she too could write poetry if she could only
express herself like that poem that appealed to her so deeply that she had
copied out of the newspaper she found one evening round the potherbs. Art
thou real, my ideal? it was called by Louis J. Walsh, Magherafelt, and after
there was something about twilight, wilt thou ever? and ofttimes the beauty
of poetry, so sad in its transient loveliness, had misted her eyes with
silent tears that the years were slipping by for her, one by one, and but
for that one shortcoming she knew she need fear no competition and that was
an accident coming down Dalkey hill and she always tried to conceal it. But
it must end she felt. If she saw that magic lure in his eyes there would be
no holding back for her. Love laughs at locksmiths. She would make the great
sacrifice. Her every effort would be to share his thoughts. Dearer than the
whole world would she be to him and gild his days with happiness. There was
the allimportant question and she was dying to know was he a married man or
a widower who had lost his wife or some tragedy like the nobleman with the
foreign name from the land of song had to have her put into a madhouse,
cruel only to be kind. But even if - what then? Would it make a very great
difference? From everything in the least indelicate her finebred nature
instinctively recoiled. She loathed that sort of person, the fallen women
off the accommodation walk beside the Dodder that went with the soldiers and
coarse men, with no respect for a girl's honour, degrading the sex and being
taken up to the police station. No, no: not that. They would be just good
friends like a big brother and sister without all that other in spite of the
conventions of Society with a big ess. Perhaps it was an old flame he was in
mourning for from the days beyond recall. She thought she understood. She
would try to understand him because men were so different. The old love was
waiting, waiting with little white hands stretched out, with blue appealing
eyes. Heart of mine! She would follow her dream of love, the dictates of her
heart that told her he was her all in all, the only man in all the world for
her for love was the master guide. Nothing else mattered. Come what might
she would be wild, untrammelled, free.
Canon O'Hanlon put the Blessed Sacrament back into the tabernacle and
the choir sang Laudate Dominum omnes gentes and then he locked the
tabernacle door because the benediction was over and Father Conroy handed
him his hat to put on and crosscat Edy asked wasn't she coming but Jacky
Caffrey called out:
-- O, look, Cissy!
And they all looked was it sheet lightning but Tommy saw it too over
the trees beside the church, blue and then green and purple.
-- It's fireworks, Cissy Caffrey said.
And they all ran down the strand to see over the houses and the church,
helterskelter, Edy with the pushcar with baby Boardman in it and Cissy
holding Tommy and Jacky by the hand so they wouldn't fall running.
-- Come on, Gerty, Cissy called. It's the bazaar fireworks.
But Gerty was adamant. She had no intention of being at their beck and
call. If they could run like rossies she could sit so she said she could see
from where she was. The eyes that were fastened upon her set her pulses
tingling. She looked at him a moment, meeting his glance, and a light broke
in upon her. Whitehot passion was in that face, passion silent as the grave,
and it had made her his. At last they were left alone without the others to
pry and pass remarks and she knew he could be trusted to the death,
steadfast, a sterling man, a man of inflexible honour to his fingertips. His
hands and face were working and a tremor went over her. She leaned back far
to look up where the fireworks were and she caught her knee in her hands so
as not to fall back looking up and there was no one to see only him and her
when she revealed all her graceful beautifully shaped legs like that, supply
soft and delicately rounded, and she seemed to hear the panting of his
heart, his hoarse breathing, because she knew about the passion of men like
that, hot-blooded, because Bertha Supple told her once in dead secret and
made her swear she'd never about the gentleman lodger that was staying with
them out of the Congested Districts Board that had pictures cut out of
papers of those skirtdancers and highkickers and she said he used to do
something not very nice that you could imagine sometimes in the bed. But
this was altogether different from a thing like that because there was all
the difference because she could almost feel him draw her face to his and
the first quick hot touch of his handsome lips. Besides there was absolution
so long as you didn't do the other thing before being married and there
ought to be women priests that would understand without your telling out and
Cissy Caffrey too sometimes had that dreamy kind of dreamy look in her eyes
so that she too, my dear, and Winny Rippingham so mad about actors'
photographs and besides it was on account of that other thing coming on the
way it did.
