Ulysses Part 13

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 eyeb.a.l.l.s 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 amplius 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, a.s.sisting 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) tw.a.n.g 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 G.o.dd.a.m.ned idiot! Hray! No-one saw: tell no-one. Books you were going to write with letters for t.i.tles.

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, razorsh.e.l.ls, squeaking pebbles, that on the unnumbered pebbles beats, wood sieved by the s.h.i.+pworm, 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 sh.o.r.e; at the land a maze of dark cunning nets; farther away chalkscrawled backdoors and on the higher beach a dryingline with two crucified s.h.i.+rts. Ringsend: wigwams of brown steersmen and master mariners. Human sh.e.l.ls.

He halted. I have pa.s.sed 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 Jesus_ by M. Leo Taxil. Lent it to his friend.

_--C'est tordant, vous savez. Moi, je suis socialiste. Je ne crois pas en l'existence de Dieu. Faut pas le dire a mon p-re._

_--Il croit?_

_--Mon pere, oui._

_Schluss_. He laps.

My Latin quarter hat. G.o.d, 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 s.h.i.+llings, the banging door of the post office slammed in your face by the usher. Hunger toothache. _Encore deux minutes_. Look clock. Must get. _Ferme_. Hired dog! Shoot him to b.l.o.o.d.y bits with a bang shotgun, bits man spattered walls all bra.s.s b.u.t.tons. 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 Columba.n.u.s. 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 breton_. 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 setier!_ A jet of coffee steam from the burnished caldron. She serves me at his beck. _Il est irlandais. Hollandais? Non fromage. Deux irlandais, nous, Irlande, vous savez ah, oui!_ She thought you wanted a cheese _hollandais_. Your 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 Dalca.s.sians, 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 s.h.i.+rt, sanguineflowered, trembles its Spanish ta.s.sels 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, Felix Faure, know how he died? Licentious men. The froeken, _bonne a 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 gla.s.s 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 Git-le-Coeur, canary and two buck lodgers. Peachy cheeks, a zebra skirt, frisky as a young thing's.

Spurned and undespairing. Tell Pat you saw me, won't you? I wanted to get poor Pat a job one time. _Mon fils_, soldier of France. I taught him to sing _The boys of Kilkenny are stout roaring blades_. Know that old 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 lights.h.i.+p, am I? He stood suddenly, his feet beginning to sink slowly in the quaking soil. Turn back.

Turning, he scanned the sh.o.r.e 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 carca.s.s of a dog lay lolled on bladderwrack. Before him the gunwale of a boat, sunk in sand. _Un coche ensable_ 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 b.l.o.o.d.y well gigant rolls all them b.l.o.o.d.y 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 sh.o.r.eward 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 b.r.e.a.s.t.s 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 l.u.s.ts 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. _Naturlich_, put there for you.

Would you or would you not? The man that was drowned nine days ago off Maiden's rock. They are waiting for him now. The truth, spit it out. I would want to. I would try. I am not a strong swimmer. Water cold soft.

When I put my face into it in the basin at Clongowes. Can't see! Who's behind me? Out quickly, quickly! Do you see the tide flowing quickly in on all sides, sheeting the lows of sand quickly, sh.e.l.lcocoacoloured? 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.