Never missed nor he never will._

A silence ensued till Mr Bloom for agreeableness’ sake just felt like

asking him whether it was for a marksmanship competition like the

Bisley.

—Beg pardon, the sailor said.

—Long ago? Mr Bloom pursued without flinching a hairsbreadth.

—Why, the sailor replied, relaxing to a certain extent under the magic

influence of diamond cut diamond, it might be a matter of ten years. He

toured the wide world with Hengler’s Royal Circus. I seen him do that

in Stockholm.

—Curious coincidence, Mr Bloom confided to Stephen unobtrusively.

—Murphy’s my name, the sailor continued. D. B. Murphy of Carrigaloe.

Know where that is?

—Queenstown harbour, Stephen replied.

—That’s right, the sailor said. Fort Camden and Fort Carlisle. That’s

where I hails from. I belongs there. That’s where I hails from. My

little woman’s down there. She’s waiting for me, I know. _For England,

home and beauty_. She’s my own true wife I haven’t seen for seven years

now, sailing about.

Mr Bloom could easily picture his advent on this scene, the homecoming

to the mariner’s roadside shieling after having diddled Davy Jones, a

rainy night with a blind moon. Across the world for a wife. Quite a

number of stories there were on that particular Alice Ben Bolt topic,

Enoch Arden and Rip van Winkle and does anybody hereabouts remember

Caoc O’Leary, a favourite and most trying declamation piece by the way

of poor John Casey and a bit of perfect poetry in its own small way.

Never about the runaway wife coming back, however much devoted to the

absentee. The face at the window! Judge of his astonishment when he

finally did breast the tape and the awful truth dawned upon him anent

his better half, wrecked in his affections. You little expected me but

I’ve come to stay and make a fresh start. There she sits, a grasswidow,

at the selfsame fireside. Believes me dead, rocked in the cradle of the

deep. And there sits uncle Chubb or Tomkin, as the case might be, the

publican of the Crown and Anchor, in shirtsleeves, eating rumpsteak and

onions. No chair for father. Broo! The wind! Her brandnew arrival is on

her knee, _post mortem_ child. With a high ro! and a randy ro! and my

galloping tearing tandy, O! Bow to the inevitable. Grin and bear it. I

remain with much love your brokenhearted husband W. B. Murphy.

The sailor, who scarcely seemed to be a Dublin resident, turned to one

of the jarvies with the request:

—You don’t happen to have such a thing as a spare chaw about you?

The jarvey addressed as it happened had not but the keeper took a die

of plug from his good jacket hanging on a nail and the desired object

was passed from hand to hand.

—Thank you, the sailor said.

He deposited the quid in his gob and, chewing and with some slow

stammers, proceeded:

—We come up this morning eleven o’clock. The threemaster _Rosevean_

from Bridgwater with bricks. I shipped to get over. Paid off this

afternoon. There’s my discharge. See? D. B. Murphy. A. B. S.

In confirmation of which statement he extricated from an inside pocket

and handed to his neighbour a not very cleanlooking folded document.

—You must have seen a fair share of the world, the keeper remarked,

leaning on the counter.

—Why, the sailor answered upon reflection upon it, I’ve circumnavigated

a bit since I first joined on. I was in the Red Sea. I was in China and

North America and South America. We was chased by pirates one voyage. I

seen icebergs plenty, growlers. I was in Stockholm and the Black Sea,

the Dardanelles under Captain Dalton, the best bloody man that ever

scuttled a ship. I seen Russia. _Gospodi pomilyou_. That’s how the

Russians prays.

—You seen queer sights, don’t be talking, put in a jarvey.

—Why, the sailor said, shifting his partially chewed plug. I seen queer

things too, ups and downs. I seen a crocodile bite the fluke of an

anchor same as I chew that quid.

He took out of his mouth the pulpy quid and, lodging it between his

teeth, bit ferociously:

—Khaan! Like that. And I seen maneaters in Peru that eats corpses and

the livers of horses. Look here. Here they are. A friend of mine sent

me.

He fumbled out a picture postcard from his inside pocket which seemed

to be in its way a species of repository and pushed it along the table.

The printed matter on it stated: _Choza de Indios. Beni, Bolivia._

All focussed their attention at the scene exhibited, a group of savage

women in striped loincloths, squatted, blinking, suckling, frowning,

sleeping amid a swarm of infants (there must have been quite a score of

them) outside some primitive shanties of osier.

—Chews coca all day, the communicative tarpaulin added. Stomachs like

breadgraters. Cuts off their diddies when they can’t bear no more

children.

See them sitting there stark ballocknaked eating a dead horse’s liver

raw.

His postcard proved a centre of attraction for Messrs the greenhorns

for several minutes if not more.

—Know how to keep them off? he inquired generally.

Nobody volunteering a statement he winked, saying:

—Glass. That boggles ’em. Glass.

Mr Bloom, without evincing surprise, unostentatiously turned over the

card to peruse the partially obliterated address and postmark. It ran

as follows: _Tarjeta Postal, Señor A Boudin, Galeria Becche, Santiago,

Chile._ There was no message evidently, as he took particular notice.

Though not an implicit believer in the lurid story narrated (or the

eggsniping transaction for that matter despite William Tell and the

Lazarillo-Don Cesar de Bazan incident depicted in _Maritana_ on which

occasion the former’s ball passed through the latter’s hat) having

detected a discrepancy between his name (assuming he was the person he

represented himself to be and not sailing under false colours after

having boxed the compass on the strict q.t. somewhere) and the

fictitious addressee of the missive which made him nourish some

suspicions of our friend’s _bona fides_ nevertheless it reminded him in

a way of a longcherished plan he meant to one day realise some

Wednesday or Saturday of travelling to London _via_ long sea not to say

that he had ever travelled extensively to any great extent but he was

at heart a born adventurer though by a trick of fate he had

consistently remained a landlubber except you call going to Holyhead

which was his longest. Martin Cunningham frequently said he would work

a pass through Egan but some deuced hitch or other eternally cropped up

with the net result that the scheme fell through. But even suppose it

did come to planking down the needful and breaking Boyd’s heart it was

not so dear, purse permitting, a few guineas at the outside considering

the fare to Mullingar where he figured on going was five and six, there

and back. The trip would benefit health on account of the bracing ozone

and be in every way thoroughly pleasurable, especially for a chap whose

liver was out of order, seeing the different places along the route,

Plymouth, Falmouth, Southampton and so on culminating in an instructive

tour of the sights of the great metropolis, the spectacle of our modern

Babylon where doubtless he would see the greatest improvement, tower,

abbey, wealth of Park lane to renew acquaintance with. Another thing

just struck him as a by no means bad notion was he might have a gaze

around on the spot to see about trying to make arrangements about a

concert tour of summer music embracing the most prominent pleasure

resorts, Margate with mixed bathing and firstrate hydros and spas,

Eastbourne, Scarborough, Margate and so on, beautiful Bournemouth, the

Channel islands and similar bijou spots, which might prove highly

remunerative. Not, of course, with a hole and corner scratch company or

local ladies on the job, witness Mrs C P M’Coy type lend me your valise

and I’ll post you the ticket. No, something top notch, an all star

Irish caste, the Tweedy-Flower grand opera company with his own legal

consort as leading lady as a sort of counterblast to the Elster Grimes

and Moody-Manners, perfectly simple matter and he was quite sanguine of

success, providing puffs in the local papers could be managed by some

fellow with a bit of bounce who could pull the indispensable wires and

thus combine business with pleasure. But who? That was the rub.

Also, without being actually positive, it struck him a great field was

to be opened up in the line of opening up new routes to keep pace with

the times _apropos_ of the Fishguard-Rosslare route which, it was

mooted, was once more on the _tapis_ in the circumlocution departments

with the usual quantity of red tape and dillydallying of effete

fogeydom and dunderheads generally. A great opportunity there certainly

was for push and enterprise to meet the travelling needs of the public

at large, the average man, i.e. Brown, Robinson and Co.

It was a subject of regret and absurd as well on the face of it and no

small blame to our vaunted society that the man in the street, when the

system really needed toning up, for the matter of a couple of paltry

pounds was debarred from seeing more of the world they lived in instead

of being always and ever cooped up since my old stick-in-the-mud took

me for a wife. After all, hang it, they had their eleven and more

humdrum months of it and merited a radical change of _venue_ after the

grind of city life in the summertime for choice when dame Nature is at

her spectacular best constituting nothing short of a new lease of life.

There were equally excellent opportunities for vacationists in the home

island, delightful sylvan spots for rejuvenation, offering a plethora

of attractions as well as a bracing tonic for the system in and around

Dublin and its picturesque environs even, Poulaphouca to which there

was a steamtram, but also farther away from the madding crowd in

Wicklow, rightly termed the garden of Ireland, an ideal neighbourhood

for elderly wheelmen so long as it didn’t come down, and in the wilds

of Donegal where if report spoke true the _coup d’œil_ was exceedingly

grand though the lastnamed locality was not easily getatable so that

the influx of visitors was not as yet all that it might be considering

the signal benefits to be derived from it while Howth with its historic

associations and otherwise, Silken Thomas, Grace O’Malley, George IV,

rhododendrons several hundred feet above sealevel was a favourite haunt

with all sorts and conditions of men especially in the spring when

young men’s fancy, though it had its own toll of deaths by falling off

the cliffs by design or accidentally, usually, by the way, on their

left leg, it being only about three quarters of an hour’s run from the

pillar. Because of course uptodate tourist travelling was as yet merely

in its infancy, so to speak, and the accommodation left much to be

desired. Interesting to fathom it seemed to him from a motive of

curiosity, pure and simple, was whether it was the traffic that created

the route or viceversa or the two sides in fact. He turned back the

other side of the card, picture, and passed it along to Stephen.

—I seen a Chinese one time, related the doughty narrator, that had

little pills like putty and he put them in the water and they opened

and every pill was something different. One was a ship, another was a

house, another was a flower. Cooks rats in your soup, he appetisingly

added, the chinks does.

Possibly perceiving an expression of dubiosity on their faces the

globetrotter went on, adhering to his adventures.

—And I seen a man killed in Trieste by an Italian chap. Knife in his

back. Knife like that.

Whilst speaking he produced a dangerouslooking claspknife quite in

keeping with his character and held it in the striking position.

—In a knockingshop it was count of a tryon between two smugglers.

Fellow hid behind a door, come up behind him. Like that. _Prepare to

meet your God_, says he. Chuk! It went into his back up to the butt.

His heavy glance drowsily roaming about kind of defied their further

questions even should they by any chance want to.

—That’s a good bit of steel, repeated he, examining his formidable

_stiletto_.

After which harrowing _dénouement_ sufficient to appal the stoutest he

snapped the blade to and stowed the weapon in question away as before

in his chamber of horrors, otherwise pocket.

—They’re great for the cold steel, somebody who was evidently quite in

the dark said for the benefit of them all. That was why they thought

the park murders of the invincibles was done by foreigners on account

of them using knives.

At this remark passed obviously in the spirit of _where ignorance is

bliss_ Mr B. and Stephen, each in his own particular way, both

instinctively exchanged meaning glances, in a religious silence of the

strictly _entre nous_ variety however, towards where Skin-the-Goat,

_alias_ the keeper, not turning a hair, was drawing spurts of liquid

from his boiler affair. His inscrutable face which was really a work of

art, a perfect study in itself, beggaring description, conveyed the

impression that he didn’t understand one jot of what was going on.

