by the
power of God thrust Satan down to hell and with him those other wicked
spirits who wander through the world for the ruin of souls.
The priest and the massboy stood up and walked off. All over. The
women remained behind: thanksgiving.
Better be shoving along. Brother Buzz. Come around with the plate
perhaps. Pay your Easter duty.

He stood up. Hello. Were those two buttons of my waistcoat open all the
time? Women enjoy it. Never tell you. But we. Excuse, miss, there’s a
(whh!) just a (whh!) fluff. Or their skirt behind, placket unhooked.
Glimpses of the moon. Annoyed if you don’t. Why didn’t you tell me
before. Still like you better untidy. Good job it wasn’t farther south. He
passed, discreetly buttoning, down the aisle and out through the main door
into the light. He stood a moment unseeing by the cold black marble bowl
while before him and behind two worshippers dipped furtive hands in the
low tide of holy water. Trams: a car of Prescott’s dyeworks: a widow in her
weeds. Notice because I’m in mourning myself. He covered himself. How
goes the time? Quarter past. Time enough yet. Better get that lotion made
up. Where is this? Ah yes, the last time. Sweny’s in Lincoln place. Chemists
rarely move. Their green and gold beaconjars too heavy to stir. Hamilton
Long’s, founded in the year of the flood. Huguenot churchyard near there.
Visit some day.
He walked southward along Westland row. But the recipe is in the other
trousers. O, and I forgot that latchkey too. Bore this funeral affair. O well,
poor fellow, it’s not his fault. When was it I got it made up last? Wait. I
changed a sovereign I remember. First of the month it must have been or the
second. O, he can look it up in the prescriptions book.
The chemist turned back page after page. Sandy shrivelled smell he
seems to have. Shrunken skull. And old. Quest for the philosopher’s stone.
The alchemists. Drugs age you after mental excitement. Lethargy then.
Why? Reaction. A lifetime in a night. Gradually changes your character.
Living all the day among herbs, ointments, disinfectants. All his alabaster
lilypots. Mortar and pestle. Aq. Dist. Fol. Laur. Te Virid. Smell almost cure
you like the dentist’s doorbell. Doctor Whack. He ought to physic himself a
bit. Electuary or emulsion. The first fellow that picked an herb to cure
himself had a bit of pluck. Simples. Want to be careful. Enough stuff here to
chloroform you. Test: turns blue litmus paper red. Chloroform. Overdose of
laudanum. Sleeping draughts. Lovephiltres. Paragoric poppysyrup bad for
cough. Clogs the pores or the phlegm. Poisons the only cures. Remedy
where you least expect it. Clever of nature.
—About a fortnight ago, sir?
—Yes, Mr Bloom said.

He waited by the counter, inhaling slowly the keen reek of drugs, the
dusty dry smell of sponges and loofahs. Lot of time taken up telling your
aches and pains.
—Sweet almond oil and tincture of benzoin, Mr Bloom said, and then
orangeflower water...
It certainly did make her skin so delicate white like wax.
—And white wax also, he said.
Brings out the darkness of her eyes. Looking at me, the sheet up to her
eyes, Spanish, smelling herself, when I was fixing the links in my cuffs.
Those homely recipes are often the best: strawberries for the teeth: nettles
and rainwater: oatmeal they say steeped in buttermilk. Skinfood. One of the
old queen’s sons, duke of Albany was it? had only one skin. Leopold, yes.
Three we have. Warts, bunions and pimples to make it worse. But you want
a perfume too. What perfume does your? Peau d’Espagne. That
orangeflower water is so fresh. Nice smell these soaps have. Pure curd soap.
Time to get a bath round the corner. Hammam. Turkish. Massage. Dirt gets
rolled up in your navel. Nicer if a nice girl did it. Also I think I. Yes I. Do it
in the bath. Curious longing I. Water to water. Combine business with
pleasure. Pity no time for massage. Feel fresh then all the day. Funeral be
rather glum.
—Yes, sir, the chemist said. That was two and nine. Have you brought a
bottle?
—No, Mr Bloom said. Make it up, please. I’ll call later in the day and I’ll
take one of these soaps. How much are they?
—Fourpence, sir.
Mr Bloom raised a cake to his nostrils. Sweet lemony wax.
—I’ll take this one, he said. That makes three and a penny.
—Yes, sir, the chemist said. You can pay all together, sir, when you come
back.
—Good, Mr Bloom said.
He strolled out of the shop, the newspaper baton under his armpit, the
coolwrappered soap in his left hand.
At his armpit Bantam Lyons’ voice and hand said:

—Hello, Bloom. What’s the best news? Is that today’s? Show us a
minute.
Shaved off his moustache again, by Jove! Long cold upper lip. To look
younger. He does look balmy. Younger than I am.
Bantam Lyons’s yellow blacknailed fingers unrolled the baton. Wants a
wash too. Take off the rough dirt. Good morning, have you used Pears’
soap? Dandruff on his shoulders. Scalp wants oiling.
—I want to see about that French horse that’s running today, Bantam
Lyons said. Where the bugger is it?
He rustled the pleated pages, jerking his chin on his high collar. Barber’s
itch. Tight collar he’ll lose his hair. Better leave him the paper and get shut
of him.
—You can keep it, Mr Bloom said.
—Ascot. Gold cup. Wait, Bantam Lyons muttered. Half a mo. Maximum
the second.
—I was just going to throw it away, Mr Bloom said.
Bantam Lyons raised his eyes suddenly and leered weakly.
—What’s that? his sharp voice said.
—I say you can keep it, Mr Bloom answered. I was going to throw it
away that moment.
Bantam Lyons doubted an instant, leering: then thrust the outspread
sheets back on Mr Bloom’s arms.
—I’ll risk it, he said. Here, thanks.
He sped off towards Conway’s corner. God speed scut.
Mr Bloom folded the sheets again to a neat square and lodged the soap in
it, smiling. Silly lips of that chap. Betting. Regular hotbed of it lately.
Messenger boys stealing to put on sixpence. Raffle for large tender turkey.
Your Christmas dinner for threepence. Jack Fleming embezzling to gamble
then smuggled off to America. Keeps a hotel now. They never come back.
Fleshpots of Egypt.
He walked cheerfully towards the mosque of the baths. Remind you of a
mosque, redbaked bricks, the minarets. College sports today I see. He eyed
the horseshoe poster over the gate of college park: cyclist doubled up like a
cod in a pot. Damn bad ad. Now if they had made it round like a wheel.

Then the spokes: sports, sports, sports: and the hub big: college. Something
to catch the eye.
There’s Hornblower standing at the porter’s lodge. Keep him on hands:
might take a turn in there on the nod. How do you do, Mr Hornblower?
How do you do, sir?
Heavenly weather really. If life was always like that. Cricket weather. Sit
around under sunshades. Over after over. Out. They can’t play it here. Duck
for six wickets. Still Captain Culler broke a window in the Kildare street
club with a slog to square leg. Donnybrook fair more in their line. And the
skulls we were acracking when M’Carthy took the floor. Heatwave. Won’t
last. Always passing, the stream of life, which in the stream of life we trace
is dearer than them all.
Enjoy a bath now: clean trough of water, cool enamel, the gentle tepid
stream. This is my body.
He foresaw his pale body reclined in it at full, naked, in a womb of
warmth, oiled by scented melting soap, softly laved. He saw his trunk and
limbs riprippled over and sustained, buoyed lightly upward, lemonyellow:
his navel, bud of flesh: and saw the dark tangled curls of his bush floating,
floating hair of the stream around the limp father of thousands, a languid
floating flower.

[6]
Martin Cunningham, first, poked his silkhatted head into the creaking
carriage and, entering deftly, seated himself. Mr Power stepped in after him,
curving his height with care.
—Come on, Simon.
—After you, Mr Bloom said.
Mr Dedalus covered himself quickly and got in, saying:
—Yes, yes.
—Are we all here now? Martin Cunningham asked. Come along, Bloom.
Mr Bloom entered and sat in the vacant place. He pulled the door to after
him and slammed it twice till it shut tight. He passed an arm through the
armstrap and looked seriously from the open carriagewindow at the lowered
blinds of the avenue. One dragged aside: an old woman peeping. Nose
whiteflattened against the pane. Thanking her stars she was passed over.
Extraordinary the interest they take in a corpse. Glad to see us go we give
them such trouble coming. Job seems to suit them. Huggermugger in
corners. Slop about in slipperslappers for fear he’d wake. Then getting it
ready. Laying it out. Molly and Mrs Fleming making the bed. Pull it more
to your side. Our windingsheet. Never know who will touch you dead.
Wash and shampoo. I believe they clip the nails and the hair. Keep a bit in
an envelope. Grows all the same after. Unclean job.
All waited. Nothing was said. Stowing in the wreaths probably. I am
sitting on something hard. Ah, that soap: in my hip pocket. Better shift it out
of that. Wait for an opportunity.
All waited. Then wheels were heard from in front, turning: then nearer:
then horses’ hoofs. A jolt. Their carriage began to move, creaking and
swaying. Other hoofs and creaking wheels started behind. The blinds of the
avenue passed and number nine with its craped knocker, door ajar. At
walking pace.

They waited still, their knees jogging, till they had turned and were
passing along the tramtracks. Tritonville road. Quicker. The wheels rattled
rolling over the cobbled causeway and the crazy glasses shook rattling in
the doorframes.
—What way is he taking us? Mr Power asked through both windows.
—Irishtown, Martin Cunningham said. Ringsend. Brunswick street.
Mr Dedalus nodded, looking out.
—That’s a fine old custom, he said. I am glad to see it has not died out.
All watched awhile through their windows caps and hats lifted by
passers. Respect. The carriage swerved from the tramtrack to the smoother
road past Watery lane. Mr Bloom at gaze saw a lithe young man, clad in
mourning, a wide hat.
—There’s a friend of yours gone by, Dedalus, he said.
—Who is that?
—Your son and heir.
—Where is he? Mr Dedalus said, stretching over across.
The carriage, passing the open drains and mounds of rippedup roadway
before the tenement houses, lurched round the corner and, swerving back to
the tramtrack, rolled on noisily with chattering wheels. Mr Dedalus fell
back, saying:
—Was that Mulligan cad with him? His fidus Achates!
—No, Mr Bloom said. He was alone.
—Down with his aunt Sally, I suppose, Mr Dedalus said, the Goulding
faction, the drunken little costdrawer and Crissie, papa’s little lump of dung,
the wise child that knows her own father.
Mr Bloom smiled joylessly on Ringsend road. Wallace Bros: the
bottleworks: Dodder bridge.
Richie Goulding and the legal bag. Goulding, Collis and Ward he calls
the firm. His jokes are getting a bit damp. Great card he was. Waltzing in
Stamer street with Ignatius Gallaher on a Sunday morning, the landlady’s
two hats pinned on his head. Out on the rampage all night. Beginning to tell
on him now: that backache of his, I fear. Wife ironing his back. Thinks he’ll
cure it with pills. All breadcrumbs they are. About six hundred per cent
profit.

—He’s in with a lowdown crowd, Mr Dedalus snarled. That Mulligan is a
contaminated bloody doubledyed ruffian by all accounts. His name stinks
all over Dublin. But with the help of God and His blessed mother I’ll make
it my business to write a letter one of those days to his mother or his aunt or
whatever she is that will open her eye as wide as a gate. I’ll tickle his
catastrophe, believe you me.
He cried above the clatter of the wheels:
—I won’t have her bastard of a nephew ruin my son. A counterjumper’s
son. Selling tapes in my cousin, Peter Paul M’Swiney’s. Not likely.
He ceased. Mr Bloom glanced from his angry moustache to Mr Power’s
mild face and Martin Cunningham’s eyes and beard, gravely shaking. Noisy
selfwilled man. Full of his son. He is right. Something to hand on. If little
Rudy had lived. See him grow up. Hear his voice in the house. Walking
beside Molly in an Eton suit. My son. Me in his eyes. Strange feeling it
would be. From me. Just a chance. Must have been that morning in
Raymond terrace she was at the window watching the two dogs at it by the
wall of the cease to do evil. And the sergeant grinning up. She had that
cream gown on with the rip she never stitched. Give us a touch, Poldy. God,
I’m dying for it. How life begins.
Got big then. Had to refuse the Greystones concert. My son inside her. I
could have helped him on in life. I could. Make him independent. Learn
German too.
—Are we late? Mr Power asked.
—Ten minutes, Martin Cunningham said, looking at his watch.
Molly. Milly. Same thing watered down. Her tomboy oaths. O jumping
Jupiter! Ye gods and little fishes! Still, she’s a dear girl. Soon be a woman.
Mullingar. Dearest Papli. Young student. Yes, yes: a woman too. Life, life.
The carriage heeled over and back, their four trunks swaying.
—Corny might have given us a more commodious yoke, Mr Power said.
—He might, Mr Dedalus said, if he hadn’t that squint troubling him. Do
you follow me?
He closed his left eye. Martin Cunningham began to brush away
crustcrumbs from under his thighs.
—What is this, he said, in the name of God? Crumbs?

—Someone seems to have been making a picnic party here lately, Mr
Power said.
All raised their thighs and eyed with disfavour the mildewed buttonless
leather of the seats. Mr Dedalus, twisting his nose, frowned downward and
said:
—Unless I’m greatly mistaken. What do you think, Martin?
—It struck me too, Martin Cunningham said.
Mr Bloom set his thigh down. Glad I took that bath. Feel my feet quite
clean. But I wish Mrs Fleming had darned these socks better.
Mr Dedalus sighed resignedly.
—After all, he said, it’s the most natural thing in the world.
—Did Tom Kernan turn up? Martin Cunningham asked, twirling the peak
of his beard gently.
—Yes, Mr Bloom answered. He’s behind with Ned Lambert and Hynes.
—And Corny Kelleher himself? Mr Power asked.
—At the cemetery, Martin Cunningham said.
—I met M’Coy this morning, Mr Bloom said. He said he’d try to come.
The carriage halted short.
—What’s wrong?
—We’re stopped.
—Where are we?
Mr Bloom put his head out of the window.
—The grand canal, he said.
Gasworks. Whooping cough they say it cures. Good job Milly never got
it. Poor children! Doubles them up black and blue in convulsions. Shame
really. Got off lightly with illnesses compared. Only measles. Flaxseed tea.
Scarlatina, influenza epidemics. Canvassing for death. Don’t miss this
chance. Dogs’ home over there. Poor old Athos! Be good to Athos, Leopold,
is my last wish. Thy will be done. We obey them in the grave. A dying
scrawl. He took it to heart, pined away. Quiet brute. Old men’s dogs usually
are.
A raindrop spat on his hat. He drew back and saw an instant of shower
spray dots over the grey flags. Apart. Curious. Like through a colander. I

thought it would. My boots were creaking I remember now.
—The weather is changing, he said quietly.
—A pity it did not keep up fine, Martin Cunningham said.
—Wanted for the country, Mr Power said. There’s the sun again coming
out.
Mr Dedalus, peering through his glasses towards the veiled sun, hurled a
mute curse at the sky.
—It’s as uncertain as a child’s bottom, he said.
—We’re off again.
The carriage turned again its stiff wheels and their trunks swayed gently.
Martin Cunningham twirled more quickly the peak of his beard.
—Tom Kernan was immense last night, he said. And Paddy Leonard
taking him off to his face.
—O, draw him out, Martin, Mr Power said eagerly. Wait till you hear
him, Simon, on Ben Dollard’s singing of The Croppy Boy.
—Immense, Martin Cunningham said pompously. His singing of that
simple ballad, Martin, is the most trenchant rendering I ever heard in the
whole course of my experience.
—Trenchant, Mr Power said laughing. He’s dead nuts on that. And the
retrospective arrangement.
—Did you read Dan Dawson’s speech? Martin Cunningham asked.
—I did not then, Mr Dedalus said. Where is it?
—In the paper this morning.
Mr Bloom took the paper from his inside pocket. That book I must
change for her.
—No, no, Mr Dedalus said quickly. Later on please.
Mr Bloom’s glance travelled down the edge of the paper, scanning the
deaths: Callan, Coleman, Dignam, Fawcett, Lowry, Naumann, Peake, what
Peake is that? is it the chap was in Crosbie and Alleyne’s? no, Sexton,
Urbright. Inked characters fast fading on the frayed breaking paper. Thanks
to the Little Flower. Sadly missed. To the inexpressible grief of his. Aged 88
after a long and tedious illness. Month’s mind: Quinlan. On whose soul
Sweet Jesus have mercy.

It is now a month since dear Henry fled
To his home up above in the sky
While his family weeps and mourns his loss
Hoping some day to meet him on high.

I tore up the envelope? Yes. Where did I put her letter after I read it in the
bath? He patted his waistcoatpocket. There all right. Dear Henry fled.
Before my patience are exhausted.
National school. Meade’s yard. The hazard. Only two there now.
Nodding. Full as a tick. Too much bone in their skulls. The other trotting
round with a fare. An hour ago I was passing there. The jarvies raised their
hats.
A pointsman’s back straightened itself upright suddenly against a
tramway standard by Mr Bloom’s window. Couldn’t they invent something
automatic so that the wheel itself much handier? Well but that fellow would
lose his job then? Well but then another fellow would get a job making the
new invention?
Antient concert rooms. Nothing on there. A man in a buff suit with a
crape armlet. Not much grief there. Quarter mourning. People in law
perhaps.
They went past the bleak pulpit of saint Mark’s, under the railway bridge,
past the Queen’s theatre: in silence. Hoardings: Eugene Stratton, Mrs
Bandmann Palmer. Could I go to see Leah tonight, I wonder. I said I. Or the
Lily of Killarney? Elster Grimes Opera Company. Big powerful change.
Wet bright bills for next week. Fun on the Bristol. Martin Cunningham
could work a pass for the Gaiety. Have to stand a drink or two. As broad as
it’s long.
He’s coming in the afternoon. Her songs.
Plasto’s. Sir Philip Crampton’s memorial fountain bust. Who was he?
—How do you do? Martin Cunningham said, raising his palm to his brow
in salute.
—He doesn’t see us, Mr Power said. Yes, he does. How do you do?
—Who? Mr Dedalus asked.
—Blazes Boylan, Mr Power said. There he is airing his quiff.
Just that moment I was thinking.

Mr Dedalus bent across to salute. From the door of the Red Bank the
white disc of a straw hat flashed reply: spruce figure: passed.
Mr Bloom reviewed the nails of his left hand, then those of his right
hand. The nails, yes. Is there anything more in him that they she sees?
Fascination. Worst man in Dublin. That keeps him alive. They sometimes
feel what a person is. Instinct. But a type like that. My nails. I am just
looking at them: well pared. And after: thinking alone. Body getting a bit
softy. I would notice that: from remembering. What causes that? I suppose
the skin can’t contract quickly enough when the flesh falls off. But the
shape is there. The shape is there still. Shoulders. Hips. Plump. Night of the
dance dressing. Shift stuck between the cheeks behind.
He clasped his hands between his knees and, satisfied, sent his vacant
glance over their faces.
Mr Power asked:
—How is the concert tour getting on, Bloom?
—O, very well, Mr Bloom said. I hear great accounts of it. It’s a good
idea, you see...
—Are you going yourself?
—Well no, Mr Bloom said. In point of fact I have to go down to the
county Clare on some private business. You see the idea is to tour the chief
towns. What you lose on one you can make up on the other.
—Quite so, Martin Cunningham said. Mary Anderson is up there now.
Have you good artists?
—Louis Werner is touring her, Mr Bloom said. O yes, we’ll have all
topnobbers. J. C. Doyle and John MacCormack I hope and. The best, in
fact.
—And Madame, Mr Power said smiling. Last but not least.
Mr Bloom unclasped his hands in a gesture of soft politeness and clasped
them. Smith O’Brien. Someone has laid a bunch of flowers there. Woman.
Must be his deathday. For many happy returns. The carriage wheeling by
Farrell’s statue united noiselessly their unresisting knees.
Oot: a dullgarbed old man from the curbstone tendered his wares, his
mouth opening: oot.
—Four bootlaces for a penny.

Wonder why he was struck off the rolls. Had his office in Hume street.
Same house as Molly’s namesake, Tweedy, crown solicitor for Waterford.
Has that silk hat ever since. Relics of old decency. Mourning too. Terrible
comedown, poor wretch! Kicked about like snuff at a wake. O’Callaghan
on his last legs.
And Madame. Twenty past eleven. Up. Mrs Fleming is in to clean. Doing
her hair, humming: voglio e non vorrei. No: vorrei e non. Looking at the
tips of her hairs to see if they are split. Mi trema un poco il. Beautiful on
that tre her voice is: weeping tone. A thrush. A throstle. There is a word
throstle that expresses that.
His eyes passed lightly over Mr Power’s goodlooking face. Greyish over
the ears. Madame: smiling. I smiled back. A smile goes a long way. Only
politeness perhaps. Nice fellow. Who knows is that true about the woman
he keeps? Not pleasant for the wife. Yet they say, who was it told me, there
is no carnal. You would imagine that would get played out pretty quick.
Yes, it was Crofton met him one evening bringing her a pound of
rumpsteak. What is this she was? Barmaid in Jury’s. Or the Moira, was it?
They passed under the hugecloaked Liberator’s form.
Martin Cunningham nudged Mr Power.
—Of the tribe of Reuben, he said.
A tall blackbearded figure, bent on a stick, stumping round the corner of
Elvery’s Elephant house, showed them a curved hand open on his spine.
—In all his pristine beauty, Mr Power said.
Mr Dedalus looked after the stumping figure and said mildly:
—The devil break the hasp of your back!
Mr Power, collapsing in laughter, shaded his face from the window as the
carriage passed Gray’s statue.
—We have all been there, Martin Cunningham said broadly.
His eyes met Mr Bloom’s eyes. He caressed his beard, adding:
—Well, nearly all of us.
Mr Bloom began to speak with sudden eagerness to his companions’
faces.
—That’s an awfully good one that’s going the rounds about Reuben J and
the son.

—About the boatman? Mr Power asked.
—Yes. Isn’t it awfully good?
—What is that? Mr Dedalus asked. I didn’t hear it.
—There was a girl in the case, Mr Bloom began, and he determined to
send him to the Isle of Man out of harm’s way but when they were both.....
—What? Mr Dedalus asked. That confirmed bloody hobbledehoy is it?
—Yes, Mr Bloom said. They were both on the way to the boat and he
tried to drown.....
—Drown Barabbas! Mr Dedalus cried. I wish to Christ he did!
Mr Power sent a long laugh down his shaded nostrils.
—No, Mr Bloom said, the son himself.....
Martin Cunningham thwarted his speech rudely:
—Reuben J and the son were piking it down the quay next the river on
their way to the Isle of Man boat and the young chiseller suddenly got loose
and over the wall with him into the Liffey.
—For God’s sake! Mr Dedalus exclaimed in fright. Is he dead?
—Dead! Martin Cunningham cried. Not he! A boatman got a pole and
fished him out by the slack of the breeches and he was landed up to the
father on the quay more dead than alive. Half the town was there.
—Yes, Mr Bloom said. But the funny part is.....
—And Reuben J, Martin Cunningham said, gave the boatman a florin for
saving his son’s life.
A stifled sigh came from under Mr Power’s hand.
—O, he did, Martin Cunningham affirmed. Like a hero. A silver florin.
—Isn’t it awfully good? Mr Bloom said eagerly.
—One and eightpence too much, Mr Dedalus said drily.
Mr Power’s choked laugh burst quietly in the carriage.
Nelson’s pillar.
—Eight plums a penny! Eight for a penny!
—We had better look a little serious, Martin Cunningham said.
Mr Dedalus sighed.

—Ah then indeed, he said, poor little Paddy wouldn’t grudge us a laugh.
Many a good one he told himself.
—The Lord forgive me! Mr Power said, wiping his wet eyes with his
fingers. Poor Paddy! I little thought a week ago when I saw him last and he
was in his usual health that I’d be driving after him like this. He’s gone
from us.
—As decent a little man as ever wore a hat, Mr Dedalus said. He went
very suddenly.
—Breakdown, Martin Cunningham said. Heart.
He tapped his chest sadly.
Blazing face: redhot. Too much John Barleycorn. Cure for a red nose.
Drink like the devil till it turns adelite. A lot of money he spent colouring it.
Mr Power gazed at the passing houses with rueful apprehension.
—He had a sudden death, poor fellow, he said.
—The best death, Mr Bloom said.
Their wide open eyes looked at him.
—No suffering, he said. A moment and all is over. Like dying in sleep.
No-one spoke.
Dead side of the street this. Dull business by day, land agents,
temperance hotel, Falconer’s railway guide, civil service college, Gill’s,
catholic club, the industrious blind. Why? Some reason. Sun or wind. At
night too. Chummies and slaveys. Under the patronage of the late Father
Mathew. Foundation stone for Parnell. Breakdown. Heart.
White horses with white frontlet plumes came round the Rotunda corner,
galloping. A tiny coffin flashed by. In a hurry to bury. A mourning coach.
Unmarried. Black for the married. Piebald for bachelors. Dun for a nun.
—Sad, Martin Cunningham said. A child.
A dwarf’s face, mauve and wrinkled like little Rudy’s was. Dwarf’s body,
weak as putty, in a whitelined deal box. Burial friendly society pays. Penny
a week for a sod of turf. Our. Little. Beggar. Baby. Meant nothing. Mistake
of nature. If it’s healthy it’s from the mother. If not from the man. Better
luck next time.
—Poor little thing, Mr Dedalus said. It’s well out of it.

The carriage climbed more slowly the hill of Rutland square. Rattle his
bones. Over the stones. Only a pauper. Nobody owns.
—In the midst of life, Martin Cunningham said.
—But the worst of all, Mr Power said, is the man who takes his own life.
Martin Cunningham drew out his watch briskly, coughed and put it back.
—The greatest disgrace to have in the family, Mr Power added.
—Temporary insanity, of course, Martin Cunningham said decisively. We
must take a charitable view of it.
—They say a man who does it is a coward, Mr Dedalus said.
—It is not for us to judge, Martin Cunningham said.
Mr Bloom, about to speak, closed his lips again. Martin Cunningham’s
large eyes. Looking away now. Sympathetic human man he is. Intelligent.
Like Shakespeare’s face. Always a good word to say. They have no mercy
on that here or infanticide. Refuse christian burial. They used to drive a
stake of wood through his heart in the grave. As if it wasn’t broken already.
Yet sometimes they repent too late. Found in the riverbed clutching rushes.
He looked at me. And that awful drunkard of a wife of his. Setting up house
for her time after time and then pawning the furniture on him every
Saturday almost. Leading him the life of the damned. Wear the heart out of
a stone, that. Monday morning. Start afresh. Shoulder to the wheel. Lord,
she must have looked a sight that night Dedalus told me he was in there.
Drunk about the place and capering with Martin’s umbrella.
And they call me the jewel of Asia,
Of Asia,
The geisha.

He looked away from me. He knows. Rattle his bones.
That afternoon of the inquest. The redlabelled bottle on the table. The
room in the hotel with hunting pictures. Stuffy it was. Sunlight through the
slats of the Venetian blind. The coroner’s sunlit ears, big and hairy. Boots
giving evidence. Thought he was asleep first. Then saw like yellow streaks
on his face. Had slipped down to the foot of the bed. Verdict: overdose.
Death by misadventure. The letter. For my son Leopold.
No more pain. Wake no more. Nobody owns.
The carriage rattled swiftly along Blessington street. Over the stones.

—We are going the pace, I think, Martin Cunningham said.
—God grant he doesn’t upset us on the road, Mr Power said.
—I hope not, Martin Cunningham said. That will be a great race
tomorrow in Germany. The Gordon Bennett.
—Yes, by Jove, Mr Dedalus said. That will be worth seeing, faith.
As they turned into Berkeley street a streetorgan near the Basin sent over
and after them a rollicking rattling song of the halls. Has anybody here seen
Kelly? Kay ee double ell wy. Dead March from Saul. He’s as bad as old
Antonio. He left me on my ownio. Pirouette! The Mater Misericordiae.
Eccles street. My house down there. Big place. Ward for incurables there.
Very encouraging. Our Lady’s Hospice for the dying. Deadhouse handy
underneath. Where old Mrs Riordan died. They look terrible the women.
Her feeding cup and rubbing her mouth with the spoon. Then the screen
round her bed for her to die. Nice young student that was dressed that bite
the bee gave me. He’s gone over to the lying-in hospital they told me. From
one extreme to the other.
The carriage galloped round a corner: stopped.
—What’s wrong now?
A divided drove of branded cattle passed the windows, lowing, slouching
by on padded hoofs, whisking their tails slowly on their clotted bony
croups. Outside them and through them ran raddled sheep bleating their
fear.
—Emigrants, Mr Power said.
—Huuuh! the drover’s voice cried, his switch sounding on their flanks.
Huuuh! out of that!
Thursday, of course. Tomorrow is killing day. Springers. Cuffe sold them
about twentyseven quid each. For Liverpool probably. Roastbeef for old
England. They buy up all the juicy ones. And then the fifth quarter lost: all
that raw stuff, hide, hair, horns. Comes to a big thing in a year. Dead meat
trade. Byproducts of the slaughterhouses for tanneries, soap, margarine.
Wonder if that dodge works now getting dicky meat off the train at
Clonsilla.
The carriage moved on through the drove.

—I can’t make out why the corporation doesn’t run a tramline from the
parkgate to the quays, Mr Bloom said. All those animals could be taken in
trucks down to the boats.
—Instead of blocking up the thoroughfare, Martin Cunningham said.
Quite right. They ought to.
—Yes, Mr Bloom said, and another thing I often thought, is to have
municipal funeral trams like they have in Milan, you know. Run the line out
to the cemetery gates and have special trams, hearse and carriage and all.
Don’t you see what I mean?
—O, that be damned for a story, Mr Dedalus said. Pullman car and
saloon diningroom.
—A poor lookout for Corny, Mr Power added.
—Why? Mr Bloom asked, turning to Mr Dedalus. Wouldn’t it be more
decent than galloping two abreast?
—Well, there’s something in that, Mr Dedalus granted.
—And, Martin Cunningham said, we wouldn’t have scenes like that
when the hearse capsized round Dunphy’s and upset the coffin on to the
road.
—That was terrible, Mr Power’s shocked face said, and the corpse fell
about the road. Terrible!
—First round Dunphy’s, Mr Dedalus said, nodding. Gordon Bennett cup.
—Praises be to God! Martin Cunningham said piously.
Bom! Upset. A coffin bumped out on to the road. Burst open. Paddy
Dignam shot out and rolling over stiff in the dust in a brown habit too large
for him. Red face: grey now. Mouth fallen open. Asking what’s up now.
Quite right to close it. Looks horrid open. Then the insides decompose
quickly. Much better to close up all the orifices. Yes, also. With wax. The
sphincter loose. Seal up all.
—Dunphy’s, Mr Power announced as the carriage turned right.
Dunphy’s corner. Mourning coaches drawn up, drowning their grief. A
pause by the wayside. Tiptop position for a pub. Expect we’ll pull up here
on the way back to drink his health. Pass round the consolation. Elixir of
life.

