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—You, Cochrane, what city sent for him?
—Tarentum, sir.
—Very good. Well?
—There was a battle, sir.
—Very good. Where?
The boy’s blank face asked the blank window.
Fabled by the daughters of memory. And yet it was in
some way if not as memory fabled it. A phrase, then, of
impatience, thud of Blake’s wings of excess. I hear the
ruin of all space, shattered glass and toppling masonry, and
time one livid final flame. What’s left us then?
—I forget the place, sir. 279 B. C.
—Asculum, Stephen said, glancing at the name and
date in the gorescarred book.
—Yes, sir. And he said: Another victory like that and we
are done for.
That phrase the world had remembered. A dull ease of
the mind. From a hill above a corpsestrewn plain a general
speaking to his officers, leaned upon his spear. Any general
to any officers. They lend ear.
—You, Armstrong, Stephen said. What was the end of
Pyrrhus?
—End of Pyrrhus, sir?
—I know, sir. Ask me, sir, Comyn said.
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—Wait. You, Armstrong. Do you know anything
about Pyrrhus?
A bag of figrolls lay snugly in Armstrong’s satchel. He
curled them between his palms at whiles and swallowed
them softly. Crumbs adhered to the tissue of his lips. A
sweetened boy’s breath. Welloff people, proud that their
eldest son was in the navy. Vico road, Dalkey.
—Pyrrhus, sir? Pyrrhus, a pier.
All laughed. Mirthless high malicious laughter.
Armstrong looked round at his classmates, silly glee in
profile. In a moment they will laugh more loudly, aware
of my lack of rule and of the fees their papas pay.
—Tell me now, Stephen said, poking the boy’s
shoulder with the book, what is a pier.
—A pier, sir, Armstrong said. A thing out in the water.
A kind of a bridge. Kingstown pier, sir.
Some laughed again: mirthless but with meaning. Two
in the back bench whispered. Yes. They knew: had never
learned nor ever been innocent. All. With envy he
watched their faces: Edith, Ethel, Gerty, Lily. Their likes:
their breaths, too, sweetened with tea and jam, their
bracelets tittering in the struggle.
—Kingstown pier, Stephen said. Yes, a disappointed
bridge.
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The words troubled their gaze.
—How, sir? Comyn asked. A bridge is across a river.
For Haines’s chapbook. No-one here to hear. Tonight
deftly amid wild drink and talk, to pierce the polished mail
of his mind. What then? A jester at the court of his master,
indulged and disesteemed, winning a clement master’s
praise. Why had they chosen all that part? Not wholly for
the smooth caress. For them too history was a tale like any
other too often heard, their land a pawnshop.
Had Pyrrhus not fallen by a beldam’s hand in Argos or
Julius Caesar not been knifed to death. They are not to be
thought away. Time has branded them and fettered they
are lodged in the room of the infinite possibilities they
have ousted. But can those have been possible seeing that
they never were? Or was that only possible which came to
pass? Weave, weaver of the wind.
—Tell us a story, sir.
—O, do, sir. A ghoststory.
—Where do you begin in this? Stephen asked, opening
another book.
--Weep no more, Comyn said.
—Go on then, Talbot.
—And the story, sir?
—After, Stephen said. Go on, Talbot.
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A swarthy boy opened a book and propped it nimbly
under the breastwork of his satchel. He recited jerks of
verse with odd glances at the text:
—Weep no more, woful shepherds, weep no
more
For Lycidas, your sorrow, is not dead,
Sunk though he be beneath the watery floor ...
It must be a movement then, an actuality of the
possible as possible. Aristotle’s phrase formed itself within
the gabbled verses and floated out into the studious silence
of the library of Saint Genevieve where he had read,
sheltered from the sin of Paris, night by night. By his
elbow a delicate Siamese conned a handbook of strategy.
Fed and feeding brains about me: under glowlamps,
impaled, with faintly beating feelers: and in my mind’s
darkness a sloth of the underworld, reluctant, shy of
brightness, shifting her dragon scaly folds. Thought is the
thought of thought. Tranquil brightness. The soul is in a
manner all that is: the soul is the form of forms.
Tranquility sudden, vast, candescent: form of forms.
Talbot repeated:
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—Through the dear might of Him that walked
the waves,
Through the dear might ...
—Turn over, Stephen said quietly. I don’t see
anything.
—What, sir? Talbot asked simply, bending forward.
His hand turned the page over. He leaned back and
went on again, having just remembered. Of him that
walked the waves. Here also over these craven hearts his
shadow lies and on the scoffer’s heart and lips and on
mine. It lies upon their eager faces who offered him a coin
of the tribute. To Caesar what is Caesar’s, to God what is
God’s. A long look from dark eyes, a riddling sentence to
be woven and woven on the church’s looms. Ay.
Riddle me, riddle me, randy ro.
My father gave me seeds to sow.
Talbot slid his closed book into his satchel.
—Have I heard all? Stephen asked.
—Yes, sir. Hockey at ten, sir.
—Half day, sir. Thursday.
—Who can answer a riddle? Stephen asked.
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