And Jacky Caffrey shouted to look, there was another and she leaned
back and the garters were blue to match on account of the transparent and
they all saw it and shouted to look, look there it was and she leaned back
ever so far to see the fireworks and something queer was flying about
through the air, a soft thing to and fro, dark. And she saw a long Roman
candle going up over the trees up, up, and, in the tense hush, they were all
breathless with excitement as it went higher and higher and she had to lean
back more and more to look up after it, high, high, almost out of sight, and
her face was suffused with a divine, an entrancing blush from straining back
and he could see her other things too, nainsook knickers, the fabric that
caresses the skin, better than those other pettiwidth, the green, four and
eleven, on account of being white and she let him and she saw that he saw
and then it went so high it went out of sight a moment and she was trembling
in every limb from being bent so far back he had a full view high up above
her knee no-one ever not even on the swing or wading and she wasn't ashamed
and he wasn't either to look in that immodest way like that because he
couldn't resist the sight of the wondrous revealment half offered like those
skirt-dancers behaving so immodest before gentlemen looking and he kept on
looking, looking. She would fain have cried to him chokingly, held out her
snowy slender arms to him to come, to feel his lips laid on her white brow
the cry of a young girl's love, a little strangled cry, wrung from her, that
cry that has rung through the ages. And then a rocket sprang and bang shot
blind and O! then the Roman candle burst and it was like a sigh of O! and
everyone cried O!O! in raptures and it gushed out of it a stream of rain
gold hair threads and they shed and ah! they were all greeny dewy stars
falling with golden, O so lively! O so soft, sweet, soft!
Then all melted away dewily in the grey air: all was silent. Ah! She
glanced at him as she bent forward quickly, a pathetic little glance of
piteous protest, of shy reproach under which he coloured like a girl. He was
leaning back against the rock behind. Leopold Bloom (for it is he) stands
silent, with bowed head before those young guileless eyes. What a brute he
had been! At it again? A fair unsullied soul had called to him and, wretch
that he was, how had he answered? An utter cad he had been. He of all men!
But there was an infinite store of mercy in those eyes, for him too a word
of pardon even though he had erred and sinned and wandered. Should a girl
tell? No, a thousand times no. That was their secret, only theirs, alone in
the hiding twilight and there was none to know or tell save the little bat
that flew so softly through the evening to and fro and little bats don't
tell.
Cissy Caffrey whistled, imitating the boys in the football field to
show what a great person she was: and then she cried:
-- Gerty! Gerty! We're going. Come on. We can see from farther up.
Gerty had an idea, one of love's little ruses. She slipped a hand into
her kerchief pocket and took out the wadding and waved in reply of course
without letting him and then slipped it back. Wonder if he's too far to. She
rose. Was it goodbye? No. She had to go but they would meet again, there,
and she would dream of that till then, tomorrow, of her dream of yester eve.
She drew herself up to her full height. Their souls bet in a last lingering
glance and the eyes that reached her heart, full of a strange shining, hung
enraptured on her sweet flowerlike face. She half smiled at him wanly, a
sweet forgiving smile, a smile that verged on tears, and then they parted.
Slowly without looking back she went down the uneven strand to Cissy,
to Edy, to Jacky and Tommy Caffrey, to little baby Boardman. It was darker
now and there were stones and bits of wood on the strand and slippy seaweed.
She balked with a certain quiet dignity characteristic of her but with care
and very slowly because Gerty MacDowell was...
Tight boots? No. She's lame! O!
Mr Bloom watched her as she limped away. Poor girl! That's why she's
left on the shelf and the others did a sprint. Thought something was wrong
by the cut of her jib. Jilted beauty. A defect is ten times worse in a
woman. But makes them polite. Glad I didn't know it when she was on show.
Hot little devil all The same. Wouldn't mind. Curiosity like a nun or a
negress or a girl with glasses. That squinty one is delicate. Near her
monthlies, I expect, makes them feel ticklish. I have such a bad headache
today. Where did I put the letter? Yes, all right. All kinds of crazy
longings. Licking pennies. Girl in Tranquilla convent that nun told me liked
to smell rock oil. Virgins go mad in the end I suppose. Sister? How many
women in Dublin have it today? Martha, she. Something in the air. That's the
moon. But then why don't all women menstruate at the same time with same
moon, I mean? Depends on the time they were born, I suppose. Or all start
scratch then get out of step. Sometimes Molly and Milly together. Anyhow I
got the best of that. Damned glad I didn't do it in the bath this morning
over her silly I will punish you letter. Made up for that tramdriver this
morning. That gouger M'Coy stopping me to say nothing. And his wife
engagement in the country valise, voice like a pickaxe. Thankful for small
mercies. Cheap too. Yours for the asking. Because they want it themselves.
Their natural craving. Shoals of them every evening poured out of offices.