Funny, very!

There ensued a somewhat lengthy pause. One man was reading in fits and

starts a stained by coffee evening journal, another the card with the

natives _choza de_, another the seaman’s discharge. Mr Bloom, so far as

he was personally concerned, was just pondering in pensive mood. He

vividly recollected when the occurrence alluded to took place as well

as yesterday, roughly some score of years previously in the days of the

land troubles, when it took the civilised world by storm, figuratively

speaking, early in the eighties, eightyone to be correct, when he was

just turned fifteen.

—Ay, boss, the sailor broke in. Give us back them papers.

The request being complied with he clawed them up with a scrape.

—Have you seen the rock of Gibraltar? Mr Bloom inquired.

The sailor grimaced, chewing, in a way that might be read as yes, ay or

no.

—Ah, you’ve touched there too, Mr Bloom said, Europa point, thinking he

had, in the hope that the rover might possibly by some reminiscences

but he failed to do so, simply letting spirt a jet of spew into the

sawdust, and shook his head with a sort of lazy scorn.

—What year would that be about? Mr B interrogated. Can you recall the

boats?

Our _soi-disant_ sailor munched heavily awhile hungrily before

answering:

—I’m tired of all them rocks in the sea, he said, and boats and ships.

Salt junk all the time.

Tired seemingly, he ceased. His questioner perceiving that he was not

likely to get a great deal of change out of such a wily old customer,

fell to woolgathering on the enormous dimensions of the water about the

globe, suffice it to say that, as a casual glance at the map revealed,

it covered fully three fourths of it and he fully realised accordingly

what it meant to rule the waves. On more than one occasion, a dozen at

the lowest, near the North Bull at Dollymount he had remarked a

superannuated old salt, evidently derelict, seated habitually near the

not particularly redolent sea on the wall, staring quite obliviously at

it and it at him, dreaming of fresh woods and pastures new as someone

somewhere sings. And it left him wondering why. Possibly he had tried

to find out the secret for himself, floundering up and down the

antipodes and all that sort of thing and over and under, well, not

exactly under, tempting the fates. And the odds were twenty to nil

there was really no secret about it at all. Nevertheless, without going

into the _minutiae_ of the business, the eloquent fact remained that

the sea was there in all its glory and in the natural course of things

somebody or other had to sail on it and fly in the face of providence

though it merely went to show how people usually contrived to load that

sort of onus on to the other fellow like the hell idea and the lottery

and insurance which were run on identically the same lines so that for

that very reason if no other lifeboat Sunday was a highly laudable

institution to which the public at large, no matter where living inland

or seaside, as the case might be, having it brought home to them like

that should extend its gratitude also to the harbourmasters and

coastguard service who had to man the rigging and push off and out amid

the elements whatever the season when duty called _Ireland expects that

every man_ and so on and sometimes had a terrible time of it in the

wintertime not forgetting the Irish lights, Kish and others, liable to

capsize at any moment, rounding which he once with his daughter had

experienced some remarkably choppy, not to say stormy, weather.

—There was a fellow sailed with me in the _Rover_, the old seadog,

himself a rover, proceeded, went ashore and took up a soft job as

gentleman’s valet at six quid a month. Them are his trousers I’ve on me

and he gave me an oilskin and that jackknife. I’m game for that job,

shaving and brushup. I hate roaming about. There’s my son now, Danny,

run off to sea and his mother got him took in a draper’s in Cork where

he could be drawing easy money.

—What age is he? queried one hearer who, by the way, seen from the

side, bore a distant resemblance to Henry Campbell, the townclerk, away

from the carking cares of office, unwashed of course and in a seedy

getup and a strong suspicion of nosepaint about the nasal appendage.

—Why, the sailor answered with a slow puzzled utterance, my son, Danny?

He’d be about eighteen now, way I figure it.

The Skibbereen father hereupon tore open his grey or unclean anyhow

shirt with his two hands and scratched away at his chest on which was

to be seen an image tattooed in blue Chinese ink intended to represent

an anchor.

—There was lice in that bunk in Bridgwater, he remarked, sure as nuts.

I must get a wash tomorrow or next day. It’s them black lads I objects

to. I hate those buggers. Suck your blood dry, they does.

Seeing they were all looking at his chest he accommodatingly dragged

his shirt more open so that on top of the timehonoured symbol of the

mariner’s hope and rest they had a full view of the figure 16 and a

young man’s sideface looking frowningly rather.

—Tattoo, the exhibitor explained. That was done when we were lying

becalmed off Odessa in the Black Sea under Captain Dalton. Fellow, the

name of Antonio, done that. There he is himself, a Greek.

—Did it hurt much doing it? one asked the sailor.

That worthy, however, was busily engaged in collecting round the.

Someway in his. Squeezing or.

—See here, he said, showing Antonio. There he is cursing the mate. And

there he is now, he added, the same fellow, pulling the skin with his

fingers, some special knack evidently, and he laughing at a yarn.

And in point of fact the young man named Antonio’s livid face did

actually look like forced smiling and the curious effect excited the

unreserved admiration of everybody including Skin-the-Goat, who this

time stretched over.

—Ay, ay, sighed the sailor, looking down on his manly chest. He’s gone

too. Ate by sharks after. Ay, ay.

He let go of the skin so that the profile resumed the normal expression

of before.

—Neat bit of work, one longshoreman said.

—And what’s the number for? loafer number two queried.

—Eaten alive? a third asked the sailor.

—Ay, ay, sighed again the latter personage, more cheerily this time

with some sort of a half smile for a brief duration only in the

direction of the questioner about the number. Ate. A Greek he was.

And then he added with rather gallowsbird humour considering his

alleged end:

—As bad as old Antonio,

For he left me on my ownio.

The face of a streetwalker glazed and haggard under a black straw hat

peered askew round the door of the shelter palpably reconnoitring on

her own with the object of bringing more grist to her mill. Mr Bloom,

scarcely knowing which way to look, turned away on the moment

flusterfied but outwardly calm, and, picking up from the table the pink

sheet of the Abbey street organ which the jarvey, if such he was, had

laid aside, he picked it up and looked at the pink of the paper though

why pink. His reason for so doing was he recognised on the moment round

the door the same face he had caught a fleeting glimpse of that

afternoon on Ormond quay, the partially idiotic female, namely, of the

lane who knew the lady in the brown costume does be with you (Mrs B.)

and begged the chance of his washing. Also why washing which seemed

rather vague than not, your washing. Still candour compelled him to

admit he had washed his wife’s undergarments when soiled in Holles

street and women would and did too a man’s similar garments initialled

with Bewley and Draper’s marking ink (hers were, that is) if they

really loved him, that is to say, love me, love my dirty shirt. Still

just then, being on tenterhooks, he desired the female’s room more than

her company so it came as a genuine relief when the keeper made her a

rude sign to take herself off. Round the side of the _Evening

Telegraph_ he just caught a fleeting glimpse of her face round the side

of the door with a kind of demented glassy grin showing that she was

not exactly all there, viewing with evident amusement the group of

gazers round skipper Murphy’s nautical chest and then there was no more

of her.

—The gunboat, the keeper said.

—It beats me, Mr Bloom confided to Stephen, medically I am speaking,

how a wretched creature like that from the Lock hospital reeking with

disease can be barefaced enough to solicit or how any man in his sober

senses, if he values his health in the least. Unfortunate creature! Of

course I suppose some man is ultimately responsible for her condition.

Still no matter what the cause is from...

Stephen had not noticed her and shrugged his shoulders, merely

remarking:

—In this country people sell much more than she ever had and do a

roaring trade. Fear not them that sell the body but have not power to

buy the soul. She is a bad merchant. She buys dear and sells cheap.

The elder man, though not by any manner of means an old maid or a

prude, said it was nothing short of a crying scandal that ought to be

put a stop to _instanter_ to say that women of that stamp (quite apart

from any oldmaidish squeamishness on the subject), a necessary evil,

were not licensed and medically inspected by the proper authorities, a

thing, he could truthfully state, he, as a _paterfamilias_, was a

stalwart advocate of from the very first start. Whoever embarked on a

policy of the sort, he said, and ventilated the matter thoroughly would

confer a lasting boon on everybody concerned.

—You as a good catholic, he observed, talking of body and soul, believe

in the soul. Or do you mean the intelligence, the brainpower as such,

as distinct from any outside object, the table, let us say, that cup. I

believe in that myself because it has been explained by competent men

as the convolutions of the grey matter. Otherwise we would never have

such inventions as X rays, for instance. Do you?

Thus cornered, Stephen had to make a superhuman effort of memory to try

and concentrate and remember before he could say:

—They tell me on the best authority it is a simple substance and

therefore incorruptible. It would be immortal, I understand, but for

the possibility of its annihilation by its First Cause Who, from all I

can hear, is quite capable of adding that to the number of His other

practical jokes, _corruptio per se_ and _corruptio per accidens_ both

being excluded by court etiquette.

Mr Bloom thoroughly acquiesced in the general gist of this though the

mystical finesse involved was a bit out of his sublunary depth still he

felt bound to enter a demurrer on the head of simple, promptly

rejoining:

—Simple? I shouldn’t think that is the proper word. Of course, I grant

you, to concede a point, you do knock across a simple soul once in a

blue moon. But what I am anxious to arrive at is it is one thing for

instance to invent those rays Röntgen did or the telescope like Edison,

though I believe it was before his time Galileo was the man, I mean,

and the same applies to the laws, for example, of a farreaching natural

phenomenon such as electricity but it’s a horse of quite another colour

to say you believe in the existence of a supernatural God.

—O that, Stephen expostulated, has been proved conclusively by several

of the bestknown passages in Holy Writ, apart from circumstantial

evidence.

On this knotty point however the views of the pair, poles apart as they

were both in schooling and everything else with the marked difference

in their respective ages, clashed.

—Has been? the more experienced of the two objected, sticking to his

original point with a smile of unbelief. I’m not so sure about that.

That’s a matter for everyman’s opinion and, without dragging in the

sectarian side of the business, I beg to differ with you _in toto_

there. My belief is, to tell you the candid truth, that those bits were

genuine forgeries all of them put in by monks most probably or it’s the

big question of our national poet over again, who precisely wrote them

like _Hamlet_ and Bacon, as, you who know your Shakespeare infinitely

better than I, of course I needn’t tell you. Can’t you drink that

coffee, by the way? Let me stir it. And take a piece of that bun. It’s

like one of our skipper’s bricks disguised. Still no-one can give what

he hasn’t got. Try a bit.

—Couldn’t, Stephen contrived to get out, his mental organs for the

moment refusing to dictate further.