But suppose now it did happen. Would he bleed if a nail say cut him in
the knocking about? He would and he wouldn’t, I suppose. Depends on
where. The circulation stops. Still some might ooze out of an artery. It
would be better to bury them in red: a dark red.
In silence they drove along Phibsborough road. An empty hearse trotted
by, coming from the cemetery: looks relieved.
Crossguns bridge: the royal canal.
Water rushed roaring through the sluices. A man stood on his dropping
barge, between clamps of turf. On the towpath by the lock a slacktethered
horse. Aboard of the Bugabu.
Their eyes watched him. On the slow weedy waterway he had floated on
his raft coastward over Ireland drawn by a haulage rope past beds of reeds,
over slime, mudchoked bottles, carrion dogs. Athlone, Mullingar,
Moyvalley, I could make a walking tour to see Milly by the canal. Or cycle
down. Hire some old crock, safety. Wren had one the other day at the
auction but a lady’s. Developing waterways. James M’Cann’s hobby to row
me o’er the ferry. Cheaper transit. By easy stages. Houseboats. Camping
out. Also hearses. To heaven by water. Perhaps I will without writing. Come
as a surprise, Leixlip, Clonsilla. Dropping down lock by lock to Dublin.
With turf from the midland bogs. Salute. He lifted his brown straw hat,
saluting Paddy Dignam.
They drove on past Brian Boroimhe house. Near it now.
—I wonder how is our friend Fogarty getting on, Mr Power said.
—Better ask Tom Kernan, Mr Dedalus said.
—How is that? Martin Cunningham said. Left him weeping, I suppose?
—Though lost to sight, Mr Dedalus said, to memory dear.
The carriage steered left for Finglas road.
The stonecutter’s yard on the right. Last lap. Crowded on the spit of land
silent shapes appeared, white, sorrowful, holding out calm hands, knelt in
grief, pointing. Fragments of shapes, hewn. In white silence: appealing. The
best obtainable. Thos. H. Dennany, monumental builder and sculptor.
Passed.
On the curbstone before Jimmy Geary, the sexton’s, an old tramp sat,
grumbling, emptying the dirt and stones out of his huge dustbrown yawning

boot. After life’s journey.
Gloomy gardens then went by: one by one: gloomy houses.
Mr Power pointed.
—That is where Childs was murdered, he said. The last house.
—So it is, Mr Dedalus said. A gruesome case. Seymour Bushe got him
off. Murdered his brother. Or so they said.
—The crown had no evidence, Mr Power said.
—Only circumstantial, Martin Cunningham added. That’s the maxim of
the law. Better for ninetynine guilty to escape than for one innocent person
to be wrongfully condemned.
They looked. Murderer’s ground. It passed darkly. Shuttered, tenantless,
unweeded garden. Whole place gone to hell. Wrongfully condemned.
Murder. The murderer’s image in the eye of the murdered. They love
reading about it. Man’s head found in a garden. Her clothing consisted of.
How she met her death. Recent outrage. The weapon used. Murderer is still
at large. Clues. A shoelace. The body to be exhumed. Murder will out.
Cramped in this carriage. She mightn’t like me to come that way without
letting her know. Must be careful about women. Catch them once with their
pants down. Never forgive you after. Fifteen.
The high railings of Prospect rippled past their gaze. Dark poplars, rare
white forms. Forms more frequent, white shapes thronged amid the trees,
white forms and fragments streaming by mutely, sustaining vain gestures on
the air.
The felly harshed against the curbstone: stopped. Martin Cunningham put
out his arm and, wrenching back the handle, shoved the door open with his
knee. He stepped out. Mr Power and Mr Dedalus followed.
Change that soap now. Mr Bloom’s hand unbuttoned his hip pocket
swiftly and transferred the paperstuck soap to his inner handkerchief
pocket. He stepped out of the carriage, replacing the newspaper his other
hand still held.
Paltry funeral: coach and three carriages. It’s all the same. Pallbearers,
gold reins, requiem mass, firing a volley. Pomp of death. Beyond the hind
carriage a hawker stood by his barrow of cakes and fruit. Simnel cakes

those are, stuck together: cakes for the dead. Dogbiscuits. Who ate them?
Mourners coming out.
He followed his companions. Mr Kernan and Ned Lambert followed,
Hynes walking after them. Corny Kelleher stood by the opened hearse and
took out the two wreaths. He handed one to the boy.
Where is that child’s funeral disappeared to?
A team of horses passed from Finglas with toiling plodding tread,
dragging through the funereal silence a creaking waggon on which lay a
granite block. The waggoner marching at their head saluted.
Coffin now. Got here before us, dead as he is. Horse looking round at it
with his plume skeowways. Dull eye: collar tight on his neck, pressing on a
bloodvessel or something. Do they know what they cart out here every day?
Must be twenty or thirty funerals every day. Then Mount Jerome for the
protestants. Funerals all over the world everywhere every minute.
Shovelling them under by the cartload doublequick. Thousands every hour.
Too many in the world.
Mourners came out through the gates: woman and a girl. Leanjawed
harpy, hard woman at a bargain, her bonnet awry. Girl’s face stained with
dirt and tears, holding the woman’s arm, looking up at her for a sign to cry.
Fish’s face, bloodless and livid.
The mutes shouldered the coffin and bore it in through the gates. So
much dead weight. Felt heavier myself stepping out of that bath. First the
stiff: then the friends of the stiff. Corny Kelleher and the boy followed with
their wreaths. Who is that beside them? Ah, the brother-in-law.
All walked after.
Martin Cunningham whispered:
—I was in mortal agony with you talking of suicide before Bloom.
—What? Mr Power whispered. How so?
—His father poisoned himself, Martin Cunningham whispered. Had the
Queen’s hotel in Ennis. You heard him say he was going to Clare.
Anniversary.
—O God! Mr Power whispered. First I heard of it. Poisoned himself?
He glanced behind him to where a face with dark thinking eyes followed
towards the cardinal’s mausoleum. Speaking.

—Was he insured? Mr Bloom asked.
—I believe so, Mr Kernan answered. But the policy was heavily
mortgaged. Martin is trying to get the youngster into Artane.
—How many children did he leave?
—Five. Ned Lambert says he’ll try to get one of the girls into Todd’s.
—A sad case, Mr Bloom said gently. Five young children.
—A great blow to the poor wife, Mr Kernan added.
—Indeed yes, Mr Bloom agreed.
Has the laugh at him now.
He looked down at the boots he had blacked and polished. She had
outlived him. Lost her husband. More dead for her than for me. One must
outlive the other. Wise men say. There are more women than men in the
world. Condole with her. Your terrible loss. I hope you’ll soon follow him.
For Hindu widows only. She would marry another. Him? No. Yet who
knows after. Widowhood not the thing since the old queen died. Drawn on a
guncarriage. Victoria and Albert. Frogmore memorial mourning. But in the
end she put a few violets in her bonnet. Vain in her heart of hearts. All for a
shadow. Consort not even a king. Her son was the substance. Something
new to hope for not like the past she wanted back, waiting. It never comes.
One must go first: alone, under the ground: and lie no more in her warm
bed.
—How are you, Simon? Ned Lambert said softly, clasping hands.
Haven’t seen you for a month of Sundays.
—Never better. How are all in Cork’s own town?
—I was down there for the Cork park races on Easter Monday, Ned
Lambert said. Same old six and eightpence. Stopped with Dick Tivy.
—And how is Dick, the solid man?
—Nothing between himself and heaven, Ned Lambert answered.
—By the holy Paul! Mr Dedalus said in subdued wonder. Dick Tivy
bald?
—Martin is going to get up a whip for the youngsters, Ned Lambert said,
pointing ahead. A few bob a skull. Just to keep them going till the insurance
is cleared up.
—Yes, yes, Mr Dedalus said dubiously. Is that the eldest boy in front?

—Yes, Ned Lambert said, with the wife’s brother. John Henry Menton is
behind. He put down his name for a quid.
—I’ll engage he did, Mr Dedalus said. I often told poor Paddy he ought
to mind that job. John Henry is not the worst in the world.
—How did he lose it? Ned Lambert asked. Liquor, what?
—Many a good man’s fault, Mr Dedalus said with a sigh.
They halted about the door of the mortuary chapel. Mr Bloom stood
behind the boy with the wreath looking down at his sleekcombed hair and at
the slender furrowed neck inside his brandnew collar. Poor boy! Was he
there when the father? Both unconscious. Lighten up at the last moment and
recognise for the last time. All he might have done. I owe three shillings to
O’Grady. Would he understand? The mutes bore the coffin into the chapel.
Which end is his head?
After a moment he followed the others in, blinking in the screened light.
The coffin lay on its bier before the chancel, four tall yellow candles at its
corners. Always in front of us. Corny Kelleher, laying a wreath at each fore
corner, beckoned to the boy to kneel. The mourners knelt here and there in
prayingdesks. Mr Bloom stood behind near the font and, when all had knelt,
dropped carefully his unfolded newspaper from his pocket and knelt his
right knee upon it. He fitted his black hat gently on his left knee and,
holding its brim, bent over piously.
A server bearing a brass bucket with something in it came out through a
door. The whitesmocked priest came after him, tidying his stole with one
hand, balancing with the other a little book against his toad’s belly. Who’ll
read the book? I, said the rook.
They halted by the bier and the priest began to read out of his book with
a fluent croak.
Father Coffey. I knew his name was like a coffin. Dominenamine. Bully
about the muzzle he looks. Bosses the show. Muscular christian. Woe betide
anyone that looks crooked at him: priest. Thou art Peter. Burst sideways like
a sheep in clover Dedalus says he will. With a belly on him like a poisoned
pup. Most amusing expressions that man finds. Hhhn: burst sideways.
—Non intres in judicium cum servo tuo, Domine.
Makes them feel more important to be prayed over in Latin. Requiem
mass. Crape weepers. Blackedged notepaper. Your name on the altarlist.

Chilly place this. Want to feed well, sitting in there all the morning in the
gloom kicking his heels waiting for the next please. Eyes of a toad too.
What swells him up that way? Molly gets swelled after cabbage. Air of the
place maybe. Looks full up of bad gas. Must be an infernal lot of bad gas
round the place. Butchers, for instance: they get like raw beefsteaks. Who
was telling me? Mervyn Browne. Down in the vaults of saint Werburgh’s
lovely old organ hundred and fifty they have to bore a hole in the coffins
sometimes to let out the bad gas and burn it. Out it rushes: blue. One whiff
of that and you’re a goner.
My kneecap is hurting me. Ow. That’s better.
The priest took a stick with a knob at the end of it out of the boy’s bucket
and shook it over the coffin. Then he walked to the other end and shook it
again. Then he came back and put it back in the bucket. As you were before
you rested. It’s all written down: he has to do it.
—Et ne nos inducas in tentationem.
The server piped the answers in the treble. I often thought it would be
better to have boy servants. Up to fifteen or so. After that, of course ...
Holy water that was, I expect. Shaking sleep out of it. He must be fed up
with that job, shaking that thing over all the corpses they trot up. What harm
if he could see what he was shaking it over. Every mortal day a fresh batch:
middleaged men, old women, children, women dead in childbirth, men with
beards, baldheaded businessmen, consumptive girls with little sparrows’
breasts. All the year round he prayed the same thing over them all and
shook water on top of them: sleep. On Dignam now.
—In paradisum.
Said he was going to paradise or is in paradise. Says that over everybody.
Tiresome kind of a job. But he has to say something.
The priest closed his book and went off, followed by the server. Corny
Kelleher opened the sidedoors and the gravediggers came in, hoisted the
coffin again, carried it out and shoved it on their cart. Corny Kelleher gave
one wreath to the boy and one to the brother-in-law. All followed them out
of the sidedoors into the mild grey air. Mr Bloom came last folding his
paper again into his pocket. He gazed gravely at the ground till the
coffincart wheeled off to the left. The metal wheels ground the gravel with a

sharp grating cry and the pack of blunt boots followed the trundled barrow
along a lane of sepulchres.
The ree the ra the ree the ra the roo. Lord, I mustn’t lilt here.
—The O’Connell circle, Mr Dedalus said about him.
Mr Power’s soft eyes went up to the apex of the lofty cone.
—He’s at rest, he said, in the middle of his people, old Dan O’. But his
heart is buried in Rome. How many broken hearts are buried here, Simon!
—Her grave is over there, Jack, Mr Dedalus said. I’ll soon be stretched
beside her. Let Him take me whenever He likes.
Breaking down, he began to weep to himself quietly, stumbling a little in
his walk. Mr Power took his arm.
—She’s better where she is, he said kindly.
—I suppose so, Mr Dedalus said with a weak gasp. I suppose she is in
heaven if there is a heaven.
Corny Kelleher stepped aside from his rank and allowed the mourners to
plod by.
—Sad occasions, Mr Kernan began politely.
Mr Bloom closed his eyes and sadly twice bowed his head.
—The others are putting on their hats, Mr Kernan said. I suppose we can
do so too. We are the last. This cemetery is a treacherous place.
They covered their heads.
—The reverend gentleman read the service too quickly, don’t you think?
Mr Kernan said with reproof.
Mr Bloom nodded gravely looking in the quick bloodshot eyes. Secret
eyes, secretsearching. Mason, I think: not sure. Beside him again. We are
the last. In the same boat. Hope he’ll say something else.
Mr Kernan added:
—The service of the Irish church used in Mount Jerome is simpler, more
impressive I must say.
Mr Bloom gave prudent assent. The language of course was another
thing.
Mr Kernan said with solemnity:
—I am the resurrection and the life. That touches a man’s inmost heart.

—It does, Mr Bloom said.
Your heart perhaps but what price the fellow in the six feet by two with
his toes to the daisies? No touching that. Seat of the affections. Broken
heart. A pump after all, pumping thousands of gallons of blood every day.
One fine day it gets bunged up: and there you are. Lots of them lying
around here: lungs, hearts, livers. Old rusty pumps: damn the thing else.
The resurrection and the life. Once you are dead you are dead. That last day
idea. Knocking them all up out of their graves. Come forth, Lazarus! And
he came fifth and lost the job. Get up! Last day! Then every fellow mousing
around for his liver and his lights and the rest of his traps. Find damn all of
himself that morning. Pennyweight of powder in a skull. Twelve grammes
one pennyweight. Troy measure.
Corny Kelleher fell into step at their side.
—Everything went off A1, he said. What?
He looked on them from his drawling eye. Policeman’s shoulders. With
your tooraloom tooraloom.
—As it should be, Mr Kernan said.
—What? Eh? Corny Kelleher said.
Mr Kernan assured him.
—Who is that chap behind with Tom Kernan? John Henry Menton asked.
I know his face.
Ned Lambert glanced back.
—Bloom, he said, Madame Marion Tweedy that was, is, I mean, the
soprano. She’s his wife.
—O, to be sure, John Henry Menton said. I haven’t seen her for some
time. She was a finelooking woman. I danced with her, wait, fifteen
seventeen golden years ago, at Mat Dillon’s in Roundtown. And a good
armful she was.
He looked behind through the others.
—What is he? he asked. What does he do? Wasn’t he in the stationery
line? I fell foul of him one evening, I remember, at bowls.
Ned Lambert smiled.
—Yes, he was, he said, in Wisdom Hely’s. A traveller for blottingpaper.

—In God’s name, John Henry Menton said, what did she marry a coon
like that for? She had plenty of game in her then.
—Has still, Ned Lambert said. He does some canvassing for ads.
John Henry Menton’s large eyes stared ahead.
The barrow turned into a side lane. A portly man, ambushed among the
grasses, raised his hat in homage. The gravediggers touched their caps.
—John O’Connell, Mr Power said pleased. He never forgets a friend.
Mr O’Connell shook all their hands in silence. Mr Dedalus said:
—I am come to pay you another visit.
—My dear Simon, the caretaker answered in a low voice. I don’t want
your custom at all.
Saluting Ned Lambert and John Henry Menton he walked on at Martin
Cunningham’s side puzzling two long keys at his back.
—Did you hear that one, he asked them, about Mulcahy from the
Coombe?
—I did not, Martin Cunningham said.
They bent their silk hats in concert and Hynes inclined his ear. The
caretaker hung his thumbs in the loops of his gold watchchain and spoke in
a discreet tone to their vacant smiles.
—They tell the story, he said, that two drunks came out here one foggy
evening to look for the grave of a friend of theirs. They asked for Mulcahy
from the Coombe and were told where he was buried. After traipsing about
in the fog they found the grave sure enough. One of the drunks spelt out the
name: Terence Mulcahy. The other drunk was blinking up at a statue of Our
Saviour the widow had got put up.
The caretaker blinked up at one of the sepulchres they passed. He
resumed:
—And, after blinking up at the sacred figure, Not a bloody bit like the
man, says he. That’s not Mulcahy, says he, whoever done it.
Rewarded by smiles he fell back and spoke with Corny Kelleher,
accepting the dockets given him, turning them over and scanning them as
he walked.
—That’s all done with a purpose, Martin Cunningham explained to
Hynes.

—I know, Hynes said. I know that.
—To cheer a fellow up, Martin Cunningham said. It’s pure
goodheartedness: damn the thing else.
Mr Bloom admired the caretaker’s prosperous bulk. All want to be on
good terms with him. Decent fellow, John O’Connell, real good sort. Keys:
like Keyes’s ad: no fear of anyone getting out. No passout checks. Habeas
corpus. I must see about that ad after the funeral. Did I write Ballsbridge on
the envelope I took to cover when she disturbed me writing to Martha?
Hope it’s not chucked in the dead letter office. Be the better of a shave.
Grey sprouting beard. That’s the first sign when the hairs come out grey.
And temper getting cross. Silver threads among the grey. Fancy being his
wife. Wonder he had the gumption to propose to any girl. Come out and live
in the graveyard. Dangle that before her. It might thrill her first. Courting
death. Shades of night hovering here with all the dead stretched about. The
shadows of the tombs when churchyards yawn and Daniel O’Connell must
be a descendant I suppose who is this used to say he was a queer breedy
man great catholic all the same like a big giant in the dark. Will o’ the wisp.
Gas of graves. Want to keep her mind off it to conceive at all. Women
especially are so touchy. Tell her a ghost story in bed to make her sleep.
Have you ever seen a ghost? Well, I have. It was a pitchdark night. The
clock was on the stroke of twelve. Still they’d kiss all right if properly
keyed up. Whores in Turkish graveyards. Learn anything if taken young.
You might pick up a young widow here. Men like that. Love among the
tombstones. Romeo. Spice of pleasure. In the midst of death we are in life.
Both ends meet. Tantalising for the poor dead. Smell of grilled beefsteaks to
the starving. Gnawing their vitals. Desire to grig people. Molly wanting to
do it at the window. Eight children he has anyway.
He has seen a fair share go under in his time, lying around him field after
field. Holy fields. More room if they buried them standing. Sitting or
kneeling you couldn’t. Standing? His head might come up some day above
ground in a landslip with his hand pointing. All honeycombed the ground
must be: oblong cells. And very neat he keeps it too: trim grass and edgings.
His garden Major Gamble calls Mount Jerome. Well, so it is. Ought to be
flowers of sleep. Chinese cemeteries with giant poppies growing produce
the best opium Mastiansky told me. The Botanic Gardens are just over
there. It’s the blood sinking in the earth gives new life. Same idea those

jews they said killed the christian boy. Every man his price. Well preserved
fat corpse, gentleman, epicure, invaluable for fruit garden. A bargain. By
carcass of William Wilkinson, auditor and accountant, lately deceased, three
pounds thirteen and six. With thanks.
I daresay the soil would be quite fat with corpsemanure, bones, flesh,
nails. Charnelhouses. Dreadful. Turning green and pink decomposing. Rot
quick in damp earth. The lean old ones tougher. Then a kind of a tallowy
kind of a cheesy. Then begin to get black, black treacle oozing out of them.
Then dried up. Deathmoths. Of course the cells or whatever they are go on
living. Changing about. Live for ever practically. Nothing to feed on feed
on themselves.
But they must breed a devil of a lot of maggots. Soil must be simply
swirling with them. Your head it simply swurls. Those pretty little seaside
gurls. He looks cheerful enough over it. Gives him a sense of power seeing
all the others go under first. Wonder how he looks at life. Cracking his jokes
too: warms the cockles of his heart. The one about the bulletin. Spurgeon
went to heaven 4 a.m. this morning. 11 p.m. (closing time). Not arrived yet.
Peter. The dead themselves the men anyhow would like to hear an odd joke
or the women to know what’s in fashion. A juicy pear or ladies’ punch, hot,
strong and sweet. Keep out the damp. You must laugh sometimes so better
do it that way. Gravediggers in Hamlet. Shows the profound knowledge of
the human heart. Daren’t joke about the dead for two years at least. De
mortuis nil nisi prius. Go out of mourning first. Hard to imagine his funeral.
Seems a sort of a joke. Read your own obituary notice they say you live
longer. Gives you second wind. New lease of life.
—How many have you for tomorrow? the caretaker asked.
—Two, Corny Kelleher said. Half ten and eleven.
The caretaker put the papers in his pocket. The barrow had ceased to
trundle. The mourners split and moved to each side of the hole, stepping
with care round the graves. The gravediggers bore the coffin and set its nose
on the brink, looping the bands round it.
Burying him. We come to bury Cæsar. His ides of March or June. He
doesn’t know who is here nor care. Now who is that lankylooking galoot
over there in the macintosh? Now who is he I’d like to know? Now I’d give
a trifle to know who he is. Always someone turns up you never dreamt of. A
fellow could live on his lonesome all his life. Yes, he could. Still he’d have

to get someone to sod him after he died though he could dig his own grave.
We all do. Only man buries. No, ants too. First thing strikes anybody. Bury
the dead. Say Robinson Crusoe was true to life. Well then Friday buried
him. Every Friday buries a Thursday if you come to look at it.
O, poor Robinson Crusoe!
How could you possibly do so?

Poor Dignam! His last lie on the earth in his box. When you think of
them all it does seem a waste of wood. All gnawed through. They could
invent a handsome bier with a kind of panel sliding, let it down that way. Ay
but they might object to be buried out of another fellow’s. They’re so
particular. Lay me in my native earth. Bit of clay from the holy land. Only a
mother and deadborn child ever buried in the one coffin. I see what it
means. I see. To protect him as long as possible even in the earth. The
Irishman’s house is his coffin. Embalming in catacombs, mummies the
same idea.
Mr Bloom stood far back, his hat in his hand, counting the bared heads.
Twelve. I’m thirteen. No. The chap in the macintosh is thirteen. Death’s
number. Where the deuce did he pop out of? He wasn’t in the chapel, that
I’ll swear. Silly superstition that about thirteen.
Nice soft tweed Ned Lambert has in that suit. Tinge of purple. I had one
like that when we lived in Lombard street west. Dressy fellow he was once.
Used to change three suits in the day. Must get that grey suit of mine turned
by Mesias. Hello. It’s dyed. His wife I forgot he’s not married or his
landlady ought to have picked out those threads for him.
The coffin dived out of sight, eased down by the men straddled on the
gravetrestles. They struggled up and out: and all uncovered. Twenty.
Pause.
If we were all suddenly somebody else.
Far away a donkey brayed. Rain. No such ass. Never see a dead one, they
say. Shame of death. They hide. Also poor papa went away.
Gentle sweet air blew round the bared heads in a whisper. Whisper. The
boy by the gravehead held his wreath with both hands staring quietly in the
black open space. Mr Bloom moved behind the portly kindly caretaker.
Wellcut frockcoat. Weighing them up perhaps to see which will go next.
Well, it is a long rest. Feel no more. It’s the moment you feel. Must be

damned unpleasant. Can’t believe it at first. Mistake must be: someone else.
Try the house opposite. Wait, I wanted to. I haven’t yet. Then darkened
deathchamber. Light they want. Whispering around you. Would you like to
see a priest? Then rambling and wandering. Delirium all you hid all your
life. The death struggle. His sleep is not natural. Press his lower eyelid.
Watching is his nose pointed is his jaw sinking are the soles of his feet
yellow. Pull the pillow away and finish it off on the floor since he’s
doomed. Devil in that picture of sinner’s death showing him a woman.
Dying to embrace her in his shirt. Last act of Lucia. Shall I nevermore
behold thee? Bam! He expires. Gone at last. People talk about you a bit:
forget you. Don’t forget to pray for him. Remember him in your prayers.
Even Parnell. Ivy day dying out. Then they follow: dropping into a hole,
one after the other.
We are praying now for the repose of his soul. Hoping you’re well and
not in hell. Nice change of air. Out of the fryingpan of life into the fire of
purgatory.
Does he ever think of the hole waiting for himself? They say you do
when you shiver in the sun. Someone walking over it. Callboy’s warning.
Near you. Mine over there towards Finglas, the plot I bought. Mamma, poor
mamma, and little Rudy.
The gravediggers took up their spades and flung heavy clods of clay in
on the coffin. Mr Bloom turned away his face. And if he was alive all the
time? Whew! By jingo, that would be awful! No, no: he is dead, of course.
Of course he is dead. Monday he died. They ought to have some law to
pierce the heart and make sure or an electric clock or a telephone in the
coffin and some kind of a canvas airhole. Flag of distress. Three days.
Rather long to keep them in summer. Just as well to get shut of them as
soon as you are sure there’s no.
The clay fell softer. Begin to be forgotten. Out of sight, out of mind.
The caretaker moved away a few paces and put on his hat. Had enough of
it. The mourners took heart of grace, one by one, covering themselves
without show. Mr Bloom put on his hat and saw the portly figure make its
way deftly through the maze of graves. Quietly, sure of his ground, he
traversed the dismal fields.
Hynes jotting down something in his notebook. Ah, the names. But he
knows them all. No: coming to me.

—I am just taking the names, Hynes said below his breath. What is your
christian name? I’m not sure.
—L, Mr Bloom said. Leopold. And you might put down M’Coy’s name
too. He asked me to.
—Charley, Hynes said writing. I know. He was on the Freeman once.
So he was before he got the job in the morgue under Louis Byrne. Good
idea a postmortem for doctors. Find out what they imagine they know. He
died of a Tuesday. Got the run. Levanted with the cash of a few ads.
Charley, you’re my darling. That was why he asked me to. O well, does no
harm. I saw to that, M’Coy. Thanks, old chap: much obliged. Leave him
under an obligation: costs nothing.
—And tell us, Hynes said, do you know that fellow in the, fellow was
over there in the...
He looked around.
—Macintosh. Yes, I saw him, Mr Bloom said. Where is he now?
—M’Intosh, Hynes said scribbling. I don’t know who he is. Is that his
name?
He moved away, looking about him.
—No, Mr Bloom began, turning and stopping. I say, Hynes!
Didn’t hear. What? Where has he disappeared to? Not a sign. Well of all
the. Has anybody here seen? Kay ee double ell. Become invisible. Good
Lord, what became of him?
A seventh gravedigger came beside Mr Bloom to take up an idle spade.
—O, excuse me!
He stepped aside nimbly.
Clay, brown, damp, began to be seen in the hole. It rose. Nearly over. A
mound of damp clods rose more, rose, and the gravediggers rested their
spades. All uncovered again for a few instants. The boy propped his wreath
against a corner: the brother-in-law his on a lump. The gravediggers put on
their caps and carried their earthy spades towards the barrow. Then knocked
the blades lightly on the turf: clean. One bent to pluck from the haft a long
tuft of grass. One, leaving his mates, walked slowly on with shouldered
weapon, its blade blueglancing. Silently at the gravehead another coiled the
coffinband. His navelcord. The brother-in-law, turning away, placed

something in his free hand. Thanks in silence. Sorry, sir: trouble.
Headshake. I know that. For yourselves just.
The mourners moved away slowly without aim, by devious paths, staying
at whiles to read a name on a tomb.
—Let us go round by the chief’s grave, Hynes said. We have time.
—Let us, Mr Power said.
They turned to the right, following their slow thoughts. With awe Mr
Power’s blank voice spoke:
—Some say he is not in that grave at all. That the coffin was filled with
stones. That one day he will come again.
Hynes shook his head.
—Parnell will never come again, he said. He’s there, all that was mortal
of him. Peace to his ashes.
Mr Bloom walked unheeded along his grove by saddened angels, crosses,
broken pillars, family vaults, stone hopes praying with upcast eyes, old
Ireland’s hearts and hands. More sensible to spend the money on some
charity for the living. Pray for the repose of the soul of. Does anybody
really? Plant him and have done with him. Like down a coalshoot. Then
lump them together to save time. All souls’ day. Twentyseventh I’ll be at his
grave. Ten shillings for the gardener. He keeps it free of weeds. Old man
himself. Bent down double with his shears clipping. Near death’s door. Who
passed away. Who departed this life. As if they did it of their own accord.
Got the shove, all of them. Who kicked the bucket. More interesting if they
told you what they were. So and So, wheelwright. I travelled for cork lino. I
paid five shillings in the pound. Or a woman’s with her saucepan. I cooked
good Irish stew. Eulogy in a country churchyard it ought to be that poem of
whose is it Wordsworth or Thomas Campbell. Entered into rest the
protestants put it. Old Dr Murren’s. The great physician called him home.
Well it’s God’s acre for them. Nice country residence. Newly plastered and
painted. Ideal spot to have a quiet smoke and read the Church Times.
Marriage ads they never try to beautify. Rusty wreaths hung on knobs,
garlands of bronzefoil. Better value that for the money. Still, the flowers are
more poetical. The other gets rather tiresome, never withering. Expresses
nothing. Immortelles.

A bird sat tamely perched on a poplar branch. Like stuffed. Like the
wedding present alderman Hooper gave us. Hoo! Not a budge out of him.
Knows there are no catapults to let fly at him. Dead animal even sadder.
Silly-Milly burying the little dead bird in the kitchen matchbox, a
daisychain and bits of broken chainies on the grave.
The Sacred Heart that is: showing it. Heart on his sleeve. Ought to be
sideways and red it should be painted like a real heart. Ireland was
dedicated to it or whatever that. Seems anything but pleased. Why this
infliction? Would birds come then and peck like the boy with the basket of
fruit but he said no because they ought to have been afraid of the boy.
Apollo that was.
How many! All these here once walked round Dublin. Faithful departed.
As you are now so once were we.
Besides how could you remember everybody? Eyes, walk, voice. Well,
the voice, yes: gramophone. Have a gramophone in every grave or keep it
in the house. After dinner on a Sunday. Put on poor old greatgrandfather.
Kraahraark! Hellohellohello amawfullyglad kraark awfullygladaseeagain
hellohello amawf krpthsth. Remind you of the voice like the photograph
reminds you of the face. Otherwise you couldn’t remember the face after
fifteen years, say. For instance who? For instance some fellow that died
when I was in Wisdom Hely’s.
Rtststr! A rattle of pebbles. Wait. Stop!
He looked down intently into a stone crypt. Some animal. Wait. There he
goes.
An obese grey rat toddled along the side of the crypt, moving the
pebbles. An old stager: greatgrandfather: he knows the ropes. The grey alive
crushed itself in under the plinth, wriggled itself in under it. Good
hidingplace for treasure.
Who lives there? Are laid the remains of Robert Emery. Robert Emmet
was buried here by torchlight, wasn’t he? Making his rounds.
Tail gone now.
One of those chaps would make short work of a fellow. Pick the bones
clean no matter who it was. Ordinary meat for them. A corpse is meat gone
bad. Well and what’s cheese? Corpse of milk. I read in that Voyages in
China that the Chinese say a white man smells like a corpse. Cremation

better. Priests dead against it. Devilling for the other firm. Wholesale
burners and Dutch oven dealers. Time of the plague. Quicklime feverpits to
eat them. Lethal chamber. Ashes to ashes. Or bury at sea. Where is that
Parsee tower of silence? Eaten by birds. Earth, fire, water. Drowning they
say is the pleasantest. See your whole life in a flash. But being brought back
to life no. Can’t bury in the air however. Out of a flying machine. Wonder
does the news go about whenever a fresh one is let down. Underground
communication. We learned that from them. Wouldn’t be surprised. Regular
square feed for them. Flies come before he’s well dead. Got wind of
Dignam. They wouldn’t care about the smell of it. Saltwhite crumbling
mush of corpse: smell, taste like raw white turnips.
The gates glimmered in front: still open. Back to the world again.
Enough of this place. Brings you a bit nearer every time. Last time I was
here was Mrs Sinico’s funeral. Poor papa too. The love that kills. And even
scraping up the earth at night with a lantern like that case I read of to get at
fresh buried females or even putrefied with running gravesores. Give you
the creeps after a bit. I will appear to you after death. You will see my ghost
after death. My ghost will haunt you after death. There is another world
after death named hell. I do not like that other world she wrote. No more do
I. Plenty to see and hear and feel yet. Feel live warm beings near you. Let
them sleep in their maggoty beds. They are not going to get me this innings.
Warm beds: warm fullblooded life.
Martin Cunningham emerged from a sidepath, talking gravely.
Solicitor, I think. I know his face. Menton, John Henry, solicitor,
commissioner for oaths and affidavits. Dignam used to be in his office. Mat
Dillon’s long ago. Jolly Mat. Convivial evenings. Cold fowl, cigars, the
Tantalus glasses. Heart of gold really. Yes, Menton. Got his rag out that
evening on the bowlinggreen because I sailed inside him. Pure fluke of
mine: the bias. Why he took such a rooted dislike to me. Hate at first sight.
Molly and Floey Dillon linked under the lilactree, laughing. Fellow always
like that, mortified if women are by.
Got a dinge in the side of his hat. Carriage probably.
—Excuse me, sir, Mr Bloom said beside them.
They stopped.
—Your hat is a little crushed, Mr Bloom said pointing.

