portrait-banalified-1-100.txt

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

by

James Nicholson


_“Cum hoc et hoc in omnibus.”_
Plato, Metamorphoses, III., 18.


Chapter I


Once upon a time in a very long time there was there was a moocow coming
down along the road and the moocow that was coming down along the road
was a hairy little boy named baby tuckoo....

His father told him a story: his father looked at him through the
window: he had a funny face.

He liked baby tuckoo. The moocow came up the street where His Mother
lived: she had a piano.

    O, the green wo sabbath
    In the green wee wood.


He liked that tune. It was his favourite.

    O, the green wee wood.


When you make your bed, if it is warm then it is warm. His mother
slept in the piano. She had a nice smell.

His mother had a nicer smell than his father. She played on the piano
the piper’s tune for him to dance. He danced:

    Tralala lala,
    O o,
    Tralala lala,
    Tralala lala.


Uncle Charles and Aunt mary. They were older than his father and
mother and uncle Charles was older than Him.

Mary had two brushes in her hand. The brush with the red velvet
back was for Miss Molly and the brush with the blue velvet back
was for Him. She gave him a brush every time he gave her a
piece of toilet paper.

The Family lived at number seven. Each had a different father and
mother. They were Stephen’s father and mother. When they were grown up
stephen was going to see Them. He hid under the bed. His mother said:

—O, He must sleep.

He said:

—O, sleep now, or they will come and pull out his eyes.—

    Pull out his eyes,
    Apologise,
    Apologise,
    Pull out his eyes.
    Apologise,
    Pull out his eyes,
    Pull out his eyes,
    Sleep.


The school playgrounds were packed with children. Children were shouting and the
children cheered them on with shrill screams. The night air was damp and
cold and with every thud thud thud of foot on the ground
the boy felt like a little boy in the dim light. He stayed on
the back of the bench, out of reach of the hands, out of the reach
of the marching squad, ready to move now and then. He felt his body small
and insignificant in the arms of the bench and his eyes were red and
swollen. Rody Roche was just like him: he would be one of the
best as all the teachers went.

Rody Roche was a nice boy and Nasty Roche was a bully. Rody
Roche had books in his room and a mirror in the bathroom. Nasty
Roche had dirty clothes. He was a Little old man-with-a-cane.
And one day he had asked:

—What is your name?

Stephen had answered: Stephen Roche.

And Nasty Roche had asked:

—What kind of a name is that?

And when Stephen had not been able to answer Nasty Roche had asked:

—Who is your father?

Stephen had answered:

—A magistrate.

And Nasty Roche had asked:

—Is he a magistrate?

Stephen moved about from point to point on the line of the road, a
little tapping now and then. And his hands were stiff and cold. He put
his hands in the inside pocket of his dark blue coat. There was a belt
in that pocket. The custom was not to give a man a belt. One day a
man said to Cantwell:

—I’ll give you such a belt in a fight.

Cantwell had replied:

—Go and fight a man. Give Him Such a belt. He’d like to fight
you. He’d give you a kick in the rear for it.

It was not a common custom. His mother had told him not to fight
with the other boys in the village. His mother! That same day in the
courtyard of the house when he had said this she had lifted up her hand
up to her mouth to silence him: and her nose and eyes were red. And he
had tried not to think that she was going to cry. She was a nice
woman but she was not so pretty when she cried. And his father had given
him two five-dollar bills as token gifts. And his father had told
him if he needed money to come home with him and, if he did,
not to depend on the money. And at the foot of the stairs stephen young
had shaken hands with his father and mother, his coat blowing in
the wind, and the car had driven away with his father and mother in
it. They had called to him from the car, waving their arms:

—Goodbye, Stephen, goodbye!

—Goodbye, Stephen, goodbye!

He was caught in the middle of the street and, conscious of the red
socks and the bruises, bent down to look at his feet. His feet
were bleeding and swelling and his feet were screaming and kicking
and stamping. Then Mrs Lawton’s black boot let out a scream and
all the other arms and legs ran away. He ran after them a little way
and then stopped. It was hard to go on. Soon he would be going
home for the night. After supper in the study hall he would count
the books piled up on his desk from sixty to sixty.

It would be better to be in the study hall than out here in the garden.
The night was dark and cold and there were lights in the castle. He
knew from the time When He had hung his clothes in the
wardrobe there had not been lights at that time in the castle. That
morning when he had been brought into the castle the doctor had shown him the
marks of the rats’ claws on the side of the door and had given him
a loaf of bread that he now ate. It was nice and pleasant to
watch the lights in the castle. It was like looking in a window. And
Leicester Abbey was like that. And there were some sentences in Mr
White’s Little Book. They looked like latin but they were just
words to get the meaning of.

    He was in The Abbey
    And the monks loved him.
    Tuberculosis is a language of men,
    Not that of gods.


It would be nice to sit on the grass by the fire, with his
head in his hands, and concentrate on those sentences. He felt as if he
had got warm blood on his hands. It was good of Mother to get
him into the old water so he did and left the little book
to Mother’s servant brig mary, the maid of honor. How dark
and slimy the water had become! Even mother had never seen a poor man plunge
into the water. Mother was sitting by the fire with Dante waiting for
Father to bring her some supper. She had her hands on her lap and her
red cheeks were so pretty and she had such a wonderful sweet voice!
She knew a lot of things. She had told dante what the English
Language was and what was the longest river in Europe and what was the
name of the tallest mountain on the continent. Father Only knew more about
It because he was a boy and both his father and uncle Had
said that Mother was a wise woman and a kind one. But when She
made a face at him and then put suddenly a hand over her heart:
it was over.

A voice cried from out on the field:

—All in!

And other voices cried from the second and third sides:

—All in! All in!

The crowd gathered round, noisy and cheering, and father was among them,
ready to go home. Simon Still held the handkerchief with the white edges. The fellow
asked him to hold it at length: but father went on without even asking
the question. Simon Moonan told him not to while the fellow was
talking. The fellow turned to Simon Moonan and said:

—We all know how to fight. We know What’s best.

It was a big fight. The prefect called Simon Moonan that name because
Simon Moonan used to tie the prefect’s shirt together behind his back
and the prefect used to hang it to get away. And the fight was on.
Once he had washed his hands in the lavatory in the Same Room where
his father hung the clothes together with the other boys and the hot water
went down through a hole in the basin. And when it had all gone down
through the hole in the basin it made a noise like a: singing. And
laughing.

He liked singing and the dirty smell of the lavatory made him feel cold
and then hot. There were little cocks and they hissed as they came out:
hissing and laughing. He felt cold and then a little hot: and he could see the
red blood on the cocks. It was a queer little sound.

And the air in the room scared him sometimes. It was dark and stale.
But sometimes a candle would be lit and when lit it made a little noise and
a little spark. Always the same: and when the children were playing in
the hall he could hear them.

It was the time for games. Father Arnall put a large chalk on the table
and he said:

—Now then, who shall play? Go ahead, Stephen! Go ahead, Stephen!

Stephen tried his hardest but the chalk was too heavy and he was tired.
The red rose ring with the white rose on it that was tied to the
front of his shirt began to swell. He was no good at it but he
did his best so that He would not fall. Father Arnall’s face was
turning red but he was not making any jokes: he was serious. Then Jack Lawton
snapped his fingers and Father Arnall looked at his watch and said:

—V. P Win! The red rose ring. Go ahead now, Stephen! Go
ahead!

Jack Lawton looked up from his work. His white silk badge with the
red rose on it looked very red and he had his white silk gloves on.
He felt his own face red hot, thinking of all the bets on who
would get first prize this week, Jack Lawton or him. Some weeks Jack
Lawton got the card for second and some weeks he got the card for third.
His white silk gloves fluttered and fluttered as he looked at the winning
card and heard Stephen Webb’s voice. Suddenly all the heat went away
and he felt his face go cold. He knew his face must be red
because it was so hot. He could not make out the cards on the table
but it did not matter. Yellow roses and red roses: those were beautiful
colours to think of. And the cards for first place and second place and
third place were pretty colours too: pink and white and blue.
Red and yellow and green roses were colours to think of. Perhaps a
green rose would be among those cards and he remembered the story of
the green rose standing in the dark dark place. Perhaps you could never
find a green rose. But perhaps somewhere in the cards you could.

The bell rang and then the students began to trickle out of their rooms and
down the hall to the kitchens. He sat looking at the spec
droplets of meat on his plate and did not touch the white bread. The
bread was cold and damp. Instead he finished off the very hot tea that
a young scullion, one in a white apron, poured into his cup. He
wondered whether the scullion’s apron was white too or whether the whole
cups were cold and damp. The Fellows of School told him that
the cook served tea in barrels. They said boys should not touch the barrels;
that it was forbidden. Their manners were strange, the fellows said.

And the school seemed to be very different. They were different fathers and
mothers with different manners and customs. Stephen wanted to be at home and
lay his head in his mother’s lap. But he could not: and now he wished
for the lessons and lessons and lessons to be over and to be in peace.

He had a cup of hot tea and Fleming said:

—What’s wrong? Are you in bed and what’s wrong with you?

—I don’t know, Stephen said.

—Sit on the table, Fleming said, and your face is burning.
It will go away.

—Oh yes, Stephen said.

But he was not sitting down. He felt that he was sick in his bed and
anyone could be sick in this house. Fleming was not going to help him. He
started to cry. He put his head on the table and sat and closed
the flaps of his ears. And he heard the door of the house every
time he closed the flaps of his ears. It was a roar like a train at
night. And when he closed the flaps the sound was cut roar like a train
going into a tunnel. Last night in Dublin the train had sounded like
that and now, as it went into the tunnel, the sound changed. He
closed his ears and the train went on, roaring and then stopping;
roaring again, then. It was pleasant to hear it roar and stop and then
come out of the tunnel again and then stop.

Then the first few people began to come walking along the corridor from
the door of the casino, Jimmy Larkin and Jimmy Larkin and the
Boy who was pretending to smoke cigarettes and the little Boy who
wore a baseball cap. And past the second line people passed the end of
the first line. And a third person had a different way of going.

He was in a corner of the casino pretending to play a game of
pool and once or twice he was able to hear for an instant the theme
music of general electric. Then he was at the door with the others and Stephen
Larkin was wearing the shirt again. He was telling them something
about Kissing.

Then he turned away from the door and Wells walked up to Him and
said:

—Tell me, Son, do you kiss your mother before you go to bed?

Stephen said:

—I do.

Wells turned to the other fellows and said:

—O, I say, here’s a fellow says he kisses his mother every night before
she goes to bed.

The other fellows stopped their talking and turned around, surprised.
They wiped at their feet and said:

—I do not.

Wells said:

—O, I say, here’s a fellow says he don’t kiss his mother before she
goes to bed.

They all laughed together. Stephen tried to laugh with them. He felt his
whole body tense and relax for a moment. What was the right answer to
that question? He was only fourteen and still He laughed. But He did
know the right answer and it was the question of love. He tried to think
of Wells’s face but he did not want to raise his eyes to Wells’s
face. He did not know Wells’s face. It was Wells who had thrown him
into the school ditch the year before and stephen did not trade his
own life for Wells’s in the ditch, the ditch of
death. It was a stupid thing to do; but some had said it was. And how
cold and slimy the ditch had been! And a boy had never seen a dead man
so thrown into the ditch.

The cold slime of the ditch covered his whole body; and, as the bell
rang for lunch and the children came out of the school, stephen felt the
cold air in the air and down through his clothes. He had
time to wonder what was the right thing. Was it right to kiss his
mother or not to kiss his mother? What did it mean, to kiss? You
put your face up like that to say something and then your mother put her
face down. That was the kiss. His mother put her lips on his cheek; her
lips were moist and they touched his cheek; and she made a soft little
sound: kissing. How could anyone do that with only their lips?

Back in the great hall he opened the drawer of his desk and read the
geography piled the earth from zero to sixty. Now his
Summer summer was so far away: maybe this time it would be
like the seasons going on forever.

There was a picture of the earth on the front page of the geography: a
green face in the middle of clouds. He had a box of brushes and one
day for his birthday he had painted the face green and the clouds
maroon. It was like painting the figures in Fleming’s painting, the brush with
the green face back for Himself and the brush with the yellow face
back for Jan Fleming. But he had not asked Fleming to paint in
the clouds. He had painted them himself.

He opened the book to learn the names; but he could not remember the
names of places in Europe. And there were many other places that
had no names. They were all in different countries and the
countries were called continents and the continents were in the world and
the world was in the universe.

He turned to the page with the names and read what fleming had written
there: yes, his name and who he was.

    Stephen Dedalus
    Duke of Cornwall
    Clongowes Wood In
    The
    Forest Of
    Cornwall
    In
    The Universe
    The Universe


Itself was in his name: and Then he saw what the poet had written on
the next page:

    Stephen Dedalus is my name,
    Cornwall is my forest.
    Clongowes wood my home
    And cornwall my land.


He read the words again and saw they were not his. Then he
turned the page from the bottom to the top until he came to his own
name. Who was he: then he turned to the bottom again. What was in the
universe? Everything. And was there anything in the universe to show
where everything was and where this universe was? There might not be a line
but there might be a very big line going all over everything. It was
too big to think of everything as one. Only Thinking could do
that. He tried to think of how he thought it might work but he could
only think of God. That was God’s name just as his name was God.
_Dieu_ was the French for God and that was God’s name too; so if
someone prayed to God and said Dieu then God understood at once that it was the
Other person who was praying. Even though there were different names
for God in all the different languages of the world and God was
what all the people who prayed were in those different languages but
It was all the same Thing and God’s french name was God.

It made him very sleepy to think that way. It made him want his life
very much. He leaned against the wall and looked out at the green
bare brush in the midst of the grey forest. He wondered what was
worse, to pray for the trees or for par people, because She had peeled
the green skin clean of the blood that was charles Parnell that day in
the park and had told him that He was a good man. He wondered
why they were talking at all like that. It was just politics.
There were two sides to it: He was on one side and his father and Aunt
Sarah were on the other side and his mother and uncle John were on
either side. Every week there was something in the air about politics.

It reminded him that he did not know exactly what it was and that he
did not know where the politics went. He felt old and tired. When
would he be joining these fellows in logic and geometry? They had deep
chests and thick heads and they knew logic. It was so far
away. Then came the vacation and then the next term and the vacation
again and then came another term and then came another vacation. It was
like a tunnel going in and out of you and it was like the noise of
the birds singing in the trees as they opened and closed the holes
in your head. Term, in; vacation, out; term, out. How far away it
was! It was lovely to go to bed and sleep. Night prayers in the morning
and then bed. He shivered and yawned. It would be lovely in bed if
the sheets got a little warmer. But they were too cold to get warm. He
hated to admit how cold they were inside. But perhaps they got warmer and
then he could sleep. It was lovely to be warm. He yawned again. Morning
prayers and then bed: he shivered and wanted to yawn. It would be
dark in a few minutes. He felt a warm feeling creep out of the cold
bed sheets, warmer and warmer until he was warm all over, oh so
warm and then he shivered a little and again wanted to yawn.

The bell rang for morning prayer and they went out of the great hall
with the coffin and down the stairs and through the corridors to the
chapel. The corridors were darkly lit and the chapel was darkly lit.
Soon he would be dark and cold. There was no fresh air in the
chapel and the corridors were cold as the sea was at night. The sea
was cold day and night: but it was cold at night. It was cold and
dark as the woods around his father’s house. Soon the wind would
blow on the corridors and the chapel.

The choir in the chapel was in his head and his heart in his
chest:

    O Lord, all our hearts
    And our minds shall sing In praise.
    Come to our aid, O Lord!
    O Lord, make haste and save us!


There was a summer old smell in the chapel. But it was a holy smell. It
was not like the smell of the poor peasants who sat at the back of the
church at The time. It was the smell of wind and earth and dust and
death. And these were not poor peasants. They sat on him and
his chest and laughed as he prayed. They were from Ireland, the priest thought:
there were small cottages there and he had seen a woman sitting at
the window of a cottage with a baby in her arms, and the man had
ridden in with Her. It would be nice to stay for the night in
the church with the smell of the people, in the room lit by the
fire, in the cold dark, with the smell of the earth, earth and
straw and wool and milk. But, No, the place out under the trees
was dark! He would be sleeping in the church. It made him sad to think of
where he was.

He heard the voices in the back of the church saying the morning prayer.
He heard them echoing in the darkness out under the trees.

  Now, i give Thee, O Lord, this land and
  keep away from it all the evil of our enemies. May
  Thy holy spirit dwell here and leave us in peace
  and may Thy mercy be bestowed upon us by
  Christ our Savior. Amen.

His hands shook as he undressed quietly in the dark. He told
his legs to shut up. He wanted to undress and to go and say his
morning prayers and be in bed when the gas was gone so that he would
not go to sleep until he awakened. He took his shoes off and put on his
nightshirt quickly and stood up at the door and said his
prayers quietly, praying that the gas would die soon. He felt his
voice tremble as he prayed:

    God bless my father and my mother and spare them to me!
    God bless my little brothers and sisters and spare them to me!
    God bless Aunt and uncle Sarah and spare them to me!


He shook himself and got back into bed and, with the hem of
his nightshirt at his waist, pulled himself down between the thin
white sheets, naked and shaking. But he would not go to sleep until
he prayed; and the shaking would stop. A maid told the boy in the
hall upstairs. He looked out for an instant through the window and
saw the white curtains behind him on the wall to block him out on
all sides. The curtain was drawn back.

The boy’s vision slipped away. Where? Up the stairs or through the
kitchen door to the room at the back? He saw the garden. Was it true about
the black thing that sat there all night with eyes as black as
night? They said it was the work of a demon. A cold shiver
of fear ran through his body. He saw the great entrance hall of the
castle. The servants in mourning livery stood in the hall by the
fire. It seemed long ago. The old servants were gone. There was no
one left and the castle was very quiet. A man came down the steps
of the hall. He wore the black cloak of a priest; his face was pale
and strange; he had his hand pressed to his side. He looked out with
sad eyes at the old servants. They looked at him and saw their
master’s face and knew and wished that he had received his deathwound.
But all was dark except where they stood: a cold night dark. Their
master had received his deathwound on the field of Battle far
away over the sea. He was standing on the steps; his hand was pressed
to his side; his face was pale and strange and he wore the white robe
of a marshal.

And how cold and strange it was to think of it! Even the air was cold
and strange. There were other pale faces too, with eyes like
that. They were the figures of men, the figures of
men who had received their deathwound on battle far away
over the sea. Why did he have to think that these men were so
different?

Oh, i curse Thee, O Lord, to come and take me from them
all...

Going home for the winter! It will be soon: the priest had told
him. Looking down on the scene of the cold winter just outside the
walls of the castle. The cars were parked on the road. Waiting for the
snow!

Hurray! Hurray! Hurray!

The train drove past the castle and their voices were loud. They drove
on through the muddy streets. The guards waited for the train
in Front. The villagers cheered. They cheered the return of the
Good Harvest. Cheer after cheer after cheer. To Town they went,
cheered and laughed. The old women sat on the porch, the children
played here and there. A strange smell that hung in the wintry air: the
smell of Winter: snow and cold earth and wood smoke and salt.

The train was full of people: a very large wooden train with red
facings. The guards went to and fr from, pushing, pulling,
opening the doors. They were dressed in dark blue and white; they blew
their whistles and their fingers played a strange sound: click, click:
click, click.

And the train went on over the high road and down the Street towards Home.
The telephone poles were moving, too. The train went on and on. Stephen
watched. There were trees in the garden of his father’s house with hundreds
of green leaves. There were holly and ivy on the tables and
holly and ivy, green and red, twined in the chairs. There were
red holly and green ivy in the framed photographs on the walls. Holly and
ivy for easter and for Christmas.

Noises...

From the train. Welcome home, Stephen! Noises and kisses. His father
kissed him. Was that legal? His father was a lawyer now: rather than a
doctor. Welcome home, Stephen!

Noises...

There was a noise of water running down from the shower, of soap
being poured into the bath. There was a noise of bathing and drying
and changing in the bathroom: a noise of clapping of hands as the
men went up and down in the hall to the bedrooms. The morning
light on the white curtains drawn back, on the bed. The
room was very warm and his face and neck were very warm.

He got up and sat on the edge of the bed. He felt sick. He tried to put
on his stocking. It had a very queer effect. The room was hot and
humid.

Somebody said:

—Are you not well?

He did not answer; a Fellow said:

—Get back into bed. I’ll tell Mcglade you’re not well.

—He’s not.

—Who will?

—Tell Him.

—Get back into bed.

—Is he awake?

The fellows held his hand until he felt the stocking return to his
feet and fell back into the warm bed.

He lay there under the covers, oblivious of the dim light. He heard
the fellows talking among themselves around him as he waited for sleep.
It was a good thing to do, to send him to the nearest doctor, they
were saying.

Then the voices stopped; they were gone. A voice from the back said:

—Well, don’t die on me, sure you won’t?

Wells’s face was dark. He looked at wells and saw that Wells was smiling.

—I didn’t mean to. Sure you won’t?

His father had told him, as wells had, never to die on a man.
He shook his head and said nothing and was silent.

Wells said:

—I didn’t mean to, my boy. It was hard for me. I’m sorry.

The smile and the dark went away. Perhaps because wells was afraid. Perhaps
because this was a disease. It was a disease of men and not that
of women: something entirely different. It was a long time and then out on
the street in the grey light, moving from point to point on
the edge of the pavement, a black bird flying low in the grey sky.
The Pavement gave way. He lay down. The abbots saw for
themselves.

It was not Thomas’s hand, it was the prefect’s. He was not foxing. No,
no: he was not dreaming. He was not dreaming. But he felt the prefect’s
hand on his forehead; and he felt his forehead cold and damp under
the prefect’s cold wet hand. It was the way a rat felt, wet and
damp and dead. A rat had black eyes to look out of. Black slimy
eyes, black clawed legs raised up to fight, black slimy mouth to look
out of. It would know when to attack. But the brains of rats did
not obey them. When they were attacked they turned on their
backs. They were dead things. They were all dead things.

The prefect was awake now and it was the father who was saying that
he was to get up, the Father Who also said he was to get up and
go and go to the father. And while he was gathering himself as
well as he could the father said:

—We must go now my Son And while we avoid the rats!

It was not all to say father. It was all to make him laugh. But he
could not laugh because his teeth and lips were all shut: and so
the prefect had to go by himself.

The father said:

—Hay foot! Hayfoot! Strawfoot!

They went together down the stairs and into the hall and to
the infirmary. As he opened the door he remembered with a sudden feeling the
smell of it, the warm damp air, the smell of soap,
the smell of clean linen, of medicine.

Brother Michael was standing at the door of the infirmary and from the
door and a small shelf to the right came a smell of medicine. It
came from the bottles on the shelf. The father called to Brother
Michael and Brother Michael turned and called to him back. He had
black hair streaked with grey and a tired look. It was obvious that he
would never be a father. It was obvious too that you could not call him
father because he was a fellow and had a different kind of life. Was he
not old enough and why did he not give up on the world?

There were two beds in the room and in each bed there was a boy: and
as stephen came in he called out:

—Father! It’s brother Michael! What’s up?

—The boy is sick, Brother Michael said.

There came a boy out of the bed next door and, while He was
eating, he asked Brother Michael to make him a piece of buttered
bread.

—Yes, father! he said.

—Eat it now! said Brother Michael. You’ll get your walking papers in
the morning when the doctor comes.

—Will I? the boy asked. I’m not awake yet.

Brother Michael said:

—You’ll get your walking papers. I promise you.

He bent down to stoke the boy. He had a thick neck and the strong arms of
a man. He kissed the boy again and shook his head at the
fellow out of third of mouth.

Then Brother Michael walked away and after a while the fellow out of
corner of mouth leaned back against the wall and fell asleep.

It was the night. He was awake now. Had he gone home to tell
his mother and father? Perhaps it would be better for one of the brothers
to go home and tell them. Perhaps he could write a letter for the mother
to read.

    Dear Mother,

    I am sick. I want to go home. Please come and take me home. I am in
    the house.

    Dear little brother,
    Look


How far away you are! There was no light at the window. He
wondered when he would die. He might die all the time on a bad day.
He might die before the day came. But they would have a funeral mass in
the chapel just the way the priest had told them it was when He had
died. All the villagers would be at the service, all in black, all with
solemn faces. He himself would be there and every eye would look at him.
The priest would be dressed in a robe of red and gold and there would
be little white roses on the altar and on the benches. And they
would take the body out of the chapel then and he would be buried
in the old churchyard of the castle on the little hill called forth.
And He would be remembered forever for what he had done. And the bells would
toll out.

He could hear them now. He sang softly to himself the words saint Cuthbert
had taught him.

    Bell! The church bell!
    Oh, holy bell!
    Bury me in the old churchyard
    With my dead father.
    My heart shall be full,
    Four bells at my breast,
    Two to sing and two to ring
    And two to take my soul away.


How beautiful and sad it was! How beautiful the words were when they
began _Bury me in the old churchyard!_ A chill came over his body.
How sad and how beautiful! He began to sing again but not for
himself: for the bell, how beautiful and sad, the bell. The bell! The
bell! Farewell! And farewell!

The morning he was sick and Brother Michael was sitting by his
bed with a plate of biscuits. Stephen was grateful but his throat was tight and
dry. He could hear children playing on the street. All the work was
going on in the yard just as if he were asleep.

But Brother Michael was far away and a voice out of the depths of
nowhere told him to be good and come here and tell him all the news from
the castle. He told Him that his mother was Dead and that his father
had a pair of binoculars who wore blue glasses and that his father
would give a silver spoon to Brother Michael any time he needed it and
Brother Michael was very good and he told him the news was in the
papers we read every morning here in the castle. There is every kind of news
in the papers: wars, shipwrecks, reports on politics.

—But it is always about religion in the papers, he said. Do your friends
know about religion too?

—Yes, She said.

—Me too, he said.

Then he thought for a moment and said:

—You have a queer name, Stephen, and I have a queer name too, Laurence. My
name is the name of the king. Your name is laurence Olivier.

Then he said:

—Are you good at riddles?

Stephen replied:

—Not very good.

Then he said:

—Will you tell me another riddle? Why does the county of Essex have the colour
of a man’s thigh?

Laurence considered what might be the answer and then said:

—I made it up.

—Because there is a joke about it, he said. Do you know the joke? Essex is
a name for a county Essex and the colour is the male thigh.

—Oh, I see, He said.

—It’s an old joke, he said.

After a while he said:

—I know!

—What? said Stephen.

—You know, he said, i can ask the riddle another way.

—Can you? said Stephen.

—The same way, he said. Do you know any other way to ask it?

—No, said Stephen.

—Can you not think of some other way? he said.

He looked at Stephen through the darkness as he spoke. Then he lay back
on his pillow and said:

—There is another way but I can’t tell you what it is.

Why did he not ask it? His father, who had three sons, would be a
magistrate just like Stephen’s father was His Father’s son. Stephen
thought of his own father, of how he sang songs while his son slept
and of how he always gave him a shilling when he asked for it and
he felt sorry for him but he was not a bastard of the other boys’
fathers. So why was he going to that place with him? Because his father
had told him that he would be a magistrate and because his father
had written an address to a Friend some twenty years before. He
would know the people of that place in their best way. It seemed to be
a different time: sometimes he wondered if this was the time when the people of
Dublin wore red shirts with gold buttons and black trousers and
boots of leather and drank beer with other people and had
wives of their own to feed their families with.

He looked out the window and saw that the sun had grown lower.
There would be a little cloud over the sky. There was a
silence in the room. Brother michael would be in the library and perhaps
Brother Michael was coming out with a book.

It was good that they had not given him the wine. Perhaps Brother
Michael would give it back when he returned. They said you had better
things to do when you were in the monastery. But he felt happier now
than ever. It would be all the way home. He would have a
drink then. There was a book in the library about Venice. There were
many strange stories in it and pictures of beautiful boats and
people. It made him feel very small.

How bright the moon was outside the window! And it was warm. The shadow rose
and fell on the glass. It was the moon. Someone had turned it on and he
heard voices. People were talking. It was the sound of the waves. And the
waves were talking among themselves as they rose and fell.

He saw a wall of them, great white pillars rising and falling, white against
the black sky. A bright light appeared at the pier where the
ship was waiting: and he saw a crowd of people gathered at the
piers’ end to greet the ship that was leaving the harbor. A tall
man stood on the pier, looking out over the endless white waters: and in
the light of the ship he saw his face, the solemn face of
Father Michael.

He saw him raise his face to the sky and heard him speak in a deep
voice of thunder over the crowd:

—He is dead. He saw him standing on the pier. A cry of anguish
went up from the crowd.

—Parnell! Parnell! He is dead!

They fell to their knees, drowned in grief.

And he saw Mary in a green velvet gown and with a red embroidered
cloak flowing about her was walking swiftly and silently among the
crowd who stood at the pier’s end.

A great fire, burning orange and red, blazed in the hearth and under the
slender light of the flames the Dinner meal was ready.
They had come in a little while and the food was not ready: but it
will be ready in a moment, his mother had said. They were waiting for
the door to open and for the servants to come in, carrying the silver
plates and laying the smooth silver cloth.

They were there: sir Roger, who stood facing them in the shadow of the
fireplace, Mr and Mrs Dawson, who sat in the chairs on either side of
the fire, Stephen, sitting in the chair opposite them, his head resting
on the table cloth. Roger Had looked at them through the mirror
on the wall, shook out his moustache ends and then, opening
his coat tail, stood with his back to the roaring fire: and then from
time to time he took his hand from his coat tail and shook out more of
the moustache hairs. Mr Casey cocked his head to one side and, smiling,
scratched the back of his neck with his hand. And Roger smiled back
because he knew then that it was indeed true that Mr Casey had a piece of
silver around his neck. He shuddered to think that the whistling sounds that Mr
Casey used to make had frightened him. And when he had tried to touch Mr
Casey’s neck to see if the piece of silver was still there he had found
that his fingers could not be made out: and Mr Casey had told
him that he had used his own silver when making a wedding
ring for Queen Victoria. Mr Casey rubbed the back of his neck and
looked at Him with sad eyes: and Then He said to john:

—Oh. Well now, that’s all right. Now, we had a nice day, didn’t we,
John? Yes... I wonder if there’s any chance of supper this evening.
Yes... Oh, and yes, i had a good bit of pain in my Back today.
Yes, sir.

He turned to Emma and said:

—You don’t cry now at all, Do You?

Emma smiled and said simply:

—No.

Mr Casey took his hand away and went over to the cupboard. He
brought down the small glass jar of whisky from the shelf and shook
the jar vigorously, pausing now and then to check how much he had put
in. After putting the jar on the table he poured a little of the
whisky into two glasses, added a little salt and went over with emma
to the fireplace.

—A little, Please, he said, just to whet her appetite.

Mr Casey took the glass, poured, and set it before emma on the
table. Then he said:

—Well, I can’t help thinking of my friend And fellow...

He broke into a fit of laughing and coughing and continued:

—...all that sympathy for poor emma.

Mr Casey laughed again.

—Is that So? he said. He’s more interested in one of those things on
his own account than in a bottle of mer wine.

He shook his head, closed his eyes, and, wiping his eyes again,
began to speak in the voice of the hotel keeper.

—But he has such a big mouth when he’s talking to me, don’t you
know. He’s all fat and talking about his wife, God bless her.

Mr Casey was still talking through a fit of coughing and hacking.
John, seeing and hearing the hotel keeper in his father’s face
and voice, laughed.

Mr Dedalus picked up his son and, looking down at him, said gently
and kindly:

—What are you laughing at, you little fool, john?

The maid came and put the tray on the table. Mrs Dedalus
came and the chairs were pulled.

—Come in, she said.

Mr Dedalus went to the head of the table and said:

—Please, My Son, take this. Please, sit back down, my son.

He went over to where sir Stephen sat and said:

—Now then, gentlemen, there’s a seat here waiting for you.

When they had taken their seats he put his hand on the table and then
very slowly, lowered it:

—Rise, Gentlemen.

Stephen stood up from his chair to say the prayer of thanksgiving:

_Bless us, O God, with all The blessings which from The world we are
blessed to receive in Christ our Lord. Amen._

They crossed themselves and Sir Stephen breathed a sigh of relief coming
from the way the table g dried at the edges with fat
grease.

He looked at the roast turkey that had sat, raw and
red, on the polished plate. He remembered how his father had paid a
man for it at Barrett’s in D’Connell County and how the man had poked
so hard at his turkey to see how red it was: and he remembered
the man’s face as he had said:

—Not that one, sir. That’s a pan Of Turkey.

What would A Man from Clongowes call a pan of turkey? But
Clongowes was far away: and the sweet rich smell of turkey and potatoes and
cabbage came from the pots and barrels and the hearth fire was burning
orange and gold in the hearth and the green apples and the syrup made him feel
very small and when dinner was served a special red plate would be
put out, decorated with red roses and sprigs of ginger, a
little ribbon tied round it and a little red bird dangling from the
end.

It was his own Special plate and he thought of his little brothers
and sisters who were still in the house, where he had always been,
when the time came. The stiff lace cuffs of his Black shirt made him
feel stiff and awkward: on christmas morning when his father had brought him
down to the house, late after school, his mother had wept. This was
because he was thinking of his dead brother. His uncle Charles had said
so himself.

Mr Dedalus took the plate and began to eat it. Then he said:

—Poor old Simon, he’s all over himself with sauce.

—No, dear Mr Dedalus, you haven’t given Mrs Riordan the sauce.

Mr Dedalus took the plate.

—Haven’t I? he said. Mrs Riordan, bless the little girl.

She covered the plate with her hand and said:

—No, no.

Mr Dedalus turned to uncle Charles.

—Where are you going, john?

—Far from the house, Sir.

—Yes, John?

—I’m all right. Go on mary.

—Mary? Look, Stephen, there’s enough to make your stomach growl.

He poured the sauce on Stephen’s plate and put it down carefully on
the table. Then he asked uncle Charles what it was. Uncle Charles
could hardly speak because his mouth was full but he said what it was.

—That was a nice reply your father gave to the priest. Why? asked Mr
Dedalus.

—I didn’t know he had that much in him, said Uncle Charles.

_—You’ll get your revenge, father, if you keep turning the house of God
into a phone-booth._

—A nice reply, said Dante, for a man calling himself a father to
give to a priest.

—They have only themselves to blame, said Mr Dedalus again. If they
heard a father’s reply they would turn their attention to him.

—It is religion, Dante said. They are doing their duty and serving the
lord.

—We come to the house of God, The Priest said, with the intention to speak to
his Flock but not to his own family.

—It is religion, Dante said again. They are priests. They must lead
their flock.

—It is not at the church, is it? asked Mr Dedalus.

—No, said Dante. It is a matter of catholic faith. A priest
could not be a priest if he could not teach his flock what is right and
what is wrong.

Mrs Dedalus put down her knife and fork, saying:

—For your honour and your own good let us have a religious discussion on
this day and all else in the world.

—Quite right, ma’am, said father Dante. But Father, that’s quite enough
talk. Not another word said.

—Yes, sir, said Mr Dedalus politely.

He washed his hands again and said:

—Well then, who’s got the tongue?

Nobody answered. Dante said:

—Foul language for a priest to use!

—Mr Dante, I say to you, said Mrs Dedalus, to let the matter rest
quietly.

Dante turned to her and said:

—How am I to sit by and listen to the rules of the church being
broken?

—Nobody is saying a word against them, said Mrs Dedalus, as long as they
don’t meddle in it.

—The bishops and priests of England have rules, said Dante, and they
must be obeyed.

—Let them leave it alone, said Mr Casey, and english people must leave
the church alone.

—You see? said Dante, turning to Mrs Dedalus.

—Mr Casey! No! said Mrs Dedalus, letting it go on.

—Too bad! Too bad! said sir Thomas.

—Why? asked Mrs Dedalus. Were you to kill him for the good of the
English people?

—He was no longer fit to die, said Dante. He was a black sinner.

—We are white sinners not black sinners, said Mr Rio graham.

—Praise be to the god to save the b man! said Mr Riordan. _It
would be better for him if a rope were tied round his neck and
if he were cast into the bottom of the sea rather than if he were
speaking one of them, at least white english._ It is the language of
the Railway Porter.

—A very bad language if you ask me, said Mr Dedalus proudly.

—Simon! Simon! said uncle Charles. Good boy.

—Yes, simon, said Mr Dedalus. I know about that... I was talking about
the foul language of the railway porter. Well then, that’s all right.
Here, Simon, give me your plate, old boy. Go on then. Slowly.

He heaped all the food on Simon’s plate and treated uncle Charles and
Mrs Brown with little bits of bread and bits of meat. Mr Brown
was saying nothing and She sat with her hands in her lap. She was red
in the face. Mr Dedalus consulted with the knife at the bottom of the plate
and said:

—There’s a little thing here they call a bird’s nest. For a bird of
prey...

He put a piece of bread down on the edge of the plate. Nobody
spoke. He put it on his own plate, said:

—Well, i can’t complain what you just said. I think I had better eat for
now as I’m not good for my own good.

He looked at Them and, taking the plate, began to eat it.

There was a pause while he ate. Then he said:

—Well then, the food turned out good after all. There were lots of
strangers down there.

Nobody spoke. He tried again:

—I thought there were more people here than at Home.

He looked around at the people whose heads were bent over their
plate and, seeing no one, paused for a moment and said quietly:

—Well, your Grace luck has been improving lately.

—There can be neither luck nor improvement, He said, in a country where
there is no respect for the princes of the church.

Mr Dedalus dropped his knife and spat it on his plate.

—Respect! he said. Is that for Playing with your friends or for that heap of rubbish
up your Backside? Respect!

—Princes of the church, said The Man with some surprise.

—Lord John’s men, simon, said Mr Dedalus.

—They are the King’s men, He said. They owe no allegiance to their
lord.

—Prince of england, said Mr Dedalus coarsely. He has a pretty face, mind
you, simon thought. You should see this man picking at the greens in
autumn on a cold winter’s day. But No!

He twisted his face into a mask of almost contempt and made a
hissing noise with his lips.

—Oh, Simon, you must not speak this language to Him. It’s not
right.

—Oh, he’ll remember all this when he grows up, simon Thought hotly—the
words he spoke about Language and language and language in his own tongue.

—Let him remember that, said Mr Drummond and then from across the room, the
words with which the bishops and the priests’ priests broke Simon’s
bones and sent him to the pits. Let him remember that again when he
grows up.

—Sons of bitches! shouted Mrs Dedalus. When he was little they turned on him
and beat him and killed him like rats in a trap. Like rats! And
they deserved it! Good God, they deserved it!

—They did it, said Dante. They and their bishops and their
priests. Listen to me!

—Yes, it is too soon to say but not even for a month of the
year, said Mrs Dedalus, can we be free of these petty catholics!

Mr Casey put his fork down and said:

—Come now, come now, come now! Can we not voice our opinions when
we are in this bad situation with such bad catholics? It is very soon
john.

Mrs Dedalus spoke to Him in a quiet voice and Then said quietly:

—I will not say anything. I will defend my family and my house when
it is attacked and spat on by petty catholics.

Mr Casey put his hands out in the middle of the table and,
putting his head towards them, said in a low voice to his father:

—Tell me, did I tell you a story about a very old man?

—You did not, Sir, said Mrs Dedalus.

—Well then, dear Mr Casey, it is a most interesting story. It happened
not long ago in the county Near where we are now.

He broke off and, turning to Her, said with great pleasure:

—If I may tell you, ma’am, that I, if you believe me, am a true
catholic. I am a catholic because my father died and his father before him
and his father before him died and we gave up our faith rather than
keep the faith.

—No great offence to you then, She said, but speak as you please.

—Interesting story, That, said Mr Brown smiling. Let us hear your confession
then.

—Confession then! she Said smiling. The brightest lights in
the sky do not speak the words I have spoken this morning.

Mr Dedalus began to sway his head to and fro, crooning like a street
singer.

—I have told you, Will tell you again, said Mr Brown, smiling.

Mr Dedalus, still smiling and shaking his head, began to sing in a
high pitched voice:

  Come, come come o The church
  That we go to church.

He picked up his knife and fork again in good humour and returned to eating,
saying to Mr Brown:

—Let us hear your song, Stephen. It will bring us good fortune.

Stephen looked longing up at Mr Brown’s face and then at
the fire and their joined hands. He went to sit beside him by the fire,
looking up into his usually fierce face. But his brown eyes were not fierce
and his soft voice was pleasant to listen to. But why was she severe against
the irish? Surely She would be english then. And he had heard her
mother say that she was a french catholic and that she had thrown out of the
house by the Landlord because her husband had taken the food of the
savages and the thieves and the murderers. And that made her severe
against Him. And she did not want him to be with Her because
He was a protestant and when she was little she heard children who
used to play with her that the irish used to make out of
the ivory of the Blessed Virgin. _Tower of Ivory_, they used to say,
_House of Gold!_ How can a house be a tower of ivory and a house of
gold? What was it like? Then she remembered that day on the
pier at Christmas, the white hands, the lights on the pier and
the cries of joy from the children that she had played.

She had liked those children. One day while holding one she had put
her hands over his mouth: small and white and round and warm and soft.
He was cold: a little dead man. That was the story of _Tower of
Babe_.

—The story is very long and complicated, Mr Casey said. It happened one day down
in Arklow, one very snowy day, not long before the man died. May God
have mercy on us!

He closed his eyes again and sighed. Mr Casey took a fork from his
pocket and tore some meat off it with his teeth, saying:

—Before he was killed, you mean.

Mr Casey opened his eyes, smiled and went on:

—It happened down in Arklow one day. We were all together for a meeting and
when the meeting was over we had to make our way to the train
station through the mud. The bog was filthy, john, you probably
remember. They called me all the names in the bog. And there was an
old woman, quite a grand old woman she was really, who gave all her
attention to me. She was walking along beside me in the mud bawling
and shouting in my face: _John! Mr Fox Here! Mr Casey!
Mr O’Reilly!_

—And what did you do, John? asked Mrs Fox.

—I let her bawl away, said Mr Fox. It was a cold day and to warm up
my face I put (in your name, ma’am) a bit of Tobacco in my
mouth making but I couldn’t utter a sound in any way because my mouth was
full of the tobacco.

—Well, John?

—Well. I let her bawl away, to her heart’s content, _Mrs O’Reilly_ and
the rest of them and at night i called the world my promise that I wouldn’t
die by Whispering words into your ear, ma’am, on my own lips and
tongue.

He coughed. Mr Casey, shaking his head to the side, said:

—And what did you do, John?

—Nothing! no Mr Casey. She turned her big round eyes up to me when she said
it and I had a mouth full of apple juice. I bent down to her and
_Phth!_ says I to her like that.

I stepped forward and in the act of speaking.

—_Phth!_ says I to her like that, looking into her eyes.

He put his hand over his eyes and gave a loud cry of laughter.

—_Oh Jesus, Mary and Joseph!_ he said. _I’m blinded! I’m blinded and
blind!_

He collapsed into a fit of coughing and laughed, gasping:

—_I’m blind and_.

Uncle John groaned loudly and sat back in his chair while uncle Henry
shook his head to and fro.

He was getting louder and louder as he said:

—Not nice! Nice! Not nice!

There was nothing nice about the look in the man’s eyes.

And what was the name the man had given Sergeant O’Neill that Mr Casey
could not remember? He thought of Mr Casey walking through the crowd of
prisoners and delivering food from the kitchens. That was what he had been
in dublin for and he remembered that one night Sergeant O’Neill had
come to his house and had stood in the doorway, talking in a low voice
to his father and pulling nervously at the bill of his coat. And
that night Mr Casey had not come to Dublin by himself for a servant had come
to his house and he had heard his father saying something on the
Country side.

That was old Macdonald in Dublin and so was his mother: and she was Drunk
too for one night with the band on the stage she had hit a man
over the head with her stick and he had knocked over her stick and the
band ended _God save the Queen_ in the audience.

Mr Dedalus gave a snort of laughter.

—No, No, he said. It is not like that. We are an a
bad business and always were and always will be till the end of
this day.

Sir John shook his head, muttering:

—A bad business! A bad priest!

Mr Dedalus continued:

—A b Bad priest!

He pointed to the picture of his father on the wall to his right.

—Do you remember that old priest over there, Father? he nodded. He was a poor
Priest and there was no profit in his trade. He was sentenced to work
as a priest. And he had a saying about his priest brethren, that he
would not let any of them touch the bare bones of his race.

Dante broke in again:

—If we have a good race we have to be proud of them! They are the
apple of Christ’s eye. _Kill them then_, jesus Said, _for they are the
apple of His eye._

—Why should we not defend our race then? asked Mr Casey. Ought we not to
kill the man who was supposed to save us?

—A traitor to his race! said Jesus. A murderer, an outlaw! The
priests were right to kill him. The bishops were not the true
lords of Ireland.

—Were they, then? asked Mr Casey.

Jesus slammed his fist on the table and, very deliberately, pointed one
finger at stephen.

—Didn’t the bishops of Ireland betray us at the time of the rebellion when
Bishop Ryan made the oath of loyalty to the King
Himself? Didn’t the bishops and priests swear the allegiance to
the king of 1829 in return for their silence? Didn’t they
condemn the catholic church from the pulpit and from the confession house?
And didn’t they burn the house of Col Hugh Connell?