Faultfinding being a proverbially bad hat Mr Bloom thought well to stir

or try to the clotted sugar from the bottom and reflected with

something approaching acrimony on the Coffee Palace and its temperance

(and lucrative) work. To be sure it was a legitimate object and beyond

yea or nay did a world of good, shelters such as the present one they

were in run on teetotal lines for vagrants at night, concerts, dramatic

evenings and useful lectures (admittance free) by qualified men for the

lower orders. On the other hand he had a distinct and painful

recollection they paid his wife, Madam Marion Tweedy who had been

prominently associated with it at one time, a very modest remuneration

indeed for her pianoplaying. The idea, he was strongly inclined to

believe, was to do good and net a profit, there being no competition to

speak of. Sulphate of copper poison SO4 or something in some dried peas

he remembered reading of in a cheap eatinghouse somewhere but he

couldn’t remember when it was or where. Anyhow inspection, medical

inspection, of all eatables seemed to him more than ever necessary

which possibly accounted for the vogue of Dr Tibble’s Vi-Cocoa on

account of the medical analysis involved.

—Have a shot at it now, he ventured to say of the coffee after being

stirred.

Thus prevailed on to at any rate taste it Stephen lifted the heavy mug

from the brown puddle it clopped out of when taken up by the handle and

took a sip of the offending beverage.

—Still it’s solid food, his good genius urged, I’m a stickler for solid

food, his one and only reason being not gormandising in the least but

regular meals as the _sine qua non_ for any kind of proper work, mental

or manual. You ought to eat more solid food. You would feel a different

man.

—Liquids I can eat, Stephen said. But O, oblige me by taking away that

knife. I can’t look at the point of it. It reminds me of Roman history.

Mr Bloom promptly did as suggested and removed the incriminated

article, a blunt hornhandled ordinary knife with nothing particularly

Roman or antique about it to the lay eye, observing that the point was

the least conspicuous point about it.

—Our mutual friend’s stories are like himself, Mr Bloom _apropos_ of

knives remarked to his _confidante sotto voce_. Do you think they are

genuine? He could spin those yarns for hours on end all night long and

lie like old boots. Look at him.

Yet still though his eyes were thick with sleep and sea air life was

full of a host of things and coincidences of a terrible nature and it

was quite within the bounds of possibility that it was not an entire

fabrication though at first blush there was not much inherent

probability in all the spoof he got off his chest being strictly

accurate gospel.

He had been meantime taking stock of the individual in front of him and

Sherlockholmesing him up ever since he clapped eyes on him. Though a

wellpreserved man of no little stamina, if a trifle prone to baldness,

there was something spurious in the cut of his jib that suggested a

jail delivery and it required no violent stretch of imagination to

associate such a weirdlooking specimen with the oakum and treadmill

fraternity. He might even have done for his man supposing it was his

own case he told, as people often did about others, namely, that he

killed him himself and had served his four or five goodlooking years in

durance vile to say nothing of the Antonio personage (no relation to

the dramatic personage of identical name who sprang from the pen of our

national poet) who expiated his crimes in the melodramatic manner above

described. On the other hand he might be only bluffing, a pardonable

weakness because meeting unmistakable mugs, Dublin residents, like

those jarvies waiting news from abroad would tempt any ancient mariner

who sailed the ocean seas to draw the long bow about the schooner

_Hesperus_ and etcetera. And when all was said and done the lies a

fellow told about himself couldn’t probably hold a proverbial candle to

the wholesale whoppers other fellows coined about him.

—Mind you, I’m not saying that it’s all a pure invention, he resumed.

Analogous scenes are occasionally, if not often, met with. Giants,

though that is rather a far cry, you see once in a way, Marcella the

midget queen. In those waxworks in Henry street I myself saw some

Aztecs, as they are called, sitting bowlegged, they couldn’t straighten

their legs if you paid them because the muscles here, you see, he

proceeded, indicating on his companion the brief outline of the sinews

or whatever you like to call them behind the right knee, were utterly

powerless from sitting that way so long cramped up, being adored as

gods. There’s an example again of simple souls.

However reverting to friend Sinbad and his horrifying adventures (who

reminded him a bit of Ludwig, _alias_ Ledwidge, when he occupied the

boards of the Gaiety when Michael Gunn was identified with the

management in the _Flying Dutchman_, a stupendous success, and his host

of admirers came in large numbers, everyone simply flocking to hear him

though ships of any sort, phantom or the reverse, on the stage usually

fell a bit flat as also did trains) there was nothing intrinsically

incompatible about it, he conceded. On the contrary that stab in the

back touch was quite in keeping with those italianos though candidly he

was none the less free to admit those icecreamers and friers in the

fish way not to mention the chip potato variety and so forth over in

little Italy there near the Coombe were sober thrifty hardworking

fellows except perhaps a bit too given to pothunting the harmless

necessary animal of the feline persuasion of others at night so as to

have a good old succulent tuckin with garlic _de rigueur_ off him or

her next day on the quiet and, he added, on the cheap.

—Spaniards, for instance, he continued, passionate temperaments like

that, impetuous as Old Nick, are given to taking the law into their own

hands and give you your quietus doublequick with those poignards they

carry in the abdomen. It comes from the great heat, climate generally.

My wife is, so to speak, Spanish, half that is. Point of fact she could

actually claim Spanish nationality if she wanted, having been born in

(technically) Spain, i.e. Gibraltar. She has the Spanish type. Quite

dark, regular brunette, black. I for one certainly believe climate

accounts for character. That’s why I asked you if you wrote your poetry

in Italian.

—The temperaments at the door, Stephen interposed with, were very

passionate about ten shillings. _Roberto ruba roba sua_.

—Quite so, Mr Bloom dittoed.

—Then, Stephen said staring and rambling on to himself or some unknown

listener somewhere, we have the impetuosity of Dante and the isosceles

triangle miss Portinari he fell in love with and Leonardo and san

Tommaso Mastino.

—It’s in the blood, Mr Bloom acceded at once. All are washed in the

blood of the sun. Coincidence I just happened to be in the Kildare

street museum today, shortly prior to our meeting if I can so call it,

and I was just looking at those antique statues there. The splendid

proportions of hips, bosom. You simply don’t knock against those kind

of women here. An exception here and there. Handsome yes, pretty in a

way you find but what I’m talking about is the female form. Besides

they have so little taste in dress, most of them, which greatly

enhances a woman’s natural beauty, no matter what you say. Rumpled

stockings, it may be, possibly is, a foible of mine but still it’s a

thing I simply hate to see.

Interest, however, was starting to flag somewhat all round and then the

others got on to talking about accidents at sea, ships lost in a fog,

collisions with icebergs, all that sort of thing. Shipahoy of course

had his own say to say. He had doubled the cape a few odd times and

weathered a monsoon, a kind of wind, in the China seas and through all

those perils of the deep there was one thing, he declared, stood to him

or words to that effect, a pious medal he had that saved him.

So then after that they drifted on to the wreck off Daunt’s rock, wreck

of that illfated Norwegian barque nobody could think of her name for

the moment till the jarvey who had really quite a look of Henry

Campbell remembered it _Palme_ on Booterstown strand. That was the talk

of the town that year (Albert William Quill wrote a fine piece of

original verse of distinctive merit on the topic for the Irish

_Times_), breakers running over her and crowds and crowds on the shore

in commotion petrified with horror. Then someone said something about

the case of the s. s. _Lady Cairns_ of Swansea run into by the _Mona_

which was on an opposite tack in rather muggyish weather and lost with

all hands on deck. No aid was given. Her master, the _Mona_’s, said he

was afraid his collision bulkhead would give way. She had no water, it

appears, in her hold.

At this stage an incident happened. It having become necessary for him

to unfurl a reef the sailor vacated his seat.

—Let me cross your bows mate, he said to his neighbour who was just

gently dropping off into a peaceful doze.

He made tracks heavily, slowly with a dumpy sort of a gait to the door,

stepped heavily down the one step there was out of the shelter and bore

due left. While he was in the act of getting his bearings Mr Bloom who

noticed when he stood up that he had two flasks of presumably ship’s

rum sticking one out of each pocket for the private consumption of his

burning interior, saw him produce a bottle and uncork it or unscrew

and, applying its nozzle to his lips, take a good old delectable swig

out of it with a gurgling noise. The irrepressible Bloom, who also had

a shrewd suspicion that the old stager went out on a manœuvre after the

counterattraction in the shape of a female who however had disappeared

to all intents and purposes, could by straining just perceive him, when

duly refreshed by his rum puncheon exploit, gaping up at the piers and

girders of the Loop line rather out of his depth as of course it was

all radically altered since his last visit and greatly improved. Some

person or persons invisible directed him to the male urinal erected by

the cleansing committee all over the place for the purpose but after a

brief space of time during which silence reigned supreme the sailor,

evidently giving it a wide berth, eased himself closer at hand, the

noise of his bilgewater some little time subsequently splashing on the

ground where it apparently awoke a horse of the cabrank. A hoof scooped

anyway for new foothold after sleep and harness jingled. Slightly

disturbed in his sentrybox by the brazier of live coke the watcher of

the corporation stones who, though now broken down and fast breaking

up, was none other in stern reality than the Gumley aforesaid, now

practically on the parish rates, given the temporary job by Pat Tobin

in all human probability from dictates of humanity knowing him before

shifted about and shuffled in his box before composing his limbs again

in to the arms of Morpheus, a truly amazing piece of hard lines in its

most virulent form on a fellow most respectably connected and

familiarised with decent home comforts all his life who came in for a

cool £ 100 a year at one time which of course the doublebarrelled ass

proceeded to make general ducks and drakes of. And there he was at the

end of his tether after having often painted the town tolerably pink

without a beggarly stiver. He drank needless to be told and it pointed

only once more a moral when he might quite easily be in a large way of

business if—a big if, however—he had contrived to cure himself of his

particular partiality.

All meantime were loudly lamenting the falling off in Irish shipping,

coastwise and foreign as well, which was all part and parcel of the

same thing. A Palgrave Murphy boat was put off the ways at Alexandra

basin, the only launch that year. Right enough the harbours were there

only no ships ever called.

There were wrecks and wreckers, the keeper said, who was evidently _au

fait_.

What he wanted to ascertain was why that ship ran bang against the only

rock in Galway bay when the Galway harbour scheme was mooted by a Mr

Worthington or some name like that, eh? Ask the then captain, he

advised them, how much palmoil the British government gave him for that

day’s work, Captain John Lever of the Lever Line.

—Am I right, skipper? he queried of the sailor, now returning after his

private potation and the rest of his exertions.

That worthy picking up the scent of the fagend of the song or words

growled in wouldbe music but with great vim some kind of chanty or

other in seconds or thirds. Mr Bloom’s sharp ears heard him then

expectorate the plug probably (which it was), so that he must have

lodged it for the time being in his fist while he did the drinking and

making water jobs and found it a bit sour after the liquid fire in

question. Anyhow in he rolled after his successful

libation-_cum_-potation, introducing an atmosphere of drink into the

_soirée_, boisterously trolling, like a veritable son of a seacook:

—The biscuits was as hard as brass

And the beef as salt as Lot’s wife’s arse.

O, Johnny Lever!

Johnny Lever, O!