John Henry Menton stared at him for an instant without moving.
—There, Martin Cunningham helped, pointing also.
John Henry Menton took off his hat, bulged out the dinge and smoothed
the nap with care on his coatsleeve. He clapped the hat on his head again.
—It’s all right now, Martin Cunningham said.
John Henry Menton jerked his head down in acknowledgment.
—Thank you, he said shortly.
They walked on towards the gates. Mr Bloom, chapfallen, drew behind a
few paces so as not to overhear. Martin laying down the law. Martin could
wind a sappyhead like that round his little finger, without his seeing it.
Oyster eyes. Never mind. Be sorry after perhaps when it dawns on him.
Get the pull over him that way.
Thank you. How grand we are this morning!

[7]

IN THE HEART OF THE HIBERNIAN METROPOLIS

Before Nelson’s pillar trams slowed, shunted, changed trolley, started for
Blackrock, Kingstown and Dalkey, Clonskea, Rathgar and Terenure,
Palmerston Park and upper Rathmines, Sandymount Green, Rathmines,
Ringsend and Sandymount Tower, Harold’s Cross. The hoarse Dublin
United Tramway Company’s timekeeper bawled them off:
—Rathgar and Terenure!
—Come on, Sandymount Green!
Right and left parallel clanging ringing a doubledecker and a singledeck
moved from their railheads, swerved to the down line, glided parallel.
—Start, Palmerston Park!

THE WEARER OF THE CROWN

Under the porch of the general post office shoeblacks called and
polished. Parked in North Prince’s street His Majesty’s vermilion mailcars,
bearing on their sides the royal initials, E. R., received loudly flung sacks of
letters, postcards, lettercards, parcels, insured and paid, for local, provincial,
British and overseas delivery.

GENTLEMEN OF THE PRESS

Grossbooted draymen rolled barrels dullthudding out of Prince’s stores
and bumped them up on the brewery float. On the brewery float bumped
dullthudding barrels rolled by grossbooted draymen out of Prince’s stores.
—There it is, Red Murray said. Alexander Keyes.

—Just cut it out, will you? Mr Bloom said, and I’ll take it round to the
Telegraph office.
The door of Ruttledge’s office creaked again. Davy Stephens, minute in a
large capecoat, a small felt hat crowning his ringlets, passed out with a roll
of papers under his cape, a king’s courier.
Red Murray’s long shears sliced out the advertisement from the
newspaper in four clean strokes. Scissors and paste.
—I’ll go through the printingworks, Mr Bloom said, taking the cut
square.
—Of course, if he wants a par, Red Murray said earnestly, a pen behind
his ear, we can do him one.
—Right, Mr Bloom said with a nod. I’ll rub that in.
We.

WILLIAM BRAYDEN, ESQUIRE, OF OAKLANDS,
SANDYMOUNT

Red Murray touched Mr Bloom’s arm with the shears and whispered:
—Brayden.
Mr Bloom turned and saw the liveried porter raise his lettered cap as a
stately figure entered between the newsboards of the Weekly Freeman and
National Press and the Freeman’s Journal and National Press.
Dullthudding Guinness’s barrels. It passed statelily up the staircase, steered
by an umbrella, a solemn beardframed face. The broadcloth back ascended
each step: back. All his brains are in the nape of his neck, Simon Dedalus
says. Welts of flesh behind on him. Fat folds of neck, fat, neck, fat, neck.
—Don’t you think his face is like Our Saviour? Red Murray whispered.
The door of Ruttledge’s office whispered: ee: cree. They always build
one door opposite another for the wind to. Way in. Way out.
Our Saviour: beardframed oval face: talking in the dusk. Mary, Martha.
Steered by an umbrella sword to the footlights: Mario the tenor.
—Or like Mario, Mr Bloom said.

—Yes, Red Murray agreed. But Mario was said to be the picture of Our
Saviour.
Jesusmario with rougy cheeks, doublet and spindle legs. Hand on his
heart. In Martha.
Co-ome thou lost one,
Co-ome thou dear one!

THE CROZIER AND THE PEN

—His grace phoned down twice this morning, Red Murray said gravely.
They watched the knees, legs, boots vanish. Neck.
A telegram boy stepped in nimbly, threw an envelope on the counter and
stepped off posthaste with a word:
—Freeman!
Mr Bloom said slowly:
—Well, he is one of our saviours also.
A meek smile accompanied him as he lifted the counterflap, as he passed
in through a sidedoor and along the warm dark stairs and passage, along the
now reverberating boards. But will he save the circulation? Thumping.
Thumping.
He pushed in the glass swingdoor and entered, stepping over strewn
packing paper. Through a lane of clanking drums he made his way towards
Nannetti’s reading closet.

WITH UNFEIGNED REGRET IT IS WE ANNOUNCE THE
DISSOLUTION OF A MOST RESPECTED DUBLIN
BURGESS

Hynes here too: account of the funeral probably. Thumping. Thump. This
morning the remains of the late Mr Patrick Dignam. Machines. Smash a
man to atoms if they got him caught. Rule the world today. His machineries
are pegging away too. Like these, got out of hand: fermenting. Working
away, tearing away. And that old grey rat tearing to get in.

HOW A GREAT DAILY ORGAN IS TURNED OUT

Mr Bloom halted behind the foreman’s spare body, admiring a glossy
crown.
Strange he never saw his real country. Ireland my country. Member for
College green. He boomed that workaday worker tack for all it was worth.
It’s the ads and side features sell a weekly, not the stale news in the official
gazette. Queen Anne is dead. Published by authority in the year one
thousand and. Demesne situate in the townland of Rosenallis, barony of
Tinnahinch. To all whom it may concern schedule pursuant to statute
showing return of number of mules and jennets exported from Ballina.
Nature notes. Cartoons. Phil Blake’s weekly Pat and Bull story. Uncle
Toby’s page for tiny tots. Country bumpkin’s queries. Dear Mr Editor, what
is a good cure for flatulence? I’d like that part. Learn a lot teaching others.
The personal note. M. A. P. Mainly all pictures. Shapely bathers on golden
strand. World’s biggest balloon. Double marriage of sisters celebrated. Two
bridegrooms laughing heartily at each other. Cuprani too, printer. More Irish
than the Irish.
The machines clanked in threefour time. Thump, thump, thump. Now if
he got paralysed there and no-one knew how to stop them they’d clank on
and on the same, print it over and over and up and back. Monkeydoodle the
whole thing. Want a cool head.
—Well, get it into the evening edition, councillor, Hynes said.
Soon be calling him my lord mayor. Long John is backing him, they say.
The foreman, without answering, scribbled press on a corner of the sheet
and made a sign to a typesetter. He handed the sheet silently over the dirty
glass screen.
—Right: thanks, Hynes said moving off.
Mr Bloom stood in his way.
—If you want to draw the cashier is just going to lunch, he said, pointing
backward with his thumb.
—Did you? Hynes asked.
—Mm, Mr Bloom said. Look sharp and you’ll catch him.
—Thanks, old man, Hynes said. I’ll tap him too.

He hurried on eagerly towards the Freeman’s Journal.
Three bob I lent him in Meagher’s. Three weeks. Third hint.

WE SEE THE CANVASSER AT WORK

Mr Bloom laid his cutting on Mr Nannetti’s desk.
—Excuse me, councillor, he said. This ad, you see. Keyes, you
remember?
Mr Nannetti considered the cutting awhile and nodded.
—He wants it in for July, Mr Bloom said.
The foreman moved his pencil towards it.
—But wait, Mr Bloom said. He wants it changed. Keyes, you see. He
wants two keys at the top.
Hell of a racket they make. He doesn’t hear it. Nannan. Iron nerves.
Maybe he understands what I.
The foreman turned round to hear patiently and, lifting an elbow, began
to scratch slowly in the armpit of his alpaca jacket.
—Like that, Mr Bloom said, crossing his forefingers at the top.
Let him take that in first.
Mr Bloom, glancing sideways up from the cross he had made, saw the
foreman’s sallow face, think he has a touch of jaundice, and beyond the
obedient reels feeding in huge webs of paper. Clank it. Clank it. Miles of it
unreeled. What becomes of it after? O, wrap up meat, parcels: various uses,
thousand and one things.
Slipping his words deftly into the pauses of the clanking he drew swiftly
on the scarred woodwork.

HOUSE OF KEY(E)S

—Like that, see. Two crossed keys here. A circle. Then here the name.
Alexander Keyes, tea, wine and spirit merchant. So on.
Better not teach him his own business.

—You know yourself, councillor, just what he wants. Then round the top
in leaded: the house of keys. You see? Do you think that’s a good idea?
The foreman moved his scratching hand to his lower ribs and scratched
there quietly.
—The idea, Mr Bloom said, is the house of keys. You know, councillor,
the Manx parliament. Innuendo of home rule. Tourists, you know, from the
isle of Man. Catches the eye, you see. Can you do that?
I could ask him perhaps about how to pronounce that voglio. But then if
he didn’t know only make it awkward for him. Better not.
—We can do that, the foreman said. Have you the design?
—I can get it, Mr Bloom said. It was in a Kilkenny paper. He has a house
there too. I’ll just run out and ask him. Well, you can do that and just a little
par calling attention. You know the usual. Highclass licensed premises.
Longfelt want. So on.
The foreman thought for an instant.
—We can do that, he said. Let him give us a three months’ renewal.
A typesetter brought him a limp galleypage. He began to check it silently.
Mr Bloom stood by, hearing the loud throbs of cranks, watching the silent
typesetters at their cases.

ORTHOGRAPHICAL

Want to be sure of his spelling. Proof fever. Martin Cunningham forgot to
give us his spellingbee conundrum this morning. It is amusing to view the
unpar one ar alleled embarra two ars is it? double ess ment of a harassed
pedlar while gauging au the symmetry with a y of a peeled pear under a
cemetery wall. Silly, isn’t it? Cemetery put in of course on account of the
symmetry.
I should have said when he clapped on his topper. Thank you. I ought to
have said something about an old hat or something. No. I could have said.
Looks as good as new now. See his phiz then.
Sllt. The nethermost deck of the first machine jogged forward its flyboard
with sllt the first batch of quirefolded papers. Sllt. Almost human the way it

sllt to call attention. Doing its level best to speak. That door too sllt
creaking, asking to be shut. Everything speaks in its own way. Sllt.

NOTED CHURCHMAN AN OCCASIONAL CONTRIBUTOR

The foreman handed back the galleypage suddenly, saying:
—Wait. Where’s the archbishop’s letter? It’s to be repeated in the
Telegraph. Where’s what’s his name?
He looked about him round his loud unanswering machines.
—Monks, sir? a voice asked from the castingbox.
—Ay. Where’s Monks?
—Monks!
Mr Bloom took up his cutting. Time to get out.
—Then I’ll get the design, Mr Nannetti, he said, and you’ll give it a good
place I know.
—Monks!
—Yes, sir.
Three months’ renewal. Want to get some wind off my chest first. Try it
anyhow. Rub in August: good idea: horseshow month. Ballsbridge. Tourists
over for the show.

A DAYFATHER

He walked on through the caseroom passing an old man, bowed,
spectacled, aproned. Old Monks, the dayfather. Queer lot of stuff he must
have put through his hands in his time: obituary notices, pubs’ ads,
speeches, divorce suits, found drowned. Nearing the end of his tether now.
Sober serious man with a bit in the savingsbank I’d say. Wife a good cook
and washer. Daughter working the machine in the parlour. Plain Jane, no
damn nonsense.

AND IT WAS THE FEAST OF THE PASSOVER

He stayed in his walk to watch a typesetter neatly distributing type.
Reads it backwards first. Quickly he does it. Must require some practice
that. mangiD kcirtaP. Poor papa with his hagadah book, reading backwards
with his finger to me. Pessach. Next year in Jerusalem. Dear, O dear! All
that long business about that brought us out of the land of Egypt and into
the house of bondage alleluia. Shema Israel Adonai Elohenu. No, that’s the
other. Then the twelve brothers, Jacob’s sons. And then the lamb and the cat
and the dog and the stick and the water and the butcher. And then the angel
of death kills the butcher and he kills the ox and the dog kills the cat.
Sounds a bit silly till you come to look into it well. Justice it means but it’s
everybody eating everyone else. That’s what life is after all. How quickly he
does that job. Practice makes perfect. Seems to see with his fingers.
Mr Bloom passed on out of the clanking noises through the gallery on to
the landing. Now am I going to tram it out all the way and then catch him
out perhaps. Better phone him up first. Number? Yes. Same as Citron’s
house. Twentyeight. Twentyeight double four.

ONLY ONCE MORE THAT SOAP

He went down the house staircase. Who the deuce scrawled all over those
walls with matches? Looks as if they did it for a bet. Heavy greasy smell
there always is in those works. Lukewarm glue in Thom’s next door when I
was there.
He took out his handkerchief to dab his nose. Citronlemon? Ah, the soap
I put there. Lose it out of that pocket. Putting back his handkerchief he took
out the soap and stowed it away, buttoned, into the hip pocket of his
trousers.
What perfume does your wife use? I could go home still: tram:
something I forgot. Just to see: before: dressing. No. Here. No.
A sudden screech of laughter came from the Evening Telegraph office.
Know who that is. What’s up? Pop in a minute to phone. Ned Lambert it is.
He entered softly.

ERIN, GREEN GEM OF THE SILVER SEA

—The ghost walks, professor MacHugh murmured softly, biscuitfully to
the dusty windowpane.
Mr Dedalus, staring from the empty fireplace at Ned Lambert’s quizzing
face, asked of it sourly:
—Agonising Christ, wouldn’t it give you a heartburn on your arse?
Ned Lambert, seated on the table, read on:
—Or again, note the meanderings of some purling rill as it babbles on its
way, tho’ quarrelling with the stony obstacles, to the tumbling waters of
Neptune’s blue domain, ’mid mossy banks, fanned by gentlest zephyrs,
played on by the glorious sunlight or ’neath the shadows cast o’er its
pensive bosom by the overarching leafage of the giants of the forest. What
about that, Simon? he asked over the fringe of his newspaper. How’s that
for high?
—Changing his drink, Mr Dedalus said.
Ned Lambert, laughing, struck the newspaper on his knees, repeating:
—The pensive bosom and the overarsing leafage. O boys! O boys!
—And Xenophon looked upon Marathon, Mr Dedalus said, looking
again on the fireplace and to the window, and Marathon looked on the sea.
—That will do, professor MacHugh cried from the window. I don’t want
to hear any more of the stuff.
He ate off the crescent of water biscuit he had been nibbling and,
hungered, made ready to nibble the biscuit in his other hand.
High falutin stuff. Bladderbags. Ned Lambert is taking a day off I see.
Rather upsets a man’s day, a funeral does. He has influence they say. Old
Chatterton, the vicechancellor, is his granduncle or his greatgranduncle.
Close on ninety they say. Subleader for his death written this long time
perhaps. Living to spite them. Might go first himself. Johnny, make room
for your uncle. The right honourable Hedges Eyre Chatterton. Daresay he
writes him an odd shaky cheque or two on gale days. Windfall when he
kicks out. Alleluia.
—Just another spasm, Ned Lambert said.
—What is it? Mr Bloom asked.
—A recently discovered fragment of Cicero, professor MacHugh
answered with pomp of tone. Our lovely land.

SHORT BUT TO THE POINT

—Whose land? Mr Bloom said simply.
—Most pertinent question, the professor said between his chews. With an
accent on the whose.
—Dan Dawson’s land Mr Dedalus said.
—Is it his speech last night? Mr Bloom asked.
Ned Lambert nodded.
—But listen to this, he said.
The doorknob hit Mr Bloom in the small of the back as the door was
pushed in.
—Excuse me, J. J. O’Molloy said, entering.
Mr Bloom moved nimbly aside.
—I beg yours, he said.
—Good day, Jack.
—Come in. Come in.
—Good day.
—How are you, Dedalus?
—Well. And yourself?
J. J. O’Molloy shook his head.

SAD

Cleverest fellow at the junior bar he used to be. Decline, poor chap. That
hectic flush spells finis for a man. Touch and go with him. What’s in the
wind, I wonder. Money worry.
—Or again if we but climb the serried mountain peaks.
—You’re looking extra.
—Is the editor to be seen? J. J. O’Molloy asked, looking towards the
inner door.
—Very much so, professor MacHugh said. To be seen and heard. He’s in
his sanctum with Lenehan.

J. J. O’Molloy strolled to the sloping desk and began to turn back the
pink pages of the file.
Practice dwindling. A mighthavebeen. Losing heart. Gambling. Debts of
honour. Reaping the whirlwind. Used to get good retainers from D. and T.
Fitzgerald. Their wigs to show the grey matter. Brains on their sleeve like
the statue in Glasnevin. Believe he does some literary work for the Express
with Gabriel Conroy. Wellread fellow. Myles Crawford began on the
Independent. Funny the way those newspaper men veer about when they
get wind of a new opening. Weathercocks. Hot and cold in the same breath.
Wouldn’t know which to believe. One story good till you hear the next. Go
for one another baldheaded in the papers and then all blows over. Hail
fellow well met the next moment.
—Ah, listen to this for God’ sake, Ned Lambert pleaded. Or again if we
but climb the serried mountain peaks...
—Bombast! the professor broke in testily. Enough of the inflated
windbag!
—Peaks, Ned Lambert went on, towering high on high, to bathe our
souls, as it were...
—Bathe his lips, Mr Dedalus said. Blessed and eternal God! Yes? Is he
taking anything for it?
—As ’twere, in the peerless panorama of Ireland’s portfolio, unmatched,
despite their wellpraised prototypes in other vaunted prize regions, for very
beauty, of bosky grove and undulating plain and luscious pastureland of
vernal green, steeped in the transcendent translucent glow of our mild
mysterious Irish twilight...

HIS NATIVE DORIC

—The moon, professor MacHugh said. He forgot Hamlet.
—That mantles the vista far and wide and wait till the glowing orb of the
moon shine forth to irradiate her silver effulgence...
—O! Mr Dedalus cried, giving vent to a hopeless groan. Shite and
onions! That’ll do, Ned. Life is too short.
He took off his silk hat and, blowing out impatiently his bushy
moustache, welshcombed his hair with raking fingers.

Ned Lambert tossed the newspaper aside, chuckling with delight. An
instant after a hoarse bark of laughter burst over professor MacHugh’s
unshaven blackspectacled face.
—Doughy Daw! he cried.

WHAT WETHERUP SAID

All very fine to jeer at it now in cold print but it goes down like hot cake
that stuff. He was in the bakery line too, wasn’t he? Why they call him
Doughy Daw. Feathered his nest well anyhow. Daughter engaged to that
chap in the inland revenue office with the motor. Hooked that nicely.
Entertainments. Open house. Big blowout. Wetherup always said that. Get a
grip of them by the stomach.
The inner door was opened violently and a scarlet beaked face, crested by
a comb of feathery hair, thrust itself in. The bold blue eyes stared about
them and the harsh voice asked:
—What is it?
—And here comes the sham squire himself! professor MacHugh said
grandly.
—Getonouthat, you bloody old pedagogue! the editor said in recognition.
—Come, Ned, Mr Dedalus said, putting on his hat. I must get a drink
after that.
—Drink! the editor cried. No drinks served before mass.
—Quite right too, Mr Dedalus said, going out. Come on, Ned.
Ned Lambert sidled down from the table. The editor’s blue eyes roved
towards Mr Bloom’s face, shadowed by a smile.
—Will you join us, Myles? Ned Lambert asked.

MEMORABLE BATTLES RECALLED

—North Cork militia! the editor cried, striding to the mantelpiece. We
won every time! North Cork and Spanish officers!
—Where was that, Myles? Ned Lambert asked with a reflective glance at
his toecaps.

—In Ohio! the editor shouted.
—So it was, begad, Ned Lambert agreed.
Passing out he whispered to J. J. O’Molloy:
—Incipient jigs. Sad case.
—Ohio! the editor crowed in high treble from his uplifted scarlet face.
My Ohio!
—A perfect cretic! the professor said. Long, short and long.

O, HARP EOLIAN!

He took a reel of dental floss from his waistcoat pocket and, breaking off
a piece, twanged it smartly between two and two of his resonant unwashed
teeth.
—Bingbang, bangbang.
Mr Bloom, seeing the coast clear, made for the inner door.
—Just a moment, Mr Crawford, he said. I just want to phone about an ad.
He went in.
—What about that leader this evening? professor MacHugh asked,
coming to the editor and laying a firm hand on his shoulder.
—That’ll be all right, Myles Crawford said more calmly. Never you fret.
Hello, Jack. That’s all right.
—Good day, Myles, J. J. O’Molloy said, letting the pages he held slip
limply back on the file. Is that Canada swindle case on today?
The telephone whirred inside.
—Twentyeight... No, twenty... Double four... Yes.

SPOT THE WINNER

Lenehan came out of the inner office with Sport’s tissues.
—Who wants a dead cert for the Gold cup? he asked. Sceptre with O.
Madden up.
He tossed the tissues on to the table.

Screams of newsboys barefoot in the hall rushed near and the door was
flung open.
—Hush, Lenehan said. I hear feetstoops.
Professor MacHugh strode across the room and seized the cringing
urchin by the collar as the others scampered out of the hall and down the
steps. The tissues rustled up in the draught, floated softly in the air blue
scrawls and under the table came to earth.
—It wasn’t me, sir. It was the big fellow shoved me, sir.
—Throw him out and shut the door, the editor said. There’s a hurricane
blowing.
Lenehan began to paw the tissues up from the floor, grunting as he
stooped twice.
—Waiting for the racing special, sir, the newsboy said. It was Pat Farrell
shoved me, sir.
He pointed to two faces peering in round the doorframe.
—Him, sir.
—Out of this with you, professor MacHugh said gruffly.
He hustled the boy out and banged the door to.
J. J. O’Molloy turned the files crackingly over, murmuring, seeking:
—Continued on page six, column four.
—Yes, Evening Telegraph here, Mr Bloom phoned from the inner office.
Is the boss...? Yes, Telegraph... To where? Aha! Which auction rooms?...
Aha! I see... Right. I’ll catch him.

A COLLISION ENSUES

The bell whirred again as he rang off. He came in quickly and bumped
against Lenehan who was struggling up with the second tissue.
—Pardon, monsieur, Lenehan said, clutching him for an instant and
making a grimace.
—My fault, Mr Bloom said, suffering his grip. Are you hurt? I’m in a
hurry.
—Knee, Lenehan said.

He made a comic face and whined, rubbing his knee:
—The accumulation of the anno Domini.
—Sorry, Mr Bloom said.
He went to the door and, holding it ajar, paused. J. J. O’Molloy slapped
the heavy pages over. The noise of two shrill voices, a mouthorgan, echoed
in the bare hallway from the newsboys squatted on the doorsteps:
We are the boys of Wexford
Who fought with heart and hand.

EXIT BLOOM

—I’m just running round to Bachelor’s walk, Mr Bloom said, about this
ad of Keyes’s. Want to fix it up. They tell me he’s round there in Dillon’s.
He looked indecisively for a moment at their faces. The editor who,
leaning against the mantelshelf, had propped his head on his hand, suddenly
stretched forth an arm amply.
—Begone! he said. The world is before you.
—Back in no time, Mr Bloom said, hurrying out.
J. J. O’Molloy took the tissues from Lenehan’s hand and read them,
blowing them apart gently, without comment.
—He’ll get that advertisement, the professor said, staring through his
blackrimmed spectacles over the crossblind. Look at the young scamps after
him.
—Show. Where? Lenehan cried, running to the window.

A STREET CORTÈGE

Both smiled over the crossblind at the file of capering newsboys in Mr
Bloom’s wake, the last zigzagging white on the breeze a mocking kite, a tail
of white bowknots.
—Look at the young guttersnipe behind him hue and cry, Lenehan said,
and you’ll kick. O, my rib risible! Taking off his flat spaugs and the walk.
Small nines. Steal upon larks.

He began to mazurka in swift caricature across the floor on sliding feet
past the fireplace to J. J. O’Molloy who placed the tissues in his receiving
hands.
—What’s that? Myles Crawford said with a start. Where are the other
two gone?
—Who? the professor said, turning. They’re gone round to the Oval for a
drink. Paddy Hooper is there with Jack Hall. Came over last night.
—Come on then, Myles Crawford said. Where’s my hat?
He walked jerkily into the office behind, parting the vent of his jacket,
jingling his keys in his back pocket. They jingled then in the air and against
the wood as he locked his desk drawer.
—He’s pretty well on, professor MacHugh said in a low voice.
—Seems to be, J. J. O’Molloy said, taking out a cigarettecase in
murmuring meditation, but it is not always as it seems. Who has the most
matches?

THE CALUMET OF PEACE

He offered a cigarette to the professor and took one himself. Lenehan
promptly struck a match for them and lit their cigarettes in turn. J. J.
O’Molloy opened his case again and offered it.
—Thanky vous, Lenehan said, helping himself.
The editor came from the inner office, a straw hat awry on his brow. He
declaimed in song, pointing sternly at professor MacHugh:
’Twas rank and fame that tempted thee,
’Twas empire charmed thy heart.

The professor grinned, locking his long lips.
—Eh? You bloody old Roman empire? Myles Crawford said.
He took a cigarette from the open case. Lenehan, lighting it for him with
quick grace, said:
—Silence for my brandnew riddle!
—Imperium romanum, J. J. O’Molloy said gently. It sounds nobler than
British or Brixton. The word reminds one somehow of fat in the fire.

Myles Crawford blew his first puff violently towards the ceiling.
—That’s it, he said. We are the fat. You and I are the fat in the fire. We
haven’t got the chance of a snowball in hell.

THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME

—Wait a moment, professor MacHugh said, raising two quiet claws. We
mustn’t be led away by words, by sounds of words. We think of Rome,
imperial, imperious, imperative.
He extended elocutionary arms from frayed stained shirtcuffs, pausing:
—What was their civilisation? Vast, I allow: but vile. Cloacae: sewers.
The Jews in the wilderness and on the mountaintop said: It is meet to be
here. Let us build an altar to Jehovah. The Roman, like the Englishman
who follows in his footsteps, brought to every new shore on which he set
his foot (on our shore he never set it) only his cloacal obsession. He gazed
about him in his toga and he said: It is meet to be here. Let us construct a
watercloset.
—Which they accordingly did do, Lenehan said. Our old ancient
ancestors, as we read in the first chapter of Guinness’s, were partial to the
running stream.
—They were nature’s gentlemen, J. J. O’Molloy murmured. But we have
also Roman law.
—And Pontius Pilate is its prophet, professor MacHugh responded.
—Do you know that story about chief baron Palles? J. J. O’Molloy
asked. It was at the royal university dinner. Everything was going
swimmingly ...
—First my riddle, Lenehan said. Are you ready?
Mr O’Madden Burke, tall in copious grey of Donegal tweed, came in
from the hallway. Stephen Dedalus, behind him, uncovered as he entered.
—Entrez, mes enfants! Lenehan cried.
—I escort a suppliant, Mr O’Madden Burke said melodiously. Youth led
by Experience visits Notoriety.
—How do you do? the editor said, holding out a hand. Come in. Your
governor is just gone.

???

Lenehan said to all:
—Silence! What opera resembles a railwayline? Reflect, ponder,
excogitate, reply.
Stephen handed over the typed sheets, pointing to the title and signature.
—Who? the editor asked.
Bit torn off.
—Mr Garrett Deasy, Stephen said.
—That old pelters, the editor said. Who tore it? Was he short taken?
On swift sail flaming
From storm and south
He comes, pale vampire,
Mouth to my mouth.

—Good day, Stephen, the professor said, coming to peer over their
shoulders. Foot and mouth? Are you turned...?
Bullockbefriending bard.

SHINDY IN WELLKNOWN RESTAURANT

—Good day, sir, Stephen answered blushing. The letter is not mine. Mr
Garrett Deasy asked me to...
—O, I know him, Myles Crawford said, and I knew his wife too. The
bloodiest old tartar God ever made. By Jesus, she had the foot and mouth
disease and no mistake! The night she threw the soup in the waiter’s face in
the Star and Garter. Oho!
A woman brought sin into the world. For Helen, the runaway wife of
Menelaus, ten years the Greeks. O’Rourke, prince of Breffni.
—Is he a widower? Stephen asked.
—Ay, a grass one, Myles Crawford said, his eye running down the
typescript. Emperor’s horses. Habsburg. An Irishman saved his life on the
ramparts of Vienna. Don’t you forget! Maximilian Karl O’Donnell, graf von
Tirconnell in Ireland. Sent his heir over to make the king an Austrian

fieldmarshal now. Going to be trouble there one day. Wild geese. O yes,
every time. Don’t you forget that!
—The moot point is did he forget it, J. J. O’Molloy said quietly, turning a
horseshoe paperweight. Saving princes is a thank you job.
Professor MacHugh turned on him.
—And if not? he said.
—I’ll tell you how it was, Myles Crawford began. A Hungarian it was
one day...

LOST CAUSES NOBLE MARQUESS MENTIONED

—We were always loyal to lost causes, the professor said. Success for us
is the death of the intellect and of the imagination. We were never loyal to
the successful. We serve them. I teach the blatant Latin language. I speak
the tongue of a race the acme of whose mentality is the maxim: time is
money. Material domination. Dominus! Lord! Where is the spirituality?
Lord Jesus? Lord Salisbury? A sofa in a westend club. But the Greek!

KYRIE ELEISON!

A smile of light brightened his darkrimmed eyes, lengthened his long
lips.
—The Greek! he said again. Kyrios! Shining word! The vowels the
Semite and the Saxon know not. Kyrie! The radiance of the intellect. I
ought to profess Greek, the language of the mind. Kyrie eleison! The
closetmaker and the cloacamaker will never be lords of our spirit. We are
liege subjects of the catholic chivalry of Europe that foundered at Trafalgar
and of the empire of the spirit, not an imperium, that went under with the
Athenian fleets at Aegospotami. Yes, yes. They went under. Pyrrhus, misled
by an oracle, made a last attempt to retrieve the fortunes of Greece. Loyal to
a lost cause.
He strode away from them towards the window.
—They went forth to battle, Mr O’Madden Burke said greyly, but they
always fell.