Reserve better. Don't want it they throw it at you. Catch em alive, O. Pity
they can't see themselves. A dream of wellfilled hose. Where was that? Ah,
yes. Muioscope pictures in Capel street: for men only. Peeping Tom. Willy's
hat and what the girls did with it. Do they snapshot those girls or is it
all a fake? Lingerie does it. Felt for the curves inside her deshabillŲ.
Excites them also when they're. I'm all clean come and dirty me. And they
like dressing one another for the sacrifice. Milly delighted with Molly's
new blouse. At first. Put them all on to take them all off. Molly. Why I
bought her the violet garters. Us too: the tie he wore, his lovely socks and
turnedup trousers. He wore a pair of gaiters the night that first we met.
His lovely shirt was shining beneath his what? of jet. Say a woman loses a
charm with every pin she takes out. Pinned together. O Mairy lost the pin of
her. Dressed up to the nines for somebody. Fashion part of their charm. Just
changes when you're on the track of the secret. Except the east: Mary,
Martha: now as then. No reasonable offer refused. She wasn't in a hurry
either. Always off to a fellow when they are. They never forget an
appointment. Out on spec probably. They believe in chance because like
themselves. And the others inclined to give her an odd dig. Girl friends at
school, arms round each other's neck or with ten fingers locked, kissing and
whispering secrets about nothing in the convent garden. Nuns with
whitewashed faces, cool coif and their rosaries going up and down,
vindictive too for what they can't get. Barbed wire. Be sure now and write
to me. And I'll write to you. Now won't you? Molly and Josie Powell. Till Mr
Right comes along then meet once in a blue moon. Tableau! O, look who it is
for the love of God! How are you at all? What have you been doing with
yourself? Kiss and delighted to, kiss, to see you. Picking holes in each
other's appearance. You're looking splendid. Sister souls showing their
teeth at one another. How many have you left? Wouldn't lend each other a
pinch of salt.
Ah!
Devils they are when that's coming on them. Dark devilish appearance.
Molly often told me feel things a ton weight. Scratch the sole of my foot. O
that way! O, that's exquisite! Feel it myself too. Good to rest once in a
way. Wonder if it's bad to go with them then. Safe in one way. Turns milk,
makes fiddlestrings snap. Something about withering plants I read in a
garden. Besides they say if the flower withers she wears she's a flirt. All
are. Daresay she felt I. When you feel like that you often meet what you
feel. Liked me or what? Dress they look at. Always know a fellow courting:
collars and cuffs. Well cocks and lions do the same and stags. Same time
might prefer a tie undone or something. Trousers? Suppose I when I was? No.
Gently does it. Dislike rough and tumble. Kiss in the dark and never tell.
Saw something in me. Wonder what. Sooner have me as I am than some poet chap
with bearsgrease, plastery hair lovelock over his dexter optic. To aid
gentleman in literary. Ought to attend to my appearance my age. Didn't let
her see me in profile. Still, you never know. Pretty girls and ugly men
marrying. Beauty and the beast. Besides I can't be so if Molly. Took off her
hat to show her hair. Wide brim bought to hide her face, meeting someone
might know her, bend down or carry a bunch of flowers to smell. Hair strong
in rut. Ten bob I got for Molly's combings when we were on the rocks in
Holles street. Why not? Suppose he gave her money. Why not? All a prejudice.
She's worth ten, fifteen, more a pound. All that for nothing. Bold hand. Mrs
Marion. Did I forget to write address on that letter like the postcard I
sent to Flynn? And the day I went to Drimmie's without a necktie. Wrangle
with Molly it was put me off. No, I remember. Richie Goulding. He's another.
Weighs on his mind. Funny my watch stopped at half past four. Dust. Shark
liver oil they use to clean could do it myself. Save. Was that just when he,
she?
O, he did. Into her. She did. Done.
Ah!
Mr Bloom with careful hand recomposed his wet shirt. O Lord, that
little limping devil. Begins to feel cold and clammy Aftereffect not
pleasant. Still you have to get rid of it someway. They don't care.
Complimented perhaps. Go home to nicey bread and milky and say night prayers
with the kiddies. Well, aren't they. See her as she is spoil all. Must have
the stage setting, the rouge, costume, position, music. The name too. Amours
of actresses. Nell Gwynn, Mrs Bracegirdle, Maud Branscombe. Curtain up.
Moonlight silver effulgence. Maiden discovered with pensive bosom. Little
sweetheart come and kiss me Still I feel. The strength it gives a man.
