portrait-banalified-10-100.txt

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

by

Jack Nicholson


_“A persona non a persona non.”_
Leonardo, Leonardo, C., 18.


Chapter I


Once upon a time in a very long time there was there was a moocow coming
down along the road and the moocow that was coming down along the road
was a hairy little boy named baby tuckoo....

His father told him a story: his father looked at him through the
window: he had a hairy face.

He was baby tuckoo. The moocow went to the place where His Mother
lived: he smelled rose blossoms.

    O, the little rose blossoms
    And the little green grass.


He sang a song. That was his song.

    O, the little rose blossoms.


When you make your bed, first it gets warm then it gets cold. His mother
played on the piano. She sang the same song.

His mother had a different voice than his father. She played on the piano
a children’s song for him to dance. He danced:

    Tralala lal,
    Tralala lal,
    Tralala lala,
    Tralala lala.


Uncle Charles and Aunt mary. They were older than his father and
mother and uncle Charles was older than Him.

Mary had two brushes in her hand. The brush with the red velvet
back was for Uncle Charles and the brush with the green velvet back
was for Him. Mary gave him a brush every time he gave her a
piece of toilet paper.

The Family lived at number seven. Each had a different father and
mother. Nobody knew Stephen’s father and mother. When they were growing up
stephen was afraid to see Them. He slept under the covers. His mother said:

—Stephen, You must apologise.

He said:

—Mary, if anything, a boy will cry and pull out his eyes.—

    Pull out his eyes,
    Apologise,
    Apologise,
    Pull out his eyes.
    Stephen,
    Pull out his eyes,
    Pull out his eyes,
    Stephen.


The school playgrounds were packed with boys. They were running and the
girls urged them on with their feet. The night air was clear and
cool and amid the thump thump thump of running feet a tall
thin boy flew like a small bird through the night air. He kept to
the back of the crowd, out of sight of his peers, out of the sound
of the running feet, afraid to turn around and look. He felt his body small
and weak in the middle of the crowd and his eyes were wide and
frightened. Rody Kickham was right behind him: he would be captain of the
guard as all the papers said.

Rody Kickham was a big man and Nasty Roche was a drunk. Rody
Kickham had money in his pocket and a pistol in the other. Nasty
Roche had no money. He gave the Man a hole-in-the-wall.
And one day he had asked:

—What is your name?

Stephen had answered: Nasty Roche.

And Nasty Roche had asked:

—What kind of a name is that?

And when Stephen had not been able to answer Nasty Roche had asked:

—What is your occupation?

Stephen had answered:

—A magistrate.

And Nasty Roche had asked:

—Is he a magistrate?

Stephen moved rapidly from point to point on the edge of his desk, making
small movements now and then. But his movements were smooth and easy. He had
his hand in the breast pocket of his dark blue coat. There was a belt
in that pocket. And he was about to give a fellow a belt. One of the
men said to Cantwell:

—I’ll give this fellow a belt in a moment.

Cantwell had replied:

—Go and make your point. Give This Fellow a belt. I’d like to see
it. I’ll give you a kick in the balls for it.

He was not a rough boy. His mother had warned him not to associate
with the rough boys of the castle. His mother! The other day in the
hall of the castle when he had said this she had put up her hand
up to her mouth to silence him: and her nose and cheeks were red. And he
had tried not to think that she was going to cry. She was a pretty
girl but she was not so pretty when she cried. And his father had given
him two one-dollar bills of twenty dollars. And his father had told
him that he had nothing to take home with him and, if he did,
ought to take on a servant. And at the door of the house the boy
had shaken hands with his father and mother, the right hand over
the left, and the car had driven away with his father and mother in
it. They had called to him from the car, waving their arms:

—Goodbye, Stephen, goodbye!

—Goodbye, Stephen, goodbye!

He was now in the middle of the street and, conscious of the torn
trousers and the blood, bent down to look at the bodies. The arms
were twisting and turning and the legs were kicking and screaming
and stamping. Then Mrs Brown’s black boots ran out the door and
all the twisted arms and legs ran away. He ran after them a little way
and then stopped. It was time to go home. Tomorrow he would be going
home for the night. After supper in the study hall he would watch
the sun go down over his castle at half past seven.

It would be better to eat in the study hall than go out into the courtyard.
The courtyard was dark and quiet but there were lights in the castle. He
knew from the time The Soldier had hit his head on the
door that there had been lights at one time in the castle. One
time when he had been invited to a feast the cook had shown him the
marks of the soldiers’ heads on the outside of the door and had offered him
a loaf of bread if the man agreed. It was nice and strange to
see the lights in the castle. It was like looking out a window. And
The Writing was like that. And there were some sentences in The
Cook’s Little Book. They were like that but they were getting
harder to get the hang of.

    It was in The Cupboard
    Where the cook kept it.
    It was a book of men,
    And not of gods.


It would be nice to sit on the grass by the fire, with his
head in his hands, and think of the sea. He felt as if he
had a living thing under his feet. It was tempting for Mother to throw
him into the cruel sea and he would gladly trade his little book
for Father’s story of hector, the story of hector. How dark
and deep the sea had become! The boy had never seen a living thing go
into the sea. He was sitting by the fire with Dante waiting for
Mother to bring them some food. She had her hands in her lap and her
finger nails were very long and she had such a beautiful singing voice!
She knew a lot of things. She had told him what the Atlantic
Ocean was and what was the longest river in Europe and what was the
name of the tallest mountain in the world. Father Joseph knew nothing about
Her because she was dead now but both his father and mother Had
said that She was a wise woman and a beautiful one. And when She
made a face at him and then put up a hand to her mouth:
that was enough.

A voice cried from out on the field:

—All in!

And other voices cried from the second and third sides:

—All in! All in!

The boy turned around, happy and excited, and he walked towards them,
ready to go in. He Still held his sword at the ready again. The fellow
told him to give it some thought: but he went in without even seeing
the boy. Simon Moonan told him not to know the boy was
there. The fellow turned to Simon Moonan and said:

—We all know why you came. You were Prefect’s son.

That was a nice name. The prefect gave Simon Moonan that name because
Simon Moonan used to tie the prefect’s hands together behind his back
and the prefect used to let go and get noisy. And the noise was loud.
Once he had tied his hands to the basin of the Lava Sink and
his hands pulled the basin down and the seal broke and the boiling water
went down through the hole in the basin. And when it had all gone down
through the hole in the basin it made a noise like that: again. And
again.

He knew this because the hot water in the corridor made him feel cold
and then hot. There were always cocks and they came in and went out:
cold and hot. He felt cold and then a little hot: and he could hear the
mothers calling out the cocks. It was a queer little noise.

And the water in the corridor scared him sometimes. It was cold and hot.
And sometimes the lamp would be lit and from inside it made a little noise like
a small explosion. Always the same: even when the mothers were shouting in
the corridor he could hear it.

Now was the time for sums. Father Arnall put a large sum on the table
and he said:

—Now then, who will draw? Go ahead, Lancaster! Go ahead, Lancaster!

He did his best but the sum was too high and he felt dizzy.
The red silk badge with the red rose on it that was tied to the
front of his shirt started to shake. He was not good at drawing but he
did his best so that He would not lose. Father Arnall’s face was
bright red but he was not in any hurry: he was excited. Then Jack Lawton
snapped his fingers and Father Arnall looked at his son and said:

—Lancaster. Then York! The red rose again. Go ahead stephen, Draw! Go
ahead!

Jack Lawton looked up from his cards. His white silk badge with the
red rose on it was turning red as he put his red silk badge on.
He felt his face turning red again, thinking of all the bets on who
would get the card for first, Jack Lawton or him. Some weeks Jack
Lawton got the card for first and some weeks he got the card for second.
His white silk badge fluttered and fluttered as he looked at the red
rose and heard The Announcer’s voice. Then all the red went away
and he felt his face go white. He knew his face should be white
but it was not white. He could not make out the words of the announcer
but it did not matter. Pink roses and lavender roses: those were beautiful
colours to think of. And the cards for first place and second place and
third place were beautiful colours too: pink and white and lavender.
Lavender and white and pink roses were colours to think of. Perhaps a
green rose would be on the card and he remembered the story of
the little apple tree and the little green rose. Perhaps you could not
find a green rose. But perhaps somewhere in the garden you could.

The bell rang and all the students began to trickle out of their classrooms and
into the corridors of the school. He was picking at the last
bit of bread on his plate but could not eat the whole thing. The
bread was damp and cold. So he finished drinking the little white tea that
the old scullion, dressed in a white apron, poured into his cup. He
wondered whether the scullion’s tea was real tea or whether the real
tea was bitter and bad. Both He and Samuel drank tea that
other boys gave them in return. They said they did not like the tea;
that it was bitter. The mothers were good, the fathers bad.

