Ulysses
ā Iā
Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. A yellow dressinggown, ungirdled, was sustained gently behind him by the mild morning air. He held the bowl aloft and intoned:
ā Introibo ad altare Dei.
Halted, he peered down the dark winding stairs and called out coarsely:
ā Come up, Kinch! Come up, you fearful jesuit!
Solemnly he came forward and mounted the round gunrest. He faced about and blessed gravely thrice the tower, the surrounding land and the awaking mountains. Then, catching sight of Stephen Dedalus, he bent towards him and made rapid crosses in the air, gurgling in his throat and shaking his head. Stephen Dedalus, displeased and sleepy, leaned his arms on the top of the staircase and looked coldly at the shaking gurgling face that blessed him, equine in its length, and at the light untonsured hair, grained and hued like pale oak.
Buck Mulligan peeped an instant under the mirror and then covered the bowl smartly.
ā Back to barracks! he said sternly.
He added in a preacherās tone:
ā For this, O dearly beloved, is the genuine Christine: body and soul and blood and ouns. Slow music, please. Shut your eyes, gents. One moment. A little trouble about those white corpuscles. Silence, all.
He peered sideways up and gave a long slow whistle of call, then paused awhile in rapt attention, his even white teeth glistening here and there with gold points. Chrysostomos. Two strong shrill whistles answered through the calm.
ā Thanks, old chap, he cried briskly. That will do nicely. Switch off the current, will you?
He skipped off the gunrest and looked gravely at his watcher, gathering about his legs the loose folds of his gown. The plump shadowed face and sullen oval jowl recalled a prelate, patron of arts in the middle ages. A pleasant smile broke quietly over his lips.
ā The mockery of it! he said gaily. Your absurd name, an ancient Greek!
He pointed his finger in friendly jest and went over to the parapet, laughing to himself. Stephen Dedalus stepped up, followed him wearily halfway and sat down on the edge of the gunrest, watching him still as he propped his mirror on the parapet, dipped the brush in the bowl and lathered cheeks and neck.
Buck Mulliganās gay voice went on.
ā My name is absurd too: Malachi Mulligan, two dactyls. But it has a Hellenic ring, hasnāt it? Tripping and sunny like the buck himself. We must go to Athens. Will you come if I can get the aunt to fork out twenty quid?
He laid the brush aside and, laughing with delight, cried:
ā Will he come? The jejune jesuit!
Ceasing, he began to shave with care.
ā Tell me, Mulligan, Stephen said quietly.
ā Yes, my love?
ā How long is Haines going to stay in this tower?
Buck Mulligan showed a shaven cheek over his right shoulder.
ā God, isnāt he dreadful? he said frankly. A ponderous Saxon. He thinks youāre not a gentleman. God, these bloody English! Bursting with money and indigestion. Because he comes from Oxford. You know, Dedalus, you have the real Oxford manner. He canāt make you out. O, my name for you is the best: Kinch, the knife-blade.
He shaved warily over his chin.
ā He was raving all night about a black panther, Stephen said. Where is his guncase?
ā A woful lunatic! Mulligan said. Were you in a funk?
ā I was, Stephen said with energy and growing fear. Out here in the dark with a man I donāt know raving and moaning to himself about shooting a black panther. You saved men from drowning. Iām not a hero, however. If he stays on here I am off.
Buck Mulligan frowned at the lather on his razorblade. He hopped down from his perch and began to search his trouser pockets hastily.
ā Scutter! he cried thickly.
He came over to the gunrest and, thrusting a hand into Stephenās upper pocket, said:
ā Lend us a loan of your noserag to wipe my razor.
Stephen suffered him to pull out and hold up on show by its corner a dirty crumpled handkerchief. Buck Mulligan wiped the razorblade neatly. Then, gazing over the handkerchief, he said:
ā The bardās noserag! A new art colour for our Irish poets: snotgreen. You can almost taste it, canāt you?
He mounted to the parapet again and gazed out over Dublin bay, his fair oakpale hair stirring slightly.
ā God! he said quietly. Isnāt the sea what Algy calls it: a great sweet mother? The snotgreen sea. The scrotumtightening sea. Epi oinopa ponton. Ah, Dedalus, the Greeks! I must teach you. You must read them in the original. Thalatta! Thalatta! She is our great sweet mother. Come and look.
Stephen stood up and went over to the parapet. Leaning on it he looked down on the water and on the mailboat clearing the harbourmouth of Kingstown.
ā Our mighty mother! Buck Mulligan said.
He turned abruptly his grey searching eyes from the sea to Stephenās face.
ā The aunt thinks you killed your mother, he said. Thatās why she wonāt let me have anything to do with you.
ā Someone killed her, Stephen said gloomily.
ā You could have knelt down, damn it, Kinch, when your dying mother asked you, Buck Mulligan said. Iām hyperborean as much as you. But to think of your mother begging you with her last breath to kneel down and pray for her. And you refused. There is something sinister in you . . .
He broke off and lathered again lightly his farther cheek. A tolerant smile curled his lips.
ā But a lovely mummer! he murmured to himself. Kinch, the loveliest mummer of them all!
He shaved evenly and with care, in silence, seriously.
Stephen, an elbow rested on the jagged granite, leaned his palm against his brow and gazed at the fraying edge of his shiny black coat-sleeve. Pain, that was not yet the pain of love, fretted his heart. Silently, in a dream she had come to him after her death, her wasted body within its loose brown graveclothes giving off an odour of wax and rosewood, her breath, that had bent upon him, mute, reproachful, a faint odour of wetted ashes. Across the threadbare cuffedge he saw the sea hailed as a great sweet mother by the wellfed voice beside him. The ring of bay and skyline held a dull green mass of liquid. A bowl of white china had stood beside her deathbed holding the green sluggish bile which she had torn up from her rotting liver by fits of loud groaning vomiting.