That's the secret of it. Good job I let off there behind coming out of
Dignam's. Cider that was. Otherwise I couldn't have. Makes you want to sing
after. Lacaus esant taratara. Suppose I spoke to her. What about? Bad plan
however if you don't know how to end the conversation. Ask them a question
they ask you another. Good idea if you're in a cart. Wonderful of course if
you say: good evening, and you see she's on for it: good evening. O but the
dark evening in the Appian way I nearly spoke to Mrs Clinch O thinking she
was. Whew! Girl in Meath street that night. All the dirty things I made her
say all wrong of course. My arks she called it. It's so hard to find one
who. Aho! If you don't answer when they solicit must be horrible for them
till they harden. And kissed my hand when I gave her the extra two
shillings. Parrots. Press the button and the bird will squeak. Wish she
hadn't called me sir. Oh, her mouth in the dark! And you a married man with
a single girl! That's what they enjoy. Taking a man from another woman. Or
even hear of it. Different with me. Glad to get away from other chap's wife.
Eating off his cold plate. Chap in the Burton today spitting back gumchewed
gristle. French letter still in my pocketbook. Cause of half the trouble.
But might happen sometime, I don't think. Come in. All is prepared. I
dreamt. What? Worst is beginning. How they change the venue when it's not
what they like. Ask you do you like mushrooms because she once knew a
gentleman who. Or ask you what someone was going to say when he changed his
mind and stopped. Yet if I went the whole hog, say: I want to, something
like that. Because I did. She too. Offend her. Then make it up. Pretend to
want something awfully, then cry off for her sake. Flatters them. She must
have been thinking of someone else all the time. What harm? Must since she
came to the use of reason, he, he and he. First Kiss does the trick. The
propitious moment. Something inside them goes pop. Mushy like, tell by their
eye, on the sly. First thoughts are best. Remember that till their dying
day. Molly, lieutenant Mulvey that kissed her under the Moorish wall beside
the gardens. Fifteen she told me. But her breasts were developed. Fell
asleep then. After Gencree dinner that was when we drove home the featherbed
mountain. Gnashing her teeth in sleep. Lord mayor had his eye off her too.
Val Dillon. Apoplectic.
There she is with them down there for the fireworks. My fireworks. Up
like a rocket, down like a stick. And the children, twins they must be,
waiting for something to happen. Want to be grownups. Dressing in mother's
clothes. Time enough, understand all the ways of the world. And the dark one
with the mop head and the nigger mouth. I knew she could whistle. Mouth made
for that. Like Molly. Why that high class whore In Jammet's wore her veil
only to her nose. Would you mind, please, telling me the right time? I'll
tell you the right time up a dark lane. Say prunes and prisms forty times
every morning, cure for fat lips. Caressing the little boy too. Onlookers
see most of the game. Of course they understand birds, animals, babies. In
their line.
Didn't look back when she was going down the strand. Wouldn't give that
satisfaction. Those girls, those girls, those lovely seaside girls. Fine
eyes she had, clear. It's the white of the eye brings that out not so much
the pupil. Did she know what I? Course. Like a cat sitting beyond a dog's
jump. Women never meet one like that Wilkins in the high school drawing a
picture of Venus with all his belongings on show. Call that innocence? Poor
idiot! His wife has her work cut out for her. Never see them sit on a bench
marked Wet Paint. Eyes all over them. Look under the bed for what's not
there. Longing to get the fright of their lives. Sharp as needles they are.
When I said to Molly the man at the corner of Cuffe street was goodlooking,
thought she might like, twigged at once he had a false arm. Had too. Where
do they get that? Typist going up Roger Greene's stairs two at a time to
show her understandings. Handed down from father to mother to daughter, I
mean. Bred in the bone. Milly for example drying her handkerchief on the
mirror to save the ironing. Best place for an ad to catch a woman's eye on a
mirror. And when I sent her for Molly's Paisley shawl to Presscott's, by the
way that ad I must, carrying home the change in her stocking. Clever little
minx! I never told her. Neat way she carried parcels too. Attract men, small
thing like that. Holding up her hand, shaking it, to let the blood flow back
when it was red. Who did you learn that from? Nobody. Something the nurse
taught me. O, don't they know? Three years old she was in front of Molly's
dressingtable just before we left Lombard street west. Me have a nice face.
Mullingar. Who knows? Ways of the world. Young student. Straight on her pins
anyway not like the other. Still she was game. Lord, I am wet. Devil you
are. Swell of her calf. Transparent stockings, stretched to breaking point.
