This eBook is designed and published by Planet pdf. For more free



Yüklə 3,16 Mb.
Pdf görüntüsü
səhifə3/221
tarix09.08.2018
ölçüsü3,16 Mb.
#62211
1   2   3   4   5   6   7   8   9   ...   221

Ulysses 

11 


of

 1305 


Shouts from the open window startling evening in the 

quadrangle. A deaf gardener, aproned, masked with 

Matthew Arnold’s face, pushes his mower on the sombre 

lawn watching narrowly the dancing motes of grasshalms. 

To ourselves ... new paganism ... omphalos. 

—Let him stay, Stephen said. There’s nothing wrong 

with him except at night. 

—Then what is it? Buck Mulligan asked impatiently. 

Cough it up. I’m quite frank with you. What have you 

against me now? 

They halted, looking towards the blunt cape of Bray 

Head that lay on the water like the snout of a sleeping 

whale. Stephen freed his arm quietly. 

—Do you wish me to tell you? he asked. 

—Yes, what is it? Buck Mulligan answered. I don’t 

remember anything. 

He looked in Stephen’s face as he spoke. A light wind 

passed his brow, fanning softly his fair uncombed hair and 

stirring silver points of anxiety in his eyes. 

Stephen, depressed by his own voice, said: 

—Do you remember the first day I went to your house 

after my mother’s death? 

Buck Mulligan frowned quickly and said: 



Ulysses 

12 


of

 1305 


—What? Where? I can’t remember anything. I 

remember only ideas and sensations. Why? What 

happened in the name of God? 

—You were making tea, Stephen said, and went across 

the landing to get more hot water. Your mother and some 

visitor came out of the drawingroom. She asked you who 

was in your room. 

—Yes? Buck Mulligan said. What did I say? I forget. 

—You said, Stephen answered, O, it’s only Dedalus 

whose mother is beastly dead. 

A flush which made him seem younger and more 

engaging rose to Buck Mulligan’s cheek. 

—Did I say that? he asked. Well? What harm is that? 

He shook his constraint from him nervously. 

—And what is death, he asked, your mother’s or yours 

or my own? You saw only your mother die. I see them 

pop off every day in the Mater and Richmond and cut up 

into tripes in the dissectingroom. It’s a beastly thing and 

nothing else. It simply doesn’t matter. You wouldn’t kneel 

down to pray for your mother on her deathbed when she 

asked you. Why? Because you have the cursed jesuit strain 

in you, only it’s injected the wrong way. To me it’s all a 

mockery and beastly. Her cerebral lobes are not 

functioning. She calls the doctor sir Peter Teazle and picks 



Ulysses 

13 


of

 1305 


buttercups off the quilt. Humour her till it’s over. You 

crossed her last wish in death and yet you sulk with me 

because I don’t whinge like some hired mute from 

Lalouette’s. Absurd! I suppose I did say it. I didn’t mean to 

offend the memory of your mother. 

He had spoken himself into boldness. Stephen, 

shielding the gaping wounds which the words had left in 

his heart, said very coldly: 

—I am not thinking of the offence to my mother. 

—Of what then? Buck Mulligan asked. 

—Of the offence to me, Stephen answered. 

Buck Mulligan swung round on his heel. 

—O, an impossible person! he exclaimed. 

He walked off quickly round the parapet. Stephen 

stood at his post, gazing over the calm sea towards the 

headland. Sea and headland now grew dim. Pulses were 

beating in his eyes, veiling their sight, and he felt the fever 

of his cheeks. 

A voice within the tower called loudly: 

—Are you up there, Mulligan? 

—I’m coming, Buck Mulligan answered. 

He turned towards Stephen and said: 




Ulysses 

14 


of

 1305 


—Look at the sea. What does it care about offences? 

Chuck Loyola, Kinch, and come on down. The Sassenach 

wants his morning rashers. 

His head halted again for a moment at the top of the 

staircase, level with the roof: 

—Don’t mope over it all day, he said. I’m 

inconsequent. Give up the moody brooding. 

His head vanished but the drone of his descending 

voice boomed out of the stairhead: 

And no more turn aside and brood 

Upon love’s bitter mystery 

For Fergus rules the brazen cars. 

Woodshadows floated silently by through the morning 

peace from the stairhead seaward where he gazed. Inshore 

and farther out the mirror of water whitened, spurned by 

lightshod hurrying feet. White breast of the dim sea. The 

twining stresses, two by two. A hand plucking the 

harpstrings, merging their twining chords. Wavewhite 

wedded words shimmering on the dim tide. 

A cloud began to cover the sun slowly, wholly, 

shadowing the bay in deeper green. It lay beneath him, a 

bowl of bitter waters. Fergus’ song: I sang it alone in the 

house, holding down the long dark chords. Her door was 




Ulysses 

15 


of

 1305 


open: she wanted to hear my music. Silent with awe and 

pity I went to her bedside. She was crying in her wretched 

bed. For those words, Stephen: love’s bitter mystery. 

Where now? 

Her secrets: old featherfans, tasselled dancecards, 

powdered with musk, a gaud of amber beads in her locked 

drawer. A birdcage hung in the sunny window of her 

house when she was a girl. She heard old Royce sing in 

the pantomime of Turko the Terrible and laughed with 

others when he sang: 



I am the boy 

That can enjoy 

Invisibility. 

Phantasmal mirth, folded away: muskperfumed. 



And no more turn aside and brood. 

Folded away in the memory of nature with her toys. 

Memories beset his brooding brain. Her glass of water 

from the kitchen tap when she had approached the 

sacrament. A cored apple, filled with brown sugar, roasting 

for her at the hob on a dark autumn evening. Her shapely 




Yüklə 3,16 Mb.

Dostları ilə paylaş:
1   2   3   4   5   6   7   8   9   ...   221




Verilənlər bazası müəlliflik hüququ ilə müdafiə olunur ©genderi.org 2024
rəhbərliyinə müraciət

    Ana səhifə