Complete Works of James Joyce (271 page)

 
— It has not epiphanised yet, he said.

Cranly stared stolidly down the river and held his peace for a few minutes during which the expounder of the new esthetic repeated his theory to himself all over again. A clock at the far side of the bridge chimed and simultaneously Cranly’s thin lips parted for speech:

 
— I wonder, he said . . .

 
— What?

Cranly continued to stare towards the mouth of the Liffey like a man in a trance. Stephen waited for the sentence to be finished and then he said again “What?” Cranly then faced about suddenly and said with flat emphasis:

 
— I wonder did that bloody boat, the ever start?

Stephen had now completed a series of hymns in honour of extravagant beauty and these he published privately in a manuscript edition of one copy. His last interview with Cranly had been so unsatisfactory that he hesitated to show the manuscript to him. He kept the manuscript by him and its presence tormented him. He wanted to show it to his parents but the examination was approaching and he knew that their sympathy would be incomplete. He wanted to show it to Maurice but he was conscious that his brother resented having been forsaken for plebeian companions. He wanted to show it to Lynch but he dreaded the physical labour of urging that torpid young man into a condition of receptiveness. He even thought for a moment of McCann and Madden. He saw Madden rarely; the salute which the young patriot gave him on those rare occasions was not unlike the salute which [one] a friend who has failed gives to a friend who has succeeded. Madden spent the greater part of his day in Cooney’s tobacco-shop, sampling and discussing , smoking very heavy tobacco and speaking Irish with [one] newly arrived provincials. McCann was still busily occupied in editing his magazine [for] to which he had himself contributed an article entitled “Rationalism in Practice.” In this article he expressed the hope that mankind in the not too distant future would use mineral, [as] instead of animal [and] or vegetable diet. The tone of the editor’s writing had become much more orthodox than his speech had been wont to be. In the report of the general meeting of the College Sodality which occupied a column and a half of the College magazine it was stated that Mr McCann, in a forcible speech, had [suggested] made many valuable suggestions for the working of the society on a more practical basis. Stephen was surprised at this and when one day, [when Mc] walking through Nassau St with Cranly, he encountered the editor striding vigorously towards the Library he said to Cranly:

 
— What is Bonny Dundee at?

 
— How — at?

 
— I mean . . . this sodality business he’s mixing himself up in. He can’t be stupid enough to think he can use the sodality for any good purpose.

Cranly eyed Stephen quizzically but, after considering the matter, decided to make no remark.

The examination resulted in Cranly’s being ‘stuck’ again and in Stephen’s securing a low pass. Stephen did not think it necessary to take the results of these examinations very bitterly to heart inasmuch as he [ judged] knew that Father Artifoni, who had presented himself for the matriculation examination, had been awarded higher marks for his English paper than for his Italian paper, having been tested in the latter language by a polyglot examiner who examined in French, Italian, Arabic, [Jewish] Hebrew, Spanish and German. Stephen sympathised with his teacher who was ingenuous enough to express his astonishment. One evening during the examinations Stephen was talking to Cranly under the arcade of the University when Emma passed them. Cranly raised his ancient straw hat (which he had once more resurrected) and Stephen followed suit. In reply she bowed very politely across Stephen at his friend. Cranly replaced his hat and proceeded to meditate in the shade of it for a few minutes.

 
— Why did she do that? he said.

 
— An invitation, perhaps, said Stephen.

Cranly stared continuously at the air through which she had passed: and Stephen said smilingly:

 
— Perhaps she meant it as an invitation.

 
— Perhaps.

 
— You’re incomplete without a woman, said Stephen.

 
— Only she’s so flamin’ fat, said Cranly, d’ye know . . .

Stephen kept silent. He was not pleased that anyone else should speak against her and he did not smile when Cranly took his arm saying “Let us eke go” which [he] was always intended as an old English expression inviting departure. Stephen had long ago debated with himself the advisability of telling Cranly that the expression should be amended but Cranly’s persistent emphasis of the word ‘eke’ acted as a deterrent.

The announcement of the result of the examination led to a domestic squabble. Mr Daedalus ransacked his vocabulary in search of abusive terms and ended by asking Stephen what were his plans for the future.

 
— I have no plans.

 
— Well then the sooner you clear out the better. You’ve been having us I see. However with the help of God and His Holy Mother I’ll write to Mullingar the first thing in the morning. There’s no use in your god-father wasting any more of his money on you.

 
— Simon, said Mrs Daedalus, you always go to the fair with the story. Can’t you be reasonable?

 
— Reasonable be damned. Don’t I know the set he has got into — lousy-looking patriots and that football chap in the knickerbockers. To tell you the God’s truth, Stephen, I thought you’d have more pride than to associate with such canaille.

 
— I don’t think Stephen has done so badly in his examination: he hasn’t failed and after all . . .

 
— She will put in her word, you know, said Mr Daedalus to his son. That’s a little hereditary habit. Her family, you know, by God they know anything you can ask them down to the making of the mainspring of a watch. Fact.

 
— You oughtn’t to run away with the story, Simon. Many fathers would be glad to have such a son.

 
— You needn’t interfere between me and my son. We understand each other. I’m not saying anything to him; but I want to know what he has been doing for twelve months.

Stephen continued tapping the blade of his knife on the edge of his plate.

 
— What have you been doing?

 
— Thinking.

 
— Thinking? Is that all?

 
— And writing a little.

 
— Hm. I see. Wasting your time, in fact.

 
— I don’t consider it waste of time to think.

 
— Hm. I see. You see I know these Bohemian chaps, these poets, who don’t consider it waste of time to think. But at the same time they’re damn glad to borrow an odd shilling now and then to buy chops with. How will you like thinking when you have no chops? Can’t you go for something definite, some good appointment in a government office and then, by Christ, you can think as much as you like. Study for some first-class appointment, there are plenty of them, and you can write at your leisure. Unless, perhaps, you would prefer to be a loafer eating orange-peels and sleeping in the Park.

Stephen made no reply. When the harangue had been repeated five or six times he got up and went out. He went over to the Library to look for Cranly and, not finding him in the reading-room or in the porch, went to the Adelphi Hotel. It was a Saturday night and the rooms were crowded with clerks. [and] The clerk from the Agricultural Board Office was sitting in the corner of the bar with his hat pushed well back from his forehead and at once Stephen recognised the dark ooze which was threatening to emerge upon his heated face. He was occupied in twirling his moustache in the crook of his index finger, and in glancing between the barmaid’s face and the label of his bottle of stout. The billiard-room was very noisy: all the tables were engaged and the balls hopped on to the floor every minute or so. Some of the players played in their shirt-sleeves.

Cranly was sitting stolidly on the seat that ran alongside the tables, watching a game [of]. Stephen sat beside him in silence, also watching the game. It was a three-handed game. An elderly clerk, evidently in a patronising mood, was playing two of his junior colleagues. The elderly clerk was a tall stout man who wore gilt spectacles on a face like a red shrivelled apple. He was in his shirt-sleeves and he played and spoke so briskly as to suggest that he was drilling rather than playing. The young clerks were both clean shaven. One of them was a thickset young man who played doggedly without speaking, the other was an effervescent young man with white eyebrows and a nervous manner. Cranly and Stephen watched the game progress, creep from point to point. The heavy young man put his ball on to the floor three times in succession and the scoring was so slow that the marker came and stood by the table as a reminder that the twenty minutes had passed. The players chalked their cues oftener than before and, seeing that they were in earnest about finishing the game, the marker did not say anything about the time. But his presence acted upon them. The elderly clerk jerked his cue at his ball, making a bad stroke, and stood back from the table blinking his eyes and saying “Missed that time.” The effervescent young clerk hurried to his ball, made a bad stroke and, looking along his cue, said “Ah!” The dogged young man shot his ball straight into the top pocket, a fact which the marker registered at once on the broken marking-board. The elderly clerk peered for a few critical seconds over the rim of his glasses, made another bad stroke and, at once proceeding to chalk his cue [briskly], said briefly and sharply to the effervescent young man “Come on now, White. Hurry up now.”

The hopeless pretence of those three lives before him, their unredeemable servility, made the back of Stephen’s eyes feel burning hot. He laid his [arm] hand on Cranly’s shoulder and said impetuously:

 
— We must go out at once. I can’t stand it any longer.

They crossed the room together and Stephen said:

 
— If I had remained another minute I think I would have begun to cry.

 
— Yes, it is bloody awful, said Cranly.

 
— O, hopeless! hopeless! said Stephen clenching his fists.

XX
VI

A few nights before Cranly went to the country to [recruit] refresh himself in body after his failure in the examination, Stephen said to him:

 
— I believe this will be an important season for me. I intend to come to some decision as to my course of action.

 
— But you will go for Second Arts next year?

 
— My godfather may not pay. They expected I would get an exhibition.

 
— And why didn’t you? said Cranly.

 
— I will think things out, said Stephen, and see what I can do.

 
— There are a hundred things you can do.

 
— Are there, faith? We’ll see . . . I might want to write to you. What is your address?

Cranly affected not to hear this question. He was picking his teeth with a match, very deliberately
 
and scrupulously, occasionally halting to insert his tongue carefully into some crevice before continuing the process of picking. He spat out what he dislodged. His straw hat rested mainly on the nape of his neck and his feet were planted far apart. After a considerable pause he returned to his last phrase, as if he had been inwardly reviewing it:

 
— Ay, hundreds of things.

Stephen said:

 
— What is your address in the country?

 
— My address? . . . O . . . You see . . . it’s really impossible, d’ye know, to say what my address would be. But you won’t come to any decision before I come back . . . I’m almost sure I’ll go in the morning but I want to see at what time there’s a train.

 
— We looked before, said Stephen. Half past nine.

 
— No . . . I think I must go up to Harcourt St to see what time there’s a train.

They walked slowly in the direction of Harcourt St. Stephen, refusing to nurse ill-feeling, said:

 
— What mysterious purpose is concealed under your impossible prosiness? Please tell me that. Have you anything in your mind’s eye?

 
— If I had a mysterious purpose, said Cranly, I wouldn’t be likely to tell you, (would I?), what it was.

 
— I have told you a great deal, said Stephen.

 
— Most people have some purpose or other in their lives. Aristotle says that the end of every being is its greatest good. We all act in view of some good.

 
— Couldn’t you be a bit more precise? You don’t wish me to write gospels about you, do you? . . . Are you really thinking of being a pork-butcher?

 
— Yes, really. Would you not think of it. You could wrap your sausages in your love-poems.

Stephen laughed.

 
— You mustn’t think you can impose on me, Cranly, he said. I know you are damnably romantic.

At Harcourt St Station they went up to the time-table and after a glance at it Stephen said mischieviously []:

 
— Half past nine, as I told you. You see you wouldn’t take a fool’s word for it.

 
— That’s another train, said Cranly impatiently.

Stephen smiled with enjoyment while Cranly began to examine the chart, murmuring the names of the stations to himself and calculating time. In the end he seemed to arrive at some decision for he said to Stephen “Let us eke go.” Outside the station Stephen pulled his friend’s coat-sleeve and pointed to a newsbill which was exposed to public gaze on the roadway, held down at the corners by four stones.

 
— Have you seen this?

[Cranly] They stopped to read the [items] bill and four or five people also stopped to read it. Cranly read out the items in his flattest accent, beginning at the headline:

EVENING TELEGRAPH

 
[Meeting]

Nationalist Meeting at Ballinrobe.

Important Speeches.

Main Drainage Scheme.

Breezy Discussion.

Death of a Well-known Solicitor

Mad Cow at Cabra,

Literature &.

 
— Do you think it requires great ability to live that life successfully? asked Stephen when they were once more on the way.

 
— I suppose you consider literature the most important thing

 
— You take up that view of the world, I am sure, out of pure perversity. You try to prove me abnormal and diseased but it is as easy to prove that the well-known solicitor was diseased and abnormal. Insensibility is a mark of disease.

 
— He may have been what you would call an artist.

 
— Yes, of course . . . And as for the temptation which Satan was allowed to dangle before the eyes of Jesus it is, in reality, the most ineffectual temptation to offer to any man of genius. That well-known solicitor might succumb to it but for Jesus the kingdom of this world must have been a very empty phrase indeed — at least when he had outgrown a romantic youth. Satan, really, is the romantic youth of Jesus re-appearing for a moment. I had a romantic youth, too, when I thought it must be a grand thing to be a material Messias: that was the will of my father who will never be in heaven. But now such a thought arises in my mind only in moments of great physical weakness. So I regard that view of life as the abnormal view — for me. A few days ago I walked out to Howth for a swim and while I was going round the side of the Head I had to take a little ribbon of a path that hung high over the rocks .

 
— What side of Howth?

 
— Near the Bailey . . . Very good. As I looked down on those rocks beneath me the thought arose in my mind to cast myself down upon them. The thought made me shiver with pleasure for a moment but, of course, I recognised our old friend. All these temptations are of a piece. To Jesus, to me, to the excitable person who adopts brigandage or suicide after taking the suggestions of literature too seriously, Satan offers a monstrous life. It is monstrous because the seat of the spiritual principle of a man is not transferable to a material object. A man only pretends to think his hat more important than his head. That view of life, I consider, is abnormal.

 
— You cannot call that abnormal which everyone does.

 
— Does everyone jump off the Hill of Howth? Does everyone join secret societies? Does everyone sacrifice happiness and pleasure and peace to honour in the world? Father Artifoni told me of a society of mutual assistance in Italy the members of which had the right to be thrown into the Arno by their fellow-members on signing a paper proving that their case was past curing.

