ULYSSES. James Joyce

Mulligan made way for him to scramble past and, glancing at Haines and Stephen, crossed himself piously with his thumbnail at brow and breastbone.

      — Seymour’s back in town, the young man said, grasping again his spur of rock. Chucked medicine and going in for the army.

      — Ah, go to God, Buck Mulligan said.

      — Going over next week to stew. You know that red Carlisle girl, Lily?

      — Yes.

      — Spooning with him last night on the pier. The father is rotto with money.

      — Is she up the pole?

      — Better ask Seymour that.

      — Seymour a bleeding officer, Buck Mulligan said.

      He nodded to himself as he drew off his trousers and stood up, saying tritely :

      — Redheaded women buck like goats.

      He broke off in alarm, feeling his side under his flapping shirt.

      — My twelfth rib is gone, he cried. I’m the Uebermensch. Toothless Kinch and I, the supermen.

      He struggled out of his shirt and flung it behind him to where his clothes lay.

      — Are you going in here, Malachi?

      — Yes. Make room in the bed.

      The young man shoved himself backward through the water and reached the middle of the creek in two long clean strokes. Haines sat down on a stone, smoking.

      — Are you not coming in, Buck Mulligan asked.

      — Later on, Haines said. Not on my breakfast.

      Stephen turned away.

      — I’m going, Mulligan, he said.

      — Give us that key, Kinch, Buck Mulligan said, to keep my chemise flat.

      Stephen handed him the key. Buck Mulligan laid it across his heaped clothes.

      — And twopence, he said, for a pint. Throw it there.

      Stephen threw two pennies on the soft heap. Dressing, undressing. Buck Mulligan erect, with joined hands before him, said solemnly : — He who stealeth from the poor lendeth to the Lord. Thus spake Zarathustra.

      His plump body plunged.

      — We’ll see you again, Haines said, turning as Stephen walked up the path and smiling at wild Irish.

      Horn of a bull, hoof of a horse, smile of a Saxon.

      — The Ship, Buck Mulligan cried. Half twelve.

      — Good, Stephen said.

      He walked along the upwardcurving path.

      Liliata rutilantium.

      Turma circumdet.

      Jubilantium te virginum

      The priest’s grey nimbus in a niche where he dressed discreetly. I will not sleep here tonight. Home also I cannot go.

      A voice, sweettoned and sustained, called to him from the sea. Turning the curve he waved his hand. It called again. A sleek brown head, a seal’s, far out on the water, round.

      Usurper.

02

       Table of Contents

      — You, Cochrane, what city sent for him?

      — Tarentum, sir.

      — Very good. Well?

      — There was a battle, sir.

      — Very good. Where?

      The boy’s blank face asked the blank window.

      Fabled by the daughters of memory. And yet it was in some way if not as memory fabled it. A phrase, then, of impatience, thud of Blake’s wings of excess. I hear the ruin of all space, shattered glass and toppling masonry, and time one livid final flame. What’s left us then?

      — I forget the place, sir. 279 B.C.

      — Asculum, Stephen said, glancing at the name and date in the gorescarred book.

      — Yes, sir. And he said : Another victory like that and we are done for.

      That phrase the world had remembered. A dull ease of the mind. From a hill above a corpsestrewn plain a general speaking to his officers, leaned upon his spear. Any general to any officers. They lend ear.

      — You, Armstrong, Stephen said. What was the end of Pyrrhus?

      — End of Pyrrhus, sir?

      — I know, sir. Ask me, sir, Comyn said.

      — Wait. You, Armstrong. Do you know anything about Pyrrhus?

      A bag of figrolls lay snugly in Armstrong’s satchel. He curled them between his palms at whiles and swallowed them softly. Crumbs adhered to the tissues of his lips. A sweetened boy’s breath. Welloff people, proud that their eldest son was in the navy. Vico Road, Dalkey.

      — Pyrrhus, sir? Pyrrhus, a pier.

      All laughed. Mirthless high malicious laughter. Armstrong looked round at his classmates, silly glee in profile. In a moment they will laugh more loudly, aware of my lack of rule and of the fees their papas pay.

      — Tell me now, Stephen said, poking the boy’s shoulder with the book, what is a pier.

      — A pier, sir, Armstrong said. A thing out in the waves. A kind of bridge. Kingstown pier, sir.

      Some laughed again : mirthless but with meaning. Two in the back bench whispered. Yes. They knew : had never learned nor ever been innocent. All. With envy he watched their faces. Edith, Ethel, Gerty, Lily. Their likes : their breaths, too, sweetened with tea and jam, their bracelets tittering in the struggle.

      — Kingstown pier, Stephen said. Yes, a disappointed bridge.

      The words troubled their gaze.

      — How, sir? Comyn asked. A bridge is across a river.

      For Haines’s chapbook. No-one here to hear. Tonight deftly amid wild drink and talk, to pierce the polished mail of his mind. What then? A jester at the court of his master, indulged and disesteemed, winning a clement master’s praise. Why had they chosen all that part? Not wholly for the smooth caress. For them too history was a tale like any other too often heard, their land a pawnshop.

      Had Pyrrhus not fallen by a beldam’s hand in Argos or Julius Caesar not been knifed to death? They are not to be thought away. Time has branded them and fettered they are lodged in the room of the infinite possibilities they have ousted. But can those have been possible seeing that they never were? Or was that only possible which came to pass? Weave, weaver of the wind.

      — Tell us a story, sir.

      — Oh, do, sir. A ghoststory.

      — Where do you begin in this? Stephen asked, opening another book.

      — Weep no more, Comyn said.

      — Go on then, Talbot.

      — And the history, sir?

      — After, Stephen said. Go on, Talbot.

      A swarthy boy opened a book and propped it nimbly under the breastwork of his satchel. He recited jerks of verse with odd glances at the text :

      — Weep no more, woful shepherd, weep no more

      For Lycidas, your sorrow, is not dead,

      Sunk though he be beneath the watery floor…

      It must be a movement then, an actuality of the possible as possible. Aristotle’s phrase formed itself within the gabbled verses and floated out into the studious