-- III -- - Part 16

-- III -- Part 16

Preparatory to anything else Mr Bloom brushed off the greater bulk of the
shavings and handed Stephen the hat and ashplant and bucked him up
generally in orthodox Samaritan fashion which he very badly needed. His
(Stephen's) mind was not exactly what you would call wandering but a bit
unsteady and on his expressed desire for some beverage to drink Mr Bloom
in view of the hour it was and there being no pump of Vartry water
available for their ablutions let alone drinking purposes hit upon an
expedient by suggesting, off the reel, the propriety of the cabman's
shelter, as it was called, hardly a stonesthrow away near Butt bridge
where they might hit upon some drinkables in the shape of a milk and soda
or a mineral. But how to get there was the rub. For the nonce he was
rather nonplussed but inasmuch as the duty plainly devolved upon him to
take some measures on the subject he pondered suitable ways and means
during which Stephen repeatedly yawned. So far as he could see he was
rather pale in the face so that it occurred to him as highly advisable to
get a conveyance of some description which would answer in their then
condition, both of them being e.d.ed, particularly Stephen, always
assuming that there was such a thing to be found. Accordingly after a few
such preliminaries as brushing, in spite of his having forgotten to take
up his rather soapsuddy handkerchief after it had done yeoman service in
the shaving line, they both walked together along Beaver street or, more
properly, lane as far as the farrier's and the distinctly fetid
atmosphere of the livery stables at the corner of Montgomery street where
they made tracks to the left from thence debouching into Amiens street
round by the corner of Dan Bergin's. But as he confidently anticipated
there was not a sign of a Jehu plying for hire anywhere to be seen except
a fourwheeler, probably engaged by some fellows inside on the spree,
outside the North Star hotel and there was no symptom of its budging a
quarter of an inch when Mr Bloom, who was anything but a professional
whistler, endeavoured to hail it by emitting a kind of a whistle, holding
his arms arched over his head, twice.

This was a quandary but, bringing common sense to bear on it, evidently
there was nothing for it but put a good face on the matter and foot it
which they accordingly did. So, bevelling around by Mullett's and the
Signal House which they shortly reached, they proceeded perforce in the
direction of Amiens street railway terminus, Mr Bloom being handicapped
by the circumstance that one of the back buttons of his trousers had, to
vary the timehonoured adage, gone the way of all buttons though, entering
thoroughly into the spirit of the thing, he heroically made light of the
mischance. So as neither of them were particularly pressed for time, as
it happened, and the temperature refreshing since it cleared up after the
recent visitation of Jupiter Pluvius, they dandered along past by where
the empty vehicle was waiting without a fare or a jarvey. As it so
happened a Dublin United Tramways Company's sandstrewer happened to be
returning and the elder man recounted to his companion A PROPOS of the
incident his own truly miraculous escape of some little while back. They
passed the main entrance of the Great Northern railway station, the
starting point for Belfast, where of course all traffic was suspended at
that late hour and passing the backdoor of the morgue (a not very
enticing locality, not to say gruesome to a degree, more especially at
night) ultimately gained the Dock Tavern and in due course turned into
Store street, famous for its C division police station. Between this
point and the high at present unlit warehouses of Beresford place Stephen
thought to think of Ibsen, associated with Baird's the stonecutter's in
his mind somehow in Talbot place, first turning on the right, while the
other who was acting as his FIDUS ACHATES inhaled with internal
satisfaction the smell of James Rourke's city bakery, situated quite
close to where they were, the very palatable odour indeed of our daily
bread, of all commodities of the public the primary and most
indispensable. Bread, the staff of life, earn your bread, O tell me where
is fancy bread, at Rourke's the baker's it is said.

