Complete Works of James Joyce (38 page)

 
— Let him stay, Stephen said. There’s nothing wrong with him except at night.

 
— Then what is it? Buck Mulligan asked impatiently. Cough it up. I’m quite frank with you. What have you against me now?

They halted, looking towards the blunt cape of Bray Head that lay on the water like the snout of a sleeping whale. Stephen freed his arm quietly.

 
— Do you wish me to tell you? he asked.

 
— Yes, what is it? Buck Mulligan answered. I don’t remember anything.

He looked in Stephen’s face as he spoke. A light wind passed his brow, fanning softly his fair uncombed hair and stirring silver points of anxiety in his eyes.

Stephen, depressed by his own voice, said:

 
— Do you remember the first day I went to your house after my mother’s death?

Buck Mulligan frowned quickly and said:

 
— What? Where? I can’t remember anything. I remember only ideas and sensations. Why? What happened in the name of God?

 
— You were making tea, Stephen said, and went across the landing to get more hot water. Your mother and some visitor came out of the drawingroom. She asked you who was in your room.

 
— Yes? Buck Mulligan said. What did I say? I forget.

 
— You said, Stephen answered,
O, it’s only Dedalus whose mother is beastly dead.

A flush which made him seem younger and more engaging rose to Buck Mulligan’s cheek.

 
— Did I say that? he asked. Well? What harm is that?

He shook his constraint from him nervously.

 
— And what is death, he asked, your mother’s or yours or my own? You saw only your mother die. I see them pop off every day in the Mater and Richmond and cut up into tripes in the dissectingroom. It’s a beastly thing and nothing else. It simply doesn’t matter. You wouldn’t kneel down to pray for your mother on her deathbed when she asked you. Why? Because you have the cursed jesuit strain in you, only it’s injected the wrong way. To me it’s all a mockery and beastly. Her cerebral lobes are not functioning. She calls the doctor sir Peter Teazle and picks buttercups off the quilt. Humour her till it’s over. You crossed her last wish in death and yet you sulk with me because I don’t whinge like some hired mute from Lalouette’s. Absurd! I suppose I did say it. I didn’t mean to offend the memory of your mother.

He had spoken himself into boldness. Stephen, shielding the gaping wounds which the words had left in his heart, said very coldly:

 
— I am not thinking of the offence to my mother.

 
— Of what then? Buck Mulligan asked.

 
— 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 Sassenach 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. Inshore 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 shimmering 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, tasselled 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 glass 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 shirts.

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 hoarse loud breath rattling in horror, while all prayed on their knees. Her eyes on me to strike me down.
Liliata rutilantium te confessorum turma circumdet: 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 shining 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 Cockney 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 sunshine 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 friendship?

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:

 
— Kinch!

 
— It’s in the lock, Stephen said, coming forward.

The key scraped round harshly twice and, when the heavy door had been set ajar, welcome light and bright air entered. Haines stood at the doorway, looking out. Stephen haled his upended valise to the table and sat down to wait. Buck Mulligan tossed the fry on to the dish beside him. Then he carried the dish and a large teapot over to the table, set them down heavily and sighed with relief.

 
— I’m melting, he said, as the candle remarked when... But, hush! Not a word more on that subject! Kinch, wake up! Bread, butter, honey. Haines, come in. The grub is ready. Bless us, O Lord, and these thy gifts. Where’s the sugar? O, jay, there’s no milk.

Stephen fetched the loaf and the pot of honey and the buttercooler from the locker. Buck Mulligan sat down in a sudden pet.

 
— What sort of a kip is this? he said. I told her to come after eight.

 
— We can drink it black, Stephen said thirstily. There’s a lemon in the locker.

 
— O, damn you and your Paris fads! Buck Mulligan said. I want Sandycove milk.

Haines came in from the doorway and said quietly:

 
— That woman is coming up with the milk.

 
— The blessings of God on you! Buck Mulligan cried, jumping up from his chair. Sit down. Pour out the tea there. The sugar is in the bag. Here, I can’t go fumbling at the damned eggs.

He hacked through the fry on the dish and slapped it out on three plates, saying:

 
—
In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti.

Haines sat down to pour out the tea.

 
— I’m giving you two lumps each, he said. But, I say, Mulligan, you do make strong tea, don’t you?

Buck Mulligan, hewing thick slices from the loaf, said in an old woman’s wheedling voice:

 
— When I makes tea I makes tea, as old mother Grogan said. And when I makes water I makes water.

 
— By Jove, it is tea, Haines said.

Buck Mulligan went on hewing and wheedling:

 
—
So I do, Mrs Cahill,
says she.
Begob, ma’am,
says Mrs Cahill,
God send you don’t make them in the one pot.

He lunged towards his messmates in turn a thick slice of bread, impaled on his knife.

 
— That’s folk, he said very earnestly, for your book, Haines. Five lines of text and ten pages of notes about the folk and the fishgods of Dundrum. Printed by the weird sisters in the year of the big wind.