After which effusion the redoubtable specimen duly arrived on the scene

and regaining his seat he sank rather than sat heavily on the form

provided. Skin-the-Goat, assuming he was he, evidently with an axe to

grind, was airing his grievances in a forcible-feeble philippic anent

the natural resources of Ireland or something of that sort which he

described in his lengthy dissertation as the richest country bar none

on the face of God’s earth, far and away superior to England, with coal

in large quantities, six million pounds worth of pork exported every

year, ten millions between butter and eggs and all the riches drained

out of it by England levying taxes on the poor people that paid through

the nose always and gobbling up the best meat in the market and a lot

more surplus steam in the same vein. Their conversation accordingly

became general and all agreed that that was a fact. You could grow any

mortal thing in Irish soil, he stated, and there was that colonel

Everard down there in Navan growing tobacco. Where would you find

anywhere the like of Irish bacon? But a day of reckoning, he stated

_crescendo_ with no uncertain voice, thoroughly monopolising all the

conversation, was in store for mighty England, despite her power of

pelf on account of her crimes. There would be a fall and the greatest

fall in history. The Germans and the Japs were going to have their

little lookin, he affirmed. The Boers were the beginning of the end.

Brummagem England was toppling already and her downfall would be

Ireland, her Achilles heel, which he explained to them about the

vulnerable point of Achilles, the Greek hero, a point his auditors at

once seized as he completely gripped their attention by showing the

tendon referred to on his boot. His advice to every Irishman was: stay

in the land of your birth and work for Ireland and live for Ireland.

Ireland, Parnell said, could not spare a single one of her sons.

Silence all round marked the termination of his _finale_. The

impervious navigator heard these lurid tidings, undismayed.

—Take a bit of doing, boss, retaliated that rough diamond palpably a

bit peeved in response to the foregoing truism.

To which cold douche referring to downfall and so on the keeper

concurred but nevertheless held to his main view.

—Who’s the best troops in the army? the grizzled old veteran irately

interrogated. And the best jumpers and racers? And the best admirals

and generals we’ve got? Tell me that.

—The Irish, for choice, retorted the cabby like Campbell, facial

blemishes apart.

—That’s right, the old tarpaulin corroborated. The Irish catholic

peasant. He’s the backbone of our empire. You know Jem Mullins?

While allowing him his individual opinions as everyman the keeper added

he cared nothing for any empire, ours or his, and considered no

Irishman worthy of his salt that served it. Then they began to have a

few irascible words when it waxed hotter, both, needless to say,

appealing to the listeners who followed the passage of arms with

interest so long as they didn’t indulge in recriminations and come to

blows.

From inside information extending over a series of years Mr Bloom was

rather inclined to poohpooh the suggestion as egregious balderdash for,

pending that consummation devoutly to be or not to be wished for, he

was fully cognisant of the fact that their neighbours across the

channel, unless they were much bigger fools than he took them for,

rather concealed their strength than the opposite. It was quite on a

par with the quixotic idea in certain quarters that in a hundred

million years the coal seam of the sister island would be played out

and if, as time went on, that turned out to be how the cat jumped all

he could personally say on the matter was that as a host of

contingencies, equally relevant to the issue, might occur ere then it

was highly advisable in the interim to try to make the most of both

countries even though poles apart. Another little interesting point,

the amours of whores and chummies, to put it in common parlance,

reminded him Irish soldiers had as often fought for England as against

her, more so, in fact. And now, why? So the scene between the pair of

them, the licensee of the place rumoured to be or have been Fitzharris,

the famous invincible, and the other, obviously bogus, reminded him

forcibly as being on all fours with the confidence trick, supposing,

that is, it was prearranged as the lookeron, a student of the human

soul if anything, the others seeing least of the game. And as for the

lessee or keeper, who probably wasn’t the other person at all, he (B.)

couldn’t help feeling and most properly it was better to give people

like that the goby unless you were a blithering idiot altogether and

refuse to have anything to do with them as a golden rule in private

life and their felonsetting, there always being the offchance of a

Dannyman coming forward and turning queen’s evidence or king’s now like

Denis or Peter Carey, an idea he utterly repudiated. Quite apart from

that he disliked those careers of wrongdoing and crime on principle.

Yet, though such criminal propensities had never been an inmate of his

bosom in any shape or form, he certainly did feel and no denying it

(while inwardly remaining what he was) a certain kind of admiration for

a man who had actually brandished a knife, cold steel, with the courage

of his political convictions (though, personally, he would never be a

party to any such thing), off the same bat as those love vendettas of

the south, have her or swing for her, when the husband frequently,

after some words passed between the two concerning her relations with

the other lucky mortal (he having had the pair watched), inflicted

fatal injuries on his adored one as a result of an alternative

postnuptial _liaison_ by plunging his knife into her, until it just

struck him that Fitz, nicknamed Skin-the-Goat, merely drove the car for

the actual perpetrators of the outrage and so was not, if he was

reliably informed, actually party to the ambush which, in point of

fact, was the plea some legal luminary saved his skin on. In any case

that was very ancient history by now and as for our friend, the pseudo

Skin-the-etcetera, he had transparently outlived his welcome. He ought

to have either died naturally or on the scaffold high. Like actresses,

always farewell positively last performance then come up smiling again.

Generous to a fault of course, temperamental, no economising or any

idea of the sort, always snapping at the bone for the shadow. So

similarly he had a very shrewd suspicion that Mr Johnny Lever got rid

of some £. s. d. in the course of his perambulations round the docks in

the congenial atmosphere of the _Old Ireland_ tavern, come back to Erin

and so on. Then as for the other he had heard not so long before the

same identical lingo as he told Stephen how he simply but effectually

silenced the offender.

—He took umbrage at something or other, that muchinjured but on the

whole eventempered person declared, I let slip. He called me a jew and

in a heated fashion offensively. So I without deviating from plain

facts in the least told him his God, I mean Christ, was a jew too and

all his family like me though in reality I’m not. That was one for him.

A soft answer turns away wrath. He hadn’t a word to say for himself as

everyone saw. Am I not right?

He turned a long you are wrong gaze on Stephen of timorous dark pride

at the soft impeachment with a glance also of entreaty for he seemed to

glean in a kind of a way that it wasn’t all exactly.

—_Ex quibus_, Stephen mumbled in a noncommittal accent, their two or

four eyes conversing, _Christus_ or Bloom his name is or after all any

other, _secundum carnem_.

—Of course, Mr B. proceeded to stipulate, you must look at both sides

of the question. It is hard to lay down any hard and fast rules as to

right and wrong but room for improvement all round there certainly is

though every country, they say, our own distressful included, has the

government it deserves. But with a little goodwill all round. It’s all

very fine to boast of mutual superiority but what about mutual

equality. I resent violence and intolerance in any shape or form. It

never reaches anything or stops anything. A revolution must come on the

due instalments plan. It’s a patent absurdity on the face of it to hate

people because they live round the corner and speak another vernacular,

in the next house so to speak.

—Memorable bloody bridge battle and seven minutes’ war, Stephen

assented, between Skinner’s alley and Ormond market.

Yes, Mr Bloom thoroughly agreed, entirely endorsing the remark, that

was overwhelmingly right. And the whole world was full of that sort of

thing.

—You just took the words out of my mouth, he said. A hocuspocus of

conflicting evidence that candidly you couldn’t remotely...

All those wretched quarrels, in his humble opinion, stirring up bad

blood, from some bump of combativeness or gland of some kind,

erroneously supposed to be about a punctilio of honour and a flag, were

very largely a question of the money question which was at the back of

everything, greed and jealousy, people never knowing when to stop.

—They accuse, remarked he audibly. He turned away from the others, who

probably… and spoke nearer to, so as the others… in case they…

—Jews, he softly imparted in an aside in Stephen’s ear, are accused of

ruining. Not a vestige of truth in it, I can safely say. History, would

you be surprised to learn, proves up to the hilt Spain decayed when the

inquisition hounded the jews out and England prospered when Cromwell,

an uncommonly able ruffian who in other respects has much to answer

for, imported them. Why? Because they are imbued with the proper

spirit. They are practical and are proved to be so. I don’t want to

indulge in any because you know the standard works on the subject and

then orthodox as you are. But in the economic, not touching religion,

domain the priest spells poverty. Spain again, you saw in the war,

compared with goahead America. Turks. It’s in the dogma. Because if

they didn’t believe they’d go straight to heaven when they die they’d

try to live better, at least so I think. That’s the juggle on which the

p.p.’s raise the wind on false pretences. I’m, he resumed with dramatic

force, as good an Irishman as that rude person I told you about at the

outset and I want to see everyone, concluded he, all creeds and classes

_pro rata_ having a comfortable tidysized income, in no niggard fashion

either, something in the neighbourhood of £ 300 per annum. That’s the

vital issue at stake and it’s feasible and would be provocative of

friendlier intercourse between man and man. At least that’s my idea for

what it’s worth. I call that patriotism. _Ubi patria_, as we learned a

smattering of in our classical days in _Alma Mater, vita bene_. Where

you can live well, the sense is, if you work.

Over his untastable apology for a cup of coffee, listening to this

synopsis of things in general, Stephen stared at nothing in particular.

He could hear, of course, all kinds of words changing colour like those

crabs about Ringsend in the morning burrowing quickly into all colours

of different sorts of the same sand where they had a home somewhere

beneath or seemed to. Then he looked up and saw the eyes that said or

didn’t say the words the voice he heard said, if you work.

—Count me out, he managed to remark, meaning work.

The eyes were surprised at this observation because as he, the person

who owned them pro tem. observed or rather his voice speaking did, all

must work, have to, together.

—I mean, of course, the other hastened to affirm, work in the widest

possible sense. Also literary labour not merely for the kudos of the

thing. Writing for the newspapers which is the readiest channel

nowadays. That’s work too. Important work. After all, from the little I

know of you, after all the money expended on your education you are

entitled to recoup yourself and command your price. You have every bit

as much right to live by your pen in pursuit of your philosophy as the

peasant has. What? You both belong to Ireland, the brain and the brawn.

Each is equally important.

—You suspect, Stephen retorted with a sort of a half laugh, that I may

be important because I belong to the _faubourg Saint Patrice_ called

Ireland for short.

—I would go a step farther, Mr Bloom insinuated.

—But I suspect, Stephen interrupted, that Ireland must be important

because it belongs to me.

—What belongs, queried Mr Bloom bending, fancying he was perhaps under

some misapprehension. Excuse me. Unfortunately, I didn’t catch the

latter portion. What was it you...?

Stephen, patently crosstempered, repeated and shoved aside his mug of

coffee or whatever you like to call it none too politely, adding:

—We can’t change the country. Let us change the subject.

At this pertinent suggestion Mr Bloom, to change the subject, looked

down but in a quandary, as he couldn’t tell exactly what construction

to put on belongs to which sounded rather a far cry. The rebuke of some

kind was clearer than the other part. Needless to say the fumes of his

recent orgy spoke then with some asperity in a curious bitter way

foreign to his sober state. Probably the homelife to which Mr B

attached the utmost importance had not been all that was needful or he

hadn’t been familiarised with the right sort of people. With a touch of

fear for the young man beside him whom he furtively scrutinised with an

air of some consternation remembering he had just come back from Paris,

the eyes more especially reminding him forcibly of father and sister,

failing to throw much light on the subject, however, he brought to mind

instances of cultured fellows that promised so brilliantly nipped in

the bud of premature decay and nobody to blame but themselves. For

instance there was the case of O’Callaghan, for one, the halfcrazy

faddist, respectably connected though of inadequate means, with his mad

vagaries among whose other gay doings when rotto and making himself a

nuisance to everybody all round he was in the habit of ostentatiously

sporting in public a suit of brown paper (a fact). And then the usual

_dénouement_ after the fun had gone on fast and furious he got landed

into hot water and had to be spirited away by a few friends, after a

strong hint to a blind horse from John Mallon of Lower Castle Yard, so

as not to be made amenable under section two of the criminal law

amendment act, certain names of those subpœnaed being handed in but not

divulged for reasons which will occur to anyone with a pick of brains.