EN ROUTE to his taciturn and, not to put too fine a point on it, not yet
perfectly sober companion Mr Bloom who at all events was in complete
possession of his faculties, never more so, in fact disgustingly sober,
spoke a word of caution re the dangers of nighttown, women of ill fame
and swell mobsmen, which, barely permissible once in a while though not
as a habitual practice, was of the nature of a regular deathtrap for
young fellows of his age particularly if they had acquired drinking
habits under the influence of liquor unless you knew a little jiujitsu
for every contingency as even a fellow on the broad of his back could
administer a nasty kick if you didn't look out. Highly providential was
the appearance on the scene of Corny Kelleher when Stephen was blissfully
unconscious but for that man in the gap turning up at the eleventh hour
the finis might have been that he might have been a candidate for the
accident ward or, failing that, the bridewell and an appearance in the
court next day before Mr Tobias or, he being the solicitor rather, old
Wall, he meant to say, or Mahony which simply spelt ruin for a chap when
it got bruited about. The reason he mentioned the fact was that a lot of
those policemen, whom he cordially disliked, were admittedly unscrupulous
in the service of the Crown and, as Mr Bloom put it, recalling a case or
two in the A division in Clanbrassil street, prepared to swear a hole
through a ten gallon pot. Never on the spot when wanted but in quiet
parts of the city, Pembroke road for example, the guardians of the law
were well in evidence, the obvious reason being they were paid to protect
the upper classes. Another thing he commented on was equipping soldiers
with firearms or sidearms of any description liable to go off at any time
which was tantamount to inciting them against civilians should by any
chance they fall out over anything. You frittered away your time, he very
sensibly maintained, and health and also character besides which, the
squandermania of the thing, fast women of the DEMIMONDE ran away with a
lot of l.s.d. into the bargain and the greatest danger of all was who you
got drunk with though, touching the much vexed question of stimulants, he
relished a glass of choice old wine in season as both nourishing and
bloodmaking and possessing aperient virtues (notably a good burgundy
which he was a staunch believer in) still never beyond a certain point
where he invariably drew the line as it simply led to trouble all round
to say nothing of your being at the tender mercy of others practically.
Most of all he commented adversely on the desertion of Stephen by all his
pubhunting CONFRERES but one, a most glaring piece of ratting on the part
of his brother medicos under all the circs.

--And that one was Judas, Stephen said, who up to then had said nothing
whatsoever of any kind.

Discussing these and kindred topics they made a beeline across the back
of the Customhouse and passed under the Loop Line bridge where a brazier
of coke burning in front of a sentrybox or something like one attracted
their rather lagging footsteps. Stephen of his own accord stopped for no
special reason to look at the heap of barren cobblestones and by the
light emanating from the brazier he could just make out the darker figure
of the corporation watchman inside the gloom of the sentrybox. He began
to remember that this had happened or had been mentioned as having
happened before but it cost him no small effort before he remembered that
he recognised in the sentry a quondam friend of his father's, Gumley. To
avoid a meeting he drew nearer to the pillars of the railway bridge.

--Someone saluted you, Mr Bloom said.

A figure of middle height on the prowl evidently under the arches saluted
again, calling:

--NIGHT!

Stephen of course started rather dizzily and stopped to return the
compliment. Mr Bloom actuated by motives of inherent delicacy inasmuch as
he always believed in minding his own business moved off but nevertheless
remained on the QUI VIVE with just a shade of anxiety though not funkyish
in the least. Though unusual in the Dublin area he knew that it was not
by any means unknown for desperadoes who had next to nothing to live on
to be abroad waylaying and generally terrorising peaceable pedestrians by
placing a pistol at their head in some secluded spot outside the city
proper, famished loiterers of the Thames embankment category they might
be hanging about there or simply marauders ready to decamp with whatever
boodle they could in one fell swoop at a moment's notice, your money or
your life, leaving you there to point a moral, gagged and garrotted.

Stephen, that is when the accosting figure came to close quarters, though
he was not in an over sober state himself recognised Corley's breath
redolent of rotten cornjuice. Lord John Corley some called him and his
genealogy came about in this wise. He was the eldest son of inspector
Corley of the G division, lately deceased, who had married a certain
Katherine Brophy, the daughter of a Louth farmer. His grandfather Patrick
Michael Corley of New Ross had married the widow of a publican there
whose maiden name had been Katherine (also) Talbot. Rumour had it (though
not proved) that she descended from the house of the lords Talbot de
Malahide in whose mansion, really an unquestionably fine residence of its
kind and well worth seeing, her mother or aunt or some relative, a woman,
as the tale went, of extreme beauty, had enjoyed the distinction of being
in service in the washkitchen. This therefore was the reason why the
still comparatively young though dissolute man who now addressed Stephen
was spoken of by some with facetious proclivities as Lord John Corley.