But the fathers seemed to be so different. They were like fathers and
mothers with different faces and voices. Stephen wanted to stay at home and
lay his head in his father’s lap. But he could not: and so he waited
for his chores and washing and dressing to be done and to be in bed.

He took a sip of his tea and Fleming said:

—What’s wrong? Are you in bed and what’s wrong with you?

—I don’t know, Stephen said.

—Sick in your head, Fleming said, and your face looks funny.
It will go away.

—Oh yes, Stephen said.

But he was not really sick. He said that he was sick in his head because
anyone could be sick in their head. It was very hard to believe that. He
started to cry. He put his head on the table and closed and opened
the flaps of his ears. And he heard the train in the distance every
time he closed the flaps of his ears. It made him roar like a lion at
night. And when he opened the flaps the roar would cut off like a train
going into a tunnel. Last night at Dinner the train had roared like
that and then, as it went into the tunnel, the roar stopped. He
opened his ears and the train went on, roaring and then stopping;
roaring again, now. It was pleasant to hear it roar and stop and then
come out of the tunnel again and then stop.

Then the first line tables began to come down from the table in
the middle of the room, Jimmy Dean and Johnny Carson and the
Girl who was supposed to be there and the little Boy who
wore a baseball cap. And then the second line came and the beginning of
the third line. Now the old man had a funny way of talking.

He was in a corner of the room pretending to play a game of
chess and once or twice he was able to hear for an interval the soft
giggles of little girls. Then wells was at the door with the girls and Jimmy
Dean was in his coat pocket. He was telling them something
about Stephen.

Then they came away from the door and Wells went over to Stephen and
said:

—Tell me, Son, do you kiss your mother before you go to bed?

Stephen said:

—I do.

Wells turned to the other fellows and said:

—O, I say, here’s a fellow says he kisses his mother every night before
he goes to bed.

The other fellows stopped their laughing and looked up, puzzled.
Stephen looked into their eyes and said:

—I do not.

Wells said:

—O, I say, here’s a fellow says he doesn’t kiss his mother before he
goes to bed.

They all laughed again. Stephen tried to laugh with them. He felt his
whole body tense and think for a moment. What was the right answer to
this question? He had given up and still They laughed. But He did
know the right answer and it was in spite of himself. He tried to think
of Wells’s face but he did not want to raise his eyes to Wells’s
face. He did not know Wells’s face. It was Wells who had thrown him
into the school ditch the day before and he would gladly trade an
old man and He’s an old man, a man of
thirty. It was a stupid thing to do; all the boys thought it was. But how
cold and wet the ditch had been! And the boy had never seen a young man
thrown down into a ditch.

The cold water of the ditch filled his whole body; and, as the bell
rang for lunch and the boys came out of the school, he felt the
cold air in the air and wet in his clothes. He had
time to think it was the right thing. Was it right to kiss his
mother and not to kiss his father? What did it mean, to kiss? You
put your face down like that and you smiled and then your mother put her
face up. It was a kiss. His mother put her lips on his face; her
lips were soft and they touched his cheek; and she made a soft little
sound: kissing. How could people do that to their own children?

Back in the living room he opened the drawer of his desk and saw the
sun coming up again at half past six. Now the
Real sun was not far off: and this time it had shone
and the clouds shone as well.

There was a picture of the sun on the front page of the newspaper: a
yellow sun in the midst of clouds. He had a couple of brushes and last
night in his bedroom he had painted the sun yellow and the clouds
blue. It was like painting the brushes in Fleming’s office, the brush with
the green velvet back for Himself and the brush with the blue velvet
back for Mr Fleming. Only he had not asked Fleming to paint both
the brushes. He had done it himself.

He opened the book to find the geography; but he could not remember the
names of places in It. And they were all different places and
had different names. They were all in different countries and the
countries were on continents and the continents were in the world and
the world was in the universe.

He turned to the back of the book and read what he had written
there: he, his name and where he lived.

    Stephen Dedalus
    Owner of The
    Clongowes Wood Estate
    In
    County Kildare
    Was
    After
    The Universe
    The Universe


Itself was after his name: and Then the author of the book was written on
the next page:

    Stephen Dedalus is my name,
    Ireland is my country.
    Clongowes wood my name
    And ireland my country.


He read the words again and realised they were all wrong. So he
read the words from the bottom to the top until he came to his own
conclusion. So did he: then he read all the words again. What was after the
universe? Everything. And was there anything after the universe to say
that everything existed in the same way everywhere? There might not be a universe
but there must be a big thought out there thinking about everything. It was
very important to think about god and everything. Only God could do
that. Stephen tried to think of what he thought god could do but he could
not think of Anything. God was Stephen’s friend too and his friend was God.
_Dieu_ was the French for God and he was Stephen’s friend too; so if
you prayed to God and said Dieu pere You knew at once that it was a
Different person who was god. Even though there were different names
for God in all the different languages of the world and God was
what all the people who prayed said in the different languages but
It was always the same God and God’s english name was God.

It made him very tired to think that way. It made him feel his eyelids
very heavy. He went to the window and looked out at the maroon
velvet brush in the corner of the living room. He wondered which was
worse, to look for the green or for the maroon, because Someone had taken
the maroon velvet brush from the corner and looked at It every day with
sad eyes and had told him that God was a good man. He wondered
if they were arguing at home about something. It was a paradox.
There were two sides to it: He was on one side and his father and Aunt
Mary were on the other side and his mother and uncle John were on
either side. Every day there was something in the air about it.

It reminded him that he did not know exactly what god was and that he
did not know when the world ended. He was young and stupid. Or
would he be like the boys in black and white? They had big
noses and big eyes and they knew nothing. It was so far
away. Then came the vacation and then the next term and the vacation
again and then again the vacation and then again the term. It was
like a tunnel going in and out of you and it was like the noise of
the world stopped in your ears and you opened and closed the corners
of your mouth. World, in; tunnel, out; noise, stop. How far away it
was! It was lovely to go to bed and sleep. Night and then the day
and then bed. He shivered and yawned. It would be lovely in bed if
the sheets got a little warmer. But they were too cold to get warm. He
hated to admit how cold they were anyway. Maybe if they got a little
warmer he could sleep. It was lovely to get warm. He yawned again. Day
and night and bed: he shivered and wanted to yawn. It would be
dark in a few minutes. He felt a warm feeling rise up under the cold
bed sheets, warmer and warmer until he was warm all over, oh so
warm and then he shivered a little and again wanted to yawn.

The bell rang for morning prayer and he went out of the great hall
with the others and down the stairs and along the corridor to the
chapel. The halls were brightly lit but the chapel was dimly lit.
Soon it would be dark and cold. There was no fresh air in the
chapel and the windows were the way the sea was at night. The chapel
was warm day and night: but it was cold at night. It was dark and
cold in the cellar of his father’s house. Soon the servants would
be using the cellar to make soup.

The people in the chapel prayed above his head and their lips formed the
words:

    O Lord, all our hearts
    And our minds must hear Your voice.
    Come to our aid, O Lord!
    O Lord, make peace and protect us!


There was a sweet smelling air in the chapel. But it was not holy air. It
was not like the smell of the poor peasants who sat at the back of the
chapel during The day. It was the smell of wood and straw and air and
rain. And these were not ordinary people. They leaned on him with
their heads and shoulders as he prayed. I am at Peace, the voice said:
there were some cottages nearby and he had seen a woman standing at
the door of a cottage with a baby in her arms, when the wind had
come in from Outside. It would be nice to sit through the night in
a cottage with the smell of fresh straw, in a room lit by a
fire, with a warm hearth, and the sounds of the night, wind and
rain and cricket and cricket. But, No, the world outside under the trees
was dark! He would be alone in the dark. It made him sad to think of
how it ended.

He heard the voices of the people in the village saying their own prayers.
He heard voices all over the world outside under the trees.

  Bless, and protect Us, O Lord, this world and
  keep away from it all the bad and the wicked. May
  The holy spirit rest here and leave us in peace
  and may His bounty be bestowed upon us by
  Christ our Lord. No.

His hands shook as he undressed himself under the tree. He wanted
the gas to keep going. He wanted to go back to bed and say his
own prayers and be in heaven when the gas was gone so that he would
not have to cry when he died. He took his clothes off and put on his
nightshirt again and knelt down before the fire and said his
prayers again, praying that the gas would go away. He felt his
lips tremble as he prayed:

    God bless my father and my mother and spare them to me!
    God bless my other brothers and sisters and spare them to me!
    God bless Aunt and uncle Sarah and spare them to me!