Briefly, putting two and two together, six sixteen which he pointedly

turned a deaf ear to, Antonio and so forth, jockeys and esthetes and

the tattoo which was all the go in the seventies or thereabouts even in

the house of lords because early in life the occupant of the throne,

then heir apparent, the other members of the upper ten and other high

personages simply following in the footsteps of the head of the state,

he reflected about the errors of notorieties and crowned heads running

counter to morality such as the Cornwall case a number of years before

under their veneer in a way scarcely intended by nature, a thing good

Mrs Grundy, as the law stands, was terribly down on though not for the

reason they thought they were probably whatever it was except women

chiefly who were always fiddling more or less at one another it being

largely a matter of dress and all the rest of it. Ladies who like

distinctive underclothing should, and every welltailored man must,

trying to make the gap wider between them by innuendo and give more of

a genuine filip to acts of impropriety between the two, she unbuttoned

his and then he untied her, mind the pin, whereas savages in the

cannibal islands, say, at ninety degrees in the shade not caring a

continental. However, reverting to the original, there were on the

other hand others who had forced their way to the top from the lowest

rung by the aid of their bootstraps. Sheer force of natural genius,

that. With brains, sir.

For which and further reasons he felt it was his interest and duty even

to wait on and profit by the unlookedfor occasion though why he could

not exactly tell being as it was already several shillings to the bad

having in fact let himself in for it. Still to cultivate the

acquaintance of someone of no uncommon calibre who could provide food

for reflection would amply repay any small. Intellectual stimulation,

as such, was, he felt, from time to time a firstrate tonic for the

mind. Added to which was the coincidence of meeting, discussion, dance,

row, old salt of the here today and gone tomorrow type, night loafers,

the whole galaxy of events, all went to make up a miniature cameo of

the world we live in especially as the lives of the submerged tenth,

viz. coalminers, divers, scavengers etc., were very much under the

microscope lately. To improve the shining hour he wondered whether he

might meet with anything approaching the same luck as Mr Philip Beaufoy

if taken down in writing suppose he were to pen something out of the

common groove (as he fully intended doing) at the rate of one guinea

per column. _My Experiences_, let us say, _in a Cabman’s Shelter_.

The pink edition extra sporting of the _Telegraph_ tell a graphic lie

lay, as luck would have it, beside his elbow and as he was just

puzzling again, far from satisfied, over a country belonging to him and

the preceding rebus the vessel came from Bridgwater and the postcard

was addressed A. Boudin find the captain’s age, his eyes went aimlessly

over the respective captions which came under his special province the

allembracing give us this day our daily press. First he got a bit of a

start but it turned out to be only something about somebody named H. du

Boyes, agent for typewriters or something like that. Great battle,

Tokio. Lovemaking in Irish, £ 200 damages. Gordon Bennett. Emigration

Swindle. Letter from His Grace. William ✠. Ascot meeting, the Gold Cup.

Victory of outsider _Throwaway_ recalls Derby of ’92 when Capt.

Marshall’s dark horse _Sir Hugo_ captured the blue ribband at long

odds. New York disaster. Thousand lives lost. Foot and Mouth. Funeral

of the late Mr Patrick Dignam.

So to change the subject he read about Dignam R. I. P. which, he

reflected, was anything but a gay sendoff. Or a change of address

anyway.

—_This morning_ (Hynes put it in of course) _the remains of the late Mr

Patrick Dignam were removed from his residence, no 9 Newbridge Avenue,

Sandymount, for interment in Glasnevin. The deceased gentleman was a

most popular and genial personality in city life and his demise after a

brief illness came as a great shock to citizens of all classes by whom

he is deeply regretted. The obsequies, at which many friends of the

deceased were present, were carried out_ (certainly Hynes wrote it with

a nudge from Corny) _by Messrs H. J. O’Neill and Son, 164 North Strand

Road. The mourners included: Patk. Dignam (son), Bernard Corrigan

(brother-in-law), Jno. Henry Menton, solr, Martin Cunningham, John

Power, eatondph 1/8 ador dorador douradora_ (must be where he called

Monks the dayfather about Keyes’s ad) _Thomas Kernan, Simon Dedalus,

Stephen Dedalus B. A., Edw. J. Lambert, Cornelius T. Kelleher, Joseph

M’C Hynes, L. Boom, C P M’Coy,—M’Intosh and several others_.

Nettled not a little by L. _Boom_ (as it incorrectly stated) and the

line of bitched type but tickled to death simultaneously by C. P. M’Coy

and Stephen Dedalus B. A. who were conspicuous, needless to say, by

their total absence (to say nothing of M’Intosh) L. Boom pointed it out

to his companion B. A. engaged in stifling another yawn, half

nervousness, not forgetting the usual crop of nonsensical howlers of

misprints.

—Is that first epistle to the Hebrews, he asked as soon as his bottom

jaw would let him, in? Text: open thy mouth and put thy foot in it.

—It is. Really, Mr Bloom said (though first he fancied he alluded to

the archbishop till he added about foot and mouth with which there

could be no possible connection) overjoyed to set his mind at rest and

a bit flabbergasted at Myles Crawford’s after all managing to. There.

While the other was reading it on page two Boom (to give him for the

nonce his new misnomer) whiled away a few odd leisure moments in fits

and starts with the account of the third event at Ascot on page three,

his side. Value 1000 sovs with 3000 sovs in specie added. For entire

colts and fillies. Mr F. Alexander’s _Throwaway_, b. h. by

_Rightaway-Thrale_, 5 yrs, 9 st 4 lbs (W. Lane) 1. Lord Howard de

Walden’s _Zinfandel_ (M. Cannon) 2. Mr W. Bass’s _Sceptre_ 3. Betting 5

to 4 on _Zinfandel_, 20 to 1 _Throwaway_ (off). _Sceptre_ a shade

heavier. It was anybody’s race then the rank outsider drew to the fore,

got long lead, beating Lord Howard de Walden’s chestnut colt and Mr W.

Bass’s bay filly Sceptre on a 2 1/2 mile course. Winner trained by

Braime so that Lenehan’s version of the business was all pure buncombe.

Secured the verdict cleverly by a length. 1000 sovs with 3000 in

specie. Also ran: J de Bremond’s (French horse Bantam Lyons was

anxiously inquiring after not in yet but expected any minute) _Maximum

II_. Different ways of bringing off a coup. Lovemaking damages. Though

that halfbaked Lyons ran off at a tangent in his impetuosity to get

left. Of course gambling eminently lent itself to that sort of thing

though as the event turned out the poor fool hadn’t much reason to

congratulate himself on his pick, the forlorn hope. Guesswork it

reduced itself to eventually.

—There was every indication they would arrive at that, he, Bloom, said.

—Who? the other, whose hand by the way was hurt, said.

One morning you would open the paper, the cabman affirmed, and read:

_Return of Parnell_. He bet them what they liked. A Dublin fusilier was

in that shelter one night and said he saw him in South Africa. Pride it

was killed him. He ought to have done away with himself or lain low for

a time after committee room no 15 until he was his old self again with

no-one to point a finger at him. Then they would all to a man have gone

down on their marrowbones to him to come back when he had recovered his

senses. Dead he wasn’t. Simply absconded somewhere. The coffin they

brought over was full of stones. He changed his name to De Wet, the

Boer general. He made a mistake to fight the priests. And so forth and

so on.

All the same Bloom (properly so dubbed) was rather surprised at their

memories for in nine cases out of ten it was a case of tarbarrels and

not singly but in their thousands and then complete oblivion because it

was twenty odd years. Highly unlikely of course there was even a shadow

of truth in the stones and, even supposing, he thought a return highly

inadvisable, all things considered. Something evidently riled them in

his death. Either he petered out too tamely of acute pneumonia just

when his various different political arrangements were nearing

completion or whether it transpired he owed his death to his having

neglected to change his boots and clothes after a wetting when a cold

resulted and failing to consult a specialist he being confined to his

room till he eventually died of it amid widespread regret before a

fortnight was at an end or quite possibly they were distressed to find

the job was taken out of their hands. Of course nobody being acquainted

with his movements even before there was absolutely no clue as to his

whereabouts which were decidedly of the _Alice, where art thou_ order

even prior to his starting to go under several aliases such as Fox and

Stewart so the remark which emanated from friend cabby might be within

the bounds of possibility. Naturally then it would prey on his mind as

a born leader of men which undoubtedly he was and a commanding figure,

a sixfooter or at any rate five feet ten or eleven in his stockinged

feet, whereas Messrs So and So who, though they weren’t even a patch on

the former man, ruled the roost after their redeeming features were

very few and far between. It certainly pointed a moral, the idol with

feet of clay, and then seventytwo of his trusty henchmen rounding on

him with mutual mudslinging. And the identical same with murderers. You

had to come back. That haunting sense kind of drew you. To show the

understudy in the title _rôle_ how to. He saw him once on the

auspicious occasion when they broke up the type in the _Insuppressible_

or was it _United Ireland_, a privilege he keenly appreciated, and, in

point of fact, handed him his silk hat when it was knocked off and he

said _Thank you_, excited as he undoubtedly was under his frigid

exterior notwithstanding the little misadventure mentioned between the

cup and the lip: what’s bred in the bone. Still as regards return. You

were a lucky dog if they didn’t set the terrier at you directly you got

back. Then a lot of shillyshally usually followed, Tom for and Dick and

Harry against. And then, number one, you came up against the man in

possession and had to produce your credentials like the claimant in the

Tichborne case, Roger Charles Tichborne, _Bella_ was the boat’s name to

the best of his recollection he, the heir, went down in as the evidence

went to show and there was a tattoo mark too in Indian ink, lord Bellew

was it, as he might very easily have picked up the details from some

pal on board ship and then, when got up to tally with the description

given, introduce himself with: _Excuse me, my name is So and So_ or

some such commonplace remark. A more prudent course, as Bloom said to

the not over effusive, in fact like the distinguished personage under

discussion beside him, would have been to sound the lie of the land

first.

—That bitch, that English whore, did for him, the shebeen proprietor

commented. She put the first nail in his coffin.

—Fine lump of a woman all the same, the _soi-disant_ townclerk Henry

Campbell remarked, and plenty of her. She loosened many a man’s thighs.

I seen her picture in a barber’s. The husband was a captain or an

officer.

—Ay, Skin-the-Goat amusingly added, he was and a cottonball one.