Taking Stephen on one side he had the customary doleful ditty to tell.
Not as much as a farthing to purchase a night's lodgings. His friends had
all deserted him. Furthermore he had a row with Lenehan and called him to
Stephen a mean bloody swab with a sprinkling of a number of other
uncalledfor expressions. He was out of a job and implored of Stephen to
tell him where on God's earth he could get something, anything at all, to
do. No, it was the daughter of the mother in the washkitchen that was
fostersister to the heir of the house or else they were connected through
the mother in some way, both occurrences happening at the same time if
the whole thing wasn't a complete fabrication from start to finish.
Anyhow he was all in.

--I wouldn't ask you only, pursued he, on my solemn oath and God knows
I'm on the rocks.

--There'll be a job tomorrow or next day, Stephen told him, in a boys'
school at Dalkey for a gentleman usher. Mr Garrett Deasy. Try it. You may
mention my name.

--Ah, God, Corley replied, sure I couldn't teach in a school, man. I was
never one of your bright ones, he added with a half laugh. I got stuck
twice in the junior at the christian brothers.

--I have no place to sleep myself, Stephen informed him.

Corley at the first go-off was inclined to suspect it was something to do
with Stephen being fired out of his digs for bringing in a bloody tart
off the street. There was a dosshouse in Marlborough street, Mrs
Maloney's, but it was only a tanner touch and full of undesirables but
M'Conachie told him you got a decent enough do in the Brazen Head over in
Winetavern street (which was distantly suggestive to the person addressed
of friar Bacon) for a bob. He was starving too though he hadn't said a
word about it.

Though this sort of thing went on every other night or very near it still
Stephen's feelings got the better of him in a sense though he knew that
Corley's brandnew rigmarole on a par with the others was hardly deserving
of much credence. However HAUD IGNARUS MALORUM MISERIS SUCCURRERE DISCO
etcetera as the Latin poet remarks especially as luck would have it he
got paid his screw after every middle of the month on the sixteenth which
was the date of the month as a matter of fact though a good bit of the
wherewithal was demolished. But the cream of the joke was nothing would
get it out of Corley's head that he was living in affluence and hadn't a
thing to do but hand out the needful. Whereas. He put his hand in a
pocket anyhow not with the idea of finding any food there but thinking he
might lend him anything up to a bob or so in lieu so that he might
endeavour at all events and get sufficient to eat but the result was in
the negative for, to his chagrin, he found his cash missing. A few broken
biscuits were all the result of his investigation. He tried his hardest
to recollect for the moment whether he had lost as well he might have or
left because in that contingency it was not a pleasant lookout, very much
the reverse in fact. He was altogether too fagged out to institute a
thorough search though he tried to recollect. About biscuits he dimly
remembered. Who now exactly gave them he wondered or where was or did he
buy. However in another pocket he came across what he surmised in the
dark were pennies, erroneously however, as it turned out.

--Those are halfcrowns, man, Corley corrected him.

And so in point of fact they turned out to be. Stephen anyhow lent him
one of them.

--Thanks, Corley answered, you're a gentleman. I'll pay you back one
time. Who's that with you? I saw him a few times in the Bleeding Horse in
Camden street with Boylan, the billsticker. You might put in a good word
for us to get me taken on there. I'd carry a sandwichboard only the girl
in the office told me they're full up for the next three weeks, man. God,
you've to book ahead, man, you'd think it was for the Carl Rosa. I don't
give a shite anyway so long as I get a job, even as a crossing sweeper.

Subsequently being not quite so down in the mouth after the two and six
he got he informed Stephen about a fellow by the name of Bags Comisky
that he said Stephen knew well out of Fullam's, the shipchandler's,
bookkeeper there that used to be often round in Nagle's back with O'Mara
and a little chap with a stutter the name of Tighe. Anyhow he was lagged
the night before last and fined ten bob for a drunk and disorderly and
refusing to go with the constable.