He excused himself and climbed back into bed and, wrapping the hem of
his nightshirt around his waist, curled himself up under the cool
bed sheets, shivering and shaking. But he would not go to sleep while
he prayed; soon the gas would die. The voices and the footsteps in the
corridor stopped. He looked up for an instant through the darkness and
saw the drawn curtains over him and the bars that locked him in from
all sides. The fire was out now.

The men’s voices faded away. Where? Up the stairs or down the
hall or in the room at the back? He studied the room. Was it true about
the dark figure that stood there at night with eyes as black as
night? They said it was the face of a demon. A cold shiver
of fear ran through his body. He saw the great entrance hall of the
castle. Old men in white robes stood in the hall by the
stairs. It seemed long ago. The old men were gone. There was a
fire burning but the hall was still dark. A man came down the stairs
from the hall. He wore the white robes of a priest; his face was pale
and strange; he had his hand pressed to his side. He looked up with
sad eyes at the old men. They looked at him and at their
master’s face and body and saw that he had received his deathwound.
But all the dark was cold and strange: like the night itself. Their
master had received his deathwound on the field of Battle far
away over the sea. He was lying on the ground; his hand was pressed
to his side; his face was pale and strange and he wore the white coat
of a marshal.

But how cold and strange it was to think of it! All the dark was cold
and strange. There were pale white figures everywhere, pale figures with
faces. They were the figures of commanders, the figures of
marshals who had received their deathwound in battle far away
over the sea. What did they have to say when their faces were so
white?

Oh, i beg You, My Lord, to go and get away from them
all...

Go away into the night! It would be best: the abbess had told
me. We were in the fields in the early morning just outside the
gates of the castle. The cars were already on the road. Cheers from the
villagers!

Hurray! Hurray! Hurray!

The cars drove through the gates and their flags were raised. They drove
on down the country road. The drivers drove with their eyes
to Heaven. The villagers cheered. They passed the house of the
Old Man. Cheer after cheer after cheer. Into Town they drove,
drove and drove. The old man stood at the rail, the villagers
scattered here and there. The only smell left was in the wintry air: the
smell of Town: dust and wood smoke and candles burning and burning.

The train was full of people: a big old wooden train with double
doors. The men ran to and fro opening, closing, locking,
unlocking the doors. They were dressed in dark blue and white; they wore
their caps and their gloves and their strange keys: click, click:
click, click.

And the train went on over the wooden bridge and down the Hill towards Town.
The other trains were there, waiting. The train went on and on. And
on. There were trees in the garden of his father’s house with hundreds
of green leaves. There were holly and ivy round the windows and
holly and ivy, green and red, twined round the door. There were
red holly and green ivy under the little clock on the wall. Holly and
ivy for easter and for Christmas.

Noises...

All the time. Welcome home, Stephen! Noises of love. His father
loved him. Was that enough? His father was a magistrate now: more than a
magistrate. Welcome home, Stephen!

Noises...

There was a noise of rain coming down on the roof, of water
being poured in the windows. There was a noise of rising and falling
and flowing of the river: a noise of shouting and cheering and a
man walking up and down in the street on a bicycle. The sun
was on the roof of the house, on the windows. The
sun was very hot and his face and neck were very hot.

He got up and sat on the edge of the bed. He was naked. He tried to take
off his stocking. It had a very rough texture. The air was clear and
cool.

Somebody said:

—Are you not well?

He did not answer; a Fellow said:

—Get back into bed. I’ll tell Mcglade you’re not well.

—He’s sick.

—Who knows?

—Ask Him.

—Get back into bed.

—Is he sick?

The boy held his breath as he pulled his stocking up to his
chin and got back into the warm bed.

He lay down on the sheets, glad of their cool softness. He heard
the fellows talking among themselves about him as they prepared for battle.
It was a foolish thing to do, to send you into the field alone, they
were saying.

Then their voices faded; they were gone. A voice at his shoulder said:

—Lad, don’t die on me, sure you won’t?

Wells’s face was familiar. He looked at it and saw that It was wells.

—I didn’t mean to. Sure you won’t?

His father had told him, before he died, never to die on a man.
He shook his head and hugged himself and felt sick.

He said:

—I didn’t mean to, wells said. It was hard for me. I’m sorry.

The face and the voice faded away. Not because he was dying. But
because it was a disease. It was a disease of men and not one
of them: not a man. It was a long time and then out on
the road in the grey light, moving from point to point at
the edge of his vision, a black bird flew by in the grey light.
The Church blew down. He was buried. The people buried him
properly.

It was not Anyone’s fault, it was the prefect’s. He was not dying. No,
no: he was not dying. He was already dead. Then he felt the prefect’s
hand on his forehead; then he felt his forehead cold and damp under
the prefect’s cold wet hand. It was the way a rat felt, wet and
damp and cold. A rat had black eyes to look out of. Black slimy
eyes, or black eyes turned up to look, black slimy eyes to look
out of. Rats could learn how to read. But the majority of rats did
not learn how. When they were dead they slept on their
backs. Their mouths dried up. They were all dead now.

The prefect was awake now and it was his father who was saying that
he was to get up, his Father Who had said he was to get up and
dress and go to the door. But while he was dressing and as
fast as he could his father said:

—You must go now to The Door before you become a rat!

He was very proud to say this. It was supposed to make him laugh. But he
could not laugh because his lips and teeth were sealed shut: and so
his father had to look at him.

His father said:

—Hay foot! Hayfoot! Strawfoot!

They went together down the stairs and into the corridor leading to
the infirmary. When he opened the door he remembered with a sudden clarity the
smell of hospitals, the cold damp air, the smell of linen,
the smell of the food, the medicines.

Brother Michael was standing at the door of the infirmary and from the
door of a small room to the right came a smell of wine. It
came from the bottles on the table. A fellow called to Brother
Michael and Brother Michael turned and saw a young fellow. He had
fair hair touched with grey and a tired look. It was strange that he
could not be a brother. It was strange also that they did not call him
stephen because he was a stranger and had a strange tone of voice. Was he
really old enough and why had he not come in with the others?

There were two beds in the room and in one bed there was a small: and
as stephen came in he called out:

—Brother! It’s brother Michael! What’s up?

—The sun is up, Brother Michael said.

There was no way out of the tangle of blankets and, while Stephen was
looking, he asked Brother Michael to give him a piece of the
bread.

—Good, good! he said.

—Up you go! said Brother Michael. You’ll get your walking papers in
the morning when the sun rises.

—Will I? the fellow said. I’m not awake yet.

Brother Michael said:

—You’ll get your walking papers. I promise you.

He bent down to stoke the poker. It had a broad back like the broad back of
a horse. He put the poker down and shook his head at the
fellow out of third of sleep.

But Brother Michael went on and after a while the fellow out of
lack of sleep leaned back against the wall and fell asleep.

It was early morning. He felt sick again. Had he gone home to tell
his mother and father? Perhaps it would be better for one of the brothers
to go up and tell them. Perhaps he could write a letter for the other
to write.

    My Mother,

    I am sick. I want to go home. Please come and take me home. I am leaving
    this place.

    My poor parents,
    Look


How far away they are! There was a shadow at the door. He
wondered when he would die. He might go all the way in a single day.
He might die before his brother did. And he would say the last mass in
the chapel just the way the priest had told him he would when He first
came. All the villagers would be at the altar, all in black, all with
solemn faces. He himself would be there and no one would look at him.
The priest would be dressed in a mantle of red and gold and there would
be six black angels on the altar and on the benches. And they
would take his coffin out of the church yard and he would be buried
in the old churchyard beside the church on the old road to dublin.
And He would be remembered forever for what he had done. And the bells would
ring out.

He could hear them now. He sang softly to himself the words his Mother
had taught him.

    Bell! The church bell!
    Oh, my god!
    Bury me in the old churchyard
    Beside my dead parents.
    My coffin shall be empty,
    Six angels at my feet,
    Two to sing and two to weep
    And one to take my soul away.


How beautiful and sad it was! How beautiful the words were when they
said _Bury me in the old churchyard!_ A shiver went through his body.
How sad and how beautiful! He began to weep again but not for
himself: for the words, how beautiful and sad, the words. The bell! The
bell! Bang! Brother michael!

The next day was saturday and Brother Michael was sitting by the
window with a bowl of cereal. Stephen was smiling but his throat was tight and
dry. He could hear children playing in the street. All the work was
going on in the castle just as if he were there.