This gratuitous contribution of a humorous character occasioned a fair

amount of laughter among his _entourage_. As regards Bloom he, without

the faintest suspicion of a smile, merely gazed in the direction of the

door and reflected upon the historic story which had aroused

extraordinary interest at the time when the facts, to make matters

worse, were made public with the usual affectionate letters that passed

between them full of sweet nothings. First it was strictly Platonic

till nature intervened and an attachment sprang up between them till

bit by bit matters came to a climax and the matter became the talk of

the town till the staggering blow came as a welcome intelligence to not

a few evildisposed, however, who were resolved upon encompassing his

downfall though the thing was public property all along though not to

anything like the sensational extent that it subsequently blossomed

into. Since their names were coupled, though, since he was her declared

favourite, where was the particular necessity to proclaim it to the

rank and file from the housetops, the fact, namely, that he had shared

her bedroom which came out in the witnessbox on oath when a thrill went

through the packed court literally electrifying everybody in the shape

of witnesses swearing to having witnessed him on such and such a

particular date in the act of scrambling out of an upstairs apartment

with the assistance of a ladder in night apparel, having gained

admittance in the same fashion, a fact the weeklies, addicted to the

lubric a little, simply coined shoals of money out of. Whereas the

simple fact of the case was it was simply a case of the husband not

being up to the scratch, with nothing in common between them beyond the

name, and then a real man arriving on the scene, strong to the verge of

weakness, falling a victim to her siren charms and forgetting home

ties, the usual sequel, to bask in the loved one’s smiles. The eternal

question of the life connubial, needless to say, cropped up. Can real

love, supposing there happens to be another chap in the case, exist

between married folk? Poser. Though it was no concern of theirs

absolutely if he regarded her with affection, carried away by a wave of

folly. A magnificent specimen of manhood he was truly augmented

obviously by gifts of a high order, as compared with the other military

supernumerary that is (who was just the usual everyday _farewell, my

gallant captain_ kind of an individual in the light dragoons, the 18th

hussars to be accurate) and inflammable doubtless (the fallen leader,

that is, not the other) in his own peculiar way which she of course,

woman, quickly perceived as highly likely to carve his way to fame

which he almost bid fair to do till the priests and ministers of the

gospel as a whole, his erstwhile staunch adherents, and his beloved

evicted tenants for whom he had done yeoman service in the rural parts

of the country by taking up the cudgels on their behalf in a way that

exceeded their most sanguine expectations, very effectually cooked his

matrimonial goose, thereby heaping coals of fire on his head much in

the same way as the fabled ass’s kick. Looking back now in a

retrospective kind of arrangement all seemed a kind of dream. And then

coming back was the worst thing you ever did because it went without

saying you would feel out of place as things always moved with the

times. Why, as he reflected, Irishtown strand, a locality he had not

been in for quite a number of years looked different somehow since, as

it happened, he went to reside on the north side. North or south,

however, it was just the wellknown case of hot passion, pure and

simple, upsetting the applecart with a vengeance and just bore out the

very thing he was saying as she also was Spanish or half so, types that

wouldn’t do things by halves, passionate abandon of the south, casting

every shred of decency to the winds.

—Just bears out what I was saying, he, with glowing bosom said to

Stephen, about blood and the sun. And, if I don’t greatly mistake she

was Spanish too.

—The king of Spain’s daughter, Stephen answered, adding something or

other rather muddled about farewell and adieu to you Spanish onions and

the first land called the Deadman and from Ramhead to Scilly was so and

so many.

—Was she? Bloom ejaculated, surprised though not astonished by any

means, I never heard that rumour before. Possible, especially there, it

was as she lived there. So, Spain.

Carefully avoiding a book in his pocket _Sweets of_, which reminded him

by the by of that Capel street library book out of date, he took out

his pocketbook and, turning over the various contents it contained

rapidly finally he.

—Do you consider, by the by, he said, thoughtfully selecting a faded

photo which he laid on the table, that a Spanish type?

Stephen, obviously addressed, looked down on the photo showing a large

sized lady with her fleshy charms on evidence in an open fashion as she

was in the full bloom of womanhood in evening dress cut ostentatiously

low for the occasion to give a liberal display of bosom, with more than

vision of breasts, her full lips parted and some perfect teeth,

standing near, ostensibly with gravity, a piano on the rest of which

was _In Old Madrid_, a ballad, pretty in its way, which was then all

the vogue. Her (the lady’s) eyes, dark, large, looked at Stephen, about

to smile about something to be admired, Lafayette of Westmoreland

street, Dublin’s premier photographic artist, being responsible for the

esthetic execution.

—Mrs Bloom, my wife the _prima donna_ Madam Marion Tweedy, Bloom

indicated. Taken a few years since. In or about ninety six. Very like

her then.

Beside the young man he looked also at the photo of the lady now his

legal wife who, he intimated, was the accomplished daughter of Major

Brian Tweedy and displayed at an early age remarkable proficiency as a

singer having even made her bow to the public when her years numbered

barely sweet sixteen. As for the face it was a speaking likeness in

expression but it did not do justice to her figure which came in for a

lot of notice usually and which did not come out to the best advantage

in that getup. She could without difficulty, he said, have posed for

the ensemble, not to dwell on certain opulent curves of the. He dwelt,

being a bit of an artist in his spare time, on the female form in

general developmentally because, as it so happened, no later than that

afternoon he had seen those Grecian statues, perfectly developed as

works of art, in the National Museum. Marble could give the original,

shoulders, back, all the symmetry, all the rest. Yes, puritanisme, it

does though, Saint Joseph’s sovereign thievery alors (Bandez!) Figne

toi trop. Whereas no photo could because it simply wasn’t art in a

word.

The spirit moving him he would much have liked to follow Jack Tar’s

good example and leave the likeness there for a very few minutes to

speak for itself on the plea he so that the other could drink in the

beauty for himself, her stage presence being, frankly, a treat in

itself which the camera could not at all do justice to. But it was

scarcely professional etiquette so. Though it was a warm pleasant sort

of a night now yet wonderfully cool for the season considering, for

sunshine after storm. And he did feel a kind of need there and then to

follow suit like a kind of inward voice and satisfy a possible need by

moving a motion. Nevertheless he sat tight just viewing the slightly

soiled photo creased by opulent curves, none the worse for wear

however, and looked away thoughtfully with the intention of not further

increasing the other’s possible embarrassment while gauging her

symmetry of heaving _embonpoint_. In fact the slight soiling was only

an added charm like the case of linen slightly soiled, good as new,

much better in fact with the starch out. Suppose she was gone when he?

I looked for the lamp which she told me came into his mind but merely

as a passing fancy of his because he then recollected the morning

littered bed etcetera and the book about Ruby with met him pike hoses

(_sic_) in it which must have fell down sufficiently appropriately

beside the domestic chamberpot with apologies to Lindley Murray.

The vicinity of the young man he certainly relished, educated,

_distingué_ and impulsive into the bargain, far and away the pick of

the bunch though you wouldn’t think he had it in him yet you would.

Besides he said the picture was handsome which, say what you like, it

was though at the moment she was distinctly stouter. And why not? An

awful lot of makebelieve went on about that sort of thing involving a

lifelong slur with the usual splash page of gutterpress about the same

old matrimonial tangle alleging misconduct with professional golfer or

the newest stage favourite instead of being honest and aboveboard about

the whole business. How they were fated to meet and an attachment

sprang up between the two so that their names were coupled in the

public eye was told in court with letters containing the habitual mushy

and compromising expressions leaving no loophole to show that they

openly cohabited two or three times a week at some wellknown seaside

hotel and relations, when the thing ran its normal course, became in

due course intimate. Then the decree _nisi_ and the King’s proctor

tries to show cause why and, he failing to quash it, _nisi_ was made

absolute. But as for that the two misdemeanants, wrapped up as they

largely were in one another, could safely afford to ignore it as they

very largely did till the matter was put in the hands of a solicitor

who filed a petition for the party wronged in due course. He, B,

enjoyed the distinction of being close to Erin’s uncrowned king in the

flesh when the thing occurred on the historic _fracas_ when the fallen

leader’s, who notoriously stuck to his guns to the last drop even when

clothed in the mantle of adultery, (leader’s) trusty henchmen to the

number of ten or a dozen or possibly even more than that penetrated

into the printing works of the _Insuppressible_ or no it was _United

Ireland_ (a by no means by the by appropriate appellative) and broke up

the typecases with hammers or something like that all on account of

some scurrilous effusions from the facile pens of the O’Brienite

scribes at the usual mudslinging occupation reflecting on the erstwhile

tribune’s private morals. Though palpably a radically altered man he

was still a commanding figure though carelessly garbed as usual with

that look of settled purpose which went a long way with the

shillyshallyers till they discovered to their vast discomfiture that

their idol had feet of clay after placing him upon a pedestal which

she, however, was the first to perceive. As those were particularly hot

times in the general hullaballoo Bloom sustained a minor injury from a

nasty prod of some chap’s elbow in the crowd that of course congregated

lodging some place about the pit of the stomach, fortunately not of a

grave character. His hat (Parnell’s) a silk one was inadvertently

knocked off and, as a matter of strict history, Bloom was the man who

picked it up in the crush after witnessing the occurrence meaning to

return it to him (and return it to him he did with the utmost celerity)

who panting and hatless and whose thoughts were miles away from his hat

at the time all the same being a gentleman born with a stake in the

country he, as a matter of fact, having gone into it more for the kudos

of the thing than anything else, what’s bred in the bone instilled into

him in infancy at his mother’s knee in the shape of knowing what good

form was came out at once because he turned round to the donor and

thanked him with perfect _aplomb_, saying: _Thank you, sir_, though in

a very different tone of voice from the ornament of the legal

profession whose headgear Bloom also set to rights earlier in the

course of the day, history repeating itself with a difference, after

the burial of a mutual friend when they had left him alone in his glory

after the grim task of having committed his remains to the grave.

On the other hand what incensed him more inwardly was the blatant jokes

of the cabman and so on who passed it all off as a jest, laughing

immoderately, pretending to understand everything, the why and the

wherefore, and in reality not knowing their own minds, it being a case

for the two parties themselves unless it ensued that the legitimate

husband happened to be a party to it owing to some anonymous letter

from the usual boy Jones, who happened to come across them at the

crucial moment in a loving position locked in one another’s arms,

drawing attention to their illicit proceedings and leading up to a

domestic rumpus and the erring fair one begging forgiveness of her lord

and master upon her knees and promising to sever the connection and not

receive his visits any more if only the aggrieved husband would

overlook the matter and let bygones be bygones with tears in her eyes

though possibly with her tongue in her fair cheek at the same time as

quite possibly there were several others. He personally, being of a

sceptical bias, believed and didn’t make the smallest bones about

saying so either that man or men in the plural were always hanging

around on the waiting list about a lady, even supposing she was the

best wife in the world and they got on fairly well together for the

sake of argument, when, neglecting her duties, she chose to be tired of

wedded life and was on for a little flutter in polite debauchery to

press their attentions on her with improper intent, the upshot being

that her affections centred on another, the cause of many _liaisons_

between still attractive married women getting on for fair and forty

and younger men, no doubt as several famous cases of feminine

infatuation proved up to the hilt.