—Boohoo! Lenehan wept with a little noise. Owing to a brick received in
the latter half of the matinée. Poor, poor, poor Pyrrhus!
He whispered then near Stephen’s ear:

LENEHAN’S LIMERICK

—There’s a ponderous pundit MacHugh
Who wears goggles of ebony hue.
As he mostly sees double
To wear them why trouble?
I can’t see the Joe Miller. Can you?

In mourning for Sallust, Mulligan says. Whose mother is beastly dead.
Myles Crawford crammed the sheets into a sidepocket.
—That’ll be all right, he said. I’ll read the rest after. That’ll be all right.
Lenehan extended his hands in protest.
—But my riddle! he said. What opera is like a railwayline?
—Opera? Mr O’Madden Burke’s sphinx face reriddled.
Lenehan announced gladly:
—The Rose of Castile. See the wheeze? Rows of cast steel. Gee!
He poked Mr O’Madden Burke mildly in the spleen. Mr O’Madden
Burke fell back with grace on his umbrella, feigning a gasp.
—Help! he sighed. I feel a strong weakness.
Lenehan, rising to tiptoe, fanned his face rapidly with the rustling tissues.
The professor, returning by way of the files, swept his hand across
Stephen’s and Mr O’Madden Burke’s loose ties.
—Paris, past and present, he said. You look like communards.
—Like fellows who had blown up the Bastile, J. J. O’Molloy said in
quiet mockery. Or was it you shot the lord lieutenant of Finland between
you? You look as though you had done the deed. General Bobrikoff.

OMNIUM GATHERUM

—We were only thinking about it, Stephen said.
—All the talents, Myles Crawford said. Law, the classics...
—The turf, Lenehan put in.
—Literature, the press.
—If Bloom were here, the professor said. The gentle art of
advertisement.
—And Madam Bloom, Mr O’Madden Burke added. The vocal muse.
Dublin’s prime favourite.
Lenehan gave a loud cough.
—Ahem! he said very softly. O, for a fresh of breath air! I caught a cold
in the park. The gate was open.

“YOU CAN DO IT!”

The editor laid a nervous hand on Stephen’s shoulder.
—I want you to write something for me, he said. Something with a bite
in it. You can do it. I see it in your face. In the lexicon of youth...
See it in your face. See it in your eye. Lazy idle little schemer.
—Foot and mouth disease! the editor cried in scornful invective. Great
nationalist meeting in Borris-in-Ossory. All balls! Bulldosing the public!
Give them something with a bite in it. Put us all into it, damn its soul.
Father, Son and Holy Ghost and Jakes M’Carthy.
—We can all supply mental pabulum, Mr O’Madden Burke said.
Stephen raised his eyes to the bold unheeding stare.
—He wants you for the pressgang, J. J. O’Molloy said.

THE GREAT GALLAHER

—You can do it, Myles Crawford repeated, clenching his hand in
emphasis. Wait a minute. We’ll paralyse Europe as Ignatius Gallaher used
to say when he was on the shaughraun, doing billiardmarking in the
Clarence. Gallaher, that was a pressman for you. That was a pen. You know
how he made his mark? I’ll tell you. That was the smartest piece of

journalism ever known. That was in eightyone, sixth of May, time of the
invincibles, murder in the Phoenix park, before you were born, I suppose.
I’ll show you.
He pushed past them to the files.
—Look at here, he said turning. The New York World cabled for a special.
Remember that time?
Professor MacHugh nodded.
—New York World, the editor said, excitedly pushing back his straw hat.
Where it took place. Tim Kelly, or Kavanagh I mean. Joe Brady and the rest
of them. Where Skin-the-Goat drove the car. Whole route, see?
—Skin-the-Goat, Mr O’Madden Burke said. Fitzharris. He has that
cabman’s shelter, they say, down there at Butt bridge. Holohan told me. You
know Holohan?
—Hop and carry one, is it? Myles Crawford said.
—And poor Gumley is down there too, so he told me, minding stones for
the corporation. A night watchman.
Stephen turned in surprise.
—Gumley? he said. You don’t say so? A friend of my father’s, is it?
—Never mind Gumley, Myles Crawford cried angrily. Let Gumley mind
the stones, see they don’t run away. Look at here. What did Ignatius
Gallaher do? I’ll tell you. Inspiration of genius. Cabled right away. Have
you Weekly Freeman of 17 March? Right. Have you got that?
He flung back pages of the files and stuck his finger on a point.
—Take page four, advertisement for Bransome’s coffee, let us say. Have
you got that? Right.
The telephone whirred.

A DISTANT VOICE

—I’ll answer it, the professor said, going.
—B is parkgate. Good.
His finger leaped and struck point after point, vibrating.

—T is viceregal lodge. C is where murder took place. K is Knockmaroon
gate.
The loose flesh of his neck shook like a cock’s wattles. An illstarched
dicky jutted up and with a rude gesture he thrust it back into his waistcoat.
—Hello? Evening Telegraph here... Hello?... Who’s there?... Yes... Yes...
Yes.
—F to P is the route Skin-the-Goat drove the car for an alibi, Inchicore,
Roundtown, Windy Arbour, Palmerston Park, Ranelagh. F.A.B.P. Got that?
X is Davy’s publichouse in upper Leeson street.
The professor came to the inner door.
—Bloom is at the telephone, he said.
—Tell him go to hell, the editor said promptly. X is Davy’s publichouse,
see?

CLEVER, VERY

—Clever, Lenehan said. Very.
—Gave it to them on a hot plate, Myles Crawford said, the whole bloody
history.
Nightmare from which you will never awake.
—I saw it, the editor said proudly. I was present. Dick Adams, the
besthearted bloody Corkman the Lord ever put the breath of life in, and
myself.
Lenehan bowed to a shape of air, announcing:
—Madam, I’m Adam. And Able was I ere I saw Elba.
—History! Myles Crawford cried. The Old Woman of Prince’s street was
there first. There was weeping and gnashing of teeth over that. Out of an
advertisement. Gregor Grey made the design for it. That gave him the leg
up. Then Paddy Hooper worked Tay Pay who took him on to the Star. Now
he’s got in with Blumenfeld. That’s press. That’s talent. Pyatt! He was all
their daddies!
—The father of scare journalism, Lenehan confirmed, and the brother-in-
law of Chris Callinan.
—Hello?... Are you there?... Yes, he’s here still. Come across yourself.

—Where do you find a pressman like that now, eh? the editor cried.
He flung the pages down.
—Clamn dever, Lenehan said to Mr O’Madden Burke.
—Very smart, Mr O’Madden Burke said.
Professor MacHugh came from the inner office.
—Talking about the invincibles, he said, did you see that some hawkers
were up before the recorder...
—O yes, J. J. O’Molloy said eagerly. Lady Dudley was walking home
through the park to see all the trees that were blown down by that cyclone
last year and thought she’d buy a view of Dublin. And it turned out to be a
commemoration postcard of Joe Brady or Number One or Skin-the-Goat.
Right outside the viceregal lodge, imagine!
—They’re only in the hook and eye department, Myles Crawford said.
Psha! Press and the bar! Where have you a man now at the bar like those
fellows, like Whiteside, like Isaac Butt, like silvertongued O’Hagan. Eh?
Ah, bloody nonsense. Psha! Only in the halfpenny place.
His mouth continued to twitch unspeaking in nervous curls of disdain.
Would anyone wish that mouth for her kiss? How do you know? Why did
you write it then?

RHYMES AND REASONS

Mouth, south. Is the mouth south someway? Or the south a mouth? Must
be some. South, pout, out, shout, drouth. Rhymes: two men dressed the
same, looking the same, two by two.
........................ la tua pace
.................. che parlar ti piace
Mentre che il vento, come fa, si tace.

He saw them three by three, approaching girls, in green, in rose, in russet,
entwining, per l’aer perso, in mauve, in purple, quella pacifica oriafiamma,
gold of oriflamme, di rimirar fè più ardenti. But I old men, penitent,
leadenfooted, underdarkneath the night: mouth south: tomb womb.
—Speak up for yourself, Mr O’Madden Burke said.

SUFFICIENT FOR THE DAY...

J. J. O’Molloy, smiling palely, took up the gage.
—My dear Myles, he said, flinging his cigarette aside, you put a false
construction on my words. I hold no brief, as at present advised, for the
third profession qua profession but your Cork legs are running away with
you. Why not bring in Henry Grattan and Flood and Demosthenes and
Edmund Burke? Ignatius Gallaher we all know and his Chapelizod boss,
Harmsworth of the farthing press, and his American cousin of the Bowery
guttersheet not to mention Paddy Kelly’s Budget, Pue’s Occurrences and
our watchful friend The Skibbereen Eagle. Why bring in a master of
forensic eloquence like Whiteside? Sufficient for the day is the newspaper
thereof.

LINKS WITH BYGONE DAYS OF YORE

—Grattan and Flood wrote for this very paper, the editor cried in his face.
Irish volunteers. Where are you now? Established 1763. Dr Lucas. Who
have you now like John Philpot Curran? Psha!
—Well, J. J. O’Molloy said, Bushe K.C., for example.
—Bushe? the editor said. Well, yes: Bushe, yes. He has a strain of it in
his blood. Kendal Bushe or I mean Seymour Bushe.
—He would have been on the bench long ago, the professor said, only for
.... But no matter.
J. J. O’Molloy turned to Stephen and said quietly and slowly:
—One of the most polished periods I think I ever listened to in my life
fell from the lips of Seymour Bushe. It was in that case of fratricide, the
Childs murder case. Bushe defended him.
And in the porches of mine ear did pour.

By the way how did he find that out? He died in his sleep. Or the other
story, beast with two backs?
—What was that? the professor asked.

ITALIA, MAGISTRA ARTIUM

—He spoke on the law of evidence, J. J. O’Molloy said, of Roman justice
as contrasted with the earlier Mosaic code, the lex talionis. And he cited the
Moses of Michelangelo in the vatican.
—Ha.
—A few wellchosen words, Lenehan prefaced. Silence!
Pause. J. J. O’Molloy took out his cigarettecase.
False lull. Something quite ordinary.
Messenger took out his matchbox thoughtfully and lit his cigar.
I have often thought since on looking back over that strange time that it
was that small act, trivial in itself, that striking of that match, that
determined the whole aftercourse of both our lives.

A POLISHED PERIOD

J. J. O’Molloy resumed, moulding his words:
—He said of it: that stony effigy in frozen music, horned and terrible, of
the human form divine, that eternal symbol of wisdom and of prophecy
which, if aught that the imagination or the hand of sculptor has wrought in
marble of soultransfigured and of soultransfiguring deserves to live,
deserves to live.
His slim hand with a wave graced echo and fall.
—Fine! Myles Crawford said at once.
—The divine afflatus, Mr O’Madden Burke said.
—You like it? J. J. O’Molloy asked Stephen.
Stephen, his blood wooed by grace of language and gesture, blushed. He
took a cigarette from the case. J. J. O’Molloy offered his case to Myles
Crawford. Lenehan lit their cigarettes as before and took his trophy, saying:
—Muchibus thankibus.

A MAN OF HIGH MORALE

—Professor Magennis was speaking to me about you, J. J. O’Molloy said
to Stephen. What do you think really of that hermetic crowd, the opal hush
poets: A. E. the mastermystic? That Blavatsky woman started it. She was a
nice old bag of tricks. A. E. has been telling some yankee interviewer that
you came to him in the small hours of the morning to ask him about planes
of consciousness. Magennis thinks you must have been pulling A. E.’s leg.
He is a man of the very highest morale, Magennis.
Speaking about me. What did he say? What did he say? What did he say
about me? Don’t ask.
—No, thanks, professor MacHugh said, waving the cigarettecase aside.
Wait a moment. Let me say one thing. The finest display of oratory I ever
heard was a speech made by John F Taylor at the college historical society.
Mr Justice Fitzgibbon, the present lord justice of appeal, had spoken and the
paper under debate was an essay (new for those days), advocating the
revival of the Irish tongue.
He turned towards Myles Crawford and said:
—You know Gerald Fitzgibbon. Then you can imagine the style of his
discourse.
—He is sitting with Tim Healy, J. J. O’Molloy said, rumour has it, on the
Trinity college estates commission.
—He is sitting with a sweet thing, Myles Crawford said, in a child’s
frock. Go on. Well?
—It was the speech, mark you, the professor said, of a finished orator,
full of courteous haughtiness and pouring in chastened diction I will not say
the vials of his wrath but pouring the proud man’s contumely upon the new
movement. It was then a new movement. We were weak, therefore
worthless.
He closed his long thin lips an instant but, eager to be on, raised an
outspanned hand to his spectacles and, with trembling thumb and ringfinger
touching lightly the black rims, steadied them to a new focus.

IMPROMPTU

In ferial tone he addressed J. J. O’Molloy:

—Taylor had come there, you must know, from a sickbed. That he had
prepared his speech I do not believe for there was not even one
shorthandwriter in the hall. His dark lean face had a growth of shaggy beard
round it. He wore a loose white silk neckcloth and altogether he looked
(though he was not) a dying man.
His gaze turned at once but slowly from J. J. O’Molloy’s towards
Stephen’s face and then bent at once to the ground, seeking. His unglazed
linen collar appeared behind his bent head, soiled by his withering hair. Still
seeking, he said:
—When Fitzgibbon’s speech had ended John F Taylor rose to reply.
Briefly, as well as I can bring them to mind, his words were these.
He raised his head firmly. His eyes bethought themselves once more.
Witless shellfish swam in the gross lenses to and fro, seeking outlet.
He began:
—Mr Chairman, ladies and gentlemen: Great was my admiration in
listening to the remarks addressed to the youth of Ireland a moment since by
my learned friend. It seemed to me that I had been transported into a
country far away from this country, into an age remote from this age, that I
stood in ancient Egypt and that I was listening to the speech of some
highpriest of that land addressed to the youthful Moses.
His listeners held their cigarettes poised to hear, their smokes ascending
in frail stalks that flowered with his speech. And let our crooked smokes.
Noble words coming. Look out. Could you try your hand at it yourself?
—And it seemed to me that I heard the voice of that Egyptian highpriest
raised in a tone of like haughtiness and like pride. I heard his words and
their meaning was revealed to me.

FROM THE FATHERS

It was revealed to me that those things are good which yet are corrupted
which neither if they were supremely good nor unless they were good could
be corrupted. Ah, curse you! That’s saint Augustine.
—Why will you jews not accept our culture, our religion and our
language? You are a tribe of nomad herdsmen: we are a mighty people. You
have no cities nor no wealth: our cities are hives of humanity and our

galleys, trireme and quadrireme, laden with all manner merchandise furrow
the waters of the known globe. You have but emerged from primitive
conditions: we have a literature, a priesthood, an agelong history and a
polity.
Nile.
Child, man, effigy.
By the Nilebank the babemaries kneel, cradle of bulrushes: a man supple
in combat: stonehorned, stonebearded, heart of stone.
—You pray to a local and obscure idol: our temples, majestic and
mysterious, are the abodes of Isis and Osiris, of Horus and Ammon Ra.
Yours serfdom, awe and humbleness: ours thunder and the seas. Israel is
weak and few are her children: Egypt is an host and terrible are her arms.
Vagrants and daylabourers are you called: the world trembles at our name.
A dumb belch of hunger cleft his speech. He lifted his voice above it
boldly:
—But, ladies and gentlemen, had the youthful Moses listened to and
accepted that view of life, had he bowed his head and bowed his will and
bowed his spirit before that arrogant admonition he would never have
brought the chosen people out of their house of bondage, nor followed the
pillar of the cloud by day. He would never have spoken with the Eternal
amid lightnings on Sinai’s mountaintop nor ever have come down with the
light of inspiration shining in his countenance and bearing in his arms the
tables of the law, graven in the language of the outlaw.
He ceased and looked at them, enjoying a silence.

OMINOUS—FOR HIM!

J. J. O’Molloy said not without regret:
—And yet he died without having entered the land of promise.
—A—sudden—at—the—moment—though—from—lingering—illness
—often—previously—expectorated—demise, Lenehan added. And with a
great future behind him.
The troop of bare feet was heard rushing along the hallway and pattering
up the staircase.

—That is oratory, the professor said uncontradicted.
Gone with the wind. Hosts at Mullaghmast and Tara of the kings. Miles
of ears of porches. The tribune’s words, howled and scattered to the four
winds. A people sheltered within his voice. Dead noise. Akasic records of
all that ever anywhere wherever was. Love and laud him: me no more.
I have money.
—Gentlemen, Stephen said. As the next motion on the agenda paper may
I suggest that the house do now adjourn?
—You take my breath away. It is not perchance a French compliment?
Mr O’Madden Burke asked. ’Tis the hour, methinks, when the winejug,
metaphorically speaking, is most grateful in Ye ancient hostelry.
—That it be and hereby is resolutely resolved. All that are in favour say
ay, Lenehan announced. The contrary no. I declare it carried. To which
particular boosing shed...? My casting vote is: Mooney’s!
He led the way, admonishing:
—We will sternly refuse to partake of strong waters, will we not? Yes, we
will not. By no manner of means.
Mr O’Madden Burke, following close, said with an ally’s lunge of his
umbrella:
—Lay on, Macduff!
—Chip of the old block! the editor cried, clapping Stephen on the
shoulder. Let us go. Where are those blasted keys?
He fumbled in his pocket pulling out the crushed typesheets.
—Foot and mouth. I know. That’ll be all right. That’ll go in. Where are
they? That’s all right.
He thrust the sheets back and went into the inner office.

LET US HOPE

J. J. O’Molloy, about to follow him in, said quietly to Stephen:
—I hope you will live to see it published. Myles, one moment.
He went into the inner office, closing the door behind him.

—Come along, Stephen, the professor said. That is fine, isn’t it? It has
the prophetic vision. Fuit Ilium! The sack of windy Troy. Kingdoms of this
world. The masters of the Mediterranean are fellaheen today.
The first newsboy came pattering down the stairs at their heels and
rushed out into the street, yelling:
—Racing special!
Dublin. I have much, much to learn.
They turned to the left along Abbey street.
—I have a vision too, Stephen said.
—Yes? the professor said, skipping to get into step. Crawford will follow.
Another newsboy shot past them, yelling as he ran:
—Racing special!

DEAR DIRTY DUBLIN

Dubliners.
—Two Dublin vestals, Stephen said, elderly and pious, have lived fifty
and fiftythree years in Fumbally’s lane.
—Where is that? the professor asked.
—Off Blackpitts, Stephen said.
Damp night reeking of hungry dough. Against the wall. Face glistering
tallow under her fustian shawl. Frantic hearts. Akasic records. Quicker,
darlint!
On now. Dare it. Let there be life.
—They want to see the views of Dublin from the top of Nelson’s pillar.
They save up three and tenpence in a red tin letterbox moneybox. They
shake out the threepenny bits and sixpences and coax out the pennies with
the blade of a knife. Two and three in silver and one and seven in coppers.
They put on their bonnets and best clothes and take their umbrellas for fear
it may come on to rain.
—Wise virgins, professor MacHugh said.

LIFE ON THE RAW

—They buy one and fourpenceworth of brawn and four slices of panloaf
at the north city diningrooms in Marlborough street from Miss Kate Collins,
proprietress... They purchase four and twenty ripe plums from a girl at the
foot of Nelson’s pillar to take off the thirst of the brawn. They give two
threepenny bits to the gentleman at the turnstile and begin to waddle slowly
up the winding staircase, grunting, encouraging each other, afraid of the
dark, panting, one asking the other have you the brawn, praising God and
the Blessed Virgin, threatening to come down, peeping at the airslits. Glory
be to God. They had no idea it was that high.
Their names are Anne Kearns and Florence MacCabe. Anne Kearns has
the lumbago for which she rubs on Lourdes water, given her by a lady who
got a bottleful from a passionist father. Florence MacCabe takes a crubeen
and a bottle of double X for supper every Saturday.
—Antithesis, the professor said nodding twice. Vestal virgins. I can see
them. What’s keeping our friend?
He turned.
A bevy of scampering newsboys rushed down the steps, scattering in all
directions, yelling, their white papers fluttering. Hard after them Myles
Crawford appeared on the steps, his hat aureoling his scarlet face, talking
with J. J. O’Molloy.
—Come along, the professor cried, waving his arm.
He set off again to walk by Stephen’s side.

RETURN OF BLOOM

—Yes, he said. I see them.
Mr Bloom, breathless, caught in a whirl of wild newsboys near the
offices of the Irish Catholic and Dublin Penny Journal, called:
—Mr Crawford! A moment!
—Telegraph! Racing special!
—What is it? Myles Crawford said, falling back a pace.
A newsboy cried in Mr Bloom’s face:
—Terrible tragedy in Rathmines! A child bit by a bellows!

INTERVIEW WITH THE EDITOR

—Just this ad, Mr Bloom said, pushing through towards the steps,
puffing, and taking the cutting from his pocket. I spoke with Mr Keyes just
now. He’ll give a renewal for two months, he says. After he’ll see. But he
wants a par to call attention in the Telegraph too, the Saturday pink. And he
wants it copied if it’s not too late I told councillor Nannetti from the
Kilkenny People. I can have access to it in the national library. House of
keys, don’t you see? His name is Keyes. It’s a play on the name. But he
practically promised he’d give the renewal. But he wants just a little puff.
What will I tell him, Mr Crawford?

K.M.A.

—Will you tell him he can kiss my arse? Myles Crawford said throwing
out his arm for emphasis. Tell him that straight from the stable.
A bit nervy. Look out for squalls. All off for a drink. Arm in arm.
Lenehan’s yachting cap on the cadge beyond. Usual blarney. Wonder is that
young Dedalus the moving spirit. Has a good pair of boots on him today.
Last time I saw him he had his heels on view. Been walking in muck
somewhere. Careless chap. What was he doing in Irishtown?
—Well, Mr Bloom said, his eyes returning, if I can get the design I
suppose it’s worth a short par. He’d give the ad, I think. I’ll tell him...

K.M.R.I.A.

—He can kiss my royal Irish arse, Myles Crawford cried loudly over his
shoulder. Any time he likes, tell him.
While Mr Bloom stood weighing the point and about to smile he strode
on jerkily.

RAISING THE WIND

—Nulla bona, Jack, he said, raising his hand to his chin. I’m up to here.
I’ve been through the hoop myself. I was looking for a fellow to back a bill

for me no later than last week. Sorry, Jack. You must take the will for the
deed. With a heart and a half if I could raise the wind anyhow.
J. J. O’Molloy pulled a long face and walked on silently. They caught up
on the others and walked abreast.
—When they have eaten the brawn and the bread and wiped their twenty
fingers in the paper the bread was wrapped in they go nearer to the railings.
—Something for you, the professor explained to Myles Crawford. Two
old Dublin women on the top of Nelson’s pillar.

SOME COLUMN!—THAT’S WHAT WADDLER ONE SAID

—That’s new, Myles Crawford said. That’s copy. Out for the waxies’
Dargle. Two old trickies, what?
—But they are afraid the pillar will fall, Stephen went on. They see the
roofs and argue about where the different churches are: Rathmines’ blue
dome, Adam and Eve’s, saint Laurence O’Toole’s. But it makes them giddy
to look so they pull up their skirts...

THOSE SLIGHTLY RAMBUNCTIOUS FEMALES

—Easy all, Myles Crawford said. No poetic licence. We’re in the
archdiocese here.
—And settle down on their striped petticoats, peering up at the statue of
the onehandled adulterer.
—Onehandled adulterer! the professor cried. I like that. I see the idea. I
see what you mean.

DAMES DONATE DUBLIN’S CITS SPEEDPILLS
VELOCITOUS AEROLITHS, BELIEF

—It gives them a crick in their necks, Stephen said, and they are too tired
to look up or down or to speak. They put the bag of plums between them
and eat the plums out of it, one after another, wiping off with their

handkerchiefs the plumjuice that dribbles out of their mouths and spitting
the plumstones slowly out between the railings.
He gave a sudden loud young laugh as a close. Lenehan and Mr
O’Madden Burke, hearing, turned, beckoned and led on across towards
Mooney’s.
—Finished? Myles Crawford said. So long as they do no worse.

SOPHIST WALLOPS HAUGHTY HELEN SQUARE ON
PROBOSCIS. SPARTANS GNASH MOLARS. ITHACANS
VOW PEN IS CHAMP.

—You remind me of Antisthenes, the professor said, a disciple of
Gorgias, the sophist. It is said of him that none could tell if he were bitterer
against others or against himself. He was the son of a noble and a
bondwoman. And he wrote a book in which he took away the palm of
beauty from Argive Helen and handed it to poor Penelope.
Poor Penelope. Penelope Rich.
They made ready to cross O’Connell street.

HELLO THERE, CENTRAL!

At various points along the eight lines tramcars with motionless trolleys
stood in their tracks, bound for or from Rathmines, Rathfarnham,
Blackrock, Kingstown and Dalkey, Sandymount Green, Ringsend and
Sandymount Tower, Donnybrook, Palmerston Park and Upper Rathmines,
all still, becalmed in short circuit. Hackney cars, cabs, delivery waggons,
mailvans, private broughams, aerated mineral water floats with rattling
crates of bottles, rattled, rolled, horsedrawn, rapidly.

WHAT?—AND LIKEWISE—WHERE?

—But what do you call it? Myles Crawford asked. Where did they get the
plums?

VIRGILIAN, SAYS PEDAGOGUE. SOPHOMORE PLUMPS
FOR OLD MAN MOSES.

—Call it, wait, the professor said, opening his long lips wide to reflect.
Call it, let me see. Call it: deus nobis hæc otia fecit.
—No, Stephen said. I call it A Pisgah Sight of Palestine or The Parable
of The Plums.
—I see, the professor said.
He laughed richly.
—I see, he said again with new pleasure. Moses and the promised land.
We gave him that idea, he added to J. J. O’Molloy.

HORATIO IS CYNOSURE THIS FAIR JUNE DAY

J. J. O’Molloy sent a weary sidelong glance towards the statue and held
his peace.
—I see, the professor said.
He halted on sir John Gray’s pavement island and peered aloft at Nelson
through the meshes of his wry smile.

DIMINISHED DIGITS PROVE TOO TITILLATING FOR
FRISKY FRUMPS. ANNE WIMBLES, FLO WANGLES—
YET CAN YOU BLAME THEM?

—Onehandled adulterer, he said smiling grimly. That tickles me, I must
say.
—Tickled the old ones too, Myles Crawford said, if the God Almighty’s
truth was known.

[8]
Pineapple rock, lemon platt, butter scotch. A sugarsticky girl shovelling
scoopfuls of creams for a christian brother. Some school treat. Bad for their
tummies. Lozenge and comfit manufacturer to His Majesty the King. God.
Save. Our. Sitting on his throne sucking red jujubes white.
A sombre Y. M. C. A. young man, watchful among the warm sweet
fumes of Graham Lemon’s, placed a throwaway in a hand of Mr Bloom.
Heart to heart talks.
Bloo... Me? No.
Blood of the Lamb.
His slow feet walked him riverward, reading. Are you saved? All are
washed in the blood of the lamb. God wants blood victim. Birth, hymen,
martyr, war, foundation of a building, sacrifice, kidney burntoffering,
druids’ altars. Elijah is coming. Dr John Alexander Dowie restorer of the
church in Zion is coming.
Is coming! Is coming!! Is coming!!!
All heartily welcome.

Paying game. Torry and Alexander last year. Polygamy. His wife will put
the stopper on that. Where was that ad some Birmingham firm the luminous
crucifix. Our Saviour. Wake up in the dead of night and see him on the wall,
hanging. Pepper’s ghost idea. Iron Nails Ran In.
Phosphorus it must be done with. If you leave a bit of codfish for
instance. I could see the bluey silver over it. Night I went down to the
pantry in the kitchen. Don’t like all the smells in it waiting to rush out.
What was it she wanted? The Malaga raisins. Thinking of Spain. Before
Rudy was born. The phosphorescence, that bluey greeny. Very good for the
brain.
From Butler’s monument house corner he glanced along Bachelor’s
walk. Dedalus’ daughter there still outside Dillon’s auctionrooms. Must be
selling off some old furniture. Knew her eyes at once from the father.

Lobbing about waiting for him. Home always breaks up when the mother
goes. Fifteen children he had. Birth every year almost. That’s in their
theology or the priest won’t give the poor woman the confession, the
absolution. Increase and multiply. Did you ever hear such an idea? Eat you
out of house and home. No families themselves to feed. Living on the fat of
the land. Their butteries and larders. I’d like to see them do the black fast
Yom Kippur. Crossbuns. One meal and a collation for fear he’d collapse on
the altar. A housekeeper of one of those fellows if you could pick it out of
her. Never pick it out of her. Like getting £. s. d. out of him. Does himself
well. No guests. All for number one. Watching his water. Bring your own
bread and butter. His reverence: mum’s the word.
Good Lord, that poor child’s dress is in flitters. Underfed she looks too.
Potatoes and marge, marge and potatoes. It’s after they feel it. Proof of the
pudding. Undermines the constitution.
As he set foot on O’Connell bridge a puffball of smoke plumed up from
the parapet. Brewery barge with export stout. England. Sea air sours it, I
heard. Be interesting some day get a pass through Hancock to see the
brewery. Regular world in itself. Vats of porter wonderful. Rats get in too.
Drink themselves bloated as big as a collie floating. Dead drunk on the
porter. Drink till they puke again like christians. Imagine drinking that!
Rats: vats. Well, of course, if we knew all the things.
Looking down he saw flapping strongly, wheeling between the gaunt
quaywalls, gulls. Rough weather outside. If I threw myself down? Reuben
J’s son must have swallowed a good bellyful of that sewage. One and
eightpence too much. Hhhhm. It’s the droll way he comes out with the
things. Knows how to tell a story too.
They wheeled lower. Looking for grub. Wait.
He threw down among them a crumpled paper ball. Elijah thirtytwo feet
per sec is com. Not a bit. The ball bobbed unheeded on the wake of swells,
floated under by the bridgepiers. Not such damn fools. Also the day I threw
that stale cake out of the Erin’s King picked it up in the wake fifty yards
astern. Live by their wits. They wheeled, flapping.
The hungry famished gull
Flaps o’er the waters dull.

That is how poets write, the similar sounds. But then Shakespeare has no
rhymes: blank verse. The flow of the language it is. The thoughts. Solemn.
Hamlet, I am thy father’s spirit
Doomed for a certain time to walk the earth.