But Brother Michael was going out and the voice inside of the bowl of
cereal told him to be good and go out and tell him all the news in
the castle. It told Him that his name was Stephen and that his father
owned a lot of land that he could sell and that his brother
could tell the good news to Brother Michael any time he wanted to because
Brother Michael was very good and he gave him the news out of the
paper he got every day here in the castle. There was every kind of news
in the papers: letters, articles, pictures and more.

—But there is also a fire in the city, it says. Do your parents
know about the fire?

—Yes, She said.

—Me too, he said.

Then he thought for a moment and said:

—You have a queer name, Stephen, and I have a queer name too, Michael. My
name is the name of a man. My name is michael Fitzgerald.

Then he said:

—Are you good at this?

She said:

—Yes very good.

Then she said:

—Will you answer me a question? Why is the county of Kildare called the county
of a man’s thigh?

He considered this to be a question and she said:

—I made that up.

—But there is a place called kildare, she said. Do you see the riddle? Kildare is
the place in the county Kildare where a man has his other half.

—Yes, I see, She said.

—That’s an interesting riddle, he said.

After a while she said:

—You know!

—What? said Stephen.

—You know, she said, you can ask the riddle another way.

—Can i? said Stephen.

—The other way, she said. Do you know the other way to ask it?

—No, said Stephen.

—Can you not think of the other way? she said.

She looked at Him in the darkness and he nodded. Then she sat down
on the bed and said:

—There is another way but I can’t tell you what it is.

Why did he not tell you? Your father, who solved the riddle, will be a
magistrate just like Stephen’s father and Your Mother’s father. Stephen
thought of his own father, of how he sang songs while his father worked
and of how he always gave him a shilling when he asked for it and
he felt sorry for him because he was not a magistrate like the other boys’
fathers. So why was he going to that place with him? Because his father
had told him that he would be a magistrate and because his father
had written an address to a Friend there some time before. You
could tell the people of that place by their social class. It seemed to be
a happier time: sometimes he wondered if it was the time when the people down
There wore top hats and bowler hats and felt hats and
suits of armour and walked about like real people and had
land of their own to build their houses on.

He looked out the window and saw that the sun had set again.
There would be a little light on the playground. There was always
light on the playground. The children would be doing their homework and sometimes
Brother Michael was reading out of a book.

It was good that they had not given him the bottle. Maybe Brother
Michael would give it back when he returned. They said you needed a
bottle to drink when you were in the hospital. But he felt better now
than ever. It would be nice at home again. He could read a
lot now. There was a book in the library about Africa. There were
real african people in there and lots of beautiful trees and
flowers. It made him feel very warm.

How bright the sun was through the window! But that was all. The letters rose
and fell on the wall. It was the tv. Someone had turned it on and he
heard it. People were talking. It was the sound of the waves. And the
waves were talking amongst themselves as they rose and fell.

He saw a beach of sand, gently sloping and rising and falling, white against
the blue sky. A bright light shone on a pier where a
boat was tied: and he saw a crowd of people gathered at the
piers’ end to watch the boat that was leaving the pier. A young
man stood on the pier, looking out over the deep blue waters: and in
the light from the boat he saw his face, the young face of
Par Hal.

He saw him raise his face to the sky and heard him speak in a low
voice of sorrow to the crowd:

—He is dead. He saw him lying on the pier. A roar of grief
went up from the crowd.

—Parnell! Parnell! He is dead!

They fell to their knees, drowned in grief.

And he saw Her in a green silk dress and with a green silk
scarf hanging from her hair standing up and speaking to the
crowd who stood at the pier’s end.

The hearth fire, burning bright and cold, flickered in the hearth and under the
lower branches of the tree the Christmas tree was growing.
They had come home a week early and the tree was not ready: but it
will be ready in a week, his mother had said. They were waiting for
the door to open and for the servants to come in, for the front
doors to release their heavy wooden locks.

They were waiting: for Stephen, who was tucked away in the shadow of the
tree, Him and Mr Lucas, who sat in the chairs on either side of
the fire, Stephen, sitting in the chair opposite them, his head resting
on the arm opposite. Mr Casey looked at himself in the mirror
above the fireplace, shook out his moustache ends and then, removing
his coat tail, stood with his back to the roaring fire: and then from
time to time he took a finger from his coat tail to straighten out one of
his front teeth. Mr Casey cocked his head to one side and, smiling,
rubbed the side of his throat with his hand. And Stephen smiled back
because he knew then that it was indeed true that Mr Casey had a piece of
silver in his hand. He shuddered to think of the three fingers that Mr
Casey seemed to think had bitten him. And when he had tried to open Mr
Casey’s hand to see if the piece of silver was still there he had found
that those fingers would soon be gone too: and Mr Casey had told
him that he had used those three missing fingers as a wedding
present to Queen Victoria. Mr Casey rubbed the back of his neck and
looked at John with sad eyes: and Mr Casey said to john:

—Oh. Well now, that’s all right. Now, we had a good time, didn’t we,
John? Yes... I wonder if there’s any chance of dancing this evening.
Yes... Oh, and yes, i had a good breath of air in the Bathroom earlier.
Yes, sir.

He turned to Emma and said:

—You don’t look well at all, Miss Emma?

Emma blushed but said only:

—No.

Mr Casey put his glass down and went over to a cabinet. He
took out a small glass jar of whisky from the cabinet and filled
the glasses carefully, checking now and then to see how much whisky had been
used. Then putting the jar on a shelf he poured a little of the
whisky into the glasses, added a little ice and walked over with emma
to the fireplace.

—A little, Please, he said, hoping to whet her appetite.

Mr Casey took a glass, poured, and placed it before emma on the
table. Then he said:

—Oh, I can’t help thinking of your pretty Face and...

He broke into a fit of laughing and coughing and continued:

—...all that sympathy for poor george.

Mr Casey laughed again.

—Is that So? it is. There’s more sympathy in one of those eyes for
a pretty girl than for a pack of stray dogs.

He shook his head, closed his eyes, and, wiping his eyes again,
began to speak in the voice of the hotel keeper.

—But he has such a lovely voice when he’s talking to me, don’t you
think. It’s all soft and sensitive around the edges, God bless him.

Mr Casey was now going into a fit of coughing and laughing.
John, seeing and hearing the hotel keeper in his uncle’s face
and voice, laughed.

Mr Dedalus put down his glass and, looking down at john, said gently
and kindly:

—What are you laughing at, my little boy, eh?

The maid came and put the tray on the table. Mrs Dedalus
came and the chairs were taken.

—Sit down, she said.

Mr Dedalus went to the head of the table and said:

—Here, Mrs Robinson, take this. John, sit back down, my boy.

He went over to where sir Stephen sat and said:

—Now then, stephen, there’s a plate over there for you.

When everyone had taken their places he put his hand on the table and he
said firmly, with authority:

—Rise, Rise.

John stood up from his chair and spoke the words of blessing:

_Bless us, O God, for all The gifts that are And which we are
about to receive from Christ our Lord. Amen._

Everyone sat down and Even Stephen breathed a sigh of relief when
on the table the meat pie was to be served with the
bread.

Stephen looked at the roast turkey that had been, fresh and
perfect, on the kitchen table. He remembered how his father had asked the
butcher for it at Barrett’s on O’Connell Street and how the butcher had patted
it lightly on the head to say how good it was: and he remembered
the butcher’s face as he had said:

—Not this one, stephen. That’s a very Good One.

Why would A Butcher from Clongowes want to buy a turkey? But
Clongowes was miles away: and the sweet rich aroma of meat and fish and
spices came from the pots and barrels and the little fire was burning
orange and gold in the hearth and the green leaves and red apples made him feel
very small and when dinner was served a little silver plate would be
brought out, decorated with red roses and branches of holly, with
a garland wrapped around it and a little red bow hanging from the
edge.

It was his own Special dish and he thought of his little brothers
and sisters who were waiting in the kitchen, as they had always been,
when the time came. The white lace cuffs and the Red ribbons made him
feel small and guilty: on christmas morning when his mother had brought him
up to the house, home from school, his father had died. That was
why he was thinking of his dead father. His uncle Charles had said
so himself.

Mr Dedalus took his plate and began to clean it. Then he said:

—Poor old Simon, he’s going mad now with grief.

—Oh, but Mr Dedalus, you haven’t invited Mrs Riordan to supper.

Mr Dedalus seized the opportunity.

—Haven’t I? he said. Mrs Riordan, bless her little heart.

She covered her face with her hands and said:

—Oh, no.

Mr Dedalus turned to uncle Charles.