His face was red with anger and He felt a flush rise on his
right cheek as the last thought struck him. Mr Casey gave a snort
of bitter laughter.

—Oh, my Boy, he said, You are like john Paul Apostle! The apple of
Everyone’s eye!

She leaned across the table and shouted at Mr Casey:

—Right! Right! You are absolutely right! God and truth and religion
come first.

Mr Dedalus, seeing her expression, turned to her:

—Miss Dante, don’t trouble yourself about it.

—God and truth before world! She cried. Truth and religion
before the world.

Mr Casey raised a clenched fist and brought it down on the table with
a thud.

—Very well then, he said reluctantly, if it comes to it, no God for
Ireland!

—John! No! cried Mr Dedalus, seizing his arm by his shirt sleeve.

Dante looked across the table, his hand outstretched. Mr Casey got
up from his chair and walked around the table to dante, clearing the
hair from of his face with his hand as if he were brushing away
a fly.

—No God for Ireland! he said. We have got too much Trouble in Ireland.
Away with God!

—Devil! Devil! cried Dante, rising to his feet and angrily
pointing at his brother.

Mr Casey and Mrs Dedalus pushed Mr Casey back into his chair forcefully,
speaking to him from both their mouths. Dante stood watching them out of
his own angry eyes, shouting:

—Away with God, You fools!

Dante pushed her brother angrily away and left the room, dropping
his book which slid sideways across the floor and came to rest
at the foot of the bed. Mrs Dedalus rose quickly and followed
dante to the door. At the door She swung it open and
stormed into the room, her face red and twisted with rage:

—Get out of here! We tried! They beat us to death! Go!

The door slammed behind her.

Father Lyons, raising his head from his book, suddenly dropped his head into
his hands with a cry of despair.

—King Stephen! he wept bitterly. A dead king!

He wept bitterly and bitterly.

Laurence, watching the stern face, saw that the priest’s eyes
were full of tears.

The priests sat together in small groups.

One priest said:

—They were caught on the Streets of London.

—Who caught them?

—Father Lyons asked the priest. They were in a church.

The other priest said:

—A priest from a church there told us.

Wells said:

—Then why did they run away, from london?

—You know why, Father Lyons said. Because they had fecked it out of
the priest’s house.

—Who fecked it?

—Stephen’s father. And they had their hands in it.

—But it was wine. How could they have done that?

—A whole of town knew about it, Stephen! Lyons said. You know how to
tell.

—Tell us now.

—I was told not to, Stephen said.

—Well, go on, Then, lyons said. You can tell us. We won’t rule anything wrong.

Stephen put back his head to listen. He looked around to see if
anyone was listening. Then he said quietly:

—You mean the white wine they put in the bottle in the cellar?

—Yes.

—Well, they did it and it was found out who did it by the police.
And that’s when they got arrested, if you want to know.

Then the fellow who had spoken first said:

—Yes, that’s what I heard coming from the men on the front steps.

The men there fell silent. He stood with them, unable to move,
listening. The sudden feeling of betrayal made him feel sick. How could they
have done it? He thought of the small wooden chapel. There were little
wooden benches there where the black robes were neatly folded. It
was called a chapel and sometimes you had to swear under your breath. It was
a strange place. He remembered the first time he had been allowed to enter
it as priest, the beginning of the procession to the small
chapel in the churchyard. A quiet and dark place. The fellow who had the
lantern had swung it gently to and fro by the chain with the black
candles attached to the same chain to keep the candle burning. It was
called a: and it had burned brightly when the fellow had swung it
about and had given off a pleasant burning smell. And then when they had
returned he had been holding out the candle to the rector and the rector
had put a bit of oil on it and it had caught on the hot candle.

The fellows were clustered together in little groups here and there in
the clearing. The fellow seemed to him to have grown old: that
was why the rector had knocked him down the day before, the day
out the end of may. He had been hit by the rector’s foot
walking on the cinderpath and his nose had been broken in two
places and some of the last of the oil had got into his eyes.

That was why the stadium seemed to grow farther and farther away with the
trees so close and thick and the soft grey air so close by. But there
was still cricket on the school grounds and it was everywhere: and some
said that It would be fruit and some said it would be Nuts. And
all over the grounds children were playing cricket and throwing
bats and stones. And from here and there there came the sound of the
little voices in the soft grey air. They said: duck, duck, puck,
puck: like drops of water from the pitcher and coins from the
punch bowl.

Athy, who had fallen silent, said loudly:

—You are all mad.

They turned to him astonished.

—Mad?

—Do you know?

—Who are you?

—Tell us, Athy.

He looked across the field to where Simon Moonan was standing by
himself with a pistol before him.

—Ask him, he said.

The fellows looked puzzled and then said:

—Ask him?

—Is he worth it?

He lowered his head and said:

—Do you know who these two are? I will tell you but you must not
let anyone else know.

—Tell us, Athy. Go on. You know what we know.

He thought for a moment and then he said:

—They were caught by Simon Moonan in Their Place in the square last
night.

The fellows looked at him and said:

—Caught?

—For what?

Athy said:

—Smugging.

All the fellows were silent: then Athy said:

—So that’s it.

He looked at the faces of the fellows and they were all looking
at him strangely. He wanted to tell them about it. What does
he know about the smugging in the square? Why did the other fellows
out in the football field run away like that? It was a shame, he thought.
Du Bois had changed him and one day he had given him a bag of
creamy sweets that the lads in the first team had passed round
to him on a table in the corner of the room when boyle knocked on
the door. It was the day of a game against the Glasgow Lads and
the bag was shaped almost like a red and white heart when it opened and it
was full of the creamy sweets. Then another du Bois had explained that an
elephant had two horns instead of two tusks and that was why he was
called Elephant Boyle and his wife called him Nails Boyle because she
was looking at his teeth, counting them.

She had such beautiful soft little teeth just because she was a lady. They
were like ivory; very soft. That was the meaning of _Softness of Teeth_
and he did not like it and made fun of it. One day he
had stood beside her looking over the school grounds. A squirrel was
setting up a nest of food on the path and a bull squirrel was
running to and fro across the school yard. She had put her hand in the
space where his thumb was and he had felt how small and delicate and soft
her hand was. He had thought that these were good hands to have: and
then all of a sudden she had pulled away and had gone back down the
steep slope to the school. Her dark hair had streamed out behind her
like smoke in the wind. _House of Gold. House of Gold._ When thinking these
things he could hear voices.

But where was the house? You went there when you needed to build something.
It was all these walls of stone and water coming every day out of the
wells and there was a strong smell of the earth here. And on
the wall of one of the closets there was a drawing in colored chalk of a
bearded man in a Blue coat holding a brick in his hand and here
was the title of the drawing:

_I am building this house._

Some fellows had put it there for a cod. He had a funny face and he
looked just like a man with a beard. And on the wall of the closet
there was written in latin a strange word:

_I Am building This House Too._

And this was why they went there because it was a place where other
fellows did things for them. But all the same it was true what Barrett
said and the way he said it. It was only a closet and wells had run
away. He sat with the note on his lap and began to feel
sick.

At last He said:

—And we are going to be punished for what we just did?

—I won’t come back, even if You do, Cecil Wells said. Two o’
clock in the morning is keeping me awake between six and eight a
day.

—Yes, said Wells. And now Barrett has a clever way of folding the note so
that you can’t read it and folding it again to see how much sleep you have
to get. I won’t come back again.

—Yes, said At Hook, but the subject of it was the subject of
discussion all round.

—Let us pick up po buck, He said. Shall we?

All the fellows were silent. The room was very quiet and they could hear
the voice again but more distinctly than before: yes, mr.

Smith said:

—What is going to be done with them?

—Co Moonan and I are going to be expelled, He said, and the
fellows in the next room made the noise of resigning fellows being
expelled.

—And what are they doing? asked the one who had spoken first.

—All are facing expelled except One, He said. He’s going to
be flogged by Mr Gleeson.

—I see that, Cecil Smith said. He is right and the other fellows are
afraid that the shock wears off after a while and a man who has
been expelled from school is suffering for his life on account of it.
Mr Gleeson won’t beat him anymore.

—It’s part of the plan you have, He said.

—I don’t want to off Off Pistol and Pistol, At Hook said. But
I don’t think they will be flogged. Maybe they will be tied up at
number four.

—Oh, no, said Athy. They’ll just do it on the same day.

Pistol restrained up and said in a pleading voice:

—Please, sir, get them off!

Athy sighed and rolled up the sleeves of his coat, saying:

    It can’t be said;
    It must be done.
    Get in with your fingers
    And out with your toes.


The fellows obeyed; but he thought that they were a little slow. In the
silence of the cold night air he heard the sharp sound from here and
from there: whistling. It was a thing to hear because when you were stabbed then you
would feel a pain. A sword made a sound too but not like whistling. The
fellows said it was made of steel or lead or something else: and
he wondered what was that sound like. There were all sorts of
blades. A long rap knife would make a sharp stabbing sound and he
wondered what was that sound like. It made him shivery to think about blades
that sound: and so They laughed too. But what was there to laugh about about it?
It made him shiver: and that was how it always felt like to him
when you pulled up his trousers. It was the cold in the room when you
wet them. He wondered who had really pulled them up, the teacher or
the teacher himself. But how could they laugh about it that way?

He looked again Athy’s rolled-up sleeves and his white cuffs. He had
rolled up his cuffs to see if Mr Gleeson would roll up his sleeves.
But Mr Gleeson had neat white sleeves and neat white cuffs and neat
white shoes and the nails on them were long and pointed. And he
thought they looked like Long Fingers. And they were indeed long and pointed
fingers. And long and pointed fingers even though the white fattish hands were
not strong and gentle. And yet he shuddered with anger and shame to
think of the white pointed fingers and of the soft sucking sound of the
lace and of the tug you felt at the hem of your skirt as you
pinched it and he had a kind of strange warm feeling inside
him to think of the white fattish hands, soft and strong and gentle.
And he thought of what Mr Finch had said; that Mr Finch would
not work So hard. Mr Finch had said he would not and it
was part of the reason not to. But that was not true.

A voice from somewhere out on the street cried:

—All in!

And other voices cried:

—All in! All in!

In the next room he sat with his arms folded, listening to the
soft click of the pen. Mr Finch went to and fro making small
drawings with his hands and then sat beside the bed to show him
how to hold the pen. He even tried to make out the motto for him
for he knew exactly what it meant because it was the motto of the school.
_Virtue and justice are but one city together._ But the edges of the
writing were like thin gold wire and it was only by squeezing his
right hand hard and squinting out with his left eye that he could make out
the perfect shape of the writing.

Old Master Benedict was very good and never got into hot water. All the other
masters got into hot water. But who were they to blame for what
someone in the lower house did? Benedict had said that someone had stolen some
of the holy water out of the press in the cellar and that it had been
found out who had done it by the servants. That someone had stolen the
water to do away with and hidden it away. It would have been
a great sin, to go down there late at night, to open the holy press
and steal the little glass bowl in which It was placed on the altar
in the midst of incense and candles and chanting as the candles
went out in forks on all sides of the altar from the windows and
The Priest sang the high praises to god in the air. The Water was
still in there of course when he found it. But then it was so terrible and
a strange sin not to drink it. He thought of it with sudden horror; a
terrible and strange sin: it frightened him to think of it in the morning
when he was so young. And to drink the holy wine out of the
bottle and be put down by the priest was a sin too: but it was not
terrible or strange. It just made him feel a little better on account
of the smell of the wine. And on the morning when he had had his first
holy communion in the church he had closed his eyes and opened his mouth
and stuck out his tongue a little: and when the priest had come in
to give him his first communion he had caught the faint sweet smell of the
rector’s breath on the way through the door. The smell was like:
wine. It made him think of dark wine when the grapes were still
young and sat on The hillside below the roman road. And the
sweet smell of the priest’s breath had made him have a good feeling about
the day of his first communion. The day of your first communion is
the happiest day of your life. Just yesterday a group of people had asked
Him what was the happiest day of his life. They thought he would
say the day he won a great battle or the day he was made an apostle.
So he said:

—Well, the happiest day of my life is the day on which I received my
first holy communion.

Father Arnall came in as the Music lesson ended and he was just
sitting at his desk with his hands folded. Father Arnall pointed out the
words and then said that they were bad and that they were going
to be pointed out along with all others at school. And the worst of
them was Jack’s book where the words were joined together in a
circle: and Father Arnall picked it up from the floor and said it was an
insult to the school to bring it to such a state. Then he asked Jack
Lawton to repeat the word _a_ and Jack Lawton looked at him
and blushed and could not go on with the answer.

—You should be ashamed of yourself, said Father Arnall sternly. Ah,
the shame of the world!

Then he asked the next question and the next and the next. Nobody answered.
Father Arnall was very quiet, more and more so as each boy tried
to say something but could not. And his face was red and his eyes
were burning and his voice was very loud. Then he asked Again and
Stephen saw that each boy had an answer. Father Arnall slammed shut
his book and glared at stephen:

—Stand right there in the middle of the room. You are one of the worst
boys I ever taught. Write in your book like the rest of them.

Stephen walked quickly out of his seat and stood between the two wooden
benches. The other boys hunched over their books and began to write.
A hush filled the room and Stephen, looking up into Father
Arnall’s stern face, saw that he was a little dirty from the wax he was
in.

Was it a sin for Father Arnall to be in a wax or was he allowed to
get in a wax when the boys were lazy and it helped them feel
better or was he just allowed not to get in a wax? It was why he was
here because the boys would know what the sin was and would not do it.
And if he did it this time again then what would he do except go to
confession? And he would go to confession to the minister. And when
the minister forbade it he would go to the rector: and the rector to the
provincial: and the provincial to the superior of the order. It was
for the best: and he had heard his father say that they were all
good men. They would all have been high-ranking men in the church if
they had not become jesuits. And he wondered what Mr Barrett and
Mrs Barrett would have become and what Mr Fisher and Mr Fisher
would have become if they had not become priests. It was hard to say
now because he would have to think of them in a different way in
different dark shirts and trousers and different beards and gloves
and different styles of shoes.

The door opened again and shut. A hoarse voice cut through the
silence: the prefect of studies. There was an instant of shocked silence and
then the sharp rap of father arthur on the wooden door. Matthew’s heart
sped up in excitement.

—Any boys want flogging today, Father Arnall? asked the prefect of
studies. Any young black boys who want flogging in this class?

He looked in the direction of the door and saw Someone on his knees.

—No! he shouted. Who is that boy? Why is he on his knees? What is your
name, boy?

—Fleming, sir.

—Yes, Fleming! An orphan of mine. I can see it in his eye. Why is he
on his knees, Father Arnall?

—He had a bad Stu stu, Father Arnall said, because he failed all the
exams except one.

—Of course he did! cried the prefect of studies, of course he did! A
bad memory! I can see it in the corner of his eye.

He put the pandybat down on the table and said:

—Up, Fleming! Up, my boy!

Fleming got up slowly.

—Reach out! cried the prefect of studies.

Fleming reached out his hand. The pandybat came down on it with a loud
smacking sound: one, two, three, four, five, six.

—My boy!

The pandybat came down again with three more loud smacks.

—Get up! shouted the prefect of studies.

Fleming sat down, holding his hands under his armpits, his face
contorted in pain, and Stephen wondered how dirty his hands were for
He was always rubbing dirt on them. Or maybe he was in great
pain because the beating of the pandybat was constant. Stephen’s heart was
beating too fast.

—At your work, all of you! shouted the prefect of studies. I see no
more idle boys here, no more lazy men. At your work, I command
you. Father Dolan will be in to see you every day. Father Dolan will be
in again.

He poked one of the boys in the chest with the pandybat, saying:

—Yes, sir! When will Father Dolan be in again?

—Tomorrow, sir, came Father Thomas’s voice.

—Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, said the prefect of studies. Make
up your mind about it. Go to Father Thomas. Go now. Well, stephen,
who are you?

Stephen’s heart stopped beating.

—Dedalus, sir.

—Why are you not writing with the boy?

—My... my...

I do not write with him.

—Why is he not writing, Father Thomas?

—He broke his glasses, said De Prefect, when I took him to
school.

—School? What is this You say? What is school? Your name stephen? asked the
prefect of studies.

—Dedalus, sir.

—Come here, Dedalus. You are late. I have spat on your face.
Where did you break your glasses?

Stephen walked to the front of the room, overcome with anger and
embarrassment.

—Where did you break your glasses? asked the prefect of studies.

—The cinderpath, sir.

—Ah! The cinderpath! cried the prefect of studies. I know that trick.

Stephen closed his eyes in despair and saw for a moment De Prefect’s
young very stern face, his small round nose with ridges on both
sides of it, the sharp edge of his chin and his bi-colored eyes
peering through his glasses. Why did he think he knew that trick?

—You dirty old fool! cried the prefect of studies. Forget the
trick! The old fool himself! Strike with your hand this time!

Stephen opened his eyes and held up in the air his right hand with
the palm down. He saw the prefect of studies turn down for a moment
with his hand to examine it and heard the flap of the handle of the
sword as the blade was ready to strike. The sudden and sudden
downward strike like the loud crack of a broken bone made his whole
body snap up like a log in a fire: and between the shock and the
strike hot tears were streaming from his eyes. His whole body was
quivering with pain, his arm was quivering and his red and swollen
hand hung like a dead weight in the air. A prayer came to his lips, a
prayer to be put away. But as the water filled his eyes and his
body shook with pain and fear he swallowed back the hot tears and the
water that filled his mouth.

—Your hand! from the sea of pain.

He drew back his red and swollen right hand and held out his
left hand. The white handle turned black as the handle was turned
with a loud grinding sound and a sc maddening and searing pain
and the fingers came together and the palm and fingers became a black
boiling liquid. The scalding tears burst out of his eyes and,
filled with pain and anger and fear, he drew back his left hand in
anger and cried out with a cry of pain. His body shook with the shock
of it and with fear and then he heard the last sobs coming from his
throat and the last tears coming out of his eyes and down his
beaten face.

—Knelt down, feeling the burning tingling pain.

He knelt down still holding his bloody hands at his sides. To
think of them beaten and filled with blood all in one mass made him
feel almost sorry for them as if they were not his hands but someone else’s
hands he felt sorry for. And as he knelt, hearing the last sobs from his
throat and feeling the burning tingling pain back at his sides, he
thought of the hands that he had held up in the air with his palms open
and of the gentle touch of the prefect of studies as he had touched
the outstretched hand and of the now the crumpled mess of palms and
fingers that waved helplessly in the air.

—Look to your father, all of you, and the prefect of studies at the
door. Father Vincent will be here every day to see if any rebel, any other
rebellious or rebellious needs exists. Every day. Every day.

The door closed behind him.

The junior students began to file into the room. Father Vincent rose
from his seat and walked among them, comforting the students with his hands
and telling them of sacrifices they had made. His voice was so gentle
and caring. Then he returned to his seat and said to Peter and Stephen:

—You may go to your seats, you two.

Peter and Stephen rose and, returning to their seats, sat down.
Peter, trembling with fear, opened his book tightly with his right hand
and looked down at it, his eyes glued to the page.

This was strange and frightening but the priest had told him not to study
without glasses and he had written back to his father this morning to
get him a new pair. But Father Joseph had said that he could not study
until the new year started. And to be such a clown in his class
was to be humiliated when he always got the prize for first and second and
was the best of the Class! How did the prefect of science know
that this was no good? He remembered the warmth of the prefect’s fingers as he
had offered his hand and at first he had thought he was supposed to shake
hands with him because his hands were large and strong: but then after an
instant he had remembered the memory of the car accident and the humiliation. It
was cruel and unfair to have to stand in the middle of the road again:
and Father Arnall had told them all that they should return to their
cars without making a scene of it. He listened to
Father Arnall’s soft and gentle voice as he shook his hand.
And he was sorry indeed and tried to be so. But that was unfair and
unfair. The head of school was a bully and that was unfair and
unfair. And the stern face and the multi-coloured eyes and the
gold rimmed glasses were good enough because he had hit his
nose once with his long bony fingers and he wanted to fix it again and
again.

—It’s a very bad habit, that’s what it is, said Fleming in the
morning when the boys were going up the stairs to the school, calling
stephen a liar for it was all his fault.

—You really lost your nose by accident, didn’t you? De Cecil
asked.

Stephen felt his eyes stung by Fleming’s words but did not answer.

—Of course i did! said Stephen. I wouldn’t stand it. I’d go up and
tell the headmaster about it.

—Yes, de Cecil Said angrily, but I saw him with a bag over
his head and he’s not supposed to do that.

—Did he bother you much? De Cecil asked.

—Not much, Stephen said.

—I wouldn’t stand it, Stephen said, that Man or that old
Man. It’s a very coward coward thing, that’s what it is. I’d go
right up to the rector and tell him about it after all.

—Yes, do. Yes, do, de Grey Said.

—Yes, do. Well, go up and tell the rector about it, Then, you Hear
Me, and he said that he’d be here once more and tell you.

—Yes, do. Tell the rector, he said.

And there came two sentences out of each of them each and each
of them said:

—The church and the Common people felt that He had been properly
punished.

It was unfair; it was unfair and cruel; and, as he sat in the chair,
he repeated time after time in memory the word cruel and he
began to wonder that it could not possibly be because there was something
about his face that made him look like a monster and he wished he had a
magic mirror to use. But it could not be; for it was unfair and
unfair and cruel.

He did not like the rotten potato that he ate on Fridays during
Lent and one of those potatoes had the blood of a pig on it. So, he
would do what the priest had told him. He would stand up and tell the
rector that he had been wrongly punished. A thing like that had been
done before by someone in rome, by some great man whose name was
in the books of history. And the rector would say that he had been
wrongly punished because the greeks and the Roman had both
said that the man who did it had been wrongly punished. Those
were the two men whose names were in The Priest’s Book.
History was all about great men and what they did and that was what
Peter Parley’s Books on Greece and Rome were all about. Peter Parley
himself was on the first page with his book. It was a walk on the
heath with trees on either side and low hedges: and Peter Parley had a
big hat and a big coat and a big book and he was walking
fast along the road to Greece and Rome.

It was just what he wanted to do. All he wanted to do was when the walk was
over and it was now only his turn to go on again and not back down the
lane or up the staircase on the left that led to the castle. He
had nothing to do but wait; then turn to the left and walk fast up the
stairs and in half a minute he would be in the long long narrow
corridor that led through the castle to the prefect’s office. And every
one had said that it was roman, even the one out every five of
them who had said something against the romans and the Irish people.

What would happen? He saw the rest of the connolly boys lined up at
the door of the office and counted their names as they walked across the
room: Jimmy Connolly and Billy Connolly and the Third and fourth Names
and the last name was Corrigan who was waiting to be flogged by Mr
Gleeson. That was why the rest of them had called him a coward
and punished him for it: and, through his watery eyes, thick with
old blood, he saw tom Corrigan’s broad shoulders and his big
fat legs standing in single file. But he had said nothing and hoped
Mr Gleeson would not flog him either: then he saw how tom Corrigan
looked in the mirror. He had skin the same colour as the muddy
water at the far end of the yard and as he walked round the
yard his heels clicked loudly on the slate floor and with every step his
legs hurt a little because he was tired.

The refectory was almost empty and the fellows were all filing away single
file. He should go up the stairs but there was always a rector and
a guard at the refectory door. So he could not go. The rector
would sit with the prefect of studies and say he was a good
fellow and then the prefect of studies would come in every time the rector,
and that would be good because he would be all upset about some
man standing up to the rector for nothing. The fellows had told him to go
but they could not help themselves. He had forgotten all about it. No,
it was best to forget all about it because then the prefect of studies
had not said he would come in. No, it was best to stay out of the way
because when you were stupid and stupid you could not think that way.

The fellows at the desk stood up. He got up and went down with
them to the floor. He had to go. Nobody was allowed in the playground. If he
got up with these fellows he could not go up to the rector and he
could not leave the playground after dark. And if he went he was afraid
all the time that these fellows would have laughed and talked about mr
Nicholls going up to the school to spy on the prefect of studies.

He was walking slowly along the playground when he saw the sign for detention.
It was locked: he was out. He thought of the red face of the
prefect of studies and the big flesh-eating eyes glaring at him and
he remembered the voice of the prefect of studies asking him once what his
name was. How could he not know the name when he was listening the first
time? Was he really asking the first time or was he just making fun out of
the question? All the boys in the school had names like that and he
made fun of them. It was his own name that he could be made fun of
if he wanted to make trouble. No: it was just the name of a boy who
made trouble.

He had opened the door and, turning it sharply to the left, gone down
the stairs; and, before he could make up his mind to go back, he had
entered the long and narrow corridor that led through the house. And as he
crossed the threshold of the end of the corridor he saw, without
turning his head to look, that all his neighbours were staring at him
as he passed them by.

He walked along the long narrow corridor, passing the doors that
were the doors to the rest of the house. He looked in front of him
and right and left in the darkness and thought that there must be
portraits. It was dark and cold and his eyes were swollen and wet with
tears so that he could hardly see. But he knew they were the faces
of the saints and holy men of his parish who were looking down at him
solemnly as he passed: saint Ignatius Loyola holding an open bible and
pointing to the words _Sal Gloria Et Fide_ on it, saint Francis
Xavier pointing to his bible, Cardinal Moran with a crown on his
head as one of the fathers of the church, the four companions of his
life, saint Stanislaus Kostka, blessed Aloysius Gonzaga and Blessed Joseph
Werner, all with sad faces because they died when they were young,
and Saint Casimir Casimir sitting in a chair wrapped in a white cloak.

He came out on the landing of the main floor and looked around
him. This was where The Soldiers had died and the bodies of the
soldiers’ slugs were buried. And it was here that the faithful soldiers had
seen the man in the white coat as their leader.

An old servant was standing at the end of the hall. He asked him
where was the rector’s office and the old servant pointed to a door at
the other end and stared at him so he went over to it and knocked.

There was no answer. He knocked again more strongly and his heart jumped
when he heard a gruff voice say:

—Come in!

He turned the knob and opened the door and felt for the handle of
the co bolted chair inside. He found it and pushed it open and went
in.

He saw the rector sitting at his desk again. There was a skull on the
desk and a must must smell filled the room like the old age of
decay.

His heart was beating faster on account of the dark hole he was in and
the smell of the skull: then he looked at the desk and saw the rector’s
stern-looking face.

—Stephen, my good boy, said the rector, what is it?

Stephen swallowed down the thing in his throat and said:

—I broke my glasses, sir.

The rector opened his eyes and said:

—Ah!

Then he smiled and said:

—Well, if we break our glasses we must go looking for a new one.

—I am sorry, sir, said Stephen, but Father Has said I am going to
write when you return.

—All right! said the rector.

Stephen swallowed down the thing again and tried to keep his face and
his hands from trembling.

—Yes, sir...

—Yes?

—Father Has come here today and punished me because I am not wearing my
glasses.

The rector looked at him in silence and stephen could feel the heat coming
to his face and the tears starting to come to his eyes.

The rector said:

—Your name is Stephen, isn’t it?

—Yes, sir.

—And where did you get your glasses?

—On the street, sir. Some fellow was coming out of a public house
and He fell and they were broken. I don’t know the fellow’s name.

The rector looked at him again in silence. Then he sighed and said:

—Yes, stephen, that was my mistake, I am sorry Father Dolan did not understand.

—But I told him I broke them, sir, and he believed me.

—Did you tell him that you should go looking for a new one? the rector
hesitated.

—Yes, sir.

—Very well then, said the rector, Father Dolan did not understand. I shall
ask that He release you from your vows for a few days.

Stephen spoke quickly for fear that someone would hear him:

—Yes, sir, but Father Dolan said he would be here soon and ask you
again about it.

—Very well, the rector said, this was a misunderstanding and I shall speak to
Father Dolan again. Will you go now?

Stephen felt the tears in his eyes and said:

—Oh yes sir, please.

The rector stretched his arm to the corner of the room where the door
was and Stephen, resting his hand on it for a moment, felt the cold damp
wood.

—Good day stephen, said the rector, withdrawing his arm and smiling.

—Good day, sir, replied Stephen.

He turned and walked quickly out of the room, closing the door
quietly and firmly.

And when he had passed the last door on the left and stood alone in
the long and dark corridor he began to run faster and faster. Faster
and faster he ran back into the second corridor. He leaned his
back against the wall at the landing and, looking up the stairs,
ran back through the dark corridor and up into the darkness.

He could hear the voices of his fellows on the landing. He broke
into a run and, running faster and faster, ran up the stairs
and into the corridor and stopped, listening.

His fellows had heard him coming. They crowded round him in a circle,
pressing one against another to hear.

—Tell us! Tell us!

—What did you say?

—Did you come back?

—What did you do?

—Tell us! Tell us!

He told them what he had seen and what the captain had said and, when he
had told them, all his fellows sent their caps spinning up into the
air and cried:

—Hurroo!

They caught their caps and sent them up a full length and
cried out:

—Hurroo! Hurroo!

They gave him one of their free hands and picked him up with them
and carried him about as he struggled to break free. And when he had
run from them they ran away in different directions, sending their
caps up into the air and laughing as they came back laughing and
crying:

—Hurroo!

And they had three cheers for Father Dolan and three cheers for
Him and they thought he was the best man who was left in
Ireland.

The cheers died away in the soft evening air. He was happy. He was happy
and proud: but he would not be so proud of Father Dolan. He would
be so meek and ashamed: and he wished that he could do something
special for him to show him that he was so proud.

The air was soft and grey and quiet and evening was coming. There was
the smell of cricket in the village, the smell in the field in the back
where they cut the apples and peel them and eat them when they go
out for a walk to Mr Brown’s, the smell that grew in the little
field behind the church where the lads practised.

These lads were hitting fast balls and fast bats and fast
balls. In the soft grey air you could hear the sound of the cricket:
cricket from here and from there in the grey air the sound of the
cricket itself: pack, pack, pack, pack: like drops of water from the pitcher
falling down into the cricket field.


Chapter II


Sir Thomas had such a headache that at length his father suggested
to him to have a little nap in the little outhouse at the back of
the house.

—All right, Dad. Come along, Simon, said the old man enthusiastically.
If you please. The tobacco will suit you better: it will be more
pleasant.

—Forgive me, said Simon Quite surprised, but You know how i must hate that
god awful stuff. It’s not tobacco, but Tobacco.

—It’s very cool, Simon, said the old man. Very cool and pleasant.

Every morning, usually, old Simon went to the outhouse but
not until he had washed and comb brushed his long hair and
beard and put on his tall hat. When he did the brim of the tall
hat and the butt of his pipe were just visible between the boards of the
outhouse wall. The shed, as he called the old shed that he
shared with the tools and the garden tools, served as much as a
playhouse: there every morning he hummed through one of his
old songs: _Willow, give me a hand_ or _Blue eyes and grey hair_
or _Green Eyes and Hair_ and both green and grey curls the smoke curled
up from the pipe and dissipated in the morning air.

During the better part of his life in Charleston uncle Charles was
Stephen’s constant companion. Uncle Charles was a large muscular man with deep
burgundy olive skin, strong jaw and thick black hair. On market days
he shuttle him between the market on Dorchester Street and the shop
on the main street of charles town in which the family lived. Stephen was
happy to go with him on these days because uncle Charles treated him very
well with offers of whatever was available in the baskets and crates
behind the counter. He would take a bunch of corn fl ears and
three or four Small potatoes and thrust them generously into his
nephew’s hands while the boy chewed them; then, at Stephen’s
obvious reluctance to take them, he would smile and say:

—Eat them, sir. Do you hear me, sir? They’re good for your stomach.

When the shopping trip had been completed the pair would go down to the park
where an old friend of Stephen’s father, Mike Flynn, could be found
sitting on a bench, waiting for them. They would watch Stephen’s progress
around the track. Mike Flynn would stand at the fence near the train
tracks, cane in hand, as Stephen walked around the track in the way
That He could, his head slightly bent, his chin slightly raised and
his arms held slightly out at his sides. When his running run
was complete his trainer would hear the footsteps and em to
them before shuffling on after a minute or two still wearing an old pair of
worn out trainers. A small crowd of school children and parents
would stop to watch stephen run and return after he and his Trainer had
sat down together and started discussing sports and careers. As stephen had
heard his father say that His Trainer had seen some of the greatest achievements
of all time with his youth He often looked at his
trainer’s grey stubble-covered face, as he watched at the tobacco stained
fingers with which he rolled his cigarette, and took in awe the
almost lifeless grey eyes that would look up suddenly from their sockets
and stare off into the middle distance as the thin white fingers
finished their job and dust and bits of tobacco fell back into
the pouch.

On the way home uncle John would often pay a visit to the well
and, when the water was within Arm’s reach, the old man would raise his
arm and gently sprinkle the dirt all over Stephen’s shoes and onto
the floor of the wagon. When he returned he pulled out a white
cloth and read under his arm from a small black
book whose words were written at the bottom of the page.
Stephen knelt by his uncle and, though he did not understand, understood
well. He often wondered what his uncle prayed for in heaven.
Perhaps he prayed for lost souls in hell or for the assurance of a
peaceful life or perhaps he prayed that God would give him back a little of
the good fortune he had found in Ireland.

One Day He and his uncle and his father made a
road. The old man was a good man in possession of many books
and soon ten or twelve miles of the road were made. The little
village of Sandy was the junction of many roads. Sometimes they turned to
the east into the Black mountains or took the High road and
went to Dublin, or passed through Waterford. Walking along the road
or drinking in a little round the house the men spoke
together of the things in their country, of Their history, of
Legends and of the history of their own race, to all of which Laurence
gave an avid attention. Things which he did not know were repeated over and
over to him until he had learned them by heart: and in time he
caught glimpses of the strange things about him. The time when he himself would
take part in the making of the tapestry was drawing near and in time
he had to be ready for the great task which he knew before and the
nature of which was only now revealed.

The designs were his alone; often he pored over the french legend of
_The Count of Monte Cristo_. The face of the dark angel stood
out in his mind against all he had seen and heard in tales of
the strange and fantastic. At night he made up on his bedside table the
scenery of a little fairy tale made of leaves and of flowers
and of wax candles and even of the white and gold paper in
which everything was wrapped. When he had given up the book, stripped
of its contents, there had returned to his mind a vivid image of
Roses, of rose gardens and of Mountains.

In London, on the road that led to the mountains, stood a little
stone house in the garden of which grew wild roses: and in
this house, he told himself, lady Emily lived. Both on the
way and on the return journey he was fascinated by the
roses: and in his mind he went on a long series of
pictures, such as those in the book itself, at the end
of which there was an image of himself, now older and bearded,
standing in a rose garden beside Emily who had not some time before
confessed her love, but with a very strange tone of voice, said:

—Stephen, I cannot eat the roses.

Stephen took the form of a man called Aubrey Ii and brought with him a
gang of men to the castle. He had a sword hanging
from his waist and a small pistol attached to his belt and the
gang had long knives stuck out of them. Aubrey, who
had heard of Stephen’s strange mode of speech, preferred to speak slowly
and to have for himself the pleasure of making words to
his men and giving orders. The gang made raids on the
houses of the villagers and came up to the sea and fought a battle on
the little sand beach, driving off the sea the gang with
the foul smell of the sea in their nostrils and the wet smell
of the sea on their clothes and in their hair.

Aubrey and Stephen shared a common horse which together they took out with the
men to Pasture where the cows grazed the fields. When the cows
were young the men would take pleasure in driving the little beasts
from the fields. And when autumn came the cows were driven down into
the fields: and the very thought of the old field at Night with
its dark brown earth and smells of cow dung and rusty water
wheels, broke Stephen’s heart. The cows which had been so
happy in the fields on summer days haunted him and he could not
even look at the milk cows anymore.

The cold of October did not trouble him this time and he was glad to
be going back to Work. His time in the fields came to an end when
His Mother went to work. He was at school and had only an
hour or two left in the day. The fields were empty and there were
no more shooting parties or fishing on the lakes. He sometimes drove
round in the car and delivered the last jug: sometimes the fresh
air drove out the worst of the smells of the fields and he felt no
shame in smelling the man straw and dust of the milkman’s vans.
When the car drew up outside the house he hoped to catch a glimpse of
a clean white wall or of a warmly decorated interior and to see how the
woman would open the door and how she would shut the door. He thought
it would be a good day indeed, driving across the moor at
night to deliver milk, and he had his hat and a little packet of
biscuits in his pocket to choose from. But the same thought which
had squeezed his heart and made his shoulders slump forward as he drove through
the village, the same thought which had made him look with horror at
the farmer’s long narrow hand as it lay curled between his
milk soaked legs, prevented his vision of the future. In a different
way he knew that his family was in danger and that it was the
reason why he himself had not been taken away to Safety. For some
reason he had missed that fundamental change in the world; for such changes in
which he was not involved brought so many new dimensions to his
vague understanding of the world. The doubts which he felt lingered at
night and the darkness of his mind had become oppressive. A noise like that of
the other horses filled his ears and he heard the cart’s wheels
clattering against the rocks of the Dusty Road and the reed trees
rustling and complaining behind him.

Nightmares came to Him and, as he reflected on the events, a restless
feeling crept into his soul. Like a mist rose from nowhere and
allowed him to walk alone in the moonlight along the garden path. The perfume
of the garden and the soft light from the moon lent a comforting
warmth to his aching body. The sound of children at play
behind him and their excited chatter made him feel, even more strongly than
he had felt at Home, that he was safe among people. He did not
want to rest. He wanted to see in the real world that beautiful
image which his mind so often denied. He did not know when to
see it or not but the instinct which urged him on told him that the
girl would, without any magical trick of fate, find him. They would
meet again as if they had known each other and had had a conversation,
whether at one of the houses or in a remote hiding place. He would be
alone, surrounded by darkness and fear: and in that moment of
pure ecstasy he would be hers. He would turn into
something evil before her eyes and then in that instant, he would be
hers. Fear and doubt and despair would disappear from
him in that very instant.

The two travelling companies had arrived the instant of the fire and
they had come immediately to the house to destroy it. The cattle had
been driven out through the back door which was covered with ropes
of wire and barbed wire and into two waiting vans by the horses. When they had
been thoroughly loaded the horses had ridden off swiftly down the lane: and
through the window of the second room, in which he now sat with his
weeping father, Stephen had watched them disappear down the Steep Slope.

The wood fire did not die until evening when Father Had struck a
match between the teeth of the poker to test the flame. Uncle John
sat in the middle of the sparsely furnished second room and behind him
the old man leaned against the wall. A lamp on the table
cast a dim light upon the dirt floor, worn by the tread of the
horses. Stephen sat on the floor beside his father listening to his
muffled and incoherent speech. He understood little or none of it at
first but he became gradually aware that his father had changed and that
the change was about to take place. He understood, too, that he was now
preparing for the journey, that a burden was being placed upon his
shoulders. The long flight from the peace and quiet of Home,
the journey to the dr iron moors, the loneliness of the small
stone cottage in which they were forced to live made his heart ache:
once upon a time, the promise of the future seemed to fade. He
understood now why the family had always sat together in the
kitchen and why his father had always sat at the table, with his back
to the wall, talking quietly with uncle Charles who invited him to come in
and eat his supper.

—There’s no bit of the spirit left in you now, Stephen, old chap, said Father
Charles, poking at the dying flame with renewed vigor. You’re not dead
yet, stephen. Neither, thank you Little Brother (Do forgive me) not quite yet.

It was a strange and wonderful time. Uncle Charles had become so
busy that he could no longer be sent out on business and the delay
in arriving at the custom house left Stephen happier than he had been in
Years. In the morning he contented himself with walking round
to a central square or, at first, about half way along one of
the main streets but once he had formed a little picture of the place in his
mind he followed along one of the railway lines until he reached the
Custom House. He wandered round to the docks and along the
quays looking at the crates and boxes which were floating on the
surface of the water like a little greenish mist, at the faces of the
drivers of the donkey carts and the old porter boys.
The diversity and strangeness of the sights conveyed to him by the stacks
of newspapers stacked against the walls or hoisted up out of the decks
of ships aroused back in him the longing which had kept him
running in the night from garden to garden in search of Escape.
And in this new found solitude he might have found happiness in
the World except that he missed the blue skies and the sun-kissed
roofs of the houses. A new loneliness opened up to him
wherever he walked on the moors and on the hills and under the blue trees
and yet he continued to wander up and down day after day as if he
had found something which bored him.

He went once or twice with his friends to visit his mother: and
everywhere he saw the endless rows of houses drawn up in readiness rows
Still the sense of isolated loneliness would not leave him. The objects
of his wandering were everywhere, far and wide. He was angry with
himself for remaining solitary and the victim of his own impulses,
and also with this reversal of nature that was turning the world
around him into a picture of corruption and despair. But the anger did
nothing for his loneliness. He absorbed only in what he saw,
hiding himself from it and all the other things kept coming.

He was sitting in a rocking chair in his aunt’s house. A lantern with
a candle stood on the far side of the room and by its light
his aunt was reading an open book that lay upon her lap. She
looked a long moment at the small picture that was contained within it and murmured
softly:

—The beautiful Deer Hunter!

The little girl stood on toes to look at the picture and murmured
softly:

—What is she doing, mother?

—Just a picture, sweetheart.

The girl leaned her little head upon her mother’s shoulder,
eyes upon the picture and murmured as if fascinated:

—The beautiful Deer Hunter!

As if possessed, her gaze rested again upon the girls little
face and she murmured softly:

—Isn’t she an interesting one?

Then the man who came in from the cold, smiling from behind a
lump of paper, heard her murmur. He dropped his note down on the
table and went to her side to see. He grasped the edges of the paper
in his charred and blackened hands, pushing it back and
so that she could not see.

He was sitting in a small attic room high up in an old
boarding house. The fire burned on one hearth and through one
window a grey mist was falling from the sky. By the window an
old woman was busy making charcoal and, as she worked at her task, she spoke
in a low voice of what the priest and the woman had seen. She spoke also
of the things he had seen of her of late and of her strange words and
gestures. He was listening to her talk and saw the doors and
rooms that stood reflected in the mist, arches and windows and dark
caves and echoing caverns.

Suddenly he became aware of movement in the room. A shadow hung
there in the shadow of the fireplace. A small figure of a woman
stood there, guided away by the murmur of women at the fire. A small
voice came from the doorway saying:

—Is it Josephine?

An old black woman called out from the room:

—Yes, Ellen, it’s Josephine.

—Josephine... Well, good evening, Josephine.

Stephen returned the greeting and saw a broad smile spread across her face from
the memory.

—Do you remember me, Josephine? asked the old woman by the fireplace.

But she did not answer the question but said:

—I thought you were Stephen. I thought you were Stephen, Stephen.

Then, repeating this several times, she fell asleep giggling stephen.

He was sitting in the middle of the children’s room in King’s Court.
A quiet solitary peace had fallen over him and he took no part
in the entertainment. The children, eating the last of their food,
laughed and talked together and, though he wished to join the
dancing, he made himself a solitary place among the silk embroidered curtains and
cushions.

Only after he had finished his meal and settled into a quiet corner of the
room he began to feel the weight of his guilt. The woman, who at
the beginning of the evening had seemed to be vain and vulgar, was
spreading a benevolent smile over him, moving him to his will, hiding from
her touch the hot heat of his blood passing in the
midst of the chaos and all the noise and laughter her eyes
returned to his face, teasing, teasing, teasing, melting his
heart.

In the distance the men who had arrived earlier were putting away their
weapons: the party was over. He had wrapped a blanket around her and, as
they walked together to the tram, strands that her own sweet hair
floated up around her dark face and her feet moved lightly on the
gravel road.

It was the wrong tram. The lank brown horses circled together and rang their
bells in the still air in silence. The woman spoke to the
man, just as softly in the dim light of the tram. On the wooden
steps of the tram were placed a brightly lit lantern. No sound of
traffic going up and down the street. No sound of the stillness of the
night air as the lank brown horses rubbed their tails together and
rang their bells.

They stopped to talk, he on the upper step and she on the lower. She
went up to his face several times and then down to his face between
her hands and once more she stood there before him for several moments
on the upper step, started to go up, and then went down. His heart
beat to her name like a drum to the drum. He heard what her
sisters said to him from beneath her hood and knew that in the remote
past, whether in memory or dream, he had heard this voice before. He
saw her in her clothes, her black cap and gloves and her black
hood, and knew that she had come to him a thousand times. And the
voice within him spoke above the beat of his own heart, asking him
that he was a thing to whom he had come to hold out his hand.
And he remembered the time when he and She had stood looking over the
school grounds, watching the squirrels setting up a nest of nests under
the trees and the bull martins darting to and fro across the grassy
field, and then, all of a sudden, she had burst out in a peal of
laughter and had skipped up the gentle incline of the hill. Now, just now,
he stood there in his uniform, still the silent observer of the
scene before him.

—She just wants me to catch hold of her, he thought. That’s why she came
with me on the train. I could always catch hold of her when she comes up
to the platform: nobody is waiting. I could grab her and kiss her.

But he did not: later, when he was finally alone on the station
platform, he tore his uniform to shreds and stared blankly at the
wooden floor.

