Ulysses Part 12

--Just one moment.

--Yes, sir, Stephen said, turning back at the gate.

Mr Deasy halted, breathing hard and swallowing his breath.

--I just wanted to say, he said. Ireland, they say, has the honour of being the only country which never persecuted the jews. Do you know that? No. And do you know why?

He frowned sternly on the bright air.

--Why, sir? Stephen asked, beginning to smile.

--Because she never let them in, Mr Deasy said solemnly.

A coughball of laughter leaped from his throat dragging after it a rattling chain of phlegm. He turned back quickly, coughing, laughing, his lifted arms waving to the air.

--She never let them in, he cried again through his laughter as he stamped on gaitered feet over the gravel of the path. That's why.

On his wise shoulders through the checkerwork of leaves the sun flung spangles, dancing coins.

Ineluctable modality of the visible: at least that if no more, thought through my eyes. Signatures of all things I am here to read, seasp.a.w.n and seawrack, the nearing tide, that rusty boot. Snotgreen, bluesilver, rust: coloured signs. Limits of the diaphane. But he adds: in bodies.

Then he was aware of them bodies before of them coloured. How? By knocking his sconce against them, sure. Go easy. Bald he was and a millionaire, _maestro di color che sanno_. Limit of the diaphane in. Why in? Diaphane, adiaphane. If you can put your five fingers through it it is a gate, if not a door. Shut your eyes and see.

Stephen closed his eyes to hear his boots crush crackling wrack and sh.e.l.ls. You are walking through it howsomever. I am, a stride at a time.

A very short s.p.a.ce of time through very short times of s.p.a.ce. Five, six: the _nacheinander_. Exactly: and that is the ineluctable modality of the audible. Open your eyes. No. Jesus! If I fell over a cliff that beetles o'er his base, fell through the _nebeneinander_ ineluctably! I am getting on nicely in the dark. My ash sword hangs at my side. Tap with it: they do. My two feet in his boots are at the ends of his legs, _nebeneinander_. Sounds solid: made by the mallet of _Los Demiurgos_.

Am I walking into eternity along Sandymount strand? Crush, crack, crick, crick. Wild sea money. Dominie Deasy kens them a'. Won't you come to Sandymount, Madeline the mare?

Rhythm begins, you see. I hear. Acatalectic tetrameter of iambs marching. No, agallop: _deline the mare_.

Open your eyes now. I will. One moment. Has all vanished since? If I open and am for ever in the black adiaphane. _Basta_! I will see if I can see.

See now. There all the time without you: and ever shall be, world without end.

They came down the steps from Leahy's terrace prudently, _Frauenzimmer_: and down the shelving sh.o.r.e flabbily, their splayed feet sinking in the silted sand. Like me, like Algy, coming down to our mighty mother.

Number one swung lourdily her midwife's bag, the other's gamp poked in the beach. From the liberties, out for the day. Mrs Florence MacCabe, relict of the late Patk MacCabe, deeply lamented, of Bride Street. One of her sisterhood lugged me squealing into life. Creation from nothing.

What has she in the bag? A misbirth with a trailing navelcord, hushed in ruddy wool. The cords of all link back, strandentwining cable of all flesh. That is why mystic monks. Will you be as G.o.ds? Gaze in your omphalos. h.e.l.lo! Kinch here. Put me on to Edenville. Aleph, alpha: nought, nought, one.

Spouse and helpmate of Adam Kadmon: Heva, naked Eve. She had no navel.

Gaze. Belly without blemish, bulging big, a buckler of taut vellum, no, whiteheaped corn, orient and immortal, standing from everlasting to everlasting. Womb of sin.

Wombed in sin darkness I was too, made not begotten. By them, the man with my voice and my eyes and a ghostwoman with ashes on her breath.

They clasped and sundered, did the coupler's will. From before the ages He willed me and now may not will me away or ever. A _lex eterna_ stays about Him. Is that then the divine substance wherein Father and Son are consubstantial? Where is poor dear Arius to try conclusions? Warring his life long upon the contransmagnificandjewbangtantiality. Illstarred heresiarch' In a Greek watercloset he breathed his last: euthanasia.

With beaded mitre and with crozier, stalled upon his throne, widower of a widowed see, with upstiffed omophorion, with clotted hinderparts.

Airs romped round him, nipping and eager airs. They are coming, waves.

The whitemaned seahorses, champing, brightwindbridled, the steeds of Mananaan.

I mustn't forget his letter for the press. And after? The s.h.i.+p, half twelve. By the way go easy with that money like a good young imbecile.

Yes, I must.

His pace slackened. Here. Am I going to aunt Sara's or not? My consubstantial father's voice. Did you see anything of your artist brother Stephen lately? No? Sure he's not down in Strasburg terrace with his aunt Sally? Couldn't he fly a bit higher than that, eh? And and and and tell us, Stephen, how is uncle Si? O, weeping G.o.d, the things I married into! De boys up in de hayloft. The drunken little costdrawer and his brother, the cornet player. Highly respectable gondoliers! And skeweyed Walter sirring his father, no less! Sir. Yes, sir. No, sir.

Jesus wept: and no wonder, by Christ!

I pull the wheezy bell of their shuttered cottage: and wait. They take me for a dun, peer out from a coign of vantage.

--It's Stephen, sir.

--Let him in. Let Stephen in.

A bolt drawn back and Walter welcomes me.

--We thought you were someone else.

In his broad bed nuncle Richie, pillowed and blanketed, extends over the hillock of his knees a st.u.r.dy forearm. Cleanchested. He has washed the upper moiety.

--Morrow, nephew.

He lays aside the lapboard whereon he drafts his bills of costs for the eyes of master Goff and master Shapland Tandy, filing consents and common searches and a writ of _Duces Tec.u.m_. A bogoak frame over his bald head: Wilde's _Requiescat_. The drone of his misleading whistle brings Walter back.

--Yes, sir?

--Malt for Richie and Stephen, tell mother. Where is she?

--Bathing Crissie, sir.

Papa's little bedpal. Lump of love.

--No, uncle Richie...

--Call me Richie. d.a.m.n your lithia water. It lowers. Whusky!

--Uncle Richie, really...

--Sit down or by the law Harry I'll knock you down.

Walter squints vainly for a chair.

--He has nothing to sit down on, sir.

--He has nowhere to put it, you mug. Bring in our chippendale chair.

Would you like a bite of something? None of your d.a.m.ned lawdeedaw airs here. The rich of a rasher fried with a herring? Sure? So much the better. We have nothing in the house but backache pills.

_All'erta_!

He drones bars of Ferrando's _aria di sort.i.ta_. The grandest number, Stephen, in the whole opera. Listen.