—Two apples a penny! Two for a penny!
His gaze passed over the glazed apples serried on her stand. Australians
they must be this time of year. Shiny peels: polishes them up with a rag or a
handkerchief.
Wait. Those poor birds.
He halted again and bought from the old applewoman two Banbury cakes
for a penny and broke the brittle paste and threw its fragments down into
the Liffey. See that? The gulls swooped silently, two, then all from their
heights, pouncing on prey. Gone. Every morsel.
Aware of their greed and cunning he shook the powdery crumb from his
hands. They never expected that. Manna. Live on fish, fishy flesh they
have, all seabirds, gulls, seagoose. Swans from Anna Liffey swim down
here sometimes to preen themselves. No accounting for tastes. Wonder what
kind is swanmeat. Robinson Crusoe had to live on them.
They wheeled flapping weakly. I’m not going to throw any more. Penny
quite enough. Lot of thanks I get. Not even a caw. They spread foot and
mouth disease too. If you cram a turkey say on chestnutmeal it tastes like
that. Eat pig like pig. But then why is it that saltwater fish are not salty?
How is that?
His eyes sought answer from the river and saw a rowboat rock at anchor
on the treacly swells lazily its plastered board.
Kino’s
11/—
Trousers

Good idea that. Wonder if he pays rent to the corporation. How can you
own water really? It’s always flowing in a stream, never the same, which in
the stream of life we trace. Because life is a stream. All kinds of places are
good for ads. That quack doctor for the clap used to be stuck up in all the
greenhouses. Never see it now. Strictly confidential. Dr Hy Franks. Didn’t
cost him a red like Maginni the dancing master self advertisement. Got

fellows to stick them up or stick them up himself for that matter on the q. t.
running in to loosen a button. Flybynight. Just the place too. POST NO
BILLS. POST 110 PILLS. Some chap with a dose burning him.
If he...?
O!
Eh?
No... No.
No, no. I don’t believe it. He wouldn’t surely?
No, no.
Mr Bloom moved forward, raising his troubled eyes. Think no more
about that. After one. Timeball on the ballastoffice is down. Dunsink time.
Fascinating little book that is of sir Robert Ball’s. Parallax. I never exactly
understood. There’s a priest. Could ask him. Par it’s Greek: parallel,
parallax. Met him pike hoses she called it till I told her about the
transmigration. O rocks!
Mr Bloom smiled O rocks at two windows of the ballastoffice. She’s
right after all. Only big words for ordinary things on account of the sound.
She’s not exactly witty. Can be rude too. Blurt out what I was thinking.
Still, I don’t know. She used to say Ben Dollard had a base barreltone voice.
He has legs like barrels and you’d think he was singing into a barrel. Now,
isn’t that wit. They used to call him big Ben. Not half as witty as calling
him base barreltone. Appetite like an albatross. Get outside of a baron of
beef. Powerful man he was at stowing away number one Bass. Barrel of
Bass. See? It all works out.
A procession of whitesmocked sandwichmen marched slowly towards
him along the gutter, scarlet sashes across their boards. Bargains. Like that
priest they are this morning: we have sinned: we have suffered. He read the
scarlet letters on their five tall white hats: H. E. L. Y. S. Wisdom Hely’s. Y
lagging behind drew a chunk of bread from under his foreboard, crammed it
into his mouth and munched as he walked. Our staple food. Three bob a
day, walking along the gutters, street after street. Just keep skin and bone
together, bread and skilly. They are not Boyl: no, M’Glade’s men. Doesn’t
bring in any business either. I suggested to him about a transparent showcart
with two smart girls sitting inside writing letters, copybooks, envelopes,
blottingpaper. I bet that would have caught on. Smart girls writing

something catch the eye at once. Everyone dying to know what she’s
writing. Get twenty of them round you if you stare at nothing. Have a finger
in the pie. Women too. Curiosity. Pillar of salt. Wouldn’t have it of course
because he didn’t think of it himself first. Or the inkbottle I suggested with
a false stain of black celluloid. His ideas for ads like Plumtree’s potted
under the obituaries, cold meat department. You can’t lick ’em. What? Our
envelopes. Hello, Jones, where are you going? Can’t stop, Robinson, I am
hastening to purchase the only reliable inkeraser Kansell, sold by Hely’s
Ltd, 85 Dame street. Well out of that ruck I am. Devil of a job it was
collecting accounts of those convents. Tranquilla convent. That was a nice
nun there, really sweet face. Wimple suited her small head. Sister? Sister? I
am sure she was crossed in love by her eyes. Very hard to bargain with that
sort of a woman. I disturbed her at her devotions that morning. But glad to
communicate with the outside world. Our great day, she said. Feast of Our
Lady of Mount Carmel. Sweet name too: caramel. She knew I, I think she
knew by the way she. If she had married she would have changed. I
suppose they really were short of money. Fried everything in the best butter
all the same. No lard for them. My heart’s broke eating dripping. They like
buttering themselves in and out. Molly tasting it, her veil up. Sister? Pat
Claffey, the pawnbroker’s daughter. It was a nun they say invented barbed
wire.
He crossed Westmoreland street when apostrophe S had plodded by.
Rover cycleshop. Those races are on today. How long ago is that? Year Phil
Gilligan died. We were in Lombard street west. Wait: was in Thom’s. Got
the job in Wisdom Hely’s year we married. Six years. Ten years ago:
ninetyfour he died yes that’s right the big fire at Arnott’s. Val Dillon was
lord mayor. The Glencree dinner. Alderman Robert O’Reilly emptying the
port into his soup before the flag fell. Bobbob lapping it for the inner
alderman. Couldn’t hear what the band played. For what we have already
received may the Lord make us. Milly was a kiddy then. Molly had that
elephantgrey dress with the braided frogs. Mantailored with selfcovered
buttons. She didn’t like it because I sprained my ankle first day she wore
choir picnic at the Sugarloaf. As if that. Old Goodwin’s tall hat done up
with some sticky stuff. Flies’ picnic too. Never put a dress on her back like
it. Fitted her like a glove, shoulders and hips. Just beginning to plump it out
well. Rabbitpie we had that day. People looking after her.

Happy. Happier then. Snug little room that was with the red wallpaper.
Dockrell’s, one and ninepence a dozen. Milly’s tubbing night. American
soap I bought: elderflower. Cosy smell of her bathwater. Funny she looked
soaped all over. Shapely too. Now photography. Poor papa’s daguerreotype
atelier he told me of. Hereditary taste.
He walked along the curbstone.
Stream of life. What was the name of that priestylooking chap was
always squinting in when he passed? Weak eyes, woman. Stopped in
Citron’s saint Kevin’s parade. Pen something. Pendennis? My memory is
getting. Pen ...? Of course it’s years ago. Noise of the trams probably. Well,
if he couldn’t remember the dayfather’s name that he sees every day.
Bartell d’Arcy was the tenor, just coming out then. Seeing her home after
practice. Conceited fellow with his waxedup moustache. Gave her that song
Winds that blow from the south.
Windy night that was I went to fetch her there was that lodge meeting on
about those lottery tickets after Goodwin’s concert in the supperroom or
oakroom of the Mansion house. He and I behind. Sheet of her music blew
out of my hand against the High school railings. Lucky it didn’t. Thing like
that spoils the effect of a night for her. Professor Goodwin linking her in
front. Shaky on his pins, poor old sot. His farewell concerts. Positively last
appearance on any stage. May be for months and may be for never.
Remember her laughing at the wind, her blizzard collar up. Corner of
Harcourt road remember that gust. Brrfoo! Blew up all her skirts and her
boa nearly smothered old Goodwin. She did get flushed in the wind.
Remember when we got home raking up the fire and frying up those pieces
of lap of mutton for her supper with the Chutney sauce she liked. And the
mulled rum. Could see her in the bedroom from the hearth unclamping the
busk of her stays: white.
Swish and soft flop her stays made on the bed. Always warm from her.
Always liked to let her self out. Sitting there after till near two taking out
her hairpins. Milly tucked up in beddyhouse. Happy. Happy. That was the
night...
—O, Mr Bloom, how do you do?
—O, how do you do, Mrs Breen?

—No use complaining. How is Molly those times? Haven’t seen her for
ages.
—In the pink, Mr Bloom said gaily. Milly has a position down in
Mullingar, you know.
—Go away! Isn’t that grand for her?
—Yes. In a photographer’s there. Getting on like a house on fire. How
are all your charges?
—All on the baker’s list, Mrs Breen said.
How many has she? No other in sight.
—You’re in black, I see. You have no...
—No, Mr Bloom said. I have just come from a funeral.
Going to crop up all day, I foresee. Who’s dead, when and what did he
die of? Turn up like a bad penny.
—O, dear me, Mrs Breen said. I hope it wasn’t any near relation.
May as well get her sympathy.
—Dignam, Mr Bloom said. An old friend of mine. He died quite
suddenly, poor fellow. Heart trouble, I believe. Funeral was this morning.
Your funeral’s tomorrow
While you’re coming through the rye.
Diddlediddle dumdum
Diddlediddle...

—Sad to lose the old friends, Mrs Breen’s womaneyes said melancholily.
Now that’s quite enough about that. Just: quietly: husband.
—And your lord and master?
Mrs Breen turned up her two large eyes. Hasn’t lost them anyhow.
—O, don’t be talking! she said. He’s a caution to rattlesnakes. He’s in
there now with his lawbooks finding out the law of libel. He has me
heartscalded. Wait till I show you.
Hot mockturtle vapour and steam of newbaked jampuffs rolypoly poured
out from Harrison’s. The heavy noonreek tickled the top of Mr Bloom’s
gullet. Want to make good pastry, butter, best flour, Demerara sugar, or
they’d taste it with the hot tea. Or is it from her? A barefoot arab stood over

the grating, breathing in the fumes. Deaden the gnaw of hunger that way.
Pleasure or pain is it? Penny dinner. Knife and fork chained to the table.
Opening her handbag, chipped leather. Hatpin: ought to have a guard on
those things. Stick it in a chap’s eye in the tram. Rummaging. Open.
Money. Please take one. Devils if they lose sixpence. Raise Cain. Husband
barging. Where’s the ten shillings I gave you on Monday? Are you feeding
your little brother’s family? Soiled handkerchief: medicinebottle. Pastille
that was fell. What is she?...
—There must be a new moon out, she said. He’s always bad then. Do
you know what he did last night?
Her hand ceased to rummage. Her eyes fixed themselves on him, wide in
alarm, yet smiling.
—What? Mr Bloom asked.
Let her speak. Look straight in her eyes. I believe you. Trust me.
—Woke me up in the night, she said. Dream he had, a nightmare.
Indiges.
—Said the ace of spades was walking up the stairs.
—The ace of spades! Mr Bloom said.
She took a folded postcard from her handbag.
—Read that, she said. He got it this morning.
—What is it? Mr Bloom asked, taking the card. U. P.?
—U. p: up, she said. Someone taking a rise out of him. It’s a great shame
for them whoever he is.
—Indeed it is, Mr Bloom said.
She took back the card, sighing.
—And now he’s going round to Mr Menton’s office. He’s going to take
an action for ten thousand pounds, he says.
She folded the card into her untidy bag and snapped the catch.
Same blue serge dress she had two years ago, the nap bleaching. Seen its
best days. Wispish hair over her ears. And that dowdy toque: three old
grapes to take the harm out of it. Shabby genteel. She used to be a tasty
dresser. Lines round her mouth. Only a year or so older than Molly.
See the eye that woman gave her, passing. Cruel. The unfair sex.

He looked still at her, holding back behind his look his discontent.
Pungent mockturtle oxtail mulligatawny. I’m hungry too. Flakes of pastry
on the gusset of her dress: daub of sugary flour stuck to her cheek. Rhubarb
tart with liberal fillings, rich fruit interior. Josie Powell that was. In Luke
Doyle’s long ago. Dolphin’s Barn, the charades. U. p: up.
Change the subject.
—Do you ever see anything of Mrs Beaufoy? Mr Bloom asked.
—Mina Purefoy? she said.
Philip Beaufoy I was thinking. Playgoers’ Club. Matcham often thinks of
the masterstroke. Did I pull the chain? Yes. The last act.
—Yes.
—I just called to ask on the way in is she over it. She’s in the lying-in
hospital in Holles street. Dr Horne got her in. She’s three days bad now.
—O, Mr Bloom said. I’m sorry to hear that.
—Yes, Mrs Breen said. And a houseful of kids at home. It’s a very stiff
birth, the nurse told me.
—O, Mr Bloom said.
His heavy pitying gaze absorbed her news. His tongue clacked in
compassion. Dth! Dth!
—I’m sorry to hear that, he said. Poor thing! Three days! That’s terrible
for her.
Mrs Breen nodded.
—She was taken bad on the Tuesday...
Mr Bloom touched her funnybone gently, warning her:
—Mind! Let this man pass.
A bony form strode along the curbstone from the river staring with a rapt
gaze into the sunlight through a heavystringed glass. Tight as a skullpiece a
tiny hat gripped his head. From his arm a folded dustcoat, a stick and an
umbrella dangled to his stride.
—Watch him, Mr Bloom said. He always walks outside the lampposts.
Watch!
—Who is he if it’s a fair question? Mrs Breen asked. Is he dotty?

—His name is Cashel Boyle O’Connor Fitzmaurice Tisdall Farrell, Mr
Bloom said smiling. Watch!
—He has enough of them, she said. Denis will be like that one of these
days.
She broke off suddenly.
—There he is, she said. I must go after him. Goodbye. Remember me to
Molly, won’t you?
—I will, Mr Bloom said.
He watched her dodge through passers towards the shopfronts. Denis
Breen in skimpy frockcoat and blue canvas shoes shuffled out of Harrison’s
hugging two heavy tomes to his ribs. Blown in from the bay. Like old times.
He suffered her to overtake him without surprise and thrust his dull grey
beard towards her, his loose jaw wagging as he spoke earnestly.
Meshuggah. Off his chump.
Mr Bloom walked on again easily, seeing ahead of him in sunlight the
tight skullpiece, the dangling stickumbrelladustcoat. Going the two days.
Watch him! Out he goes again. One way of getting on in the world. And
that other old mosey lunatic in those duds. Hard time she must have with
him.
U. p: up. I’ll take my oath that’s Alf Bergan or Richie Goulding. Wrote it
for a lark in the Scotch house I bet anything. Round to Menton’s office. His
oyster eyes staring at the postcard. Be a feast for the gods.
He passed the Irish Times. There might be other answers lying there. Like
to answer them all. Good system for criminals. Code. At their lunch now.
Clerk with the glasses there doesn’t know me. O, leave them there to
simmer. Enough bother wading through fortyfour of them. Wanted, smart
lady typist to aid gentleman in literary work. I called you naughty darling
because I do not like that other world. Please tell me what is the meaning.
Please tell me what perfume does your wife. Tell me who made the world.
The way they spring those questions on you. And the other one Lizzie
Twigg. My literary efforts have had the good fortune to meet with the
approval of the eminent poet A. E. (Mr Geo. Russell). No time to do her
hair drinking sloppy tea with a book of poetry.
Best paper by long chalks for a small ad. Got the provinces now. Cook
and general, exc. cuisine, housemaid kept. Wanted live man for spirit

counter. Resp. girl (R.C.) wishes to hear of post in fruit or pork shop. James
Carlisle made that. Six and a half per cent dividend. Made a big deal on
Coates’s shares. Ca’ canny. Cunning old Scotch hunks. All the toady news.
Our gracious and popular vicereine. Bought the Irish Field now. Lady
Mountcashel has quite recovered after her confinement and rode out with
the Ward Union staghounds at the enlargement yesterday at Rathoath.
Uneatable fox. Pothunters too. Fear injects juices make it tender enough for
them. Riding astride. Sit her horse like a man. Weightcarrying huntress. No
sidesaddle or pillion for her, not for Joe. First to the meet and in at the
death. Strong as a brood mare some of those horsey women. Swagger
around livery stables. Toss off a glass of brandy neat while you’d say knife.
That one at the Grosvenor this morning. Up with her on the car: wishswish.
Stonewall or fivebarred gate put her mount to it. Think that pugnosed driver
did it out of spite. Who is this she was like? O yes! Mrs Miriam Dandrade
that sold me her old wraps and black underclothes in the Shelbourne hotel.
Divorced Spanish American. Didn’t take a feather out of her my handling
them. As if I was her clotheshorse. Saw her in the viceregal party when
Stubbs the park ranger got me in with Whelan of the Express. Scavenging
what the quality left. High tea. Mayonnaise I poured on the plums thinking
it was custard. Her ears ought to have tingled for a few weeks after. Want to
be a bull for her. Born courtesan. No nursery work for her, thanks.
Poor Mrs Purefoy! Methodist husband. Method in his madness. Saffron
bun and milk and soda lunch in the educational dairy. Y. M. C. A. Eating
with a stopwatch, thirtytwo chews to the minute. And still his muttonchop
whiskers grew. Supposed to be well connected. Theodore’s cousin in Dublin
Castle. One tony relative in every family. Hardy annuals he presents her
with. Saw him out at the Three Jolly Topers marching along bareheaded and
his eldest boy carrying one in a marketnet. The squallers. Poor thing! Then
having to give the breast year after year all hours of the night. Selfish those
t.t’s are. Dog in the manger. Only one lump of sugar in my tea, if you
please.
He stood at Fleet street crossing. Luncheon interval. A sixpenny at
Rowe’s? Must look up that ad in the national library. An eightpenny in the
Burton. Better. On my way.
He walked on past Bolton’s Westmoreland house. Tea. Tea. Tea. I forgot
to tap Tom Kernan.

Sss. Dth, dth, dth! Three days imagine groaning on a bed with a
vinegared handkerchief round her forehead, her belly swollen out. Phew!
Dreadful simply! Child’s head too big: forceps. Doubled up inside her
trying to butt its way out blindly, groping for the way out. Kill me that
would. Lucky Molly got over hers lightly. They ought to invent something
to stop that. Life with hard labour. Twilight sleep idea: queen Victoria was
given that. Nine she had. A good layer. Old woman that lived in a shoe she
had so many children. Suppose he was consumptive. Time someone thought
about it instead of gassing about the what was it the pensive bosom of the
silver effulgence. Flapdoodle to feed fools on. They could easily have big
establishments whole thing quite painless out of all the taxes give every
child born five quid at compound interest up to twentyone five per cent is a
hundred shillings and five tiresome pounds multiply by twenty decimal
system encourage people to put by money save hundred and ten and a bit
twentyone years want to work it out on paper come to a tidy sum more than
you think.
Not stillborn of course. They are not even registered. Trouble for nothing.
Funny sight two of them together, their bellies out. Molly and Mrs
Moisel. Mothers’ meeting. Phthisis retires for the time being, then returns.
How flat they look all of a sudden after. Peaceful eyes. Weight off their
mind. Old Mrs Thornton was a jolly old soul. All my babies, she said. The
spoon of pap in her mouth before she fed them. O, that’s nyumnyum. Got
her hand crushed by old Tom Wall’s son. His first bow to the public. Head
like a prize pumpkin. Snuffy Dr Murren. People knocking them up at all
hours. For God’ sake, doctor. Wife in her throes. Then keep them waiting
months for their fee. To attendance on your wife. No gratitude in people.
Humane doctors, most of them.
Before the huge high door of the Irish house of parliament a flock of
pigeons flew. Their little frolic after meals. Who will we do it on? I pick the
fellow in black. Here goes. Here’s good luck. Must be thrilling from the air.
Apjohn, myself and Owen Goldberg up in the trees near Goose green
playing the monkeys. Mackerel they called me.
A squad of constables debouched from College street, marching in Indian
file. Goosestep. Foodheated faces, sweating helmets, patting their
truncheons. After their feed with a good load of fat soup under their belts.
Policeman’s lot is oft a happy one. They split up in groups and scattered,

saluting, towards their beats. Let out to graze. Best moment to attack one in
pudding time. A punch in his dinner. A squad of others, marching
irregularly, rounded Trinity railings making for the station. Bound for their
troughs. Prepare to receive cavalry. Prepare to receive soup.
He crossed under Tommy Moore’s roguish finger. They did right to put
him up over a urinal: meeting of the waters. Ought to be places for women.
Running into cakeshops. Settle my hat straight. There is not in this wide
world a vallee. Great song of Julia Morkan’s. Kept her voice up to the very
last. Pupil of Michael Balfe’s, wasn’t she?
He gazed after the last broad tunic. Nasty customers to tackle. Jack
Power could a tale unfold: father a G man. If a fellow gave them trouble
being lagged they let him have it hot and heavy in the bridewell. Can’t
blame them after all with the job they have especially the young hornies.
That horsepoliceman the day Joe Chamberlain was given his degree in
Trinity he got a run for his money. My word he did! His horse’s hoofs
clattering after us down Abbey street. Lucky I had the presence of mind to
dive into Manning’s or I was souped. He did come a wallop, by George.
Must have cracked his skull on the cobblestones. I oughtn’t to have got
myself swept along with those medicals. And the Trinity jibs in their
mortarboards. Looking for trouble. Still I got to know that young Dixon
who dressed that sting for me in the Mater and now he’s in Holles street
where Mrs Purefoy. Wheels within wheels. Police whistle in my ears still.
All skedaddled. Why he fixed on me. Give me in charge. Right here it
began.
—Up the Boers!
—Three cheers for De Wet!
—We’ll hang Joe Chamberlain on a sourapple tree.
Silly billies: mob of young cubs yelling their guts out. Vinegar hill. The
Butter exchange band. Few years’ time half of them magistrates and civil
servants. War comes on: into the army helterskelter: same fellows used to.
Whether on the scaffold high.
Never know who you’re talking to. Corny Kelleher he has Harvey Duff
in his eye. Like that Peter or Denis or James Carey that blew the gaff on the
invincibles. Member of the corporation too. Egging raw youths on to get in
the know all the time drawing secret service pay from the castle. Drop him
like a hot potato. Why those plainclothes men are always courting slaveys.

Easily twig a man used to uniform. Squarepushing up against a backdoor.
Maul her a bit. Then the next thing on the menu. And who is the gentleman
does be visiting there? Was the young master saying anything? Peeping
Tom through the keyhole. Decoy duck. Hotblooded young student fooling
round her fat arms ironing.
—Are those yours, Mary?
—I don’t wear such things... Stop or I’ll tell the missus on you. Out half
the night.
—There are great times coming, Mary. Wait till you see.
—Ah, gelong with your great times coming.
Barmaids too. Tobaccoshopgirls.
James Stephens’ idea was the best. He knew them. Circles of ten so that a
fellow couldn’t round on more than his own ring. Sinn Fein. Back out you
get the knife. Hidden hand. Stay in. The firing squad. Turnkey’s daughter
got him out of Richmond, off from Lusk. Putting up in the Buckingham
Palace hotel under their very noses. Garibaldi.
You must have a certain fascination: Parnell. Arthur Griffith is a
squareheaded fellow but he has no go in him for the mob. Or gas about our
lovely land. Gammon and spinach. Dublin Bakery Company’s tearoom.
Debating societies. That republicanism is the best form of government. That
the language question should take precedence of the economic question.
Have your daughters inveigling them to your house. Stuff them up with
meat and drink. Michaelmas goose. Here’s a good lump of thyme seasoning
under the apron for you. Have another quart of goosegrease before it gets
too cold. Halffed enthusiasts. Penny roll and a walk with the band. No grace
for the carver. The thought that the other chap pays best sauce in the world.
Make themselves thoroughly at home. Show us over those apricots,
meaning peaches. The not far distant day. Homerule sun rising up in the
northwest.
His smile faded as he walked, a heavy cloud hiding the sun slowly,
shadowing Trinity’s surly front. Trams passed one another, ingoing,
outgoing, clanging. Useless words. Things go on same, day after day:
squads of police marching out, back: trams in, out. Those two loonies
mooching about. Dignam carted off. Mina Purefoy swollen belly on a bed
groaning to have a child tugged out of her. One born every second

somewhere. Other dying every second. Since I fed the birds five minutes.
Three hundred kicked the bucket. Other three hundred born, washing the
blood off, all are washed in the blood of the lamb, bawling maaaaaa.
Cityful passing away, other cityful coming, passing away too: other
coming on, passing on. Houses, lines of houses, streets, miles of pavements,
piledup bricks, stones. Changing hands. This owner, that. Landlord never
dies they say. Other steps into his shoes when he gets his notice to quit.
They buy the place up with gold and still they have all the gold. Swindle in
it somewhere. Piled up in cities, worn away age after age. Pyramids in sand.
Built on bread and onions. Slaves Chinese wall. Babylon. Big stones left.
Round towers. Rest rubble, sprawling suburbs, jerrybuilt. Kerwan’s
mushroom houses built of breeze. Shelter, for the night.
No-one is anything.
This is the very worst hour of the day. Vitality. Dull, gloomy: hate this
hour. Feel as if I had been eaten and spewed.
Provost’s house. The reverend Dr Salmon: tinned salmon. Well tinned in
there. Like a mortuary chapel. Wouldn’t live in it if they paid me. Hope they
have liver and bacon today. Nature abhors a vacuum.
The sun freed itself slowly and lit glints of light among the silverware
opposite in Walter Sexton’s window by which John Howard Parnell passed,
unseeing.
There he is: the brother. Image of him. Haunting face. Now that’s a
coincidence. Course hundreds of times you think of a person and don’t meet
him. Like a man walking in his sleep. No-one knows him. Must be a
corporation meeting today. They say he never put on the city marshal’s
uniform since he got the job. Charley Kavanagh used to come out on his
high horse, cocked hat, puffed, powdered and shaved. Look at the
woebegone walk of him. Eaten a bad egg. Poached eyes on ghost. I have a
pain. Great man’s brother: his brother’s brother. He’d look nice on the city
charger. Drop into the D.B.C. probably for his coffee, play chess there. His
brother used men as pawns. Let them all go to pot. Afraid to pass a remark
on him. Freeze them up with that eye of his. That’s the fascination: the
name. All a bit touched. Mad Fanny and his other sister Mrs Dickinson
driving about with scarlet harness. Bolt upright like surgeon M’Ardle. Still
David Sheehy beat him for south Meath. Apply for the Chiltern Hundreds
and retire into public life. The patriot’s banquet. Eating orangepeels in the

park. Simon Dedalus said when they put him in parliament that Parnell
would come back from the grave and lead him out of the house of commons
by the arm.
—Of the twoheaded octopus, one of whose heads is the head upon which
the ends of the world have forgotten to come while the other speaks with a
Scotch accent. The tentacles...
They passed from behind Mr Bloom along the curbstone. Beard and
bicycle. Young woman.
And there he is too. Now that’s really a coincidence: second time.
Coming events cast their shadows before. With the approval of the eminent
poet, Mr Geo. Russell. That might be Lizzie Twigg with him. A. E.: what
does that mean? Initials perhaps. Albert Edward, Arthur Edmund,
Alphonsus Eb Ed El Esquire. What was he saying? The ends of the world
with a Scotch accent. Tentacles: octopus. Something occult: symbolism.
Holding forth. She’s taking it all in. Not saying a word. To aid gentleman in
literary work.
His eyes followed the high figure in homespun, beard and bicycle, a
listening woman at his side. Coming from the vegetarian. Only
weggebobbles and fruit. Don’t eat a beefsteak. If you do the eyes of that
cow will pursue you through all eternity. They say it’s healthier.
Windandwatery though. Tried it. Keep you on the run all day. Bad as a
bloater. Dreams all night. Why do they call that thing they gave me
nutsteak? Nutarians. Fruitarians. To give you the idea you are eating
rumpsteak. Absurd. Salty too. They cook in soda. Keep you sitting by the
tap all night.
Her stockings are loose over her ankles. I detest that: so tasteless. Those
literary etherial people they are all. Dreamy, cloudy, symbolistic. Esthetes
they are. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was that kind of food you see produces
the like waves of the brain the poetical. For example one of those
policemen sweating Irish stew into their shirts you couldn’t squeeze a line
of poetry out of him. Don’t know what poetry is even. Must be in a certain
mood.
The dreamy cloudy gull
Waves o’er the waters dull.

He crossed at Nassau street corner and stood before the window of Yeates
and Son, pricing the fieldglasses. Or will I drop into old Harris’s and have a
chat with young Sinclair? Wellmannered fellow. Probably at his lunch.
Must get those old glasses of mine set right. Goerz lenses six guineas.
Germans making their way everywhere. Sell on easy terms to capture trade.
Undercutting. Might chance on a pair in the railway lost property office.
Astonishing the things people leave behind them in trains and cloakrooms.
What do they be thinking about? Women too. Incredible. Last year
travelling to Ennis had to pick up that farmer’s daughter’s bag and hand it
to her at Limerick junction. Unclaimed money too. There’s a little watch up
there on the roof of the bank to test those glasses by.
His lids came down on the lower rims of his irides. Can’t see it. If you
imagine it’s there you can almost see it. Can’t see it.
He faced about and, standing between the awnings, held out his right
hand at arm’s length towards the sun. Wanted to try that often. Yes:
completely. The tip of his little finger blotted out the sun’s disk. Must be the
focus where the rays cross. If I had black glasses. Interesting. There was a
lot of talk about those sunspots when we were in Lombard street west.
Looking up from the back garden. Terrific explosions they are. There will
be a total eclipse this year: autumn some time.
Now that I come to think of it that ball falls at Greenwich time. It’s the
clock is worked by an electric wire from Dunsink. Must go out there some
first Saturday of the month. If I could get an introduction to professor Joly
or learn up something about his family. That would do to: man always feels
complimented. Flattery where least expected. Nobleman proud to be
descended from some king’s mistress. His foremother. Lay it on with a
trowel. Cap in hand goes through the land. Not go in and blurt out what you
know you’re not to: what’s parallax? Show this gentleman the door.
Ah.
His hand fell to his side again.
Never know anything about it. Waste of time. Gasballs spinning about,
crossing each other, passing. Same old dingdong always. Gas: then solid:
then world: then cold: then dead shell drifting around, frozen rock, like that
pineapple rock. The moon. Must be a new moon out, she said. I believe
there is.
He went on by la maison Claire.

