I sat dumb tired in the room until dark. Like my chamber at Clongowes: a cold night smellPortrait: 1. 381.. Frowning, I kicked the rug, walking in circles. I even began to cry, for I could not understand why Eileen had left and what painful thing I had said about her singing. There were many days spent paralysed like this. Secrets, silent, stony sit in the dark palaces of our heartsUlysses, 2. 24.Not for any reason did I want to reemerge outside to meet mother or see or be seen by the lady in the yellow dress. The inward wit bites againUlysses 1. 14..
My shoes were somewhere without me. I could stumble and break a bone if I left this room alone. Better to stay. The agoraphobe I played in ParisUlysses, 3. 33. under the library lamps was born here. I felt like the mummies in those great stone pyramids. All would be well if I could only find the bricks. Or maybe I was more like our saviour, tucked away by Joseph of ArimetheaThe man who was charged with burying Jesus; Mark 15: 46. in the little cave, our lord twiddling his thumbs for three days before rolling back the door. Forgive me. Oh Lord, open my lips, and my mouth shall announce thy praisePortrait, I. 377..
As the sun fell the picture of the cow, the candlesticks glittering on the wardrobe, the imprint Eileen left on her chair, all faded towards dark and dissolution. Signatures of all I am here to readUlysses, 2. 31..
Now in the kitchen were the familiar sounds of the adults singing. Singing on and on. I heard them retrieving drinking glasses from the verandah outside, no doubt the kitchen door had been thrust open, and bring them inside to fill again. Winy breath I knew so well.
I walked out into the corridor and sneaked up to the corner to eavesdrop. Molly was standing tall and red-breasted, proud at the center of the room beside Mother, who was herself playing at the piano a song I had never heard. I could not understand the words at first. Then the crowd grew silent and Molly sang,
The stars shine on his pathway,
The trees bend back their leaves,
To guide them to the meadow
Among the golden sheaves.
Where stand I longing, loving, and listening as I wait,
To the nightingale’s wild singing, singing, sweet singing to
its mateCostello’s hypothesis is that Molly performed this song to Bloom when they first fell in love. Costello, 31.
Only to wait?
The man in black stood beside Molly flipping the pages of the songbook. Between page-turns he was staring at her behind. He was fulfilling a duty that Molly could have just as easily done herself, yet he was grinning as if he had been assigned to watch over St. Peter’s keysAssigned to stand watch over the gates of heaven. Matthew 16:19.. A twig of lilac was pinned neatly to his jacket with a yellow ribbon. He bent his head to sniff at it, or he would flick it and stare admiringly at Molly while she sang.
At last we sat down to eat. The youngest Dillon children and I sat at a separate table in the open threshold of the kitchen, where I could feel the cool wind against my back. There was chicken: cold. Rolls: peppery. Fresh fruit in tartarus glassUlysses, 9.49: gone sour. Mother told me that Eileen’s mother had rushed off for home on an emergency.
This perplexed me, and I did not eat very much. The mothers are being carried away one by one and all that will remain for the sons is the graveyard we dig for them. Red reek of rapine on our coatsUlysses, 2. 22.. There was much talk about Molly’s singing.
–Really, dear, you absolutely must apply for a scholarship.
–The conservatory would go to the ends of the earth to have you. No doubt!
—I know the director personally. Or my wife does. Did.
–And ravishing, too! Such dark skin! A fine complexion.
–From the land of the Hesperides. She is truly apple-bosomedFrom the myth of Atlas’ daughters who tend a garden of golden apples at the edge of the world. See, e.g., Ovid Metamorphosis IV, 604-622..
–Your father must be so proud. Oh Major! Where is the dear officer?
–I swear he was outside by the wall. I saw him swallow a gallon.
–If you had grown up under my roof there would be no excuse. You’d be on a tour around the county as we speak.
–As we speak, indeed!
Under the table I saw Molly and the man’s hands clasp and frolic. They had sat together. Mother was speaking to the man about Dante.
—There is a woman, quite brilliant in her own right, but severe no less, whom we employ at our house named Ms. Riordan. She is also a teacher, if you wish to know.
—I have no doubt she is a wonderful lady. But you see I am not married, nor do I have any children.
—In any case, if you at any point require a governess I recommend her. But don’t wait too long, dear. I can’t speak for my husband of course but Fatherhood is a game best played young.
Molly was listening too.
—If all my wishes were true, Mrs. Dedalus, I would have a houseful of children as we speak. Especially a little boy like your Stephen there. This I assure you. When that day arrives I will be first on your doorstep asking for advice. Judging by your wellmannered son over there.
—You’re too generous. But please remember Ms. Riordan. I fear that she is tired of our humble home and, since our children are growing so quickly, she is looking for a new family. Youth sustains her. She is restless, desperately so, if only because she is so richMolly certainly heard this. She comments at Ulysses, 18. 608..
Molly was eager to hear more. But speech like that did not interest me.
