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—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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