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Ulysses 

6 

of

 1305 

—God! he said quietly. Isn’t the sea what Algy calls it: a 

great sweet mother? The snotgreen sea. The 

scrotumtightening sea. Epi oinopa ponton. Ah, Dedalus, the 

Greeks! I must teach you. You must read them in the 

original. Thalatta! Thalatta! She is our great sweet mother. 

Come and look. 

Stephen stood up and went over to the parapet. 

Leaning on it he looked down on the water and on the 

mailboat clearing the harbourmouth of Kingstown. 

—Our mighty mother! Buck Mulligan said. 

He turned abruptly his grey searching eyes from the sea 

to Stephen’s face. 

—The aunt thinks you killed your mother, he said. 

That’s why she won’t let me have anything to do with 

you. 

—Someone killed her, Stephen said gloomily. 

—You could have knelt down, damn it, Kinch, when 

your dying mother asked you, Buck Mulligan said. I’m 

hyperborean as much as you. But to think of your mother 

begging you with her last breath to kneel down and pray 

for her. And you refused. There is something sinister in 

you ... 

He broke off and lathered again lightly his farther 

cheek. A tolerant smile curled his lips. 

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Ulysses 

7 

of

 1305 

—But a lovely mummer! he murmured to himself. 

Kinch, the loveliest mummer of them all! 

He shaved evenly and with care, in silence, seriously. 

Stephen, an elbow rested on the jagged granite, leaned 

his palm against his brow and gazed at the fraying edge of 

his shiny black coat-sleeve. Pain, that was not yet the pain 

of love, fretted his heart. Silently, in a dream she had come 

to him after her death, her wasted body within its loose 

brown graveclothes giving off an odour of wax and 

rosewood, her breath, that had bent upon him, mute, 

reproachful, a faint odour of wetted ashes. Across the 

threadbare cuffedge he saw the sea hailed as a great sweet 

mother by the wellfed voice beside him. The ring of bay 

and skyline held a dull green mass of liquid. A bowl of 

white china had stood beside her deathbed holding the 

green sluggish bile which she had torn up from her rotting 

liver by fits of loud groaning vomiting. 

Buck Mulligan wiped again his razorblade. 

—Ah, poor dogsbody! he said in a kind voice. I must 

give you a shirt and a few noserags. How are the 

secondhand breeks? 

—They fit well enough, Stephen answered. 

Buck Mulligan attacked the hollow beneath his 

underlip. 

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Ulysses 

8 

of

 1305 

—The mockery of it, he said contentedly. Secondleg 

they should be. God knows what poxy bowsy left them 

off. I have a lovely pair with a hair stripe, grey. You’ll 

look spiffing in them. I’m not joking, Kinch. You look 

damn well when you’re dressed. 

—Thanks, Stephen said. I can’t wear them if they are 

grey. 

—He can’t wear them, Buck Mulligan told his face in 

the mirror. Etiquette is etiquette. He kills his mother but 

he can’t wear grey trousers. 

He folded his razor neatly and with stroking palps of 

fingers felt the smooth skin. 

Stephen turned his gaze from the sea and to the plump 

face with its smokeblue mobile eyes. 

—That fellow I was with in the Ship last night, said 

Buck Mulligan, says you have g.p.i. He’s up in Dottyville 

with Connolly Norman. General paralysis of the insane! 

He swept the mirror a half circle in the air to flash the 

tidings abroad in sunlight now radiant on the sea. His 

curling shaven lips laughed and the edges of his white 

glittering teeth. Laughter seized all his strong wellknit 

trunk. 

—Look at yourself, he said, you dreadful bard! 

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Ulysses 

9 

of

 1305 

Stephen bent forward and peered at the mirror held out 

to him, cleft by a crooked crack. Hair on end. As he and 

others see me. Who chose this face for me? This dogsbody 

to rid of vermin. It asks me too. 

—I pinched it out of the skivvy’s room, Buck Mulligan 

said. It does her all right. The aunt always keeps 

plainlooking servants for Malachi. Lead him not into 

temptation. And her name is Ursula. 

Laughing again, he brought the mirror away from 

Stephen’s peering eyes. 

—The rage of Caliban at not seeing his face in a 

mirror, he said. If Wilde were only alive to see you! 

Drawing back and pointing, Stephen said with 

bitterness: 

—It is a symbol of Irish art. The cracked looking-glass 

of a servant. 

Buck Mulligan suddenly linked his arm in Stephen’s 

and walked with him round the tower, his razor and 

mirror clacking in the pocket where he had thrust them. 

—It’s not fair to tease you like that, Kinch, is it? he said 

kindly. God knows you have more spirit than any of 

them. 

Parried again. He fears the lancet of my art as I fear that 

of his. The cold steelpen. 

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Ulysses 

10 

of

 1305 

—Cracked lookingglass of a servant! Tell that to the 

oxy chap downstairs and touch him for a guinea. He’s 

stinking with money and thinks you’re not a gentleman. 

His old fellow made his tin by selling jalap to Zulus or 

some bloody swindle or other. God, Kinch, if you and I 

could only work together we might do something for the 

island. Hellenise it. 

Cranly’s arm. His arm. 

—And to think of your having to beg from these 

swine. I’m the only one that knows what you are. Why 

don’t you trust me more? What have you up your nose 

against me? Is it Haines? If he makes any noise here I’ll 

bring down Seymour and we’ll give him a ragging worse 

than they gave Clive Kempthorpe. 

Young shouts of moneyed voices in Clive 

Kempthorpe’s rooms. Palefaces: they hold their ribs with 

laughter, one clasping another. O, I shall expire! Break the 

news to her gently, Aubrey! I shall die! With slit ribbons 

of his shirt whipping the air he hops and hobbles round 

the table, with trousers down at heels, chased by Ades of 

Magdalen with the tailor’s shears. A scared calf’s face 

gilded with marmalade. I don’t want to be debagged! 

Don’t you play the giddy ox with me! 

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