The man seemed to me a person who had nothing to lose and everything to gain. He betrayed an eagerness that exposed, whenever he broke through his extraordinary shell of silence to speak—an effort which did not in any way mark him as hostile but as a cautious curiosity, shy but bright—exposed him to the crowd to be a person in no way foreign to their already strong and native sensibilities. He worked by charming them. I think he was trying very hard to win my mother’s admiration.
Menton had not come to dinner. Instead, he was sitting outside with Major Tweedy smoking long, dark cigars and coughing while the Major watched him struggle. He swam in whisky. That’s nice to say: swam in it. Mat Dillon led all but his oldest children into their bedrooms.
Mother held her willowy hands up to her throat and rubbed her neck in a gesture I recognized to mean she was tiring. The only dinner conversation left was spoken between Molly and the strange man’s quiet whispering mouths. Oh Lord open our mouths.Portrait 1. 376. They were trading words like candy, dropping words into each other’s mouths. I wonder if the food you eat, imaginary or not, can send you off to imaginary worldsBloom arrives at a similar thought at Ulysses 8. 136.. At last mother called me up to the table and sat me on her lap.
–Well, Stephen, is it time to go home? We’re nearly the last ones here. And I suspect if we stay any longer we will be trespassing on these young folk’s time.
–Did Eileen’s mother ever come back?
Mother told me that she was forced to leave because Eileen had contracted a sudden and potent head-cold which required a bed, pillow, and hot water bottle to cure. So I had done all this! Enough of an error to conjure up a flu and cast it like sorcery on another person. It would be better never to speak.
Molly tousled my hair and winked, saying,
–I hope we will meet again soon Stephen. I was watching you all dayThis may have been true. Molly reinforces the claim at Ulysses, 18. 637, you know. Like a hawk or a harpie. You’ll have to sing with me sometime. You look like a young Byron. A ballad for my Byron.
I knew I must have blushed a deep red. She flicked at my collar coyly. What a cute boy, she said.
Mother thanked them both. Then, cough. Unheard. Now heard. Pierced me. Quick. Send help. Invisible signals shepard us towards a fate that comes at our end to a sickbay, an ocean where bile swims. Her darkening face.
As we stood up to go the strange man held me gently by the arm. He reached up to his collar and unfastened the lilac corsage from a coat button. What did he say?
The party by this time had tired, besodded with alcohol, the sweat of the day, the heat, the song, the dance, the games, the little treasured flirtations. In the West the Sun, too, grew tired. It was a familiar feeling, not simply to Bloom, but to all the guests. You encounter your day with such zeal in the morning and by nightfall it has consumed you. Each day becomes a small lifetime, a microcosm of birth, death.The heat of the day seemed at last to have suffused the house. In the rear the screen stood open, people passed in and out. Molly and Simon’s wife, I remember, had gone back out.
Simon’s boy, Stephen, had proven himself a rare bird. Finicky fellow. A bit old for his years. He fretted about inside when everyone else remained. What he could have been thinking about, I haven’t the slightest idea. But he was so somber. The very image of young Prince Hamlet—or so I hear. Striking, too, that he is the very image of his mother. Of course there’s no denying maternity. It’s the father that has to wonder if he’s being had or if someone else has had. What? But the boy had proven himself wise, too. All around a unique young fellow. Should like to know him as he grows. Learns. See who he becomes. High expectations.
But then, then I was not so wholly entrenched in Stephen. Think about him now, as I expect I’ll see him today and I’d met him then. But Molly. She’d given me a small nosegay of lilac as a memento. That word again. The scent covered everything as the last of the light began to leave.
Understand why they call it heady: you lose yourself in it. Lose your head. Giddy schoolboy I was, because this buxom young girl had tied up a pinch of flowers for me. Giddy at Menton, glowering into the dark, sitting beside her father. Both pissed as a newt. Different kind of heady.
The group had largely concealed around Molly and Simon’s wife, one playing, the other singing. Was her voice better then? It had a stronger power over me. Stronger power than that whiskey her da was swilling down outside. That a kind of heady, too. As though she were singing right to you. Only to you.
The stars shine on his pathway,
The trees bend back their leaves,
To guide them to the meadow
Among the golden sheaves.
Where stand I longing, loving, and listening as I wait,
To the nightingale’s wild singing, singing, sweet singing to
its mateCostello’s hypothesis is that Molly performed this song to Bloom when they first fell in love. Costello, 31.
Did everything I could to stand next to her, closer to her. Funny thing, the scent of a woman. It’s an animal smell. A smell made from the body. But the first time you smell it—when you smell her scent—it isn’t. It can’t be. It’s something celestial and magical and brimming with power. Then you get to know it. Sleep in the same bed for ages. Wake up from humid nights, drenched in sweat. Same scent, but transfigured. A different meaning. In this way, Mr. Bloom considered, love sometimes was transfigured from the ecclesiastical to the everyday through no chemical process whatsoever. It was simply a different way in which we viewed the same object. Close your left eye, see a different view than when you close your right. I had gazed longingly at her posterior while pushing those pages. Dreadful flirt, and surely everyone saw. But she was the only thing in all of existence at the time.
