Ulysses Part 2

--Of the offence to me, Stephen answered.

Buck Mulligan swung round on his heel.

--O, an impossible person! he exclaimed.

He walked off quickly round the parapet. Stephen stood at his post, gazing over the calm sea towards the headland. Sea and headland now grew dim. Pulses were beating in his eyes, veiling their sight, and he felt the fever of his cheeks.

A voice within the tower called loudly:

--Are you up there, Mulligan?

--I'm coming, Buck Mulligan answered.

He turned towards Stephen and said:

--Look at the sea. What does it care about offences? Chuck Loyola, Kinch, and come on down. The Sa.s.senach wants his morning rashers.

His head halted again for a moment at the top of the staircase, level with the roof:

--Don't mope over it all day, he said. I'm inconsequent. Give up the moody brooding.

His head vanished but the drone of his descending voice boomed out of the stairhead:

_And no more turn aside and brood Upon love's bitter mystery For Fergus rules the brazen cars._

Woodshadows floated silently by through the morning peace from the stairhead seaward where he gazed. Insh.o.r.e and farther out the mirror of water whitened, spurned by lightshod hurrying feet. White breast of the dim sea. The twining stresses, two by two. A hand plucking the harpstrings, merging their twining chords. Wavewhite wedded words s.h.i.+mmering on the dim tide.

A cloud began to cover the sun slowly, wholly, shadowing the bay in deeper green. It lay beneath him, a bowl of bitter waters. Fergus' song: I sang it alone in the house, holding down the long dark chords. Her door was open: she wanted to hear my music. Silent with awe and pity I went to her bedside. She was crying in her wretched bed. For those words, Stephen: love's bitter mystery.

Where now?

Her secrets: old featherfans, ta.s.selled dancecards, powdered with musk, a gaud of amber beads in her locked drawer. A birdcage hung in the sunny window of her house when she was a girl. She heard old Royce sing in the pantomime of Turko the Terrible and laughed with others when he sang:

_I am the boy That can enjoy Invisibility._

Phantasmal mirth, folded away: muskperfumed.

_And no more turn aside and brood._

Folded away in the memory of nature with her toys. Memories beset his brooding brain. Her gla.s.s of water from the kitchen tap when she had approached the sacrament. A cored apple, filled with brown sugar, roasting for her at the hob on a dark autumn evening. Her shapely fingernails reddened by the blood of squashed lice from the children's s.h.i.+rts.

In a dream, silently, she had come to him, her wasted body within its loose graveclothes giving off an odour of wax and rosewood, her breath, bent over him with mute secret words, a faint odour of wetted ashes.

Her glazing eyes, staring out of death, to shake and bend my soul. On me alone. The ghostcandle to light her agony. Ghostly light on the tortured face. Her hoa.r.s.e loud breath rattling in horror, while all prayed on their knees. Her eyes on me to strike me down. _Liliata rutilantium te confessorum turma circ.u.mdet: iubilantium te virginum chorus excipiat._

Ghoul! Chewer of corpses!

No, mother! Let me be and let me live.

--Kinch ahoy!

Buck Mulligan's voice sang from within the tower. It came nearer up the staircase, calling again. Stephen, still trembling at his soul's cry, heard warm running sunlight and in the air behind him friendly words.

--Dedalus, come down, like a good mosey. Breakfast is ready. Haines is apologising for waking us last night. It's all right.

--I'm coming, Stephen said, turning.

--Do, for Jesus' sake, Buck Mulligan said. For my sake and for all our sakes.

His head disappeared and reappeared.

--I told him your symbol of Irish art. He says it's very clever. Touch him for a quid, will you? A guinea, I mean.

--I get paid this morning, Stephen said.

--The school kip? Buck Mulligan said. How much? Four quid? Lend us one.

--If you want it, Stephen said.

--Four s.h.i.+ning sovereigns, Buck Mulligan cried with delight. We'll have a glorious drunk to astonish the druidy druids. Four omnipotent sovereigns.

He flung up his hands and tramped down the stone stairs, singing out of tune with a c.o.c.kney accent:

_O, won't we have a merry time, Drinking whisky, beer and wine!

On coronation, Coronation day!

O, won't we have a merry time On coronation day!_

Warm suns.h.i.+ne merrying over the sea. The nickel shavingbowl shone, forgotten, on the parapet. Why should I bring it down? Or leave it there all day, forgotten friends.h.i.+p?

He went over to it, held it in his hands awhile, feeling its coolness, smelling the clammy slaver of the lather in which the brush was stuck.

So I carried the boat of incense then at Clongowes. I am another now and yet the same. A servant too. A server of a servant.

In the gloomy domed livingroom of the tower Buck Mulligan's gowned form moved briskly to and fro about the hearth, hiding and revealing its yellow glow. Two shafts of soft daylight fell across the flagged floor from the high barbacans: and at the meeting of their rays a cloud of coalsmoke and fumes of fried grease floated, turning.

--We'll be choked, Buck Mulligan said. Haines, open that door, will you?

Stephen laid the shavingbowl on the locker. A tall figure rose from the hammock where it had been sitting, went to the doorway and pulled open the inner doors.

--Have you the key? a voice asked.

--Dedalus has it, Buck Mulligan said. Janey Mack, I'm choked!

He howled, without looking up from the fire: