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Ulysses 

46 

of

 1305 

They bundled their books away, pencils clacking, pages 

rustling. Crowding together they strapped and buckled 

their satchels, all gabbling gaily: 

—A riddle, sir? Ask me, sir. 

—O, ask me, sir. 

—A hard one, sir. 

—This is the riddle, Stephen said: 

The cock crew, 

The sky was blue: 

The bells in heaven 

Were striking eleven. 

‘Tis time for this poor soul 

To go to heaven. 

What is that? 

—What, sir? 

—Again, sir. We didn’t hear. 

Their eyes grew bigger as the lines were repeated. After 

a silence Cochrane said: 

—What is it, sir? We give it up. 

Stephen, his throat itching, answered: 

—The fox burying his grandmother under a hollybush. 

He stood up and gave a shout of nervous laughter to 

which their cries echoed dismay. 

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A stick struck the door and a voice in the corridor 

called: 

—Hockey! 

They broke asunder, sidling out of their benches, 

leaping them. Quickly they were gone and from the 

lumberroom came the rattle of sticks and clamour of their 

boots and tongues. 

Sargent who alone had lingered came forward slowly, 

showing an open copybook. His thick hair and scraggy 

neck gave witness of unreadiness and through his misty 

glasses weak eyes looked up pleading. On his cheek, dull 

and bloodless, a soft stain of ink lay, dateshaped, recent 

and damp as a snail’s bed. 

He held out his copybook. The word Sums was written 

on the headline. Beneath were sloping figures and at the 

foot a crooked signature with blind loops and a blot. Cyril 

Sargent: his name and seal. 

—Mr Deasy told me to write them out all again, he 

said, and show them to you, sir. 

Stephen touched the edges of the book. Futility. 

—Do you understand how to do them now? he asked. 

—Numbers eleven to fifteen, Sargent answered. Mr 

Deasy said I was to copy them off the board, sir. 

—Can you do them. yourself? Stephen asked. 

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—No, sir. 

Ugly and futile: lean neck and thick hair and a stain of 

ink, a snail’s bed. Yet someone had loved him, borne him 

in her arms and in her heart. But for her the race of the 

world would have trampled him underfoot, a squashed 

boneless snail. She had loved his weak watery blood 

drained from her own. Was that then real? The only true 

thing in life? His mother’s prostrate body the fiery 

Columbanus in holy zeal bestrode. She was no more: the 

trembling skeleton of a twig burnt in the fire, an odour of 

rosewood and wetted ashes. She had saved him from being 

trampled underfoot and had gone, scarcely having been. A 

poor soul gone to heaven: and on a heath beneath 

winking stars a fox, red reek of rapine in his fur, with 

merciless bright eyes scraped in the earth, listened, scraped 

up the earth, listened, scraped and scraped. 

Sitting at his side Stephen solved out the problem. He 

proves by algebra that Shakespeare’s ghost is Hamlet’s 

grandfather. Sargent peered askance through his slanted 

glasses. Hockeysticks rattled in the lumberroom: the 

hollow knock of a ball and calls from the field. 

Across the page the symbols moved in grave morrice, 

in the mummery of their letters, wearing quaint caps of 

squares and cubes. Give hands, traverse, bow to partner: 

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so: imps of fancy of the Moors. Gone too from the world, 

Averroes and Moses Maimonides, dark men in mien and 

movement, flashing in their mocking mirrors the obscure 

soul of the world, a darkness shining in brightness which 

brightness could not comprehend. 

—Do you understand now? Can you work the second 

for yourself? 

—Yes, sir. 

In long shaky strokes Sargent copied the data. Waiting 

always for a word of help his hand moved faithfully the 

unsteady symbols, a faint hue of shame flickering behind 

his dull skin. Amor matris: subjective and objective 

genitive. With her weak blood and wheysour milk she had 

fed him and hid from sight of others his swaddling bands. 

Like him was I, these sloping shoulders, this 

gracelessness. My childhood bends beside me. Too far for 

me to lay a hand there once or lightly. Mine is far and his 

secret as our eyes. Secrets, silent, stony sit in the dark 

palaces of both our hearts: secrets weary of their tyranny: 

tyrants, willing to be dethroned. 

The sum was done. 

—It is very simple, Stephen said as he stood up. 

—Yes, sir. Thanks, Sargent answered. 

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He dried the page with a sheet of thin blottingpaper 

and carried his copybook back to his bench. 

—You had better get your stick and go out to the 

others, Stephen said as he followed towards the door the 

boy’s graceless form. 

—Yes, sir. 

In the corridor his name was heard, called from the 

playfield. 

—Sargent! 

—Run on, Stephen said. Mr Deasy is calling you. 

He stood in the porch and watched the laggard hurry 

towards the scrappy field where sharp voices were in strife. 

They were sorted in teams and Mr Deasy came away 

stepping over wisps of grass with gaitered feet. When he 

had reached the schoolhouse voices again contending 

called to him. He turned his angry white moustache. 

—What is it now? he cried continually without 

listening. 

—Cochrane and Halliday are on the same side, sir, 

Stephen said. 

—Will you wait in my study for a moment, Mr Deasy 

said, till I restore order here. 

And as he stepped fussily back across the field his old 

man’s voice cried sternly: 

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