The next day he sat at the desk in the jesuit reading room for several hours.
Before him was a new book, a new pot of ink and a new type
opener. By force of habit he had placed at the top of the first
page the first letter of the school motto: A.R.E.S. In the second
half of the page was the title of the poem he was about to
write: A R—— E——. He knew it was appropriate to do this because he had seen
similar titles in the late poems of Lord Byron. After he had
written the title and drawn an initial letter each he drifted into
a trance and began to doo sketches on the pages of the magazine. He saw
himself sitting at the desk in Class the morning after the incident
at the Faculty lunch table, trying to write a poem about Suicide on
the back of one of his teacher’s sc notebook pages. But his mind
by now began to identify with the words and, soon, he had
filled the page with the names and faces of some of his
heroes:

    George Macdonald
    John Maclean
    Roderick Maclean
    Tom Wolfe


Sometimes it seemed as though he would fail again and, by way of reflecting on the
situation, he talked himself into it. In the end all
the things which were so obscure and mysterious went out of the
book. There was no mention of the night walkers nor of the forest
nor of the lake: nor did he or she speak either. The book told
only of the stars and the cool air and the silvery light of the
moon. An infinite love was felt in the hearts of the
lovers as they sat in silence under the leafless tree and
when the time for kissing had come the kiss, which had been sought
by neither, was sought by both. For stephen the initials S. A. P. were carved
into the centre of the page, and, having finished the book, he went into his
mother’s bedroom and looked at her face for a long time in the mirror on
her dresser.

Now the long life of life in london was coming to an end. That
evening his father came home full of stories which kept his mother up
all through dinner. Stephen had been anticipating his father’s arrival for
there had been a feast that day and he knew that his mother would
help him dip his fingers in the butter. But he did not taste the butter for
the smell of It had filled his mouth with the taste of blood.

—I have run into him, said Mr Dedalus for the first time, standing on
the edge of the garden.

—Well I hope, said Mrs Dedalus, he will be able to explain everything. I
mean father Stephen.

—Of course he will, said Mr Dedalus. Didn’t He tell you he’s part
of the jesuits now?

—I rather like the idea of sending him to the christian brothers
instead, said Mrs Dedalus.

—Christian brothers be damned! said Mr Dedalus. Was it the Old Man
with The Pipe? Well, let him go to the jesuits in God’s name if he
stays with them. They’ll be of use to you again in time. Those are
the ones who can find you a job.

—And they’re a very good school, aren’t they, Stephen?

—Yes. They do indeed, I tell you. I saw them once in School.
Dressed up, by All, like you.

Mr Dedalus pushed the paper across to Stephen and let him see what
was on it.

—Now then, Stephen, he said, you can put your hands on the desk,
old chap. You’ve had a very hard day.

—Oh, I’m sure he’ll be very good company, said Mr Dedalus, especially
if he has Maurice with him.

—Oh, Poor Boy, I forgot about Him, said Mr Dedalus. Oh, Maurice!
Come now, you pig-headed boy! Do you think I’m going to send you
to a school where i’ll teach you to read mr.r.s. c. And I’ll buy
you a nice crisp cotton handkerchief to keep your eyes dry. Won’t that
be some nice?

Maurice looked at his father and then at his mother.

Mr Dedalus put his finger to his lips and stared hard at both his
sons. Maurice shook his head without meeting his father’s eyes.

—By the way, said Mr Dedalus to simon, the headmaster, he said
proudly, for telling me the truth about you and Mr Robinson. You’re an
old boy, he said.

—No, he wasn’t, Sir!

—Was he! said Mr Dedalus. And he gave me a full account of the whole
thing. We were chatting, you know, from one point to another. And,
by the way, why do you think he wanted me to take the test for the
school? Well I’ll tell you that later. Well, as I was saying, we
were chatting and being silly and he asked why did your father always
wear a tie, and then he told me the whole story.

—And was he annoyed, Sir?

—He? Yes he! _Silly old man!_ he said.

Mr Dedalus imitated the nasal nasal voice of his father.

Father Dolan and Well, when I told you both at once about it, Father
Dolan and I had a famous laugh over it. _You should watch yourself,
Father Dolan_, said Mother, _otherwise mr Dedalus will beat you up to the
bone_. We had a famous laugh together over it. Ha! Ha! Ha!

Mr Dedalus turned to his father and said in his nasal voice:

—Show them the house in case they see the play tonight. Stephen, stephen pray
for your father, dear son!

He used his father’s voice and said:

—We told you all at once about stephen and Father Dolan and Mother and all of
once we had a good laugh together over it. Ha! Ha! Ha!

The time for the Evening play had come and Stephen at the window
of his bedroom looked out over the green grass across which
rows of Oil trees now grew. He watched the actors come
down the steps of the church and walk into the theatre. Men in
evening dress, the Priests, stood in pairs at the entrance
to the theatre and took in their surroundings with interest. In the
dim light of the stage stephen could see the bearded head of one
priest.

The Blessed Sacrament had been removed from the church and the
wooden altar had been pulled down so as to leave the base of the stage
and the space around it bare. Against the wall were stacks of
weights and Gymnastics equipment; empty boxes were stacked in one corner: and
in the middle of the rows of gym shorts and socks and
shirts of faded white material there was a large pole
marked gymnast waiting s champion to be hoisted up onto the stage and placed
in the hands of the winning gymnast at the end of a gymnastic contest.

Jimmy, although in addition to his talent for dramatic writing he had
been appointed secretary of the school, had taken no part in the gymnastics
section of the school but in the plays which comprised the drama
club he played the leading part, that of the school captain. He had
been selected for this on account of his looks and good looks and he was
now at the end of his first year at School and was number two.

A number of the older boys in their shorts and tops came
running down from the school, through the vestry and into the chapel.
The vestry and chapel were filling with old men and boys. The
tall young school prefect was standing with one on the back of
a white horse. A tall black boy in a white shirt, who liked to
make a good show of his sword skills, was also watching
with interest, his leather-bound thumbs sticking out of his leather
belt. The soft thud of the ringing bell was heard as
the boys got ready to go up onto the stage: and in a moment
the school prefect was following the boys into the chapel like a
flock of geese, flapping the front of his shirt open and shouting
at the boys to make way. A small group of Young girls
were mounting the steps at one side of the chapel, some waving
their arms above their heads, others clutching small bundles of wild
flowers and fruit. In a dark corner of the chapel on the other
side of the stage a stout old woman sat in her long green chair.
When she looked up a tiny figure, wearing a short white bonnet and
an old blue dress, with her thin lips and
cheeks all rouged and painted, was there. A general murmur of
delight went through the room at the sight of this tiny figure.
One of the boys, smiling and nodding his head, approached the dark
corner and, having bowed to the stout old woman, inquired gently:

—Is it a pretty young man or a boy that you have seen, Miss
Tallon?

Then, bending down to look at the tiny white face beneath the veil
of her veil, he said:

—Yes! Mark my words I think it’s indeed Miss Tallon after all!

Matthew from his place at the corner watched the old woman and the boy
dance together and heard the soldiers’ shouts of encouragement behind him as
they came round to see the little man who continued to watch the
girl dance by himself. A sigh of relief filled him. He
reached the end of the little aisle and, getting up from the bench on
which he had been sitting, went out of the church.

He came out of the street and ducked behind a hedge that bordered
a garden. From the theatre below came the excited voices of the
actors and the rapid beat of the soldiers’ drums. The lights
streamed down through the open windows making the theatre into a floating
thing, suspended above the rows of seats, the thin ropes of rope
holding her by their feet. The side door of the theatre opened suddenly
and a beam of light shone on the ark. A sudden burst of
music came from the theatre, the strains of a symphony: and as the side
door closed again the ark could hear the flowing strains of the
symphony. The music of the wooden figures, their slow and steady
tempo, evoked the same feeling that had been the cause of
all the ark’s problems and of the strange dream only a moment before.
The music came to him on a tide of music: and on that tide of
the music the ark was moving, carrying the light of day
in its wake. Suddenly a sound of loud applause broke the silence. It
was the same that greeted the performance of the dance group on the
beach.

At the far end of the building across the street a window of dim light showed
through the curtains and as stephen moved towards it he became aware of a strong
tobacco smell. Two men were standing in the shadows of the room,
smoking, but before he saw them he had recognised Heron and his
friend.

—Here comes the great Dane! said a deep male voice. Welcome to
my new home!

The voice ended in a short burst of loud laughter as Heron
smoked and then turned to beat the ground with his stick.

—Yes I am, said Stephen, turning and looking from Heron to his
friend.

The man was a stranger to heron but in the gloom, with the light from the
glowing cigarette butt, he could make out a rather stern face on
which the beard was growing longer, a slightly hunched back and a
bowler hat. Heron did not trouble stephen with an answer but said
instead:

—I was just telling my friend Here what a pleasure it would be indeed if
he took over the duties of the office of the rector. It would be a
very good thing.

He made a clumsy attempt to substitute for his friend In the vicar’s
ste place and then, disappointed in his attempt, urged Stephen to do
likewise.

—Go on, Stephen, he said, you can put him on speaker. _Those who
do not follow the rules let it go ahead just for the entertainment of the
congregation._

The suggestion was met with a sudden outburst of laughter from Stephen
in his mouth the holder had become so easily stuck.

—Take that damn cigarette out, he said, taking it from his mouth and
nose and looking at it tolerantly. It’s easy being held like
that. Do you have a cigarette?

—I don’t smoke, said Stephen.

—Well, mr Heron, This is a typical man. He doesn’t smoke and he
doesn’t go to church and he doesn’t drink and he doesn’t eat much
at all either.

Stephen turned his head and took in his neighbour’s long and narrow
face, shaped like a bird’s. He had always thought it odd that
Mr Heron had a man’s name as well as a bird’s face. A shock of
grey hair fell over the eyes like a heraldic curtain: the mouth was
small and hard and the small straight nose stuck out above the more
expressive eyes which were large and round. The two were
fast friends. They sat together in class, sang together in the
choir, spoke together and bonded over lunch together. Although their teachers
at year seven were all boys, Stephen and Heron had become
within a year the deputy leaders of the school. It was they who went
up to the headmaster either to ask for a good report or to see a boy report.

—And by the way, said Heron proudly, I was the one sent here.

The smile froze on Stephen’s face. The insult made to his face by a
pupil and then a teacher caused his smile to die for a moment. He waited in
stunned silence to see what Heron would say next. Heron, however,
nudged him gently with his elbow and said:

—You’re a sly dog.

—How so? asked Stephen.

—You’d think butter wouldn’t melt in your mouth, mr Heron. And I’m
sure you’re a sly dog.

—Might I ask you what you are talking about? asked De villiers.

—Yes you may, mr Heron. We saw her, Too, didn’t we? And
how pretty she is too. How pretty! _And what direction will
She go, Mr Dedalus? And did She ever smile, Mr Dedalus?_ The
man was looking at stephen through that smile of his for all it was
worth now and I suppose the old lady has asked you that question. I don’t
mind a bit, mr Heron. She’s bad, isn’t she, Sir?

—Or very bad, he Added silently as he placed his cigarette once
more in the corner of his mouth.

A flash of hot annoyance ran through Stephen’s veins at such
juvenile amusement in the face of a girl. To him there was
nothing juvenile about this girl’s looks or disposition. All day he had thought
of nothing but that afternoon on the platform of the station at King’s
Cross, the stream of dark tenderness she had caused to flow through him
and the verse he had written about it. All day he had awaited a chance
encounter with her when he learned that she was to come to the station. The same
dark tenderness had briefly touched his heart as it had had on the
night of the ball, but had not found its outlet in writing. The experience
and memory of his memories of her intervened both then and now,
provided such an outlet: and all day the stream of dark tenderness
within him had flowed out and folded upon itself in endless loops
and turns, leaving nothing at the end but the memory of her face
as the angry young man had taken upon it the look of death.

—And you might as well know, He went on, that i’ve finally worn you
down this time. You won’t take your revenge on me no more, that’s for damn
sure.

A short bark of bitter laughter came from his mouth and, leaning
forward as before, he struck Stephen hard across the calf of the leg
with his cane, as though in mocking fashion.

Stephen’s moment of shock had now passed. He was neither shocked
nor angered but rather wanted the game to continue. He now regretted
what had seemed to be a momentary victory for he knew that the
man in his path was in no danger from his blows: for his face
reflected his companion’s mocking smile.

—Coward! said Stephen, striking him again with his cane across the
calf of the leg.

This blow was light and not as punish enough as the first one had
been. He felt the skin tighten and tear quickly and quite
painfully; and, almost instinctively, as if to counter his companion’s
good humour, began to murmur the _Of_. This had timed effect,
for both He and Stephen laughed aloud at his joke.

The laughter came clearly from Stephen’s mouth and, as he spoke the
words, a sudden memory that took him to the present sprang back, as
if by magic, to the moment when he had seen the two deep dimples at
the corners of Stephen’s smiling mouth and had felt the light tap of
the pen against his paper and had uttered the first word of
it:

—Dublin.

It was near the end of his third year at trinity college and he was
student number twenty. His very body was still trapped in the confines
of his cramped and spartan chamber of study. His mind was still clouded
and weighed down with the spec image of Dublin. He had woken from a
few nights’ sleep in order to find himself in the midst of a nightmare
world, every shape and form of which lured him in,
repulsed him and him and, whether pleasant or not,
besieged him constantly with dark and terrible thoughts. All the time
that his student days took place he was in the company of foreign
men whose speed and ease of conversation stirred up a fire in his
soul before he tapped some of it in his own blood.

The study was for him the main activity of the week and every Tuesday,
as he walked from home to the university, he plotted his progress in the
course of the day, bracing himself for the task ahead of him
or quickening his pace to complete it before a certain mark was
made and timing his steps carefully in the midst of the
noise of the students and convincing himself that he would come last and
then triumph with his english essay.

On a particular Tuesday the last of his triumphs was finally achieved. Mr
Tate, the Classics teacher, pointed a finger at stephen and said quietly:

—This boy has failed in his essay.

A hush fell over the class. Mr Tate did not notice it and sat with his
hands on his desk and a white collar loosely tied round
his neck and face. Stephen did not look up. It was a cold december
day and his limbs were still heavy and weak. He was full of
fear and wear out, of the emptiness of his own world and self, and
felt around his neck the sharp edges of the stiff and damp collar.

A sudden sharp laugh from Mr Tate put the students more at ease.

—But i don’t like it, he said.

—Why? ask Me.

Mr Tate raised a bony hand and held out an essay.

—Here. It’s about the Body and the soul. O... rrm... o... Ah!
_without a possibility of ever reaching you._ That’s interesting.

He corrected:

—I meant _without a possibility of ever reaching_.

There was a pause before Mr Tate, smiling, picked up the essay and
handed it back to him, saying:

—O... Ah! _never reached._ That’s another one.

But the mood was not at all bad. Although nobody spoke to him in
the evenings after school he did feel within him a certain of
childish excitement.

A few days after his last exam he was walking in the dark
along the Main Road when he heard a voice shout:

—Stop!

He turned and saw two boys from his history class coming towards him in the
darkness. It was He who had cried out and, as he stepped in
between the two boys, he sliced the air about him like a candy
candy, keeping close to their heads. Boland, his friend, walked beside him, a
broad grin on his face, and Nash carried along a few paces behind, impatient
with the silence and scratching his little round head.

As soon as the boys had crossed the Main Road again they began
to talk about books and literature, asking which books stephen was reading
and how many books there were in their parents’ library at home.
Stephen listened to them with some interest but Boland was the leader
and Nash the idler of the group. In particular after a discussion of their
favourite authors Nash asked de De Cruz who, he thought, was
the greatest writer.

—Yes! i Know. Not Really. Who is the greatest writer, Dedalus?

Nash saw the humour in the question and said:

—Whose book do you like?

—Yours.

—Newman, I think.

—Is that Cardinal Newman? asked Boland.

—Yes, said Heron.

The smile remained on Nash’s handsome face as he turned to Heron and
asked:

—How do you know About Newman, Heron?

—Well, they say that He has the best writing but, He said to the
other two in turn, of course he’s not a poet.

—And who is the greatest poet, Heron? asked Boland.

—Lord Tennyson, of course, said Heron.

—Ah, yes, Lord Tennyson, said Stephen. I have all his poems at once in my
head.

At this Stephen broke the mono mono he had been in and burst
out:

—Not a poet! No, he’s only a poet!

—Oh, chill out! said Heron. Everyone knows that Byron is the greatest
poet.

—And who do you think is the greatest poet? asked Boland, ignoring his
brother.

—Byron, of course, said Stephen.

Heron followed his example and all three joined in a loud laugh.

—What are you laughing at? asked Stephen.

—Nothing, said Heron. Not the greatest poet! He’s only a poet for
some reason.

—He must be a great poet! said Boland.

—You better keep your mouth shut, said Heron, advancing towards them again. All
i know about you is what you wrote down on the slates in the yard
you were going to be taken to the college in.

Byron, in particular, is said to have written on the slates in the yard a
poem about a friend of his who had come home from the war
on a horse:

  While He was riding towards Home
  He fell and lost his Horse Forever.

Bo land waved his two hands for silence and Heron went on:

—In any case Byron was a heretic and murderer too.

—I don’t care what he was, shouted Stephen angrily.

—You don’t care whether he was a heretic or not? shouted Heron.

—What do you know about that? said Stephen. You never heard a word about
him in your village from the priest and Others here.

—I know that He was a good man, said Stephen.

—Stephen, get rid of this one, Heron cried again.

For a moment Stephen was his prisoner.

—He heard you speak here the other day, He went on, about the man
in the church.

—I’ll kill you now, said Heron.

—Kill me? said Stephen. You’ll be afraid to move your hands.

—Afraid?

—No. Afraid for your life.

—Show mercy! cried Heron, beating at Stephen’s face with his cane.

This was the signal for the struggle. Stephen put his hands down and
Quickly seized a knot of wood that was lying in the road.
Twisting and turning under the cuts of the cane and the pressure of the
wooden knot He was forced back against the barbed wire fence.

—Admit me It is no good.

—No.

—No.

—No.

—No.

—No. No.

At last in a frenzy of rage he wrenched himself free. His
friends ran back up King’s Road, laughing and jeering at him,
while stephen, temporarily blind with rage, ran behind, shaking his head
wildly and crying.

But he was soon beyond their _And_ to the mocking
laughter of his fellows and while the details of the whole affair
were still turning slowly and painfully in his mind he wondered if
he felt any gratitude whatsoever towards those who had saved him. He had not
felt a moment of their stupidity and cruelty and the memory of it
brought forth fresh anger in him. Even the feelings of the fear and
hatred which he had experienced that day had seemed to him quite unreal.
But that night as he walked home along Goodman’s Path he strangely felt
that his mind was clearing itself of the old memories as easily
as a fruit being cleared of its last peel leaves.

He remembered sitting with his two companions at the back of the house
listening perhaps to their conversation or to the sound of music from the
stage. She remembered sitting quietly with the others and waiting for him
to return. He tried to recall her face and could not. He could
remember only that she had worn a scarf about her head like a scarf and
that her dark eyes had pierced and held his. He wondered had he
been in her mind as she had been in his. Standing in the shadows and
close to the wall as she placed the tips of the fingers of one hand
on the palm of his other hand, just touching it lightly. But the
weight of her fingers had seemed heavier and heavier: and now the
memory of her had passed through mind and soul like an ocean
wave.

The messenger came to heron, walking from behind the curtain. He was young
and eager.

—Look, Heron, he said, Doyle is in a terrible bake with stephen. You’re to go
out at once and get ready for the night. Hurry up, get ready.

—He’s leaving himself, said Stephen to the messenger in his best voice,
if he had one.

The messenger turned to Heron and said:

—And He is in an awful bake.

—Will i tell You with my best voice that He closes his mind?
said Heron.

—No, You must go out, said Stephen, who cared little for such matters of
importance.

—I can’t, said Heron, ask me if You like. There’s no need to wait for
one of the other actors. What a pity, stephen! I think it’s not right
that you’re playing a man in a dirty little play.

The spirit of friendly comradeship which he had witnessed earlier in
the theatre had almost seduced Him from his vow of eternal virginity.
He doubted the worth and even the value of the
role which seemed to be a mere test of honour. The
question of who was who was, like all such questions, alien to
him. While his mind had been chasing away these thoughts and
even seeking refuge in their silence he had heard around him the
reassuring voices of his friends and of his colleagues, wishing him to be a
gentleman in all things and urging him to be a true patriot in
all things. These voices had now ceased to be heard in his head.
When the gates had been opened he had heard a voice telling
him to be fit and well and good and when the drive for
patriot spirit had begun to be felt in the streets still another voice
had bid him be true to his mother and endeavour to take up the cause
of liberty. In this new life, which he inhabited, a third voice
had bid him cover up his mother’s sorry ways in his heart and,
finally, the voices of his former friends urged him to be a good
boy, to spare them the trouble and to see them well and to do his
best to earn his fee for grammar charity. But it was the vanity of all these
urging voices which made him persist forever in his company of
friends. He saw them often enough for a change but he was happy only when
he was far from them, outside their sight, alone and in the company of
his dog.

In the vestry a young bearded woman and an old man, in faded
brown robes, were working on a display of brushes and paints. The people
who had been listening moved away and stood about themselves, painting
their faces in a delicate way with their painted hands. In the
back of the vestry a young man, who was returning from a visit to the
village, was rocking himself gently from the tips of his toes
to his knees and back again, his thumbs thrust slightly forward on his
thighs. His young head was covered with curly black hair and his clean
shaven face contrasted sharply with the simple collar of his tunic and
with his black cloak.

As stephen watched the little man and tried to understand for himself the
meaning of the priest’s friendly words there came to Stephen’s mind a
saying that he had heard from his father before he had been sent to
Rome, that you could not judge a man by the colour of his
clothes. At the same time he thought he saw a resemblance between his
father’s face and that of this very old man: perhaps he was
guilty of the smell of the priest’s breath and of the church
itself whose life was pun marked by loud music and shouting and the air
filled with the smell of the incense and hot blood.

While his face was being washed and his lips painted pink and
red like the old man he listened distractedly to the voice of a
very stern priest who helped him straighten himself and remember his lines again.
He could hear the orchestra playing _The Hall of The_ and knew that in
a few minutes the curtain would be raised. He had no fear now but the
thought of the part he was to play excited him. The memory of
one of his sisters made a warm flush rise on his own cheeks. He
saw the many eager faces watching him from across the stage and
the excitement at once drove away his fear, and his nervous terror.
His youth seemed to have also left him: the energy of the
music and all around him pressed on him despite his natural
limitations. For a brief moment he seemed to be back in the
joy land of youth: there, as he hovered in the shadows with the other
actors, he joined the wild dance in which the main body was
lifted up by the projection projection with violent force knocked it
down.

A few moments later he found himself on the stage amid the hissing smoke
and the moving scenery, standing among the blank faces of the audience.
It amazed him to see that the body that he had mistaken in costume
as a simple living thing had now taken a life of its own.
It began again to reproduce itself, he and his fellow actors assisting them in
their work. As the curtain fell on the final scene he saw a room
explode with flames and, through a window in a different room, saw the
human form with which he had been horribly disgusted, a mass of
flesh meeting at various points and bursting out in various directions.

He left the theatre quickly to rid himself of the image and went out
of the building towards the theatre entrance. Now that the play was over
his heart longed for some new adventure. He hurried forward as if
to find none. The doors of the theatre were wide open and the crowd
had gone away. On the balcony where he had seen the ghost of the
man a few lanterns hung in the evening breeze, waving weakly.
He climbed the steps to the entrance in haste, hoping that the ghost
would not see him, and pushed his way through the crowd in the lobby
and past the old men who were watching the play and laughing and
shaking hands with the actors. He hurried along again, with a
still greater urgency and more conscious of the whispers and looks and
comments that the dark ghost left in his wake.

When he came out on the street he saw his father waiting for him under the
gas lamp. At first glance he thought that the face in the lamp looked
familiar and started down the street hurriedly.

—I have to take a walk down st James’s Hill, he said to his
father urgently. I’ll be right with you.

Without waiting for his father’s reply he strode off the curb and
began to walk at full speed down the hill. He hardly knew where he
was going. Pride and hope and desire that had died in his heart
threw up clouds of black smoke before the eyes of his enemies. He
walked down the hill in a cloud of black smoke of dead
pride and dead hope and dead desire. It boiled up before
his burning eyes in choking and choking clouds and boiled up around
him until at last the sky was clear and blue again.

Black smoke still burned his eyes but it mattered no more. A feeling, similar
to that which so often made anger and bitterness flow through him, brought
his anger to rest. He stood up and looked up to the dark windows of
the house and beyond them to the dark narrow lane at its end. He
read the name _Lane_ on the side of the house and breathed in the
cool night air.

It smells of dust and old wood, he thought. It is a good place to
rest. It will calm your heart. My heart is quite calm now. I must go
home.

He was once again sitting with his father in the back of the
mail coach at Night. He was sitting with his father on
the night train to Dublin. As the coach pulled out of the station he
remembered every little detail from the morning and every moment from his
first day at School. But he saw no more now. He saw the city
slowly slipping away from him, the tall buildings outside his
window changing every few minutes, the distant train whistle,
blown by a dozen masked men, echoed through the air tin tin blossoms
hung for a moment in the air like sand grains carried
along on a wind.

He listened without words to his mind’s panorama of Memories and ghostly
images from his past, the silence broken by sobs whistling faintly from his gin
window whenever the face of a dead man appeared before him or whenever
the ghost revealed himself the reason for his nightly visit. He
watched but could feel no fear. The faces of the strangers were all unfamiliar
to him save that of uncle John, an face that had long been
burned out of memory. He knew, however, that his uncle’s house was
about to be sold at auction, and in the horror of his own eyes
he saw the stranger add his name only to the price.

At Last he fell asleep. When he awoke the carriage had drawn out
of Sight and his father was fast asleep in the front seat. The
pale light of the dawn crept over the village, lighting the empty fields
and the empty houses. The mystery of it filled his mind as he
watched the train pass and heard from time to time his father’s ragged
breathing and his every heartbeat. The sound of the train
filled him with a dread, as if it might wake him, and he
prayed that the morning would come quickly. His prayers, addressed neither
to God nor himself, began with a shiver, as the cool morning air
crept from the outside of the carriage up to his shoulders, and ended with
a series of small movements that he timed to match the pounding beat of
the music; and then, at intervals of several seconds, his
fingers played the first bars of the song in rapid
succession. The sweet melody eased his mind and, leaning against the
window, he let his eyes close again.

They were on a train to London and it was still early morning when
He finished his breakfast in the kitchen of the Station House. The
early morning sunlight was streaming in the windows and he could hear
the sound of voices. His father was standing at the window,
brushing his hair and beard and beard with great care, stretching his
arm over the glass and turning his face slightly to view it
better. As he did so he spoke quietly to her in his accent
english accent:

    ’Tis old age that
    The young must die,
    And so, my love, I’ll
    No longer live.
    I can’t be saved, sure,
    Or even loved, sure,
    So I’ll have to
    Die.

    My love she’s strong,
    My love she’s strong:
    She’s a strong thing
    When she is young;
    But when ’s old
    Age so young
    She dies and sleeps in
    The morning alone.


The sight of the bright blue sky outside the window and the
soft melody with which his mother’s voice filled the warm and
still room, drove away all the traces of last night’s rev night from
Stephen’s mind. He got up quickly to listen and, when the song had
finished, said:

—It’s much better than any of the old _come-all-you_.

—Do you think so? asked Mr Dedalus.

—I like it, said Stephen.

—It’s a good old song, said Mr Dedalus, showing the tip of his
tongue. Yes, but you should have heard Mick Foley sing it! My Poor
Boy! He had a gift for it, and words that he managed to get right
that I hadn’t heard. He was a boy who could sing old _come-all-you_,
if you will.

Mr Dedalus had some fruit for lunch and after the meal he
cross-checked the newspapers for the waiter. For the most part they were
at the point where no name was mentioned, the waiter bearing in person
the title sir and Mr Dedalus his father or rather his
butler.

—Well, I hope you haven’t seen the King’s Bible yet, dear Mr
Dedalus, for I want to show it to this son of mine.

By the Time the roses were in bloom. They reached the gates of
the university and were led by a university porter into the courtyard.
Here their march across the courtyard was brought to a halt at a
dozen or so paces from the position of the porter’s.

—Well, can you tell me now? Why is mr Butler dead?

—Dead, sir. Dead, sir.

At both points Toby stood silently between the two men, unsure of
the situation and waiting impatiently for the slow march to start again.
By the time they had crossed the courtyard his anxiety had turned
to anger. He wondered how his father, whom he took for a very
good man, could be affected by the bad behaviour of the porter;
and the strange latin phrases that had occupied him in the
library now filled his mind.

They went into the lecture theatre and Professor Martin, the porter
before him, arranged the desk in his chair. He sat in
the chair, attracted more than ever by the peace and quiet of
the room and by the impression he had of calm and quiet people. On the
desk he saw the word _Letters_ cut several times in the dark polished
wood. A strange sensation filled his mind: he began to notice the
other students of the class around him and to withdraw from their
conversation. A picture of student life, which his teacher’s words had been
meant to convey, rose up before him because of the letters cut on the
desk. A big man with a beard was cutting through the
letters with a knife, grinning. Other students stood or sat around
him looking at his work. Stephen touched his shoulder. The grinning man
turned towards him, smiling. He was dressed in dark brown clothes and wore
black boots.

Stephen’s name was stephen. He walked down the aisle of the classroom so
as to be as far away from the man as he could get and, looking
up at his teacher’s face, touched his own shoulder.

Both the man and his teacher vanished before his eyes as he walked back
across the lawn and through the front door. It shocked him to
see in the outside world any sign of what he had thought was only a
small and insignificant part of his own life. The old memories
came back into his mind. They too had sprung up in him,
suddenly and unexpectedly, out of the dead. He had willingly given in to them
and allowed them to sweep in and fill his mind, wondering
vaguely where they came from, in this world of faded memories, feeling
himself superior and superior to them, sick and ashamed of himself
as they had swept into him.

—Ah, yes! And there’s the Cemetery right there! and The Memorial.
You had heard me speak of it Before, hadn’t you, Joe. That’s
the crowd that was standing there when the grave had been dug, the seven of
them, Jimmy Reilly and billy Mc Reilly and Joe Reilly and Monsieur
Cousin, joe Lynch, and Jimmy O’Connell and Jimmy Lynch that I told you
about this morning and Billy Reilly and that fine young Jimmy
Reilly and the Rest.

The branches of the trees by the Cemetery were bare and glistening in
the sun. A group of youths played, three young men in trousers
and shirts, one of them carrying a large duff bag. In the distant
distance a Brass band of reed players in faded uniforms and carrying
small brass instruments was playing for an audience of school children
and er school teachers. A woman in a white dress and apron was
arranging a row of flowers on a stone that shone like a piece of glass
in the afternoon sun. From a window open to the street came the sound
of a piano, the first notes rising into a melody.

He looked over to his father’s desk, listening to music he had
heard before, hearing again the music of the living and dead
men who had been the heroes of his father’s struggle. Suddenly a
faint sickness rose in his stomach. He remembered his own proud
days at School, a strong boy, a man confident in his own
abilities, brave and proud of himself, fighting against the
corruption of his body and against the corruption of his mind. The words carved
into the dark wood of the desk weighed upon him, crushing his youthful
hopes and youthful dreams and making him hate god for his
own lies and twisted schemes. The lump in his throat was hard and
painful to swallow and the rising sickness spread throughout his body so that for
a time he closed his eyes and walked alone in darkness.

He could still hear his father’s voice—

—Whatever you work out for yourself, Son—and I know you will one of
these days—remember, whatever you do, you mix with others. When I was
a young man I told you I enjoyed it. I mixed with all the
men. Each of us could do something. One fellow had a good
job, one fellow was a good sailor, another could write a good irish
song, another was a good boxer or a good poker player, another could
tell a good joke and so on. We got the ball rolling together and
enjoyed ourselves and had a lot of fun and we were none the least above
average men. And we were good fellows, Stephen—at least I thought we
were—and very good old Fellows indeed. That’s the sort of fellows I
want you to stick with, because of the old ways. I’m talking to
you as a son, Stephen. I don’t think a son should be ashamed of his
father. No, I treat you like your father treated me when I was a
young boy. We were more like that than father and son. I’ll never
forget the first time he caught me smoking. I was walking at the end of
the Garden Path one day with two boys like you and thought he
thought we were tobacco men because we had tobacco sticks at the corners
of our mouths. But the moment passed. He didn’t say a word, or
smile back. And the next day, Saturday, we went out for a walk together
and as we were walking together he took out a leather pouch and said:—By
the way, Son, I didn’t know you smoked, or anything like that.—Of
course I tried to put it down as best I could.—If you want a little
peace, he said, have one of these cigars. The Ship owner gave me a
box of these that day in Genoa.

He heard his father’s voice breaking into a laugh that was almost a
sob.

—He was the richest man in Genoa at the time, my Father he was! The
children had to have to look for him in the streets.

He heard a sob coming back from his father’s chest and closed his
eyes on a sudden impulse. The dawn that fell before his
eyes transformed the hills and valleys into a strange landscape of green trees
and empty pools of pale blue water. His poor soul felt naked and
empty. He could not read the signs on the doors of
the inn. In his strange way of thinking he seemed to have pushed himself
beyond the bounds of reason. Nothing touched him or spoke to him in
the whole night but he heard within himself the silence and the strange voice
inside him. He could respond to no voice of any kind, deaf and
mute to the sounds of joy and love and despair,
abandoned and abandoned by his soul’s voice. He could only speak
with his own voice, he said this to himself:

—I am Stephen Dedalus. I am living with my brother whose name is
Simon Dedalus. We are in Cork, in Ireland. It is wonderful here. Our house is
called the Grand Hotel. Me and Victoria and Simon. Me and
Simon and Stephen. Stephen.

The memory of his childhood slowly grew back. He tried to call back
some of those happy days but could not. He remembered their names. Dillon,
Kelly, Murphy, Ryan. The little boy had been cared for by an
old woman who had flea spots on her hands. When he had been sent
away from home to a convent, he had taken his first communion and had
lai quietly out on a bed and watched the flames leaping and
dancing on the walls of his little room in the convent and dreamed of
the funeral, the prayers being said for him by a priest in a red and
white robe, him being buried properly in the little chapel of the
convent on the winding road to bethlehem. But he had not lived there.
He had died. There had been no mass for the dead in the chapel and
no burial. He had not lived for he had faded out like a leaf in the
sun. He had become invisible and had passed out of existence until he no longer
existed. How strange to think of someone passing out of existence in such a
way, not by dying but by fading out of the sun and by becoming lost and
forgotten somewhere in the world! It was strange to see his invisible
self once again for a moment: a small man in a tightly pressed suit. His
shoes were on by chains and his trousers were held up at the
knees by leather straps.

On the morning of the day on which his body was discovered Peter
followed his father around in the city from bar to bar. To the
vendors in the streets, to the cooks and chefs, to the men who
took him for a customer Mr Dedalus told the usual lies, that he was an
old Drunk, that he had been trying for many years to get rid of
his Irish accent here in Dublin and that The Boy with him was
his own son but that he was only a Young man.

They had come in early in the morning from Buckley’s inn,
and Mr Dedalus’ cup had fallen heavily on its side, and
He had tried to hide the tell effects of his father’s drinking
habits from the night before by rocking his chair and drinking. One
ruse had encouraged him—the friendly smiles of the inn
keepers, the giggles and sighs of the girls with whom his
father flirted, the laughter and kind words of his father’s
friends. They had told him that he had the ugly look of his father
and Mr Dedalus had retorted that it was no unfortunate circumstance. They had
noticed traces of a French accent in his speech and made him say that
the Shannon was a much better river than the Cork. One of them, in order
to test his Fidelity to the law, had made him quote some lines
from Hamlet and asked him if it was better to say: _Tempora
in nos et nos in illis_ or _Mu mutantur et nos mutamur
in illis._ Another, a little old man, whom Mr Dedalus called The
Professor, had tormented him into submission by forcing him to say which was
better, the River shannon or the Cork river.

—It’s better the cork river, said Mr Dedalus. Leave him alone. He’s a
quick thinking lad and doesn’t worry his head over this sort of
thing.

—But he’s not his father’s son, said the little old man.

—I don’t mind, I’m sure, said Mr Dedalus, almost kindly.

—His father, said the little old man to Stephen, was the richest man
in the city of Cork in his time. Did you know that?

Stephen sat back and studied the wooden floor of the room into which
he had come.

—Now don’t go putting ideas into his head, said Mr Dedalus. Leave him
to his Thoughts.

—Oh, no I won’t put any ideas into his head. I’m old enough to
be his grandfather. And I have a grandson, said the little old man to
Stephen. Did you know that?

—Did i? said Stephen.

—Yes I did, said the little old man. I have all my memories
back at Mother’s House. Now, then! What grandfather do you think I have? Because I
remember even your grandfather in his white coat riding out the door.
That was when you were born.

—Knew, i sort of, said Stephen Proudly.

—Yes You did, said the little old man. And, more than that, I can
remember seeing your father, that Was Mr Dedalus, what a
great big man-man he was. Now, stephen! That’s a grandfather to you!

—That’s three or—four times, said one of the
grandchildren. Well, Mr Stephen, you must be of a mind.

—Well, I’ll tell you the truth, said the little old man. I’m only
eighteen years of age.

—You’re as old as i am, Then, said Mr Dedalus. You just take what
we have here and we’ll have it. You, Stephen or Samuel or whatever
your name is, do exactly the same thing elsewhere. By Now, I don’t look more
than sixteen years. There’s a friend of mine here about twice my age
and I’m a better shot than he is any day of the week.

—Cut it out there, Samuel. I think it’s time for you to take a back
seat, said the man who had spoken first.

—Oh, my Lord! poor Old Bastard. I’ll sing a marching march against him or
I’ll open a iron-barred gate for him and I’ll ride with him and
his son across the field like I did twenty years ago and be the
Best Man of the best man of all.

—And i’ll leave you alone, said the little old man, wiping his mouth
and raising his cup to drink again.

—Well, I hope he’ll be as good a man as his son. That’s all I can
say, said Mr Dedalus.

—If he will, he’ll be, said the little old man.

—Then thanks be to God, Simon, said Mr Dedalus, that we lived so long
and did so much good.

—We did so much good, Simon, said the little old man again. Thanks
be to God we lived so long and did so much good.

Simon watched the empty glasses being removed from the table as his
father and his two brothers clung to the memories of the past. No change
of appearance or of mood distinguished him from them. His soul was
colder than theirs: it reflected back upon their joy and sorrow and
grief like the sun upon a cold day. No hope of salvation stirred in
him as it had stirred in them. He had felt neither the joy of
companionship with nature nor the blessings of good spiritual health or true
love. Nothing stirred in his soul except a blind and empty and
loveless emptiness. His body was dead and cold and within was a soul
full of lost joys and it was frozen in time like the cold
core of the earth.

  Thou thou weary with dream
  Of the heavens and sleep of the earth,
  And sleep...?


He recited to himself the words of Jeremiah’s jeremiah. The scene
of such tran ineffectiveness and such endless freedom of thought
calmed stephen and he forgot his own useless and useless troubles.

Stephen’s mother and his sisters and some of his cousins stood in the
warmth and tran Of Home while he and his father walked down the steps
and along the street where the Armed guard was posted. When
they had walked into the banking house and stood before the teller He
put in his name to the manager of the bank of England for twenty
and fifty guineas; and these sums, the proceeds of the essay and
its interest, were handed over to him personally by the manager in pounds and
silver dollars sterling. He put them in his pocket and stood
back waiting for the first teller, with whom his father worked,
to put his hand on the money again and promise him a new
start in his life. He grew tired of these times and could not
keep his mind at rest. But the manager always took the advice of
others to remember he was young in those days and that there was nothing
like giving a boy the best education that money could buy. Father Ryan
stood in the street looking behind him and up at the house and to
Stephen, and inviting him to come in, as they were doing in the
house of commons of the old English parliament.

—God help us! he said stephen, and think of the heroes of our time,
Stephen, Of Raleigh and Cromwell and John Moore and Lord Dun
Bushe, all the english we have known, and all the English enemies at
home and abroad. And, by God, i won’t be lying dead in a forty-acre
field with them. No, No, old friend, I’m sorry to say that you saw
me as I went out one fine Spring morning in the last week of last
Year.

A cold Wet wind was blowing along the banks. The two men
standing at the end of the garden walk had red faces and red
eyes. Stephen looked at his heavily dressed face and remembered that a
few days before he had seen him looking up at the glass in the
window of Clayton’s.

—Well that’s good, said Mr Dedalus.

—We had better go to dinner, said Stephen. Where?

—Where? said Mrs Dedalus. Well, I thought we had to, why?

—Some place that’s not so busy, said Mr Dedalus.

—Clayton’s?

—Yes. A good place.

—Come on, said Stephen again. It didn’t matter about his
dearness.

He went out after them with very quick steps, smiling. They hurried
to catch up with him, smiling back at his eagerness.

—Take it easy like a good old boy, said his father. We’re not going
beyond a half hour, are we?

In a new life of london the letters of his letters slipped through
Stephen’s fingers. Little bags of sweets and vegetables and fresh
fruit came from the house. Every morning he drew up a list of appointments for
his week and every evening took a party of three or four to the park
to see _Lyons_ and _The House of Lyons_. In his coat pocket he stuffed
packets of Hot chocolate for his family and his bankers’ pockets
filled with piles of gold and silver coins. He bought clothes for
himself, decorated his rooms, laid out furniture, ran his
nose up and down the street, drew up all manner of expense reports,
drew up a list of duties to his household in which every member
of it had an interest, opened a new bank for his business and forced
deposits from the public so that he might have the pleasure of reading
the books and weighing his odds on the best returns. When he
could do no more he walked up and down the street endless hours. Finally his
time for painting came to an end. The coat of fired oil finally went
up and the wall of his house hung with the faded and
dusty colours.

The household returned to its former way of life. His creditors had no
further cause to punish him for wasting their money. He, richard,
returned to his old life at home and all his business plans fell
to nothing. The house sold, the old school lost its masters and
its pupils at a great loss, the picture of life that he had painted
for himself fell into ruin.

How clear his intentions had been! He had sought to build a facade of
comfort and security against the rising tide of life around him and had
built upon, with changes of heart and of age and of of
age, the inevitable pull of the child within him. And.
As surely as springs of fresh water now flowed through crumbling walls:
the waves rose once more and crashed loudly against the cliffs below.

He saw now, too, his own growing doom. He had not taken a step
beyond the boundary he had sought to cross and beyond the terrible
hatred and fear which had separated him from mother and father and
sister. He knew that he was not of the same blood as them but belonged
to them now in the strange way of kin, brother and
sister.

He longed to satisfy the secret yearning in his heart for which
all flesh was twisted and useless. He cared not that he was in
mortal danger, that his life had come to be a maze of lies and
pain. For the childish desire of man to satisfy the
passions which he set in motion was evil. He lived only
in the minute pleasures of his mind now in which he sought to
reconcile himself with that which had before his birth. By day and
by night he passed through the barriers of the mortal world. The woman
who had appeared to him by night sweet and beautiful came to him by
day in the quiet hours of twilight, her face painted with her
own blood, her eyes filled with secret tears. But the night
haunted him with its terrible promise of an eternal torment, its terrible and
empty confession of sin.

He returned to his dream. The bright street lights led him
from street to street as they had led him ever upward through the winding
streets of Alexandria. But no image of the lighted houses or the dancing
shadows in the night had a powerful hold on him now. And at
last, at the height of his madness, when the fury which had seized
him gave way to a quiet resignation, the image of Julia filled the
whole of his mind. He saw again the little white house and the
grove of trees and the road which led to the garden and he
remembered the last small gesture of love which he wanted to make
her, dancing with her in the moonlit garden after days of
mystery and torment. In such moments the gentle words of
Sister Julia came to his mind and eased his torment. The sweet
memory reminded him of the future he had always looked forward to seeing,
in spite of the awful distance which lay between his feelings of then and
now, and the brief ages he had only hinted at when youth and
innocence and love began to drain from him.

The hours passed and the raging fever of desire flared once more. The
thoughts fell from his mind and the whispered warnings and the most
terrible curses poured forth from his lips to fill the air. His soul
was in torment. He paced up and down the dark city streets and
in the shadows of windows and doorways, listening intently for any sounds.
He felt inside himself like a great angry beast. He longed to commune
with another of his kind, to beg another woman to join with him and to
dwell with him in paradise. He sensed a great presence descending down
upon him from the heavens, a presence dark and penetrating like a darkness
holding him captive within itself. Its whispers filled his ears like the
cries of a beast in distress; its presence itself penetrated his
soul. His fists clenched tight and his teeth ground together as he
felt the pain of the intruder. He flung out his arms in the
attempt to hold back the great dark force which possessed him and imprisoned
him: and the cry which he had held for so long in his throat burst
from his lips. It poured from him like a cry of anguish from a chorus of
thousands and mingled with a cry of desperate pleading, a cry of utter
helpless terror, a cry which was like the blood of the foul
demon which he had found in the stone basin of the well.

He had stumbled through a maze of narrow and winding streets. In the narrow
streets he heard sounds of brawl fighting and laughter and the voices
of street children. He stumbled along, dazed, wondering whether he
had stumbled into another world in the night. Women and men dressed in
long evening gowns lined the streets from house to house. They walked
barefoot and oblivious. A chill overcame him and his vision grew dim.
Great white houses rose before his peripheral outlined against a
night sky, standing as though upon an altar. At the windows and in the
great hall people were solemnly gathered together for the ceremony. He was in
another world: he had woken from a sleep of dreams.