Going on to perform. Boylan. Ah, well. In a minutePrufrock, 47-48. there is time for decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse. Let Boylan see his interest when her flesh had transfigured itself from femme to familia. There will be time.
There was much talk about Molly’s singing.
–Really, dear, you absolutely must apply for a scholarship.
–The conservatory would go to the ends of the earth to have you. No doubt!
—I know the director personally. Or my wife does. Did.
–And ravishing, too! Such dark skin! A fine complexion.
–From the land of the Hesperides. She is truly apple-bosomed.
–Your father must be so proud. Oh Major! Where is the dear officer?
–I swear he was outside by the wall. I saw him swallow a gallon.
–If you had grown up under my roof there would be no excuse. You’d be on a tour around the county as we speak.
–As we speak, indeed!
I had reached out under the table and tenuously stroked Molly’s hand. Batted me away at first, begged off with a coy cute blush. Felt her hand in mine then, too.
Brazenly talking to Simon’s wife about what nanny she ought to use and the proper age of a man to be a father. Young. Old myself, now, and still not ready to be one. Said then that she’d like a household full of children. Mother now to a cranky pussens and a Milly on the Bloom. Would there have been more?
Hard to tell with women, even now. Expected to want children, so wants children when talking to other women. A thing we all do. Being Irish, I am expected to love Ireland. I was born hereUC. 12.16108. Though they ask me to prove this more often than women are asked to want children.
Could Stephen see our hands? Didn’t think about it then. Probably could. He was sitting with his mother but much shorter. Motion probably caught his eye. Means he saw my hand on her knee, too, probably. Ah, well. Didn’t know what it was about then. If he remembers now, he knows what it was about. No harm. Good-looking chap. I wonder if he has felt the things I was feeling that night about a woman? Never hear it about him. Wonder is he? No, I don’t believe. Doesn’t seem the type. A morose boy, still. Hard to find companionship when you’ve left no room for it amongst your sadness. Was never that way with me. True, I feel awkward here and there. A normal thing. Knowing when to speak up, when to make a joke. Not great at telling stories: envious of those who areIn the “Hades” episode, beginning at 6.262, Bloom attempts to retell a story but the task is taken over by Martin Cunningham.. Still, I get on. May be that selling ads has helped it. Get into their heads. Know what they’ll buy. Their society is as precious as their time: and their time is how they earn their money. Knowing how to buy their time, then. Same skill as knowing how to buy their society. Do hope his mother didn’t see the bit with the hands, though. Untoward. Though it ended well enough.
By then Mat had packed up his children like so many errant sundries being gathered for the wash. It was a signal to all of us, and I could feel a gathering energy of leaving. Molly and I, though, seemed largely immune. I remember it was hard to listen to her words. They joined together in a kind of hymn, like jewels forming cool and clean from her lips. Something granted my replies a wing-footed nature, flying about her and prodding spasms of laughter with each word. Far from the rising red on Simon’s wife’s throat, I felt my own cheek’s burning, burning, burning. Fate. Less of an accomplishment then. But perhaps. Fate.
Then suddenly the boy’s mother announced that it was time to go. Always the same: the first to stand ushers in a general exodus. I could tell that Molly had truly enjoyed her chat with her, and, as I wanted to impress her, I decided to make a proper show of my goodbye.
Yet, it was more than this, too, looking back. Remember as much about Stephen as I have about Molly. Just coincidence? If I didn’t expect to see his father, him, today—if he hadn’t lost his mother just now—might I remember as much about Floey?
Mr. Bloom did not believe that he would.
Molly tousled the boy’s hair and winked, saying
–I hope we will meet again soon Stephen. I was watching you all day, you know. Like a hawk or a harpie. You’ll have to sing with me sometime. You look like a young Byron. A ballad for my Byron.
His face turned a crimson that added a regality to his ridiculous suit. Molly said that he was a cute boy.
Pleasantries exchanged while I debated what to do. It came to me, then. Remembering that ridiculous squirrel and the gift I’d neglected to present him—the gift of seeing—I decided to instead give him the gift of scent.
Touching the child gently on his arm, I reached up to my collar and deftly detached that nosegay. I did it with surprisingly less trouble than I might have expected.
–Go on, Stephen. That’s very nice of you, Mr. Bloom. Very nice indeed.
No!
Just then, through the open kitchen door, the whine of the last tramcar called out from afar. Clang. On the tramline the cars collided with each other in a steel scrimmage. Clink clink clang. Bloom retrieved his arm and lay the ruined corsage on the table.
—I understand. I’ll send it in the mail, he said undisturbed. Good night to you, Stephen.
Claaang.
That undiscovered country.Hamlet, 3.1.78
Claaang.