Not like that frump today. A. E. Rumpled stockings. Or the one in Grafton
street. White. Wow! Beef to the heel.
A monkey puzzle rocket burst, spluttering in darting crackles. Zrads
and zrads, zrads, zrads. And Cissy and Tommy ran out to see and Edy after
with the pushcar and then Gerty beyond the curve of the rocks. Will she?
Watch! Watch! See! Looked round. She smelt an onion. Darling, I saw your. I
saw all.
Lord!
Did me good all the same. Off colour after Kiernan's, Dignam's. For
this relief much thanks. In Hamlet, that is. Lord! It was all things
combined. Excitement. When she leaned back felt an ache at the butt of my
tongue. Your head it simply swirls. He's right. Might have made a worse fool
of myself however. Instead of talking about nothing. Then I will tell you
all. Still it was a kind of language between us. It couldn't be? No, Gerty
they called her. Might be false name however like my and the address
Dolphin's barn a blind.
Her maiden name was Jemina Brown
And she lived with her mother in Irishtown.
Place made me think of that I suppose. All tarred with the same brush.
Wiping pens in their stockings. But the ball rolled down to her as if it
understood. Every bullet has its billet. Course I never could throw anything
straight at school. Crooked as a ram's horn. Sad however because it lasts
only a few years till they settle down to potwalloping and papa's pants will
soon fit Willy and fullers' earth for the baby when they hold him out to do
ah. No soft job. Saves them. Keeps them out of harm's way. Nature. Washing
child, washing corpse. Dignam. Children's hands always round them. Cocoa-nut
skulls, monkeys, not even closed at first, sour milk in their swaddles and
tainted curds. Oughtn't to have given that child an empty teat to suck. Fill
it up with wind. Mrs Beaufoy, Purefoy. Must call to the hospital. Wonder is
nurse Callan there still. She used to look over some nights when Molly was
in the Coffee Palace. That young doctor O'Hare I noticed her brushing his
coat. And, Mrs Breen and Mrs Dignam once like that too, marriageable. Worst
of all at night Mrs Duggan told me in the City Arms. Husband rolling in
drunk, stink of pub off him like a polecat. Have that in your nose in the
dark, whiff of stale boose. Then ask in the morning: was I drunk last night?
Bad policy however to fault the husband. Chickens come home to roost. They
stick by one another like glue. Maybe the women's fault also. That's where
Molly can knock spots off them. It is the blood of the south. Moorish. Also
the form, the figure. Hands felt for the opulent. Just compare for instance
those others. Wife locked up at home, skeleton in the cupboard. Allow me to
introduce my. Then they trot you out some kind of a nondescript, wouldn't
know what to call her. Always see a fellow's weak point in his wife. Still
there's destiny in it, falling in love. Have their own secrets between them.
Chaps that would go to the dogs if some woman didn't take them in hand. Then
little chits of girls, height of a shilling in coppers, with little
hobbies. As God made them He matched them. Sometimes children turn out
well enough. Twice nought makes one. Or old rich chap of seventy and
blushing bride. Marry in May and repent in December. This wet is very
unpleasant. Stuck. Well the foreskin is not back. Better detach.
Ow!
Other hand a sixfooter with a wifey up to his watchpocket. Long and the
short of it. Big he and little she. Very strange about my watch.
Wristwatches are always going wrong. Wonder is there any magnetic influence
between the person because that was about the time he. Yes, I suppose at
once. Cat's away the mice will play. I remember looking in Pill lane. Also
that now is magnetism. Back of everything magnetism. Earth for instance
pulling this and being pulled. That causes movement. And time? Well that's
the time the movement takes. Then if one thing stopped the whole ghesabo
would stop bit by bit. Because it's arranged. Magnetic needle tells you
what's going on in the sun, the stars. Little piece of steel iron. When you
hold out the fork. Come. Come. Tip. Woman and man that is. Fork and steel.
Molly, he. Dress up and look and suggest and let you see and see more and
defy you if you're a man to see that and, like a sneeze coming, legs, look,
look and if you have any guts in you. Tip. Have to let fly.
Wonder how is she feeling in that region. Shame all put on before third
person. More put out about a hole in her stocking. Molly, her underjaw stuck
out head back, about the farmer in the ridingboots and spurs at the horse
show. And when the painters were in Lombard street west. Fine voice that
fellow had. How Giuglini began. Smell that I did, like flowers. It was too.
Violets. Came from the turpentine probably in the paint. Make their own use
of everything. Same time doing it scraped her slipper on the floor so they
wouldn't hear. But lots of them can't kick the beam, I think. Keep that
thing up for hours. Kind of a general all round over me and half down my
back.
Wait. Hm. Hm. Yes. That's her perfume. Why she waved her hand. I leave
you this to think of me when I'm far away on the pillow. What is it?
Heliotrope? No, Hyacinth? Hm. Roses, I think. She'd like scent of that kind.
Sweet and cheap: soon sour. Why Molly likes opoponax. Suits her with a
little jessamine mixed. Her high notes and her low notes. At the dance night
she met him, dance of the hours. Heat brought it out. She was wearing her
black and it had the perfume of the time before. Good conductor, is it? Or
bad? Light too. Suppose there's some connection. For instance if you go into
a cellar where it's dark. Mysterious thing too. Why did I smell it only now?
Took its time in coming like herself, slow but sure. Suppose it's ever so
many millions of tiny grains blown across. Yes, it is. Because those spice
islands, Cinghalese this morning, smell them leagues off. Tell you what it
is. It's like a fine veil or web they have all over the skin, fine like what
do you call it gossamer and they're aways spinning it out of them, fine as
anything, rainbow colours without knowing it. Clings to everything she takes
off. Vamp of her stockings. Warm shoe. Stays. Drawers: little kick, taking
them off. Byby till next time. Also the cat likes to sniff in her shift on
the bed. Know her smell in a thousand. Bathwater too. Reminds me of
strawberries and cream. Wonder where it is really. There or the armpits or
under the neck. Because you get it out of all holes and corners. Hyacinth
perfume made of oil or ether or something. Muskrat. Bag under their tails
one grain pour off odour for years. Dogs at each other behind. Good evening.
Evening. How do you sniff? Hm. Hm. Very well, thank you. Animals go by that.
Yes now, look at it that way. We're the same. Some women for instance warn
you off when they have their period. Come near. Then get a hogo you could
hang your hat on. Like what? Potted herrings gone stale or. Boof! Please
keep off the grass.
Perhaps they get a man smell off us. What though? Cigary gloves Long
John had on his desk the other. Breath? What you eat and drink gives that.
No. Mansmell, I mean. Must be connected with that because priests that are
supposed to be are different. Women buzz round it like flies round treacle.
Railed off the altar get on to it at any cost. The tree of forbidden priest.
O father, will you? Let me be the first to. That diffuses itself all through
the body, permeates. Source of life and it's extremely curious the smell.
Celery sauce. Let me.
Mr Bloom inserted his nose. Hm. Into the. Hm. Opening of his waistcoat.
Almonds or. No. Lemons it is. Ah, no, that's the soap.
O by the by that lotion. I knew there was something on my mind. Never
went back and the soap not paid. Dislike carrying bottles like that hag this
morning. Hynes might have paid me that three shillings. I could mention
Meagher's just to remind him. Still if he works that paragraph. Two and
nine. Bad opinion of me he'll have. Call tomorrow. How much do I owe you?
Three and nine? Two and nine, sir. Ah. Might stop him giving credit another
time. Lose your customers that way. Pubs do. Fellow run up a bill on the
slate and then slinking around the back streets into somewhere else.
Here's this nobleman passed before. Blown in from the bay. Just went as
far as turn back. Always at home at dinnertime. Looks mangled out: had a
good tuck in. Enjoying nature now. Grace after meals. After supper walk a
mile. Sure he has a small bank balance somewhere, government sit. Walk after
him now make him awkward like those newsboys me today. Still you learn
something. See ourselves as others see us. So long as women don't mock what
matter? That's the way to find out. Ask yourself who is he now. The Mystery
Man on the Beach, prize titbit story by Mr Leopold Bloom. Payment at the
rate of one guinea per column. And that fellow today at the graveside in the
brown macintosh. Corns on his kismet however. Healthy perhaps absorb all
the. Whistle brings rain they say. Must be some somewhere. Salt in the
Ormond damp. The body feels the atmosphere. Old Betty's joints are on the
rack. Mother Shipton's prophecy that is about ships around they fly in the
twinkling. No. Signs of rain it is. The royal reader. And distant hills seem
coming nigh.
Howth. Bailey light. Two, four, six, eight, nine. See. Has to change or
they might think it a house. Wreckers. Grace Darling. People afraid of the
dark. Also glowworms, cyclists: lightingup time. Jewels diamonds flash
better. Light is a kind of reassuring. Not going to hurt you. Better now of
course than long ago. Country roads. Run you through the small guts for
nothing. Still two types there are you bob against. Scowl or smile. Pardon!
