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Ulysses 

191 

of

 1305 

—To cheer a fellow up, Martin Cunningham said. It’s 

pure goodheartedness: damn the thing else. 

Mr Bloom admired the caretaker’s prosperous bulk. All 

want to be on good terms with him. Decent fellow, John 

O’Connell, real good sort. Keys: like Keyes’s ad: no fear of 

anyone getting out. No passout checks. Habeas corpus. I 

must see about that ad after the funeral. Did I write 

Ballsbridge on the envelope I took to cover when she 

disturbed me writing to Martha? Hope it’s not chucked in 

the dead letter office. Be the better of a shave. Grey 

sprouting beard. That’s the first sign when the hairs come 

out grey. And temper getting cross. Silver threads among 

the grey. Fancy being his wife. Wonder he had the 

gumption to propose to any girl. Come out and live in the 

graveyard. Dangle that before her. It might thrill her first. 

Courting death ... Shades of night hovering here with all 

the dead stretched about. The shadows of the tombs when 

churchyards yawn and Daniel O’Connell must be a 

descendant I suppose who is this used to say he was a 

queer breedy man great catholic all the same like a big 

giant in the dark. Will o’ the wisp. Gas of graves. Want to 

keep her mind off it to conceive at all. Women especially 

are so touchy. Tell her a ghost story in bed to make her 

sleep. Have you ever seen a ghost? Well, I have. It was a 

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pitchdark night. The clock was on the stroke of twelve. 

Still they’d kiss all right if properly keyed up. Whores in 

Turkish graveyards. Learn anything if taken young. You 

might pick up a young widow here. Men like that. Love 

among the tombstones. Romeo. Spice of pleasure. In the 

midst of death we are in life. Both ends meet. Tantalising 

for the poor dead. Smell of grilled beefsteaks to the 

starving. Gnawing their vitals. Desire to grig people. 

Molly wanting to do it at the window. Eight children he 

has anyway. 

He has seen a fair share go under in his time, lying 

around him field after field. Holy fields. More room if 

they buried them standing. Sitting or kneeling you 

couldn’t. Standing? His head might come up some day 

above ground in a landslip with his hand pointing. All 

honeycombed the ground must be: oblong cells. And very 

neat he keeps it too: trim grass and edgings. His garden 

Major Gamble calls Mount Jerome. Well, so it is. Ought 

to be flowers of sleep. Chinese cemeteries with giant 

poppies growing produce the best opium Mastiansky told 

me. The Botanic Gardens are just over there. It’s the 

blood sinking in the earth gives new life. Same idea those 

jews they said killed the christian boy. Every man his 

price. Well preserved fat corpse, gentleman, epicure, 

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invaluable for fruit garden. A bargain. By carcass of 

William Wilkinson, auditor and accountant, lately 

deceased, three pounds thirteen and six. With thanks. 

I daresay the soil would be quite fat with 

corpsemanure, bones, flesh, nails. Charnelhouses. 

Dreadful. Turning green and pink decomposing. Rot 

quick in damp earth. The lean old ones tougher. Then a 

kind of a tallowy kind of a cheesy. Then begin to get 

black, black treacle oozing out of them. Then dried up. 

Deathmoths. Of course the cells or whatever they are go 

on living. Changing about. Live for ever practically. 

Nothing to feed on feed on themselves. 

But they must breed a devil of a lot of maggots. Soil 

must be simply swirling with them. Your head it simply 

swurls. Those pretty little seaside gurls. He looks cheerful 

enough over it. Gives him a sense of power seeing all the 

others go under first. Wonder how he looks at life. 

Cracking his jokes too: warms the cockles of his heart. 

The one about the bulletin. Spurgeon went to heaven 4 

a.m. this morning. 11 p.m. (closing time). Not arrived yet. 

Peter. The dead themselves the men anyhow would like 

to hear an odd joke or the women to know what’s in 

fashion. A juicy pear or ladies’ punch, hot, strong and 

sweet. Keep out the damp. You must laugh sometimes so 

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better do it that way. Gravediggers in Hamlet. Shows the 

profound knowledge of the human heart. Daren’t joke 

about the dead for two years at least. De mortuis nil nisi 

prius. Go out of mourning first. Hard to imagine his 

funeral. Seems a sort of a joke. Read your own obituary 

notice they say you live longer. Gives you second wind. 

New lease of life. 

—How many have-you for tomorrow? the caretaker 

asked. 

—Two, Corny Kelleher said. Half ten and eleven. 

The caretaker put the papers in his pocket. The barrow 

had ceased to trundle. The mourners split and moved to 

each side of the hole, stepping with care round the graves. 

The gravediggers bore the coffin and set its nose on the 

brink, looping the bands round it. 

Burying him. We come to bury Caesar. His ides of 

March or June. He doesn’t know who is here nor care. 

Now who is that lankylooking galoot over there in the 

macintosh? Now who is he I’d like to know? Now I’d 

give a trifle to know who he is. Always someone turns up 

you never dreamt of. A fellow could live on his lonesome 

all his life. Yes, he could. Still he’d have to get someone to 

sod him after he died though he could dig his own grave. 

We all do. Only man buries. No, ants too. First thing 

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