Mr Bloom in the meanwhile kept dodging about in the vicinity of the
cobblestones near the brazier of coke in front of the corporation
watchman's sentrybox who evidently a glutton for work, it struck him, was
having a quiet forty winks for all intents and purposes on his own
private account while Dublin slept. He threw an odd eye at the same time
now and then at Stephen's anything but immaculately attired interlocutor
as if he had seen that nobleman somewhere or other though where he was
not in a position to truthfully state nor had he the remotest idea when.
Being a levelheaded individual who could give points to not a few in
point of shrewd observation he also remarked on his very dilapidated hat
and slouchy wearing apparel generally testifying to a chronic
impecuniosity. Palpably he was one of his hangerson but for the matter of
that it was merely a question of one preying on his nextdoor neighbour
all round, in every deep, so to put it, a deeper depth and for the matter
of that if the man in the street chanced to be in the dock himself penal
servitude with or without the option of a fine would be a very rara avis
altogether. In any case he had a consummate amount of cool assurance
intercepting people at that hour of the night or morning. Pretty thick
that was certainly.

The pair parted company and Stephen rejoined Mr Bloom who, with his
practised eye, was not without perceiving that he had succumbed to the
blandiloquence of the other parasite. Alluding to the encounter he said,
laughingly, Stephen, that is:

--He is down on his luck. He asked me to ask you to ask somebody named
Boylan, a billsticker, to give him a job as a sandwichman.

At this intelligence, in which he seemingly evinced little interest, Mr
Bloom gazed abstractedly for the space of a half a second or so in the
direction of a bucketdredger, rejoicing in the farfamed name of Eblana,
moored alongside Customhouse quay and quite possibly out of repair,
whereupon he observed evasively:

--Everybody gets their own ration of luck, they say. Now you mention it
his face was familiar to me. But, leaving that for the moment, how much
did you part with, he queried, if I am not too inquisitive?

--Half a crown, Stephen responded. I daresay he needs it to sleep
somewhere.

--Needs! Mr Bloom ejaculated, professing not the least surprise at the
intelligence, I can quite credit the assertion and I guarantee he
invariably does. Everyone according to his needs or everyone according to
his deeds. But, talking about things in general, where, added he with a
smile, will you sleep yourself? Walking to Sandycove is out of the
question. And even supposing you did you won't get in after what occurred
at Westland Row station. Simply fag out there for nothing. I don't mean
to presume to dictate to you in the slightest degree but why did you
leave your father's house?

--To seek misfortune, was Stephen's answer.

--I met your respected father on a recent occasion, Mr Bloom
diplomatically returned, today in fact, or to be strictly accurate, on
yesterday. Where does he live at present? I gathered in the course of
conversation that he had moved.

--I believe he is in Dublin somewhere, Stephen answered unconcernedly.
Why?

--A gifted man, Mr Bloom said of Mr Dedalus senior, in more respects than
one and a born RACONTEUR if ever there was one. He takes great pride,
quite legitimate, out of you. You could go back perhaps, he hasarded,
still thinking of the very unpleasant scene at Westland Row terminus when
it was perfectly evident that the other two, Mulligan, that is, and that
English tourist friend of his, who eventually euchred their third
companion, were patently trying as if the whole bally station belonged to
them to give Stephen the slip in the confusion, which they did.

There was no response forthcoming to the suggestion however, such as it
was, Stephen's mind's eye being too busily engaged in repicturing his
family hearth the last time he saw it with his sister Dilly sitting by
the ingle, her hair hanging down, waiting for some weak Trinidad shell
cocoa that was in the sootcoated kettle to be done so that she and he
could drink it with the oatmealwater for milk after the Friday herrings
they had eaten at two a penny with an egg apiece for Maggy, Boody and
Katey, the cat meanwhile under the mangle devouring a mess of eggshells
and charred fish heads and bones on a square of brown paper, in
accordance with the third precept of the church to fast and abstain on
the days commanded, it being quarter tense or if not, ember days or
something like that.

--No, Mr Bloom repeated again, I wouldn't personally repose much trust in
that boon companion of yours who contributes the humorous element, Dr
Mulligan, as a guide, philosopher and friend if I were in your shoes. He
knows which side his bread is buttered on though in all probability he
never realised what it is to be without regular meals. Of course you
didn't notice as much as I did. But it wouldn't occasion me the least
surprise to learn that a pinch of tobacco or some narcotic was put in
your drink for some ulterior object.

He understood however from all he heard that Dr Mulligan was a versatile
allround man, by no means confined to medicine only, who was rapidly
coming to the fore in his line and, if the report was verified, bade fair
to enjoy a flourishing practice in the not too distant future as a tony
medical practitioner drawing a handsome fee for his services in addition
to which professional status his rescue of that man from certain drowning
by artificial respiration and what they call first aid at Skerries, or
Malahide was it?, was, he was bound to admit, an exceedingly plucky deed
which he could not too highly praise, so that frankly he was utterly at a
loss to fathom what earthly reason could be at the back of it except he
put it down to sheer cussedness or jealousy, pure and simple.