Wait. The full moon was the night we were Sunday fortnight exactly
there is a new moon. Walking down by the Tolka. Not bad for a Fairview
moon. She was humming. The young May moon she’s beaming, love. He
other side of her. Elbow, arm. He. Glowworm’s la-amp is gleaming, love.
Touch. Fingers. Asking. Answer. Yes.
Stop. Stop. If it was it was. Must.
Mr Bloom, quickbreathing, slowlier walking passed Adam court.
With a keep quiet relief his eyes took note this is the street here middle of
the day of Bob Doran’s bottle shoulders. On his annual bend, M’Coy said.
They drink in order to say or do something or cherchez la femme. Up in the
Coombe with chummies and streetwalkers and then the rest of the year
sober as a judge.
Yes. Thought so. Sloping into the Empire. Gone. Plain soda would do
him good. Where Pat Kinsella had his Harp theatre before Whitbred ran the
Queen’s. Broth of a boy. Dion Boucicault business with his harvestmoon
face in a poky bonnet. Three Purty Maids from School. How time flies, eh?
Showing long red pantaloons under his skirts. Drinkers, drinking, laughed
spluttering, their drink against their breath. More power, Pat. Coarse red:
fun for drunkards: guffaw and smoke. Take off that white hat. His parboiled
eyes. Where is he now? Beggar somewhere. The harp that once did starve
us all.
I was happier then. Or was that I? Or am I now I? Twentyeight I was. She
twentythree. When we left Lombard street west something changed. Could
never like it again after Rudy. Can’t bring back time. Like holding water in
your hand. Would you go back to then? Just beginning then. Would you?
Are you not happy in your home you poor little naughty boy? Wants to sew
on buttons for me. I must answer. Write it in the library.
Grafton street gay with housed awnings lured his senses. Muslin prints,
silkdames and dowagers, jingle of harnesses, hoofthuds lowringing in the
baking causeway. Thick feet that woman has in the white stockings. Hope
the rain mucks them up on her. Countrybred chawbacon. All the beef to the
heels were in. Always gives a woman clumsy feet. Molly looks out of
plumb.
He passed, dallying, the windows of Brown Thomas, silk mercers.
Cascades of ribbons. Flimsy China silks. A tilted urn poured from its mouth
a flood of bloodhued poplin: lustrous blood. The huguenots brought that

here. La causa è santa! Tara tara. Great chorus that. Taree tara. Must be
washed in rainwater. Meyerbeer. Tara: bom bom bom.
Pincushions. I’m a long time threatening to buy one. Sticking them all
over the place. Needles in window curtains.
He bared slightly his left forearm. Scrape: nearly gone. Not today
anyhow. Must go back for that lotion. For her birthday perhaps.
Junejulyaugseptember eighth. Nearly three months off. Then she mightn’t
like it. Women won’t pick up pins. Say it cuts lo.
Gleaming silks, petticoats on slim brass rails, rays of flat silk stockings.
Useless to go back. Had to be. Tell me all.
High voices. Sunwarm silk. Jingling harnesses. All for a woman, home
and houses, silkwebs, silver, rich fruits spicy from Jaffa. Agendath Netaim.
Wealth of the world.
A warm human plumpness settled down on his brain. His brain yielded.
Perfume of embraces all him assailed. With hungered flesh obscurely, he
mutely craved to adore.
Duke street. Here we are. Must eat. The Burton. Feel better then.
He turned Combridge’s corner, still pursued. Jingling, hoofthuds.
Perfumed bodies, warm, full. All kissed, yielded: in deep summer fields,
tangled pressed grass, in trickling hallways of tenements, along sofas,
creaking beds.
—Jack, love!
—Darling!
—Kiss me, Reggy!
—My boy!
—Love!
His heart astir he pushed in the door of the Burton restaurant. Stink
gripped his trembling breath: pungent meatjuice, slush of greens. See the
animals feed.
Men, men, men.
Perched on high stools by the bar, hats shoved back, at the tables calling
for more bread no charge, swilling, wolfing gobfuls of sloppy food, their
eyes bulging, wiping wetted moustaches. A pallid suetfaced young man
polished his tumbler knife fork and spoon with his napkin. New set of

microbes. A man with an infant’s saucestained napkin tucked round him
shovelled gurgling soup down his gullet. A man spitting back on his plate:
halfmasticated gristle: gums: no teeth to chewchewchew it. Chump chop
from the grill. Bolting to get it over. Sad booser’s eyes. Bitten off more than
he can chew. Am I like that? See ourselves as others see us. Hungry man is
an angry man. Working tooth and jaw. Don’t! O! A bone! That last pagan
king of Ireland Cormac in the schoolpoem choked himself at Sletty
southward of the Boyne. Wonder what he was eating. Something
galoptious. Saint Patrick converted him to Christianity. Couldn’t swallow it
all however.
—Roast beef and cabbage.
—One stew.
Smells of men. Spat-on sawdust, sweetish warmish cigarettesmoke, reek
of plug, spilt beer, men’s beery piss, the stale of ferment.
His gorge rose.
Couldn’t eat a morsel here. Fellow sharpening knife and fork to eat all
before him, old chap picking his tootles. Slight spasm, full, chewing the
cud. Before and after. Grace after meals. Look on this picture then on that.
Scoffing up stewgravy with sopping sippets of bread. Lick it off the plate,
man! Get out of this.
He gazed round the stooled and tabled eaters, tightening the wings of his
nose.
—Two stouts here.
—One corned and cabbage.
That fellow ramming a knifeful of cabbage down as if his life depended
on it. Good stroke. Give me the fidgets to look. Safer to eat from his three
hands. Tear it limb from limb. Second nature to him. Born with a silver
knife in his mouth. That’s witty, I think. Or no. Silver means born rich.
Born with a knife. But then the allusion is lost.
An illgirt server gathered sticky clattering plates. Rock, the head bailiff,
standing at the bar blew the foamy crown from his tankard. Well up: it
splashed yellow near his boot. A diner, knife and fork upright, elbows on
table, ready for a second helping stared towards the foodlift across his
stained square of newspaper. Other chap telling him something with his

mouth full. Sympathetic listener. Table talk. I munched hum un thu
Unchster Bunk un Munchday. Ha? Did you, faith?
Mr Bloom raised two fingers doubtfully to his lips. His eyes said:
—Not here. Don’t see him.
Out. I hate dirty eaters.
He backed towards the door. Get a light snack in Davy Byrne’s. Stopgap.
Keep me going. Had a good breakfast.
—Roast and mashed here.
—Pint of stout.
Every fellow for his own, tooth and nail. Gulp. Grub. Gulp. Gobstuff.
He came out into clearer air and turned back towards Grafton street. Eat
or be eaten. Kill! Kill!
Suppose that communal kitchen years to come perhaps. All trotting down
with porringers and tommycans to be filled. Devour contents in the street.
John Howard Parnell example the provost of Trinity every mother’s son
don’t talk of your provosts and provost of Trinity women and children
cabmen priests parsons fieldmarshals archbishops. From Ailesbury road,
Clyde road, artisans’ dwellings, north Dublin union, lord mayor in his
gingerbread coach, old queen in a bathchair. My plate’s empty. After you
with our incorporated drinkingcup. Like sir Philip Crampton’s fountain.
Rub off the microbes with your handkerchief. Next chap rubs on a new
batch with his. Father O’Flynn would make hares of them all. Have rows all
the same. All for number one. Children fighting for the scrapings of the pot.
Want a souppot as big as the Phoenix park. Harpooning flitches and
hindquarters out of it. Hate people all round you. City Arms hotel table
d’hôte she called it. Soup, joint and sweet. Never know whose thoughts
you’re chewing. Then who’d wash up all the plates and forks? Might be all
feeding on tabloids that time. Teeth getting worse and worse.
After all there’s a lot in that vegetarian fine flavour of things from the
earth garlic of course it stinks after Italian organgrinders crisp of onions
mushrooms truffles. Pain to the animal too. Pluck and draw fowl. Wretched
brutes there at the cattlemarket waiting for the poleaxe to split their skulls
open. Moo. Poor trembling calves. Meh. Staggering bob. Bubble and
squeak. Butchers’ buckets wobbly lights. Give us that brisket off the hook.
Plup. Rawhead and bloody bones. Flayed glasseyed sheep hung from their

haunches, sheepsnouts bloodypapered snivelling nosejam on sawdust. Top
and lashers going out. Don’t maul them pieces, young one.
Hot fresh blood they prescribe for decline. Blood always needed.
Insidious. Lick it up smokinghot, thick sugary. Famished ghosts.
Ah, I’m hungry.
He entered Davy Byrne’s. Moral pub. He doesn’t chat. Stands a drink
now and then. But in leapyear once in four. Cashed a cheque for me once.
What will I take now? He drew his watch. Let me see now. Shandygaff?
—Hello, Bloom, Nosey Flynn said from his nook.
—Hello, Flynn.
—How’s things?
—Tiptop... Let me see. I’ll take a glass of burgundy and... let me see.
Sardines on the shelves. Almost taste them by looking. Sandwich? Ham
and his descendants musterred and bred there. Potted meats. What is home
without Plumtree’s potted meat? Incomplete. What a stupid ad! Under the
obituary notices they stuck it. All up a plumtree. Dignam’s potted meat.
Cannibals would with lemon and rice. White missionary too salty. Like
pickled pork. Expect the chief consumes the parts of honour. Ought to be
tough from exercise. His wives in a row to watch the effect. There was a
right royal old nigger. Who ate or something the somethings of the reverend
Mr MacTrigger. With it an abode of bliss. Lord knows what concoction.
Cauls mouldy tripes windpipes faked and minced up. Puzzle find the meat.
Kosher. No meat and milk together. Hygiene that was what they call now.
Yom Kippur fast spring cleaning of inside. Peace and war depend on some
fellow’s digestion. Religions. Christmas turkeys and geese. Slaughter of
innocents. Eat drink and be merry. Then casual wards full after. Heads
bandaged. Cheese digests all but itself. Mity cheese.
—Have you a cheese sandwich?
—Yes, sir.
Like a few olives too if they had them. Italian I prefer. Good glass of
burgundy take away that. Lubricate. A nice salad, cool as a cucumber, Tom
Kernan can dress. Puts gusto into it. Pure olive oil. Milly served me that
cutlet with a sprig of parsley. Take one Spanish onion. God made food, the
devil the cooks. Devilled crab.

—Wife well?
—Quite well, thanks... A cheese sandwich, then. Gorgonzola, have you?
—Yes, sir.
Nosey Flynn sipped his grog.
—Doing any singing those times?
Look at his mouth. Could whistle in his own ear. Flap ears to match.
Music. Knows as much about it as my coachman. Still better tell him. Does
no harm. Free ad.
—She’s engaged for a big tour end of this month. You may have heard
perhaps.
—No. O, that’s the style. Who’s getting it up?
The curate served.
—How much is that?
—Seven d., sir... Thank you, sir.
Mr Bloom cut his sandwich into slender strips. Mr MacTrigger. Easier
than the dreamy creamy stuff. His five hundred wives. Had the time of their
lives.
—Mustard, sir?
—Thank you.
He studded under each lifted strip yellow blobs. Their lives. I have it. It
grew bigger and bigger and bigger.
—Getting it up? he said. Well, it’s like a company idea, you see. Part
shares and part profits.
—Ay, now I remember, Nosey Flynn said, putting his hand in his pocket
to scratch his groin. Who is this was telling me? Isn’t Blazes Boylan mixed
up in it?
A warm shock of air heat of mustard hanched on Mr Bloom’s heart. He
raised his eyes and met the stare of a bilious clock. Two. Pub clock five
minutes fast. Time going on. Hands moving. Two. Not yet.
His midriff yearned then upward, sank within him, yearned more longly,
longingly.
Wine.

He smellsipped the cordial juice and, bidding his throat strongly to speed
it, set his wineglass delicately down.
—Yes, he said. He’s the organiser in point of fact.
No fear: no brains.
Nosey Flynn snuffled and scratched. Flea having a good square meal.
—He had a good slice of luck, Jack Mooney was telling me, over that
boxingmatch Myler Keogh won again that soldier in the Portobello
barracks. By God, he had the little kipper down in the county Carlow he
was telling me...
Hope that dewdrop doesn’t come down into his glass. No, snuffled it up.
—For near a month, man, before it came off. Sucking duck eggs by God
till further orders. Keep him off the boose, see? O, by God, Blazes is a hairy
chap.
Davy Byrne came forward from the hindbar in tuckstitched shirtsleeves,
cleaning his lips with two wipes of his napkin. Herring’s blush. Whose
smile upon each feature plays with such and such replete. Too much fat on
the parsnips.
—And here’s himself and pepper on him, Nosey Flynn said. Can you
give us a good one for the Gold cup?
—I’m off that, Mr Flynn, Davy Byrne answered. I never put anything on
a horse.
—You’re right there, Nosey Flynn said.
Mr Bloom ate his strips of sandwich, fresh clean bread, with relish of
disgust pungent mustard, the feety savour of green cheese. Sips of his wine
soothed his palate. Not logwood that. Tastes fuller this weather with the
chill off.
Nice quiet bar. Nice piece of wood in that counter. Nicely planed. Like
the way it curves there.
—I wouldn’t do anything at all in that line, Davy Byrne said. It ruined
many a man, the same horses.
Vintners’ sweepstake. Licensed for the sale of beer, wine and spirits for
consumption on the premises. Heads I win tails you lose.
—True for you, Nosey Flynn said. Unless you’re in the know. There’s no
straight sport going now. Lenehan gets some good ones. He’s giving

Sceptre today. Zinfandel’s the favourite, Lord Howard de Walden’s, won at
Epsom. Morny Cannon is riding him. I could have got seven to one against
Saint Amant a fortnight before.
—That so? Davy Byrne said...
He went towards the window and, taking up the pettycash book, scanned
its pages.
—I could, faith, Nosey Flynn said, snuffling. That was a rare bit of
horseflesh. Saint Frusquin was her sire. She won in a thunderstorm,
Rothschild’s filly, with wadding in her ears. Blue jacket and yellow cap.
Bad luck to big Ben Dollard and his John O’Gaunt. He put me off it. Ay.
He drank resignedly from his tumbler, running his fingers down the
flutes.
—Ay, he said, sighing.
Mr Bloom, champing, standing, looked upon his sigh. Nosey numbskull.
Will I tell him that horse Lenehan? He knows already. Better let him forget.
Go and lose more. Fool and his money. Dewdrop coming down again. Cold
nose he’d have kissing a woman. Still they might like. Prickly beards they
like. Dogs’ cold noses. Old Mrs Riordan with the rumbling stomach’s Skye
terrier in the City Arms hotel. Molly fondling him in her lap. O, the big
doggybowwowsywowsy!
Wine soaked and softened rolled pith of bread mustard a moment
mawkish cheese. Nice wine it is. Taste it better because I’m not thirsty. Bath
of course does that. Just a bite or two. Then about six o’clock I can. Six.
Six. Time will be gone then. She...
Mild fire of wine kindled his veins. I wanted that badly. Felt so off
colour. His eyes unhungrily saw shelves of tins: sardines, gaudy lobsters’
claws. All the odd things people pick up for food. Out of shells, periwinkles
with a pin, off trees, snails out of the ground the French eat, out of the sea
with bait on a hook. Silly fish learn nothing in a thousand years. If you
didn’t know risky putting anything into your mouth. Poisonous berries.
Johnny Magories. Roundness you think good. Gaudy colour warns you off.
One fellow told another and so on. Try it on the dog first. Led on by the
smell or the look. Tempting fruit. Ice cones. Cream. Instinct. Orangegroves
for instance. Need artificial irrigation. Bleibtreustrasse. Yes but what about
oysters. Unsightly like a clot of phlegm. Filthy shells. Devil to open them

too. Who found them out? Garbage, sewage they feed on. Fizz and Red
bank oysters. Effect on the sexual. Aphrodis. He was in the Red Bank this
morning. Was he oysters old fish at table perhaps he young flesh in bed no
June has no ar no oysters. But there are people like things high. Tainted
game. Jugged hare. First catch your hare. Chinese eating eggs fifty years
old, blue and green again. Dinner of thirty courses. Each dish harmless
might mix inside. Idea for a poison mystery. That archduke Leopold was it
no yes or was it Otto one of those Habsburgs? Or who was it used to eat the
scruff off his own head? Cheapest lunch in town. Of course aristocrats, then
the others copy to be in the fashion. Milly too rock oil and flour. Raw pastry
I like myself. Half the catch of oysters they throw back in the sea to keep up
the price. Cheap no-one would buy. Caviare. Do the grand. Hock in green
glasses. Swell blowout. Lady this. Powdered bosom pearls. The élite.
Crème de la crème. They want special dishes to pretend they’re. Hermit
with a platter of pulse keep down the stings of the flesh. Know me come eat
with me. Royal sturgeon high sheriff, Coffey, the butcher, right to venisons
of the forest from his ex. Send him back the half of a cow. Spread I saw
down in the Master of the Rolls’ kitchen area. Whitehatted chef like a rabbi.
Combustible duck. Curly cabbage à la duchesse de Parme. Just as well to
write it on the bill of fare so you can know what you’ve eaten. Too many
drugs spoil the broth. I know it myself. Dosing it with Edwards’ desiccated
soup. Geese stuffed silly for them. Lobsters boiled alive. Do ptake some
ptarmigan. Wouldn’t mind being a waiter in a swell hotel. Tips, evening
dress, halfnaked ladies. May I tempt you to a little more filleted lemon sole,
miss Dubedat? Yes, do bedad. And she did bedad. Huguenot name I expect
that. A miss Dubedat lived in Killiney, I remember. Du de la is French. Still
it’s the same fish perhaps old Micky Hanlon of Moore street ripped the guts
out of making money hand over fist finger in fishes’ gills can’t write his
name on a cheque think he was painting the landscape with his mouth
twisted. Moooikill A Aitcha Ha ignorant as a kish of brogues, worth fifty
thousand pounds.
Stuck on the pane two flies buzzed, stuck.
Glowing wine on his palate lingered swallowed. Crushing in the
winepress grapes of Burgundy. Sun’s heat it is. Seems to a secret touch
telling me memory. Touched his sense moistened remembered. Hidden
under wild ferns on Howth below us bay sleeping: sky. No sound. The sky.
The bay purple by the Lion’s head. Green by Drumleck. Yellowgreen

towards Sutton. Fields of undersea, the lines faint brown in grass, buried
cities. Pillowed on my coat she had her hair, earwigs in the heather scrub
my hand under her nape, you’ll toss me all. O wonder! Coolsoft with
ointments her hand touched me, caressed: her eyes upon me did not turn
away. Ravished over her I lay, full lips full open, kissed her mouth. Yum.
Softly she gave me in my mouth the seedcake warm and chewed. Mawkish
pulp her mouth had mumbled sweetsour of her spittle. Joy: I ate it: joy.
Young life, her lips that gave me pouting. Soft warm sticky gumjelly lips.
Flowers her eyes were, take me, willing eyes. Pebbles fell. She lay still. A
goat. No-one. High on Ben Howth rhododendrons a nannygoat walking
surefooted, dropping currants. Screened under ferns she laughed
warmfolded. Wildly I lay on her, kissed her: eyes, her lips, her stretched
neck beating, woman’s breasts full in her blouse of nun’s veiling, fat nipples
upright. Hot I tongued her. She kissed me. I was kissed. All yielding she
tossed my hair. Kissed, she kissed me.
Me. And me now.
Stuck, the flies buzzed.
His downcast eyes followed the silent veining of the oaken slab. Beauty:
it curves: curves are beauty. Shapely goddesses, Venus, Juno: curves the
world admires. Can see them library museum standing in the round hall,
naked goddesses. Aids to digestion. They don’t care what man looks. All to
see. Never speaking. I mean to say to fellows like Flynn. Suppose she did
Pygmalion and Galatea what would she say first? Mortal! Put you in your
proper place. Quaffing nectar at mess with gods golden dishes, all
ambrosial. Not like a tanner lunch we have, boiled mutton, carrots and
turnips, bottle of Allsop. Nectar imagine it drinking electricity: gods’ food.
Lovely forms of women sculped Junonian. Immortal lovely. And we
stuffing food in one hole and out behind: food, chyle, blood, dung, earth,
food: have to feed it like stoking an engine. They have no. Never looked.
I’ll look today. Keeper won’t see. Bend down let something fall see if she.
Dribbling a quiet message from his bladder came to go to do not to do
there to do. A man and ready he drained his glass to the lees and walked, to
men too they gave themselves, manly conscious, lay with men lovers, a
youth enjoyed her, to the yard.
When the sound of his boots had ceased Davy Byrne said from his book:
—What is this he is? Isn’t he in the insurance line?

—He’s out of that long ago, Nosey Flynn said. He does canvassing for
the Freeman.
—I know him well to see, Davy Byrne said. Is he in trouble?
—Trouble? Nosey Flynn said. Not that I heard of. Why?
—I noticed he was in mourning.
—Was he? Nosey Flynn said. So he was, faith. I asked him how was all
at home. You’re right, by God. So he was.
—I never broach the subject, Davy Byrne said humanely, if I see a
gentleman is in trouble that way. It only brings it up fresh in their minds.
—It’s not the wife anyhow, Nosey Flynn said. I met him the day before
yesterday and he coming out of that Irish farm dairy John Wyse Nolan’s
wife has in Henry street with a jar of cream in his hand taking it home to his
better half. She’s well nourished, I tell you. Plovers on toast.
—And is he doing for the Freeman? Davy Byrne said.
Nosey Flynn pursed his lips.
—He doesn’t buy cream on the ads he picks up. You can make bacon of
that.
—How so? Davy Byrne asked, coming from his book.
Nosey Flynn made swift passes in the air with juggling fingers. He
winked.
—He’s in the craft, he said.
—Do you tell me so? Davy Byrne said.
—Very much so, Nosey Flynn said. Ancient free and accepted order. He’s
an excellent brother. Light, life and love, by God. They give him a leg up. I
was told that by a—well, I won’t say who.
—Is that a fact?
—O, it’s a fine order, Nosey Flynn said. They stick to you when you’re
down. I know a fellow was trying to get into it. But they’re as close as
damn it. By God they did right to keep the women out of it.
Davy Byrne smiledyawnednodded all in one:
—Iiiiiichaaaaaaach!
—There was one woman, Nosey Flynn said, hid herself in a clock to find
out what they do be doing. But be damned but they smelt her out and swore

her in on the spot a master mason. That was one of the saint Legers of
Doneraile.
Davy Byrne, sated after his yawn, said with tearwashed eyes:
—And is that a fact? Decent quiet man he is. I often saw him in here and
I never once saw him—you know, over the line.
—God Almighty couldn’t make him drunk, Nosey Flynn said firmly.
Slips off when the fun gets too hot. Didn’t you see him look at his watch?
Ah, you weren’t there. If you ask him to have a drink first thing he does he
outs with the watch to see what he ought to imbibe. Declare to God he does.
—There are some like that, Davy Byrne said. He’s a safe man, I’d say.
—He’s not too bad, Nosey Flynn said, snuffling it up. He’s been known
to put his hand down too to help a fellow. Give the devil his due. O, Bloom
has his good points. But there’s one thing he’ll never do.
His hand scrawled a dry pen signature beside his grog.
—I know, Davy Byrne said.
—Nothing in black and white, Nosey Flynn said.
Paddy Leonard and Bantam Lyons came in. Tom Rochford followed
frowning, a plaining hand on his claret waistcoat.
—Day, Mr Byrne.
—Day, gentlemen.
They paused at the counter.
—Who’s standing? Paddy Leonard asked.
—I’m sitting anyhow, Nosey Flynn answered.
—Well, what’ll it be? Paddy Leonard asked.
—I’ll take a stone ginger, Bantam Lyons said.
—How much? Paddy Leonard cried. Since when, for God’ sake? What’s
yours, Tom?
—How is the main drainage? Nosey Flynn asked, sipping.
For answer Tom Rochford pressed his hand to his breastbone and
hiccupped.
—Would I trouble you for a glass of fresh water, Mr Byrne? he said.
—Certainly, sir.

Paddy Leonard eyed his alemates.
—Lord love a duck, he said. Look at what I’m standing drinks to! Cold
water and gingerpop! Two fellows that would suck whisky off a sore leg.
He has some bloody horse up his sleeve for the Gold cup. A dead snip.
—Zinfandel is it? Nosey Flynn asked.
Tom Rochford spilt powder from a twisted paper into the water set before
him.
—That cursed dyspepsia, he said before drinking.
—Breadsoda is very good, Davy Byrne said.
Tom Rochford nodded and drank.
—Is it Zinfandel?
—Say nothing! Bantam Lyons winked. I’m going to plunge five bob on
my own.
—Tell us if you’re worth your salt and be damned to you, Paddy Leonard
said. Who gave it to you?
Mr Bloom on his way out raised three fingers in greeting.
—So long! Nosey Flynn said.
The others turned.
—That’s the man now that gave it to me, Bantam Lyons whispered.
—Prrwht! Paddy Leonard said with scorn. Mr Byrne, sir, we’ll take two
of your small Jamesons after that and a...
—Stone ginger, Davy Byrne added civilly.
—Ay, Paddy Leonard said. A suckingbottle for the baby.
Mr Bloom walked towards Dawson street, his tongue brushing his teeth
smooth. Something green it would have to be: spinach, say. Then with those
Röntgen rays searchlight you could.
At Duke lane a ravenous terrier choked up a sick knuckly cud on the
cobblestones and lapped it with new zest. Surfeit. Returned with thanks
having fully digested the contents. First sweet then savoury. Mr Bloom
coasted warily. Ruminants. His second course. Their upper jaw they move.
Wonder if Tom Rochford will do anything with that invention of his?
Wasting time explaining it to Flynn’s mouth. Lean people long mouths.

Ought to be a hall or a place where inventors could go in and invent free.
Course then you’d have all the cranks pestering.
He hummed, prolonging in solemn echo the closes of the bars:
Don Giovanni, a cenar teco
M’invitasti.

Feel better. Burgundy. Good pick me up. Who distilled first? Some chap
in the blues. Dutch courage. That Kilkenny People in the national library
now I must.
Bare clean closestools waiting in the window of William Miller, plumber,
turned back his thoughts. They could: and watch it all the way down,
swallow a pin sometimes come out of the ribs years after, tour round the
body changing biliary duct spleen squirting liver gastric juice coils of
intestines like pipes. But the poor buffer would have to stand all the time
with his insides entrails on show. Science.
—A cenar teco.
What does that teco mean? Tonight perhaps.
Don Giovanni, thou hast me invited
To come to supper tonight,
The rum the rumdum.

Doesn’t go properly.
Keyes: two months if I get Nannetti to. That’ll be two pounds ten about
two pounds eight. Three Hynes owes me. Two eleven. Prescott’s dyeworks
van over there. If I get Billy Prescott’s ad: two fifteen. Five guineas about.
On the pig’s back.
Could buy one of those silk petticoats for Molly, colour of her new
garters.
Today. Today. Not think.
Tour the south then. What about English wateringplaces? Brighton,
Margate. Piers by moonlight. Her voice floating out. Those lovely seaside
girls. Against John Long’s a drowsing loafer lounged in heavy thought,
gnawing a crusted knuckle. Handy man wants job. Small wages. Will eat
anything.
Mr Bloom turned at Gray’s confectioner’s window of unbought tarts and
passed the reverend Thomas Connellan’s bookstore. Why I left the church of

Rome? Birds’ Nest. Women run him. They say they used to give pauper
children soup to change to protestants in the time of the potato blight.
Society over the way papa went to for the conversion of poor jews. Same
bait. Why we left the church of Rome.
A blind stripling stood tapping the curbstone with his slender cane. No
tram in sight. Wants to cross.
—Do you want to cross? Mr Bloom asked.
The blind stripling did not answer. His wallface frowned weakly. He
moved his head uncertainly.
—You’re in Dawson street, Mr Bloom said. Molesworth street is
opposite. Do you want to cross? There’s nothing in the way.
The cane moved out trembling to the left. Mr Bloom’s eye followed its
line and saw again the dyeworks’ van drawn up before Drago’s. Where I
saw his brillantined hair just when I was. Horse drooping. Driver in John
Long’s. Slaking his drouth.
—There’s a van there, Mr Bloom said, but it’s not moving. I’ll see you
across. Do you want to go to Molesworth street?
—Yes, the stripling answered. South Frederick street.
—Come, Mr Bloom said.
He touched the thin elbow gently: then took the limp seeing hand to
guide it forward.
Say something to him. Better not do the condescending. They mistrust
what you tell them. Pass a common remark.
—The rain kept off.
No answer.
Stains on his coat. Slobbers his food, I suppose. Tastes all different for
him. Have to be spoonfed first. Like a child’s hand, his hand. Like Milly’s
was. Sensitive. Sizing me up I daresay from my hand. Wonder if he has a
name. Van. Keep his cane clear of the horse’s legs: tired drudge get his
doze. That’s right. Clear. Behind a bull: in front of a horse.
—Thanks, sir.
Knows I’m a man. Voice.
—Right now? First turn to the left.

The blind stripling tapped the curbstone and went on his way, drawing
his cane back, feeling again.
Mr Bloom walked behind the eyeless feet, a flatcut suit of herringbone
tweed. Poor young fellow! How on earth did he know that van was there?
Must have felt it. See things in their forehead perhaps: kind of sense of
volume. Weight or size of it, something blacker than the dark. Wonder
would he feel it if something was removed. Feel a gap. Queer idea of
Dublin he must have, tapping his way round by the stones. Could he walk
in a beeline if he hadn’t that cane? Bloodless pious face like a fellow going
in to be a priest.
Penrose! That was that chap’s name.
Look at all the things they can learn to do. Read with their fingers. Tune
pianos. Or we are surprised they have any brains. Why we think a deformed
person or a hunchback clever if he says something we might say. Of course
the other senses are more. Embroider. Plait baskets. People ought to help.
Workbasket I could buy for Molly’s birthday. Hates sewing. Might take an
objection. Dark men they call them.
Sense of smell must be stronger too. Smells on all sides, bunched
together. Each street different smell. Each person too. Then the spring, the
summer: smells. Tastes? They say you can’t taste wines with your eyes shut
or a cold in the head. Also smoke in the dark they say get no pleasure.
And with a woman, for instance. More shameless not seeing. That girl
passing the Stewart institution, head in the air. Look at me. I have them all
on. Must be strange not to see her. Kind of a form in his mind’s eye. The
voice, temperatures: when he touches her with his fingers must almost see
the lines, the curves. His hands on her hair, for instance. Say it was black,
for instance. Good. We call it black. Then passing over her white skin.
Different feel perhaps. Feeling of white.
Postoffice. Must answer. Fag today. Send her a postal order two shillings,
half a crown. Accept my little present. Stationer’s just here too. Wait. Think
over it.
With a gentle finger he felt ever so slowly the hair combed back above
his ears. Again. Fibres of fine fine straw. Then gently his finger felt the skin
of his right cheek. Downy hair there too. Not smooth enough. The belly is
the smoothest. No-one about. There he goes into Frederick street. Perhaps
to Levenston’s dancing academy piano. Might be settling my braces.

Walking by Doran’s publichouse he slid his hand between his waistcoat
and trousers and, pulling aside his shirt gently, felt a slack fold of his belly.
But I know it’s whitey yellow. Want to try in the dark to see.
He withdrew his hand and pulled his dress to.
Poor fellow! Quite a boy. Terrible. Really terrible. What dreams would he
have, not seeing? Life a dream for him. Where is the justice being born that
way? All those women and children excursion beanfeast burned and
drowned in New York. Holocaust. Karma they call that transmigration for
sins you did in a past life the reincarnation met him pike hoses. Dear, dear,
dear. Pity, of course: but somehow you can’t cotton on to them someway.
Sir Frederick Falkiner going into the freemasons’ hall. Solemn as Troy.
After his good lunch in Earlsfort terrace. Old legal cronies cracking a
magnum. Tales of the bench and assizes and annals of the bluecoat school. I
sentenced him to ten years. I suppose he’d turn up his nose at that stuff I
drank. Vintage wine for them, the year marked on a dusty bottle. Has his
own ideas of justice in the recorder’s court. Wellmeaning old man. Police
chargesheets crammed with cases get their percentage manufacturing crime.
Sends them to the rightabout. The devil on moneylenders. Gave Reuben J a
great strawcalling. Now he’s really what they call a dirty jew. Power those
judges have. Crusty old topers in wigs. Bear with a sore paw. And may the
Lord have mercy on your soul.
Hello, placard. Mirus bazaar. His Excellency the lord lieutenant.
Sixteenth. Today it is. In aid of funds for Mercer’s hospital. The Messiah
was first given for that. Yes. Handel. What about going out there:
Ballsbridge. Drop in on Keyes. No use sticking to him like a leech. Wear
out my welcome. Sure to know someone on the gate.
Mr Bloom came to Kildare street. First I must. Library.
Straw hat in sunlight. Tan shoes. Turnedup trousers. It is. It is.
His heart quopped softly. To the right. Museum. Goddesses. He swerved
to the right.
Is it? Almost certain. Won’t look. Wine in my face. Why did I? Too
heady. Yes, it is. The walk. Not see. Get on.
Making for the museum gate with long windy steps he lifted his eyes.
Handsome building. Sir Thomas Deane designed. Not following me?
Didn’t see me perhaps. Light in his eyes.

The flutter of his breath came forth in short sighs. Quick. Cold statues:
quiet there. Safe in a minute.
No. Didn’t see me. After two. Just at the gate.
My heart!
His eyes beating looked steadfastly at cream curves of stone. Sir Thomas
Deane was the Greek architecture.
Look for something I.
His hasty hand went quick into a pocket, took out, read unfolded
Agendath Netaim. Where did I?
Busy looking.
He thrust back quick Agendath.
Afternoon she said.
I am looking for that. Yes, that. Try all pockets. Handker. Freeman.
Where did I? Ah, yes. Trousers. Potato. Purse. Where?
Hurry. Walk quietly. Moment more. My heart.
His hand looking for the where did I put found in his hip pocket soap
lotion have to call tepid paper stuck. Ah soap there I yes. Gate.
Safe!