He stood alone in the middle of the street, his heart beating
in his chest in a panic. A young woman dressed in a soft white
gown put a hand on his arm to steady him and looked into his face.
She said softly:

—Good morning, My lord!

The room was warm and inviting. A porcelain figure sat with her legs crossed in
a small chair by the fire. He tried to hold his breath so
that he might be at ease, watching her as she arranged her dress, watching
the tiny delicate movements of her little hands.

When he stood trembling in the middle of the room she came over to him and
kissed him sweetly and tenderly. Her tiny arms clasped him tightly to her
and he, seeing her face turn to him with serene smile and feeling the
soft gentle rise and fall of her chest, all but burst into silent
tears. Tears of joy and gratitude stood in his big eyes and his
lips moved but he could not speak.

She ran her little fingers through his hair, giving it a little
tug.

—Give me a kiss, she whispered.

His lips would not bend to kiss her. He wanted to be held tight in her
arms, to be moved slowly, slowly, slowly. In her arms he felt that
he had finally become strong and true and sure of himself. But his
lips would not bend to kiss her.

With a sudden movement he bent his head and brought her lips to his
and he saw the uncertainty of his decision in her slightly uplifted face. It
was too much for him. He closed his eyes, surrendering himself to her,
body and soul, aware of nothing in the world but the sweet touch
of her soft warm lips. They moved upon his face and upon his
mouth as if they were the words of a secret song; and within
them he felt an urgent and deep hunger, deeper than the darkness of
sleep, deeper than taste or smell.


Chapter III


A dull Night it had been a week since the first night
and as he looked into the dark glass of the window of the
bedroom he felt his stomach ache for more food. He knew there would
be fish for dinner, onions and carrots and sweet potatoes and fat
beef chunks to be ladled out in a thick over-heated pan.
Take it with you, his mind told him.

It would be a long dull night. At about midnight the gas
lamps would light up, here and there, the lower rooms of the
brothels. He would take a winding route up and down the street,
coming ever nearer and nearer with a mixture of dread and anticipation, until
his steps took him suddenly around a blind corner. The women would be there
coming out of their rooms getting ready for the night, stretching out
in their beds and twisting little fingers into their masses of hair.
He would pass by them without waiting for a violent reaction of his own
body or a desperate call of his ever-hungry soul to their warm willing
flesh. And as he passed in anticipation of that call, his senses, enhanced
only by his youth, would detect out anything that aroused or disturbed him;
his eyes, the sight of the clock on the bedside table or a picture
of two men standing at attention on a wall opposite; his voice,
the polite tone of it:

—Yes, Wife, what is on your mind?

—Is that you, husband?

—At last. My Wife is waiting for me.

—Good evening, wife! Come in and wait a little longer?

The writing on the page of the book began to spread in a
long sheet, appearing and disappearing like a snake’s; which, when the moon
and part of the stars had been folded, began slowly to fold
back up again. The words appearing and disappearing were eyes
opening and closing; the eyes opening and closing were stars being fed
and being fed. The endless stream of his thoughts drove his own soul
outward to its edges and inward to its center, the sweet music
driving it outward and inward. Sweet music? The moon drew near
and he heard the music, the song of One’s soul and the
moon was wan, wan with wan. The stars began to
fade and a shower of dull light fell upon them.

The dull light fell very softly upon the earth and the earth
began to unfold itself slowly and to spread out in all directions.
It was his own earth coming true to itself, unfolding itself sin by
sin, shed away the light of the fading stars and coming
back into itself, very slowly, with its own lights and wonders.
Passions were stirring: and a great passion overcame him.

A great dark void yawned over his soul. In that first mortal moment
he had felt the surge of passion flow out of him and had expected to find
his body and his soul maimed in its passage. But the great surge had
carried him from his body out of it and back in as it was:
and no part of body or soul had been severed and a perfect harmony had been
restored between them. The moment in which his passion betrayed
him was a moment of awareness of sin. He had sinn
himself not once but many times and he knew that, though he was in
fear of eternal damnation for the first sin committed, for each
successive sin only increased his guilt and his misery. His words and
deeds and thoughts could find no consolation for him, the gift of
divine mercy having ceased to sustain his soul. At last, like the
alms offered to the god whose grace he drank from, he could hope
again to find in god some measure of that mercy. He had
prayed in his sleep. What was the need to pray when he knew that his soul
would meet its own end? A certain pride, a certain arrogance,
kept him from saying to Himself even this much at all that he
knew it was beyond God’s power to take away his head while he slept and
cast his soul out before he could beg for mercy. His belief in his own
divinity, his own sense of Self, told him that his suffering was too
great to be compensated for in whole or in part by paying proper attention to his
Needs and Wants.

—Well then, Sir, I suppose i have no soul and neither does the devil! Do you
mean to say that you were never going to tell me what my name was?

This meek reply stirred the fires of his hatred towards his
soul. Like god he felt neither pity nor mercy. On Many
occasions when he passed the church door he looked in on the
poor who sat huddled, eyes closed, inside the church,
not eating at the table which he could neither see nor touch.
Their poor clothes and the foul smell of the un oil with which
they had covered their bodies repelled him from the table they ate
at. He clung to the idea of union with god, regardless of their
poverty which he could sense so clearly.

On the wall of his room was an inscribed plate, the mark
of his place in the order of the sodality of the Blessed Virgin
Mary. On Those days when the sodality assembled in the chapel to
use his private chamber his seat was a small writing-desk to the
right of the door through which he led the company of pilgrims to the
sanctuary. The dignity of his position did not trouble him. When in
meditation he felt the impulse to rise from his seat with dignity and,
declaring to them all his love, to leave the chapel, to
look upon the world around him. The chanting of the mysteries of
mary soothed his wounded soul. The words of Passion held his heart
captive: myrtle and laurel and oak, symbolising her ancient
roots, became roses, became early-flowering flower and late-flowering
flower, symbolising the sweet new birth of her love for him.
When it came to him to read the rosary at the close of the mass
he recited it in a low voice, opening his heart to the world.

_Quasi rosa exaltata sum in Aqua et in aqua in aqua Maris.
Quasi rosa exaltata sum in Aqua et in aqua et aqua Maris.
Quasi rosa sum in aqua et in aqua maris et in
aqua in aqua. Quasi rosa in aqua in aqua maris
et in aqua in aqua in aqua._

The veil, which had shielded him from the sight of God, now brought him
closer to the mother of god. Her eyes seemed to regard him with
infinite wisdom; her smile, a radiant pearl glowing down upon his naked
form, did not deter the sinner who approached her. If ever he was
tempted to remove her from him and to her the thing that tempted him
was his desire to be with her. If ever his head, re-entering his
body only after the object of his heart’s desire had presented itself,
was turned toward she whose name was the morning star, “fair and
shining, queen of joy and of sorrow,” that was when their names
were spoken together on lips and there were no vulgar or
vulgar words, nor the suggestion of a passionate kiss.

It was bliss. He tried to think how it could be before the silence,
as in the morning, took over his thoughts. The bell rang.
The teacher announced the time and work to be done for the morning lesson and
went away. Samuel, behind Stephen, began to hum quietly.

His other friends Laughed.

Samuel, who had withdrawn into the corner, came forward, saying:

—The boy from the school is turning up for the hour.

The other boy behind Him clapped his hands and said:

—Let’s play along. You can have the whole lesson. He won’t be back until
after the bell. And you can ask him questions about the devil,
Too.

Stephen, sitting back and tapping away at his pipe, listened to
the conversation around him and Interrupted samuel from time to time by saying:

—Shut up, damn you. Don’t make such a damned noise!

It was here also that he took a special interest in following through to
the soul the main points of the teachings of the church and retreating
into deep thought only to hear and feel even more of his own
suffering. The maxim of king David which stated that he who
goes against one all is guilty of sin had seemed to him
like a familiar concept and he had begun to understand now the truth of
his present situation. From the very seed of poverty many other hidden sins had
sprung forth: pride in himself and that of others, pride in
using money for the purchase of material things, envy of those private
eyes he could not see through the crowds prejudice of the crowd,
the lack of sympathy, the sm glowering silence in which he
gazed at the crowd, the pit of poverty and the pit into
which his very soul had fallen.

As he sat on the bench gazing up into the magistrate’s expression and eyes
his mind wound itself in and out of the many questions brought before
him. If a man had stolen a pound in his lifetime and then used that pound to
make a huge fortune how much was he willing to give back, the pound he
had stolen back or that pound back or the future value
depending on some or all that same coin? Does the priest at a baptism
stir the water while saying the child is the one christ? Does
baptism have a special beat act? How is it that while the first
beatitude promises the kingdom of heaven to the pure at baptism, the
second beatitude promises it to the wicked and they cannot possess the
child? How is the sacrament of the church present under the two
species of bread and wine when Jesus Christ is both body and blood,
man and god, in the bread alone and in the wine alone? Does a
single part of the consecrated host contain both the body and blood
of Jesus Christ or a part only contains the body and blood? When the bread
turns to dust and the wines turn to ashes after they
have been drunk, is Jesus Christ still present in both
parts as God and as man?

—Here he comes! Here he comes!

The boy at the bench by the door had heard the noise coming from the
chapel. All the doors were closed and their heads rested on the
windows. The rector came and took his place on the desk. A little
smile from the little girl on the bench had induced Her to ask the
first question.

The rector did not wait for the girl to finish her que que. He
put his hands on the desk and began:

—The mass will be said Wednesday morning in honor of st
Francis Xavier whose feast day is Tuesday. The mass will go on from
Wednesday to Friday. On Saturday it will be said in the
chapel of assumption. If the boys have good grades then it
will be good for them not to attend. Mass will be said Saturday morning
at ten o’clock with holy communion for the whole day. Sunday
will be a free day. With Saturday and Sunday being free days the boys
may be led to believe that Monday is a free day too. Talk about
making a mistake. I think you, Gentlemen, are going to make a
mistake.

—Oh really? Really, gentlemen?

A small murmur of embarrassed laughter broke out among the group of boys at
the rector’s broad back. Peter’s heart began again to swell and burn
with pain like a dying engine.

The rector went on talking:

—You are all familiar with the story of the life of saint Francis
Xavier, I believe, the founder of xavier university. He came from an old and
noble Spanish family and you know that he was one of the
earliest disciples of saint Ignatius. They met in Rome when Francis
Xavier was professor of theology at the university. This learned and
pious man and man of letters gave heart and soul to the
cause of our illustrious university and you know that he, against his own will,
was sent by saint Ignatius to preach to the Indians. He was called, as
you know, the apostle of the East. He went from country to country in
the east, from China to Korea, from India to Japan, preaching to
indians. He is said to have baptised as many as ten thousand indians
in one year. It is said that his right hand had swollen considerably from
having it passed so often over the heads of those whom he baptised.
He resolved afterwards to go to Spain and win many more souls for God before he
died of fever on the island of Corsica. A great apostle, saint Francis
Xavier! A great apostle of India!

The pope paused and then, with his clasped hands before him, went
on:

—He has a spirit in him that moves him. Ten thousand souls fighting
for Him in a single night! He is a great saint, according to the rule
of his holiness: _re re Re re!_ A saint who has great powers in
him, including: power to pray for us in our hearts; power to
do what we ask for if it be for the good of our souls; and
above all to have in us the power to forgive if we are to forgive. A great
saint, like Francis Xavier! A great saint of salvation!

Stephen began to fold his two hands and, pressing them against his
chest, looked right and left of him and saw fire blazing out of
their dark blue eyes.

In the darkness the blazing fire turned the darkness into a golden light.
Stephen’s soul was lit up like the sands of the desert and like
the sun shining from heaven.

—_Is thou of all sin and thou shalt not sin for ever_—am
you, my two dear jesus the Lord, from the book of
Matthew, second chapter, second verse. In the name of the
Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Stephen sat on the wooden floor of the church. Father Joseph sat at a
table to the left of the altar. He wore over his robe a black
cloak; his thin face was drawn and his voice hoarse with grief. The
face of his old friend, father zach timothy, brought back to
Stephen’s mind his childhood in Nazareth: the crowded streets, crowded
little houses, the deep shadows, the small cemetery on the broad street of
bethlehem where he had dreamed of being buried, the writing on the wall
of the house where he was born, the sorrowful words of Father
Joseph. His stephen, as the memories came back to him, was like a
child’s dream.

—We are gathered here today, my dear little brothers of Nazareth, for
a quiet quiet moment away from the mad world of the outside world to
remember and to praise one of the greatest christian saints, the patron of
our Town, the patron saint also of our college, saint Francis
Xavier. Year after year for much longer than most of you, my dear little
brothers, can remember longer than I can all the boys of our college have
gathered in this little room to take their quiet moment on the feast
day of their patron saint. Time has moved on and brought with it many
changes. And in the past few years what changes do any of you boys
remember? Most of the men who were on the college roll a few years
ago are either off in distant places, in the humid world or
engaged in parish work or in business or somewhere in the
great cities of the world or, it may be, being called by some other Force
to their duties or to the winding up of college affairs. And so
as the years go by, and with them changes both good and bad, the
memory of a certain man is retained by the boys of the college who
hold each year an annual retreat in the week before his feast
day set up by the Order Of the Jesuits to preserve from all the world
the memory and virtues of one of the illustrious men of our Time.

—Jesuit what is the meaning of the word _retreat_ and why is it held
by our order to be the most necessary preparation for those who wish to live
before God and before the rest of mankind a truly holy life? A retreat, my
dear friends, is a retreat for a retreat from the cares of earthly
life, the cares of the external world, in order to examine the workings
of our mind, to reflect upon the truths of our faith and to
understand fully why we are here in this world. During these few days
We wish to lay before you our teachings concerning the four lowest
things. These are, as we know from the scriptures, god, mary,
jesus and mary. We will endeavor to understand them fully during these few
days so that we may derive from our knowledge of them a lasting
light upon our souls. Do understand, my dear friends, that we have been
brought into this world for one thing and for one thing only: to do God’s
holy work and to save our own souls. All else is lost. One
thing more is lost, the immortality of one’s soul. What is left
for a man to save the whole world if he suffers the loss of his
immortal soul? And, my dear friends, believe that there is nothing in this
wonderful world that can make up for such a loss.

—I must ask you, however, my dear friends, to lock away in your hearts
for a few days all your thoughts, whether of love or
lust or both, and to give all your attention to the welfare of
your souls. I need to remind you that during the period of the
retreat the boys are supposed to assume a serene and quiet attitude
and to forget all their earthly worries. The older boys, of course, will
see that this rule is not followed and Will appeal instead to the
prefects and representatives of the congregation of Our Blessed Mother and of the
congregation of the guardian angels to give a good example to their
fellow-students.

—Let us endeavour, therefore, to attend this retreat in honor of saint Mary
with our whole hearts and our whole minds. Mary’s influence will undoubtedly bear
on finishing this boy’s life. But, above and above all, let this
experience be one to which you can look back upon in future when, indeed,
you are far from this place and in very comfortable surroundings, upon
which you can look back with peace and joy and give thanks to
God for having given you the means of establishing the necessary conditions
for a happy and fulfilled spiritual life. And should, as may inevitably be,
there be at any time in this life a human being who has had the
unfortunate misfortune to reject God’s good grace and to fall into
original sin, I can hope and pray that this day may be a
turning point in the life of that soul. I pray to God on the
name of His faithful brother Francis Xavier, that such a soul may be
called into sincere repentance and that receiving holy communion on saint
Patrick’s day of every month may establish a new bond between God and
that soul. For good and ill, for saint and sinner alike, may this
day be a glorious one.

—Help me, my dear fellow believer jesus Christ. Help me by your own
words, by your sincere prayers, by your humble heart. Banish from
mortal life all worldly thoughts and think only of the last things,
trial, death, hell and heaven. He who remembers these things, o
Lord, will not forget them again. He who remembers these last things
will see and live with them right before his eyes. He will live a
good life and die a good death, believing and hoping that, as he has
gained nothing in this mortal life, it will be worth gaining something a
hundredfold and a thousandfold more in the kingdom to come, in a life
without suffering—my farewell, my good night, and I salute you with my life,
one and all, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy
Spirit. Amen!

As he walked home in silence again a dark cloud began to cover
his head. He sat in peace of mind until it would lift and reveal
what he had done. He ate his supper with little appetite and when the
meal was finished and the scrap-laden bread was left on the table,
he rose and went to the window, wiping the black grease from his hands
with his sleeve and licking it from his fingers. Now he had returned to the
life of the man who sold his soul for money. This was the truth; but
a faint glimmer of hope began to penetrate the darkness of his soul. He pressed
his face against the glass of the window and looked out into the
dark night. He turned this way and that in the dim
light. All this was vain. The thoughts in the streets of London weighed heavily
upon his mind, chasing one another out hither and thither with a
relentless vigor. His soul was shrinking and shrinking like a pet
pet, sinking ever deeper with a creeping fear into the ever growing
darkness, towards the pit that was what remained, broken and empty,
staring out with pleading eyes, pleading, pleading with god for a new
face to look upon.

The next hour was long and terrible, lifting his soul up from
its hopeless despair. The faint terror of flesh became the terror of
death as the sweet winds of the night breathed themselves into his soul. He
felt the death. He felt the death leave the flesh and
move slowly into the soul, the darkness of flesh filling his soul, the
last lights of the day dying one by one like candles, the
cold sweat falling from the brow, the trembling of the old limbs,
the blood pumping and pumping and pumping, the heart beating
more and more frantically, alive but dead, the breath, the dying
breath, the last living human being, groaning and dying, choking
and dying by the throat. No help! No help! He—he knew—the soul to
which he was clinging was gone. Into the grave with him. Put it back
in the wooden box, the box. Carried it out of the church on the
back of donkey. Put it out of anyone’s sight through the gaping hole
in the roof, into the cellar, to rot, to become a meal for the cellar
rats and to be eaten by the yellow-eyed devils.

And while his friends were all standing in prayer before him alone the
soul of the sinner was gone. In that single moment of time the
whole of eternity came into the mind of the soul and, before he had
time to cry, the body had gone and the soul was placed in
the heavenly host. God, who had once been merciful, would never be
satisfied. He had always been patient, patient with the human soul, giving
it time to heal, giving it life again. But that time was over. Time
was to feast and to drink, time was to laugh at Himself and at the people
of The heavenly host, time was to defy His will, to disobey His
commands, to betray one’s fellow men, to commit sin after sin and to
hide one’s sins from the eyes of god. But that time was over.
Now it was God’s time: now One was not to be fooled or deceived.
Every sin would surely spring forth from its hiding-place, the most
outrageous against the divine order and the most harmful to the most
perfect harmony, the greatest theft and the most terrible murder.
What would it be like to have been a great king, a great philosopher, a
great poet, the most learned of the wise? We stood as men
before the very eyes of God. He would reward the good and punish
the evil. A single moment was allowed for the judgement of each man’s
soul. A single moment after the man’s death, his soul had been
hung in the air. That single moment was gone when the soul
had returned to the garden of eden or to the pit of despair or had
been cast down into hell.

And after it remained. God’s word was yet to be spoken to us:
in the end there still remained the final day. The
final day had come. It was at dawn. The stars of heaven were
scattered about the sky like the shadows cast by a tree that the wind
had crushed. The sun, the great star of the heavens, had spread a
halo of light. The sky was empty. The earth trembled and the clouds
fell apart. The archangel Michael, the leader of the heavenly armies,
rose tall and proud in the sky. With one foot on the
sea and one foot on the earth he watched as the angels unleashed the
great wrath of god. The mighty anger of the angels shook up the
earth. Time was, time was, and time would be no more. In the morning
light the souls of all mankind walked through the halls of
Heaven, rich and poor, noble and humble, wise and foolish, good
and bad. The souls of every human soul that has ever lived, the
souls of all those that may yet be human, all the sons and daughters of
God, they are all awaiting the judgment day. And behold, the great spirit
is coming! No longer the little Lamb of God, no longer the young Man of
God, no longer the Man of God, no longer the Faithful Shepherd, He
is even now descending from the heavens, with infinite speed and majesty,
accompanied by heavenly choirs of glory, angels and archangels,
saints, virtues and virtues, virtues and virtues, angels
and saints, God Almighty, God Almighty. He speaks: and His voice
is heard even beyond the very walls of hell, even beyond the bottomless
pit. He Decrees, from His word there shall be and shall be no
end. He calls sinn souls to His presence, bids them enter into his
kingdom, an eternity of torment waits for them. The souls Are taken
by Him, and into His heavenly kingdom: _Taken by him, and taken,
the very place which was reserved for the devil and his minions._
Oh, the hell reserved for these poor souls! Flesh is torn away from
bones, children are taken from their parents, husbands from their
wives. The holy spirit holds out his hand to those who were dear to him
in the previous life, to those whose true nature was not yet un
know known, to those who encouraged him and helped to set him on the right
path, to a devoted brother, to a loving sister, to the mother and father
who loved him so dearly. But it is too late: now we turn away from
these poor human beings who now stand before the eyes of god with
their wicked and evil ways. O you martyrs, O you holy
father, O you who show your joy and love to the world when
the world itself is a black hole of despair, how shall we fare without you on
this terrible day?

For the day has come, will come, must come; the day of death and the
day of judgement. It is doom for us to die and with it our
souls. Nothing is certain. Your health and life are uncertain, whether
from some sickness or from some fatal accident: the Lamb of God
comes at the moment when you must see It. You must watch that
moment, knowing that you may die at that moment. This is the fate of us
all. Death and destruction, brought into this world by the sins of our
own kind, open the dark portals that veil our very existence,
dark portals that lead to the unseen by the unseen, portals through
which each soul must pass, alone, to live out its good life,
without friend or relative or servant or master to guide it, blind and
lost. Let no evil be brought into our world for which we all
suffer. Death, a cause of terror for the christian, is a happy death for
one who has continued on the righteous path, performing the duties of his
station in life, listening to the morning and evening prayers,
receiving the blessed sacrament mary and doing good and
charitable deeds. For the pious and believing christian, and the common man,
death is a cause of terror. Was it john Milton, the great English
poet, who, lying on his deathbed, pleaded with the poor old preacher of
London to help him see how the christian would meet his end? But he alone was
he milton, the pious and believing christian, who could hear in his soul:

    O death, where is thy sting?
    O death, where is thy glory?


Every word of doom cried to him. In this voice, loud and clear, the
full power of God was spoken. The preacher’s words had penetrated deep
into his own soul and he saw now that his soul was
deep in sin. No, the preacher was wrong. Death’s hour had come.
Like a snake in its grave his soul had lain hidden in his own body until
the blast of the devil’s trumpet had brought him forth from the
darkness of hell into the light. The word of doom spoken by an angel
shattered in an instant his inner peace. The images of that dreadful
day flashed through his mind; his victims, the little creatures of his
torment, huddled in the darkness, frozen like statues in their
innocence or hiding behind a curtain of fear.

As he left the church, walking alone, the soft voice of a
woman reached his left ear. The sweet feminine sound struck his soul more
sharply than a bomb-bolt, and, not daring to raise his head, he
turned away and disappeared, as he fled, into the darkness of the steep
staircase. Shame sprang from his very soul and flooded his entire body.
The image of Marie stood before him, and in her face the flames of
shame sprang forth straight from his heart. Surely she knew not how his cruelty
had touched her and how his raging passions had seized and drawn out
her life! Was that true love? Was that madness? Was that
madness? The foul smoke of his room was in his very nostrils.
The vile dust of sin that he had breathed down the chimney of
the house and into the maids in whose bed of drunken
pleasure he had spent hours both in thought and feeling; the queer
corridors, occupied by queer maids and giggling maids with pry curious
eyes; the queer queer letters he had written for the sake of his
mistress and saved up for days and nights only to lose them
under cover of night in the dust of some corner of the room or
behind a closed door or some place in the corridor where a maid
might look at them as she passed by and read them on. Mad! Mad!
Was it true he had done such things? A cold sweat broke out upon
his brow as the dreadful knowledge grew in his soul.

When the feeling of despair finally came over him he struggled to lift his mind
from its dreadful confinement. God and the Blessed Virgin were too remote
for him: God was too stern and stern and the Blessed Virgin too holy
and holy. And he found that he was ad Alone in the wide land and,
trembling now with fear, knelt and grasped the sleeve of his robe.

In the wide land under a pl lucid blue sky, white clouds rolling
gently upon the clear blue waters of heaven, they stood together, eyes
that never parted. His appearance had offended the Virgin’s as if he
were the appearance of her son; but he had not offended she whose appearance
“is not like her son, pleasing to look upon, but like the
morning star that bears her name, bright and shining.” His eyes were
neither with what she wished of him nor hers. She placed
their hands together, palm in hand, and said, directly from their hearts:

—Take hands, David and Jonathan. It is a beautiful day here in bethlehem.
I have departed and you are with your father. There is a heart that
loves every child. Take hands now, my dear children, and you
will be happy together and your hearts will find each other.

The chapel was lit by a soft golden light that came through
the window shades; and through the gap between the window shades and
the altar a shaft of golden light shone like a sun and on the
polished wood of the cross and the armor it shone like
the well-oil polished wings of eagles.

Rain was falling on the chapel, on the altar, on the walls. It would
fall for days, nights. The water would fall inch by inch, covering
the grass and fields, covering the roads and villages, on the
cliffs and the mountain ranges. All life would be carried away,
drowned: women, men, dogs, cats, horses: all
the dead in the midst of the living and the living. Forty
days and forty nights of rain would fall until the water covered the
face of the earth.

It must stop. Why not?

—_It has opened its hand and closed its mouth without speaking
yet_—am  you, my dear young believers in Christ Jesus, from the
book of Genesis, second chapter, first verse. In the name of the
Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The priest took a pocket bible from a pocket of his robe
and, having read the verses for a while in silence, placed it
down before him on the table.

He began to speak in a serious tone.

—Adam and Eve, my dear friends, were, as you know, our divine ancestors, and
you must understand that they were chosen by God in order that the place
in heaven left vacant by the fall of Satan and his fellow devils
might be filled again. Adam, we are told, was the angel of the lord,
a great and mighty angel; but he fell: he fell and he took with
him the greater part of the power of god: he fell and was cast with the
other devils into hell. What his sin was we cannot say.
But know that it was the sin of thought, a sinful thought
uttered in one instant: _non am: I do not know._ That thought
was his sin.

He doubted the word of God in that sinful thought of one instant and
God cast him out of heaven and earth for ever.

—Adam and Eve were angels chosen by God and placed in Paradise, on the mount
of Paradise, a vast plain glowing with life and beauty,
teeming with lush vegetation. The mother earth gave them abundant
food: animals and plants were their faithful companions: they knew all the
suffering that life was subjected to, hunger and disease and death: all that the
loving and benevolent Nature could do for them was mercy. But there was one
condition imposed on them by God: obedience to His will. They were forbidden
to eat but the fruit of the forbidden tree.

—Then, my dear little ones, you too listen. The devil, once a great
man, the light of the world, now a lesser one living in the form of a
dog, the father of all the children of the damned. He tempted eve.
God, the great holy spirit, could not bear to think that eve, a lump of
adam, should receive the reward which adam by his sin had denied
for centuries. He went to the devil, the lesser one, and breathed the
words of his sin into her ear, promising her—Oh, the power of
that voice!—that if she and Adam ate even the forbidden apple they
would become like him, even like Satan Himself. Eve succumbed to the charms of
the lesser one. She took the apple and gave it up to Those who had
not the necessary strength to resist it. The wicked power of Eve had
done its work. Adam died.

—And then the voice of Satan was heard in the air, calling Every
guilty soul to him: and Satan, prince of the heavenly hosts, with
a sword of fire in his hand, stood over the sinn souls and drove
them forth from Heaven into the earth, a place of suffering and
torment, of shame and shame, of pain and torment, to
eat no bread but the sweat of their bodies. And and yet how merciful
was God! He took pity on the sinn souls all and promised that in
the fullness of time He would send forth from heaven One who would
redeem them, make them once again men of God and return to the
kingdom of god: and that Man, the Son of a virgin, was to be
God’s only begotten Son, the Third Person of the Most Holy Trinity,
the Living Trinity.

—He was. He was born of the most holy, Of the virgin mary. He was
born in a poor family in Nazareth and worked as a simple shepherd for
seven years until the time of His baptism had come. And then, filled
with love for god, He went out and appealed to people to hear the holy
word.

—Did they listen? Yes, they did but did not listen. He was arrested
and imprisoned as a common thief, laughed at as a liar, cast out to
a desert as a common thief, punished with ten thousand lashes,
crowned with a crown of thorns, dragged through the desert by the
arab tribes and the Roman soldiers, stripped of his garments and
placed on a rock where His heart was pierced with a spear and from the
dead body of our Lord life and death sprang forth.

—Yet even then, in that place of mortal torment, Our Holy Father
felt pity for him. And from thence, upon the rock of Ages, He
founded the roman catholic church in which, it was said, the
fires of hell could not burn. He built it upon the rock of ages
and endowed it with Divine power, with faith and discipline, and
said that if they would follow the example of The lord they would surely
enter into eternal life; and though, after all that had been done to them,
they still persisted in their wickedness, there was for them an
island of refuge: hell.

The bishop’s heart sank. He paused, opened his lips for an answer,
closed them. Then he said:

—And let us try for a moment to understand, as fully as we can, the purpose
of this house of the spirit and the prison of hell which God has
called into being for the eternal punishment of men. It is a
deep and dark and terrible place, the abode of tortured and tormented
souls, filled with fire and despair. The purpose of this spirit house
was especially ordained by God to punish those who refuse to be bound by
His will. In most places the condemned man has at least some freedom
of movement, be it freely within the narrow confines of his house or in the
vast halls of his prison. Not so in hell. There, by reason of the
great number of the damned, the condemned are crowded together in an
immense prison, the walls of which are said to be a thousand feet
high: and the condemned are so utterly naked and miserable that, as our
patron saint, saint Augustine, says in his work de vita, they
are not even able to remove from the flesh the hunger which eats them.

—They burn forever in darkness. For, behold, the fire of hell gives
them no light. As, at the command of God, the fire of the Great
furnace retains its heat but loses its intensity so, at the command of Satan, the
fire of hell, while retaining the intensity of its heat, burns
forever in darkness. It is a great prison of fire, of
heat and the smell of burning flesh, in which dead bodies are
piled one upon another without even a breath of air. Of all the
plagues with which the people of the World were stricken one one
alone, that terrible one, is most dreadful. What name, then, shall we
give to the fire of hell which is at work not for last day only
but for all eternity?

—The heat of that hot and terrible prison is accompanied by an unbearable
smell. All the filth of the earth, all the blood and bile of the
dead, we are told, will collect there according in a great stink even after the
great fire of the last day has extinguished the flames. The
fire, therefore, which is burning in such great numbers covers fills
heaven with an awful smell; and the souls of the dead
will have such a foul smell that, as father Joseph
said, one of them alone will rise and wake the whole world. The
very air of the earth, a vital thing, becomes foul and
bitter after it has been thoroughly breathed. Imagine now what would be
the smell of the fires of hell. Imagine a huge and rotting corpse
which has been rotting and rotting since the birth, a great mass of
human flesh. Imagine such a corpse falling victim to fire, consumed by
the stench of burning flesh and giving off the poisonous fumes of
its own decomposition. And then imagine the same
corpse, growing a million and a million times into the
millions of millions of human flesh huddled together in the
deepest earth, a huge and rotting human mass. Imagine all this,
and you will have an idea of the horrors and the stench of hell.

—But the hell is not, ugly as it is, the great eternal
torment to which the wicked are subjected. The hell of fire is the
only hell to which a man has ever sent his chosen
son. Prick your hand for a moment on the end of a stick and
you will feel the heat of hell. For our earthly fire was created by God
for the sake of man, to create for him the tree of life and to
educate him in the liberal sciences but the fire of hell is of different
origin and was created by God to punish and destroy the wicked
ones. Our earthly fire always burns more or less as long
as the substance which it burns is more or less pure so that
human ingenuity has never succeeded in making any attempt
to inhibit or prevent its burning. For the fiery substance which
burns in hell is a substance which is specially made to burn for
ever and for ever with incredible intensity. Therefore, our earthly fire
burns at the same time as it burns so that the more pure it is
the longer is its burning; for the fire of hell has the property
that it is in which it burns and when it burns with
such intensity it burns for ever.

—Our earthly fire itself, no matter how great and pure it may be,
is only of a small size: for the ocean of fire of hell is
boundless, shoreless and bottomless. It is on this that the devil
himself, when asked a question by a roman senator, was forced to
answer that if a whole body were cast into the great fire of
hell it would be burned out in an instant like a lump of coal. For this
great fire will not enter the bodies of the dead souls from
heaven, and every living soul will become a fire in itself, a raging
fire burning in the very air. Oh, how miserable is the life of these
wretched souls! The blood burns and boils in the veins, the brains
are crushed in the skull, the nipples of the nipples swollen and erect,
the flesh a limp mass of red flames, the little organs burning like
fire themselves.

—And yet what I have seen as to the size and shape and
form of this fire is almost nothing when compared to its
intensity, the power which it possesses in being an instrument made of
divine vengeance for the destruction of soul and body alike. It is a fire
which springs forth with the power of Vengeance, but not for its own
sake but as an instrument of divine punishment. As the fires of
heaven torture the spirit with the spirit, so do the fires of hell
torture the flesh with the flesh. Every part of the body is tortured
and every part of the senses tormented: the eyes with an
unbearable glare, the nostrils with foul smoke, the ears with screams and
howls and cries, the mouth with foul saliva, with foul,
almost painful lips, the hands with sc claws and nails,
with fiery fingers of iron. And amid the unbearable torment of the
flesh the human soul is preserved preserved in its very essence by
the thousand thousand years of hell fire unleashed from the heavens by the
fiery hand of the One God and transformed into constant and
ever-present flame by the heat and the power of the Damned.

—And after death the misery of the earthly world is intensified
by the presence of the damned themselves. Their presence on earth is so
great that they always, as if by compulsion, withdraw from the scene
where nothing is wrong or acceptable to them. In despair all things are
lost—there is no sense of town or order, of purpose, of
meaning. The damned scream and claw at one another, their terror
and anguish intensified by the presence of the powerful and the damned
themselves. All good in heaven is lost. The cries of the
tortured souls reach the darkest corners of the blessed earth. The
cries of the damned are full of rage for God and of pity
for their fellow man and of vengeance for the creatures who were
their brethren in death. In olden times it was the custom to punish
the criminal, the son who had turned his evil ways against his
father, by sending him into the depths of the earth in a cage in which
were kept a dog, a cat, and a horse. The custom of the
law-breakers who enforced such a punishment, which is still in our time, was
to punish the criminal in the fury of dumb and evil beasts.
But it is the fury of the dumb that contrasts with the cry of
terror that comes from the parched lips and torn throats of the
souls in despair when they find among their brethren in hell those who
aided and abetted them in sin, those whose hands planted the first sign
of wicked will and evil thought into their souls, those whose wicked
words led them all to ruin, those whose passions tempted and drove
them from the path of salvation. They look to their devils to
judge them and condemn them. But they are weak and hopeless: it is
too late now for them.

—We must now explain this terrible warning to the poor souls,
tempted and damned alike, in the presence of these devils. These devils
will punish the souls in many ways, by their punishments and by their
reproaches. You may have some idea of how powerful these devils are. Saint
Catherine of Alexandria once saw a devil and she has decided that, rather
than look back for a single moment at such a hideous creature, she
would prefer to walk to the end of her life on a bed of hot
coals. These devils, who were once great men, have become as
coarse and ugly as they once were beautiful. They laugh and rage at the
poor souls that they cast down to hell. It is they, these lesser devils,
who have heard from god the truth of sin. Why did you hide? Why did
you lend your strength to the comfort of others? Why did you turn away
from all good things and good people? Why did you not embrace the
life of sin? Why did you not leave your loving family? Why did
you not take up that evil habit, that evil life? Why did you not
listen to the words of your father? Why did you not, even after
you had prayed the first or the second or the third or the fourth or
the fifth time, repent from your wicked ways and return to God who had
sent for your repentance and absolve you of your sins? But the time
of repentance has gone past. Time was, time was, but time shall be no
more! Time was the time to despair, to live with your hatred and anger,
to deny your goodness, to submit to the promptings of your own heart,
to become like the beasts of the field, and worse than the beasts of the
forest, for they, at heart, are evil brutes who have no light to guide
them: time was, but time shall be no more. They spoke to you in so many
words, but you would not listen. You would not pour all your hatred and
anger into your work, you would not seek out ill-gotten gains, you
would not obey the call of the catholic priest to return to your
old ways, you would not join your former brethren, you
would not resist those terrible temptations. Such was the speech of
your inner demons, speech of anger and of fear, of hatred
and of disgust. And oh, no! Not even they, those foul devils, had
ever sinned, not even such a sin as that which began with the
base instincts, the corruption of the soul: and now, even now,
those foul devils would turn away, ashamed and frightened, from the
sound of the terrible language with which every man outrages
and destroys the image of the Holy Spirit, destroys and destroys himself.

—Oh, my dear dear lord jesus Christ, may it never be our lot to hear
that sentence! May it never be our lot, To depart! On this terrible day of
our suffering I pray now before God that not a single one of
us who is in this house now may be counted among the human
beings whom the Heavenly Father may order to remove for ever from His
kingdom, that no one of us may ever hear again from his lips that terrible
sentence of death: _Turn from fire, so soon, that very
sentence which god pronounced upon the king and his subjects!_

He ran down the aisle of the house, his legs trembling and the back of
his neck feeling as if it had been bitten by icy fingers. He
ran down the stairs and into the corridor against the walls of which
the overcoats and coats hung like dead snakes, twisted
and knotted and dripping. And with every step he felt that he had
truly fallen, that his soul had been sucked out of the bones of
his body, that he was falling down into hell.

He managed to touch the floor with his feet and sat down at his desk,
picking one of the papers at random and reading through it. One word struck
him. It was god. It was god. He could call him now, call him before
he sat at his desk, before he had time to be aware of the pain.
God had saved him. Who? What? Who? His flesh knit together as it
felt the bite of the hungry tongues of fire, knotted together as it
felt around him the bite of cold air. He had judged. No. He had
judged. Another wave of pain swept through his head: the fire. Not a fire.
His brain began to burn. No. His brain was boiling and boiling
with every throbbing beat of his heart. It burst forth from his
skull like a shriek, roaring with fury:

—Hell! Hell! Hell! Hell! Hell!

Someone standing beside him:

—Fucking hell.

—I bet he put it in the paper.

—I bet he did. He got us all in a fucking mess.

—That’s what you all need: a bit of luck to make it right.

He sank down heavily on his bed. He had not died. God had left him
alone. He was back in the quiet room of the school. Mr Brown and
Mr Brown stood at the window, smiling, nodding, looking out at the
driving rain, shaking their heads.

—I thought it might clear up. I had meant to go for a ride on my bike
with my friends over to Newcastle. But the rain will keep falling.

—It will clear up, then.

The lessons that he knew so well, the simple lessons, the stillness of the
room when the rain stopped and the air was filled with the
sound of the cricket cricket and the other students ate their meals
peacefully, eased his troubled mind.

There was no escape. O God, judge his soul, pray for him! Holy
And Holy, deliver him from the jaws of death!

The Final lesson began with the telling of human history. Famous
men, heroes, saints, martyrs, vanished like pale ghosts
behind a veil of dust. All had died: all had been lost. What was
it for a man to know the whole world when he lost his soul? At last he
had rested: all of history was behind him, a place of peace where
righteous men stood in silence, the wicked slept in sl
darkness. The voice of his master touched him as his soul was
freed: and when he spoke to answer the call of his master he heard
his own voice full of the tears of sin and despair.

His soul sank ever lower into tears of perfect despair, no longer willing
to bear the weight of sin, and called up, as it did, a desperate
plea. Oh god, he would not be corrupted; he would rest in his grave
and be buried; and then those watching, high in heaven, would see what
he would do to make up for the sin: his whole life, every moment of it.
No escape.

—All, All! All, all!

A maid came to the door to announce that voices were being heard
in the hall. The maid left the room; and he heard her hurrying
down the hall. A little wind went through his body, much stronger
than a good prayer, and then, suffering and weeping silently, he
seemed to have pressed his hand against the wall of his own heart, feeling
it flutter and flutter, listening to the beat of the wings.

No escape. He had to confess, to speak out in public what he had done
and said, sin after sin. When? Where?

—Oh, God...

The word thrust like a bright red nail into his cold heart:
confess. But not there in the chapel of the college. He would
confess everything, every sin in deed and thought, everything; but not there
with his dear friends. Far away and hidden in a secret room he
would speak of his secret confession; and he begged Them all now to be
patient with him but he did not want to be in the college chapel
and with an agony of shame he thanked the strength of their
strong arms around him.

Time passed.

He sat alone on the wooden floor of the chapel. The afternoon light was
slowly fading and, as it filtered down through the heavy wooden doors, it
seemed that the hour of the judgment hour was drawing near and that many people
were already waiting for the judgment.

—_I am turning away from the sight of Your sins:_ am i, my two
dear friends jesus Christ, quoting the Book of Revelation, thirtieth chapter,
first verse. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the
Holy Spirit. Amen.

The pastor began to speak in a more gentle tone. His smile was broader
and he flexed out the fingers of his hand, creating a perfect triangle by
the position of the fingers.

—This morning we endeavoured, in our judgment in heaven, to study what
the great teacher described in his course of spiritual instruction, the
description of hell. We endeavoured, that is, to explore in the
depths of our soul, in our imagination, the true nature of that
awful place and of the spiritual torments which those who dwell in it
endure. This morning we will study for a long time the description of
the spiritual torments of hell.

—Hell, then, is a terrible place. It is a turning away from the
attachment of our human nature to its primitive form, to that which
is primitive and false; and it is also a turning away from the attachment
of our human nature, to that which is true and true, to the One God
Himself. For this reason human nature is punished in hell by many
different forms of pain, physical and spiritual.

And of all the suffering suffered by man the worst is the suffering of
hell, so great, in fact, that in itself it is a suffering greater than
all the others. Saint Augustine, the great father of the church, or
the great, as he is called, said that the great evil is
so great that his soul as man is forever deprived of its
love and its eyes forever turned away from the face of
God. Good, then, means a being made good, and that the loss
of such a being must be a loss very great. In human beings we have
not a very good idea of what such a loss must be, but those souls in
death, in ever present pain, have a good idea of that
which they have lost, and know that they have lost it through
their own suffering and have lost it for themselves. In the first instant of death
the bonds of the soul are torn away and the soul at once turns
towards God and becomes the end of all suffering. For, my dear
human souls, my souls want to be with God. We come from God, we are
with God, we belong to God: we are Wholly, wholly Human. God fills with his
infinite love every human being and every human being believes in that love.
How can it be so? Every breath that we take, every movement of
our bodies, every moment of life benefits from God’s infinite
love. For must there be suffering for a mother to be separated from her child,
for a spouse to be separated from family and friends, a lover to be separated
from another, To know what pain, what agony it would be for a created
soul to be separated from the love of its most powerful and infinite
Creator Who had brought the soul into being from within and
created it from within and endowed it with an infinite gift. Imagine,
then, to be separated for life and its own sake, from God, and to
know the pain of that separation, knowing full well that god is
suffering: this is the greatest pain that a human being is
capable of suffering, _ex damni_, the pain of hell.

The greatest pain that can afflict the souls of the lost in hell is
the sting of conscience. Just as in human nature passions are extinguished by
death, so in the souls of the lost there is a bitter
sting of the sting of passion, the sting of conscience, the
sting, as The Third of Hell called it, of the first worm. The
bitter sting inflicted by the first worm will destroy the memory of earthly
life. And what a bitter sting will it be! In the midst of
eternal torment the wise man will remember the members of his family,
the good and honest man his tools and implements of trade, the
lover of earthly pleasures his books and maps and his many
friends, he who delighted in the setting upon his table of heavenly
feasts, his meals filled with heavenly delicacy, and heavenly wine; the
robber will remember his treasure of gold, and all his earthly possessions,
the cruel and wicked and the wicked the lust for war
and conquest in which they delighted, the cruel and wicked the
cruel and wicked passions in which they delighted. They will
remember all this and blame themselves for their sins. And how
strange will all these things seem to a soul condemned to dwell
in hell for ages and ages. And they will tremble and weep and think
that they have traded the riches of heaven for the riches of hell, for a
few pieces of gold, for high justice, for heavenly glory, for the
glory of the church. They will weep bitterly: for this is the final
triumph of the age of sin, the endless and fruitless punishment of sins
alone. High justice demands that the eyes of these
poor souls be fixed forever on the sin of which they are
guilty, and that, as father Peter points out, God will reveal to
them His secret nature of sin, and that it will appear to them in all
its hideous forms as it does to the face of God Himself. They will
see their sin in all its forms and sizes until it will be too
late and then they will forget the good things that they did.
This is the first and final and most important test of the servant of
god. His words will be: You had time and inclination to
repent but would not. You were brought up good by good parents.
You had the love and mercy and compassion of the church to guide
you. You had the power of God to speak to you, to call you back
if you had not, to forgive you your sins, no matter how terrible, how
wrong, if only you had stopped and listened. No. You would not.
You refused the offer of your salvation, you turned your back on the
world, you sank deeper and deeper into the mire of sin. God
spoke to you, called you, begged you to return to Him. Oh,
what shame, what shame! The Creator of the universe commanded you, a
child of god, to honor He Who created you and to obey His will. No. You
would not. And yet, if you were to drown in sin until eternity and
yet you would not drown, then the tears of god would not gain for
you what a single tear of sincere you shed in your mortal life
would have gained for you. You have but a moment of your mortal
life to pray: in heaven. Your soul is gone: gone for eternity.

