Complete Works of James Joyce (298 page)
Read Complete Works of James Joyce Online
Authors: Unknown
No school tomorrow: it is Saturday night in winter: I sit by the fire. Soon they will be returning with provisions, meat and vegetables, tea and bread and butter, and white pudding that makes a noise on the pan... I sit reading a story of Alsace, turning over the yellow pages, watching the men and women in their strange dresses. It pleases me to read of their ways; through them I seem to touch the life of a land beyond them to enter into communion with the German people. Dearest illusion, friend of my youth!
In him I have imaged myself. Our lives are still sacred in their intimate sympathies. I am with him at night when he reads the books of the philosophers or some tale of ancient times. I am with him when he wanders alone or with one whom he has never seen, that young girl who puts around him arms that have no malice in them, offering her simple, abundant love, hearing and answering his soul he knows not how.
The children who have stayed latest are getting on their things to go home for the party is over. This is the last tram. The lank brown horses know it and shake their bells to the clear night, in admonition. The conductor talks with the driver; both nod often in the green light of the lamp. There is nobody near. We seem to listen, I on the upper step and she on the lower. She comes up to my step many times and goes down again, between our phrases, and once or twice remains beside me, forgetting to go down, and then goes down… Let be; let be... And now she does not urge her vanities - her fine dress and sash and long black stockings — for now (wisdom of children) we seem to know that this end will please us better than any end we have laboured for.
(Dublin: on Mountjoy Square)
Joyce -
(concludes)
... That’ll be forty thousand pounds.
Aunt Lillie -
(titters) - O,
laus!... I was like that too
...When I was a girl I was
sure
I’d marry a
lord... or something...
Joyce -
(thinks)
- Is it possible she’s comparing
herself with me?
High up in the old, dark-windowed house: firelight in the narrow room: dusk outside. An old woman bustles about, making tea; she tells of the changes, her odd ways, and what the priest and the doctor said
I hear her words in the distance. I wander among the coals, among the ways of adventure
Christ! What is in the doorway?
A skull - a monkey; a creature drawn hither to the fire, to the voices: a silly creature.
- Is that Mary Ellen? -
- No, Eliza, it’s Jim -
- O
O, goodnight, Jim -
- D’ye want anything, Eliza? -
- I thought it was Mary Ellen
I thought you were Mary Ellen, Jim -
A small field of stiff weeds and thistles alive with confused forms, half-men, half-goats. Dragging their great tails they move hither and thither, aggressively. Their faces are lightly bearded, pointed and grey as india-rubber. A secret personal sin directs them, holding them now, as in reaction, to constant malevolence. One is clasping about his body a torn flannel jacket; another complains monotonously as his beard catches in the stiff weeds. They move about me, enclosing me, that old sin sharpening their eyes to cruelty, swishing through the fields in slow circles, thrusting upwards their terrific faces. Help !
It is time to go away now - breakfast is ready. I’ll say another prayer... I am hungry; yet I would like to stay here in this quiet chapel where the mass has come and gone so quietly
Hail, holy Queen, Mother of Mercy, our life, our sweetness and our hope! Tomorrow and every day after I hope I shall bring you some virtue as an offering for I know you will be pleased with me if I do. Now, goodbye for the present
O, the beautiful sunlight in the avenue and O, the sunlight in my heart!
Dull clouds have covered the sky. Where three roads meet and before a swampy beach a big dog is recumbent. From time to time he lifts his muzzle in the air and utters a prolonged sorrowful howl. People stop to look at him and pass on; some remain, arrested, it may be, by that lamentation in which they seem to hear the utterance of their own sorrow that had once its voice but is now voiceless, a servant of laborious days. Rain begins to fall.
(Mullingar: a Sunday in July:
Noon)
Tobin - (walking noisily with thick boots and
tapping the road with his stick)... O
there’s nothing like marriage for
making a fellow steady. Before I came
here to the
Examiner
I used knock about
with fellows and boose... Now I’ve a
good house and
I go home in the
evening and if I want a drink
well, I can have it... My advice to
every young fellow that can afford it
is: marry young.
1
0
(Dublin: in the Stag’s Head,
Dame Lane)
O’Mahony - Haven’t you that little priest that
writes poetry over there - Fr Russell?
Joyce - O, yes...I hear he has written verses.
O’Mahony -
(smiling adroitly)..
.Verses, yes...that’s
the proper name for them...
1
1
(Dublin: at Sheehy’s,
Belvedere Place)
Joyce - I knew you meant him. But you’re wrong
about his age.
Maggie Sheehy -
(leans forward to speak seriously).
Why,
how old is he?
Joyce - Seventy-two.
Maggie Sheehy - Is he?
1
2
(Dublin: at Sheehy’s, Belvedere
Place)
O’Reilly - (with developing seriousness)...Now
it’s my turn, I suppose
(quite
seriously)...
Who is your favourite
poet?
(a pause)
Hanna Sheehy -
German?
O’Reilly -
Yes.
(a hush)
Hanna Sheehy -..I think
Goethe
1
3
(Dublin: at Sheehy’s, Belvedere
Place)
Fallon - (as he passes) - I was told to congratulate
you especially on your performance.
Joyce - Thank you.
Blake -
(after a pause).
.I’d never advise anyone
to...O, it’s a terrible life!...
Joyce - Ha.
Blake -
(between puffs of smoke)
- of course...it
looks all right from the outside...to
those who don’t know...But if
you knew...it’s really terrible. A
bit of candle, no...dinner, squalid
...poverty. You’ve no idea simply...
1
4
(Dublin: at Sheehy’s, Belvedere
Place)
Dick Sheehy - What’s a lie? Mr Speaker, I must ask...
Mr Sheehy — Order, order!
Fallon — You know it’s a lie!
Mr Sheehy — You must withdraw, sir.
Dick Sheehy - As I was saying...
Fallon - No, I won’t.
Mr Sheehy - I call on the honourable member
for Denbigh... Order, order!...