[9]
Urbane, to comfort them, the quaker librarian purred:
—And we have, have we not, those priceless pages of Wilhelm Meister.
A great poet on a great brother poet. A hesitating soul taking arms against a
sea of troubles, torn by conflicting doubts, as one sees in real life.
He came a step a sinkapace forward on neatsleather creaking and a step
backward a sinkapace on the solemn floor.
A noiseless attendant setting open the door but slightly made him a
noiseless beck.
—Directly, said he, creaking to go, albeit lingering. The beautiful
ineffectual dreamer who comes to grief against hard facts. One always feels
that Goethe’s judgments are so true. True in the larger analysis.
Twicreakingly analysis he corantoed off. Bald, most zealous by the door
he gave his large ear all to the attendant’s words: heard them: and was gone.
Two left.
—Monsieur de la Palice, Stephen sneered, was alive fifteen minutes
before his death.
—Have you found those six brave medicals, John Eglinton asked with
elder’s gall, to write Paradise Lost at your dictation? The Sorrows of Satan
he calls it.
Smile. Smile Cranly’s smile.
First he tickled her
Then he patted her
Then he passed the female catheter
For he was a medical
Jolly old medi...

—I feel you would need one more for Hamlet. Seven is dear to the
mystic mind. The shining seven W.B. calls them.
Glittereyed his rufous skull close to his greencapped desklamp sought the
face bearded amid darkgreener shadow, an ollav, holyeyed. He laughed low:

a sizar’s laugh of Trinity: unanswered.
Orchestral Satan, weeping many a rood
Tears such as angels weep.
Ed egli avea del cul fatto trombetta.

He holds my follies hostage.
Cranly’s eleven true Wicklowmen to free their sireland. Gaptoothed
Kathleen, her four beautiful green fields, the stranger in her house. And one
more to hail him: ave, rabbi: the Tinahely twelve. In the shadow of the glen
he cooees for them. My soul’s youth I gave him, night by night. God speed.
Good hunting.
Mulligan has my telegram.
Folly. Persist.
—Our young Irish bards, John Eglinton censured, have yet to create a
figure which the world will set beside Saxon Shakespeare’s Hamlet though
I admire him, as old Ben did, on this side idolatry.
—All these questions are purely academic, Russell oracled out of his
shadow. I mean, whether Hamlet is Shakespeare or James I or Essex.
Clergymen’s discussions of the historicity of Jesus. Art has to reveal to us
ideas, formless spiritual essences. The supreme question about a work of art
is out of how deep a life does it spring. The painting of Gustave Moreau is
the painting of ideas. The deepest poetry of Shelley, the words of Hamlet
bring our minds into contact with the eternal wisdom, Plato’s world of
ideas. All the rest is the speculation of schoolboys for schoolboys.
A. E. has been telling some yankee interviewer. Wall, tarnation strike me!
—The schoolmen were schoolboys first, Stephen said superpolitely.
Aristotle was once Plato’s schoolboy.
—And has remained so, one should hope, John Eglinton sedately said.
One can see him, a model schoolboy with his diploma under his arm.
He laughed again at the now smiling bearded face.
Formless spiritual. Father, Word and Holy Breath. Allfather, the heavenly
man. Hiesos Kristos, magician of the beautiful, the Logos who suffers in us
at every moment. This verily is that. I am the fire upon the altar. I am the
sacrificial butter.

Dunlop, Judge, the noblest Roman of them all, A.E., Arval, the Name
Ineffable, in heaven hight: K.H., their master, whose identity is no secret to
adepts. Brothers of the great white lodge always watching to see if they can
help. The Christ with the bridesister, moisture of light, born of an ensouled
virgin, repentant sophia, departed to the plane of buddhi. The life esoteric is
not for ordinary person. O.P. must work off bad karma first. Mrs Cooper
Oakley once glimpsed our very illustrious sister H.P.B.’s elemental.
O, fie! Out on’t! Pfuiteufel! You naughtn’t to look, missus, so you
naughtn’t when a lady’s ashowing of her elemental.
Mr Best entered, tall, young, mild, light. He bore in his hand with grace a
notebook, new, large, clean, bright.
—That model schoolboy, Stephen said, would find Hamlet’s musings
about the afterlife of his princely soul, the improbable, insignificant and
undramatic monologue, as shallow as Plato’s.
John Eglinton, frowning, said, waxing wroth:
—Upon my word it makes my blood boil to hear anyone compare
Aristotle with Plato.
—Which of the two, Stephen asked, would have banished me from his
commonwealth?
Unsheathe your dagger definitions. Horseness is the whatness of allhorse.
Streams of tendency and eons they worship. God: noise in the street: very
peripatetic. Space: what you damn well have to see. Through spaces smaller
than red globules of man’s blood they creepycrawl after Blake’s buttocks
into eternity of which this vegetable world is but a shadow. Hold to the now,
the here, through which all future plunges to the past.
Mr Best came forward, amiable, towards his colleague.
—Haines is gone, he said.
—Is he?
—I was showing him Jubainville’s book. He’s quite enthusiastic, don’t
you know, about Hyde’s Lovesongs of Connacht. I couldn’t bring him in to
hear the discussion. He’s gone to Gill’s to buy it.
Bound thee forth, my booklet, quick
To greet the callous public.
Writ, I ween, ’twas not my wish
In lean unlovely English.

—The peatsmoke is going to his head, John Eglinton opined.
We feel in England. Penitent thief. Gone. I smoked his baccy. Green
twinkling stone. An emerald set in the ring of the sea.
—People do not know how dangerous lovesongs can be, the auric egg of
Russell warned occultly. The movements which work revolutions in the
world are born out of the dreams and visions in a peasant’s heart on the
hillside. For them the earth is not an exploitable ground but the living
mother. The rarefied air of the academy and the arena produce the
sixshilling novel, the musichall song. France produces the finest flower of
corruption in Mallarmé but the desirable life is revealed only to the poor of
heart, the life of Homer’s Phæacians.
From these words Mr Best turned an unoffending face to Stephen.
—Mallarmé, don’t you know, he said, has written those wonderful prose
poems Stephen MacKenna used to read to me in Paris. The one about
Hamlet. He says: il se promène, lisant au livre de lui-même, don’t you
know, reading the book of himself. He describes Hamlet given in a French
town, don’t you know, a provincial town. They advertised it.
His free hand graciously wrote tiny signs in air.

Hamlet
ou
Le Distrait
Pièce de Shakespeare

He repeated to John Eglinton’s newgathered frown:
—Pièce de Shakespeare, don’t you know. It’s so French. The French
point of view. Hamlet ou...
—The absentminded beggar, Stephen ended.
John Eglinton laughed.
—Yes, I suppose it would be, he said. Excellent people, no doubt, but
distressingly shortsighted in some matters.
Sumptuous and stagnant exaggeration of murder.
—A deathsman of the soul Robert Greene called him, Stephen said. Not
for nothing was he a butcher’s son, wielding the sledded poleaxe and
spitting in his palms. Nine lives are taken off for his father’s one. Our

Father who art in purgatory. Khaki Hamlets don’t hesitate to shoot. The
bloodboltered shambles in act five is a forecast of the concentration camp
sung by Mr Swinburne.
Cranly, I his mute orderly, following battles from afar.
Whelps and dams of murderous foes whom none
But we had spared...

Between the Saxon smile and yankee yawp. The devil and the deep sea.
—He will have it that Hamlet is a ghoststory, John Eglinton said for Mr
Best’s behoof. Like the fat boy in Pickwick he wants to make our flesh
creep.
List! List! O List!

My flesh hears him: creeping, hears.
If thou didst ever...

—What is a ghost? Stephen said with tingling energy. One who has faded
into impalpability through death, through absence, through change of
manners. Elizabethan London lay as far from Stratford as corrupt Paris lies
from virgin Dublin. Who is the ghost from limbo patrum, returning to the
world that has forgotten him? Who is King Hamlet?
John Eglinton shifted his spare body, leaning back to judge.
Lifted.
—It is this hour of a day in mid June, Stephen said, begging with a swift
glance their hearing. The flag is up on the playhouse by the bankside. The
bear Sackerson growls in the pit near it, Paris garden. Canvasclimbers who
sailed with Drake chew their sausages among the groundlings.
Local colour. Work in all you know. Make them accomplices.
—Shakespeare has left the huguenot’s house in Silver street and walks by
the swanmews along the riverbank. But he does not stay to feed the pen
chivying her game of cygnets towards the rushes. The swan of Avon has
other thoughts.
Composition of place. Ignatius Loyola, make haste to help me!
—The play begins. A player comes on under the shadow, made up in the
castoff mail of a court buck, a wellset man with a bass voice. It is the ghost,

the king, a king and no king, and the player is Shakespeare who has studied
Hamlet all the years of his life which were not vanity in order to play the
part of the spectre. He speaks the words to Burbage, the young player who
stands before him beyond the rack of cerecloth, calling him by a name:
Hamlet, I am thy father’s spirit,

bidding him list. To a son he speaks, the son of his soul, the prince,
young Hamlet and to the son of his body, Hamnet Shakespeare, who has
died in Stratford that his namesake may live for ever.
Is it possible that that player Shakespeare, a ghost by absence, and in the
vesture of buried Denmark, a ghost by death, speaking his own words to his
own son’s name (had Hamnet Shakespeare lived he would have been prince
Hamlet’s twin), is it possible, I want to know, or probable that he did not
draw or foresee the logical conclusion of those premises: you are the
dispossessed son: I am the murdered father: your mother is the guilty queen,
Ann Shakespeare, born Hathaway?
—But this prying into the family life of a great man, Russell began
impatiently.
Art thou there, truepenny?
—Interesting only to the parish clerk. I mean, we have the plays. I mean
when we read the poetry of King Lear what is it to us how the poet lived?
As for living our servants can do that for us, Villiers de l’Isle has said.
Peeping and prying into greenroom gossip of the day, the poet’s drinking,
the poet’s debts. We have King Lear: and it is immortal.
Mr Best’s face, appealed to, agreed.
Flow over them with your waves and with your waters,
Mananaan, Mananaan MacLir...

How now, sirrah, that pound he lent you when you were hungry?
Marry, I wanted it.
Take thou this noble.
Go to! You spent most of it in Georgina Johnson’s bed, clergyman’s
daughter. Agenbite of inwit.
Do you intend to pay it back?
O, yes.

When? Now?
Well... No.
When, then?
I paid my way. I paid my way.
Steady on. He’s from beyant Boyne water. The northeast corner. You owe
it.
Wait. Five months. Molecules all change. I am other I now. Other I got
pound.
Buzz. Buzz.
But I, entelechy, form of forms, am I by memory because under
everchanging forms.
I that sinned and prayed and fasted.
A child Conmee saved from pandies.
I, I and I. I.
A.E.I.O.U.
—Do you mean to fly in the face of the tradition of three centuries? John
Eglinton’s carping voice asked. Her ghost at least has been laid for ever.
She died, for literature at least, before she was born.
—She died, Stephen retorted, sixtyseven years after she was born. She
saw him into and out of the world. She took his first embraces. She bore his
children and she laid pennies on his eyes to keep his eyelids closed when he
lay on his deathbed.
Mother’s deathbed. Candle. The sheeted mirror. Who brought me into
this world lies there, bronzelidded, under few cheap flowers. Liliata
rutilantium.
I wept alone.
John Eglinton looked in the tangled glowworm of his lamp.
—The world believes that Shakespeare made a mistake, he said, and got
out of it as quickly and as best he could.
—Bosh! Stephen said rudely. A man of genius makes no mistakes. His
errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.
Portals of discovery opened to let in the quaker librarian, softcreakfooted,
bald, eared and assiduous.

—A shrew, John Eglinton said shrewdly, is not a useful portal of
discovery, one should imagine. What useful discovery did Socrates learn
from Xanthippe?
—Dialectic, Stephen answered: and from his mother how to bring
thoughts into the world. What he learnt from his other wife Myrto (absit
nomen!), Socratididion’s Epipsychidion, no man, not a woman, will ever
know. But neither the midwife’s lore nor the caudlelectures saved him from
the archons of Sinn Fein and their naggin of hemlock.
—But Ann Hathaway? Mr Best’s quiet voice said forgetfully. Yes, we
seem to be forgetting her as Shakespeare himself forgot her.
His look went from brooder’s beard to carper’s skull, to remind, to chide
them not unkindly, then to the baldpink lollard costard, guiltless though
maligned.
—He had a good groatsworth of wit, Stephen said, and no truant
memory. He carried a memory in his wallet as he trudged to Romeville
whistling The girl I left behind me. If the earthquake did not time it we
should know where to place poor Wat, sitting in his form, the cry of hounds,
the studded bridle and her blue windows. That memory, Venus and Adonis,
lay in the bedchamber of every light-of-love in London. Is Katharine the
shrew illfavoured? Hortensio calls her young and beautiful. Do you think
the writer of Antony and Cleopatra, a passionate pilgrim, had his eyes in the
back of his head that he chose the ugliest doxy in all Warwickshire to lie
withal? Good: he left her and gained the world of men. But his boywomen
are the women of a boy. Their life, thought, speech are lent them by males.
He chose badly? He was chosen, it seems to me. If others have their will
Ann hath a way. By cock, she was to blame. She put the comether on him,
sweet and twentysix. The greyeyed goddess who bends over the boy
Adonis, stooping to conquer, as prologue to the swelling act, is a boldfaced
Stratford wench who tumbles in a cornfield a lover younger than herself.
And my turn? When?
Come!
—Ryefield, Mr Best said brightly, gladly, raising his new book, gladly,
brightly.
He murmured then with blond delight for all:

Between the acres of the rye
These pretty countryfolk would lie.

Paris: the wellpleased pleaser.
A tall figure in bearded homespun rose from shadow and unveiled its
cooperative watch.
—I am afraid I am due at the Homestead.
Whither away? Exploitable ground.
—Are you going? John Eglinton’s active eyebrows asked. Shall we see
you at Moore’s tonight? Piper is coming.
—Piper! Mr Best piped. Is Piper back?
Peter Piper pecked a peck of pick of peck of pickled pepper.
—I don’t know if I can. Thursday. We have our meeting. If I can get
away in time.
Yogibogeybox in Dawson chambers. Isis Unveiled. Their Pali book we
tried to pawn. Crosslegged under an umbrel umbershoot he thrones an
Aztec logos, functioning on astral levels, their oversoul, mahamahatma. The
faithful hermetists await the light, ripe for chelaship, ringroundabout him.
Louis H. Victory. T. Caulfield Irwin. Lotus ladies tend them i’the eyes, their
pineal glands aglow. Filled with his god, he thrones, Buddh under plantain.
Gulfer of souls, engulfer. Hesouls, shesouls, shoals of souls. Engulfed with
wailing creecries, whirled, whirling, they bewail.
In quintessential triviality
For years in this fleshcase a shesoul dwelt.

—They say we are to have a literary surprise, the quaker librarian said,
friendly and earnest. Mr Russell, rumour has it, is gathering together a sheaf
of our younger poets’ verses. We are all looking forward anxiously.
Anxiously he glanced in the cone of lamplight where three faces, lighted,
shone.
See this. Remember.
Stephen looked down on a wide headless caubeen, hung on his
ashplanthandle over his knee. My casque and sword. Touch lightly with two
index fingers. Aristotle’s experiment. One or two? Necessity is that in virtue
of which it is impossible that one can be otherwise. Argal, one hat is one
hat.

Listen.
Young Colum and Starkey. George Roberts is doing the commercial part.
Longworth will give it a good puff in the Express. O, will he? I liked
Colum’s Drover. Yes, I think he has that queer thing genius. Do you think
he has genius really? Yeats admired his line: As in wild earth a Grecian
vase. Did he? I hope you’ll be able to come tonight. Malachi Mulligan is
coming too. Moore asked him to bring Haines. Did you hear Miss
Mitchell’s joke about Moore and Martyn? That Moore is Martyn’s wild
oats? Awfully clever, isn’t it? They remind one of Don Quixote and Sancho
Panza. Our national epic has yet to be written, Dr Sigerson says. Moore is
the man for it. A knight of the rueful countenance here in Dublin. With a
saffron kilt? O’Neill Russell? O, yes, he must speak the grand old tongue.
And his Dulcinea? James Stephens is doing some clever sketches. We are
becoming important, it seems.
Cordelia. Cordoglio. Lir’s loneliest daughter.
Nookshotten. Now your best French polish.
—Thank you very much, Mr Russell, Stephen said, rising. If you will be
so kind as to give the letter to Mr Norman...
—O, yes. If he considers it important it will go in. We have so much
correspondence.
—I understand, Stephen said. Thanks.
God ild you. The pigs’ paper. Bullockbefriending.
Synge has promised me an article for Dana too. Are we going to be read?
I feel we are. The Gaelic league wants something in Irish. I hope you will
come round tonight. Bring Starkey.
Stephen sat down.
The quaker librarian came from the leavetakers. Blushing, his mask said:
—Mr Dedalus, your views are most illuminating.
He creaked to and fro, tiptoing up nearer heaven by the altitude of a
chopine, and, covered by the noise of outgoing, said low:
—Is it your view, then, that she was not faithful to the poet?
Alarmed face asks me. Why did he come? Courtesy or an inward light?
—Where there is a reconciliation, Stephen said, there must have been
first a sundering.

—Yes.
Christfox in leather trews, hiding, a runaway in blighted treeforks, from
hue and cry. Knowing no vixen, walking lonely in the chase. Women he
won to him, tender people, a whore of Babylon, ladies of justices, bully
tapsters’ wives. Fox and geese. And in New Place a slack dishonoured body
that once was comely, once as sweet, as fresh as cinnamon, now her leaves
falling, all, bare, frighted of the narrow grave and unforgiven.
—Yes. So you think...
The door closed behind the outgoer.
Rest suddenly possessed the discreet vaulted cell, rest of warm and
brooding air.
A vestal’s lamp.
Here he ponders things that were not: what Cæsar would have lived to do
had he believed the soothsayer: what might have been: possibilities of the
possible as possible: things not known: what name Achilles bore when he
lived among women.
Coffined thoughts around me, in mummycases, embalmed in spice of
words. Thoth, god of libraries, a birdgod, moonycrowned. And I heard the
voice of that Egyptian highpriest. In painted chambers loaded with
tilebooks.
They are still. Once quick in the brains of men. Still: but an itch of death
is in them, to tell me in my ear a maudlin tale, urge me to wreak their will.
—Certainly, John Eglinton mused, of all great men he is the most
enigmatic. We know nothing but that he lived and suffered. Not even so
much. Others abide our question. A shadow hangs over all the rest.
—But Hamlet is so personal, isn’t it? Mr Best pleaded. I mean, a kind of
private paper, don’t you know, of his private life. I mean, I don’t care a
button, don’t you know, who is killed or who is guilty...
He rested an innocent book on the edge of the desk, smiling his defiance.
His private papers in the original. Ta an bad ar an tir. Taim in mo shagart.
Put beurla on it, littlejohn.
Quoth littlejohn Eglinton:
—I was prepared for paradoxes from what Malachi Mulligan told us but I
may as well warn you that if you want to shake my belief that Shakespeare

is Hamlet you have a stern task before you.
Bear with me.
Stephen withstood the bane of miscreant eyes glinting stern under
wrinkled brows. A basilisk. E quando vede l’uomo l’attosca. Messer
Brunetto, I thank thee for the word.
—As we, or mother Dana, weave and unweave our bodies, Stephen said,
from day to day, their molecules shuttled to and fro, so does the artist weave
and unweave his image. And as the mole on my right breast is where it was
when I was born, though all my body has been woven of new stuff time
after time, so through the ghost of the unquiet father the image of the
unliving son looks forth. In the intense instant of imagination, when the
mind, Shelley says, is a fading coal, that which I was is that which I am and
that which in possibility I may come to be. So in the future, the sister of the
past, I may see myself as I sit here now but by reflection from that which
then I shall be.
Drummond of Hawthornden helped you at that stile.
—Yes, Mr Best said youngly. I feel Hamlet quite young. The bitterness
might be from the father but the passages with Ophelia are surely from the
son.
Has the wrong sow by the lug. He is in my father. I am in his son.
—That mole is the last to go, Stephen said, laughing.
John Eglinton made a nothing pleasing mow.
—If that were the birthmark of genius, he said, genius would be a drug in
the market. The plays of Shakespeare’s later years which Renan admired so
much breathe another spirit.
—The spirit of reconciliation, the quaker librarian breathed.
—There can be no reconciliation, Stephen said, if there has not been a
sundering.
Said that.
—If you want to know what are the events which cast their shadow over
the hell of time of King Lear, Othello, Hamlet, Troilus and Cressida, look to
see when and how the shadow lifts. What softens the heart of a man,
shipwrecked in storms dire, Tried, like another Ulysses, Pericles, prince of
Tyre?

Head, redconecapped, buffeted, brineblinded.
—A child, a girl, placed in his arms, Marina.
—The leaning of sophists towards the bypaths of apocrypha is a constant
quantity, John Eglinton detected. The highroads are dreary but they lead to
the town.
Good Bacon: gone musty. Shakespeare Bacon’s wild oats.
Cypherjugglers going the highroads. Seekers on the great quest. What town,
good masters? Mummed in names: A. E., eon: Magee, John Eglinton. East
of the sun, west of the moon: Tir na n-og. Booted the twain and staved.
How many miles to Dublin?
Three score and ten, sir.
Will we be there by candlelight?

—Mr Brandes accepts it, Stephen said, as the first play of the closing
period.
—Does he? What does Mr Sidney Lee, or Mr Simon Lazarus as some
aver his name is, say of it?
—Marina, Stephen said, a child of storm, Miranda, a wonder, Perdita,
that which was lost. What was lost is given back to him: his daughter’s
child. My dearest wife, Pericles says, was like this maid. Will any man love
the daughter if he has not loved the mother?
—The art of being a grandfather, Mr Best gan murmur. L’art d’être
grand...
—Will he not see reborn in her, with the memory of his own youth
added, another image?
Do you know what you are talking about? Love, yes. Word known to all
men. Amor vero aliquid alicui bonum vult unde et ea quae concupiscimus ...
—His own image to a man with that queer thing genius is the standard of
all experience, material and moral. Such an appeal will touch him. The
images of other males of his blood will repel him. He will see in them
grotesque attempts of nature to foretell or to repeat himself.
The benign forehead of the quaker librarian enkindled rosily with hope.
—I hope Mr Dedalus will work out his theory for the enlightenment of
the public. And we ought to mention another Irish commentator, Mr George
Bernard Shaw. Nor should we forget Mr Frank Harris. His articles on

Shakespeare in the Saturday Review were surely brilliant. Oddly enough he
too draws for us an unhappy relation with the dark lady of the sonnets. The
favoured rival is William Herbert, earl of Pembroke. I own that if the poet
must be rejected such a rejection would seem more in harmony with—what
shall I say?—our notions of what ought not to have been.
Felicitously he ceased and held a meek head among them, auk’s egg,
prize of their fray.
He thous and thees her with grave husbandwords. Dost love, Miriam?
Dost love thy man?
—That may be too, Stephen said. There’s a saying of Goethe’s which Mr
Magee likes to quote. Beware of what you wish for in youth because you
will get it in middle life. Why does he send to one who is a buonaroba, a
bay where all men ride, a maid of honour with a scandalous girlhood, a
lordling to woo for him? He was himself a lord of language and had made
himself a coistrel gentleman and he had written Romeo and Juliet. Why?
Belief in himself has been untimely killed. He was overborne in a cornfield
first (ryefield, I should say) and he will never be a victor in his own eyes
after nor play victoriously the game of laugh and lie down. Assumed
dongiovannism will not save him. No later undoing will undo the first
undoing. The tusk of the boar has wounded him there where love lies
ableeding. If the shrew is worsted yet there remains to her woman’s
invisible weapon. There is, I feel in the words, some goad of the flesh
driving him into a new passion, a darker shadow of the first, darkening even
his own understanding of himself. A like fate awaits him and the two rages
commingle in a whirlpool.
They list. And in the porches of their ears I pour.
—The soul has been before stricken mortally, a poison poured in the
porch of a sleeping ear. But those who are done to death in sleep cannot
know the manner of their quell unless their Creator endow their souls with
that knowledge in the life to come. The poisoning and the beast with two
backs that urged it King Hamlet’s ghost could not know of were he not
endowed with knowledge by his creator. That is why the speech (his lean
unlovely English) is always turned elsewhere, backward. Ravisher and
ravished, what he would but would not, go with him from Lucrece’s
bluecircled ivory globes to Imogen’s breast, bare, with its mole
cinquespotted. He goes back, weary of the creation he has piled up to hide

him from himself, an old dog licking an old sore. But, because loss is his
gain, he passes on towards eternity in undiminished personality, untaught
by the wisdom he has written or by the laws he has revealed. His beaver is
up. He is a ghost, a shadow now, the wind by Elsinore’s rocks or what you
will, the sea’s voice, a voice heard only in the heart of him who is the
substance of his shadow, the son consubstantial with the father.
—Amen! was responded from the doorway.
Hast thou found me, O mine enemy?
Entr’acte.
A ribald face, sullen as a dean’s, Buck Mulligan came forward, then
blithe in motley, towards the greeting of their smiles. My telegram.
—You were speaking of the gaseous vertebrate, if I mistake not? he
asked of Stephen.
Primrosevested he greeted gaily with his doffed Panama as with a bauble.
They make him welcome. Was Du verlachst wirst Du noch dienen.
Brood of mockers: Photius, pseudomalachi, Johann Most.
He Who Himself begot middler the Holy Ghost and Himself sent
Himself, Agenbuyer, between Himself and others, Who, put upon by His
fiends, stripped and whipped, was nailed like bat to barndoor, starved on
crosstree, Who let Him bury, stood up, harrowed hell, fared into heaven and
there these nineteen hundred years sitteth on the right hand of His Own Self
but yet shall come in the latter day to doom the quick and dead when all the
quick shall be dead already.

He lifts his hands. Veils fall. O, flowers! Bells with bells with bells
aquiring.

—Yes, indeed, the quaker librarian said. A most instructive discussion.
Mr Mulligan, I’ll be bound, has his theory too of the play and of
Shakespeare. All sides of life should be represented.
He smiled on all sides equally.
Buck Mulligan thought, puzzled:
—Shakespeare? he said. I seem to know the name.
A flying sunny smile rayed in his loose features.
—To be sure, he said, remembering brightly. The chap that writes like
Synge.
Mr Best turned to him.
—Haines missed you, he said. Did you meet him? He’ll see you after at
the D. B. C. He’s gone to Gill’s to buy Hyde’s Lovesongs of Connacht.
—I came through the museum, Buck Mulligan said. Was he here?
—The bard’s fellowcountrymen, John Eglinton answered, are rather tired
perhaps of our brilliancies of theorising. I hear that an actress played
Hamlet for the fourhundredandeighth time last night in Dublin. Vining held
that the prince was a woman. Has no-one made him out to be an Irishman?
Judge Barton, I believe, is searching for some clues. He swears (His
Highness not His Lordship) by saint Patrick.
—The most brilliant of all is that story of Wilde’s, Mr Best said, lifting
his brilliant notebook. That Portrait of Mr W. H. where he proves that the
sonnets were written by a Willie Hughes, a man all hues.
—For Willie Hughes, is it not? the quaker librarian asked.
Or Hughie Wills? Mr William Himself. W. H.: who am I?
—I mean, for Willie Hughes, Mr Best said, amending his gloss easily. Of
course it’s all paradox, don’t you know, Hughes and hews and hues, the
colour, but it’s so typical the way he works it out. It’s the very essence of
Wilde, don’t you know. The light touch.
His glance touched their faces lightly as he smiled, a blond ephebe. Tame
essence of Wilde.
You’re darned witty. Three drams of usquebaugh you drank with Dan
Deasy’s ducats.
How much did I spend? O, a few shillings.

For a plump of pressmen. Humour wet and dry.
Wit. You would give your five wits for youth’s proud livery he pranks in.
Lineaments of gratified desire.
There be many mo. Take her for me. In pairing time. Jove, a cool ruttime
send them. Yea, turtledove her.
Eve. Naked wheatbellied sin. A snake coils her, fang in’s kiss.
—Do you think it is only a paradox? the quaker librarian was asking. The
mocker is never taken seriously when he is most serious.
They talked seriously of mocker’s seriousness.
Buck Mulligan’s again heavy face eyed Stephen awhile. Then, his head
wagging, he came near, drew a folded telegram from his pocket. His mobile
lips read, smiling with new delight.
—Telegram! he said. Wonderful inspiration! Telegram! A papal bull!
He sat on a corner of the unlit desk, reading aloud joyfully:
—The sentimentalist is he who would enjoy without incurring the
immense debtorship for a thing done. Signed: Dedalus. Where did you
launch it from? The kips? No. College Green. Have you drunk the four
quid? The aunt is going to call on your unsubstantial father. Telegram!
Malachi Mulligan, The Ship, lower Abbey street. O, you peerless mummer!
O, you priestified Kinchite!
Joyfully he thrust message and envelope into a pocket but keened in a
querulous brogue:
—It’s what I’m telling you, mister honey, it’s queer and sick we were,
Haines and myself, the time himself brought it in. ’Twas murmur we did for
a gallus potion would rouse a friar, I’m thinking, and he limp with leching.
And we one hour and two hours and three hours in Connery’s sitting civil
waiting for pints apiece.
He wailed:
—And we to be there, mavrone, and you to be unbeknownst sending us
your conglomerations the way we to have our tongues out a yard long like
the drouthy clerics do be fainting for a pussful.
Stephen laughed.
Quickly, warningfully Buck Mulligan bent down.

—The tramper Synge is looking for you, he said, to murder you. He
heard you pissed on his halldoor in Glasthule. He’s out in pampooties to
murder you.
—Me! Stephen exclaimed. That was your contribution to literature.
Buck Mulligan gleefully bent back, laughing to the dark eavesdropping
ceiling.
—Murder you! he laughed.
Harsh gargoyle face that warred against me over our mess of hash of
lights in rue Saint-André-des-Arts. In words of words for words, palabras.
Oisin with Patrick. Faunman he met in Clamart woods, brandishing a
winebottle. C’est vendredi saint! Murthering Irish. His image, wandering,
he met. I mine. I met a fool i’the forest.
—Mr Lyster, an attendant said from the door ajar.
—... in which everyone can find his own. So Mr Justice Madden in his
Diary of Master William Silence has found the hunting terms... Yes? What is
it?
—There’s a gentleman here, sir, the attendant said, coming forward and
offering a card. From the Freeman. He wants to see the files of the Kilkenny
People for last year.
—Certainly, certainly, certainly. Is the gentleman?...
He took the eager card, glanced, not saw, laid down unglanced, looked,
asked, creaked, asked:
—Is he?... O, there!
Brisk in a galliard he was off, out. In the daylit corridor he talked with
voluble pains of zeal, in duty bound, most fair, most kind, most honest
broadbrim.
—This gentleman? Freeman’s Journal? Kilkenny People? To be sure.
Good day, sir. Kilkenny... We have certainly...
A patient silhouette waited, listening.
—All the leading provincial... Northern Whig, Cork Examiner,
Enniscorthy Guardian, 1903... Will you please?... Evans, conduct this
gentleman... If you just follow the atten... Or, please allow me... This way...
Please, sir...