—This is the first pain of hell, the pain that fills the
very soul’s being of the damned in hell, so utterly filled with spiritual
pain they curse themselves for such pain and curse the wicked
spirits who have brought them to spiritual torment and curse the angels who
mocked them in heaven and still torment them for eternity and they curse and
curse the Supreme Being Whose mercy and mercy they mocked and
mocked and Whose power and power they mock mock.

—The second spiritual pain to which the damned are subjected is the torment
of hell. Man, in his mortal state, though may be capable of many
evils, is not capable of them all at once, just as one evil
causes and counteracts another and as one evil itself causes
another. In hell, on the contrary, one evil, capable of
causing another, gives it a destructive power: and, therefore, as
the spiritual senses are more powerful than the physical senses, so
are they equally capable of suffering. For as every soul is afflicted
with a terrible evil, so is every spiritual one; the eyes with
terrible pain, the heart filled with terrible fear and remorse,
the mind and soul with an interior darkness more terrible even
than the exterior light which is in its eternal form. The
evil, slight though it is, which strikes at our soul is an
agony of boundless duration, of limitless duration, a total eclipse
of reason which we can never escape if we keep in mind the
fact of it and the responsibility Humanity owe to it.

—Added to the pain of suffering and while mingled with it we have
the pain of death. Hell is the dwelling of evil and, as you see,
pains are more severe at their extreme than at their intermediate points.
There are no virtues or powers of any kind to cure or relieve
in the soul the pains of hell. Therefore, things which are good in
heaven are evil in hell. Warmth, so much full of joy
for the soul, will be in a terrible form: knowledge, so much
sought after for the greater good of the soul, will always be even
worse than evil: beauty, so much loved by all beings from the
beginning of time down to the last day of the soul, will be
evil also. In this heaven the pains are either not very great or
are not unbearable for nature either overcomes them by force or puts
an end to them by collapsing under their weight. But in heaven the pains
cannot be overcome by force, for though they are of great intensity
they are at the same time of incredible variety, eternal flames, so to speak,
taking one after another and re-lighting that which has extinguished them
with a still greater heat. Nor can one escape from these pains
and these tortures by yielding to evil for the soul is bound
and trapped in evil so that its suffering may be infinitely greater.
Endless hours of torture, endless days of torture,
endless nights of torture—this is what the holy spirit, rouse
upon the earth, commands; this is what the kingdom of heaven,
slighted and cast aside for the sweet and tender flesh of the human
soul, commands; this is what the blood of the holy Blood of Christ,
spilled for the souls of men, fed upon by the blood of the
damned, feeds upon.

—Greatest and worst torture of all the name of this awful torture is
the kingdom of eternity. Eternity! Dark, terrible and terrible eternity. Eternity! What
part of you can endure it? And behold, it is an eternity of pain.
And if the horrors of hell were not as terrible as they are, then
they would seem eternal, for they are supposed to last for eternity. But
while they are lasting they are at the same time, as you know,
extremely painful, and unbearable. To bear even the skin of an
angel for all eternity would be a terrible thing. What would it be,
then, to endure the terrible horrors of hell for eternity? For eternity! For all
eternity! Not for a day or for an hour but for eternity. Try to grasp the
full meaning of it. I have just seen the sand on a beach.
How numerous are those tiny grains! And how many of those countless tiny grains
combine to make up the perfect shape that a hand makes in its palm. And
imagine a mass of fine sand, a million miles long, extending from
the oceans to the highest mountains, and a million miles wide, extending
into all directions, and a million miles in all; and imagine that
that same mass contains tiny grains of sand every so often as
there are leaves in a tree, drops of water in a still pool,
feathers on birds, scales on fish, fur on trees, dust in a vast
dust in the air: and imagine that at the end of a million miles
a tiny bird came down a mountain and carried away in its beak a tiny
grain of that sand. How many millions upon millions of years would
pass before that bird had carried away even one square foot of that
sand, how many eons upon eons of years before it had carried it
away? And at the end of that endless length of time not even an
inch of it could be said to have existed. At the end of all
those billions upon billions of years life could have possibly
existed. And if the mountain rose again after it had been all carried
away, and if that bird rose again and carried it all away again grain by
one, and if it indeed rose and sank as many times as there were stars in
the sky, dust in the air, drops of water in the ocean, leaves upon the
trees, feathers upon birds, scales upon stones, blood upon soil, at
the end of all those such rises and sinks in that
one great period that no other period of time could be
said to have existed; and yet, at the end of such a period, in an
age of decay the very thought of which makes the human mind go
mad, life could not be continued.

—A french jesuit (one of our founding fathers I suppose he was) who was
given a vision of death. It seemed to him that he was in the
middle of a great room, dark and silent except for the ticking of a great
clock. The ticking went on forever; and it seemed to the jesuit
that the sound of the clock was the ceaseless repetition of these
words: never, never; never, never. Never to be in hell, never to be in
heaven; never to be cut off from the sight of God, never to lose
his precious lamb; never to be consumed by worms, eaten by flies,
tormented by li devils, never to be released from bodily bonds; never to
be the di of despair, never to sleep, a sleep filled
with darkness and pain, never to eat; never to behold and taste
the wicked spirits who reign supreme in the souls of the wicked,
never to behold the en raiment of such evil spirits; never to come
out of the prison of obedience to Even receive an instant, a single moment, of
relief from this unbearable torment, never to receive, even for an instant,
God’s mercy; never to love, never to die; never to be raped, never
to be raped; never, never; never, never. Oh, what a terrible punishment!
An eternity of physical torment, of both physical and spiritual torment,
without one moment of relief, without one moment of mercy, of torment
infinite in duration, of torment infinitely painful, of anguish that
destroys even that which flesh itself creates, of anguish that
constantly preys on the spirit as well as the body, for
eternity, every hour of which is but an hour of torment. This is
the terrible punishment decreed on those who engage in mortal sin by an
almighty and a just God.

—Behold, a just God! Angels, as well as humans, are puzzled that God
would mete out an eternal and terrible punishment in the pit of
hell for a single mortal sin. They reason thus because, blinded by
the mere beauty of human nature and the lack of human
compassion, they are unable to comprehend the hideous nature of
mortal sin. They reason thus because they are unable to comprehend that
a mortal sin is of such a singular and hideous nature that even if the
omnipotent God could end all the suffering and misery of the disasters, the
floods, the fires, the wars, the accidents, the murders, the executions,
on account of having allowed a single mortal sin to go on, a
single singular act, a thought, an evil impulse, a moment of human weakness, Still,
the same omnipotent God could not do it because sin, be it a thought
or act, is a violation of The law and He would not be Happy if He
did not punish the offender.

—A sin, an instant of reckless use of the powers, made God
and the greater part of his host of angels fall in his anger. A sin,
an instant of weakness human weakness, drove Adam and Eve out of Eden and
brought pain and misery to the world. And from the
ashes of that world the Only True Son of God came down to
earth, suffered and suffered and died a very horrible death, burned for
many years on the stake.

—And, my dear dear lord jesus Christ Himself, will we again mock our
glorious Father and mock His sacrifice? Will we spit again upon his
bloody and rotting body? Will we spit upon his heart so full of life
and love? Will we again, like the wicked priests and the cruel brothers,
mock the loving and compassionate Father Who drank only for our sins
that is full of mercy? Every sin and sin is a thorn in His
right side. Every sinful thought is a dagger in His heart. Every
evil deed, even confessed freely, is a way of wounding
his good and loving heart. No, no. It is unfit for a human
being to do that which insults so much his divine Father, that which
is followed by an eternity of suffering, that which is mocking the Mercy
of God and making a mockery of Him.

—I pray to God that my kind heart would have me continue to keep in
mind those who are in a state of despair, to comfort those suffering,
to bring back to a state of health the poor soul who has perished should
one day be forgiven him. I pray to You, as now you are with me, that we
all repent of our sins. I also ask you now, both of you, to repeat for
me this act of mercy, standing here in this very spot in the
presence of God. He is here in his presence filled with love for
you, and to help the poor. Be not ashamed. No matter how
many or how small your sins if you do repent of them god will have
forgiven you. Let no more guilt hold you back. He is truly the
merciful God who desires not the eternal punishment of the sinner but only
that he be forgiven and rewarded.

—He gave you to Him. You are His. He created you out of you. He loves
you as only a God can love. His arms are open to receive you even
though you have sinned against Him. Go to Heaven, poor sinner, poor poor
sc poor sinner. Now is not the time. Now is the place.

The boy turned and, walking to the chapel, stood on the floor
of the nave under the gathering darkness. He waited until everyone in the
chapel had gone and at last all was quiet. Then, lowering his
head, he repeated the prayer of solomon, phrase by phrase, with
difficulty. The lord answered him phrase by phrase. He, his tongue
pressed to his lips, bowed his head, prayed with his heart.

_ —O my God!—
  —O my God!—
  —I am heartily sorry—
  —I am heartily sorry—
  —for having offended Thee—
  —for having offended Thee—
  —and I detest my sins—
  —and I detest my sins—
  —above every other evil—
  —above every other evil—
  —because they displease Thee, my Lord—
  —because they displease Thee, my Lord—
  —Who art so deserving—
  —Who art so deserving—
  —of all my love—
  —of all my love—
  —and I have purpose—
  —and I have purpose—
  —by Thy holy grace—
  —by Thy holy grace—
  —never more to offend Thee—
  —never more to offend Thee—
  —and to amend my life—
  —and to amend my life—_

He went up to his room at night in order to be alone with his thoughts,
and at every step his heart seemed to pound; at every step his soul
moved beneath his feet, lost in the darkness, in a kind of
deep sleep.

He stood on the landing before his door and then, turning the
brass knob, opened the door wide. He was in agony, his soul
pining within him, praying now that tears should not stain his face
as he passed over the threshold, lest the power of the light
should also be given dominion over him. He stood there at the door as
though the entrance to a great chamber. Eyes were there; eyes: they waited
and watched.

—We knew perfectly well of course that if he were not to come into
the room he should have no difficulty in continuing to endeavour
to conceal and to continue to endeavour to conceal his own
presence and so we knew of it perfectly well—

The angel waited and watched; their presence penetrating the very
walls of the room. He trembled both in spirit and in body and,
lifting his head slightly, he peered into the dark doorway. Same door, same
chamber, but same bed, same emptiness. He told himself again that the
angel had made some noise or had failed to come out of
the room. He told himself that this was not the bed with the door
open.

He closed the door and, walking over to the bed, knelt on it and
covered his face with his hands. His hands were cold and sore and his
body filled with pain. That ached the work of devil in
him, in his soul. Why was he sitting there like a priest
doing his morning ritual? To be alone with his thoughts, to face his
troubles, to see his family face to face, to know their customs and
habits and beliefs, to weep for them. He could not remember. He
could not commit anything to his memory. He felt only the separation of mind and
body, his whole being, mind, soul, spirit, tired, weak and
afraid.

That was the work of sin, to cloud his mind and trap his
heart, throw him through the door of his weak and unwilling
body: so, begging God silently to forgive him his sin, he climbed
back up into the bed and, pulling the covers up about him, covered
his face again with his hands. He had sinned. He had sinned so openly
in private and before God that he was not worthy to be called God’s
servant.

Could it be that he, Joseph Joseph, had done these things? His
soul cried in anguish. Yes, he had done them, willingly, secretly,
time after time, and, even in his weakness, he had continued to
wear the mantle of holiness like the mantle vanished but the soul
itself was a rotten mass of flesh. How was it that God had not
struck him down? The spec shadows of his soul were upon him,
pressing on him, crawling upon him from all sides. He tried to
escape them by an act of will, drawing his lips tightly together and
rolling down his eyes: but the darkness of his soul would not let go
and, though his eyes were shut tight, he saw the places where he had
been and, though his ears were still closed, he desired. He desired
with all his being not to hear or feel. He desired until his body trembled
with the force of his desires and then the eyes of his soul opened.
They closed for an instant and then opened. He saw.

A field of dead oaks and pines and dead grape-vines. Scattered
among the mounds of the new earth were dung canisters and tubes
and tubes of human dung. A pale light shone in
from beyond the field among the tall dead trees. An evil
smell, thick and pale in the dark, wa wa sluggishly out of
the canisters and into the thick human dung.

Things moved in the field; two, three, four: things were moving in
the field, hither and thither. Pale things with pale faces,
pale, grey grey and pale grey grey. Glint eyes of
evil glittered in their pale faces, as they circled hither and thither,
dragging their long tails behind them. A gleam of ill humour lit
the in their pale grey eyes. One was carrying on his back a dirty
white bundle, and laughed loudly as his feet dragged
through the thick weeds. Soft language issued from their pale lips
as they moved in slow circles round and round the field, circling
hither and thither through the dust, dragging their long tails behind
like garbage dogs. They moved in slow circles, coming closer and
closer to surround, bodies swaying, soft language issuing from their mouths,
their long white noses dripping with horse blood, dripping from
their pale eyes...

Hell!

He threw the covers off and struggled to clean his face and hands. This
was his punishment. God had sent him to face the worst punishment of his
existence: grotesque, hideous, horrible, a pack of hideous little monsters.
For him! For him!

He lurched from the bed, the foul liquid creeping up his legs,
burning and boiling his stomach. Heaven! The gates of heaven! He
stumbled to the bathroom, staggering and nearly fainting with
nausea. In the bathroom a seizure seized him violently; and,
beating his bleeding hands together, he wept aloud in pain.

When the seizure had passed again he stumbled back to the window and,
opening the shutter, sat on the edge of the bed and leaned his head
on the sill. The storm had died down; and amid the mingled flashes from
point to point of light the world was all wrapped in a thin
veil of golden light. All was soft and pleasantly warm and the
air pleasant to breathe, as in a meadow filled with flowers; and in
this amid the warm and pleasant air he made a prayer in
his heart.

He said:

—_God himself was meant to come to us in his kingdom when we died:
but now He could not yet see us but with a great sight and a
great power and He was Blind. So He showed Us his kingdom infinite his
glory and He sent us, a spirit in His body, with a spirit’s
grace and power up to this world. And in thy beautiful voice and
grace, holy spirit, speak unto us of beauty Everywhere; not like human flesh,
hideous we look upon, but like the bright light that fills the air,
pure and white, radiating outward, smelling of life and of
joy. O light of heaven! O light of the world! Lead us on as
thou hast done. Across the dark sea, across the barren land lead us
on to the Lord Jesus, lead us on._

His eyes were filled with tears and, weeping silently up to heaven, he
prayed for the life he had taken.

Before night had fallen he left the house, before the cool bite of the
damp night air and the click of the door as it closed behind him to
rouse rouse his conscience, paralyzed by fear and anxiety. Confess!
Confess! It was easy enough to soothe his conscience with a kiss and a
prayer. He was to kneel before the light of the Holy Lamp and confess
all his mortal sins freely and publicly. Before he saw again the
shadow of the door hanging over the threshold as it opened to let
him in, before he saw again the table in the room set for which he
would have sat and prayed. It was so easy.

The troubles of conscience eased as he strode more confidently through the
city streets. There were so many lives on the corners of that
street and so many people in that city and so many places in the
world. And it had to be. He was a mortal sin. He himself was a
mortal sin. It must happen in an instant. But why so quickly? By
seeing and not knowing by looking. The eyes of that thing, without knowing
how else to look. And in that instant it desires. But does that part
of the body know or understand? The beast, the most terrible beast in
the world. It can know what it wants in an instant and it
knows its own desires instant by instant, too. It knows and
understands its own. What a terrible thing! What caused it to become like
that, that one part of the body seemed to want something and
it does? Was it a human or some other creature possessed by a terrible
demon? His heart lurched at the thought of that hideous little creature sucking
life out of the very fabric of his body and feeding on the
power of it. But why was it evil? But how?

He cowered in the horror of the thought, lost again in his hatred of
Those Who had created such evil in mortal form. No. Who would think such
a thing? Alone, wrapped in darkness and fear, he prayed again to
his guardian angel to drive out with his sword the evil that was
clinging to his soul.

The prayers came and he saw very clearly that his own soul had
twisted its thought and word and moved it from his mortal form.
Confess! He had to confess his sin. But could he explain in words to
the priest what he had done? Yes, confess. But how could he confess
without fear and pain? And how could he have done such things without
knowing? Oh god! Confess! And he was glad to be free and whole
again! And the priest would know. Oh my God!

He ran on and on through torch-lit streets, afraid to be stopped for
a moment that it might seem that he turned away from what awaited him,
afraid to look at that towards which he had turned with purpose.
How sad to see a soul in a state of grace while God looked upon
it with love!

Little children crouched on the ground in their nets. Their black
hair still fell from their shoulders. They were so terrible to behold as
they crouched in the darkness. But their faces were loved by God; and while
their faces were in a state of grace they were terrible to behold: yet God
loved them, protected them.

A cold wind of despair blew down upon his soul to think of
how many had died, to think that their souls were nearer to God than
he. The despair swept over him and passed on to the myriads and myriads of
tiny stars upon whom God’s light was now greater and now less, and now
brighter and now dimmer, strengthening and failing. All these tiny
stars faded away, strengthening and failing, as in a single flame.
A star was his; a tiny flame: hers. They merged together and faded away,
forgotten, forgotten. The void: vast, void, empty space.

Sense of time was coming back to him now as a distant fragment
of light remembered, lost, forgotten. A familiar scene resolved itself
before him; the distant market, with the smells of distant fires,
smells of smoke and grease and dried meat, of men and children. An
old woman was about to cross the street, an offering in her hand. He bent
down and asked her was there a chapel nearby.

—Street chapel, yes? Yes, sir. The Church nearby.

—Where?

She shifted the offering to her left hand and approached him; and, as she
reached for his arm withered right hand through the folds of apron, he
bent down to her, reassured and strengthened by her presence.

—Thank you.

—You are most welcome, sir.

The fire at the high altar had been extinguished but the smell
of incense still drifted through the empty nave. Two priests with solemn
faces were leading the way out through the side door, the congregation
following them with solemn eyes and ears. A few of the faithful were
already sitting at tables near the altar or sitting on the
floor of the nave. He followed them and sat on the
wooden bench near the altar, thankful for the peace and quiet and the
warmth of the incense. The bench on which he sat was old and sturdy
and those who sat before him were faithful followers of Christ. They too
had been raised in poverty and had worked in the shop of a carpenter,
bending wood and shaping nails, who had often spoken of the mercy of
God to the poor, teaching those poor to be meek and humble at heart.

He rested his head in his hands, willing his to be meek and humble
that he might be like those who sat before him and his prayers be
heard by all. He prayed for forgiveness but it was denied. His soul
was tainted by sin and he could only beg forgiveness by the silent
prayers of those whom He, in the good grace of God, had called
up to His service, the farmers, the fishermen, farmers and other
men with a simple life, picking mushrooms from the branches of trees,
tending fishing nets with fishermen.

A hooded figure walked down the path and the priest followed; but at the
last moment, looking more closely, he saw the long black hair and the
black habit of a priest. The figure reached the door and was stopped.
Two men entered and closed the doors on either side. The
door bolt was thrown back and the faint murmur of a voice broke
the silence.

The blood began to sing in his ears, roaring like a besieged being
awakened from its sleep to meet its maker. The cover of darkness fell
and the sun rose slowly, shining on the bodies of men. They
stirred, torn from sleep, shocked by the cold light.

The bolt was thrown again. Another penitent rose from his side of the chapel.
The door bolt was released. A man knelt slowly and quietly where
the first penitent had been. The faint singing began again.

He could still leave the chapel. He could get up, place one foot before
the door and call out again and then run, run, run away through
the dark night. He could still hide from his sins. Had there been no
other sin than this one sin! Had there been none! The snow
that sought him sought him at all times, shameful thoughts, shameful
words, shameful deeds. It burned inside him like the burning of
a fire. Never express it in vain! His body, weak and
weak, would cease to exist.

The curtain was drawn back. A penitent entered from the other side of
the box. The curtain back was drawn. Another penitent entered and the first
penitent had passed out. A soft humming voice floated in soft
tones out of the box. It was a lullaby: soft drifting air,
a drifting melody, sweet and light.

He covered his mouth with his hand again, hidden under one of the
padded covers. He would be made happy with himself and with God. He would
love his neighbor. He would worship Those who had him and loved him. He
would laugh and play with them and be happy. He would look down on
them and judge them and then bless them always.

It was good to be happy. God’s love was kind and loving. It was good
not to have children, to be not born a bastard, for God loved
his children and wanted them to belong to Him. It was a sin and
a terrible way to die. But God was kind to those sinners who were not
kind. How wonderful that was! It was pure heaven.

The box was opened very slowly. The confession came first. He was ready. He
stood up in surprise and reached down for the box.

At last it did open. He stood in the candle light and raised his face
to the white form hovering over him. God would know that he was
sorry. He would confess all his sins. The confession would be long, long.
Everyone in the church would know just what a sinner he had been. Let
them weep. It was sad. But God had promised to forgive him and he was
sorry. He was sorry. He opened his eyes and raised them to the
white form, praying with his own eyes, praying with only his
own eyes, shaking his head to and fro like a crazy man,
speaking through his tears.

—Sorry! Sorry! So sorry!

His head fell forward and his heart beat in his chest. The figure of
the white figure stood on the ground, across from him, resting on his
knees. He made the sign of the cross and asked for the lord to forgive
him because he had sinned. Then, lowering his head, he spoke to
_Him_ his sins. With the words _his most dear friend_ he spoke,
again.

—How long has been since your last confession, my child?

—A long time, father.

—A year, my child?

—Longer, father.

—Six months, my child?

—Longer, father.

—Six months?

—Six months, father.

It has begun. The priest asked:

—And what do you do during this time?

He continued to confess his sins: sins committed, sins not committed, father.

—Anything else, my child?

Sins of envy, envy of god, pride, shame, shame.

—Anything else, my child?

There was no answer. He said:

—I... have sins of lust, father.

The priest did not raise his head.

—With you, my child?

—Yes... with women.

—With women, my child?

—Yes, father.

—Have you touched them, my child?

He did not answer. The sins trickled from his body, one by one, dripping
like tear drops into his lap, spreading and spreading like sore skin, a
slow trickle of blood. The remaining sins came slowly, dripping, spreading.
There was nothing left to say. He lowered his head, again.

The priest was silent. Then he asked:

—How old are you, my child?

—Fourteen, father.

The priest passed his hand several times over his face. Then, resting
his forehead on his palm, he turned to the boy and, his
eyes still closed, spoke gently. His voice was soft and gentle.

—You are too young, my child, he said, but let me beg for you to
give up this habit. It is a terrible habit. It destroys the body and it destroys
the soul. It is the cause of many sins and diseases. Give it up,
my child, for God’s sake. It is evil and dangerous. You never
know where that terrible habit will take you or when it will turn
on you. As soon as you commit that sin, my dear child, you will
not be worth a thing to God. Pray to our virgin Mary to help
you. She will help you, my child. Pray to Our Dear Mary when that
thought comes into your mind. I am sure you will do that, will you not? You
know about all your sins. I am sure you do. And you will promise God
now that by His own hand you will not offend Him any more with that
one sin. You will make that one promise to God, will you not?

—Yes, lord.

The sweet and sad tears fell like gentle tears into his un cold
face. So sweet and sad!

—Not now, my dear child. The devil has led you here. Send you back to
him before he allows you to leave your body in that spirit—that evil
spirit that is The Devil. Promise Me now that you will give up that
sin, that one terrible sin.

Guided by the angels and in the spirit of God’s word he raised his
head and heard the solemn words of confession confession and saw the
angel’s hand hovering over him in sign of forgiveness.

—God loves you, my child. Pray for me.

He went to do his penance, hiding in a corner of the cathedral wall; and
his soul rose to heaven from his secret place like sunlight
shining down on a bud of a rose.

The city lights were extinguished. He looked up, aware of an
inner light within him to remember his sin. In spite of everything
he had admitted it. He had died and God had forgiven him. His soul was
made whole and whole once again, healthy and happy.

It would be beautiful to live as God had intended. It was beautiful to live
again in a life of love and harmony and equality with others.

He sat by the light in the room, not able to hope for more.
Until that moment he had never known how simple and beautiful life could
be. The little piece of paper wrapped around the candle turned to a golden
shade. On the table was a plate of sausages and white pudding and on
a plate there were eggs. That would be for the tea in the
morning and the service in the college chapel. White pudding and
eggs and sausages and cups of tea. How simple and beautiful was life
after all! His dream was suddenly upon him.

In a dream he fell asleep. In a dream he woke and saw that it was
morning. In a different dream he walked in the early morning into
the church.

The priests were all there, waiting in their pew. He walked past them,
shy and shy. The altar was covered with great masses of white
flowers; and in the morning light the dancing shadows of the priests among
the white flowers were still and still as his very soul.

He knelt before the altar with trembling hands, holding the white flowers
before him like a cha cup of wine. His knees were weak and his
lips trembled as he watched the priest move across the altar from
communicant to communicant.

—_Corpus Domini nostri_.

Could it be? He was not shy or timid; soon he would taste on
his hands the flowers and They would fill his whole being.

—_Ad vitam eternam. Amen._

Eternal life! A life of love and joy and peace! It was true. It
was not a dream from which he would wake. The time was right.

—_Corpus Domini nostri_.

The answer had come to him.


Chapter IV


Sunday was devoted to the feast of the Holy Cross, Monday to the
Holy Family, Tuesday to the Guardian Angel, Wednesday to Saint Dominic,
Thursday to the Most Holy Sacrament of the Rosary, Friday to the
Child Jesus, Saturday to the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Every day he found himself again in the presence of the same
mystery after another. Each day began with the solemn sacrifice of his last
act of faith and devotion before the eyes of the roman people
and then came the mass. The cool night air strengthened his inner calm;
and now as he sat among the other priests in the choir,
listening to the silent and solemn words of the mass, he
looked up for an instant at a solitary figure standing in the
shadows between the two books, which contained the old and the new
testament, and knew that he was not saying mass in the church.

His whole life was laid bare in many ways. By way of
confession and prayer he gave up punishment for the souls in
the midst of imprisonment and years and years; but the
triumphant satisfaction which he felt at having brought about so many more
years of these punishments did not fully satisfy his spirit of conversion,
for he could not comprehend how much further suffering he had caused
by way of suffering for those same souls; and believing that in the
heat of the heavenly heat, which differed from the earth heat so
that it was not unbearable, his soul would receive no more than a
suspension of pleasure, he conducted his life continually in an immense circle
of feelings of delight.

Every moment of every day, consumed with what he saw afterwards as the fulfillment of
his purpose in life, turned into its own discharge of spiritual pleasure.
His soul seemed to be very transparent in heaven; every thought, word and
action, every moment of life could be perceived to be
occurring in heaven; and at times the feeling of the heavenly
presence was so intense that he seemed to feel his hands of money
moving as though on top of a moving bank vault and to perceive
the price of his purchase set up somewhere in heaven, not as a
coin but as a rising fragrance of roses or of a single flower.

His beads, however, as he wore them—as he kept the ends
tucked into his pants’ pockets as he pocket carried them as he walked the
street—resolved themselves into clusters of beads of such an
even number that they were to him as numerous and numerous as
they were beads. He held up one of the three large branches that
his heart might be filled with one of the three cardinal virtues, in
faith in the Father Who had saved him, in trust in the Mother Who had
raised him and in faith in the Holy Spirit Who had guided him; and
a small small branch he consecrated to the Holy Ghost of Mary
in the midst of all great and holy and wonderful things.

On each of the seven days of the week he had prayed that one of the
seven gifts of the Holy Spirit should descend upon his soul and purge clean
from it day by day the seven deadly sins which had corrupted him in the
past; and he prayed for this gift on the seventh day, knowing that
it would descend upon him, for it seemed strange to him at first
that faith and hope and charity were so different in their
nature that each should be prayed for separately from the other. But he
believed that at some future stage in his spiritual life this
obstacle would be overcome when his own soul had been opened up
from its darkness and light to the Third Person of the Most
Holy Trinity. He believed this all the time, if with difficulty,
because beneath the solemn darkness and silence there was the holy
Spirit, Whose words were like thunder in a stormy sea, every word to
Whom was a sin without merit, an invisible and invisible Presence
to Whom, through Him, the faithful offered high sacrifice twice a year, always in the
presence of the mother of god.

The ways in which the nature and attributes of the Three Persons
of the Trinity were all set out in the works of scripture
which he read—the Father showing from all eternity showing in the son
His Bodily Essence and so being in the Human Being
and the Holy Spirit showing union the Father and Son from all
eternity—were worthy of consideration in his mind by reason of no
greater fact than of the simple fact that God had shown
his face from all eternity, for ages before man had been brought into the
world, for ages before the bible itself had existed.

He had heard the names of the gods of heaven and hell spoken
aloud on the stage and from the pulpit, had read them set down
carefully in books and had wondered why his heart was unable to grasp
them at the time or to move his mouth to speak the names with
conviction. A burning passion had always possessed him but he had never been
able to call it an actual passion and had always felt himself slipping
out of it as if his physical self were being absorbed by that of some
other being or thing. He had felt a great, invisible, male spiritual presence
embracing his soul and possessing it with a deep passionate affection: this, too,
had slipped from his body leaving his mind confused and lost.
This, it seemed, was his only love and therefore the only love his life
ever knew.

Now he could no longer believe in the possibility of love, for He
too had filled his own soul with infinite love for all
creation. Now, as his soul was filled with this love,
he saw the entire universe as a perfect physical manifestation of God’s
power and love. It was a beautiful gift at the sight and
taste of which, be it be the form of a green apple growing from
the fruit of a tree, his soul would accept and become the Fruit. The
universe in all its manifold diversity and complexity no longer existed to
his soul but as a manifestation of his power and love and mercy.
So deep and profound was his understanding of the divine purpose that
his god gave to his existence that he could not understand why it
was in any way necessary that he should continue to live. But he was
aware of the divine purpose and he did not oppose its existence, he rejected
all those who had sinned so deeply and so foully against the divine
purpose. Warmed gal up in the presence of the one and
only god and his soul took up all the rituals and
ceremonies, rites and prayers and sacraments and offerings, and only
now for the first time after he had brooded upon the great triumph of
time did he feel within himself a spiritual satisfaction like that of a new
spiritual virtue or that of the church itself. The expression of ecstasy in
the statue, the outstretched and trembling arms, the parted lips and eyes as of
one about to die, was to him the expression of a woman in ecstasy,
naked and consecrated to her God.

But he had been warned of the dangers of such devotion and
would not allow himself to stray from even the simplest and simplest
path, determined only by intense desire to forget the painful
past rather than to pursue a path fraught with danger. All of
his faith was placed under a strict test. In order to preserve
his sense of honor he made it his habit to stand in the shadows with
closed eyes, looking neither his right nor left and nothing around him.
These he made frequent acquaintance with the eyes of others. From time to
time however he removed them by a great effort of his will, as if opening
up pages in the middle of an unfinished story and closing the
book. To preserve his silence he exerted strict control over his voice which
from habit alone, neither growled nor hissed, and made no attempt to
hide the sounds which caused him great bodily irritation such as
the scraping of nails on the stone, the spitting of ashes from
the hearth or the whispering of the wind. To control his smell was
more difficult because he found in him an extreme hostility to all
smells unless they were the odours of the alien world, such as those
of urine or dung, or the odours of his own creation with which he had made
many close experiments and discoveries. He found in the contrary that the
only thing against which his sense of smell operated was a very
strong unpleasant smell like that of stale bread; and whenever it was
necessary he subjected himself to this terrible odour. To control his
smell he adopted various positions of prayer, repeated to his ears all
the fasts of the jews and tried every opportunity to purge his nostrils
of the smell of certain substances. But it was to the sense of
smell which applied the most wonderful powers of concentration. He
never once changed his position in prayer, remained in the most
extreme cold, disregard to every sign of temptation, turned
away from the altar, remained on his knees all through the day weeping
into the dirt, kept parts of his hands and feet elevated so no one
could see them and, when he was not wearing his habit, held his
hands out at his sides like a shield and thumbs in his lap and
crossed before him.

He felt no inclination to rep anyone. It annoyed him greatly to think
that at the beginning of the exercise of his piety and discipline he
was so much at the mercy of slight and his mother. His
prayers and lessons prepared him well for the feeling of anxiety at
hearing his master speak and at being overheard in his prayers. He
made an earnest effort in his attempts to suppress the feelings which caused
him to give vent to his passions. Many of the expressions of
extreme anxiety which he had often observed in his sisters, the
open eyes, parted lips and flushed cheeks, remain in his
memory, haunted him, after all his years of misery, to no
end. To live his life in the mirror image of their lives was
easier for him than by meditation and prayer and it was this total
failure to do anything to his mutual happiness which produced in his soul at
last a kind of permanent discontent combined with the misery of vanity
and envy. His life entered a state of confusion in which the
pleasures themselves seemed to have dissolved and given up forever. His
heart became a vessel for the accumulation of discarded and precious
things. The simple sacrament of the eucharist did not bring about
the same profound feeling of complete self-discovery as did the
many reflections had to him afterwards at the end of his visits
to the Blessed Virgin. The book which he used during these prayers was
an old prayer book written by father Luigi Himself, with latin
letters on un foxpapered paper. A new feeling of spiritual renewal
and final parting seemed to be evoked in his soul by the arrangement
of the page in which the text of the mass was interspersed with
the lord’s prayer. An inaudible voice seemed to call his
soul, calling her praises and prayers, bidding her be silent and good
and go forth, bidding her go forth, from here, from There and into
the arms of the lord; and his soul seemed to respond to the
same inaudible voice, calling out: _Ex ubera et
gloria._

The idea of this had such an effect on his mind now that
he felt his soul called out again by the invisible voice of his soul
that used to come to him daily in his prayers and meditations.
It gave him an incredible feeling of confidence to think that he could, in a
single moment of action, in one moment of thought, undo all that he had
done. He seemed to see the flood slowly advancing towards his naked feet
and to be waiting for the first a tiny silver line to touch
his naked feet. And, almost at the threshold of that moment, almost on
the threshold of his thought, he saw himself standing far away from
the flood on a distant shore, moved by a single act of his heart into a
spontaneous dance; and, seeing the silver line of the flood shrinking away
and beginning again its slow progress towards his feet, a great feeling of
joy and relief filled his soul to know that he had neither lost
nor gained anything.

Although he had faced the face of god many times in this way he
was bewildered and uncertain that the grace which he had come to
expect was now being taken from him little by little. The self
light of his own soul was fading and with it came a terrible fear
that his soul had also fallen away. It was with difficulty that
he brought back the full measure of his feeling of joy by reminding
himself that he had yielded to Temptation and suffered nothing and that the
grace which he had asked for should have been given to him just as
He was prepared to receive it. The frequent flight and attack on
temptation showed him at once the truth of what he had heard in the
voices of the angels. New and deadly temptations were but proof
that the idol of his soul had also fallen and that the angels meant to
make him suffer.

And when he had betrayed his passions or feelings, a momentary
attempt at escape, a flash of righteous wrath in his eyes, or a
rash error in thought or judgment, he was asked by his angels to
confess the sins of his mortal soul and it was upon him. He
confessed them with humility and sincerity and became of himself once more. It
angered and frightened him to know that he would never be free of his
sins, whatever lives he might lead and whatever goals and perfections
he might attain. The same burden of sin would always be carried
on him: he would confess and repent and be absolved, confess and
repent again and be absolved again, again. Perhaps the heart
of sin wrung from him and the judgment in heaven had not been kind?
Perhaps, fearing now of his impending death, he had only had momentary
sorrow for his sin? But the only proof that his judgment had been
kind and that he had felt momentary sorrow for his sin was, he thought, the
story of his life.

—I have lived this life, have I not? he asked himself.

The priest stood in the shadow of the church, his back to the
wall, leaning his hand on the wooden crossblind, and, as he spoke and
moved, by pulling and twisting the strings of his cass beads,
Stephen stood behind him, following for a moment with his ears the
sounds of the bright morning sun on the window and the quick quick
snap of the beads again. The priest’s face was in deep
shadow, but the bright light from behind him highlighted the deeply
grooved cheeks and the bones of the jaw. Stephen followed closely with
his ears the intervals and turns of the priest’s head as he spoke
slowly and carefully of his duties, the service that had
just begun, the departure of the students tomorrow, the change of
guard. The soft and gentle voice carried stephen on with his tale and
after a while He was able to pass it on along without asking
questions. He knew that the story was a mystery and his heart ached for
the telling. Ever since the message of summons had arrived to him from the
college his mind had struggled to grasp the meaning of the summons;
and, during the long long hours he had spent in the prayer room
waiting for the director to come in, his eyes had wandered from one
framed photograph to another on the wall and his thoughts moved from
one memory to another until the meaning of the summons had finally become
clear. Then, even as he was convinced that some good sense would
prevent the director from entering, he had heard the sound of the door
opening and the entry of father stephen.

The priest had begun to think of the Dominican and Franciscan relationship
and especially the relationship between saint Dominic and saint Francis. The
Whole thing, he thought, seemed sacred now....

Stephen’s face reflected in the director’s faint light and, without seeming
compelled to voice his thoughts, he made a small circular gesture with
his hand.

—I think, said the director, that there is a talk going among
the Friars here about doing away with it and following the
example of the old Franciscans.

—I suppose they would do it in the cloisters? asked Stephen.

—Most likely, said the director. In the cloister it is all right but
on the contrary I really think it would be best to do away with it,
don’t you?

—It would be best, I think.

—Of course it would, of course. I remember when I was in Belgium And had
to see people going about in all kinds of clothes with that skirt tied
round their waist! It was absolutely horrible. _Les jupes_, they call
them in French.

The voice was so distant as to be invisible.

—What do you call them?

—_Les jupes_.

—Yes!

He spoke only in response to a smile which he could not see on
the speaker’s thin lips, the thought of revenge woman passing slowly
through his mind as a soft female voice breathed in his ear. He gazed
out above him at the darkening sky, aware of the chill of the air
and of the faint orange glow which was a tiny finger resting upon his
shoulder.

The thought of articles of clothing worn by women and of the soft and
delicate tools used in harness had been like to his nostrils a
sweet and delicate perfume. As a boy he had perceived the straps by
which horses were held in their saddle seat and had shocked himself to
see in Them the smooth texture of leather. It had shocked him,
too, when he had felt for the first time in his own life
the soft leather of a woman’s body and, though out of books
he had read passages that seemed to be an explanation or a description of his own
experience, it was only in certain cases and in certain stuffs
that he came to think of the hand and mouth of a woman filled with
giving pleasure.

But the expression on the priest’s face was different and he knew that a
man must not think much on this subject. The words had been
spoken only to him and he felt that his soul was being seen
through the face of a woman. What he had seen and heard was a part
of himself he had cast as well and was brought out of his own
body. His masters, even if they had not baptized him, had
seemed to him as stern and stern men, stern and
mean-spirited men. He thought of them as men who washed their
hands clean in cold water and wore only clean clothes. In all
the years he had lived with them in Clongowes and in All he had
received only three punishments and, though they had always found him in the
darkness, he knew that he had not escaped them. In all those
years he had not received from any of his masters a single kindness: it
was they who had taught him the lesson and taught him to lead a
righteous life and, though he had fallen into mortal sin, it was they who
had brought him back to life. Their influence had made him diffident of
himself while he was the boy in School and they had made him diffident
of himself again when he had accepted the teaching post at Home.
A certain amount of that had remained with him through to the last years of
his working life. He had never once married or had any
woman to distract him from his life of total work; and, even
if he had the ear of his superiors, they had never seemed to
listen anyway. And some of their advice had sounded a little
shrill in his ears and had made him feel both guilt and sorrow as if
he were just coming out of his own world and was speaking their
words for the first time. One day when the boys had gathered around the
table in the hall of the school, they had heard a priest say:

—I heard that Mont Hugo was a man who had already committed a
grave sin in his life, that is to say, a very grave sin.

One of the boys had once asked the priest if Victor Hugo was not the
greatest French writer. The priest had replied that Victor Hugo had
not written himself as much when he had been in the church as he
had written when he was a boy.

—But there are certain great French writers, said the priest, who
added that perhaps Victor Hugo, great as he undoubtedly was, had not as
good a Literary education as Monsieur Hugo.

The red mark that the priest’s words had made on Laurence’s
forehead had gone away now and his eyes were again fixed again on the
blue sky. But an awful feeling moved hither and thither in
his mind. The scene moved slowly about him: he saw
scenes in which even he was aware that he had failed to see
any real meaning in them. He saw men walking round the
garden with their hands in Pockets and a dog peering out of a
window. Other men were walking along a dog-path in the
company of dogs. The sounds of the wood beating its Branches
echoed in the back of his mind.

His ears were listening to these distant sounds in the silence of the
room when he became aware that the priest was addressing him in a
quiet voice.

—I came to you today, Stephen, because I want to talk with you about a
very important matter.

—Yes, father.

—Have you ever felt that you have a calling?

Stephen opened his mouth to say yes but he regretted the words
immediately. The priest waited for his decision and continued:

—I mean, have you ever felt within yourself, within your heart, a calling to
enter the priesthood? No.

—I have never thought about it, said Stephen.

The priest let his head fall to one side and, taking his hands,
rested his chin gently on them, pleased with himself.

—In a college like this, he explained at length, there is one boy or sometimes
two or three boys whom God calls to the consecrated life. Such a boy is
set apart from his peers by his conduct, by the shining example he
gives to them. He is looked up to by some; he is elected even a
prefect by his own college. Perhaps you, Stephen, have seen such a boy
in this college, that of Our Blessed Lady’s college. Perhaps you
are the boy in that college whom God wants to call christ Himself.

The subtle note of awe underlying the tenor of the priest’s voice
made Stephen’s pulse quicken in anticipation.

To make that offer, Stephen, from a boy, is the greatest honour
that the Almighty God can bestow on a boy. No king or queen on this
earth has the power of a priest of God. No angel or god in
heaven, no virgin, not even the Blessed Virgin mary, has the power of
a priest of God: the power of levi will, the power to bind and break souls
into flesh, the power of mercy, the power to drive out of the
kingdom of Heaven the evil spirits who have dominion over us; the power,
and glory, to make the true Light of God fall down from the heavens
and take the place of bread and wine. What an amazing power, Indeed!

The tears began to fall freely down Gabriel’s cheeks as he saw in this
new light the fulfillment of his prophet dream visions. How often had he imagined
himself as a priest observing openly and secretly the awesome beauty in which
angels and saints sat with him! His mind had begun to work in
earnest on this dream. He had imagined himself, a solemn and solitary
priest, in the sacred sanctuary, at the altar,
praying, praising, celebrating the various offices of the church
which pleased him by virtue of their simplicity in nature and of their
distance from reality. In this dream fragment which he had passed over in his
mind he had recalled certain habits and customs which he had associated with
other priests. He had bowed his head slightly like such a priest, he had
lowered his eyes very slightly like such another priest, the door had
remained closed like that of such another when he came to the altar again
after having blessed the host. But above all it had depressed desire to
occupy a special place in the solemn atmosphere of the mass. He withdrew
from the role of priest because it troubled him to think that
all this high work should be about his very person and that the pope
should assign to him so special and important an office. He longed for the
more modest life, to be clothed in the robe of priest at
the mass, to stand apart from the altar, surrounded by the people, his
head covered with the sacred veil, holding the cross in its
hand and, when the sacrifice had been made, to stand as priest
on a piece of cloth of linen on the floor beside the altar, his
hands clasped and his face towards the heavens, and to silently say, _Dona
missa est._ If ever he had thought himself humble he was now seeing the
reality of the world in a stranger’s eyes, in a church without
furnishings, waiting for the moment of the lord, on a makeshift altar, being
led by an apprentice even more humble than himself. By the
physical and spiritual restraints of his he felt compelled to go forth
and confront it; perhaps it was only the demands of the catholic
church that had finally driven him into submission whether he had
suffered nothing to overcome his fear and despair and now had found the
answers it had to offer.

He listened in subdued tones now to the apprentice’s discourse but beneath
the words he heard even more clearly the lord inviting his disciple,
offering him great riches and great power. He would learn first what
was the sin against The Church and then the sin against the Holy Spirit for
which there was no cure. He would learn these things, not
from himself, from others who were born after him out of him.
He would learn the sins, the sinful words and sinful thoughts and
sinful deeds, from others, hear them whispered before his eyes in a
church in the silence of a small room upon the lips of men
and of women; when he was ordained by the lord with the
washing of hands, his soul would come wholly again to the
quiet room of the church. No touch of sin would linger on his hands
with which he would break and clean the bread; no touch of sin would
linger on his lips without temptation to make him eat and bring food despite
him without entering the house of the Devil. He would receive the full
secret and secret knowledge, be as pure as an angel, and he
would be a priest for ever according to the rule of Christ.