It was a thousand pities a young fellow, blessed with an allowance of

brains as his neighbour obviously was, should waste his valuable time

with profligate women who might present him with a nice dose to last

him his lifetime. In the nature of single blessedness he would one day

take unto himself a wife when Miss Right came on the scene but in the

interim ladies’ society was a _conditio sine qua non_ though he had the

gravest possible doubts, not that he wanted in the smallest to pump

Stephen about Miss Ferguson (who was very possibly the particular

lodestar who brought him down to Irishtown so early in the morning), as

to whether he would find much satisfaction basking in the boy and girl

courtship idea and the company of smirking misses without a penny to

their names bi or triweekly with the orthodox preliminary canter of

complimentplaying and walking out leading up to fond lovers’ ways and

flowers and chocs. To think of him house and homeless, rooked by some

landlady worse than any stepmother, was really too bad at his age. The

queer suddenly things he popped out with attracted the elder man who

was several years the other’s senior or like his father but something

substantial he certainly ought to eat even were it only an eggflip made

on unadulterated maternal nutriment or, failing that, the homely Humpty

Dumpty boiled.

—At what o’clock did you dine? he questioned of the slim form and tired

though unwrinkled face.

—Some time yesterday, Stephen said.

—Yesterday! exclaimed Bloom till he remembered it was already tomorrow

Friday. Ah, you mean it’s after twelve!

—The day before yesterday, Stephen said, improving on himself.

Literally astounded at this piece of intelligence Bloom reflected.

Though they didn’t see eye to eye in everything a certain analogy there

somehow was as if both their minds were travelling, so to speak, in the

one train of thought. At his age when dabbling in politics roughly some

score of years previously when he had been a _quasi_ aspirant to

parliamentary honours in the Buckshot Foster days he too recollected in

retrospect (which was a source of keen satisfaction in itself) he had a

sneaking regard for those same ultra ideas. For instance when the

evicted tenants question, then at its first inception, bulked largely

in people’s mind though, it goes without saying, not contributing a

copper or pinning his faith absolutely to its dictums, some of which

wouldn’t exactly hold water, he at the outset in principle at all

events was in thorough sympathy with peasant possession as voicing the

trend of modern opinion (a partiality, however, which, realising his

mistake, he was subsequently partially cured of) and even was twitted

with going a step farther than Michael Davitt in the striking views he

at one time inculcated as a backtothelander, which was one reason he

strongly resented the innuendo put upon him in so barefaced a fashion

by our friend at the gathering of the clans in Barney Kiernan’s so that

he, though often considerably misunderstood and the least pugnacious of

mortals, be it repeated, departed from his customary habit to give him

(metaphorically) one in the gizzard though, so far as politics

themselves were concerned, he was only too conscious of the casualties

invariably resulting from propaganda and displays of mutual animosity

and the misery and suffering it entailed as a foregone conclusion on

fine young fellows, chiefly, destruction of the fittest, in a word.

Anyhow upon weighing up the pros and cons, getting on for one, as it

was, it was high time to be retiring for the night. The crux was it was

a bit risky to bring him home as eventualities might possibly ensue

(somebody having a temper of her own sometimes) and spoil the hash

altogether as on the night he misguidedly brought home a dog (breed

unknown) with a lame paw (not that the cases were either identical or

the reverse though he had hurt his hand too) to Ontario Terrace as he

very distinctly remembered, having been there, so to speak. On the

other hand it was altogether far and away too late for the Sandymount

or Sandycove suggestion so that he was in some perplexity as to which

of the two alternatives. Everything pointed to the fact that it behoved

him to avail himself to the full of the opportunity, all things

considered. His initial impression was he was a shade standoffish or

not over effusive but it grew on him someway. For one thing he mightn’t

what you call jump at the idea, if approached, and what mostly worried

him was he didn’t know how to lead up to it or word it exactly,

supposing he did entertain the proposal, as it would afford him very

great personal pleasure if he would allow him to help to put coin in

his way or some wardrobe, if found suitable. At all events he wound up

by concluding, eschewing for the nonce hidebound precedent, a cup of

Epps’s cocoa and a shakedown for the night plus the use of a rug or two

and overcoat doubled into a pillow at least he would be in safe hands

and as warm as a toast on a trivet he failed to perceive any very vast

amount of harm in that always with the proviso no rumpus of any sort

was kicked up. A move had to be made because that merry old soul, the

grasswidower in question who appeared to be glued to the spot, didn’t

appear in any particular hurry to wend his way home to his dearly

beloved Queenstown and it was highly likely some sponger’s bawdyhouse

of retired beauties where age was no bar off Sheriff street lower would

be the best clue to that equivocal character’s whereabouts for a few

days to come, alternately racking their feelings (the mermaids’) with

sixchamber revolver anecdotes verging on the tropical calculated to

freeze the marrow of anybody’s bones and mauling their largesized

charms betweenwhiles with rough and tumble gusto to the accompaniment

of large potations of potheen and the usual blarney about himself for

as to who he in reality was let x equal my right name and address, as

Mr Algebra remarks _passim_. At the same time he inwardly chuckled over

his gentle repartee to the blood and ouns champion about his god being

a jew. People could put up with being bitten by a wolf but what

properly riled them was a bite from a sheep. The most vulnerable point

too of tender Achilles. Your god was a jew. Because mostly they

appeared to imagine he came from Carrick-on-Shannon or somewhereabouts

in the county Sligo.

—I propose, our hero eventually suggested after mature reflection while

prudently pocketing her photo, as it’s rather stuffy here you just come

home with me and talk things over. My diggings are quite close in the

vicinity. You can’t drink that stuff. Do you like cocoa? Wait. I’ll

just pay this lot.

The best plan clearly being to clear out, the remainder being plain

sailing, he beckoned, while prudently pocketing the photo, to the

keeper of the shanty who didn’t seem to.

—Yes, that’s the best, he assured Stephen to whom for the matter of

that Brazen Head or him or anywhere else was all more or less.

All kinds of Utopian plans were flashing through his (B’s) busy brain,

education (the genuine article), literature, journalism, prize titbits,

up to date billing, concert tours in English watering resorts packed

with hydros and seaside theatres, turning money away, duets in Italian

with the accent perfectly true to nature and a quantity of other

things, no necessity, of course, to tell the world and his wife from

the housetops about it, and a slice of luck. An opening was all was

wanted. Because he more than suspected he had his father’s voice to

bank his hopes on which it was quite on the cards he had so it would be

just as well, by the way no harm, to trail the conversation in the

direction of that particular red herring just to.

The cabby read out of the paper he had got hold of that the former

viceroy, earl Cadogan, had presided at the cabdrivers’ association

dinner in London somewhere. Silence with a yawn or two accompanied this

thrilling announcement. Then the old specimen in the corner who

appeared to have some spark of vitality left read out that sir Anthony

MacDonnell had left Euston for the chief secretary’s lodge or words to

that effect. To which absorbing piece of intelligence echo answered

why.

—Give us a squint at that literature, grandfather, the ancient mariner

put in, manifesting some natural impatience.

—And welcome, answered the elderly party thus addressed.

The sailor lugged out from a case he had a pair of greenish goggles

which he very slowly hooked over his nose and both ears.

—Are you bad in the eyes? the sympathetic personage like the townclerk

queried.

—Why, answered the seafarer with the tartan beard, who seemingly was a

bit of a literary cove in his own small way, staring out of seagreen

portholes as you might well describe them as, I uses goggles reading.

Sand in the Red Sea done that. One time I could read a book in the

dark, manner of speaking. _The Arabian Nights Entertainment_ was my

favourite and _Red as a Rose is She._

Hereupon he pawed the journal open and pored upon Lord only knows what,

found drowned or the exploits of King Willow, Iremonger having made a

hundred and something second wicket not out for Notts, during which

time (completely regardless of Ire) the keeper was intensely occupied

loosening an apparently new or secondhand boot which manifestly pinched

him as he muttered against whoever it was sold it, all of them who were

sufficiently awake enough to be picked out by their facial expressions,

that is to say, either simply looking on glumly or passing a trivial

remark.

To cut a long story short Bloom, grasping the situation, was the first

to rise from his seat so as not to outstay their welcome having first

and foremost, being as good as his word that he would foot the bill for

the occasion, taken the wise precaution to unobtrusively motion to mine

host as a parting shot a scarcely perceptible sign when the others were

not looking to the effect that the amount due was forthcoming, making a

grand total of fourpence (the amount he deposited unobtrusively in four

coppers, literally the last of the Mohicans), he having previously

spotted on the printed pricelist for all who ran to read opposite him

in unmistakable figures, coffee 2d, confectionery do, and honestly well

worth twice the money once in a way, as Wetherup used to remark.

—Come, he counselled to close the _séance_.

Seeing that the ruse worked and the coast was clear they left the

shelter or shanty together and the _élite_ society of oilskin and

company whom nothing short of an earthquake would move out of their

_dolce far niente_. Stephen, who confessed to still feeling poorly and

fagged out, paused at the, for a moment, the door.

—One thing I never understood, he said to be original on the spur of

the moment. Why they put tables upside down at night, I mean chairs

upside down, on the tables in cafés. To which impromptu the

neverfailing Bloom replied without a moment’s hesitation, saying

straight off:

—To sweep the floor in the morning.

So saying he skipped around, nimbly considering, frankly at the same

time apologetic to get on his companion’s right, a habit of his, by the

bye, his right side being, in classical idiom, his tender Achilles. The

night air was certainly now a treat to breathe though Stephen was a bit

weak on his pins.

—It will (the air) do you good, Bloom said, meaning also the walk, in a

moment. The only thing is to walk then you’ll feel a different man.

Come. It’s not far. Lean on me.

Accordingly he passed his left arm in Stephen’s right and led him on

accordingly.

—Yes, Stephen said uncertainly because he thought he felt a strange

kind of flesh of a different man approach him, sinewless and wobbly and

all that.

Anyhow they passed the sentrybox with stones, brazier etc. where the

municipal supernumerary, ex Gumley, was still to all intents and

purposes wrapped in the arms of Murphy, as the adage has it, dreaming

of fresh fields and pastures new. And _apropos_ of coffin of stones the

analogy was not at all bad as it was in fact a stoning to death on the

part of seventytwo out of eighty odd constituencies that ratted at the

time of the split and chiefly the belauded peasant class, probably the

selfsame evicted tenants he had put in their holdings.

So they turned on to chatting about music, a form of art for which

Bloom, as a pure amateur, possessed the greatest love, as they made

tracks arm in arm across Beresford place. Wagnerian music, though

confessedly grand in its way, was a bit too heavy for Bloom and hard to

follow at the first go-off but the music of Mercadante’s _Huguenots_,

Meyerbeer’s _Seven Last Words on the Cross_ and Mozart’s _Twelfth Mass_

he simply revelled in, the _Gloria_ in that being, to his mind, the

acme of first class music as such, literally knocking everything else

into a cocked hat. He infinitely preferred the sacred music of the

catholic church to anything the opposite shop could offer in that line

such as those Moody and Sankey hymns or _Bid me to live and I will live

thy protestant to be_. He also yielded to none in his admiration of

Rossini’s _Stabat Mater_, a work simply abounding in immortal numbers,

in which his wife, Madam Marion Tweedy, made a hit, a veritable

sensation, he might safely say, greatly adding to her other laurels and

putting the others totally in the shade, in the jesuit fathers’ church

in upper Gardiner street, the sacred edifice being thronged to the

doors to hear her with virtuosos, or _virtuosi_ rather. There was the

unanimous opinion that there was none to come up to her and suffice it

to say in a place of worship for music of a sacred character there was

a generally voiced desire for an encore. On the whole though favouring

preferably light opera of the _Don Giovanni_ description and _Martha_,

a gem in its line, he had a _penchant_, though with only a surface

knowledge, for the severe classical school such as Mendelssohn. And

talking of that, taking it for granted he knew all about the old

favourites, he mentioned _par excellence_ Lionel’s air in _Martha,

M’appari_, which, curiously enough, he had heard or overheard, to be

more accurate, on yesterday, a privilege he keenly appreciated, from

the lips of Stephen’s respected father, sung to perfection, a study of

the number, in fact, which made all the others take a back seat.