Voluble, dutiful, he led the way to all the provincial papers, a bowing
dark figure following his hasty heels.
The door closed.
—The sheeny! Buck Mulligan cried.
He jumped up and snatched the card.
—What’s his name? Ikey Moses? Bloom.
He rattled on:
—Jehovah, collector of prepuces, is no more. I found him over in the
museum where I went to hail the foamborn Aphrodite. The Greek mouth
that has never been twisted in prayer. Every day we must do homage to her.
Life of life, thy lips enkindle.
Suddenly he turned to Stephen:
—He knows you. He knows your old fellow. O, I fear me, he is Greeker
than the Greeks. His pale Galilean eyes were upon her mesial groove. Venus
Kallipyge. O, the thunder of those loins! The god pursuing the maiden hid.
—We want to hear more, John Eglinton decided with Mr Best’s approval.
We begin to be interested in Mrs S. Till now we had thought of her, if at all,
as a patient Griselda, a Penelope stayathome.
—Antisthenes, pupil of Gorgias, Stephen said, took the palm of beauty
from Kyrios Menelaus’ brooddam, Argive Helen, the wooden mare of Troy
in whom a score of heroes slept, and handed it to poor Penelope. Twenty
years he lived in London and, during part of that time, he drew a salary
equal to that of the lord chancellor of Ireland. His life was rich. His art,
more than the art of feudalism as Walt Whitman called it, is the art of
surfeit. Hot herringpies, green mugs of sack, honeysauces, sugar of roses,
marchpane, gooseberried pigeons, ringocandies. Sir Walter Raleigh, when
they arrested him, had half a million francs on his back including a pair of
fancy stays. The gombeenwoman Eliza Tudor had underlinen enough to vie
with her of Sheba. Twenty years he dallied there between conjugial love
and its chaste delights and scortatory love and its foul pleasures. You know
Manningham’s story of the burgher’s wife who bade Dick Burbage to her
bed after she had seen him in Richard III and how Shakespeare,
overhearing, without more ado about nothing, took the cow by the horns
and, when Burbage came knocking at the gate, answered from the capon’s
blankets: William the conqueror came before Richard III. And the gay lakin,

mistress Fitton, mount and cry O, and his dainty birdsnies, lady Penelope
Rich, a clean quality woman is suited for a player, and the punks of the
bankside, a penny a time.
Cours la Reine. Encore vingt sous. Nous ferons de petites cochonneries.
Minette? Tu veux?
—The height of fine society. And sir William Davenant of Oxford’s
mother with her cup of canary for any cockcanary.
Buck Mulligan, his pious eyes upturned, prayed:
—Blessed Margaret Mary Anycock!
—And Harry of six wives’ daughter. And other lady friends from
neighbour seats as Lawn Tennyson, gentleman poet, sings. But all those
twenty years what do you suppose poor Penelope in Stratford was doing
behind the diamond panes?
Do and do. Thing done. In a rosery of Fetter lane of Gerard, herbalist, he
walks, greyedauburn. An azured harebell like her veins. Lids of Juno’s eyes,
violets. He walks. One life is all. One body. Do. But do. Afar, in a reek of
lust and squalor, hands are laid on whiteness.
Buck Mulligan rapped John Eglinton’s desk sharply.
—Whom do you suspect? he challenged.
—Say that he is the spurned lover in the sonnets. Once spurned twice
spurned. But the court wanton spurned him for a lord, his dearmylove.
Love that dare not speak its name.
—As an Englishman, you mean, John sturdy Eglinton put in, he loved a
lord.
Old wall where sudden lizards flash. At Charenton I watched them.
—It seems so, Stephen said, when he wants to do for him, and for all
other and singular uneared wombs, the holy office an ostler does for the
stallion. Maybe, like Socrates, he had a midwife to mother as he had a
shrew to wife. But she, the giglot wanton, did not break a bedvow. Two
deeds are rank in that ghost’s mind: a broken vow and the dullbrained yokel
on whom her favour has declined, deceased husband’s brother. Sweet Ann, I
take it, was hot in the blood. Once a wooer, twice a wooer.
Stephen turned boldly in his chair.

—The burden of proof is with you not with me, he said frowning. If you
deny that in the fifth scene of Hamlet he has branded her with infamy tell
me why there is no mention of her during the thirtyfour years between the
day she married him and the day she buried him. All those women saw their
men down and under: Mary, her goodman John, Ann, her poor dear Willun,
when he went and died on her, raging that he was the first to go, Joan, her
four brothers, Judith, her husband and all her sons, Susan, her husband too,
while Susan’s daughter, Elizabeth, to use granddaddy’s words, wed her
second, having killed her first.
O, yes, mention there is. In the years when he was living richly in royal
London to pay a debt she had to borrow forty shillings from her father’s
shepherd. Explain you then. Explain the swansong too wherein he has
commended her to posterity.
He faced their silence.

To whom thus Eglinton: You mean the will.
But that has been explained, I believe, by jurists.
She was entitled to her widow’s dower
At common law. His legal knowledge was great
Our judges tell us.
Him Satan fleers,
Mocker:
And therefore he left out her name
From the first draft but he did not leave out
The presents for his granddaughter, for his daughters,
For his sister, for his old cronies in Stratford
And in London. And therefore when he was urged,
As I believe, to name her
He left her his
Secondbest
Bed.

Punkt.

Leftherhis
Secondbest
Leftherhis

Bestabed
Secabest
Leftabed.

Woa!
—Pretty countryfolk had few chattels then, John Eglinton observed, as
they have still if our peasant plays are true to type.
—He was a rich country gentleman, Stephen said, with a coat of arms
and landed estate at Stratford and a house in Ireland yard, a capitalist
shareholder, a bill promoter, a tithefarmer. Why did he not leave her his best
bed if he wished her to snore away the rest of her nights in peace?
—It is clear that there were two beds, a best and a secondbest, Mr
Secondbest Best said finely.
—Separatio a mensa et a thalamo, bettered Buck Mulligan and was
smiled on.
—Antiquity mentions famous beds, Second Eglinton puckered,
bedsmiling. Let me think.
—Antiquity mentions that Stagyrite schoolurchin and bald heathen sage,
Stephen said, who when dying in exile frees and endows his slaves, pays
tribute to his elders, wills to be laid in earth near the bones of his dead wife
and bids his friends be kind to an old mistress (don’t forget Nell Gwynn
Herpyllis) and let her live in his villa.
—Do you mean he died so? Mr Best asked with slight concern. I mean...
—He died dead drunk, Buck Mulligan capped. A quart of ale is a dish for
a king. O, I must tell you what Dowden said!
—What? asked Besteglinton.
William Shakespeare and company, limited. The people’s William. For
terms apply: E. Dowden, Highfield house...
—Lovely! Buck Mulligan suspired amorously. I asked him what he
thought of the charge of pederasty brought against the bard. He lifted his
hands and said: All we can say is that life ran very high in those days.
Lovely!
Catamite.

—The sense of beauty leads us astray, said beautifulinsadness Best to
ugling Eglinton.
Steadfast John replied severe:
—The doctor can tell us what those words mean. You cannot eat your
cake and have it.
Sayest thou so? Will they wrest from us, from me, the palm of beauty?
—And the sense of property, Stephen said. He drew Shylock out of his
own long pocket. The son of a maltjobber and moneylender he was himself
a cornjobber and moneylender, with ten tods of corn hoarded in the famine
riots. His borrowers are no doubt those divers of worship mentioned by
Chettle Falstaff who reported his uprightness of dealing. He sued a
fellowplayer for the price of a few bags of malt and exacted his pound of
flesh in interest for every money lent. How else could Aubrey’s ostler and
callboy get rich quick? All events brought grist to his mill. Shylock chimes
with the jewbaiting that followed the hanging and quartering of the queen’s
leech Lopez, his jew’s heart being plucked forth while the sheeny was yet
alive: Hamlet and Macbeth with the coming to the throne of a Scotch
philosophaster with a turn for witchroasting. The lost armada is his jeer in
Love’s Labour Lost. His pageants, the histories, sail fullbellied on a tide of
Mafeking enthusiasm. Warwickshire jesuits are tried and we have a porter’s
theory of equivocation. The Sea Venture comes home from Bermudas and
the play Renan admired is written with Patsy Caliban, our American cousin.
The sugared sonnets follow Sidney’s. As for fay Elizabeth, otherwise
carrotty Bess, the gross virgin who inspired The Merry Wives of Windsor,
let some meinherr from Almany grope his life long for deephid meanings in
the depths of the buckbasket.
I think you’re getting on very nicely. Just mix up a mixture of
theolologicophilolological. Mingo, minxi, mictum, mingere.
—Prove that he was a jew, John Eglinton dared, expectantly. Your dean
of studies holds he was a holy Roman.
Sufflaminandus sum.
—He was made in Germany, Stephen replied, as the champion French
polisher of Italian scandals.
—A myriadminded man, Mr Best reminded. Coleridge called him
myriadminded.

Amplius. In societate humana hoc est maxime necessarium ut sit amicitia
inter multos.
—Saint Thomas, Stephen began...
—Ora pro nobis, Monk Mulligan groaned, sinking to a chair.
There he keened a wailing rune.
—Pogue mahone! Acushla machree! It’s destroyed we are from this day!
It’s destroyed we are surely!
All smiled their smiles.
—Saint Thomas, Stephen smiling said, whose gorbellied works I enjoy
reading in the original, writing of incest from a standpoint different from
that of the new Viennese school Mr Magee spoke of, likens it in his wise
and curious way to an avarice of the emotions. He means that the love so
given to one near in blood is covetously withheld from some stranger who,
it may be, hungers for it. Jews, whom christians tax with avarice, are of all
races the most given to intermarriage. Accusations are made in anger. The
christian laws which built up the hoards of the jews (for whom, as for the
lollards, storm was shelter) bound their affections too with hoops of steel.
Whether these be sins or virtues old Nobodaddy will tell us at doomsday
leet. But a man who holds so tightly to what he calls his rights over what he
calls his debts will hold tightly also to what he calls his rights over her
whom he calls his wife. No sir smile neighbour shall covet his ox or his
wife or his manservant or his maidservant or his jackass.
—Or his jennyass, Buck Mulligan antiphoned.
—Gentle Will is being roughly handled, gentle Mr Best said gently.
—Which will? gagged sweetly Buck Mulligan. We are getting mixed.
—The will to live, John Eglinton philosophised, for poor Ann, Will’s
widow, is the will to die.
—Requiescat! Stephen prayed.
What of all the will to do?
It has vanished long ago...

—She lies laid out in stark stiffness in that secondbest bed, the mobled
queen, even though you prove that a bed in those days was as rare as a
motorcar is now and that its carvings were the wonder of seven parishes. In
old age she takes up with gospellers (one stayed with her at New Place and

drank a quart of sack the town council paid for but in which bed he slept it
skills not to ask) and heard she had a soul. She read or had read to her his
chapbooks preferring them to the Merry Wives and, loosing her nightly
waters on the jordan, she thought over Hooks and Eyes for Believers’
Breeches and The most Spiritual Snuffbox to Make the Most Devout Souls
Sneeze. Venus has twisted her lips in prayer. Agenbite of inwit: remorse of
conscience. It is an age of exhausted whoredom groping for its god.
—History shows that to be true, inquit Eglintonus Chronolologos. The
ages succeed one another. But we have it on high authority that a man’s
worst enemies shall be those of his own house and family. I feel that Russell
is right. What do we care for his wife or father? I should say that only
family poets have family lives. Falstaff was not a family man. I feel that the
fat knight is his supreme creation.
Lean, he lay back. Shy, deny thy kindred, the unco guid. Shy, supping
with the godless, he sneaks the cup. A sire in Ultonian Antrim bade it him.
Visits him here on quarter days. Mr Magee, sir, there’s a gentleman to see
you. Me? Says he’s your father, sir. Give me my Wordsworth. Enter Magee
Mor Matthew, a rugged rough rugheaded kern, in strossers with a buttoned
codpiece, his nether stocks bemired with clauber of ten forests, a wand of
wilding in his hand.
Your own? He knows your old fellow. The widower.
Hurrying to her squalid deathlair from gay Paris on the quayside I
touched his hand. The voice, new warmth, speaking. Dr Bob Kenny is
attending her. The eyes that wish me well. But do not know me.
—A father, Stephen said, battling against hopelessness, is a necessary
evil. He wrote the play in the months that followed his father’s death. If you
hold that he, a greying man with two marriageable daughters, with
thirtyfive years of life, nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita, with fifty of
experience, is the beardless undergraduate from Wittenberg then you must
hold that his seventyyear old mother is the lustful queen. No. The corpse of
John Shakespeare does not walk the night. From hour to hour it rots and
rots. He rests, disarmed of fatherhood, having devised that mystical estate
upon his son. Boccaccio’s Calandrino was the first and last man who felt
himself with child. Fatherhood, in the sense of conscious begetting, is
unknown to man. It is a mystical estate, an apostolic succession, from only
begetter to only begotten. On that mystery and not on the madonna which

the cunning Italian intellect flung to the mob of Europe the church is
founded and founded irremovably because founded, like the world, macro
and microcosm, upon the void. Upon incertitude, upon unlikelihood. Amor
matris, subjective and objective genitive, may be the only true thing in life.
Paternity may be a legal fiction. Who is the father of any son that any son
should love him or he any son?
What the hell are you driving at?
I know. Shut up. Blast you. I have reasons.
Amplius. Adhuc. Iterum. Postea.
Are you condemned to do this?
—They are sundered by a bodily shame so steadfast that the criminal
annals of the world, stained with all other incests and bestialities, hardly
record its breach. Sons with mothers, sires with daughters, lesbic sisters,
loves that dare not speak their name, nephews with grandmothers, jailbirds
with keyholes, queens with prize bulls. The son unborn mars beauty: born,
he brings pain, divides affection, increases care. He is a new male: his
growth is his father’s decline, his youth his father’s envy, his friend his
father’s enemy.
In rue Monsieur-le-Prince I thought it.
—What links them in nature? An instant of blind rut.
Am I a father? If I were?
Shrunken uncertain hand.
—Sabellius, the African, subtlest heresiarch of all the beasts of the field,
held that the Father was Himself His Own Son. The bulldog of Aquin, with
whom no word shall be impossible, refutes him. Well: if the father who has
not a son be not a father can the son who has not a father be a son? When
Rutlandbaconsouthamptonshakespeare or another poet of the same name in
the comedy of errors wrote Hamlet he was not the father of his own son
merely but, being no more a son, he was and felt himself the father of all his
race, the father of his own grandfather, the father of his unborn grandson
who, by the same token, never was born, for nature, as Mr Magee
understands her, abhors perfection.
Eglintoneyes, quick with pleasure, looked up shybrightly. Gladly
glancing, a merry puritan, through the twisted eglantine.

Flatter. Rarely. But flatter.
—Himself his own father, Sonmulligan told himself. Wait. I am big with
child. I have an unborn child in my brain. Pallas Athena! A play! The play’s
the thing! Let me parturiate!
He clasped his paunchbrow with both birthaiding hands.
—As for his family, Stephen said, his mother’s name lives in the forest of
Arden. Her death brought from him the scene with Volumnia in Coriolanus.
His boyson’s death is the deathscene of young Arthur in King John. Hamlet,
the black prince, is Hamnet Shakespeare. Who the girls in The Tempest, in
Pericles, in Winter’s Tale are we know. Who Cleopatra, fleshpot of Egypt,
and Cressid and Venus are we may guess. But there is another member of
his family who is recorded.
—The plot thickens, John Eglinton said.
The quaker librarian, quaking, tiptoed in, quake, his mask, quake, with
haste, quake, quack.
Door closed. Cell. Day.
They list. Three. They.
I you he they.
Come, mess.
STEPHEN: He had three brothers, Gilbert, Edmund, Richard. Gilbert in
his old age told some cavaliers he got a pass for nowt from Maister
Gatherer one time mass he did and he seen his brud Maister Wull the
playwriter up in Lunnon in a wrastling play wud a man on’s back. The
playhouse sausage filled Gilbert’s soul. He is nowhere: but an Edmund and
a Richard are recorded in the works of sweet William.
MAGEEGLINJOHN: Names! What’s in a name?
BEST: That is my name, Richard, don’t you know. I hope you are going
to say a good word for Richard, don’t you know, for my sake. (Laughter)
BUCKMULLIGAN: (Piano, diminuendo)
Then outspoke medical Dick
To his comrade medical Davy...

STEPHEN: In his trinity of black Wills, the villain shakebags, Iago,
Richard Crookback, Edmund in King Lear, two bear the wicked uncles’

names. Nay, that last play was written or being written while his brother
Edmund lay dying in Southwark.
BEST: I hope Edmund is going to catch it. I don’t want Richard, my
name ...
(Laughter)
QUAKERLYSTER: (A tempo) But he that filches from me my good
name...
STEPHEN: (Stringendo) He has hidden his own name, a fair name,
William, in the plays, a super here, a clown there, as a painter of old Italy
set his face in a dark corner of his canvas. He has revealed it in the sonnets
where there is Will in overplus. Like John o’Gaunt his name is dear to him,
as dear as the coat and crest he toadied for, on a bend sable a spear or
steeled argent, honorificabilitudinitatibus, dearer than his glory of greatest
shakescene in the country. What’s in a name? That is what we ask ourselves
in childhood when we write the name that we are told is ours. A star, a
daystar, a firedrake, rose at his birth. It shone by day in the heavens alone,
brighter than Venus in the night, and by night it shone over delta in
Cassiopeia, the recumbent constellation which is the signature of his initial
among the stars. His eyes watched it, lowlying on the horizon, eastward of
the bear, as he walked by the slumberous summer fields at midnight
returning from Shottery and from her arms.
Both satisfied. I too.
Don’t tell them he was nine years old when it was quenched.
And from her arms.
Wait to be wooed and won. Ay, meacock. Who will woo you?
Read the skies. Autontimorumenos. Bous Stephanoumenos. Where’s your
configuration? Stephen, Stephen, cut the bread even. S. D: sua donna. Già:
di lui. Gelindo risolve di non amare S. D.
—What is that, Mr Dedalus? the quaker librarian asked. Was it a celestial
phenomenon?
—A star by night, Stephen said. A pillar of the cloud by day.
What more’s to speak?
Stephen looked on his hat, his stick, his boots.

Stephanos, my crown. My sword. His boots are spoiling the shape of my
feet. Buy a pair. Holes in my socks. Handkerchief too.
—You make good use of the name, John Eglinton allowed. Your own
name is strange enough. I suppose it explains your fantastical humour.
Me, Magee and Mulligan.
Fabulous artificer. The hawklike man. You flew. Whereto? Newhaven-
Dieppe, steerage passenger. Paris and back. Lapwing. Icarus. Pater, ait.
Seabedabbled, fallen, weltering. Lapwing you are. Lapwing be.
Mr Best eagerquietly lifted his book to say:
—That’s very interesting because that brother motive, don’t you know,
we find also in the old Irish myths. Just what you say. The three brothers
Shakespeare. In Grimm too, don’t you know, the fairytales. The third
brother that always marries the sleeping beauty and wins the best prize.
Best of Best brothers. Good, better, best.
The quaker librarian springhalted near.
—I should like to know, he said, which brother you... I understand you to
suggest there was misconduct with one of the brothers... But perhaps I am
anticipating?
He caught himself in the act: looked at all: refrained.
An attendant from the doorway called:
—Mr Lyster! Father Dineen wants...
—O, Father Dineen! Directly.
Swiftly rectly creaking rectly rectly he was rectly gone.
John Eglinton touched the foil.
—Come, he said. Let us hear what you have to say of Richard and
Edmund. You kept them for the last, didn’t you?
—In asking you to remember those two noble kinsmen nuncle Richie and
nuncle Edmund, Stephen answered, I feel I am asking too much perhaps. A
brother is as easily forgotten as an umbrella.
Lapwing.
Where is your brother? Apothecaries’ hall. My whetstone. Him, then
Cranly, Mulligan: now these. Speech, speech. But act. Act speech. They
mock to try you. Act. Be acted on.

Lapwing.
I am tired of my voice, the voice of Esau. My kingdom for a drink.
On.
—You will say those names were already in the chronicles from which he
took the stuff of his plays. Why did he take them rather than others?
Richard, a whoreson crookback, misbegotten, makes love to a widowed
Ann (what’s in a name?), woos and wins her, a whoreson merry widow.
Richard the conqueror, third brother, came after William the conquered. The
other four acts of that play hang limply from that first. Of all his kings
Richard is the only king unshielded by Shakespeare’s reverence, the angel
of the world. Why is the underplot of King Lear in which Edmund figures
lifted out of Sidney’s Arcadia and spatchcocked on to a Celtic legend older
than history?
—That was Will’s way, John Eglinton defended. We should not now
combine a Norse saga with an excerpt from a novel by George Meredith.
Que voulez-vous? Moore would say. He puts Bohemia on the seacoast and
makes Ulysses quote Aristotle.
—Why? Stephen answered himself. Because the theme of the false or the
usurping or the adulterous brother or all three in one is to Shakespeare,
what the poor are not, always with him. The note of banishment,
banishment from the heart, banishment from home, sounds uninterruptedly
from The Two Gentlemen of Verona onward till Prospero breaks his staff,
buries it certain fathoms in the earth and drowns his book. It doubles itself
in the middle of his life, reflects itself in another, repeats itself, protasis,
epitasis, catastasis, catastrophe. It repeats itself again when he is near the
grave, when his married daughter Susan, chip of the old block, is accused of
adultery. But it was the original sin that darkened his understanding,
weakened his will and left in him a strong inclination to evil. The words are
those of my lords bishops of Maynooth. An original sin and, like original
sin, committed by another in whose sin he too has sinned. It is between the
lines of his last written words, it is petrified on his tombstone under which
her four bones are not to be laid. Age has not withered it. Beauty and peace
have not done it away. It is in infinite variety everywhere in the world he
has created, in Much Ado about Nothing, twice in As you like It, in The
Tempest, in Hamlet, in Measure for Measure—and in all the other plays
which I have not read.

He laughed to free his mind from his mind’s bondage.
Judge Eglinton summed up.
—The truth is midway, he affirmed. He is the ghost and the prince. He is
all in all.
—He is, Stephen said. The boy of act one is the mature man of act five.
All in all. In Cymbeline, in Othello he is bawd and cuckold. He acts and is
acted on. Lover of an ideal or a perversion, like José he kills the real
Carmen. His unremitting intellect is the hornmad Iago ceaselessly willing
that the moor in him shall suffer.
—Cuckoo! Cuckoo! Cuck Mulligan clucked lewdly. O word of fear!
Dark dome received, reverbed.
—And what a character is Iago! undaunted John Eglinton exclaimed.
When all is said Dumas fils (or is it Dumas père?) is right. After God
Shakespeare has created most.
—Man delights him not nor woman neither, Stephen said. He returns
after a life of absence to that spot of earth where he was born, where he has
always been, man and boy, a silent witness and there, his journey of life
ended, he plants his mulberrytree in the earth. Then dies. The motion is
ended. Gravediggers bury Hamlet père and Hamlet fils. A king and a prince
at last in death, with incidental music. And, what though murdered and
betrayed, bewept by all frail tender hearts for, Dane or Dubliner, sorrow for
the dead is the only husband from whom they refuse to be divorced. If you
like the epilogue look long on it: prosperous Prospero, the good man
rewarded, Lizzie, grandpa’s lump of love, and nuncle Richie, the bad man
taken off by poetic justice to the place where the bad niggers go. Strong
curtain. He found in the world without as actual what was in his world
within as possible. Maeterlinck says: If Socrates leave his house today he
will find the sage seated on his doorstep. If Judas go forth tonight it is to
Judas his steps will tend. Every life is many days, day after day. We walk
through ourselves, meeting robbers, ghosts, giants, old men, young men,
wives, widows, brothers-in-love, but always meeting ourselves. The
playwright who wrote the folio of this world and wrote it badly (He gave us
light first and the sun two days later), the lord of things as they are whom
the most Roman of catholics call dio boia, hangman god, is doubtless all in
all in all of us, ostler and butcher, and would be bawd and cuckold too but

that in the economy of heaven, foretold by Hamlet, there are no more
marriages, glorified man, an androgynous angel, being a wife unto himself.
—Eureka! Buck Mulligan cried. Eureka!
Suddenly happied he jumped up and reached in a stride John Eglinton’s
desk.
—May I? he said. The Lord has spoken to Malachi.
He began to scribble on a slip of paper.
Take some slips from the counter going out.
—Those who are married, Mr Best, douce herald, said, all save one, shall
live. The rest shall keep as they are.
He laughed, unmarried, at Eglinton Johannes, of arts a bachelor.
Unwed, unfancied, ware of wiles, they fingerponder nightly each his
variorum edition of The Taming of the Shrew.
—You are a delusion, said roundly John Eglinton to Stephen. You have
brought us all this way to show us a French triangle. Do you believe your
own theory?
—No, Stephen said promptly.
—Are you going to write it? Mr Best asked. You ought to make it a
dialogue, don’t you know, like the Platonic dialogues Wilde wrote.
John Eclecticon doubly smiled.
—Well, in that case, he said, I don’t see why you should expect payment
for it since you don’t believe it yourself. Dowden believes there is some
mystery in Hamlet but will say no more. Herr Bleibtreu, the man Piper met
in Berlin, who is working up that Rutland theory, believes that the secret is
hidden in the Stratford monument. He is going to visit the present duke,
Piper says, and prove to him that his ancestor wrote the plays. It will come
as a surprise to his grace. But he believes his theory.
I believe, O Lord, help my unbelief. That is, help me to believe or help
me to unbelieve? Who helps to believe? Egomen. Who to unbelieve? Other
chap.
—You are the only contributor to Dana who asks for pieces of silver.
Then I don’t know about the next number. Fred Ryan wants space for an
article on economics.
Fraidrine. Two pieces of silver he lent me. Tide you over. Economics.

—For a guinea, Stephen said, you can publish this interview.
Buck Mulligan stood up from his laughing scribbling, laughing: and then
gravely said, honeying malice:
—I called upon the bard Kinch at his summer residence in upper
Mecklenburgh street and found him deep in the study of the Summa contra
Gentiles in the company of two gonorrheal ladies, Fresh Nelly and Rosalie,
the coalquay whore.
He broke away.
—Come, Kinch. Come, wandering Ængus of the birds.
Come, Kinch. You have eaten all we left. Ay. I will serve you your orts
and offals.
Stephen rose.
Life is many days. This will end.
—We shall see you tonight, John Eglinton said. Notre ami Moore says
Malachi Mulligan must be there.
Buck Mulligan flaunted his slip and panama.
—Monsieur Moore, he said, lecturer on French letters to the youth of
Ireland. I’ll be there. Come, Kinch, the bards must drink. Can you walk
straight?
Laughing, he...
Swill till eleven. Irish nights entertainment.
Lubber...
Stephen followed a lubber...
One day in the national library we had a discussion. Shakes. After. His
lub back: I followed. I gall his kibe.
Stephen, greeting, then all amort, followed a lubber jester, a wellkempt
head, newbarbered, out of the vaulted cell into a shattering daylight of no
thought.
What have I learned? Of them? Of me?
Walk like Haines now.
The constant readers’ room. In the readers’ book Cashel Boyle O’Connor
Fitzmaurice Tisdall Farrell parafes his polysyllables. Item: was Hamlet
mad? The quaker’s pate godlily with a priesteen in booktalk.

—O please do, sir... I shall be most pleased...
Amused Buck Mulligan mused in pleasant murmur with himself,
selfnodding:
—A pleased bottom.
The turnstile.
Is that?... Blueribboned hat... Idly writing... What? Looked?...
The curving balustrade: smoothsliding Mincius.
Puck Mulligan, panamahelmeted, went step by step, iambing, trolling:
John Eglinton, my jo, John,
Why won’t you wed a wife?

He spluttered to the air:
—O, the chinless Chinaman! Chin Chon Eg Lin Ton. We went over to
their playbox, Haines and I, the plumbers’ hall. Our players are creating a
new art for Europe like the Greeks or M. Maeterlinck. Abbey Theatre! I
smell the pubic sweat of monks.
He spat blank.
Forgot: any more than he forgot the whipping lousy Lucy gave him. And
left the femme de trente ans. And why no other children born? And his first
child a girl?
Afterwit. Go back.
The dour recluse still there (he has his cake) and the douce youngling,
minion of pleasure, Phedo’s toyable fair hair.
Eh... I just eh... wanted... I forgot... he...
—Longworth and M’Curdy Atkinson were there...
Puck Mulligan footed featly, trilling:
I hardly hear the purlieu cry
Or a Tommy talk as I pass one by
Before my thoughts begin to run
On F. M’Curdy Atkinson,
The same that had the wooden leg
And that filibustering filibeg
That never dared to slake his drouth,
Magee that had the chinless mouth.
Being afraid to marry on earth
They masturbated for all they were worth.

Jest on. Know thyself.
Halted, below me, a quizzer looks at me. I halt.
—Mournful mummer, Buck Mulligan moaned. Synge has left off
wearing black to be like nature. Only crows, priests and English coal are
black.
A laugh tripped over his lips.
—Longworth is awfully sick, he said, after what you wrote about that old
hake Gregory. O you inquisitional drunken jewjesuit! She gets you a job on
the paper and then you go and slate her drivel to Jaysus. Couldn’t you do
the Yeats touch?
He went on and down, mopping, chanting with waving graceful arms:
—The most beautiful book that has come out of our country in my time.
One thinks of Homer.
He stopped at the stairfoot.
—I have conceived a play for the mummers, he said solemnly.
The pillared Moorish hall, shadows entwined. Gone the nine men’s
morrice with caps of indices.
In sweetly varying voices Buck Mulligan read his tablet:

Everyman His Own Wife
or
A Honeymoon in the Hand
(a national immorality in three orgasms)
by
Ballocky Mulligan.

He turned a happy patch’s smirk to Stephen, saying:
—The disguise, I fear, is thin. But listen.
He read, marcato:
—Characters:
TOBY TOSTOFF (a ruined Pole)
CRAB (a bushranger)
MEDICAL DICK )
and ) (two birds with one stone)
MEDICAL DAVY )

MOTHER GROGAN (a watercarrier)
FRESH NELLY
and
ROSALIE (the coalquay whore).

He laughed, lolling a to and fro head, walking on, followed by Stephen:
and mirthfully he told the shadows, souls of men:
—O, the night in the Camden hall when the daughters of Erin had to lift
their skirts to step over you as you lay in your mulberrycoloured,
multicoloured, multitudinous vomit!
—The most innocent son of Erin, Stephen said, for whom they ever lifted
them.
About to pass through the doorway, feeling one behind, he stood aside.
Part. The moment is now. Where then? If Socrates leave his house today,
if Judas go forth tonight. Why? That lies in space which I in time must
come to, ineluctably.
My will: his will that fronts me. Seas between.
A man passed out between them, bowing, greeting.
—Good day again, Buck Mulligan said.
The portico.
Here I watched the birds for augury. Ængus of the birds. They go, they
come. Last night I flew. Easily flew. Men wondered. Street of harlots after.
A creamfruit melon he held to me. In. You will see.
—The wandering jew, Buck Mulligan whispered with clown’s awe. Did
you see his eye? He looked upon you to lust after you. I fear thee, ancient
mariner. O, Kinch, thou art in peril. Get thee a breechpad.
Manner of Oxenford.
Day. Wheelbarrow sun over arch of bridge.
A dark back went before them, step of a pard, down, out by the gateway,
under portcullis barbs.
They followed.
Offend me still. Speak on.
Kind air defined the coigns of houses in Kildare street. No birds. Frail
from the housetops two plumes of smoke ascended, pluming, and in a flaw
of softness softly were blown.

Cease to strive. Peace of the druid priests of Cymbeline: hierophantic:
from wide earth an altar.
Laud we the gods
And let our crooked smokes climb to their nostrils
From our bless’d altars.