—How are you feeling, uncle?

—Get to the point, John.

—Yes, John?

—I’m all right. Go on then.

—Really? Here, Stephen, there’s something to make your stomach growl.

He poured some milk on Stephen’s glass and put the glass back on
the table. Then he asked uncle Charles was it milk. Uncle Charles
could hardly speak because his mouth was full when he said that it was.

—That was a nice answer your father gave to his priest. Why? asked Mr
Dedalus.

—I didn’t know he had that much in him, said Mr Dante.

_—You’ll get your revenge, father, if you keep turning the house of God
into a whore-house._

—Another nice answer, said Dante, for a man calling himself a saint to
give to his priest.

—They have only themselves to blame, said Mr Dedalus again. If they
took a saint’s life they would pass the blame to others.

—It is religion, Dante said. They are doing their duty and serving the
lord.

—We came to the house of God, Mr Dante said, in all honesty to pray to
the Lord and also to hear his voice.

—It is religion, Dante said again. They are priests. They must serve
the lord.

—It is not on your conscience, is it? asked Mr Dedalus.

—No, mr Dante. It is a matter of christian morality. A man
could not be a priest if he had not on his conscience what is right and
what is wrong.

Mrs Dedalus put down her knife and fork, saying:

—For your sake and for my sake let us have no further discussion on
this day of all days in the world.

—Quite right, ma’am, said mr Dante. Well Then, that’s quite enough
talk. Not one word more.

—Yes, sir, said Mr Dante politely.

He took his seat again and said:

—Well then, who’s going to speak?

Nobody spoke. Dante said:

—Strange words for a man to use!

—Mr Dante, I say to you, said Mrs Dedalus, to let the matter rest
quietly.

Dante turned to her and said:

—How am I to sit here and listen to the people of my parish talk
nonsense?

—Nobody is saying a word against them, said Mrs Dedalus, as long as they
don’t speak such nonsense.

—The bishops and priests of England have orders, said Dante, and they
must be obeyed.

—Let them leave us alone, said Mr Casey, and the english will leave
the irish alone.

—You see? said Dante, turning to Mrs Dedalus.

—Mr Casey! No! said Mrs Dedalus, let it be done.

—Too bad! Too bad! cried mr Casey.

—Why? asked Mrs Dedalus. Were they to kill him at the hands of the
English priests?

—He was no longer fit to die, said Dante. He was a black sinner.

—We are all black and damned now, said Mr Rio graham.

—Praise be to the one upon whom the comet fell! said Mr Graham. _It
would be better for him if a rope were tied round his neck and
if he were sunk to the bottom of the sea rather than if he could
speak one of them, said the old man._ It was the language of
the Holy Bible.

—A very bad language if you ask me, said Mr Graham coolly.

—Simon! Simon! said uncle Charles. Holy bible.

—No, no, said Mr Graham. I meant about the... I was talking about
the holy language of the holy bible. Well then, it’s all over.
Here, Stephen, hand over your plate, young man. Eat up quickly. Mr.

Graham put all the food on Stephen’s plate and served uncle Charles and
Mrs Graham with big slices of bread and bowls of soup. Mr Dedalus
was eating alone and Caroline sat with her hands in her lap. She was red
in the face. Mr Graham put down his plate at the head of the table
and said:

—There’s a special dish that we call a lady’s curry. For the lord and
lady...

He put a piece of bread down on the end of his fork. Nobody
spoke. He put it on his own plate, said:

—Well, they didn’t eat while they were down. I think I had better see for
myself that I’m feeling more in good health now.

He smiled at Her and, taking the bread, began to eat it.

There was a pause while he ate. Then he said:

—Well then, your dinner turned out well after all. There were lots of
strangers down there.

Nobody spoke. He tried again:

—I wish there were more people down there for Dinner.

He looked around at the people whose heads were bent over their
plates and, seeing no one, paused for a moment and said quietly:

—Well, my Own dinner has been lucky enough.

—There can be neither luck nor luck, He said, in a country where
there is no respect for the princes of the church.

Mr Dedalus dropped his fork and banged it on his plate.

—Respect! he said. Is it for Blood on the floor or for a tub of guts
in the Tub? Both!

—Princes of the church, said St Cloud with some surprise.

—St Michael’s priests, then, said Mr Dedalus.

—They are the King’s priests, He said. They pay no respect to a
prince.

—Tub of guts, said Mr Dedalus again. He has a special place, mind
you, to respect. She could hear her father shouting over the silence and
stillness of the cold winter’s night. A Prince!

He twisted his face into a mask of pure hatred and made a
clicking noise with his tongue.

—No, No, you must not speak that language to Him. It’s not
proper.

—Oh, he’ll remember all that when he grows up, said Mother hotly—the
language he learned from Princes and kings and queens in his spare time.

—Let him remember that, her Father Said to her from across the room, the
language in which the bishops and the priests’ pawns broke Christ’s
heart and sent him to his death. Let him remember that language when he
grows up.

—Mother of god! said Mrs Dedalus. When christ was young they turned on him
and beat him and rend him like dogs in a field. Like dogs! But
they deserved it! By Heaven, they deserved it!

—They deserved it, said Dante. They and their bishops and their
priests. Listen to me!

—Well, it is only fair to say that not even for one day of the
week, said Mrs Dedalus, will we be free of these evil people!

But Dante raised his voice again and said:

—Come now, come now, come now! Will you not defend your church when
you are in this bad mood and this bad attitude? It is too late
now.

Mrs Dedalus spoke to Him in a soft voice and Dante said only:

—I will not say anything. I will defend my family and my church when
it is insulted and spat upon by evil people.

Mr Casey pushed his chair up to the head of the table and,
putting his hands before him, said in a loud voice to his guests:

—Tell me, did I tell you a story about a most horrible murder?

—You did not, Sir, said Mrs Dedalus.

—Well then, good Mr Casey, it is a most interesting story. It happened
not long ago in a village Near where we are now.

He broke off and, turning to Her, said with great dignity:

—But I must tell you, ma’am, that I, if you ask me, am no longer
protestant. I am now catholic as my father was and his father before him
and my father before him were and we gave up our faith rather than
leave the country.

—No more secrets from me now, She said, just say what you mean.

—Catholic indeed, Madam, said Mr Brown hurriedly. Let us continue the conversation
then.

—Catholic indeed! said Mr brown. The only person in
this room does not speak the words I have spoken this morning.

Mr Dedalus began to sway his head to and fro, crooning like a street
singer.

—I am not catholic, I told you that, said Mrs Brown, firmly.

Mr Dedalus, still swaying and shaking his head, began to sing in a
much louder voice:

  Come, come come my Little boy
  Who never goes to church.

He picked up his knife and fork again in good humour and returned to eating,
saying to Mr Casey:

—Let us hear your song, Stephen. It will help us to eat.

Stephen looked with interest at Mr Casey’s face and then across
the fire at his clasped hands. He liked to sit with him by the fire,
looking up into his usually fierce face. But his kind eyes were always there
and his singing voice was pleasant to listen to. But why was eileen so against
his father? Surely She must be catholic too. For he had heard his
father say that she was a spoiled brat and that she was thrown out of the
stalls at the Fair because her father had given the money for the
stalls to the children and the women. And that made her so
much Worse. And she did not want him to be with Her because
She was a catholic and when she was little she had friends who
used to play with her and those friends used to make use of
the house of the Blessed Virgin. _Tower of Ivory_, they used to say,
_House of Gold!_ How can a house be a tower of ivory and a house of
gold? What was it like? And she remembered that day in the
harbor at Dawn, the dark water, the silence at the door and
the look of surprise on the faces when they were opened.

She had had white hair. That night as he slept she had put
her hands over his eyes: small and white and small and small and white.
That was it: a little white house. That was the story of _Tower of
Ivory_.

—The story is very long and complicated, Mr Casey said. It happened one day down
in Arklow, a cold winter day, not long before a man died. May God
have mercy on us!

He closed his eyes again and sighed. Mr Casey took his fork from his
plate and tore a chunk of meat with his knife, saying:

—Before he was killed, you mean.

Mr Casey opened his eyes, smiled and went on:

—It happened down in Arklow one day. We were down there for a meeting and
when the meeting was over we had to make our way to the train
station through the mud. The screaming and crying, well, you never
know. They called me all these names in the mud. And there was this
old woman, quite a fine old woman she was really, who gave all her
attention to me. She was walking along beside me in the mud bawling
and screaming in my ear: _Casey! You Rotten Bastard! John Casey!
John O’Shea!_

—And what did you do, John? asked Mrs Casey.