At Noblett’s corner where they always halted, they found Temple declaiming to a little ring of young men. The young men were laughing very much at Temple who was very drunk. Stephen kept his eyes fixed on Temple’s shapeless mouth which at moments was flecked with a thin foam as it strove to enunciate a difficult word. Cranly stared at the group and said:

 
— I’ll take my dyin’ bible Temple has been standing those medicals drinks . . . The bloody fool! . . .

Temple caught sight of them and at once broke off his discourse to come over to them. One or two of the medicals followed him.

 
— Good evening, said Temple, fumbling at his cap.

 
— .

The two medicals laughed while Temple began to search his pockets. During the search his mouth fell asunder.

 
— Who has the money? said Cranly.

The two medicals laughed and nodded towards Temple who desisted from his search disconsolately, saying:

 
— Ah, by hell, . . . I was going to stand a drink . . . Ah, by hell! . . . Where’s the other bob I had? . . .

One of the medicals said:

 
— You changed it in Connery’s.

The other medical said:

 
— He got stuck in his first today. That’s why he went on the beer tonight.

 
— And where did you raise the money? said Cranly to Temple, who began to search his pockets again.

 
— He popped his watch for ten bob.

 
— It mustn’t be a bad watch, said Cranly, if he got ten bob on it. Where did he get ten bob?

 
— Ah no! said the second medical. I popped it for him. I know a chap named Larkin in Granby Row.

The big medical student who had had the political discussion in the with the clerk from the Agricultural Board Office came over to them and said:

 
— Well, Temple, are you going to take us down to the kips?

 
— Ah, blazes, said Temple, all my money’s gone . . . Ah, by hell, I must have a woman . . . By hell, I’ll ask for a woman on tick.

The big student roared laughing and turning to Cranly, against whom he had a grudge on account of the affair in the he said:

 
— Will you have a woman too if I stand?

Cranly’s chastity was famous but the young men were not quite impressed by it. At the same time the [little] group did not betray its opinion by laughing at the big student’s invitation. Cranly did not answer; and so the second medical student said:

 
— Mac got through!

 
— What Mac? said Cranly.

 
— Mac . . . you know . . . the Gaelic League chap. He brought us down to the kips last night.

 
— And had you all women?

 
— No . . .

 
— What did you go there for?

 
— He suggested we’d walk through. Fine tarts there, too. They were running after us, man: it was fine skit. Ay, and one of them hit Mac because she said he insulted her.

 
— What did he do?

 
— I don’t know. He said “Gellong, you dirty [whore] hure” or something like that.

 
— And what did Mac say?

 
— Said he’d charge her if she followed him any further.

 
— Well, I’ll stand women all round if Cranly has one, said the big student who was in the habit of making a single inspiration serve him for a half-hour’s conversation.

 
— Ah, by hell, said Temple suddenly, have you heard the new parable . . . about the monkeys in Barbary? . . . Mar . . . vellous parable . . . Flanagan told me . . . O, (he said to Stephen) he wants to be introduced to you . . . wants to know . . . Fine fellow . . . doesn’t care a damn for religion or priests . . . By hell, I’m a freethinker . . .

 
— What is the parable? said Stephen.

Temple took off his cap and, bareheaded, he began to recite after the fashion of a country priest, prolonging all the vowels [and] jerking out the phrases, and dropping his voice at every pause:

 
— Dearly beloved Brethren: There was once a tribe of monkeys in Barbary. And . . . these monkeys were as numerous as the sands of the sea. They lived together in the woods in polygamous . . . intercourse . . . and reproduced . . . their species . . . But, behold there came into Barbary . . . the holy missionaries, the holy men of God . . . to redeem the people of Barbary. And these holy men preached to the people . . . and then . . . they went into the woods . . . far away into the woods . . . to pray to God. And they lived as hermits . . . in the woods . . . and praying to God. And, behold, the monkeys of Barbary who were in the trees . . . saw these holy men living as hermits . . . as lonely hermits . . . praying to God. And the monkeys who, my dearly beloved brethren, are imitative creatures . . . began to imitate the actions . . . of these holy men . . . and began to do likewise. And so . . . they [left their wives] separated from one another . . . and went away far away, to pray to God . . . and they did as they had seen the holy men do . . . and prayed to God . . . And . . . they did not return . . . any more . . . nor try to reproduce the species . . . And so . . . gradually. . . these po . . . or monkeys. . . grew fewer and fewer . . . and fewer and fewer . . . And today . . . there is no monkey in all Barbary.