Buck Mulligan wiped again his razorblade.
ā Ah, poor dogsbody! he said in a kind voice. I must give you a shirt and a few noserags. How are the secondhand breeks?
ā They fit well enough, Stephen answered.
Buck Mulligan attacked the hollow beneath his underlip.
ā The mockery of it, he said contentedly. Secondleg they should be. God knows what poxy bowsy left them off. I have a lovely pair with a hair stripe, grey. Youāll look spiffing in them. Iām not joking, Kinch. You look damn well when youāre dressed.
ā Thanks, Stephen said. I canāt wear them if they are grey.
ā He canāt wear them, Buck Mulligan told his face in the mirror. Etiquette is etiquette. He kills his mother but he canāt wear grey trousers.
He folded his razor neatly and with stroking palps of fingers felt the smooth skin.
Stephen turned his gaze from the sea and to the plump face with its smokeblue mobile eyes.
ā That fellow I was with in the Ship last night, said Buck Mulligan, says you have g.p.i. Heās up in Dottyville with Connolly Norman. General paralysis of the insane!
He swept the mirror a half circle in the air to flash the tidings abroad in sunlight now radiant on the sea. His curling shaven lips laughed and the edges of his white glittering teeth. Laughter seized all his strong wellknit trunk.
ā Look at yourself, he said, you dreadful bard!
Stephen bent forward and peered at the mirror held out to him, cleft by a crooked crack. Hair on end. As he and others see me. Who chose this face for me? This dogsbody to rid of vermin. It asks me too.
ā I pinched it out of the skivvyās room, Buck Mulligan said. It does her all right. The aunt always keeps plainlooking servants for Malachi. Lead him not into temptation. And her name is Ursula.
Laughing again, he brought the mirror away from Stephenās peering eyes.
ā The rage of Caliban at not seeing his face in a mirror, he said. If Wilde were only alive to see you!
Drawing back and pointing, Stephen said with bitterness:
ā It is a symbol of Irish art. The cracked looking-glass of a servant.
Buck Mulligan suddenly linked his arm in Stephenās and walked with him round the tower, his razor and mirror clacking in the pocket where he had thrust them.
ā Itās not fair to tease you like that, Kinch, is it? he said kindly. God knows you have more spirit than any of them.
Parried again. He fears the lancet of my art as I fear that of his. The cold steelpen.
ā Cracked lookingglass of a servant! Tell that to the oxy chap downstairs and touch him for a guinea. Heās stinking with money and thinks youāre not a gentleman. His old fellow made his tin by selling jalap to Zulus or some bloody swindle or other. God, Kinch, if you and I could only work together we might do something for the island. Hellenise it.
Cranlyās arm. His arm.
ā And to think of your having to beg from these swine. Iām the only one that knows what you are. Why donāt you trust me more? What have you up your nose against me? Is it Haines? If he makes any noise here Iāll bring down Seymour and weāll give him a ragging worse than they gave Clive Kempthorpe.
Young shouts of moneyed voices in Clive Kempthorpeās rooms. Palefaces: they hold their ribs with laughter, one clasping another. O, I shall expire! Break the news to her gently, Aubrey! I shall die! With slit ribbons of his shirt whipping the air he hops and hobbles round the table, with trousers down at heels, chased by Ades of Magdalen with the tailorās shears. A scared calfās face gilded with marmalade. I donāt want to be debagged! Donāt you play the giddy ox with me!
Shouts from the open window startling evening in the quadrangle. A deaf gardener, aproned, masked with Matthew Arnoldās face, pushes his mower on the sombre lawn watching narrowly the dancing motes of grasshalms.
To ourselves . . . new paganism . . . omphalos.
ā Let him stay, Stephen said. Thereās nothing wrong with him except at night.
ā Then what is it? Buck Mulligan asked impatiently. Cough it up. Iām 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.
ā Do you wish me to tell you? he asked.
ā Yes, what is it? Buck Mulligan answered. I donāt remember anything.
He looked in Stephenās 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:
ā Do you remember the first day I went to your house after my motherās death?
Buck Mulligan frowned quickly and said:
ā What? Where? I canāt remember anything. I remember only ideas and sensations. Why? What happened in the name of God?
ā 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.
ā Yes? Buck Mulligan said. What did I say? I forget.
ā You said, Stephen answered, O, itās only Dedalus whose mother is beastly dead.
A flush which made him seem younger and more engaging rose to Buck Mulliganās cheek.
ā Did I say that? he asked. Well? What harm is that?
He shook his constraint from him nervously.
ā And what is death, he asked, your motherās 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. Itās a beastly thing and nothing else. It simply doesnāt matter. You wouldnāt 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 itās injected the wrong way. To me itās 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 itās over. You crossed her last wish in death and yet you sulk with me because I donāt whinge like some hired mute from Lalouetteās. Absurd! I suppose I did say it. I didnāt 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:
ā I am not thinking of the offence to my mother.
ā Of what then? Buck Mulligan asked.
ā Of the offence to me, Stephen answered.
Buck Mulligan swung round on his heel.
ā 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:
ā Are you up there, Mulligan?
ā Iām coming, Buck Mulligan answered.
He turned towards Stephen and said:
ā 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:
ā Donāt mope over it all day, he said. Iām 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 loveās 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...