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she wanted back, waiting. It never comes. One must go
first: alone, under the ground: and lie no more in her
warm bed.
—How are you, Simon? Ned Lambert said softly,
clasping hands. Haven’t seen you for a month of Sundays.
—Never better. How are all in Cork’s own town?
—I was down there for the Cork park races on Easter
Monday, Ned Lambert said. Same old six and eightpence.
Stopped with Dick Tivy.
—And how is Dick, the solid man?
—Nothing between himself and heaven, Ned Lambert
answered.
—By the holy Paul! Mr Dedalus said in subdued
wonder. Dick Tivy bald?
—Martin is going to get up a whip for the youngsters,
Ned Lambert said, pointing ahead. A few bob a skull. Just
to keep them going till the insurance is cleared up.
—Yes, yes, Mr Dedalus said dubiously. Is that the
eldest boy in front?
—Yes, Ned Lambert said, with the wife’s brother. John
Henry Menton is behind. He put down his name for a
quid.
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—I’ll engage he did, Mr Dedalus said. I often told poor
Paddy he ought to mind that job. John Henry is not the
worst in the world.
—How did he lose it? Ned Lambert asked. Liquor,
what?
—Many a good man’s fault, Mr Dedalus said with a
sigh.
They halted about the door of the mortuary chapel. Mr
Bloom stood behind the boy with the wreath looking
down at his sleekcombed hair and at the slender furrowed
neck inside his brandnew collar. Poor boy! Was he there
when the father? Both unconscious. Lighten up at the last
moment and recognise for the last time. All he might have
done. I owe three shillings to O’Grady. Would he
understand? The mutes bore the coffin into the chapel.
Which end is his head?
After a moment he followed the others in, blinking in
the screened light. The coffin lay on its bier before the
chancel, four tall yellow candles at its corners. Always in
front of us. Corny Kelleher, laying a wreath at each fore
corner, beckoned to the boy to kneel. The mourners knelt
here and there in prayingdesks. Mr Bloom stood behind
near the font and, when all had knelt, dropped carefully
his unfolded newspaper from his pocket and knelt his right
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knee upon it. He fitted his black hat gently on his left
knee and, holding its brim, bent over piously.
A server bearing a brass bucket with something in it
came out through a door. The whitesmocked priest came
after him, tidying his stole with one hand, balancing with
the other a little book against his toad’s belly. Who’ll read
the book? I, said the rook.
They halted by the bier and the priest began to read
out of his book with a fluent croak.
Father Coffey. I knew his name was like a coffin.
Domine-namine. Bully about the muzzle he looks. Bosses
the show. Muscular christian. Woe betide anyone that
looks crooked at him: priest. Thou art Peter. Burst
sideways like a sheep in clover Dedalus says he will. With
a belly on him like a poisoned pup. Most amusing
expressions that man finds. Hhhn: burst sideways.
—Non intres in judicium cum servo tuo, Domine.
Makes them feel more important to be prayed over in
Latin. Requiem mass. Crape weepers. Blackedged
notepaper. Your name on the altarlist. Chilly place this.
Want to feed well, sitting in there all the morning in the
gloom kicking his heels waiting for the next please. Eyes
of a toad too. What swells him up that way? Molly gets
swelled after cabbage. Air of the place maybe. Looks full
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up of bad gas. Must be an infernal lot of bad gas round the
place. Butchers, for instance: they get like raw beefsteaks.
Who was telling me? Mervyn Browne. Down in the
vaults of saint Werburgh’s lovely old organ hundred and
fifty they have to bore a hole in the coffins sometimes to
let out the bad gas and burn it. Out it rushes: blue. One
whiff of that and you’re a goner.
My kneecap is hurting me. Ow. That’s better.
The priest took a stick with a knob at the end of it out
of the boy’s bucket and shook it over the coffin. Then he
walked to the other end and shook it again. Then he came
back and put it back in the bucket. As you were before
you rested. It’s all written down: he has to do it.
—Et ne nos inducas in tentationem.
The server piped the answers in the treble. I often
thought it would be better to have boy servants. Up to
fifteen or so. After that, of course ...
Holy water that was, I expect. Shaking sleep out of it.
He must be fed up with that job, shaking that thing over
all the corpses they trot up. What harm if he could see
what he was shaking it over. Every mortal day a fresh
batch: middleaged men, old women, children, women
dead in childbirth, men with beards, baldheaded
businessmen, consumptive girls with little sparrows’
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breasts. All the year round he prayed the same thing over
them all and shook water on top of them: sleep. On
Dignam now.
—In paradisum.
Said he was going to paradise or is in paradise. Says that
over everybody. Tiresome kind of a job. But he has to say
something.
The priest closed his book and went off, followed by
the server. Corny Kelleher opened the sidedoors and the
gravediggers came in, hoisted the coffin again, carried it
out and shoved it on their cart. Corny Kelleher gave one
wreath to the boy and one to the brother-in-law. All
followed them out of the sidedoors into the mild grey air.
Mr Bloom came last folding his paper again into his
pocket. He gazed gravely at the ground till the coffincart
wheeled off to the left. The metal wheels ground the
gravel with a sharp grating cry and the pack of blunt boots
followed the trundled barrow along a lane of sepulchres.
The ree the ra the ree the ra the roo. Lord, I mustn’t
lilt here.
—The O’Connell circle, Mr Dedalus said about him.
Mr Power’s soft eyes went up to the apex of the lofty
cone.
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