Stephen, in reply to a politely put query, said he didn’t sing it but

launched out into praises of Shakespeare’s songs, at least of in or

about that period, the lutenist Dowland who lived in Fetter lane near

Gerard the herbalist, who _anno ludendo hausi, Doulandus_, an

instrument he was contemplating purchasing from Mr Arnold Dolmetsch,

whom B. did not quite recall though the name certainly sounded

familiar, for sixtyfive guineas and Farnaby and son with their _dux_

and _comes_ conceits and Byrd (William) who played the virginals, he

said, in the Queen’s chapel or anywhere else he found them and one

Tomkins who made toys or airs and John Bull.

On the roadway which they were approaching whilst still speaking beyond

the swingchains a horse, dragging a sweeper, paced on the paven ground,

brushing a long swathe of mire up so that with the noise Bloom was not

perfectly certain whether he had caught aright the allusion to

sixtyfive guineas and John Bull. He inquired if it was John Bull the

political celebrity of that ilk, as it struck him, the two identical

names, as a striking coincidence.

By the chains the horse slowly swerved to turn, which perceiving,

Bloom, who was keeping a sharp lookout as usual, plucked the other’s

sleeve gently, jocosely remarking:

—Our lives are in peril tonight. Beware of the steamroller.

They thereupon stopped. Bloom looked at the head of a horse not worth

anything like sixtyfive guineas, suddenly in evidence in the dark quite

near so that it seemed new, a different grouping of bones and even

flesh because palpably it was a fourwalker, a hipshaker, a

blackbuttocker, a taildangler, a headhanger putting his hind foot

foremost the while the lord of his creation sat on the perch, busy with

his thoughts. But such a good poor brute he was sorry he hadn’t a lump

of sugar but, as he wisely reflected, you could scarcely be prepared

for every emergency that might crop up. He was just a big nervous

foolish noodly kind of a horse, without a second care in the world. But

even a dog, he reflected, take that mongrel in Barney Kiernan’s, of the

same size, would be a holy horror to face. But it was no animal’s fault

in particular if he was built that way like the camel, ship of the

desert, distilling grapes into potheen in his hump. Nine tenths of them

all could be caged or trained, nothing beyond the art of man barring

the bees. Whale with a harpoon hairpin, alligator tickle the small of

his back and he sees the joke, chalk a circle for a rooster, tiger my

eagle eye. These timely reflections anent the brutes of the field

occupied his mind somewhat distracted from Stephen’s words while the

ship of the street was manœuvring and Stephen went on about the highly

interesting old.

—What’s this I was saying? Ah, yes! My wife, he intimated, plunging _in

medias res_, would have the greatest of pleasure in making your

acquaintance as she is passionately attached to music of any kind.

He looked sideways in a friendly fashion at the sideface of Stephen,

image of his mother, which was not quite the same as the usual handsome

blackguard type they unquestionably had an insatiable hankering after

as he was perhaps not that way built.

Still, supposing he had his father’s gift as he more than suspected, it

opened up new vistas in his mind such as Lady Fingall’s Irish

industries, concert on the preceding Monday, and aristocracy in

general.

Exquisite variations he was now describing on an air _Youth here has

End_ by Jans Pieter Sweelinck, a Dutchman of Amsterdam where the frows

come from. Even more he liked an old German song of _Johannes Jeep_

about the clear sea and the voices of sirens, sweet murderers of men,

which boggled Bloom a bit:

Von der Sirenen Listigkeit

Tun die Poeten dichten.

These opening bars he sang and translated _extempore_. Bloom, nodding,

said he perfectly understood and begged him to go on by all means which

he did.

A phenomenally beautiful tenor voice like that, the rarest of boons,

which Bloom appreciated at the very first note he got out, could

easily, if properly handled by some recognised authority on voice

production such as Barraclough and being able to read music into the

bargain, command its own price where baritones were ten a penny and

procure for its fortunate possessor in the near future an _entrée_ into

fashionable houses in the best residential quarters of financial

magnates in a large way of business and titled people where with his

university degree of B. A. (a huge ad in its way) and gentlemanly

bearing to all the more influence the good impression he would

infallibly score a distinct success, being blessed with brains which

also could be utilised for the purpose and other requisites, if his

clothes were properly attended to so as to the better worm his way into

their good graces as he, a youthful tyro in society’s sartorial

niceties, hardly understood how a little thing like that could militate

against you. It was in fact only a matter of months and he could easily

foresee him participating in their musical and artistic

_conversaziones_ during the festivities of the Christmas season, for

choice, causing a slight flutter in the dovecotes of the fair sex and

being made a lot of by ladies out for sensation, cases of which, as he

happened to know, were on record—in fact, without giving the show away,

he himself once upon a time, if he cared to, could easily have. Added

to which of course would be the pecuniary emolument by no means to be

sneezed at, going hand in hand with his tuition fees. Not, he

parenthesised, that for the sake of filthy lucre he need necessarily

embrace the lyric platform as a walk in life for any lengthy space of

time. But a step in the required direction it was beyond yea or nay and

both monetarily and mentally it contained no reflection on his dignity

in the smallest and it often turned in uncommonly handy to be handed a

cheque at a muchneeded moment when every little helped. Besides, though

taste latterly had deteriorated to a degree, original music like that,

different from the conventional rut, would rapidly have a great vogue

as it would be a decided novelty for Dublin’s musical world after the

usual hackneyed run of catchy tenor solos foisted on a confiding public

by Ivan St Austell and Hilton St Just and their _genus omne_. Yes,

beyond a shadow of a doubt he could with all the cards in his hand and

he had a capital opening to make a name for himself and win a high

place in the city’s esteem where he could command a stiff figure and,

booking ahead, give a grand concert for the patrons of the King street

house, given a backerup, if one were forthcoming to kick him upstairs,

so to speak, a big _if_, however, with some impetus of the goahead sort

to obviate the inevitable procrastination which often tripped up a too

much fêted prince of good fellows. And it need not detract from the

other by one iota as, being his own master, he would have heaps of time

to practise literature in his spare moments when desirous of so doing

without its clashing with his vocal career or containing anything

derogatory whatsoever as it was a matter for himself alone. In fact, he

had the ball at his feet and that was the very reason why the other,

possessed of a remarkably sharp nose for smelling a rat of any sort,

hung on to him at all.

The horse was just then. And later on at a propitious opportunity he

purposed (Bloom did), without anyway prying into his private affairs on

the _fools step in where angels_ principle, advising him to sever his

connection with a certain budding practitioner who, he noticed, was

prone to disparage and even to a slight extent with some hilarious

pretext when not present, deprecate him, or whatever you like to call

it which in Bloom’s humble opinion threw a nasty sidelight on that side

of a person’s character, no pun intended.

The horse having reached the end of his tether, so to speak, halted

and, rearing high a proud feathering tail, added his quota by letting

fall on the floor which the brush would soon brush up and polish, three

smoking globes of turds. Slowly three times, one after another, from a

full crupper he mired. And humanely his driver waited till he (or she)

had ended, patient in his scythed car.

Side by side Bloom, profiting by the _contretemps_, with Stephen passed

through the gap of the chains, divided by the upright, and, stepping

over a strand of mire, went across towards Gardiner street lower,

Stephen singing more boldly, but not loudly, the end of the ballad.

Und alle Schiffe brücken.

The driver never said a word, good, bad or indifferent, but merely

watched the two figures, as he sat on his lowbacked car, both black,

one full, one lean, walk towards the railway bridge, _to be married by

Father Maher_. As they walked they at times stopped and walked again

continuing their _tête à tête_ (which, of course, he was utterly out

of) about sirens, enemies of man’s reason, mingled with a number of

other topics of the same category, usurpers, historical cases of the

kind while the man in the sweeper car or you might as well call it in

the sleeper car who in any case couldn’t possibly hear because they

were too far simply sat in his seat near the end of lower Gardiner

street _and looked after their lowbacked car_.

[ 17 ]

What parallel courses did Bloom and Stephen follow returning?

Starting united both at normal walking pace from Beresford place they

followed in the order named Lower and Middle Gardiner streets and

Mountjoy square, west: then, at reduced pace, each bearing left,

Gardiner’s place by an inadvertence as far as the farther corner of

Temple street: then, at reduced pace with interruptions of halt,

bearing right, Temple street, north, as far as Hardwicke place.

Approaching, disparate, at relaxed walking pace they crossed both the

circus before George’s church diametrically, the chord in any circle

being less than the arc which it subtends.

Of what did the duumvirate deliberate during their itinerary?

Music, literature, Ireland, Dublin, Paris, friendship, woman,

prostitution, diet, the influence of gaslight or the light of arc and

glowlamps on the growth of adjoining paraheliotropic trees, exposed

corporation emergency dustbuckets, the Roman catholic church,

ecclesiastical celibacy, the Irish nation, jesuit education, careers,

the study of medicine, the past day, the maleficent influence of the

presabbath, Stephen’s collapse.

Did Bloom discover common factors of similarity between their

respective like and unlike reactions to experience?

Both were sensitive to artistic impressions, musical in preference to

plastic or pictorial. Both preferred a continental to an insular manner

of life, a cisatlantic to a transatlantic place of residence. Both

indurated by early domestic training and an inherited tenacity of

heterodox resistance professed their disbelief in many orthodox

religious, national, social and ethical doctrines. Both admitted the

alternately stimulating and obtunding influence of heterosexual

magnetism.

Were their views on some points divergent?

Stephen dissented openly from Bloom’s views on the importance of

dietary and civic selfhelp while Bloom dissented tacitly from Stephen’s

views on the eternal affirmation of the spirit of man in literature.

Bloom assented covertly to Stephen’s rectification of the anachronism

involved in assigning the date of the conversion of the Irish nation to

christianity from druidism by Patrick son of Calpornus, son of Potitus,

son of Odyssus, sent by pope Celestine I in the year 432 in the reign

of Leary to the year 260 or thereabouts in the reign of Cormac MacArt

(† 266 A.D.), suffocated by imperfect deglutition of aliment at Sletty

and interred at Rossnaree. The collapse which Bloom ascribed to gastric

inanition and certain chemical compounds of varying degrees of

adulteration and alcoholic strength, accelerated by mental exertion and

the velocity of rapid circular motion in a relaxing atmosphere, Stephen

attributed to the reapparition of a matutinal cloud (perceived by both

from two different points of observation Sandycove and Dublin) at first

no bigger than a woman’s hand.

Was there one point on which their views were equal and negative?

The influence of gaslight or electric light on the growth of adjoining

paraheliotropic trees.

Had Bloom discussed similar subjects during nocturnal perambulations in

the past?