Ulysses Part 54

Portals of discovery opened to let in the quaker librarian, softcreakfooted, bald, eared and a.s.siduous.

--A shrew, John Eglinton said shrewdly, is not a useful portal of discovery, one should imagine. What useful discovery did Socrates learn from Xanthippe?

--Dialectic, Stephen answered: and from his mother how to bring thoughts into the world. What he learnt from his other wife Myrto (_absit nomen!_), Socratididion's Epipsychidion, no man, not a woman, will ever know. But neither the midwife's lore nor the caudlelectures saved him from the archons of Sinn Fein and their naggin of hemlock.

--But Ann Hathaway? Mr Best's quiet voice said forgetfully. Yes, we seem to be forgetting her as Shakespeare himself forgot her.

His look went from brooder's beard to carper's skull, to remind, to chide them not unkindly, then to the baldpink lollard costard, guiltless though maligned.

--He had a good groatsworth of wit, Stephen said, and no truant memory.

He carried a memory in his wallet as he trudged to Romeville whistling _The girl I left behind me._ If the earthquake did not time it we should know where to place poor Wat, sitting in his form, the cry of hounds, the studded bridle and her blue windows. That memory, _Venus and Adonis_, lay in the bedchamber of every light-of-love in London.

Is Katharine the shrew illfavoured? Hortensio calls her young and beautiful. Do you think the writer of _Antony and Cleopatra_, a pa.s.sionate pilgrim, had his eyes in the back of his head that he chose the ugliest doxy in all Warwicks.h.i.+re to lie withal? Good: he left her and gained the world of men. But his boywomen are the women of a boy.

Their life, thought, speech are lent them by males. He chose badly? He was chosen, it seems to me. If others have their will Ann hath a way.

By c.o.c.k, she was to blame. She put the comether on him, sweet and twentysix. The greyeyed G.o.ddess who bends over the boy Adonis, stooping to conquer, as prologue to the swelling act, is a boldfaced Stratford wench who tumbles in a cornfield a lover younger than herself.

And my turn? When?

Come!

--Ryefield, Mr Best said brightly, gladly, raising his new book, gladly, brightly.

He murmured then with blond delight for all:

_Between the acres of the rye These pretty countryfolk would lie._

Paris: the wellpleased pleaser.

A tall figure in bearded homespun rose from shadow and unveiled its cooperative watch.

--I am afraid I am due at the _Homestead._

Whither away? Exploitable ground.

--Are you going? John Eglinton's active eyebrows asked. Shall we see you at Moore's tonight? Piper is coming.

--Piper! Mr Best piped. Is Piper back?

Peter Piper pecked a peck of pick of peck of pickled pepper.

--I don't know if I can. Thursday. We have our meeting. If I can get away in time.

Yogibogeybox in Dawson chambers. _Isis Unveiled._ Their Pali book we tried to p.a.w.n. Crosslegged under an umbrel umbershoot he thrones an Aztec logos, functioning on astral levels, their oversoul, mahamahatma.

The faithful hermetists await the light, ripe for chelas.h.i.+p, ringroundabout him. Louis H. Victory. T. Caulfield Irwin. Lotus ladies tend them i'the eyes, their pineal glands aglow. Filled with his G.o.d, he thrones, Buddh under plantain. Gulfer of souls, engulfer. Hesouls, shesouls, shoals of souls. Engulfed with wailing creecries, whirled, whirling, they bewail.

_In quintessential triviality For years in this fleshcase a shesoul dwelt._

--They say we are to have a literary surprise, the quaker librarian said, friendly and earnest. Mr Russell, rumour has it, is gathering together a sheaf of our younger poets' verses. We are all looking forward anxiously.

Anxiously he glanced in the cone of lamplight where three faces, lighted, shone.

See this. Remember.

Stephen looked down on a wide headless caubeen, hung on his ashplanthandle over his knee. My casque and sword. Touch lightly with two index fingers. Aristotle's experiment. One or two? Necessity is that in virtue of which it is impossible that one can be otherwise. Argal, one hat is one hat.

Listen.

Young Colum and Starkey. George Roberts is doing the commercial part.

Longworth will give it a good puff in the _Express._ O, will he? I liked Colum's _Drover._ Yes, I think he has that queer thing genius. Do you think he has genius really? Yeats admired his line: _As in wild earth a Grecian vase_. Did he? I hope you'll be able to come tonight. Malachi Mulligan is coming too. Moore asked him to bring Haines. Did you hear Miss Mitch.e.l.l's joke about Moore and Martyn? That Moore is Martyn's wild oats? Awfully clever, isn't it? They remind one of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza. Our national epic has yet to be written, Dr Sigerson says.

Moore is the man for it. A knight of the rueful countenance here in Dublin. With a saffron kilt? O'Neill Russell? O, yes, he must speak the grand old tongue. And his Dulcinea? James Stephens is doing some clever sketches. We are becoming important, it seems.

Cordelia. _Cordoglio._ Lir's loneliest daughter.

Nookshotten. Now your best French polish.

--Thank you very much, Mr Russell, Stephen said, rising. If you will be so kind as to give the letter to Mr Norman...

--O, yes. If he considers it important it will go in. We have so much correspondence.

--I understand, Stephen said. Thanks.

G.o.d ild you. The pigs' paper. Bullockbefriending.

Synge has promised me an article for _Dana_ too. Are we going to be read? I feel we are. The Gaelic league wants something in Irish. I hope you will come round tonight. Bring Starkey.

Stephen sat down.

The quaker librarian came from the leavetakers. Blus.h.i.+ng, his mask said:

--Mr Dedalus, your views are most illuminating.

He creaked to and fro, tiptoing up nearer heaven by the alt.i.tude of a chopine, and, covered by the noise of outgoing, said low:

--Is it your view, then, that she was not faithful to the poet?

Alarmed face asks me. Why did he come? Courtesy or an inward light?

--Where there is a reconciliation, Stephen said, there must have been first a sundering.

--Yes.

Christfox in leather trews, hiding, a runaway in blighted treeforks, from hue and cry. Knowing no vixen, walking lonely in the chase. Women he won to him, tender people, a wh.o.r.e of Babylon, ladies of justices, bully tapsters' wives. Fox and geese. And in New Place a slack dishonoured body that once was comely, once as sweet, as fresh as cinnamon, now her leaves falling, all, bare, frighted of the narrow grave and unforgiven.

--Yes. So you think...

The door closed behind the outgoer.

Rest suddenly possessed the discreet vaulted cell, rest of warm and brooding air.