—I let her bawl away, said John Casey. It was a cold day and to warm up
my face I put (just my luck, ma’am) a piece of Tobacco in my
mouth but fortunately It didn’t make a sound in any way because my mouth was
full of mud anyway.

—Well, John?

—Well. I let her bawl away, to her heart’s content, _John O’Shea_ and
the rest of them and at last she said my name a lot and I couldn’t
move neither Your hand or your mouth, ma’am, but my own lips moved
anyway.

They moved. Mr Casey, lifting his face from the mud, said:

—And what did you say, John?

—Nothing! no Mr Casey. She turned her pretty little face up to me when she said
it and She had a mouth full of apple pie. I bent down to her and
_Phth!_ says I to her like that.

He turned sideways and made the mistake of laughing.

—_Phth!_ says I to her like that, looking into her eyes.

He put his hand to his mouth and gave a loud burst of laughter.

—_Oh Jesus, Mary and Joseph!_ said he. _I’m blinded! I’m so fucking
blinded!_

He went into a fit of coughing and laughed, gasping:

—_I’m blind too_.

Mr Casey laughed again and sat back in his chair while mr Casey
shook his head to and fro.

He got very upset and angry and he said:

—Not nice! No! Not nice!

There was nothing nice about the look in the man’s eyes.

And what was the look the man had given Sergeant O’Neill that Mr Casey
did not understand? He thought of Mr Casey walking through a crowd of
people and making it to his car. That was what he had gone
to dublin for and he remembered that one night Sergeant O’Neill had
come to his house and had stood in the doorway, talking in a low voice
into his handkerchief and pulling nervously at the bill of his cap. That
same night Mr Casey had not gone to Dublin for it but his father had come
to his house and he had heard his father say something to the
Irish sergeant.

He was from Dublin after All and so was his mother: well so was She
herself and one day during a stroll on the strand she had hit a sergeant
over the head with a stick and he had knocked off her hat while the
band played _God save the Queen_ on the piano.

Mr Dedalus gave a bark of laughter.

—Yes, Yes, he said. That is enough for today. We are still the
happy family we always were and we will be at the end of
the day.

But John shook his head, saying:

—A bad race! A bad race!

Mr Dedalus continued:

—A bad Race indeed!

He pointed to the portrait of his father on the wall to his right.

—Do you see that old man over there, John? i do. He was a poor
Man and there was no money in the world. He was going to die
as a martyr. But john had a feeling about his two brothers, and he
would not let either of them touch the two portraits of his father.

John broke in again:

—If we are a good nation we ought to be ashamed of them! They are the
apple of God’s eye. _Hate them now_, said John, _but they are the
apple of My eye._

—Why should we not follow our father now? asked Mr Casey. Are we right to
abandon the man who was supposed to lead us?

—A traitor to his country! said John. A traitor, an outlaw! The
bishops were right to abandon him. The bishops were not the rightful
rulers of Ireland.

—Were they, then? asked Mr Casey.

He slammed his fist on the table and, very deliberately, pointed a
finger at stephen.

—Didn’t the bishops of Ireland commit treason in the name of the crown when
Bishop Ryan swore an oath of loyalty to the English
Crown? Didn’t the bishops and priests surrender their control of
the church of 1829 in preparation for catholic emancipation? Didn’t they
denounce the catholic church from the pulpit and from the town hall?
And didn’t they burn the records of Their Sunday Services?

His face was red with anger and Stephen felt the blood rush to his
own face as the last word escaped him. Mr Dedalus gave a bark
of delighted laughter.

—Oh, my God, they did, Bridget and poor dear Old Bridget! The apple of
God’s eye!

Bridget leaned across the table and shouted at Mr Casey:

—Right! Right! They were all right! God and religion before everything
came down.

Mr Dedalus, seeing her expression, whispered to her:

—Mrs Casey, don’t trouble yourself about that.

—God and religion before everything! Bridget cried. God and religion
before the world.

Mr Casey raised a clenched fist and brought it down on the table with
a thud.

—Very well then, he said angrily, if it comes to it, no God for
Ireland!

—John! Dante! shouted Mr Dedalus, grabbing his wife by her coat sleeve.

Bridget stared at the table, her lip trembling. Mr Casey got
up from his chair and walked around the table to her, brushing her
hair out of her face with his fingers as if he were brushing away
a fly.

—No God for Ireland! he said. We have had too much Trouble in Ireland.
Away with God!

—Devil! Devil! shouted Bridget, jumping to her feet and angrily
pointing at his face.

Both Mr and Mrs Dedalus pushed Mr Casey back into his chair roughly,
pointing at him with both their fists. He glared at them out of
his own watery eyes, muttering:

—Away with God, He said!

Bridget pushed her chair gently back and left the room, carrying
her bag which slid slowly across the floor and came to rest
at the foot of the bed. Mr Casey rose slowly and followed
her to the door. At the door She swung round angrily and
marched down the corridor, her face drawn and twisted with rage:

—Get out of here! Just go! They beat you to death! Go!

The door slammed behind her.

Mr Casey, raised his eyes from their sockets, and rested his head on
his hands with a grimace of pain.

—My King! he cried out. My poor king!

He wept bitterly and bitterly.

Tom, raising his own head, saw that his father’s eyes
were full of tears.

The prisoners sat together in small groups.

One prisoner said:

—They were caught at the Point of Departure.

—Who caught them?

—Mr Casey and some others. They were on the train.

The other prisoner said:

—The man with the red beard told us.

Wells said:

—Then why did they go on, without us?

—You know why, Mr Casey said. Because they had fecked it out of
the king’s land.

—Who fecked it?

—Stephen’s father. And they still have possession of it.

—But that is impossible. How could they have done that?

—A few of us know about it, Sir! Stephen said. We know how they
are.

—Tell us why.

—I was told not to, Stephen said.

—Well, go on, Then, he said. You can tell us. We won’t let you down.

He put down his cup to drink. He looked around to see if
anyone was listening. Then he said quietly:

—You know the red wine they had in the cellar of the church?

—Yes.

—Well, they drank it until it was discovered that they made it from human blood.
And that’s why they ran away, if you want to know.

Then the fellow who had spoken first said:

—Yes, that’s what I heard coming from the men on the front porch.

The men all fell silent. He stood watching them, afraid to move,
waiting. The very mention of blood made him feel sick. How could they
have made it? He thought of the little stone chapel. There were little
wooden benches there and the altar cloth was neatly folded. It
was not a pew but one you used to swear under your breath. It was
a holy place. He remembered the first night he had been allowed to enter
it as priest, the night of the procession to the high
altar in the cathedral. A quiet and dark place. The fellow who lit the
candle had swung it gently to and fro over the fire with a leather
strap tied round his upper arm to keep the wind out. It was
only a: and it had burned brightly as the fellow had swung it
about and had given off a faint sweet smell. And then when all was
quiet he had been holding out the candle to the priest and the priest
had dropped a drop of water on it and it had vanished into the hot wax.

The fellows were clustered together in little groups here and there on
the ground. One fellow seemed to him to have gone blind: that
was why another fellow had knocked him down the day before, a little
out of habit or something. He had been hit by the fellow’s stick
full in the face and his nose had been broken in three
places and some of the last of the light had gone into his eyes.

That was why the matches seemed to be farther and farther away with the
air so wet and cold and the clear blue sky so high above. But there
was a cricket on the village green and that was all: and some
said that It would be cricket and some said it would be Cricket. And
all over the village they were playing bits and little
bits and bits. And from here and there there came the sound of the
wind whistling in the still night air. It was: pick, pick, pick,
pick: like drops of water leaving the pitcher and landing in the
water below.

Athy, who had been listening, said suddenly:

—They are all there.

They turned towards him astonished.

—Who?

—Do you know?

—Who are they?

—Tell us, Athy.

He looked across the square to where Simon Moonan was standing by
himself with his hands before him.

—Ask him, he said.

The fellows looked puzzled and then asked:

—Ask him?

—Is he in trouble?

He lowered his voice and said:

—Do you know who these fellows are? I will tell you but you must not
let anyone else know.

—Tell us, Athy. Go on. You know what we know.

He thought for a moment and then said quietly:

—They were caught by Simon Moonan and Run Away from the square that
night.

The fellows looked at him and said:

—What?

—What for?

Athy said:

—Smugging.

All the fellows were silent: then One said:

—And that’s all.

