Ulysses Part 7

Buck Mulligan made way for him to scramble past and, glancing at Haines and Stephen, crossed himself piously with his thumbnail at brow and lips 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 G.o.d! 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 s.h.i.+rt.

--My twelfth rib is gone, he cried. I'm the _Uebermensch._ Toothless Kinch and I, the supermen.

He struggled out of his s.h.i.+rt 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 s.h.i.+p, Buck Mulligan cried. Half twelve.

--Good, Stephen said.

He walked along the upwardcurving path.

_Liliata rutilantium.

Turma circ.u.mdet.

Iubilantium 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.

--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 s.p.a.ce, shattered gla.s.s 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.