Not at all. Best time to spray plants too in the shade after the sun. Some
light still. Red rays are longest. Roygbiv Vance taught us: red, orange,
yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet. A star I see. Venus? Can't tell yet.
Two, when three it's night. Were those nightclouds there all the time? Looks
like a phantom ship. No. Wait. Trees are they. An optical illusion. Mirage.
Land of the setting sun this. Homerule sun setting in the southeast. My
native land, goodnight.
Dew falling. Bad for you, dear, to sit on that stone. Brings on white
fluxions. Never have little baby then less he was big strong fight his way
up through. Might get piles myself. Sticks too like a summer cold, sore on
the mouth. Cut with grass or paper worst. Friction of the position. Like to
be that rock she sat on. O sweet little, you don't know how nice you looked.
I begin to like them at that age. Green apples. Grab at all that offer.
Suppose it's the only time we cross legs, seated. Also the library today:
those girl graduates. Happy chairs under them. But it's the evening
influence. They feel all that. Open like flowers, know their hours,
sunflowers, Jerusalem artichokes, in ballrooms, chandeliers, avenues under
the lamps. Nightstock in Mat Dillon's garden where I kissed her shoulder.
Wish I had a full length oil-painting of her then. June that was too I
wooed. The year returns. History repeats itself. Ye crags and peaks I'm with
you once again. Life, love, voyage round your own little world. And now? Sad
about her lame of course but must be on your guard not to feel too much
pity. They take advantage.
All quiet on Howth now. The distant hills seem. Where we. The
rhododendrons. I am a fool perhaps. He gets the plums and I the plumstones.
Where I come in. All that old hill has seen. Names change: that's all.
Lovers: yum yum.
Tired I feel now. Will I get up? O wait. Drained all the manhood out of
me, little wretch. She kissed me. My youth. Never again. Only once it comes.
Or hers. Take the train there tomorrow. No. Returning not the same. Like
kids your second visit to a house. The new I want. Nothing new under the
sun. Care of P. O. Dolphin's barn. Are you not happy in your? Naughty
darling. At Dolphin's barn charades in Luke Doyle's house. Mat Dillon and
his bevy of daughters: Tiny, Atty, Floey, Maimy, Louy, Hetty. Molly too.
Eightyseven that was.
Year before we. And the old major partial to his drop of spirits.
Curious she an only child, I an only child. So it returns. Think you're
escaping and run into yourself. Longest way round is the shortest way home.
And just when he and she. Circus horse walking in a ring. Rip van Winkle we
played. Rip: tear in Henny Doyle's overcoat. Van: breadvan delivering.
Winkle: cockles and periwinkles. Then I did Rip van Winkle coming back. She
leaned on the sideboard watching. Moorish eyes. Twenty years asleep in
Sleepy Hollow. All changed. Forgotten. The young are old. His gun rusty from
the dew.
Ba. What is that flying about? Swallow? Bat probably. Thinks I'm a
tree, so blind. Have birds no smell? Metempsychosis. They believed you could
be changed into a tree from grief. Weeping willow. Ba. There he goes. Funny
little beggar. Wonder where he lives. Belfry up there. Very likely. Hanging
by his heels in the odour of sanctity. Bell scared him out, I suppose. Mass
seems to be over. Could hear them all at it. Pray for us. And pray for us.
And pray for us. Good idea the repetition. Same thing with ads. Buy from us.
And buy from us. Yes, there's the light in the priest's house. Their frugal
meal. Remember about the mistake in the valuation when I was in Thom's.
Twentyeight it is. Two houses they have. Gabriel Conroy's brother is curate.
Ba. Again. Wonder why they come out at night like mice. They're a mixed
breed. Birds are like hopping mice. What frightens them, light or noise?
Better sit still. All instinct like the bird in drouth got water out of the
end of a jar by throwing in pebbles. Like a little man in a cloak he is with
tiny hands. Weeny bones. Almost see them shimmering, kind of a bluey white.
Colours depend on the light you see. Stare the sun for example like the
eagle then look at a shoe see a blotch blob yellowish. Wants to stamp his
trademark on everything. Instance, that cat this morning on the staircase.
Colour of brown turf. Say you never see them with three colours. Not true.
That half tabbywhite tortoise-shell in the City Anns with the letter em on
her forehead. Body fifty different colours. Howth a while ago amethyst.