--Except it simply amounts to one thing and he is what they call picking
your brains, he ventured to throw o.ut.

The guarded glance of half solicitude half curiosity augmented by
friendliness which he gave at Stephen's at present morose expression of
features did not throw a flood of light, none at all in fact on the
problem as to whether he had let himself be badly bamboozled to judge by
two or three lowspirited remarks he let drop or the other way about saw
through the affair and for some reason or other best known to himself
allowed matters to more or less. Grinding poverty did have that effect
and he more than conjectured that, high educational abilities though he
possessed, he experienced no little difficulty in making both ends meet.

Adjacent to the men's public urinal they perceived an icecream car round
which a group of presumably Italians in heated altercation were getting
rid of voluble expressions in their vivacious language in a particularly
animated way, there being some little differences between the parties.

--PUTTANA MADONNA, CHE CI DIA I QUATTRINI! HO RAGIONE? CULO ROTTO!

--INTENDIAMOCI. MEZZO SOVRANO PIU ...

--DICE LUI, PERO!

--MEZZO.

--FARABUTTO! MORTACCI SUI!

--MA ASCOLTA! CINQUE LA TESTA PIU ...

Mr Bloom and Stephen entered the cabman's shelter, an unpretentious
wooden structure, where, prior to then, he had rarely if ever been
before, the former having previously whispered to the latter a few hints
anent the keeper of it said to be the once famous Skin-the-Goat
Fitzharris, the invincible, though he could not vouch for the actual
facts which quite possibly there was not one vestige of truth in. A few
moments later saw our two noctambules safely seated in a discreet corner
only to be greeted by stares from the decidedly miscellaneous collection
of waifs and strays and other nondescript specimens of the genus HOMO
already there engaged in eating and drinking diversified by conversation
for whom they seemingly formed an object of marked curiosity.

--Now touching a cup of coffee, Mr Bloom ventured to plausibly suggest to
break the ice, it occurs to me you ought to sample something in the shape
of solid food, say, a roll of some description.

Accordingly his first act was with characteristic SANGFROID to order
these commodities quietly. The HOI POLLOI of jarvies or stevedores or
whatever they were after a cursory examination turned their eyes
apparently dissatisfied, away though one redbearded bibulous individual
portion of whose hair was greyish, a sailor probably, still stared for
some appreciable time before transferring his rapt attention to the
floor. Mr Bloom, availing himself of the right of free speech, he having
just a bowing acquaintance with the language in dispute, though, to be
sure, rather in a quandary over VOGLIO, remarked to his PROTEGE in an
audible tone of voice A PROPOS of the battle royal in the street which
was still raging fast and furious:

--A beautiful language. I mean for singing purposes. Why do you not write
your poetry in that language? BELLA POETRIA! It is so melodious and full.
BELLADONNA. VOGLIO.

Stephen, who was trying his dead best to yawn if he could, suffering from
lassitude generally, replied:

--To fill the ear of a cow elephant. They were haggling over money.

--Is that so? Mr Bloom asked. Of course, he subjoined pensively, at the
inward reflection of there being more languages to start with than were
absolutely necessary, it may be only the southern glamour that surrounds
it.

The keeper of the shelter in the middle of this TETE-A-TETE put a boiling
swimming cup of a choice concoction labelled coffee on the table and a
rather antediluvian specimen of a bun, or so it seemed. After which he
beat a retreat to his counter, Mr Bloom determining to have a good square
look at him later on so as not to appear to. For which reason he
encouraged Stephen to proceed with his eyes while he did the honours by
surreptitiously pushing the cup of what was temporarily supposed to be
called coffee gradually nearer him.

--Sounds are impostures, Stephen said after a pause of some little time,
like names. Cicero, Podmore. Napoleon, Mr Goodbody. Jesus, Mr Doyle.
Shakespeares were as common as Murphies. What's in a name?

--Yes, to be sure, Mr Bloom unaffectedly concurred. Of course. Our name
was changed too, he added, pushing the socalled roll across.