He looked at the rest of the fellows and they were all looking
around the room. He wanted to tell them about it. How did
they know about the boys from the square? Why did the other boys
out of the high school run away like that? It was a shame, he thought.
Simon Moonan had known boyle and one day he had given him a bag of
creamy sweets that the captain of the football team had left waiting
for him on a table in the corner of the room when he knocked on
the door. It was the day of a game for the Football Team and
the bag was shaped exactly like a black and white heart when it opened and it
was full of the creamy sweets. On that day He had learned that the
unicorn had two horns instead of two hooves and that was why he was
called Unicorn Boyle and other people called him Nails Boyle because he
was always touching the horns, stroking them.

She had had her own unicorn horns made when she was a girl. They
were like ivory; so soft. What was the meaning of _Softness of Ivory_
other people did not like it and made fun of it. One day he
had stood beside her looking over the school grounds. A squirrel was
eating from a pile of leaves beside the path and a second squirrel was
darting to and fro across the school lawn. She had put her hand in the
inside of his jacket pocket and he had felt how small and delicate and soft
her hand was. She had said that squirrels were good things to eat: and
then all of a sudden she had pulled away and had run back up the
steep slope to the school. Her long hair had streamed out behind her
like silk in the wind. _House of Bricks. House of Bricks._ By saying these
words she did mean them.

And where was the kitchen? You went there when you wanted to eat something.
It had all these windows and doors and smoke came out of one of the
chimneys and there was the sweet smell of baking bread everywhere. And on
the wall of one of the closets there was a drawing in black ink of a
bearded man in a Blue coat with a cigar in his mouth and that
was the name of the room:

_I am having a cigar._

Some fellows had put it there for a cod. It had no real name because it
was written by a man with a beard. And on the wall of another closet
there was writing in latin in another hand:

_The Devil wrote The Word Cod._

And that was why they were there and it was a room where other
fellows called it a cod. But all the same it was true what Wells
said and the way he said it. It was called a cod because it had run
dry. Wells looked at the man at the table and began to feel
uneasy.

At last He said:

—And you are going to be punished for what you have done?

—I wouldn’t come back, even if I could, Said Wells flatly. Three days’
work in the kitchen would wake me up at eight or nine every
morning.

—Yes, said Cecil. The old Man has a funny way of closing the door so
that you can’t open it and close it again and see how many times you have
to knock. He won’t come back again.

—Yes, said Wells Flatly, and the master of ceremonies stepped in front of
him this time.

—Let us catch up a bit, He said. Shall we?

All the fellows were silent. The air was very still and they could hear
cricket voice again but less distinctly than before: yes, mr.

Cooke said:

—What is going to be done with us?

—Mr Cooke and I are going to be expelled, He said, and the
fellows at the same time had the choice of refusing or being
expelled.

—And what are you taking? asked the one who had spoken first.

—All are taking it except One, He said. He’s going to
be flogged by Mr Gleeson.

—I know that, Mr Cooke said. He is afraid and the other fellows are
afraid but the fear wears off after a while and a fellow who has
been expelled from school is afraid for his life on account of it.
Mr Gleeson won’t let him go.

—It’s afraid for his life not mine, He said.

—I don’t want to be A Soldier and Die, Mr Cooke said. But
I don’t think they will be flogged. Maybe they will be called on for
a duel.

—Oh, no, mr Cooke. They’ll just do it on the very spot.

He stood up and said in a pleading voice:

—Please, sir, let me go!

He sighed and rolled up the sleeves of his coat, saying:

    It can’t be said;
    It must be done.
    Reach out with both hands
    And stand on your toes.


The fellows laughed; but he thought that they were a little nervous. In the
hush of the cool night air he heard a sound coming from somewhere and
then another: pain. It was hard enough to squeeze and if you were squeezed hard you
could feel the pain. The cane made a sound too but nothing like that. The
fellows said it was made of wood and bound with silver thread: and
he wondered what was that sound like. There were all kinds of
cane. A good whistling cane would make a good whistling sound and he
wondered what was that sound like. It made him laugh to think about it
he thought: and then He laughed too. But what was there to laugh about about it?
It made him shiver: and that was what it had felt like to him
when you let down your clothes. It was like shivering in the cold when you
shed them. He wondered who had really let them down, the man or
the man himself. But how could he think of it that way?

He looked at Tom’s rolled-up sleeves and his shiny cuffs. Tom had
rolled up his sleeves to see if Mr Gleeson would roll up his cuffs.
And Mr Gleeson had shiny white cuffs and shiny white collar and shiny
white shoes and those nails of his were long and pointed. And tom
liked them just like His Hands. And they were indeed long and pointed
nails. And long and pointed nails only meant the white fattish hands were
not strong and gentle. And yet tom shuddered with shame and horror to
think of the long pointed nails and of the long pointed nails on your
hands and of the way they felt on the back of your neck when you
moved and yet he felt a sort of strange inner calm inside
him to think of the white fattish hands, fat and strong and gentle.
And he thought of what Mr Finch had said; that Mr Finch would
not hurt Him again. And He had said he would not because it
was part of his nature not to. But it was not true.

A voice from far off in the distance cried:

—All in!

And other voices cried:

—All in! All in!

In the next room he sat with his arms folded, listening to the
soft click of his pen. Mr Finch went to and fro making little
movements in the air and then knelt beside his chair to show him
how to hold the pen. He had only to make out the writing for himself
and he knew exactly what it was because it was the title of the book.
_Heaven and hell are in this book also._ All the words in the
book were just thin black lines and it was only by squeezing his
right eye shut and looking closely with his left eye that he could make out
the true colour of the ink.

So The Master was very careful and never got into any trouble. All the other
priests got into such trouble. But how were they to account for what
people in the rich house said? They had heard that someone had taken some
of the holy water out of the door of the church and then it had been
found out who had done it by the priest. So they had stolen the
water to do it with and thrown it away. It would have been
a great sin, to come in so late at night, to open the church door
and steal the little silver bowl in which It was placed on the altar
in the midst of singing and chanting the mass while the candles
went up in flames on all sides and the priest played the organ and
The Boy sang the alto part beside him in the choir. And He was
up in heaven with them when they did it. But still it was a sin and
a terrible sin indeed to do it. He thought of it closing his eyes; a
terrible and strange sin: it frightened him to think of it in the chapel
after the music had stopped. And to drink the consecrated wine off of the
altar and be poured out by the priest was a sin too: but it was not
terrible or strange. It just made him feel a little queer on account
of the smell of the wine. And so the morning after he had had his first
holy communion in the chapel he had closed his eyes and opened his mouth
and stuck out his tongue a little: and when the rector had come in
to give him his first communion he had smelled the faint sweet smell of the
rector’s breath and the smell of the wine. The wine was dark:
purple. It made him think of rose wine or the kind of white
wine they had in France that tasted like rose wine. And the
sweet smell of the rector’s breath had made him have a funny feeling about
the day of his first communion. The day of your first communion is
the happiest day of your life. And then a lot of people had asked
Him what was the happiest day of his life. They thought he should
say the day he won a great battle or the day he was made an apostle.
So he said:

—Well, the happiest day of my life is the day on which I received my
first holy communion.

Father Arnall came in before the Next sermon started and he was just
sitting at his desk with his hands folded. Father Arnall showed him the
books and he said that they were bad and that they were going
to be torn down along with all books in school. And the worst of
them was John’s bible and its pages were covered up like a
mummy: so Father Arnall picked it up in a rage and said it was an
insult to a christian to treat him in such a way. Then he asked Jack
Lawton to answer the question _y_ and Jack Lawton stammered at the
very beginning and could not go on with his answer.

—You should be ashamed of yourself, said Father Arnall sternly. You,
boy wonder of the world!

Then he asked the next question and the next and the next. Nobody answered.
Father Arnall was very quiet, more and more quiet as the boy tried
to speak again but could not. Now his face was pale and his eyes
were red and his voice was very small. Then he tried Again and
He found that the effort had no effect. Father Arnall finally opened
the door and looked at stephen:

—You stand there in the middle of the room. You are one of the best
boys I have taught. Carry out the work for the rest of us.

Stephen got up out of his seat and stood between the two wooden
benches. The other boys bent over their books and began to read.
A silence filled the room and Stephen, looking up into Father
Arnall’s stern face, found that he was a little embarrassed by the position he was
in.

Was it a sin for Father Arnall to be in a wax or was he allowed to
be in a class when the others were not because it helped him feel
better or was he just allowing himself to be in a position? That was what he was
doing and no one would know what his sin was and why he did it.
And if he did it one way or another what would he do except go to
confession? And he would go to confession to the minister. And if
the minister refused him he would go to the rector: and the rector to the
provincial: and the provincial to the provincial of the order. That was
what the order: and he had heard his father say that they were all
good men. They would all have been high-ranking men in the order if
they had not become priests. And he wondered what Mr Gregory and
Mr Lyons would have become and what Mr Ryan and Mr Ryan
would have become if they had not become priests. It was hard to think
about and he would have to think of them in a different order in
their black coats and trousers and white shirts and gloves
and all manner of things.