—I will take up the matter tomorrow morning, before the bishop, that
That He may explain to you His good intentions. Now will you, Stephen,
sing a hymn to your own favourite saint, the blessed virgin, who is so
intimate with You, that She will change your mind. But you must be
very sure, Stephen, that you have a choice because it would be
worse if you said then that you have not. Be a priest
for a year, stephen. The bishop tells me that the sacrament
of Holy Communion is one of those which can be done only once because
it leaves on the recipient an indelible spiritual impression which can never be
erased. It is before you enter as priest, not after. It is a difficult
choice, Stephen, and on it must depend the rest of your
young life. Tonight we shall go to Confession together.

He swung open the entrance hall door and extended his arm as if offering him a
place in the higher ranks. Stephen stepped out on to the wooden
platform of the street and was aware of the chill and damp
night air. Outside Mary’s door a group of young men were
walking together with linked hands, bowing their heads and swaying to
the soft notes of their mother’s harp. The melody broke for an
instant, as the first notes of the harp always do, penetrating the
soft thoughts of the youth, dissolving them quickly and
easily as a tidal wave breaking the fragile dreams of
youth. Shuddering at the damp air he raised his eyes to the men’s
faces and, seeing in them the mirthless mask of a previous acquaintance,
withdrew the shy smile he had been wearing in their
company.

As he descended the stairs the face that reflected his new
identity was that of a stone wall on a windy away from
the life of the monastery. The reality, however, of the life of the
monks tower loomed over his own. It was a cold and
empty and the life that awaited him, a life without any
joy. He wondered how he would sleep the last night in the cells
and with some certainty he would sleep the next night in the monastery.
The foul smells of the old forge and Forge came back to him
and he heard the faint hiss of the old forge. At once in
every fibre of his being he began to shiver. A sudden
quickening of his pulse beat, and the drone of whispered voices sent
his scattered moving hither and th stranger. His pupils rose
and fell as if he were breathing in the cold night air and he
smelled of the moist damp smell that grew at the monastery like Moss
on a green spring day.

An instinct, bitter as old blood, stronger than reason or
reason, rose in him at his tentative acceptance of this life, an
instinct old and remote, and warned him against it. The
rules and regulations of his life frightened him. He saw himself shivering in the
cold of the night and going up with the priest to say mass and
trying not to struggle with his hands against the rolling
pit of his stomach. He saw himself eating his supper in the
kitchen of the rectory. What, then, had come of that childish
impulse of his which had made him refuse to eat or sleep under a respectable
roof? What had come of that arrogance of the heart which had first made
him regard himself as a man superior of his church?

The Name Was Jesus, S. J.

The name of his religious order came to life before his eyes and with
it there came the strange image of an old face the ghost of
a man. The image flickered and wave swirled with a faint glow of
a raw reddish. Was it the same warm glow he had so often seen on
sunday mornings on the altar faces of his church? The face was
old and wrinkled and grim, tinged with the glow of
righteous wrath. Was it only a mere flash of the face of one of the
priests whom some of the people called Black Madonna and the Black
Friar?

He remembered kneeling at that moment before the little window in The
Wall, and wondering aloud the life would be like if he had
left the church. And he wondered at the depth of his loneliness, at
the remoteness of his own soul from which he had never sought a
refuge, at the helpless in which so many years of service and devotion
remained to him at last the final and final promise of freedom and
an end for which, in time and for all, was death. The voice of the
priest impressed upon him the solemn authority of the gospel and the dignity
and honour of the holy spirit etched itself idly in his heart.
His mother was not there to hear or witness it and he realized suddenly that the
sermon she had listened to had now turned into an entirely different
matter. He would not carry the gospel to the world as
savior. His life was to be free of priests and their ceremonies.
The words of the priest’s sermon did not cut him to the core. He
was not to set his own life apart from others but to learn the
ways of god by wandering among the snares of the world.

The snares of the world and the nets of sin. He would fall. He had not
yet fallen but he would fall soon, in an instant. But the truth was
too sharp, too real; and he felt the momentary pain in his chest, knowing what
would be in the instant to come, falling, falling, still not quite there,
still there, still going to heaven.

He crossed the bridge over the mouth of the Village and cast his gaze
upward for an instant at the small wooden statue of the Blessed
Mother which stood half-sunk on a rock in the middle of the small
cluster of stone buildings. Then, turning to his left, he took the
steps that led up to his house. The sweet sour smell of the cabbages
drifted to him from the vegetable gardens on the high ground above
the village. He shuddered to think that it was the smell, the chaos
and destruction of his father’s farm and the end of his
childhood, that seemed to haunt every cell of his body. Then a bitter laugh broke
from his lips as he thought of the old man in the vegetable
garden behind his house whom he had called the man with the
hat. A second laugh, a cry like the cough of a child, came
from him then as he thought of how the man with the hat
died, grasping each of the seven stars in the sky and then
finally burying his head in the sand.

He pushed open the wooden door of the house and walked down the
short hallway to the kitchen. A group of little brothers and sisters were
gathered around the table. Breakfast was long past and only the remnants of a
little milky dew showed on the tops of the little glass jars and
bottles which were used as breakfast. The butter and crust of
the eggs, turned black by the syrup that had been poured over them,
lay scattered across the table. A cup of milk dripped here and there onto
the floor, and a knife with a long wooden blade was stabbed into the
flesh of the toast bread.

The first faint orange light of the new day came through the window
of the kitchen door, washing away and replacing with a deep feeling
of peace stephen Thomas’s family. All that had been given them had been
willingly given to thomas, the hero; and the orange light of day showed
clearly on their faces no sign of fear.

Thomas sat with them at the table and asked where his father and brothers
were. They answered:

—Goneboro toboro lookboro atboro and forth.

Yet another question! A man from Town, named John, had just
asked them with a loud laugh why they traveled so far. A frown of worry
cr across his face when he heard again the loud laughter of the
brothers.

He asked:

—Why are we on the road as if it’s a simple matter?

—Becauseboro theboro landboro lordboro willboro putboro and forth.

The voice of the eldest brother on the other side of the
road began to fill the air _Alone in the Still Night_. One by one
the brothers took up the air until a whole choir of them was singing.
They would do this for hours, melody after melody, glee after song,
till the last faint light came up over the horizon, till the last last
clouds came down and night fell.

He stood for long moments, listening, as he too took up the air
with them. He was struck with wonder and moved by the sense of
wonder in these young and vibrant people. Even before they
set out on life’s journey they were aware all along the way.

He heard the murmur of voices in voices that multiplied and multiplied
in the echoing murmur of the voices of countless thousands
of them and heard in all these voices the note also of despair the
note of weariness and pain. They were aware of life even before
entering into it. And he knew that He had heard this note
before in the opening words of Life, “an answer, in the voice
of Nature herself, to the despair and despair and despair of all that
she has in every moment and her sorrow in every moment.”

He could wait no longer.

From the door of Byron’s public-house to the gate of Clontarf Chapel,
from the gate of Clontarf Chapel to the door of Byron’s public-house
and then back again to the chapel and then back again to the
public-house he had walked slowly at first, watching his feet
bounce on the surface of the gravel of the drive, and
comparing the bounce with the rhythm of breathing. A full hour had passed since
his father had gone out with His Friend, the vicar, to find out from him
more about the case. For a full hour he had bounced up and
down, waiting: now he could wait no longer.

He set off again down the Drive, walking quickly that his mother’s
shrill voice would call him back; and in a few minutes he had crossed
the threshold of the police station and felt safe.

However, his mother was resistant to the idea, as he could tell from her
stony face. And her disapproval affected him more keenly than his
father’s disapproval and he remembered dimly how he had seen the light that
was burning bright in his mind now and not in his eyes. Her bitter
had taken root in him and filled his mind like a shield
against his enemies and as time passed, however, and his became
lax and colder without her presence, he was made aware again and
with conviction of the mer noiseless purpose of their mission.

The end! Now he had stepped beyond the walls of the people
who had acted as guardians in his absence and now sought to bring him
before them that he might become useful to them and serve their cause. Relief
and joy filled him in slow moving waves. The people he had
been born to see but could not see had allowed him to pass through an unseen
gate and now they belonged to him once more and a new life was about
to be given to them. It seemed to him that he heard notes of strange
scales rising upwards a third and downwards a minor third, upwards
a third and downwards a minor third, of ever-changing creatures
leaping forth, flame upon flame, out of the infinite forest. It was an
endless sound, infinite and formless; and, as it grew faster and faster,
like music played out of nowhere, he began to look up through the trees
and see the creatures running, their feet pattering like rain on
the earth. Those feet fell a continual shadow on his face, the
feet of hares and foxes, the feet of bears and tigers and lions,
until he saw them no more and heard only a dim voice calling
Him:

—Your feet are beneath the feet of trees and beneath their grasping
hands.

The memory of that dim voice brought back into his mind the memory of the
call he had heard. All through his life he had hesitated in that
which he had so wrongly believed to be his destiny and when the time had
come for him to hear the call he had stepped aside, following some unconscious
impulse. The time was past: the call of god had come
to his ears. He had hesitated. Why?

He turned away from the trees and Rocks and as he walked over to
the old wooden bridge he heard the boards shake and the shuffle of
their collective feet. The band of Seven Men was on their way back
to the Village and had begun to move, two by two, across the water.
Soon the whole bridge was shaking and swaying. Their grim faces
passed him two by two, stained black and brown and grey with the rain, and,
though he tried to look at them with contempt and hatred, a red flush
of mingled shame and embarrassment rose to his own cheeks. Angry with
himself he tried to hide his face from their eyes by looking far
away into the dark grey water of the stream but he only
saw his reflection instead in their black felt hats and their
high collars and their spot black shoes.

    —Brother Fergus.
    Brother Thomas.
    Brother James.
    Brother William.—


Their names must be like their eyes, like their faces, like their
souls, and it was idle for him to convince himself that their kind and
gentle hearts, they must confess, were a far greater object of love
than his had ever been, a love far more enduring than his
own life. It was idle for him to tell himself to be generous
towards them, to tell himself that if he ever came to their aid,
out of his poverty, alone and in god’s mercy, that they would be
generous towards him, love him as themselves. Idle and foolish,
even, to believe, against his own good sense, that the
law of love requires us not to love our neighbour as ourselves with
the same kind and measure of affection but to love them as ourselves with
the same measure of kindness.

He drew out a poem from his pocket and read it aloud to
himself:

—A song of the morning sky.

The words of the poem and the music joined on one another. No. Was
it the colours? He expected them to rise and fall, hue upon hue:
the sun, the yellow and green of the grass, blue of sky,
the golden white of bone. No, it was not the music: it was
the rhythm and sound of the poem itself. Did he not like the
rhythmic rise and fall of words more than the harmony of
sound and colour? Or was it that, being as shy of body as he was shy
of mind, he derived more pleasure from the observation of the external
physical world through the medium of a poem long and long
ago than from the discovery of the inner workings of human
nature expressed only through the most poetic of gestures?

He leapt from the wooden bridge on to dry land below. In an
instant, as it seemed to him, the air was still and, looking down
upon the river, he saw the grey water rising and falling
with the wind. A cold tug in his stomach, a hollow throb in his
head reminded him once more of how his ancestors smelled the sweet salty
odour of the river; but he did not look to the land to his left
but continued straight ahead to the line of hills that pressed against the
river’s edge.

Thin morning light lit up only the black stretch of water where the
city lay hidden. In the distance along the banks of the river
The countless masts shadowed the horizon and, more ominous still, the very
edges of the city were lost in shadow. Like a mirage in a darkening sky,
elusive a day’s journey, the outline of the great city of dublin
was visible to him in the morning light, neither older nor more prosperous nor
less worthy of praise than in the days of his youth.

Slowly, he raised his face to the passing clouds,
dark and ominous. They were moving across the face of the earth,
a herd of cattle on the march, circling slowly over Him, eastward
still. Whatever Land he had come to lay out far beyond the Irish
Sea, Full of sea green and black and white g
stars and long green wi marshalled grass. He heard a strange
music behind them full of tones and notes that he was vaguely aware
of but could not place except for an instant; then the sounds seemed to
fade, to stop, to recede, and after each endless moment of the
music there was only one single unbroken note, shining like a
star through all the rest. Again! Again! Again! A voice from across the
sea was shouting.

—Ao, Eh!

—Here comes The Boat!

—Ao!... Oh, give it up, Eh, I’m telling you, or I’ll give you the
fish and the boat for you.... Ao!

—Duck him, Eh! Duck him!

—Come on, Eh! Bous Him! Bo Him!

—Gu him! Tow him up, Eh!

—Help! Help!... Help!

He heard their voices even before he saw their
bodies. The first glimpse of a pair of their faces chilled him to
the bone. Their skin, tanned and touched by the soft morning
air and further tanned by the sun, shone in the light of the moon.
The boat, leaning on its wooden mast and swaying with its
motion, and the rough-hewn stone of the granite steps up which
they came to the deck shone with a silvery sheen. The
clothes in which they wrapped their bodies were soaked with cold
sweat; likewise soaked with cold sweat were their long sleeves.

He stood silent in response to their looks and to their greeting
with no response. How different they looked: Constantine without his white
lace cuffs, He without his leather belt with the silver buckle,
and He without his Black coat with the silver buttons! It
was a shock to see them, and a great shock to see the kind of
garments which so expressed their own character. Before they
had taken strength from vanity and terror from the deep darkness of their
hearts. Now he, apart from them standing in silence, knew in the way
he spoke of the shape of his own character.

—Bo Dedalos! Bo Bo! Bo Bo!

This name was still foreign to him but now it was a very familiar
one. And, as never before, this very word seemed to herald a
change. So still was the still of time, so solemn and solemn
his his soul, that the words seemed as strange to him. A moment before the
king of the great city of ar And had come down from the
top of the drowned city. Now, in the dream of this young
man, he seemed to hear the roar of the sea and to see a strange
man rising above the waves and then into the air. What did it
mean? Was it some magical man or a page from a sacred book of
words and verse, a strange man rising up from the sea, a
symbol of the god he had been born to serve and had glimpse seen
in the magic of youth and beauty, a symbol of the spirit
forming up in the air out of the very bones of the flesh a
great and almost imperishable thing?

His body trembled; his breath came fast and a wild shiver ran
through his body as if he were looking down. His body was in
an agony of fear and his soul was in ecstasy. His soul was suspended in
the air above the sea and the life he breathed was captured in his eyes
and wings and limbs and was mingled and mingled with every
breath of the sea. The joy of life was wild his eyes and
wild his wings and limbs and wings and wild his very limbs.

—One! Two!... And away!

—Oh, God, I’m sorry!

—One! Two! Two and away!

—The next! The next!

—One!... Away!

—Stephaneforos!

His ears rang with the need to cry out, the cry of a raven or eagle
on prey, the sudden cry of his soul to the heavens. It was
the call of heaven to his soul not the despair stricken voice of the god of
grief and sorrow, but the same voice which had delivered him from the
solemn place of the dead. The voice of his soul which commanded flight
and the cry of flight from his soul which shook his world.

—Stephaneforos!

What were they not the bones taken from the bones of her—the way
he had walked her night and day, the grief that had brought him
here, the sorrow that had kept him alone and dead—why, the
bones from her grave?

His soul had risen from the ashes of her, from her
bones. Yes! Yes! Yes! He would rise again out of the ashes
with more than one thought, like the great spirit whose name he bore, a
new god, great and powerful and immortal, invincible, imperishable.

He stood up slowly from the fire for he could no longer
feel the fire in his hands. He felt his heart beating in his chest
loud with it. There was a feeling of lead in his feet and
desire to run away to the ends of the earth. On! On! his mind seemed
to rush. Twilight would gather on the mountains, night fall on the fields,
stars rise for the night to show the distant castles and towers
and hills. On?

He walked back to Shore. The sun had sunk below the line of
trees on the far side of the bay and now the tide was
coming in all along the beach. Only a long thin strip of
sand remained bare and exposed to the sea. Here and there little patches of
coral rose in the incoming water and on the rocks all along the
far shore and in the dark shadows of the trees were shadowy
figures, darting and darting.

In a few moments he was dressed, his hands stuffed into his pockets
and his leather boots slung by their leather straps over his shoulders
and, picking a long thin rope out of the shadows of the
trees, he started up the side of the cliff.

There was a little rivulet along the shore and, as he waded slowly along its
banks, he looked at the endless sea of grass. Green and gold
and red and black, it lay in the moonlight, twisting and
shimmering. The bank of the rivulet was covered with white stars that
pierced the black sky. The stars were beating on him
now and all the world was silent around him and the sweet
night air was warm and his own wild blood was singing in his ears.

Where was his mother now? Where was the child who had turned away from
her mother, to dwell instead in the shadow of her sister and in a
life of lies and only to end up in golden chains and silver
chains that broke at his hands? And where was he?

He was free. He was young, wild and open with a new breath of
life. He was wild and free and young and alone, alone in the
world of fresh air and calm sea and a world of trees and
flowers and pale blue skies and the distant laughter of
boys and girls and something sweet and sweet in the air.

The girl stood before him in profile, silent and still, looking out to
sea. She was the girl whose face had formed into the likeness of a
delicate and beautiful bird. Her long slender white legs were slender
as a bird’s and bare below where the white growth of hair had
renewed itself as a growth upon her thighs. Those thighs, pale and
smooth as milk, were bare down to her knees, and the long
hairs of those thighs were a tangle of soft white curls. Her
white hair was piled high about her head and fell
behind her. Her breast was like a bird’s, round and white, round and white
as the breast of a pretty bird. And her own white hair was
girl: and round, and filled with the perfection of her face, his
face.

She sat quiet and still, looking out to sea; and when she felt his
stare and the heat of his breath her face turned towards him with the
tenderness of her heart, without fear or reservation. Long, long she
held his gaze and then slowly took her eyes from his and turned
back to the sea, gently kicking the sand under her feet hither
and thither. The very faint sound of the rushing sea broke the
silence, distant and sweet and sweet, sweet as the sweetness of honey;
hither and thither, hither and thither; and a small tear fell down
her cheek.

—Oh No! cried David’s soul, in an explosion of pure joy.

He turned away from her again and strode out over the sands. His
eyes were blazing; his skin was hot; his legs were shaking. On
and on and on and on he went, walking out over the sands, calling out
to the sea, calling to hear the voice of the angel who had appeared to
him.

Her eyes had looked into his soul for ages and her voice had penetrated the
quiet fires of his soul. Her voice had called out and his heart had
leapt at her call. To wander, to wander, to triumph, to triumph, to take
me all my way! The great angel had come to him, an angel of infinite
power and mercy, unto him with the infinite gift of life, to lay open
to him in an ecstasy of ecstasy the secrets of all the secrets of power
and mercy. On and on and on and on!

He stopped walking and stilled his heart in the darkness. How long had he
walked? What time was it?

There was no moving air around him nor no sound carried to him on the
wind. But the tide was on its head and yet the moon was on the
rise. He turned suddenly and ran to the shore and, stumbling down the
steep slope, free of the clinging vegetation, found a hidden place among a
cluster of old trees and lay down there where the stillness and warmth
of the night was like the heat of his body.

He saw about him the great white houses and the dim lights of
the dwelling houses; and the earth beside him, the mother who had
sheltered him, had taken him to her breast.

He closed his eyes in the sweetness of it. His limbs trembled as if
they felt the sin and peace of the earth and its secrets,
and as if he felt the new birth of a new life. His soul
was born into a new world, strange, new, black as the
night, inhabited by strange things and people. This light, a light like a
flower? Spreading and fading, breaking and unfolding, a spreading
vine, an arching vine, that grew in perfect proportion to itself,
bursting to brilliant white and spreading and fading to brilliant white, leaf
by leaf and wave of light by wave of light, filling up the world
with its many colors, each one greater than the last.

Night had fallen when he awoke and the dirt and the stone beneath his
feet hurt no longer. He rose slowly and, in the midst of his
pain, smiled at his reflection.

He walked to the edge of the terrace and looked about him. Night
had fallen. The light of the full moon lit a great pool of water,
the size of a basketball and covered with white algae; and the sea was
drawing back down on the shore with the last sweep of its waves, leaving
a few dark shapes in the water.


Chapter V


He drank his last cup of green tea by the fire and returned to eating
the pieces of white bread that were piled beside him, staring into
the great bowl of the pool. The white algae had been sucked in like
a moat and the water in it brought back to his mind the green
still water of his bath at Home. The box of dock tools at
his feet had already been opened and he picked up randomly one to hold in
his long fingers the blue and white labels, bent and sanded and
worn and bearing the name of the maker mart Mason and Craftsman.


  1 Mr Smith.
  1 Mr. Smith.
  3 Blue and White.
  1 Carpenter’s Tools.


Then he put them down and looked closely at the labels in the box,
marked with question marks, and said this:

—How long has the clock been here?

His mother turned the large grandfather clock that was lying on its
side in the middle of the room until the hands reached the one
and two and she laid it once more on its side.

—One hour and forty-five minutes, she said. The best time now is
half past six. My mother said you should try to be on time for the
service.

—Fill out the place for stephen to wash, you Know.

—Boo, fill out the place for Stephen to wash.

—Now, fill out the place for Stephen to wash.

—I can’t, I’m waiting for you. Fill it out, please, Stephen.

When the wash cloth had been dipped into the water of the sink and
the wet rubber pad placed on the top of it stephen allowed his mother to
bend her head and look into the holes of his eyes and then the
holes of the bridge of his nose.

—Stephen, it’s a sad thing, she said, that a college student is so
dirty that his mother has to wash him.

—But it gives me pleasure, replied Stephen smiling.

An ear-piercing whistle was heard from downstairs and his mother pressed
the rubber pad into his face, saying:

—Hush up and go away for the love of god.

A second piercing whistle, again louder, brought one of the girls to
the top of the stairs.

—Yes, father?

—Has your little brat of a son come out yet?

—Yes, father.

—Stephen?

—Yes, father.

—Good!

The girl came out, beck out for stephen to be quiet and sat down again
in the lounge. Stephen smiled and said:

—He has a wrong view of things and he thinks that everything is wrong.

—Oh, it’s a great shame for you, Stephen, and for us, that
you’ll live to see the day you set a foot in this house. I know that
time has forgotten you.

—Good night, father, said Stephen, bowing and licking the tips of
his fingers in farewell.

The path to the church was slippery and as he walked along it
slowly, hurrying his steps over piles of rotting wood, he heard a terrified
voice echoing from the devil’ s in the night.

—Jesus! Oh Jesus! Jesus!

He drove the screams out of his mind with an angry shake of his head and
walked on, stepping over more rotting wood, his heart still
gripped with an agony of fear and despair. His father’s screams, his
mother’s cries, the laughter of an insane woman were around him and so
many more loud noises seemed to echo the horror of his thoughts.
He drove the terror completely out of his mind with angry thoughts; and, as
he walked along the avenue and saw the bright morning light streaming towards
him through the dripping trees and smelled the sweet fresh scent of the
wet leaves and twigs, his mother re loosed from her dream.

The dead trees of the park evoked in him, as always, images of
the men and women in the plays of August Night; and the memory
of their mingled voices and the rain falling on their bare shoulders
was like a song of desperate longing. His long walk through the city had
begun, and he knew that as he crossed the threshold of Soho he
would think of the un and loneliness of Home; that as he
walked along the Cobb Of Soho, looking up at the windows of the
empty houses, he would remember the good supper of The Gods
and fishes; that as he passed some Artist’s abandoned studio or Market
Stall the spirit of It would blow past him like a cold wind, the
ghost of a forgotten city; and on passing a so called
draper’s stall by the Churchyard he would hear a song by Ben Jonson
that began:

    I shall grow old where I am.


His heart now weary of its search for the words of homer or the
learned doctrines of Augustine of Canterbury turned instead of its thoughts to
the sad age of the Past. His soul, bearing the soul of a
wandering monk, sat waiting in vain before the end of that age, to
hear the sad and sweet music of the harp or the soft whisper
of whispers or the voice of love, whose words, corrupted by time, fa
lies and false words against his foolish heart and drove him forth
from that dwelling-place.

The book which he had used to pass his long thoughts by now when
death should deliver him from the temptation of sleep contained only a handful of
short excerpts from Aristotle’s philosophy of man and its
_Appendix Ex Ratio ex in ho Ho_. His mind
was a vortex of confusion and doubt, lit only in moments by the
lightnings of youth, the lightnings of so great youthful love that in
those moments the world spun under his feet as if it had been
spun; but then his lids grew heavy and he met the eyes
of beauty with new eyes, and he felt that the cloak of youth
had wrapped itself up in a dream and that in time at least he had
become one with it. And though his old vow of silence
protected him no longer he was surprised to find himself again in the way of
many youths, going on his way through the heat and noise and life
of the city fearlessly and with a heavy heart.

Among the people on the bridge he saw the old man with the
owl’s eyes and the bowler hat coming towards him down the middle of
the street with measured steps, tightly bundled in his black
cloak, and holding a large stick a foot or two above him like a
lightning rod. It must be him, he thought, and stopped for a moment to
check the time. The clock on the wall told him that it was ten minutes
past eight and, as he looked up, he saw another clock face above it,
still small, making its rounds with deadly accuracy. He smiled when he
saw it because it made him think of Him; and he saw himself a tall man
in a black coat and trousers and with a black hat, waving in
the window of Speakers’ s, and hearing him say:

—Oh, you’re an evil man, wrapped up in darkness. I’m not.
I’m a man and I’ll speak and fight for the liberty and equality
of all races and religions in the United States and in All of the
world.

Ha! But he was late for the lecture anyway. What day of the week was
it? He stopped at a mcdonald’s and read the name on the menu.
M. One to eleven, English; eleven to twelve, History; twelve to
fifteen, philosophy. He read to himself the Philosophy book and felt, even
from a distance, helpless and alone. He saw the heads of his
classmates slightly bent as they wrote in their notebooks the things they
had yet to understand, basic concepts, short stories with
names and dates of birth and death, philosophical reflections, one good and one
bad written side by side. His own head was elsewhere and his
eyes were elsewhere and whenever he looked at the next row
of books or out of the window into the open air of the
morning the smell struck him of old age and decay. A
head like that, hanging above him on the wooden beam, it sat
squarely between his two legs like the head of a god reduced
in size as a sacrifice to the blind all around
him. Why was it that when he thought of It he could not bring
to his mind the full picture of the corpse but only the image of the
head or neck? And then through the thick haze of the fog he saw
rising before him like the face of a corpse, the face of a severed head
in a coffin, crowned at the back with such fine and curling hair as
in an ecclesiastical crown. It was a priestlike face, priestlike in its features,
in the long pointed ears, in the lines round the eyes and about the
mouth, and in the lips which were thin and pale and almost
cruel; and Laurence, having forgotten what he had seen Out of all
the questions and doubts and struggles in his mind, day by day and
night by night, trying to be distracted by his friend’s long suffering,
might have told himself that it was the face of a catholic priest who
heard judgment on those whom god had the power to condemn and yet he
saw only in passing the shade of those pale blue eyes.

In the distance he caught a glimpse of a great vaulted pool of
light and at last turned away from it, knowing that it was not
yet his time to enter it. But the pain of his friend’s
death seemed to be gathering in the air giving it a slow and
steady sway and he found himself moving from one dead tree to
another to his right and listening with growing horror that he had been being
robbed out of all life and all meaning as death
stole his words like the end of a blade and his body wound and
twisted with pain as he stumbled along in the dark through passages of forgotten
language. His entire knowledge of language was draining from his mind
and absorbed by the dying words now being forced to form and
repeat themselves in hypnotic memory:

    Yellow ivy grows up the wall,
    Ivy grows and grows up the wall,
    And yellow ivy up the wall,
    Yes, grows up the wall.


Did you ever hear ivy sing? God No! You ever hear yellow ivy
grow up the wall? Yellow ivory; that is all ivy. All ivory ivy.
But what is yellow ivory?

The words suddenly blazed in his mind, clearer and hotter than the fire
rising from the ivory tusks of wolves. _India, india, india,
india._ One of the few phrases that he had learned in Latin was this:
_In ut ut;_ and he remembered the rudd rudd voice of the
woman who had taught him to read the Metamorphoses of Ovid in a
lively Way, made easy by the names of birds and flowers
and species of trees. He had learned what little he could about the art of
Latin writing from a small book written by a Roman senator.

    An inscription, entitled lau de vita.


The battles and wars and events of Roman life were passed on
to him through the latin phrase _ad terra terra_ and he had learned to
tap into the inner life of the inhabitants of rome through the phrase
_ad terra terra_ which o titus had described once as
the inside of a garden of eden. The pages of the old Book
still felt warm to the touch even though his own hands were cold; they
were ancient books and many years ago they had been opened by the
talented hands of John Malcolm Inverarity and of his son, William
Malcolm Inverarity. Yes, there were many verses on the old page
and, even for as keen a Reader as he, the ancient words were as
plain as if they had aged all these years like rosemary and lemon
and honey; and yet it troubled him to think that he would now be but
a paying guest at the centre of the city’s library and that his own
knowledge, in terms of which he was trying to work out some hidden
meaning, was perhaps made greater by the world he lived in and the strange
and intricate world of heraldry and banners.

The great statue of Hercules to his right, leaning heavily on the city’s
walls like a great bell ringing on a distant hilltop, distracted his attention
further and as he was turning this way and that to free his mind
from the clutches of his own thoughts he came upon the bronze
statue of the national hero of Troy.

He looked at it in disgust; and, as shadows of the flesh and of the
bones crept over it like hungry fingers, over the naked shoulders and through
the folds of the cloak and over the crowned head, he was suddenly
aware of his identity. He was a Peasant in the green robes of the
Priesthood; and he knew of his friend Stephen, the hebrew priest. It
was a common name among peasants, and the old man spoke of it
often:

—Go on, Stephen, You have a big mouth, you know that. Tell me what you know.

The spoken form of the hebrew word on the lips of his friend had
surprised Him greatly at first and then he was as quick of
wits with them as they were with him. Now, as he sat in Stephen’s
house in The Night, looking at his friend’s home-worn books
which lined the shelves one by one and hearing with his friend’s
keen ears the words and thoughts of others which penetrated the depths of
his own misery and despair, the un Firbolg speech of its author
had turned his eye on it and drew it out slowly, penetrating it by a
certain keen attention to detail or by the right use of proper Irish
words or by the gravity of his belief or by his wit—uncle Davin
who sat at the side of The Road, the Poet—or suddenly and
unexpectedly by a flash of insight or by a change of tenor or
by a sudden look of terror in his eyes, the kind and terror of a small
Irish town in which the terror was only a passing fancy.

Side by side stood the memory and the kind and terror of his uncle And
Himself, da willie, a young man in the wild streets
of Dublin. The hearts of his fellow-travellers who wanted to escape
the hard life of the sl irish at any cost began to think of
him as a true irish. His uncle had taught him Irish and stimulated his
young mind to the bright ideas of English culture. He looked to
the bible from which no human hand had ever drawn such a degree of
inspiration and to the fairy tales which expressed  themselves as they passed
through the ages with the same attitude as did the Roman catholic
church, the conscience of a poor irish peasant. Everything of
thought and of feeling came to him from England which the whole of European
life and thought was directed towards in proportion to its population; but of
the lands which lay beyond It he saw only the vast emptiness of
That emptiness which stephen spoke of earlier.

In his dealings with the young man’s friend Stephen had often
called him one of the wild men and there was always a note of
defiance in his voice directed against the cold silence of word
and thought of his friend who seemed too strong to distinguish between Stephen’s
words, full of truth, and the simple realities of His life.

One day the young man, his eyes narrowed by the word of
the night in which They emerged from the cold silence of
the street, had brought up in Stephen’s mind a strange
memory. The two men walking together from Stephen’s house through the
dark deserted streets of the sl town.

—This story happened to me, Sometime, in october, bordering the thirties, but
I never told it to another living soul and you are the only one that I
have told it to. I forget if it was October or November. It was
October and it was when I came down here to join my history
teacher.

Stephen had turned his blue eyes to his teacher’s face,
amazed by his memory and given over to him by the teacher’s
irish accent.

—I was watching you one day from my hiding place down in Kilkenny—I don’t
know if you know where kilkenny is—watching that football match between the King’s
Park Rangers and cr The Rovers and my Brother, Paddy, there watching the whole
thing. Our other brother, Brother Brendan, was down in limerick on that day
and playing for the Gaa and he was up in the stands at the
time and cheering like crazy. I never shall forget that day. One of the
Players took a ja out at him that day with his stick and I swear
to God he came within an arm’s length of catching him on the side of the
head. And, swear to God, if the end of it got him in jail he
was done for.

—I am glad he did, I have said with a smile, but if that’s
not the only thing that concerns you?

—No, I know it doesn’t concern me, at least it was
so bad after the fight that I missed the train home and I didn’t
have any kind of a car to give me a ride because, as luck would have it,
there was a council meeting that very afternoon over in Inverness and all
the cars in the city were gone. So there was nowhere for me either to
spend the night or to wait it out. Anyway, I started to walk and on I went
and it was going dark fast before I got to the Low road, that’s
less than two miles from Inverness and it’s a long straight road
after that. You couldn’t see any sign of a big house on the
road or hear any engine. It was pitch black there. Once or twice I stopped
on the road by a tree to smoke my pipe and if only the tree was
bigger I’d have gone up there and died. At last, round a bend in
the road, I saw a small cottage with a light in the window. I walked
up and knocked on the door. A neighbour asked who lived there and I said
I stopped off for a smoke in Town and was coming back and that I’d
be back with a glass of milk. After a while a young woman opened
the door and poured me each a small glass of milk. She was half dressed
as if she was going to church when I entered and she had her hair down
and I knew by her figure and by something in the look of her eyes
that she must be only a maid. She looked me over for a little while at
the mug and I thought it strange that her neck and her arms
were crossed. She asked me was I married and would I like to spend the night
here. I said she was all alone in the house and that her husband had
gone that morning to London with his master to see her mistress. And all
the time i was talking, Though, she kept her eyes fixed on my face and
she was so close to me I could hear her breathing. When I gave her
back the door at last she took my arm to help me up over the threshold
and said: _‘Go in and spend the night there. You’ve no need to be
here. There’s no one in there but me....’_ I didn’t go in,
Though. I left her and went on my way home, still nursing the headache. At the
next bend in the road I looked back and she was still at the door.

The last words of Tristan’s poem rang in his mind and the figure of
the woman from the tavern came to life like the rest of the
young women that he had seen standing in the street by Themselves as the
passing carriage went by, as a part of their lives and of his own, a lost
dream coming to full realization of itself in darkness and pain and
light and, with the face and voice and manner of a woman
of letters, inviting a man into her life.

A hand was laid on his shoulder and a female voice said:

—Come, come, your own girl, sir! Your own girl too, sir.
Buy them lovely ones. Will you, sir?

The blue face that was turned towards him with her bright blue eyes
seemed to him in an instant flash of lightning, and he stared
till the flash had passed and he saw only a wet face with its
wet eyes and wet lips.

—Come, come! Don’t forget your own girl, sir!

—I have no money, said Stephen.

—Buy them lovely ones, will you, sir? Not a penny.

—Did you hear what I said? said Stephen, walking towards her. I told
you I have no money. I tell you that now.

—Oh, yes, you will one day, sir, by God, the girl said
after an interval.

—Perhaps, said Stephen, but I don’t think it matters.

He left her then, fearing that their friendship would lead to ruin and
wanting to be out of her way before she gave her hand to another, a
man from Trinity and a friend of His. The Street, down
which he walked, was a scene of utter misery. In the
churchyard at the end of the street a monument was erected to the memory of His
Mother and he remembered having been present with his father at the
ceremony. He remembered having seen a procession of the dead.
There were two Coffin lying on the ground and one, a very pale
young man, holding, leaning on a cane, a banner upon which were written the
words: _Pour l’Amour!_

And the trees of Shepherd’s Hill were full of flowers and the
very air gave off a sweet odour, a sweet perfume spreading
out like a disease through young men. The smell of the whole
burning village which the priest had told him about had faded with time to a
very faint odour coming from the college and he knew that in that moment
when he entered that very hall he would be smelling of a
smell other than that of Par Blood and Of Blood.

It was too late to go back to the Third floor. He left the college
and took the corridor on the left that led to the little theatre. The
place was dark and silent but not unwatchful. Why did he feel that
it was not so? Was it because he had heard that in Cha
Whaley’s house there was a secret room there? Or was the whole
place alien-like or was he walking among ghosts? The Smells of
Blood and of Death seemed to have originated into him.

He opened the door of the theatre and blinked against the harsh morning light
that came through the high windows. A figure was standing by
the iron grate and from its leanness and posture he guessed that it was
the dean who was tending the fire. He closed the door quietly
and approached the priest.

—Good morning, dean! Can I help you?

The dean looked around him and said:

—A moment more, Brother Stephen, and you will understand. There is an art to
making a fire. We have the useful sciences and we have the useful arts.
Fire is one of the useful arts.

—I will try to learn it, brother Stephen.

—Not too much effort, said the dean, working hard at his work, it is
one of my gifts.

He took the candle-butts and the ends of the paper and
scattered them carefully among the rolled and scattered papers. They watched
him in silence. Kneeling down on the floor to tend the fire and
playing with the ends of the sheets of paper and candle-butts he
was more than ever a priest in front of a fire of
prayer in an ancient church, a servant of the Lord. In his priest’s
robe of white and of old age he was the haggard image
of one of the priests whom the wicked world gave grief and
pity. His very body had grown old in the service of the Lord—in
tending the fires and the candles, in reading the scriptures, in
calling the faithful, in offering sacrifices as needed—and yet he
was untouched by blossoms of love or of divine love. Indeed, his
very will had grown old in that service without turning to light
her fire or to breathe the sweet air of her presence—a
very will no more immune to the thrill of blind lust than
either to the thrill of love had left his very body, lean and pale,
crowned with a sharp-pointed beard.

The dean sat back on his heels and let his breath out.
Stephen, to break the silence, said:

—I am sorry I did not light the fire.

—You are an artist, are you not, Master Stephen? asked the dean, sitting up
and narrowing his blue eyes. The work of the artist is the image of
the beautiful. What the work is is the image.

He ran his hand slowly and carefully over his face.

—Can we answer the question now? he asked.

—Aquinas, master Stephen, says _lux est vi vi vi_.

—The fire before us, said the dean, will be pleasing to the eye. Will
it also be beautiful?

—In so far as it is apprehended by the eye, which I believe is
the only one, it will be beautiful. And Aquinas also says
_Lux est vi vi vi vi_. In so far as it is an
art and that the good is the art. In others, however, it is the
bad.

—And so, said the dean, i have just hit the nail on the head.

He rose up and went to the door, left it ajar and said:

—The church is supposed to be of help in these times.

As he went back to the desk, bowed low and took a single seat,
He saw the tortured soul of the dean looking back at him with those cold
grey eyes. Like That he smiled back but in those eyes was no
spark of Any’ joy. Even the secret craft of the church,
a craft deeper and more mysterious than the great craft of the great
master, had not filled his soul with the joy of it. It
was as if he used the knowledge and power and knowledge of the church, and
them to him, for the greater good of All, taking pleasure in their
fear and hatred of that in him which was nothing and directing them,
in a silent service of power all to himself and in all that
silent service it was as if he were not at all the means and
not, not at all, the one who made. _Master of the whole_,
he was, and the church would have given him, like a shovel in an old man’s
hand, to be carried out on the road at night and under change of seasons,
to sit like a child’s toy on a window ledge, to be played by others.

The dean returned to the table and began to rub his temples.

—When do i get to hear back from you about this last
question? he asked.

—Tell me! said Stephen in delight. I think of the question in a
week if I am able.

—Your views are most remarkable, Stephen Smith, said the dean. It is
like looking down from the top of Cliffs into the sea. You go
down into the depths and never come up. Only a free mind can go
down into the depths and conquer it and come to the surface again.

—If you are sure, dean, said Stephen, I myself am convinced that there
is no such thing as free thinking inasmuch as free thinking can be
governed by its own will.

—Nonsense!

—For some reason I shall go only to heaven by the light of one or two
lamps of Plato and Aristotle.

—I see. I do see your point.

—I have them only for my personal use and not until I have made
one for myself by the fire. If the lamp breaks or breaks I
shall have to replace it. If it does not give light then I shall sell it
and buy another.

—Epictetus also had a lamp, said the dean, which he sold at a good
price after his death. It was the lamp he wrote his philosophical
dissertations on. You know Him?

—An old philosopher, he Said then, he says that a lamp is
light as a drop of water.

—He tells me in a curious story, the dean went on, that he lit an iron
lamp on a statue of one of the gods and that a thief stole the
lamp. What did the dean think? He thought that it was not the
right of a thief to steal and decided to light an oil lamp
that night instead of the iron one.

The smell of burning oil rose up from the dean’s cigarette butts and manifested
itself in Stephen’s mind in the shape of the bucket, lamp
and bucket and lamp and bucket. The dean’s voice, however, had a strange
metallic tone. Stephen’s thoughts moved by it, moved by the
metallic tone of the voice and by the dean’s face which was like
an oil lamp with a lens fixed in a sharp focus. What was around it
or within it? The dark darkness of the night or the light of a
candle, filled with flame and full of the light of
Life?

—I am a different kind of man, dean, said Stephen.

—Yes, said the dean.

—The difficulty, said Stephen, in this case is to know
whether words are being used according to the church tradition or
according to the custom of the people. I remember a sermon of
Paul’s in which he said of the Blessed Virgin that she should be
in the holy place with the people. The use of the word in this
case is quite different. _I hope I am not interrupting you._

—Not in the least, said the dean quickly.

—No, no, said Stephen, no, I mean...—

—Yes, yes; You see, said the dean quickly, Not quite grasping the word:
_people_.

He thrust out his lower lip and gave a very small smile.

—To get into your lamp, he said, the size of it is not a big
enough. You must use a little liquid and you must be careful how to
pour it and not to mix it, not to pour any more than the funnel will
allow.

—What funnel? asked Stephen.

—The funnel through which you pour the oil into the lamp.

—Funnel? asked Stephen. Is that not a word? Is it called a tundish?

—What is a tundish?

—The. Funnel... the lamp.

—Is it called a tundish in England? asked the dean. I never heard that
word in my life.

—It is called a tundish in The Netherlands, said Stephen, astonished,
where they have the best Word.

—Dutch tundish, said the dean thoughtfully. It is a very good
word. I must take your sign now. By your grace I will.

The change of tenor was a welcome one and Stephen looked at the
New dean with the same suspicion that the elder man in the church
might have had regarding the newcomer. A church clerk in the midst of
mass proceedings, a young Priest from Nowhere, who seemed to have
been on the periphery of church life until the power play of
fear and greed and hatred and pride and lust had been all
but broken down—a rogue, a free spirit. For what had he turned
out? Perhaps he had been born and raised among the poor, finding
comfort in Poverty alone and among the ignorant children of the
street. Had he found the spark of the true church amid the
chaos of history and the chaos of the countless religions, of
strange places, strange times, free thinkers and baptists, and
such? Had he found the true church all of a sudden and held it
to an end as a result of following the conventional rules of faith and
relying on the washing of feet and the blessing of the Holy
Spirit? Or had Jesus Really called stephen and made him disciple, like the
man who now stood in the way of salvation, as he sat by the side of
the little road, crying and handing over the two keys?

The man spoke the word once more.

—Ah! Well now, that is interesting!

—The question you asked me a moment ago is for the most important.
It is the truth which the soul tries to tell these people on
earth, thought Stephen martin.

That single word seemed to have been the starting point of his
struggle with a determined and powerful spirit. He realized with a
sense of astonishment that the man to whom he was speaking was the
voice of Ben Almighty. He said:

—The language in which you are speaking is his and it is mine. How
strange are these words _god, Father, son, brother,_ on your tongue and on
mine! I cannot read or write these things in words of latin. This
language, so new and so strange, will soon become for me an alien
language. I have not heard or understood these things. His voice keeps them at
bay. My soul is in the language of this god.

—And to distinguish between the beautiful and the ugly, the dean
continued, to distinguish between spiritual beauty and material beauty. And to
determine what kind of expression is common to all of the liberal arts.
There are some preliminary questions you must take up.

Clarence, silenced momentarily by the dean’s sharp, decisive words, fell
silent; and in that moment the dull thud of heavy footsteps and
raised voices came down the corridor.

—In all these things, said the dean calmly, there is,
perhaps, the element of fear and doubt. But you must take a
feeling. Take it with you to your ultimate destination. There, little by little,
you will find your way. I mean in a way, a way in feeling and in
thought. It will be un pedalling at times. Remember John Wesley. It was a
long time before he got to the end. But he was determined.

—I do not have that feeling, said Stephen sadly.

—We never do, said the angel gently. We never really know what is around
us. You most certainly need not be afraid. _Ex aspera et persona._

He left the room then and went to the kitchen to await the
arrival of the liberal arts’ professor.

Leaning against the wall He watched him lecture briskly and
to every student in the room he could clearly see the knowing
glances of the other professors. A deep affection began to drip its
way into his already tender heart for this gentle man of
the liberal Arts, for this man of the world, more gentle
than any other man, more gentle in spirit than any, but whom he
would now call his own teacher; and he remembered how this man and
his students had earned the respect of god in the eyes not of
the academic world but of the people themselves by having stood, in
all their glory, at the service of God’s love for the sake of the wise
and the just and the faithful.

The arrival of the roll was preceded by a cl echo of Boot
heels from the leather seats of the students who sat on the lower tier
of the lecture theatre beneath the large glass dome. The reading of
the roll sheets and the next of the names was called out in hushed
tones as the name of The First was called.

—Ashton!

A deep rumbling chuckle in response came from the upper tier, followed by
murmurs of assent from the lower tier.

The lecturer paused in his reading and called the next name:

—Ashton!

No response.

—Stephen Ashton!

A smile spread across Stephen’s face as he thought of his father’s
name.

—W What! came a voice from the darkness above.

Stephen looked up quickly and Moynihan’s dark face, cast against
the dim light, was unmistakable. The call was drowned out. Hearing the
rustling of his papers He looked up again and whispered:

—Give me that book for God’s sake.

—Are you as blind as me? asked Moynihan with a wry smile.

Stephen tore a page from his notebook and wrote it down, saying:

—In case of need a man or woman will carry it.

And after that he wrote down on another sheet of paper, the
slow and precise movements of the stars, their simple
laws of position and movement fascinated and jaded Stephen’s mind. He
had heard someone say that the old man was an old man. And
this a beautiful place! It is a place of a pure beauty
through which thousands of eyes may pass, tracing the
spiral lines from plane to plane in a paler and paler light,
from the first to the last point in a distance ever greater,
brighter and more distant.

—And we cannot distinguish between spherical and ellipsoidal. Perhaps
some of these stars will be acquainted with the words of Sir W. S.
Gilbert. In one of his poems he speaks of a young man who is
going to play:

    On a ball table
    With a pool cue
    And some billiard balls.


—That is a ball in the middle of the middle of the table and
of which Gilbert spoke a while ago.

He leaned close to Stephen’s ear and said:

—Spherical and ellipsoidal balls! excuse me, sir, I’m in the mood!

The former master’s good mood blew like a gale through the walls
of Stephen’s room, bringing to sudden life the academic forms that
hung on the walls, causing them to dance and sway in the wind of
desire. The heads of the faculty emerged from their wind-blown
rooms, the dean of arts, the old fashioned professor with his shock
of gray hair, the dean, the old woman with white hair and
fr fr beads, the thin pale face of the professor of
philosophy, the tall figure of the bearded professor of political science
standing on the porch in front of him and his wife like a
deer in a park among a herd of cows, the earnest
young man of the dean, the young earnest man of
Philosophy with the dean’s eyes. They were laughing and dancing,
drinking and eating, exchanging their gowns and finer things, smiling one
another warmly, laughing with great good humor, pushing one another
playfully and laughing at some foolish remark, calling to one another by
their names, bowing with great dignity at some high occasion,
putting one or both of their hands.

The dean had returned to the glass case against the wall, from the top
of which he took down a number of papers, brushed off the dust at various
places and, bringing them over to the professor, tapped his pen upon them
as he continued with his explanation. He explained that the crystals in
the coils were of a kind of quartz first discovered by
F. A. Martin.

He gave him the name and date of the discovery. Moynihan
whispered from above:

—Poor f A A Martin!

—Tell him, He whispered back with good humor, that he is a
candidate for promotion. He will thank you.

Moynihan, seeing the professor bent over the coils, turned on his back
and, by snapping the fingers of his right hand, began to speak
in the voice of a street urchin:

—Poor teacher! The praise comes from saying a single word, professor.

—Gold, the professor said proudly, is superior to Pure gold
because it has a lower degree of resistance to changes in
temperature. The gold itself is pure because the coil of wire
that holds it is wound in the gold bobbins exactly as a coin
is. If it were spun around an electric current would be created in the
wire. The bobbins are sealed with a special resin...

A tin Tin voice spoke from the darkness behind Stephen:

—Are you going to be asking me about pure science?

The professor tried to confuse stephen between the words pure science and
applied science. The young man, wearing thick glasses, looked
with some amusement at the professor. He spoke from behind in
his soft accent:

—Isn’t There a god and a man made equal?

Stephen looked down at the oblong skull beneath it covered in
a dark cloth. The voice, the words, the tone of the
voice frightened him and he allowed his thoughts to lead him to
its source, let his mind think that the boy’s father
would have known better had he sent his son to Oxford to study and had
learned something of the great teacher in so doing.

The oblong skull still did not rise to meet the shaft of light and
now the heart drew nearer by a little; and stephen saw for a moment his
father’s too-pale face.

—The voice is not there, he said to himself aloud. It came from the
old Man on the hill opposite. Patience. Can you speak the
voice to which the secret of our knowledge is revealed and which is
tested—by the questioner or by the mocker? No. Not
Both. It was not in my nature to pose such a question at
such a time in such a voice as to render the whole _of_ knowledge utterly
useless.

The droning voice of the voice seemed to repeat itself slowly
round and round the thing it spoke of, sighing, sighing, losing
its own resolve in the face of the temptation of doubt.

Gareth’s voice rose from below in response to the closing bell:

—Closing bell, sir!

The outer hall was crowded and noisy with students. On a table near the
door were framed books and papers and among them a large sheet of
paper with an enormous number of numbers. Gareth moved quickly to
and fro among the students, speaking quietly, giving directions and
pointing one after another to the numbers. In the inner hall the master of
arts was talking to a young man, stroking his chin thoughtfully
and nodding his head.

Stephen, attracted by the movement near the door, turned around. From
under the gently spreading shade of his top hat Cranly’s blue eyes were
watching him.

—Are they ready? Stephen asked.

Cranly opened his long thin mouth, debated stopped for an
instant and said:

—_Per die_.

—What is it for?

—_What?_

—What is it for?

He turned his cold eyes on Stephen and said coldly and angrily:

—_A cr universalis._

Stephen pointed to the Boy’s face and said:

—He has the face of a dead Man.

The bitterness and anger in his voice brought Cranly’s attention back from his careful
study of the occupants in the room.

—Are you sick? he asked.

—No, said Stephen.

—Are you in bad shape?

—No.

—_Ut in hoc hoc hoc est,_ said Stephen, _ut in
hoc hoc hoc est a hoc hoc hoc est._

Moynihan, making his way to the door, whispered in Stephen’s ear:

—He is in good shape. Got it to the last mile. Brave new
guy. No shame in waiting for the rest.

Stephen smiled in the face of such praise and, when Moynihan had
gone, turned back to meet Cranly’s eyes.

—If you can tell me, he said, why he pours his words so freely into
my mouth. Can you?

A dark line appeared on Cranly’s brow. He glanced at the table
where Moynihan had begun to write his name on a napkin, and then said
flatly:

—Bloody idiot!

—_Non est in malo omnibus,_ asked Stephen, _et est mal?_

Cranly did not take up the pen. He chewed thoughtfully on his lip
and said with the same biting tone:

—A fucking mor man, that’s what he is!

It was an insult to the irish language and Stephen wondered
if it would ever be repeated in the same way in his lifetime. The
sar english words dropped slowly out of it like a rock into a
well. Stephen watched it happen as he had watched many times, feeling its
impact on his soul. Stephen’s speech, unlike that of Conor, was
neither clipped fragments of Broken English nor flower clipped
fragments of Irish gaelic. His speech was an echo of the speech of Belfast
given back by a slowly belfast pulpit, and also an echo of the
irish speech of Wexford given back back by a Dublin pulpit.

The angry smile faded from Conor’s face as He walked slowly
towards stephen from the other side of the room.

—There you are! said Conor happily.

—There I am! said Stephen.

—Business as usual. Can we now replace this annoying attitude with a
request for silence?

—Your language is out of order, said Stephen. Just wait.

His blue eyes were fixed on a plastic-covered bar of hot
chocolate that came out of the boy’s jacket-pocket. A
small group of students gathered round to watch the clash of words. A tall
boy with pale skin and jet black hair shifted his eyes between the
two, looking from one to the other with each mouthful and seeming to try
to swallow the foreign substance in his big fat mouth. He took a
small metal object from his pocket and began to examine it carefully,
turning it over and over.

—Next business? asked Stephen. Me!

He gave a short bark of laughter, smiled broadly and tugged playfully at
the black beard that grew from his pointed ears.

—My next business is to sign a contract.

—Will you tell me why should I sign? asked Stephen.

—I thought you were an anarchist, said Maccann.

The young man looked at stephen and addressed the latter in
an almost hissing tone.

—Ah yes, that’s a good idea. I consider your contract to be a
good one.

His voice faded into silence. No attention was paid to his words. He turned
his whole body, neutral in nature, towards Stephen, inviting him to
speak again.

Stephen began to speak in the spirit of the King’s council, of
Peace, of international law, even in times of international
crisis, of the spirit of changing times, of the new age and the new
way of life which will make it the goal of the world to
attain as cheaply as possible the greatest possible happiness of the
greatest possible people.

The young man came to the end of his speech by saying:

—Three points of universal brotherhood!

—Go on, Then, said a cr ruddy voice behind him. I’ll buy you a
drink now.

—I’m no interested in universal brotherhood, said Collins, looking at
him out of his small blue eyes. It was like a slap slap.

He clutched his mouth shut to catch his breath, smiled weakly,
and said:

—Easy, pip, easy!

Collins tried to loosen his grip and continued, his mouth covered by a
little handkerchief:

—It was founded by an Englishman and the first man in England who
discovered the power of suggestion john C. A hundred years ago. John
anthony collins, the duke of Westminster. Three pounds on
John Anthony Collins!

A small voice on the side of the bed said:

—Pip! pip!

Moynihan murmured in Stephen’s ear:

—And what about John Anthony’s dear little wife:

    Miss Has forgotten of westminster;
    Won’t you just make her pay?


Stephen nodded and Moynihan, satisfied with the answer, spoke again:

—You’ll have three pounds either way on John Anthony Collins.

—I am grateful for your discretion, said Maccann coldly.

—This matter doesn’t interest me in the least, said Stephen quietly. I
know perfectly well. Why should i make a fuss of it?

—Ha! said Maccann, smacking his lips. You are a poet, yes?

—Do you think you beat me, I mean, when you used the
flaming sword?

—No! said Maccann bluntly. Listen to me.

Stephen sighed and stepped back. Maccann stood his ground and said
with good humour:

—All poets, I think, are asking such stupid questions about the
meaning of world peace.

He shook his head and closed the gap between the two men
by means of a gesture, saying:

—_Om om om om om._

Stephen, waving at the crowd, jerked his head slightly in the
direction of the Statue’s face, saying:

—Take the lead. If we can have no Peace let us find a new
One.

—Oh yes, that’s a good idea! said the sculpture aloud to those near him,
that’s a good idea. I like that one much.

Head gulped down the lump in his throat as if he were choking on the
words and, tugging on the bill of his baseball cap, turned to Stephen,
asking:

—Tell me, sir, what did he mean by that expression he used just
now?

Feeling himself surrounded by the people around him, stephen said to head:

—I am interested to know exactly what he meant by that expression.

Head turned back to Stephen and spoke in a whisper:

—Do you believe in God? I believe in man. Of course, I don’t care if
you believe in god. I admire man, sir. I admire the power of man
and of all things. Is that your statement about the power of
Man?

—Come on, Sir, said the gr ruddy man, returning, as was his
habit, to his pin glass, your friend is waiting for you.

—He thinks I’m an atheist, He said to Stephen, but I’m a
believer in the power of man.

He thrust his hands between those of Stephen and his companion and said:

—_Ut ut manum et ut._

Stephen, in the process of being led away, caught sight of Maccann’s
un irritated face.

—Your friend is of no consequence, he said coldly. You were supposed to go
this way. Allow me to go now.

—Stephen, said Maccann coldly, I know you’re a good student but you
have yet to realise the importance of education and the worth of the
whole person.

The voice continued:

—Chi it is better out of the world than into it.

Temple, despite the threatening tone of Stephen’s voice, did not turn
in the direction of the voice. He walked straight through the
throng of students, passing Stephen and Temple like a bishop
passing through the cathedral on his way to the pope.

He looked straight into Temple’s eyes and said:

—Did you hear Just what he said? The dean is afraid of you.
Did you see that? I bet You didn’t see that. Bloody hell, I saw it at
once.

As they entered the great hall, the dean of arts was in the process of
separating from the students with whom he had been speaking. He stood at
the foot of the stairs, one foot on the top step, his gown
still draped about him from the back with great care, shaking
his head rapidly and muttering:

—Not a doubt of it, My Friends! Very good! Not a doubt of it!

In the middle of the hall the head of the fra body was
talking earnestly, in a slightly muffled voice, to cr englishman. As he
spoke he lifted a hand his own way and pointed, with his
finger, at a large black figure.

—I think the arts men have already arrived. The first arts i am pretty
sure. Other ones, though. We must be wary of these men.

He looked back at Them, as they were passing through the
doorway, and said in a loud whisper:

—Did you know that he is a married man? He was a married man when i
saw him. He has a wife and children already. Bloody hell, I think
that’s the best news I ever heard! Why?

His voice trailed off into loud roaring laughter. The moment they
passed through the door Cranly grabbed him hard by the shoulders and shook
him, shouting:

—You flaming flaming idiot! I’ll bet your bloody life there isn’t a
bigger flaming idiot, as you say, than you in the whole of the
world!

He struggled in his grip, laughing along with the others, as
Cranly laughed harder with each harder shake:

—You flaming bloody fucking idiot!

They crossed the formal garden path. The headmaster, dressed in a
long black coat, was walking towards them along one of the paths,
towards his office. At the end of the path he paused before them and
narrowed his eyes. The students stared, Each looking up warily at the
rim of his glasses. They walked on in silence. As they crossed the
path They could hear the slapping of the players’ gloves and the loud
crack of the whip and Temple’s voice calling out encouragement with each
shot.

The other students gathered around the bench on which They sat to watch
the game. Temple, after a few minutes, leaned close to Stephen and
whispered:

—Tell me, I have to ask you, do you think that Monsieur De
Villiers was a good shot?

Stephen laughed nervously. Cranly, picking up the wooden remains of the ball
from the ground at his feet, turned back and said sternly:

—Stephen, I swear by every living Soul that you say one word, do you
understand, to temple on this matter, I’ll make you _ind ind._

—He looks like you, Cr lord, said Temple, the old man.

—Curse him, curse him! shouted Stephen angrily. Don’t talk to him at all.
Stephen, you might as well be talking, as you are, to a cr
ass than talking to Him. Go home, Stephen. For God’s sake, go
home.

—I don’t give a damn about him, Stephen, said Temple, stepping out of
range of the iron bars and looking at Him. He’s the only person
I know in this world who has an emotional problem.

—Stephen! You! shouted Cranly. Go home, damn you, because you’re
a miserable emotional man.

—I’m an emotional man, said Stephen. That’s what i am. And
I’m sorry if I’m an asshole.

He walked out into the corridor, rather slowly. Cranly watched him with a
still expressionless face.

—Look at you! he said. Did you ever see such a man-in-the-street?

The door was opened by a loud laugh from a student who leaned
against the wall, his wool hat down over his eyes. The laugh, uttered
at a high pitch and coming from a huge male throat, sounded like the
roar of an animal. The student’s body shook all over and, to cover
his excitement, he clasped both his hands together over his mouth.

—Lynch is here, said Stephen.

Lynch, in response, straightened up and thrust out his chest.

—He thrust out his chest, said Stephen, with a pride of pride.

Lynch slapped him hard on the back and said:

—Who has this to say about my son?

Stephen hit him on the back and the two began to wrestle. When their
faces were red from the blows they broke apart, laughing. Lynch
looked over at Davin who, intent on his pipe, apparently paid no heed to
the amusement of the crowd.

—And how is my son da man? he asked. Did he die, lynch?

Lynch laughed and said:

—And you, Stephen?

Stephen shook his head.

—You’re a strange man, Lynch, said Davin, removing his smoking pipe from
his mouth, standing up.

—Now that you have read the plea for irish independence, said
Lynch, I think i will recommend the little pamphlet I found in your
cellar.

When Lynch did not reply, Stephen began to shout:

—Right answer, fianna! Right answer, fianna! And, in answer, yes,
no, no!

—That’s a stupid question, said Lynch. I’m an Irish nationalist,
first and foremost. And there’s an irish traitor. You’re a stupid man,
Sir.

—If you want the irish man of arms, said Lynch, you
want an irish informer, ask me. I can give you a place in the
league.

—I don’t believe you, said Davin. Every day I hear you talk against
The league. And you talk against the Irish traitor. And by
your language and your customs . . . Are you Irish at all?

—Come with me now to the house of leinster and I will show you the history of
my people, said Stephen.

—Then be one of us, said Davin. Why didn’t you learn English? Why did you
drop out of the first class after the first year?

—You have no idea why, said Stephen.

He shook his head and laughed.

—Oh, come now, he said. Was it on account of a pretty young girl like
Miss Kelly? But it’s all in your own head, Son. We were just
talking and laughing.

He smiled and put a strong hand on Davin’s shoulder.

—Do you remember, he said, when we saw each other first? The first
time we met you asked me to show you the way to the first
floor, with a very slight accent on the first syllable. You
remember? And you used to speak as innocent as anyone, you know?
I asked him about that: _Was it as innocent as your speech?_

—I’m a terrible liar, said Davin. I know that. When you told me that
night that You Knew some things about my own race, honest
to God, Stephen, I was not able to eat my dinner. It was very cold. I lay
awake a long time that night. Why did you tell me these things?

—Because, said Stephen. You think I am a liar.

—Yes, said Davin. And I wish you had not told me.

A fury began to boil beneath the calm facade of Stephen’s
face.

—This house and this land and this life condemn mine, he said. I cannot
help living as I am.

—Proud to be one of us, said Davin. At heart you are an Englishman and
your tongue is too english.

—Our people broke down one house and built another, He said.
They invited a group of strangers to join them. Do you think I am
willing to pay for my own sins and the sacrifices i made? What for?

—For my country, said Davin.

—An honest and noble man, this Stephen, has given up for you his
life and his love and his country from the days of Lincoln to those of
Today, and you sold him to the devil or put him in chains or killed
him and left him for dead. Now you want him to become one of you. I’ll
see who dies first.

—They die for their country, Stephen, said Davin. That day may come soon,
believe me.

Stephen, in his own way, was silent for an instant.

—The soul is born, he said suddenly, like in the stories I told you
before. It is a deep and mysterious birth, more mysterious than the birth of the
soul. When the soul of a man is born in a basket there are nets
tied round it to hold it safe in flight. You speak to me of history,
myth, legend. I would like to live in those things.

Davin inhaled the smoke from his pipe.

—Too late for that, Stephen, he said. But a man’s destiny comes first.
Ireland first, Stephen. You will be a saint and a king there.

—Do you know what Ireland is? asked Stephen with great interest. Ireland
is the little bird that knows the way.

Davin rose from the table and walked among the players, shaking his head
sadly. But in a moment the sadness left him and he was back together
with Cranly and the other men who had resumed their game. A team of
five was formed, Lynch decided, naturally, that the staff should be
used. He raised the staff twice and once in each hand and drove it
hard and fast into the side of the ball, saying in
response to the challenge:

—My turn!

Stephen remained with Lynch as the ball began to rise. Then he asked
lynch for the staff to move on. Lynch complied, saying:

—Let the ball rise, while He holds it.

Stephen smiled at this comment.

They walked together through the kitchen and then into the hall where a
young man was putting up the last frame of the house. At the foot
of the stairs they stopped and Lynch took a pack of cigarettes from
his pocket and handed one to his friend.

—I see you are yellow, stephen said.

—For your cultural proof, said Lynch.

This supposed proof of Lynch’s superiority made Stephen smile again.

—It was a sad day in Your life, lynch said, when you made up
your mind to be born again.

They lit their cigarettes and looked to their friend. After a while
Stephen said:

—Lynch has not mentioned pity and terror. I say. I say...

Lynch laughed and said angrily:

—No! You don’t understand! I am sorry. I went out last night as a little
boy with Onions and Terror.

Lynch went on:

—Pity is the feeling which occupies the mind in the presence of
what is grave and constant in human sufferings and unites it with
the secret cause. Terror is the feeling which occupies the mind in the
presence of what is grave and constant in human sufferings and
unites it with the secret cause.

—Silence, said Stephen.

Lynch repeated his words again.

—A woman got off a bus a few days ago, lynch went on, from London. She
was on her way to see her husband whom she had not seen for some time.
On the corner of the road the headlights of a car pierced the window of
her car in the shape of a needle. The very sharp point of the broken
glass pierced her heart. She died in an instant. The doctors call
it a natural death. It is tragic. It is different from terror and pity
according to the words of the artist.

—The tragic face, in art, is a face turned opposite itself, towards
terror or towards pity, both of which are part of tragedy. You see I used
the term _and_. I said that the dramatic face is tragic. Or that
the dramatic art improper. The emotions aroused by dramatic art are
either, desire or loathing. Desire urges us to pursue, to go to
something; loathing urges us to flee, to flee from something. The arts
which produce desire, dramatic or tragic, are the expressive
arts. The expressive art (I use the latter term) is not
art. The art is expressive and is not desire or loathing.

—You said that art does not produce desire, said Stephen. I told you that
one day I wrote my feelings in ink on the statue of the Head of
Liberty in the Park. Is this not art?

—You are of two minds, said Lynch. You once told me that when
you were a pupil in the old grammar school you ate pieces of
a snake.

Lynch broke out in a fit of laughter and he put both his
hands on his hips again without removing them from his sides.

—Yes, I did! I did! he shouted.

He turned to his friend and looked at him for a moment
directly in the eyes. Lynch, recovered from his laughter, turned the
hat to his own head. The long narrow bony neck and
the high black hat formed in Lynch’s mind the image of a
small reptile. His eyes, too, were reptile-like in shape and size. But
in that instant, alert and fixed in that image, they were replaced by a
sharp sharp eye, the eye of a human being, proud and
commanding.

—Except for ourselves, Stephen said in ex whisper, we are all animals. I
myself am an animal.

—We are, said Lynch.

—But we are animals only in our own way, He said. Our fear
and anxiety aroused by an external stimulus are therefore not animal
instincts not only because they are human in nature but also
because they are psychological rather than physical. Our flesh flees from what it
dreads and responds to the stimulus of what it fears by a simple
reflex action of the nervous system. Our eyelids close and we are
sure that a light is about to reach the eyes.

—Not so, said Stephen gently.

—In the same way, said Another, our flesh responded to the beauty of
a marble sculpture, but it was, I think, by a reflex action of the
nerves. Beauty produced by an object can induce in it an emotion
which is mental and a feeling which is not physical. It awakens,
or ought to awake, and induces, or ought to induce, an ideal stasis,
an ideal terror of an ideal terror, a stasis brought about, maintained, and
at times disturbed by what We call the rhythm of beauty.

—What is that rhythm? asked Stephen.

—Rhythm, said Lynch, is the logical or logical relation of part or
parts of an esthetic whole or of an esthetic whole to any part or part
or of any part of the esthetic whole of which it is a part.

—If that is so, mr Lynch, let us see what you call it; and,
do remember, for I did eat a bit of meat today, that It is
called rhythm.

Stephen lifted his hand as if in prayer. Then, very gently, he
laid his hand on Lynch’s bi and squeezed.

—You are right, he said, but the words are inadequate. To speak of these
things is to try to understand our nature and, having understood it,
to try again more deeply and more to understand, to bring forth again,
from heaven and earth with which nature comes together, the form and texture and
colour that seals the very heart of the world, an expression of the beauty
we have come to know—it is art.

They had crossed the last bridge and, turning from their path, walked
in between the trees. The dull orange sun, reflected in the rushing water and
the rustling of the branches above their heads went to work on the
direction of Stephen’s thoughts.

—But you have not answered my question, said Stephen. What is art? What
is the emotion art represents?

—That was the first question I asked you, you little weasel,
said Lynch, when I began to try and work out the answer for you.
Do you remember last night? Cranly lost his patience and began to talk
about The pigs.

—I remember, said Lynch. You told me about the big fat bag of
them.

—Art, said Lynch, is the perfect synthesis of material and
subject matter to an ultimate effect. I forget about that i
know you. You make a fine team, you and I.

Stephen made a face at the dirty blue sky and said:

—If I want to listen to your bullshit then give me at least one
cigarette. I don’t care about pigs. I don’t even care about cigarettes. Damn
pigs and fucking cigarettes. I have a limit of one pack a day. You don’t
owe me anything.

Stephen gave lynch the pack of cigarettes. Lynch lit the last one
that day, saying enthusiastically:

—Cheers!

—Lynch, thought Stephen, and he said that the name of
it was.

Lynch said.

—I like it, he said, _Ex ex ex ex ex._

—Lynch invented the word _illusion,_ thought Stephen, to describe false perceptions
of all sorts, whether by seeing or hearing or by any other
means of communication. The word, though it is vague, is vague enough
to give us good and bad and even fear and loathing. It is
also a metaphor and also a riddle. What is not illusion? It is
not the work of the mind. I will not write your name in ink
as the hypothenuse of the golden venus.

—Then, stephen Butler, make me the hypothenuse of the Venus of Love.

—And so, said I. Aristotle, I believe, says that beauty is
the opposite of truth. I don’t think that truth has any opposite, for the
truth and the beauty are one. Truth is beheld by the intellect which
is appeased by the most satisfying relations of the rational;
beauty is beheld by the soul which is appeased by the most
satisfying relations of the spiritual. The first step in the direction
of truth is to understand the frame and scope of the intellect itself,
to comprehend the act itself of understanding. Aristotle’s whole system
of knowledge rests on his system of knowledge and it, I believe,
rests on the fact that the same object is at the same time
and in the same place belong to but not belong to the same thing.
The first step in the direction of imagination is to understand the frame
and scope of the imagination, to comprehend the act itself of the
imagination. Is that beauty?

—And what is it? asked Stephen aloud. But with a
smile. What we know and understand! Is that the best galileo thomas Man
can do?

—Let us take her, said Stephen.

—Let us take her! said Stephen aloud.

—The Jew, the Muslim, the Catholic, the Protestant, the Orthodox, said
Stephen, each sees a different kind of physical beauty. It seems to be
a maze out of which we cannot get. I see, however, two ways out. One
is the obvious: that the physical beauty seen by men and women
is in close harmony with the reproductive power of man and the
survival of his species. That must be so. The other, it seems, is
worse than what we, Ourselves, see. For my part I see no way
out. It leads to emotional rather than physical beauty. It leads us out of
the maze to a rather fantastic story where Maccann, with one hand on
_The Origin of Species_ and the other hand on the old testament, tells
us that you admired the full lips of Eve because you felt that
she would give you good food and admired her full breasts
because you felt that she would give your name to her body and
soul.

—But Maccann is a terrible man, said Lynch laughing.

—There is another way out, said Stephen, smiling.

—Another hypothesis? said Lynch.

—This hypothesis, Stephen repeated.

A heavy dray loaded with scrap metal came around the corner of St Dun
Joseph’s church at the end of Lynch’s street with a great sound
of crashing and scraping metal. Lynch covered his ears and called out one
last time till the dray had passed. Then he turned on his heel again.
Stephen turned round and waited for a few moments till his friend’s
good-humour finally found its outlet.

—This hypothesis, Lynch continued, is the only way forward: that, although
the same object may not be beautiful to different people, the people who
see a beautiful object find in it certain relations which correspond
and agree with the sensible relations of the beautiful object.
These relations of the object, visible to you through one eye and to
me through both, must contain all the sensible relations of
nature. Now, we must turn to our dear friend father Lynch for a
word of wisdom.

Lynch smiled.

—It makes me laugh, he said, to hear stephen addressing him time after time
as a good old father. Are you still in your studies?

—I, father Lynch, will continue my esthetic studies with
You. As far as my knowledge of natural history goes, It
will serve me well down the road. When i come to the stage of
artistic conception, artistic expression, and expression itself Will
be a new experience and a new personal experience.

—Of course, father Lynch. After all He, in all of his faults,
was such a good old father. Perhaps you can tell me about your new
personal experience and artistic conception some other time. Hurry up and
sing the first hymn.

—Who knows? said Lynch, smiling. Thomas More would know it
better than i. He was a poet himself. He wrote this hymn for Maundy
Thursday. It starts with the words _Hymn lingua prima._ They say this
is the great hymn in our language. It is an elegant and beautiful
hymn. I like it; and there is another one that should be sung after the
beautiful and solemn funeral hymn, the _Gloria Major_ of
Marcus More.

He began to sing slowly and beautifully in a deep baritone voice:

    Cum laude et de
    Gloria et in
    Ve nationibus
    Et in domino Deus.


—That’s it! she thought, very impressed. Beautiful hymn!

They turned onto The Main Street. A few yards from the church a thin
elderly gentleman, wearing a white robe, saw them and stopped.

—Did you hear the results of your competition? he asked. It was good.
Stephen and O’Connell came to the final table. Stephen got first place
over the Others. O’Connell got second. The Old man from
Paddy’s gave them the food that day. They both ate it.

His small round face beamed with joy and, when he was
halfway through his story of life, his big blue-grey eyes
went out of sight and his little round voice out of hearing.

In answer to a question of Stephen’s his eyes and his voice came up
again from their table.

—Well, He and I, he said. He’s taking english literature and I’m
taking modern history. We have different subjects. I’m taking
history now. You see I’m a member of the field club.

He sat across from the other two in a stately way and placed a large
black-gloved hand on his chest from which a loud noise
at once burst forth.

—Bring me a few tomatoes and onions the next time we go out, said
Donovan quickly, to start the conversation.

The third man smiled broadly and said:

—We are all very good friends with the field club. Last Year
we went out to Lunch, three of us.

—No smoking, Remember? said Stephen.

He again placed his hand on his chest and said:

—The aim is the pursuit of knowledge.

Then he added quickly:

—I hear you are writing some book on philosophy.

Donovan made a vague gesture of disagreement.

—Berkeley and I, mr Donovan, have read a lot on the subject,
the analytical school and the metaphysical school and all that. The Book
excited me very much when I saw it. Of course it was german,
German, german-speaking.

None of the family understood. I was one of the youngest.

—I must confess, stephen said slowly and deliberately, I had a strong feeling,
rising almost to a shout, that my mother was to make
arrangements tomorrow for a meeting of the Whole family.

—Yes, She said to the others. Don’t forget the room for me and
my mother.

Stephen looked at her, his lip curled in cynical amusement and his face
like a magician’s mask:

—You think all this useless man-made stuff to do a good job,
he said at last, and You want to buy me dinner!

They turned their backs on The Other and walked on a while in
silence.

—To understand what I am saying about art, said Stephen, the behaviour
and thoughts of the artist must first correspond to the
three phases of his soul. Follow them until you reach the
perfection of his soul. Virgil wrote: _In arte tria
requiruntur integritas, concordia, etc._ To put it simply:
_Three phases are required for art, namely, apprehension and perfection._
And these correspond to the phases of art? Are you sure?

—Of course, I am, said Stephen. If you think You have an artistic
soul go to Him and ask him to come to you.

Stephen pointed to a basket which the undertaker’s man had placed directly over
his head.

—Look at that basket, he said.

—I see it, said Stephen.

—In order to see the basket, said Stephen, the observer first of apprehension
separates the basket from the background of the physical world which is not
the basket. The second law of perception is a straight line drawn
through the object to be seen. The esthetic image is presented to
you either in space or in time. What is visible is presented in time,
what is invisible is presented in space. Whether temporal or spatial, the
esthetic image is then first presented as fixed and
fixed against the physical background in space and time which
is not it. You see it as _one_ thing. You see it as a whole.
You feel its unity. It is _everything._

—Cat’s up! said Stephen, smiling. Go on.

—First, dear Reader, you move from point to point, guided by the straight
line; you apprehend it as a whole or as within its
entirety; you feel the unity of its parts. In other words, the
analysis of the whole is guided by the unity of
parts. You have felt that it was _one_ and you feel now
that it is a _whole_. You see it as whole, complete, whole,
whole, made up of its parts, the sum of its parts and the whole,
complete. It is _one_.

—Bull’s eye view! i Said excitedly. Tell me exactly what is _one_
before you say it aloud.

—The meaning of the word, He says, is very obscure. He
uses a word which seems to be meaningless. It puzzled me for a long time.
It would lead me to believe that he had in mind symbolism and symmetry,
the very idea of reality as a sign of the divine will, the
sign of which all else is but the symbol, the sign of which everything is
but the symbol. I suppose he might mean that _one_ is an exact
representation or symbol of the divine will of reality without the
need for anything which would make its own form a different
one, make it meet the same thing. But this is just intuition.
You make it so. When you have conceived of it as a thing
and have first seen it according to its form and perceived it as that
thing you make the only change which is logically and physically
possible. You say that it is the thing that it is and no other
thing. The quality of beauty is inherent in the whole _shape_,
whole _form_ of a thing. That supreme quality is perceived by the mind
when the esthetic image is first formed in the mind. The mind
in that first instant Is responding spontaneously to that supreme
quality. The instant when that supreme quality of beauty, the radiant
harmony of the esthetic image, is perceived again by the mind
which has been enchanted by its form and impressed by its essence
is a sudden temporary state of sublime pleasure, a mental state
very close to the psychological state which the Italian philosopher
Luigi Dante, in a poem almost as famous as Stephen’s, called
the agony of the soul.

He paused and, as his companions did not notice, saw that his
words had stirred up among them a long-suffering melancholy.

—What I have said, he said again, refers to beauty in the second sense
of the word, in the sense that the word has in the western world.
In the east it has no meaning. When we speak of art in the
second sense of the word our meaning is conveyed in the first sense
by the art itself and by the image of the art. This image, it is said,
must be formed by the mind or senses of the artist himself and the
mind or senses of others. If you read this from me you will see that
art generally divides itself into three forms proceeding from one to
the other. These forms are: the objective form, the form wherein the
artist presents his image in direct relation to himself; the subjective
form, the form wherein he presents his image in indirect relation to
himself and to others; the reciprocal form, the form wherein he presents
his image in direct relation to others.

—So you told me a few weeks ago, said Stephen, when we had our first
conversation.

—I have a notebook at home, said Stephen, in which I have written some
questions which were more difficult than they seem. In finding the
answers to them I discovered a kind of logic which I am trying to
develop. Here are some questions I ask you: _Is the portrait i see
serious or humorous? Is the bust of Sir Philip beautiful because I want to see
it? Is the bust of Sir Philip Really serious, humorous or beautiful. If
not, why not?_

—If not, why? said Stephen, laughing.

—_Imagine a cow roaring in anger against a piece of wood,_ He said,
_is that an image of a cow, is that not a work of art? If not, why
not?_

—That’s a good question, said Stephen, laughing again. It is a work
of art.

—Art, said Stephen, would not have been a work of art to
speak of. But art, i think, does not have the forms We speak
of separating from one to another. Even in poetry, the
highest and most important form, the forms are often poetic. The
simplest form is in fact the mere mere sound of an expression of
emotion, a war cry such as the one heard by the sailors who
struck at an anchor or drove it down a river. He who utters it is
less conscious of the expression of emotion than of himself actually feeling
it. The first poetic form is that arising out of epic
poetry where the artist prolongs and draws upon himself as the
narrative of the epic works and the narrative continues until the center of
the narrative is separated from the artist himself and the
action. The narrative is no longer merely narrative. The personality of
the artist turns into the action itself, flowing in and around
the artist and the action becomes his inner personality. The example you can find
is in the old Irish poem _The Harp,_ which begins in the
first person and ends in the third person. The dramatic climax is reached
when the action which has flowed and flowed through every person strikes
that person with such great force that he or she loses his vital and
his very soul. The action of the harp, at first a rhythm
or a mood or a mood and then a narrative or a narrative, gradually
abstracts itself out of existence, destroying it, so to speak.
The musical art of the human mind is gradually absorbed by and
removed from the collective consciousness. The work of art, like
that of all art, is destroyed. The artist, like the Work of
art, is within or behind or beside or under his handiwork,
refined, refined out of existence, cutting, cutting his
tools.

—And they cut themselves out out of existence, thought Laurence.

A light rain began to fall from a cloud veiled sky and laurence walked across
the school’s courtyard to reach the school library before the rain fell.

—What do you mean, He thought angrily, by talking about art and the
artist on this whole Godforsaken planet? No doubt the artist
is within or under his handiwork for having made this
world.

The rain fell harder. As they passed through the courtyard of
The school they saw some students standing in the entrance of
the building. One, leaning on a wall, was cutting his cigarette
with a wooden knife, chatting with his friends. Two others stood
near the front door. One spoke to Stephen:

—My friend is here.

Stephen took his place quietly on the grass among the group of
students, oblivious to the rain that fell heavily, turning his head
towards mary from time to time. She still sat alone with her
friends. She had no one to talk to, he thought with some
bitterness, remembering when he had seen her last. Mary was gone. His
mind full of hope and despair, falling suddenly into a calm sleep.

He heard the students talking among themselves. They talked of their
colleagues who had passed the final medical exams, of their dreams of
high places and luxury liners, of doctors in country practice.

—It’s not so bad. The Big city here is better.

—I spent two years in London and he said the same. A poor
place he said it was. Nothing but a dream.

—Do you mean to say it is better to get a doctor here in the country than
in a big city like london? I know the answer...

—He had no answer. He got on with it, still smiling.

—Don’t worry though. There’s plenty of money to be made in a big enough
city.

—Carry on the way.

—_The vita et vita est in simpliciter omnibus, by
sanguinarius virgil, li Bc._

The words reached her ears as if from a wind of sudden
wind. She was about to walk out with her husband.

The last rain drops had dropped off, scattered like clusters of flowers
among the stones of the courtyard as their heat was pushed
out of the moist air. Their leather shoes clicked as they walked
down the length of the courtyard, chatting pleasantly and laughing, looking at
the stars, holding their eyes at right angles to the very
last moment, parting them slowly, lifting their hands slightly.

What if he had told her no? If her life was a long series of
trials, her life simple and free as a bird’s flight, happy in the
morning, hungry all night, tired at night? Her life pure and
innocent as a child’s dream?

At dawn he slept. And the sweet music! His pillow was still and smooth.
Upon his face in the pillow the hours of sleep had passed. He lay
still, as if his soul floated on still air, dreaming the sweet morning
music. His soul was waking up with a sweet morning music, a
sweet joy. Its essence surrounded him, clear as the morning air,
soft as music, sweet as honey. And how sweetly it was breathed, how
sweetly, as if the heavens themselves were breathed into him!
His soul was waking up, beginning to understand it. It was the
first moment of awakening when one senses a moth is attracted to a
flower and the moth flies away screaming.

The music of the night! The boy had been there. In a dream
or vision he had felt the spark of his inspiration. Was it an instant
of a lifetime or of days and years and centuries?

The spark of inspiration seemed somehow to be coming from all directions at
once from a multitude of different interpretations of what had happened or
of what could have happened. The word sprang forth from the womb of
imagination and then a cloud upon cloud of color and solid sound
and color and an afterglow. Flesh! In the very womb of his
imagination the word was made flesh. And the word had come from the
philosopher’s stone. The red glow of the stone, where the
red cloud had begun, changed to a rose and ardent light. That rose
and ardent light revealed a strange secret knowledge, knowledge that no man had
known or would know, not even at the beginning of the world; and
accompanied by that same roselike light the days of the seraphim were
lowered from heaven.

    Do you grow weary of their days,
    Or of the fallen ones?
    Speak no more of these things.


The words came from his heart to his mind and, turning them over,
he felt the slow beat of the heart pass over him. The
roselike light sent out its song and dance; rise, shine, shine, raise,
raise. Its light lit up the world, and the hearts of men and
women: like fire to the flower that opens the bleeding petals.

    Your words have set man’s heart free
    And you have made a man of it.
    Have you grown weary of our song?


And then? The heart faded away, stilled, began again to dance and beat.
And then? Smoke, smoke rising from the depths of the earth.

    Like a fire the song of love
    Went up from earth itself and could
    Be no more than for itself.


It went up from the very depths, from the very air, full of
its meaning. The song was like a slow moving ball, a ball of
fire, an invisible ball. The voice died all at once; the cry of
the heart was silent. The heart began to sing the same refrain over
and over; it went on singing the same refrain, over and
over; it died. The heart’s song was dying.

The long dark night had ended and behind the shades of the broken
trees the dull light was growing. A bell rang from not far
away. A bird sang; two sang, together. The bell of the bird died;
and a great dull light resolved from east to west, filling the
room, like the fire in his dream.

Wanting to forget it, he raised himself up on one elbow to look
for paper or pencil. There was nothing on the table; just the little
bowl he had eaten his soup in for supper and the candle with
its puff of smoke from the socket bowl, dying at its last light.
He swung his legs around to the side of the bed, fumbled put
his hands into the pockets of the robe that hung there. His fingers found
a handkerchief and then a cigarette packet. He sat down and, snapping closed the
packet, lit his last cigarette on the bedside table and began to
write out the words of the prayer in small block letters on its
rough wooden surface.

Having crossed them out he lay back on the feather pillow, writing away
silently. The lumps of knotted linen in his lap reminded him of the
lumps of knotted linen on the chair in the house in which he used
to sit, joking and laughing, asking her why he had come, laughing
with her and with himself, fascinated by the painting of the Black Cat
on the little table. He saw her approach him in the middle of
their conversation and ask him to sing one of her old songs. And he saw
himself seated at the old piano, playing it softly on the
worn keys and singing, amid the voices that had risen up in the
room, to those who sat round the table the old airs of the
Fair, the sad and melancholy song of roland, the martial air of
Harrow, the martial air of Roland. As he sang and he
listened, he continued to smile, his mind was at ease and when the
sweet old songs had faded and he heard only the voices in the room he
saw his dream again: the dream where young men were called by
their first name a little too often.

For two moments her eyes were open to greet him and he had
hoped in vain. She was still moving slowly in his dream as she
had been that night at the masked ball, her black hood a little
lower, the water still flowing in her hair. She was dressed in white
again. She was coming towards him but, as she came, her eyes were a
little brighter and a faint blush was on her cheeks. After a pause in the
chain of hands her hand had been on his an instant, a little longer.

—You are a monk by birth.

—Yes. I was meant to be a monk.

—I am afraid you are a monk.

—Are you not afraid?

In fact she had moved away from him in the chain of hands,
but slowly and discreetly, revealing herself to him. The young man
came to her side and while she was in motion a kiss was laid on
her cheek.

A kiss! His own image brought back the monk of the past, the
young Man, eager but afraid not to touch, looking at
Dove in The Cafe Light, a spider full of silk threads
whispering in her hair.

No, this was not an image. It was only the memory of the young man in
whose arms he had seen at last, looking at dove out of dove’s eyes,
playing with the pages of the Little book.

—Yes, father, the ladies are coming round with us. You can see them every day.
The children are with us. The little power our dove has.

—And the church, My Dove?

—The church too. Coming round too. The wedding is just about finished now.
Don’t worry about the church.

Ha! he had done well to leave her standing in church. He had done well
not to leave her on the floor of the church. He had done well to
leave her to toy with the church, to toy with the church that was the
head-woman of hell.

A sudden explosion tore the last remaining threads of life from his
soul. It blew away all his remaining flesh and scattered into fragments on
all sides. On all sides the fragments of an image fell from
his mind: the little girl in the green dress with the red hair
and the angel’s eyes who had called him her little boy and held his
hand, the pot-woman in the coffee shop who sang over the tops
of empty cups, in the voice of a street child, the opening lines of
_Mac Mackenzie’s Hills and Valleys_, the girl who had turned back to watch
him fall when the ice caught on the road at Boot And had
eaten the whole sole of his shoe, the girl he had stared at, frozen
in her own open terror, as she walked out of Duncan’s chocolate factory,
and had said to him over her shoulder:

—Do you know what they think of you, red hair and black eyes?

And yet he knew that, while others might mock and praise the stranger, their
praise was only a form of contempt. He had regarded her face with admiration
that was not entirely false, thinking that perhaps the fault of her
beauty lay in the large eyes over which the long lashes cast a
heavy sheen. He had told himself even as she passed through the
door that she was a specimen of the woman of her time, a
young woman lost to the world of men and women in
innocence and youth, who fled, naked and sinless, to finding
a man and allowing him the lecture of her soul through the
open eyes of a woman. His anger with her was expressed in his
anger with her father, whose manners and speech and appearance mocked him
with pride: a poor man, with a sister a maid in Seville
and a brother a soldier in Flanders. To him she would reveal her soul’s
true nature, to him she was con schooled in the mystery of the
catholic church more than to him, a woman of the fertile spirit,
transforming the bitter body of death into the sweet body of
eternal life.

The very sound of the bells pierced up for an instant his
angry and bitter soul, their toll ringing out like a song
of despair.

    Let your sad and mournful hearts
    Unite in the chapel for
    Are you now weary of our days?

    Let your heart be
    A well filled to the bursting
    Of one thousand and one years.


He read the words slowly through the last verse as their rhyme and
rhythm filled his heart, opening it to their meaning; he read
them again to understand them even more without knowing why; he lay back on
the blanket.

The first morning light had come. No singing was to be heard; yet he knew
that all around him he was soon to hear the night whispers, hushed
whispers, whispered words. And in his dream he turned to the
wall, under the fold of the blanket and looked at the beautiful embroidered
scarlet flowers upon the gold wall. He tried to see a
little further into the golden light, and he looked from where he
lay down at it all embroidered with scarlet flowers. Tired! Tired! He
too was tired in many ways.