The redbearded sailor who had his weather eye on the newcomers boarded
Stephen, whom he had singled out for attention in particular, squarely by
asking:

--And what might your name be?

Just in the nick of time Mr Bloom touched his companion's boot but
Stephen, apparently disregarding the warm pressure from an unexpected
quarter, answered:

--Dedalus.

The sailor stared at him heavily from a pair of drowsy baggy eyes, rather
bunged up from excessive use of boose, preferably good old Hollands and
water.

--You know Simon Dedalus? he asked at length.

--I've heard of him, Stephen said.

Mr Bloom was all at sea for a moment, seeing the others evidently
eavesdropping too.

--He's Irish, the seaman bold affirmed, staring still in much the same
way and nodding. All Irish.

--All too Irish, Stephen rejoined.

As for Mr Bloom he could neither make head or tail of the whole business
and he was just asking himself what possible connection when the sailor
of his own accord turned to the other occupants of the shelter with the
remark:

--I seen him shoot two eggs off two bottles at fifty yards over his
shoulder. The lefthand dead shot.

Though he was slightly hampered by an occasional stammer and his gestures
being also clumsy as it was still he did his best to explain.

--Bottles out there, say. Fifty yards measured. Eggs on the bottles.
Cocks his gun over his shoulder. Aims.

He turned his body half round, shut up his right eye completely. Then he
screwed his features up someway sideways and glared out into the night
with an unprepossessing cast of countenance.

--Pom! he then shouted once.

The entire audience waited, anticipating an additional detonation, there
being still a further egg.

--Pom! he shouted twice.

Egg two evidently demolished, he nodded and winked, adding
bloodthirstily:

--BUFFALO BILL SHOOTS TO KILL,

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 D 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, SENOR 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'OEIL 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 DENOUEMENT 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 Iying
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, w ere 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 Rontgen 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 890 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, goo
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
910 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 manoeuvre after the
counterattraction in the shape of a female who however had disappeared to
all intents and purposes, could by straining just perceive him, when duly
refreshed by his rum puncheon exploit, 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 pounds 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 SOIREE, 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 l 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 pounds 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 1160 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: 1170

--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 DENOUEMENT after the fun had
gone on fast and furious he got 1190 landed into hot water and had to be
spirited away by a few friends, after a strong hint to a blind horse from
John Mallon of Lower Castle Yard, so as not to be made amenable under
section two of the criminal law amendment act, certain names of those
subpoenaed being handed in but not divulged for reasons which will occur
to anyone with a pick of brains. Briefly, putting two and two together,
six sixteen which he pointedly turned a deaf ear to, Antonio and so
forth, jockeys and esthetes and the tattoo which was all the go in the
seventies or thereabouts even in the house of lords because early in life
the occupant of the throne, then heir apparent, the other members of the
upper ten and other high personages simply following in the footsteps of
the head of the state, he reflected about the errors of notorieties and
crowned heads running counter to morality such as the Cornwall case a
number of years before under their veneer in a way scarcely intended by
nature, a thing good Mrs Grundy, as the law stands, was terribly down on
though not for the reason they thought they were probably whatever it was
except women chiefly who were always fiddling more or less at one another
it being largely a matter of dress and all the rest of it. Ladies who
like distinctive underclothing should, and every welltailored man must,
trying to make the gap wider between them by innuendo and give more of a
genuine 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 pounds 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. ,4., EDW. J.
LAMBERT, CORNELIUS T. KELLEHER, JOSEPH M'C HYNES, L. BOOM, CP M'COY,--
M'LNTOSH 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, 5 yrs, 9 st
4 lbs (W. Lane) 1, lord Howard de Walden's ZINFANDEL (M. Cannon) z, Mr W.
Bass's SCEPTRE 3. Betting 5 to 4 on ZINFANDEL, 20 to 1 THROWAWAY (off).
SCEPTRE a shade heavier, 5 to 4 on ZINFANDEL, 20 to 1 THROWAWAY (off).
THROWAWAY and ZINFANDEL stood close order. It was anybody's race then the
rank outsider drew to the fore, got long lead, beating lord Howard de
Walden's chestnut colt and Mr W. Bass's bay filly SCEPTRE on a 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
ROLE 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 l8th
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 Cap l 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 1440
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, 1450 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, DISTINGUE
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 1530
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 somewhe