Glass flashing. That's how that wise man what's his name with the burning
glass. Then the heather goes on fire. It can't be tourists' matches. What?
Perhaps the sticks dry rub together in the wind and light. Or broken bottles
in the furze act as a burning glass in the sun. Archimedes. I have it! My
memory's not so bad.
Ba. Who knows what they're always flying for. Insects? That bee last
week got into the room playing with his shadow on the ceiling. Might be the
one bit me, come back to see. Birds too never find out what they say. Like
our small talk. And says she and says he. Nerve? they have to fly over the
ocean and back. Lot must be killed in storms, telegraph wires. Dreadful life
sailors have too. Big brutes of ocean-going steamers floundering along in
the dark, lowing out like seacows. Faugh a ballagh. Out of that, bloody
curse to you. Others in vessels, bit of a handkerchief sail, pitched about
like snuff at a wake when the stormy winds do blow. Married too. Sometimes
away for years at the ends of the earth somewhere. No ends really because
it's round. Wife in every port they say. She has a good job if she minds it
till Johnny comes marching home again. If ever he does. Smelling the tail
end of ports. How can they like the sea? Yet they do. The anchor's weighed.
Off he sails with a scapular or a medal on him for luck. Well? And the
tephilim no what's this they call it poor papa's father had on his door to
touch. That brought us out of the land of Egypt and into the house of
bondage. Something in all those superstitions because when you go out never
know what dangers. Hanging on to a plank or astride of a beam for grim life,
life-belt round round him, gulping salt water, and that's the last of his
nibs till the sharks catch hold of him. Do fish ever get seasick?
Then you have a beautiful calm without a cloud, smooth sea, placid,
crew and cargo in smithereens, Davy Jones' locker. Moon looking down. Not my
fault, old cockalorum.
A lost long candle wandered up the sky from Mirus bazaar in search of
funds for Mercer's hospital and broke, drooping, and sheda cluster of violet
but one white stars. They floated, fell: they faded. The shepherd's hour:
the hour of holding: hour of tryst. From house to house, giving his
everwelcome double knock, went the nine o'clock postman, the glowworm's lamp
at his belt gleaming here and there through the laurel hedges. And among the
five young trees a hoisted lintstock lit the lamp at Leahy's terrace. By
screens of lighted windows, by equal gardens a shrill voice went crying,
wailing: Evening Telegraph, stop press edition! Result of the Gold Cup race!
and from the door of Dignam's house a boy ran out and called. Twittering the
bat flew here, flew there. Far out over the sands the coming surf crept,
grey. Howth settled for slumber tired of long days, of yumyum rhododendrons
(he was old) and felt gladly the night breeze lift, ruffle his fell of
ferns. He lay but opened a red eye unsleeping, deep and slowly breathing,
slumberous but awake. And far on Kish bank the anchored lightship twinkled,
winked at Mr Bloom.
Life those chaps out there must have, stuck in the same spot. Irish
Lights board. Penance for their sins. Coastguards too. Rocket and breeches
buoy and lifeboat. Day we went out for the pleasure cruise in the Erin's
King, throwing them the sack of old papers. Bears in the zoo. Filthy trip.
Drunkards out to shake up their livers. Puking overboard to feed the
herrings. Nausea. And the women, fear of God in their faces. Milly, no sign
of funk. Her blue scarf loose, laughing. Don't know what death is at that
age. And then their stomachs clean. But being lost they fear. When we hid
behind the tree at Crumlin. I didn't want to. Mamma! Mamma! Babes in the
wood. Frightening them with masks too. Throwing them up in the air to catch
them. I'll murder you. Is it only half fun? Or children playing battle.
Whole earnest. How can people aim guns at each other? Sometimes they go off.
Poor kids. Only troubles wildfire and nettlerash. Calomel purge I got her
for that. After getting better asleep with Molly. Very same teeth she has.
What do they love? Another themselves? But the morning she chased her with
the umbrella. Perhaps so as not to hurt. I felt her pulse. Ticking. Little
hand it was: now big. Dearest Papli. All that the hand says when you touch.
Loved to count my waistcoat buttons. Her first stays I remember. Made me
laugh to see. Little paps to begin with. Left one is more sensitive, I
think. Mine too. Nearer the heart. Padding themselves out if fat is in
fashion. Her growing pains at night, calling, wakening me. Frightened she
was when her nature came on her first. Poor child! Strange moment for the
mother too. Brings back her girlhoo