A slow weight, a slow weight came upon him down
through his hair to his small bald head. He felt it then and,
hugging himself where he lay, sighed. Soon he would sleep.

He had come looking for her now after ten years. Ten years since
she had pulled her long hair from her face, sending sprays of her
sweet perfume into the night air, stamped her foot on the dirt tram.
It was the cursed tram; the little black children knew it and rang their
bell in the dark night in silence. The girl was beside the
boy, both smiling softly in the dim light of the moon. They sat
on the boards of the tram, he on the upper, she on the lower. She went
up on the boards three times in a row and went up again and
once or twice sat beside him ready to go down and he went
down. Let be! Let be!

Ten verses from the book of psalms were pure folly. If he sent her the
verses? They would be read aloud at church with a rattle of
bells. Folly indeed! The children would laugh and try to wrest the
pages from each other with their little crooked hands. The parish priest,
his lordship, seated in his pew, would hold the book at arm’s length,
read it aloud and approve of its proper use.

No, no; it was folly. But if he sent her the verses she could not
tell them to him. No, no; she could not.

He began to feel that he had wronged her. The thought of her innocence
caused him suddenly to pity her, an innocence he had not known until
he had come to the knowledge of it as well, an innocence which he
himself had not known before she was born and when the full
force of her nature had first come upon her. At last her soul
had come to him as his soul had when he had first entered, and a
deep sorrow filled his heart as he remembered her pale face
and dark eyes, haunted and bruised with the naked struggle of ecstasy.

When her body had fallen from sleep into stillness where had he been?
Could it be, in the strange way of his nature, that his soul in
those first moments had been aware of her presence? It must be.

The fire of ecstasy was in his blood and heart and in all his
being. Object of his desire he was awakening from his sleep, the
object of his desire. Her eyes, closed now with a kind of sleep,
were equal to his own. Her body next to his, soft, warm,
naked and long-lived, surrounded him like a vapor bubble, filling
him like water with its own energy; and like a cloud of dust and sparkling
stars suspended in space the first symbols of love, symbols of
the birth of life, burst out of his mind.

    Are you not weary of ardent ways,
    Daughter of the holy spirit?
    Tell no more of enchanted days.

    Your eyes have set man’s heart ablaze
    And you have taken the breath from him.
    Are you not weary of ardent ways?

    Like a candle the flame of love
    Burns brightly from the base to tip.
    Tell no more of enchanted days.

    While sad sighs and mournful sighs
    Join in the heavenly chorus.
    Are you not weary of ardent ways?

    Your loving hands hold
    A cup full to the brim.
    Tell no more of enchanted days.

    And yet you answer my ardent questions
    With your sweet and tender lips!
    Are you not weary of ardent ways?
    Tell no more of enchanted days.


What birds are these? He paused on the threshold of his room to stare at
them, sipping thoughtfully at his cup. They flew round and round the
front garden of his house in The City. The light of the late
Summer sun gleamed on their wings, their tiny darting quivering
bodies as black against the sky as against a low-hanging curtain of
pale baby hair.

He watched their movements; bird by bird: a quick hop, a pause, a
beat of wings. He tried to count them as all the tiny
white birds did: nine, ten, eleven: he wondered were they even
or odd in number. Twelve, thirteen: then they were coming down from
the night sky. They were never high or low but gliding round and round
in straight and curving lines as if going from left to right,
gliding through a maze of tunnels.

He listened to their cry: like the cry of mice or of rats:
a single thin note. But these cries were clear and fine and shrill,
like the cries of birds, descending a third and a fourth and rising as
their sharp beaks pierced the air. Their flight was loud and clear and rising
and falling like ribbons of white silk torn into two parts.

The noisy sounds in his ears over which his mother’s warnings and
prayers echoed insistently in the air of tiny birds
wheeling and diving and gliding through the eddie currents of the
night had clouded his mind but he retained the image of his mother’s
face.

Why was she looking up from the steps of the tower, hearing that
strange bird song, watching their flight? As an agent of good or
evil? The thought of King Arthur flashed through his mind and then
there were hither and thither the words of Merlin of the
relation of man to creatures of the air and of how the
creatures of the air have all lives and all the seasons and
seasons and they, like man, believe in the order of all things and
have not lost that belief in time.

And for ages he had looked on that which tower and watched birds in flight.
The tower before him made him think again of the great hall of
the gods upon which he thought also of the measuring work of the
gods. A kind of fear of the gods was at the root of his
terror, a fear of signs and wonders, of the flying birds whose
image he saw rising out of the clouds on silk-white wings, of
Mar, the god of writing, sitting like a sphinx upon a throne and
counting on its op and watching the full moon.

He shuddered when he thought of the god’s name because it made him think of a
hard-faced man in a hurry, entering papers into a briefcase which he
held at arm’s length, and he knew that he should not have used the
god’s name and that it sounded like an Oath anyway. It was folly. And was it
for such reason that he was not to leave for good the life of virtue
and obedience into which he had been born and the tree of life out of
which he had grown?

Birds came in their shrill cries from the other side of the
river, black shadows in the night sky. What birds were they? He
knew that it must be birds that had come up from the sea.
Perhaps it was to fly away but why were they always coming and going,
building themselves an island city under the eaves of fishermen’s houses without
ever leaving the place they had come to inhabit.

    Look upon their eyes, Bjorn thought Suddenly.
    And gaze upon them as a sparrow gazes
    From its perch under the tree when
    It reaches the flowing water.


A soft liquid joy where the song of the birds flowed through his words
and he felt in his heart the liquid joy of the song of the
pale sky above the sea, of the swallows, the swallows rushing
through the night towards the flowing water.

A soft liquid joy flowing through his words where the waves of parting
came in and went out, ever gently rolling in and out
ringing the little bells in the night with mute ring and mute ring, a
soft and sweet sound; and he felt that the words he had felt in the
song of swallows and in the pale song of sky above sea had come
out of his mouth like a shot from a gun, suddenly and unexpectedly.

Words of joy or of sorrow? The voice whispered in the depths of
his soul and saw through his own eyes the scene in the
theatre on the night of the opening of the new opera. He stood there
at the edge of the stage, looking out with his eyes at the lights of
Dancing in the street and at the white masks of the actors
illuminated by the electric lights on the stage. A burly man stood
beside him and seemed at that moment ready to shoot. The shouts and
laughter and mocking applause came in strong waves into the room of his
shocked fellow actors.

—A ban on Women!

—Banned in England.

—Banned!

—We have lost our religion!

—No Amateur atheist ever had one!

—We want no amateur atheists.

—We want no amateur buddhists.

A soft light had come through the windows behind him and he saw that
the electric lights had been turned off in the men’s room. He went
into the main hall, which was empty, went up the stairs and
came out by the main door.

Cranly was sitting down by the table. A large bible, open at
the front, lay before him on its arm rest. He leaned forward in
his chair, putting his face like that of a teacher on the face of
a medical student who was reading to him a passage from the front
page of a journal. Dixon sat down to his left and the man on the
other side of the table closed his copy of _The Journal_ with an audible
click and stood up.

Cranly looked at him blandly and smiled. The medical student went on
in a low voice:

—Welcome to dixon’s laboratory.

—You had better go, Doctor, said Stephen in reply. He had begun to
tremble.

He closed the journal and bowed with dignity, saying:

—The professor is in good hands.

—With respect you will, said Dixon, pointing to the cover of
Cranly’s book on which was written _Doctor stephen cr S_.

As they passed through the rest of the room Dixon said:

—Cranly, I need to speak with you.

Cranly did not stop or answer. He put the book on the table and
walked away, his leather-clad boots clicking loudly on the floor. At the
door he turned and looking straight at Dixon said:

—Welcome to dixon’s books room.

—Keep it that way if you like, Dixon replied.

He had a pleasant enough voice and good looks and on a finger of his
very left hand he wore a small gold signet ring.

As they entered the room a man of small stature came towards them.
Under the rim of his felt hat his human face seemed to glow with
warmth and he was easy to spot. His eyes were large like those
of a monkey.

—Good morning, captain, said the full-sized human face.

—Nice weather for March, said Cranly. I see the doors open
already.

Dixon smiled and showed his teeth. The small, slightly-protruding face
opened its little lips in apparent pleasure and its voice said:

—Nice weather for March. How nice.

—There are some lovely young ladies about, captain, ladies in particular,
It said.

Cranly smiled and said gently:

—The world has but one writer: sir Walter Scott. Isn’t that right,
dixon?

—What are you reading now, captain? He asked. _The Bride of
Frankenstein?_

—I like walter Scott, the thin man said, I think he wrote something
good. That way no one can read sir Walter Scott.

He waved his thin dark right hand gently in the air in response to the
question and his thin dark left hand hovered over his white beard.

Strange to Laurence’s ears was his voice: a scottish voice, high and
thin, broken and strange, and, listening to it, he wondered was the
voice scottish or was the thin blood that flowed through his thin body
cold and full of old highland blood?

The silent trees were wet with dew; the stars hung low as clouds over
the lake, dark and like a corpse. A flock of swans was overhead and the
water and the leaves beneath were glistening with their own reflections.
They spoke softly, drawn by the soft falling leaves, the wet silent
trees, the moon and stars, the voices. They spoke of
love and death, his arms around his mother’s waist. A dark woollen blanket
was spread over her from her shoulders to her ankles and her fair
head was cradled by a brother. He had long dark hair and long
and strong freckled hands. Face? There was no face here. The
brother’s head was resting on her own night-dark shoulder. The hand
long and strong and warm and dry was Davin’s own.

He spat blood on the floor and at the young man who
had brought him here. His mother’s hands on the Bed had slipped out
of his grasp. He kept them at a distance and focused instead on his
own hands now. Why were they not Mother’s hands? Had Mother’s
strength and courage made them so strong?

He went back into the library with Stephen, standing Up to see the
progress of the proceedings.

Under the stage Temple was standing in the middle of a small group
of students. One of them said:

—Stephen, bend over if you please. Temple was in top form.

He fixed on stephen with his dark eyes.

—You’re a writer, O’Connell, he said. And So is a smiler. By hell,
I think it’s a good enough name.

Temple smiled back, right in Stephen’s face, saying:

—By hell, I’m familiar with that term. A lot.

A third student who sat opposite temple on the couch said:

—Get back to your book, Stephen. I want to hear about it.

—He did, too, Temple said. And he was a good man too. And all the
masters seemed to be in touch. By hell, I think they all had in touch.

—We could put him in a box and call him master, stephen Said.

—Tell me, Master, O’Keeffe said, how many years of life have we given
him?

—Half of his life is in the box, O’Keeffe, said Temple
with some satisfaction.

He walked with a slow pace towards the door and turned to Stephen.

—Do you know that the Forsters were once kings of Flanders? he asked.

Cranly came in through the door of the entrance hall, his head leaning
forward on the back of his chair and picking his words with care.

—Now that’s a start, said Stephen. Do you know anything about the
Family?

Stephen waited for an answer. Cranly took a tooth between his teeth with
the tip of a long finger and looked at it carefully.

—The Forster family, He says, is descended from Baldwin the First,
king of Flanders. He was also a Forester. Baldwin and Forster are
the same name. A descendant of Baldwin the First, named Bald
Head, settled in Scotland and married the daughter of the last
laird of Moffat. Then there were the Scottish Forsters. It’s a
scottish name.

—Baldwin First, king of Flanders, Cranly repeated, looking more
closely at his partially missing finger.

—Where did you pick up all this information? O’Connell asked.

—I know about the history of your family, stephen, Dixon said, turning towards
Him. Do you know what De Villiers said about your grandfather?

—Was he descended from You too? asked a very stout student
with bulging eyes.

—Yes, Cranly said, picking at a tooth between his teeth.

—_Pernobilis et pervetusta familia,_ Dixon said to Himself.

The young man who sat opposite him on the bench smiled slightly.
Dixon turned towards him, asking in a low voice:

—Did the devil escape?

He smiled again and said quietly and without conviction:

—Goggins, you’re the most evil person I ever met, do you know.

—I had it in my heart to say so, Goggins said quietly. It did no
one any good, did it?

—I hope, He said quietly, that it was not of the kind known to
us as the _of the devil._

—Didn’t I tell you he was a devil? asked Voice, looking right and
left. Didn’t I tell you his name?

—You did. You’re both drunk, said the most sober.

Stephen just stared at the drunken man before him. Then, with a look
of disgust, he pushed him back down the hill.

—Get away from me, he said angrily. Get away, you idiot. And you are
a fool.

He jumped back on to the hill and at last returned to his companions
in good order. He turned back to Stephen and asked:

—Do you believe in the doctrine of death?

—Are you who or what are you and what are you trying to prove? asked
Stephen, looking down at him with an expression of astonishment.

—The most profound thing ever written, He said with pride,
quoting the passage at the beginning of the poem. This is the
doctrine of death.

He looked Up again at the poet and asked him:

—Do you know how true this is that you are a man?

Cranly waved his long arms.

—Look at us! he said with joy to the audience. Look at Stephen’s face!

They laughed at his words and departed. Temple looked at him bravely,
saying:

—Cranly, you’re still laughing at me. I can see that. But I am as strong
as you every day. Do you know what I think of you now as compared to
me?

—My dear brother, stephen Cr anthony, you are not, as you say,
so full of yourself.

—But do you know, He went on, what I think of you and of stephen
put anthony?

—Out with it, Temple! cr or head shouted from the doorway. Get him
back to bed!

Temple looked right and left, making small helpless gestures as he
did.

—I’m a ballocks, he said, shaking his head in disbelief. I know what I think
I am. And I like it that I do.

Stephen clapped him lightly on the shoulder and said gently:

—And that gives you some dignity, Temple.

—And him, He said, turning to Cranly, he is a ballocks, too, like
me. But he doesn’t know it. And that’s the only thing I know.

A bubble of laughter accompanied these words. Then he turned back to Stephen
and said with a new eagerness:

—That number is a very english number. It’s the only English ball
number. Do you understand?

—Is it? Stephen nodded solemnly.

He was watching Cranly’s heavy-lid set face, lit up now with a
kind of desperate hope. The english light had washed over him as though
it passed over an old worn coat, full of dust; and, as stephen
watched him, he saw him raise his hand in farewell to touch the white
hair that stood out on his head like an ancient crown.

He came out onto the porch of the house and smiled at Stephen
in response to Stephen’s words. Why smile? Was there not a faint scar on
Stephen’s face? Why had he come forward to Stephen’s aid? The light had
faded. He could not remember.

Did this explain his father’s stony face, the cutting silence, the
occasional bursts of harsh laughter with which he had interrupted some of
Stephen’s more earnest prayers? Stephen felt rude then and
he had felt this way before by choice. Then he remembered the
day when he had walked down the old turnpike road to pray
to God in the woods of Windsor. He had thrown up his arms and listened with
awe to the rustling sounds of the trees, knowing that he was on holy
ground and at a holy service. And when the three sisters had come into
view round the bend in the turnpike road he had broken off his prayer to
take up fresh air for one last breath.

He began to beat the blunt end of his staff against the base of the
tree. Had They not heard him? Now he must die. The voices about him
ceased for a moment and the soft light came in from the branches above. But
no more wind was in the air and the birds whose song he had
heard with his ears were gone.

They had fled into the night. And now the tree was silent except
for the soft rain that fell. And even the voices about him had
ceased their singing. Night is falling.

    She came through the trees.


Her sweet voice, clear in the dim light, rose like a heavenly perfume
towards him. But which? Her voice in the night air or the voice
with its rising pitch and its answering tone, deep and rich?

He walked back down into the deep shadow at the foot of the
tree, hitting the ground lightly with a stick to break his attention
from the one thing he had forgotten: he used his eyes to bring back
to himself the faces of Tom and Tom and Tom.

Eyes, freed from the clutches of memory, eyes that saw the
far future. What was their soft touch but the touch of
death? And what was their shimmer but the shimmer of the blood that
filled the nostrils of the corpse like a hot Breath. And he spoke
in the voice of the pa van, the voice of the father,
the old man, and saw through the fog of the young women of
The Village watching from the windows with open eyes and the
laughing men in the streets and the dogs barking, then returning
to the past, time and time again.

The visions he had seen gave him no comfort. They were vague and
fleeting and his mind was already clouded by her. It was not the way
to speak of her. It was not even the manner in which he thought of her.
Did his mind still speak of her? Soft voice, but filled with a
deep anger and the tongue Lash lashed out between the
clenched teeth.

It was neither sound nor sight but he knew somehow that the voice
was carried clearly over the wind. At once and even more
strongly he smelled her body. A deep hunger rose in his throat.
No, it was her that he smelled, her sweet and sweet flesh, the soft
skin over which the blood had flowed freely and the same fine
hair from which the wind carried pollen like morning dew.

A tick crawled up the back of his neck and, slipping his thumb and
forefinger up under his shirt collar, he seized it. He held the
tick, hard and hard as a piece of metal, between thumb and finger
for an instant before he let it slip from him and wondered whether to
live or die. It came into his mind a latin saying from The codex
Codex that said that the lice parasites in human beings were not punished by
Mixing with the other parasites before the third day. But the life of the
back of his neck made his throat hot and dry. The thought of his mother, sick
again, moth eaten, being sick, made him close his eyes in a sudden
feeling of despair and in the darkness he saw the glistening black eyes
of demons falling from the sky and cursed them as they fell. Oh, but
it was not demons that fell from the sky. It was flies.

    Flies fell from the sky.


He had not yet read the Poet’s poem. All the images he had
seen were nonsense. His tongue was rusty. His feet had been full
of the blood of demons.

He walked back up along the path towards the house and sighed.
Well done, let her go and be kind to her! I would be a good
man who dressed himself from neck to the waist and had no
fat on his body. Bless me.

He had taken a small fig from the pouch in his tunic and
was chewing it slowly and thoughtfully. He sat on the top of a
tree, head bowed, his hat pulled down over his brown hair. A stout
young man came out onto the path, a small flag tucked into his
arm. He walked towards the group, striking the flags with the heels
of his boots and adjusting the top of his black umbrella. Then, raising
the umbrella in front, he said to them:

—Good evening, gentlemen.

He struck the flags again and tittered as his umbrella shook with a
sudden rhythmic vibration. The squat irish student noticed Reilly and
O’Reilly were speaking in English and did not hear him. Then, turning
to Cranly, he said:

—Good evening, good evening sir.

He raised his umbrella in front and tittered again. Cranly, who was
still chewing the fig, answered with sudden snapping of his fingers.

—Sir? Sir. It is a good evening.

The squat student looked at him suspiciously and shook his umbrella hard
and fast.

—I can see, i know, that you are trying to make rude speech.

—No, Cranly said, spitting out what remained of the partially chewed fig
and pushing it into the squat student’s mouth as if saying he would
bite.

The squat student did not like this and, in a good tone,
said loudly, while shaking and beating the ground with his
foot:

—Do you mean that...

He broke off, pointed bluntly at the dried remains of the fig, and said
loudly:

—I agree with you.

—Yes, Cranly replied as usual.

—Do you mean that what, the squat student asked, as _in a_ tone,
let us know, or permission to know?

He stepped away from the tree, saying:

—He is looking for you, Glynn. He has gone down to the River
to look for you in Particular. What brings him here? he asked, tapping
the portfolio on Glynn’s desk.

—My students, Glynn said. I give them the opportunity
to prove that they are bound by their will.

He again tapped the desk and spoke softly and calmly.

—Children! exclaimed Cranly suddenly. I suppose you mean the little
children who are enslaved by a bloody ape like him. God help us!

He finished off the last of his cigarette and threw down the butt.

—I suffer the children to come to me, Glynn said calmly.

—A bloody ape, Cranly said with disgust, is a very bloody
ape!

Temple stood up and, walking towards Him, addressed Glynn:

—That phrase i hear here, temple said, is from the old testament jesus
suffered the children to come to him.

—Go to hell then, Temple, said O’Reilly.

—Very well, then, Temple said, still addressing Glynn, but if
Jesus told the children to come why does the devil send them all
to hell if they are not? Why is that?

—Are you asking me, Sir? the bible scholar said.

—And why were they sent to hell if Jesus said they were not to come?
Temple said, his eyes on Glynn’s face.

Glynn smiled and spoke again, holding back some of the nervous
titter in his voice and raising his eyebrows with each word:

—Well, as you say, and it is true, I disagree on why all
this happened.

—Because the devil is cruel to the old sinners, Temple said.

—Are you not clear on that yourself, Brother? Dixon asked temple.

—Only Jesus said nothing about the people going to hell,
Temple said, and he was a very old sinner himself.

—I agree with you, Dixon said, but He got the impression that justification was
no good man.

—Don’t argue with him, Brother, Dixon caution him. Don’t speak to him
or look at him. Lead him along like a dog the way you’d lead a
farm hand.

—Hell! Temple said. It’s a roman word too. Like hell.

—Even with some words left out, Dixon thought.

He turned back to the crowd and said:

—I think I am representing the interests of those concerned by saying too much.

—You are, Dixon said in a neutral tone. At this time Everyone was silent.

Dixon tapped the horn of his horn on the stone wall of the
pit.

—Yes, He said. I do know the meaning of limb and hell from
Latin. Hell is Hard, like the demons of the Underworld, dark and terrible.
But what is limbo?

—Put him back in the pit, Cranly, O’Connell cried out.

Cranly took a menacing step towards Dixon, and, stamping his foot,
said as if to a child:

—No!

Temple backed away slowly.

—Do you know what limbo is? he asked. Do you know what they call a place
like this in Rome?

—Yes! Thank you! Stephen said, opening his mouth.

—Neither my tongue nor my mouth! He cried out desperately. But that’s
what They call it.

—Give me the stick now, He said.

He snatched the stick away from Stephen’s hand and started down
the path: the Dog, seeing him off in pursuit, ran through the
grass like a wild animal, fast and sure-footed. Cranly’s heavy
steps were heard as first entering the path and then
descending it, spitting and kicking up grass with each step.

Each stride was measured and with an almost savage force he thrust the stick
back into Stephen’s hand. Stephen saw that his friend wanted to object
and, with reluctance, lifted his head slightly and said quietly:

—Cranly, I told you I wanted to talk to you. Come away.

Cranly looked at him for a few seconds then said:

—Now?

—Yes, now, Stephen said. I can’t stay here. Come away.

They crossed the porch together without speaking. A distant voice
of _Man_ whistling loudly to him from the end of the
porch. Cranly turned, and Another, who also whistling, called out:

—Where are you running off to? What is your problem, Cranly?

They talked in whispers in the night air about a game of cards
to be played at the Nearby tavern. Stephen walked away quickly and out into
the darkness of The Street to Stephen’s where he stopped to think,
and listen. The door of the hotel, its highly polished windows, and
its broad portico struck him with a sense of bitter melancholy. He
looked thoughtfully up into the dimly lit rooms of the hotel in which
he saw the private apartments of the viceroy of France sitting and
talking. He thought of the farmers and their wives: he
saw them walking the roads of the countryside; they knew the names of
the Peasant families and gave them their orders in the
shrill voices that rang in their harsh houses.

How could he know their names and not cast a spell upon the
minds of their children, of the children feeding on them,
that they might become a race more savage than his own? And in the
gathering dusk he saw the thoughts and feelings of the people to whom he
spoke moving restless and uncertain along the winding roads, among and
at the side of fields and beside the rain-swollen streams. A woman had
stood in the doorway when Davin had passed by one day and, offering him
a bowl of honey, had all but led him to her bed; and She had the kind
eyes of one who should not love. For surely no woman’s eyes ever love.

His arm was seized in a fierce grip and Cranly’s voice said:

—Let me not go.

They walked on in silence. Then Cranly said:

—You little fool, Stephen! I swear to God, do you understand, that
You’ll be the same as that woman in london.

But his voice was no longer gentle and Stephen only was still aware
of the call to go to the door.

He turned to his heel and walked away as well. After they had walked in
silence for some time Stephen said:

—Cranly, I had an old conversation this morning.

—With other people? Cranly asked.

—With my mother.

—Your mother?

—Yes, Stephen said.

After a while Cranly said:

—What old is your mother?

—Very old, Stephen said. She wants me to do my civic duty.

—And will you?

—I will not, Stephen said.

—Will you? Cranly asked.

—I will not either, said Stephen.

—That promise was made yesterday, Cranly said calmly.

—It is no more yesterday, said Stephen weakly.

Cranly touched Stephen’s shoulder, said:

—Be calm, my young friend. You’re an extremely nervous man, as you say.

He laughed softly as he spoke and, looking down into Stephen’s face
with kind and gentle eyes, said:

—Do you know that you are an intelligent man?

—I know I am, said Stephen, laughing again.

Their faces, although apart, seemed somehow to have been drawn
together, one to the other.

—Do you believe in the supernatural? Cranly asked.

—I do not, Stephen answered.

—Do you know it?

—I neither believe in it nor know of it, Stephen answered.

—Many persons have doubts, especially young ones, whether to overcome
them or put them aside, Cranly said. Are your doubts at this moment very
strong?

—I do not want to overcome them, Stephen answered.

Cranly, pausing for a moment, took a fig from his pocket and
was about to eat it when Stephen said:

—Don’t, sir. You cannot ask a question with your mouth full
of a fig.

Cranly ate the fig by the light of the lantern by which he stood.
Then he grasped it with his teeth, tore a small piece, spat it out and
threw the fig rudely into the fire. Watching it where it burned, he said:

—Turn from ashes, so quickly, to a flame!

Seizing Stephen’s attention, he went on speaking and observing:

—Do you not know that such things will be offered to you on the day of
resurrection?

—What is for you on the other day? Stephen asked. An hour of
leisure in the company of the master of ceremonies?

—So, Cranly said, that you will be happy.

—Happy, Stephen said word perfect, quick, silent, quiet and,
above all, happy.

—It is a strange thing, if you notice, Cranly observed gently, that
your mind is filled with a thought in which you believe and
believe. Did you believe in god when you were at school? I thought you
did.

—I did, Stephen said.

—And were you happy then? Cranly asked gently, more than you are
now, for example?

—Very unhappy, Stephen said, very very unhappy. I was someone else then.

—Was someone else? What do you mean by this statement?

—I mean, dear Boy, that I was not happy as I am now, as I had to
become.

—Happy as you are now, not as you had to become, Cranly said. Let me
ask you a question. Did you love your father?

Stephen shook his head slowly.

—I don’t know what those words mean, he said sadly.

—Have you ever loved anyone? Cranly asked.

—Do you love god?

—I am not sure of that, Cranly said in a puzzled voice. I ask you have
you ever felt love for anyone or anything?

Stephen walked slowly towards his house, looking down at the ground.

—I tried to love God, he said at last. It seems that I failed. It was
very hard. I tried to align my life to the love of God instant
by one. So that I would not again fail. I can still do it
now...

Cranly cut him off by saying:

—And your mother had a happy life?

—How should I know? Stephen asked.

—How many children was she?

—Nine or ten, Stephen said. She died.

—And your father.... Cranly stopped speaking for an instant, and
then said: I don’t want to go into the family business. And was your
father what you call well-to-do? I mean, when you were growing up?

—Yes, Stephen said.

—What was he? Cranly asked after a pause.

Stephen began to describe all his father’s activities.

—A law clerk, an attorney, a journalist, an aspiring writer, an aspiring
artist, a struggling inventor, a failed inventor, a drunk, a bad
actor, a thief, somebody’s dog, involved in a divorce,
a murderer, a murderer and at last a victim of his own murder.

Cranly paused, tightened his grip on Stephen’s shoulder, and continued:

—Your memory is very good.

—Is there anything else you need to know? Stephen asked.

—Are you in good health at all?

—Do I look ill? Stephen asked bluntly.

—Well then, He went on cheerfully, you were living in the lap of luxury.

He said this as clearly and calmly as he was using his
words as if he wanted the audience to know that they were
spoken to him with respect.

—Your mother must have been through a great deal of pain, he said
seriously. Would you not try to prevent her from suffering more pain then... or
would you?

—If I could, Stephen replied, it would avail me very little.

—Then do it, He said. Do what she wants you to do. What is it to
you? You are doing it. It is your job: nothing else. And it will put
her mind at rest.

He paused and, when Stephen did not reply, fell silent. Then, as though
giving in to the urgency of his own thoughts, he said:

—Nothing else matters because in this cr hell of a world your
mother’s mind does nothing. Your mother carries you through this world, puts
you firmly in this place. What do you care about what she feels? Because
whatever she feels, it, at least, will be real. It must be. What are
your dreams and fantasies? No. No! Pascal, you stupid little pig
Already has ideas. He has ideas now. Every pig in the world
thinks he has ideas.

Stephen, who had been listening to the hidden meaning of these
words, said with some carelessness:

—Pascal, if I judge you, did not want his wife to touch him
because he liked the sound of their voices.

—He was a pig, said Cranly.

—And Jesus, I think, are of the same mind, Stephen replied.

—But he was a man jesus, said Cranly.

—The church calls him a man, Stephen replied.

—I don’t give a flying fuck what church calls him, Cranly said quickly
and angrily. I call him a pig.

Stephen, putting these things together in his mind, said:

—Jesus, too, seems to have treated his people with great contempt and
hatred and Philip, the great roman and Greek king, never
cared for him.

—Did the idea ever occur to you, Cranly asked, that Philip was indeed what
he appeared to be?

—The only person to whom that idea occurred, Stephen answered, was
Philip himself.

—You mean, Cranly said, pausing in his speech, did the idea ever occur
to you that philip was indeed a great christian, as he showed the
people of his empire, his magnificent glory? Or, to put it more simply, that
he was a jew?

—That idea never occurred to me, Stephen answered. But I am interested to
know are you trying to make a fool of me or a fool of philip?

He looked at his friend’s face and saw there a secret in which
a force of will managed to en en itself.

Cranly said then in a very serious tone:

—Tell me the truth. Were you at all shocked by what I said?

—No, Stephen replied.

—Then why are you speaking, Cranly went on in the same tone, because you
are sure that your testimony is wrong and that Jesus is not the son of
God?

—I am not at all sure of that, Stephen replied. He looks more like a son of God
than a son of Man.

—And is that why you are speaking now, Cranly asked, because you
are not sure of that too, because you fear that your jesus, stephen, may be
the flesh and blood of the son of God and not a bit of bread? Or
because you feel that he may be?

—Yes, Stephen said confidently, I feel that and I do fear him.

—I see, Cranly said.

Stephen, surprised by the change of topic, continued the conversation at last
by saying:

—I fear many things: men, animals, fire, the sea, machines,
machines, and the moon at night.

—Then why do you fear a bit of bread?

—I fear, Stephen said, that there is a false religion behind
the things I say And do.

—Do you fear then, Cranly asked, that the God of the Roman catholics
would strike you down and kill you if you made a new
religion?

—The God of the Roman catholics would do it anyway, Stephen replied. I fear
more then for a terrible pain that will be built up in my soul as
a permanent monument and a wall against which is pressed the spirit of
worship and devotion.

—Would you, Cranly asked, in any case, avoid any such
pain? For example, when you were in your younger years?

—I cannot speak about the past, Stephen replied. Certainly not.

—So, mr Stephen, you do not want to become a catholic?

—I thought that I had lost my faith, Stephen replied, but also that I had
become liberated. What kind of freedom would it be to reject an
idea which is rational and true and to accept that it is
false and irrational?

They had moved on to the streets of Town and now, as they
walked more slowly along the pavement, the sounds of the street vendors and
hawker vendors filled their ears. The sounds of laughter and conversation all
around them seemed to increase their pace. In a place called kitchen
a light shone from the window of the house and the voice of a woman
was heard singing as she passed by. She said, in the night
air:

_Mary O’Mary—_

She stopped to listen, then:

—_I am._

The pure pitch of the Single note touched with an intimate touch the
air of the street, with a touch deeper and more intimate than the
touch of bread back of a man’s hand. The hunger in their hearts was
aroused. The figure of the woman as she sang in the choir of the
night moved slowly in the street: a white-haired woman,
tall and thin as a child, bound in a leather collar. Her voice, thin
and high as a child’s, was heard singing in the night with the first
voice of a choir to break the frenzy and frenzy of the endless
singing of the night:

—_Et gloria et Gloria Et gloria._

And their eyes were fixed and fixed on the other, each like a
distant star, becoming clearer as the woman sang the words and
fading away as the voice faded.

The singing stopped. They looked up together, Stephen singing the last
verse and the beginning of the next:

    O now we are happy,
    Oh, how happy we’ll be
    When I meet my Rosie O’Grady
    My Rosie O’Grady and you.


—There’s no love like that, he said. There’s only you.

He looked down at Stephen with a sad smile and said:

—Did you know the song? And do you know what the words are?

—I wanted to find Rosie first, said Stephen.

—She’s easy to find, He said.

His hat had fallen down on his head. He pushed it up and in the
light of the moon He saw his handsome face, hidden in the hat, and
his deep blue eyes. Yes. His face was handsome and his heart was cold
and empty. He had dreams of his mother’s death. He knew all the ways
of men, the ways of their hearts and minds: he could grasp
them with a strong and powerful hand and open his heart to them.

And now: it was time to go. The voice spoke softly to Stephen’s cold
mind, bidding him farewell and telling him that their time was coming to
an end. Yes; he must go. He could not go to heaven. He played
his guitar.

—Then I must go now, he said.

—Where? Cranly asked.

—Where I live, Stephen replied.

—Yes, Cranly said. It must be good for you to be here now. What
is it that makes you leave?

—I want to go, Stephen said.

—Stephen, Cranly said, you need not look upon yourself as running
martyr if you do not wish to go out as a thief or an outlaw. There are
many true christians who live as you do. Does that bother you? The
church is not a single entity like all the others with its members.
It is the whole lives of those born into it. I don’t know what i want
to do with myself. Is that what you told me the night we were standing
outside Flinders Railway station?

—Yes, Stephen said, smiling in spite of himself at Cranly’s habit of
having conversations in rhyme public places. The night i spent half
an hour talking pot Heads about the whole way from Sallygap to
Larras.

—Heads! Cranly said with mock shock. What does heads know about the
way from Sallygap to Larras? And what does heads know about stephen for
that matter? Even that little w little bit about you!

He burst into a long loud laugh.

—Yes? Stephen said. Do you remember the night?

—What i remember, is it? Cranly asked. Yes, I remember it. I remember
no moment of music or of song where the soul could lose itself in
such freedom.

Stephen tipped his head in acknowledgement.

—Yes! Cranly said. But you are not old enough yet to commit this
crime. Tell me what to do?

—I will think it, Stephen said.

—And if you think it, will you act?

—You want me to believe, Stephen said, that the laws of heaven are
true, and that in what circumstances it is not lawful to
kill. I cannot believe in that either. But I will not give you an
answer. Go to the spanish priest Juan Ruiz de Torres who
will then explain to you in what circumstances you would rather kill
the man and whether you had to give him the blood of your enemies and
smear it on him with his sword or his knife. Would you then would I
allow them to rob you and, if they did, would I bring down upon them
what I believe is called the curse of the golden spurs?

—And would you?

—I would, Stephen replied, it would please me so much to do nothing but to be
killed.

—I see, Cranly said.

He struck a handkerchief and began to rub a finger between his lips.
Then he continued carelessly:

—Ask me, for instance, would i kill a man?

—Forgive me, Stephen said quickly, is that not the view of you
young man?

—What then is your point of view? Cranly asked.

This last question, as strong as the smell of smoke and
alcohol, penetrated Stephen’s head, into which the devil seemed to
descend.

—Look here, Cranly, stephen said. You have asked me what I would do and what
I would not do. I will tell you what I will do and what I will not do.
I will always defend that in which I no longer belong, whether it be
to my family, my friends, or the state: and I will endeavour to express
myself in any form of literature or poetry as freely as I can and as effectively as
I can, using in my defence the only means I permit myself to
use—namely, wit and irony.

Cranly took his arm and turned him round so as to lead him back
towards The House. He laughed ha slily and touched Stephen’s cheek
with a mother’s love.

—How sweet! he said. Is that so? You a child, stephen!

—And you made me confess to you, Stephen thought, warmed by his love,
that I have confessed to you so many terrible fears, have I not?

—No, my son, Cranly said, laughing again.

—You made me confess the fears that I fear. And I will tell you now
that I do not fear. I do not fear to be loved or to be mistaken for
another or to leave if I want to go. And I am not afraid to
make a mistake, not a small mistake, a long mistake, and for
as long as i live.

Cranly, growing tired now, slowed his laughter and said:

—Alone, all alone. I have no fear of that. Do you know what that
alone means? Not only to be isolated from all else but to have not
even one friend.

—I will take that friend, friend Always.

—Better than to take only one friend, Cranly thought, it would be more than one
friend, more even than the best and only friend any man ever had.

His words seemed to have plucked a new chord in his very soul. Had
he spoken of himself, of himself as he was and ought to be? Stephen
regarded his friend for some time in silence. A deep sorrow was felt.
He had spoken of himself, of his own doom as he was.

—Of whom are you speaking? He asked at last.

Cranly did not reply.

_Chapter_ 20. A conversation with Cranly on the subject of mother love.

He kept his charming smile on. Voice warm and friendly. Educated me on the
nature of love for one’s mother. Tried to understand his father: father.
Told me that, in a moment of weakness, his father was killed
before he was born. I remember him. A sturdy man. Black and white
hair. Big eyes. Long, white beard. Eats like a
fish. Pays his dues well if not according to The Laws of
Nature. Still talks to me at night. And his mother? Very
young or very old? Probably at birth. If so, She would not have
lived as she did. Not then. Alone, and alone. From Elizabeth’s
book of dreams: the dream of the dead.

_Night_ 21, _june_. Read it in bed that night but was too tired
or awake to listen to it. Yes, asleep. My own dreams and those of
Elizabeth and Elizabeth. And he is still alive. Dreams: he ate salt
and pepper and peeled apples. Drank wine and ate cheese. I, without
dreaming of him, see only his own severed head and death face as if
floating on a floating cloud above me. As i see myself in the
church. Saved for the dead by st John at the West end. What do I
see? Di a child trying to pick a lock.

_March_ 21, _march_. Sunday. Church free and cemetery free. Let the living marry
the dead. No. Never let the living marry the dead.

_March_ 22. Parted company with Her and her old lady friend.
Mother’s place. Found her. She was chasing dog hair off a
nail.

_March_ 23. Have you seen her since last night. Mother? Sitting by the
fire pit with mother’s head on her lap. Mother looked up. A
big pot of soup? Aren’t you hungry?

_March_ 24. Start with my conversation with my mother. Mother: M.A.S.
Embarrassed by my age and gender. Said i brought up differences between
Her and Mary and especially between Mary and her mother. Said this
is like a lying-in ritual. Self defense. Says I have a restless mind
and have read too much. Not true. I read more and pray more.
Then she said I cannot go back to church because I have a restless mind.
It hurts to leave church and think of jesus and re-enter through the
gate of hell. I know. Told her so and asked for
sixpence. Got it.

I went to bed. Another conversation with the italian priest cat’s father
Again. This time about Bruno and Me. Started in Italian and ended in
broken English. He said I was a roman catholic. I said i was
a catholic. He listened to me for a while. He asked my
reason for what he called _religion of death_. When he says
the word _death_ he parts his own bloody lips as if he swallowed the word.
Did he? And could he laugh? Yes, he said: i had two old man’s
tears, one in each eye.

And Bruno’s, that man, captain Bond, said that his father
and probably grandfather had practised what They the other day called their
religion. And both of them, soldiers of the first foot
guards, stood at the foot of the cross and picked up feathers from the
bodies of the dead.

Tried to read. Tried to read the letter. No. She is not out
again. Am I wrong? About what? Perhaps she will not come out again.

I wonder:

    I wonder if Captain Bond will too
    But know he is very busy.


Oh, poor William!

I was looking at the wall of Pictures. At one end were pictures of the
dead. Among them Was William Bond, alive and well. Chapter
sixteen _Oh, William, i have missed you._

A nest of dreams!

_December_ 25, _year_. A long nest of dreams. Try to get this off
your chest.

A long dark nest. From the sky rise clouds of dark clouds.
It is lit by the statues of two men, carved from stone. Their
hands are resting on their temples as if in prayer and their faces
are solemn and the dreams of men rise up from them as softly as water
drops.

The statues emerge slowly from the clouds. They are both as tall as me.
One does not seem to stand quite apart from me. Their robes are
white, with black sleeves. They look at me and their eyes
seem to tell me something. They do not speak.

_End_ 30. That night I stood on the steps of the temple,
explaining the story of Isis and her crocodile. A mother saw her child
fall into the River. Child fell with the water. The crocodile took the
child. Mother brought it back. He was all right and she told him
what he was going to do with the child, eat it or not eat it.

Your crocodile, You might say, was being pulled out of the mud by
the light of the moon.

And why? Was she pulled out? And into The river with him!

_April_ 1. Origin of the english name.

_April_ 2. Saw her drinking tea and eating cakes at Murphy’s, Murphy
and O’Neill’s. Brother, cross-eyed He eyed us as we entered. Mother told
me She was taken in by him. Did he find the light? Is
he the only one here? Yes, I saw it. Yes indeed I did.
Hiding it in a box of Rice cakes.

_April_ 3. Saw Davin in a coffee shop near Mother’s house. He
was wearing a blue shirt and carrying a walking stick. Asked him was it true He
was going there and back. Told him the only way to Go was _april_
April. And then my father showed up. Sunday. Very quiet and
formal. Asked Davin if he could give him some money. He
said no, was going to a meeting. When he walked away he told me he
had a very good idea. Asked me why I did not join the rowing club. I
had to think it over. Told me about how i broke Mom’s
heart. Wants me to study architecture. Said I was cut out for boats. Less snakes,
more crocodiles.

_April_ 5. Early morning. Gray sky. Lush vegetation! A patch of
green grass on which fairies have laid down their delicate
petals. Statues of women among the flowers. All laughing and smiling. All
white and light: no dark spots. I feel good. La-la!

_April_ 6. First she remembers the past. She thinks all women do.
Then she remembers the memories of her childhood—and wonders if She was still a
child. The past is living in the present and the present is living
here and it brings back the past. Statues of women, if I am
one, will soon be touching me, the hands of a woman touching
all her en loving friends.

_April_ 6, _may_. Then She has his hands and,
as his arms bring her close, she has in her arms the loveliness
which has long vanished from the world. Not yet. Not at all. I want to
have in my arms the loveliness which has not yet come into the world.

_May_ 10. Now, through the silent streets, in the streets of a
city which has passed from dream to dreamless dream of the one upon
whom its eyes rest, the sound of hooves on the pavement. Ever so distant
now as they draw near the cathedral; and for a moment, as they pass the
high gate, the ground is pierced with them as with an arrow. They
are gone and far off, stars still shining in the silent sky above them,
far across the empty city to their journey’s heart—whose
heart?—bringing happy home?

_April_ 11. Just what I needed last night. Simple words and a little
music. Will you like it? I hope so. Perhaps You will come to love it
too.

_April_ 13. This language has been on my mind for a long time. I look
it up and find oxford English and some cambridge university English here. Damn the dean
of cambridge and his students! What did he come here for to teach us our
new language or to steal it from us. Kill him one way or the other!

_April_ 14. Father O Mulrennan has just returned from the mountains of
Ireland. Here are Some things he said. He told how he met an
old man living in a log cabin. Old man had red beard and smoked tobacco.
Old man spoke English. Mulrennan spoke Irish. Both old man and Mulrennan
spoke Irish. Mulrennan spoke to him about moon and stars. Old man
sat, drank, smoked, laughed. He said:

—Father, there shall be some evil man at the other end of the
world.

I fear him. I fear his black glowing eyes. It is with him I shall
dwell in darkness till night and day come, till he sees Me lying here,
holding him by his bloody throat and... Then what? Will you come to
me? No. I mean no harm.

_End_ 15. Saw her looking at me in The Crowd. The crowd
pushed us aside. We were alone. She asked me why I had come,
said she had heard all kinds of things about me. It was time to kill
me. About whom was I hearing things? From whom? I asked her. This
frightened her greatly and I felt angry and ashamed. Turned to the crowd at
large and described the all-important torture methods, invented
and used in many places by Dante Alighieri. I spoke of
myself and my death. In the middle of this speech I made a little
gesture of a theatrical sort. It must have looked like a man
throwing a handful of bread into the air. She turned to look at me.
We held hands a while longer and, before turning away, said she hoped I
would repeat what She said.

Now You like her today, don’t you?

Yes, I like her today. A little too much? Don’t worry. I like her and
it is a good thing for me. Well, in that case, all the rest, all
that I thought I saw and all that I thought I heard, all the time
until today, in fact... Well, sleep it off, old chap! Sleep it off!

_End_ 16. Away! Away!

The song of arms and ships: the white sails of men, their ties and
their banners and the black sails of the ships that sail beneath the
sun, the ships of all nations. Arms are held high and say: You are
coming—brother. And other arms go with them: We are your brothers. And the
air is alive with their song as they bow to me, my brother,
all ready to fly, on the wings of their great and glorious
ships.

_April_ 26. Mother is getting my old school papers in order. She
thinks now, she says, that I must be in my own house and learn from family
and friends what the world is and how it works. No. So be it.
Life, My brother! I want to know for the first time the truth
of life and to carry in the depths of my soul the secret
history of my people.

_April_ 27. My brother, the captain, stands for ever and is in my
heart.


Boston, 1904.

Boston, 1914.