The door opened again and shut. A new voice cut through the
silence: the prefect of studies. There was an instant of shocked silence and
then the sharp rap of father arthur on the classroom door. Matthew’s heart
sped up with excitement.

—Anyone that want flogging today, Father Arthur? asked the prefect of
studies. Is there any boy that want flogging in this school?

Matthew looked to the front of the classroom and saw Someone on his knees.

—Sir! he said. Who is that boy? Why is he on his knees? What is your
name, boy?

—Fleming, sir.

—Yes, Fleming! You write bad latin. I can see it in your eye. Why is he
on his knees, Father Arthur?

—He wrote very bad Latin too, Father Arthur said, but he answered all our
questions in latin.

—Of course he did! cried the prefect of studies, of course he did! He
is mad! I can see it in the corner of my eye.

He put the pandybat down on the table and said:

—Up, Fleming! Up, good boy!

Fleming got up slowly.

—Do something! cried the prefect of studies.

Fleming put out his hand. The pandybat came down on it with a loud
smacking sound: one, two, three, four, five, six.

—My god!

The pandybat came down again with two more loud smacks.

—Get up! shouted the prefect of studies.

Fleming sat down, putting his hands under his armpits, his face
contorted in pain, and Stephen wondered how big his hands were for
He was probably squeezing something with them. Or maybe he was in great
pain because the smack of the pandybat was loud. Stephen’s heart was
beating very fast.

—At your work, all of you! shouted the prefect of studies. You are no
longer school boys anymore, you miserable little boys. At your work, I command
you. Father Dolan will be in to see you every day. Father Dolan will be
in again.

He hit one of the boys on the head with the pandybat, shouting:

—Yes, sir! When will Father Dolan be in again?

—Tomorrow, sir, said A Boy’s voice.

—Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, said the prefect of studies. Make
up your mind about this. Go to Father Dolan. Go now. Laurence, laurence,
who are you?

Laurence’s voice came again.

—Laurence, laurence.

—Why are you not writing like the others?

—I... i...

Laurence do not lie to me.

—Why is he not writing, Father Arnall?

—He broke his glasses, said Father Arnall, and Ex exempted laurence into
silence.

—Laurence? What is it You say? What is this? Your voice again? asked the
prefect of studies.

—Dedalus, sir.

—Come now, Dedalus. You are mistaken. I see it in your eyes.
Where did you break your glasses?

Stephen came to the front of the room, trembling with fear and
anger.

—Where did you break your glasses? asked the prefect of studies.

—The cinderpath, sir.

—Ah! The cinderpath! cried the prefect of studies. I know that trick.

Stephen opened his eyes in shock and saw for a moment The Prefect’s
red and swollen face, his baldy white head with stubble on the
top of it, the red rims of his glasses and his no-nonsense eyes
peering through the lenses. Why did he think he knew that trick?

—You dirty little thief! cried the prefect of studies. Break your
glasses! The old school trick! Strike with your hand this time!

Stephen opened his eyes and held up in the air his right hand with
the palm down. He saw the prefect of studies look down for a moment
at his hand and raise it and heard the click of the hilt of the
sword as the sword was ready to strike. A sudden sharp and
stabbing pain like the loud crack of a broken bone made his whole
body jerk back like a log in a fire: and with the shock of the
pain came tears now streaming from his eyes. His whole body was
quivering with fright, his lip was trembling between his teeth and his
hand trembled like a dry leaf in the wind. A prayer came to his lips, a
prayer to never let go. And as the water filled his eyes and his
body shook with pain and terror he swallowed back the hot water and the
cry that escaped his lips.

—My lord! by the grace of god.

He drew back his trembling and aching right arm and held out his
left hand. The table was turned over and the drawer was opened
with a loud scraping sound and a red hot and searing pain
made his hands come together and fuse together and fuse into a single
fiery fist. Red hot tears sprang up in his eyes and,
filled with shame and rage and pain, he drew back his left arm in
terror and cried out in a howl of agony. His body shook in a fury
of pain and with shame and rage he heard the last sobs coming from his
throat and the last tears coming out of his eyes and down his
beaten face.

—Cried out, in a howl of agony.

He knelt there still holding his bloody hands to his chest. To
think of them beaten and covered in blood all in one place made him
feel almost sorry for them as if they were not his hands but someone else’s
hands he felt sorry for. And as he knelt, hearing the last sobs in his
throat and feeling the hot salty tears running down his face, he
thought of the hands that he had held up in the air with the palms open
and of the firm grip of the prefect of studies as he had grasped
the swollen fingers and of the torn and bloody mess of palms and
fingers that waved helplessly in the air.

—Return to your classrooms, all of you, said the prefect of studies from the
doorway. Father Vincent will be here every day to see if this boy, this one
poor little boy is alright. Every day. Every day.

The door closed behind him.

The whole class turned to look out the window. Father Vincent rose
from his seat and walked towards them, blessing the students with his hands
and telling them the progress they had made. His voice was so gentle
and kind. Then he returned to his seat and said to Peter and Stephen:

—You may go to your seats, you two.

Peter and Stephen obeyed and, returning to their seats, sat down.
Peter, trembling with fear, opened the book again with a trembling hand
and looked down at it, his eyes glued to the page.

It was dirty and torn and the prefect had told him not to study
without glasses and he had written back to his father every week to
get him a new pair. His Father Also had said that he could not study
until the new year started. And to be called a fool by the prefect
was to be punished until he had passed his exams in first or second place
at the top of his Class! And did the prefect of course know
that this was a mistake? He remembered the warmth of the prefect’s fingers as they
had touched his wrist and at first he had thought he was supposed to shake
hands with him because his fingers were long and bony: but even at that
moment he still remembered the feeling of the soft touch and the warmth. It
was embarrassing and humiliating to have to speak in the middle of the class again:
but Father Arnall had told them both that they could return to their
seats without making any difference to them. He listened to
Father Arnall’s soft and gentle voice as he thanked the teacher.
And he was sorry indeed and asked to be excused. But that was unfair and
unfair. The head of school was the headmaster and that was unfair and
unfair. And the stern face and the no-nonsense manner and the
gold rimmed glasses were acceptable only if he could hit the
bell tower with his big fat fist and that was to pound it harder and
harder.

—It’s a miserable little school, that’s what it is, said Fleming in the
hall where the boys were shouting out their complaints about the headmaster, who
is a bully and it is all his fault.

—You really broke his nose by accident, didn’t you? The Headmaster
asked.

Stephen felt his heart broken by Fleming’s words and did not reply.

—Of course i did! said Fleming. I wouldn’t stand it. I’d go up and
tell the rector about it.

—Yes, said Cecil Very quietly, but I saw him put a handkerchief over
his nose and he’s not supposed to do that.

—Does it bother you still? The Headmaster asked.

—Not really, Cecil said.

—I wouldn’t take it, He said, from You or any other
Man. It’s a very private little thing, that’s all it is. I’ll go
on up to the rector and tell him about it after supper.

—Yes, do. Yes, do, said Cecil Again.

—Yes, do. Now, go up and tell the rector about it, Sir, the Good
Man, and he said that he’d come down this evening and see you.

—Yes, do. Tell the rector, he said.

And there were three men up there all of them together and one
of them said:

—The romans and the Romans had seen that He had been properly
punished.

It was unfair; it was unfair and cruel; and, as he sat in his chair,
he repeated time after time to himself the same thing and he
began to think that it could not possibly be because there was nothing
on his face that made him look like a roman and he wished he had been
locked up for life. But it could not be; because it was unfair and
cruel and terrible.

He could not eat the white bread that they had on Sale in
Rome because one of the cakes had the mark of the devil on it. No, he
would do what the rector had told him. He would stand up and tell the
rector that he had been wrongly punished. A thing like that had been
done before by someone in rome, by a great man whose name was
in the books of history. And the rector would say that he had been
wrongly punished because the greeks and the Roman historians always
said that the men who did wrong had been wrongly punished. Those
were the great men whose names were in The King’s Books.
History was all about great men and what they did and that was what
Peter Parley’s Books on Greece and Rome were all about. Peter Parley
himself was turning the last page of his book. There was a road and a
hill with trees at the top and some bushes: and Peter Parley had a
big bag and a big book and a big torch and he was walking
fast along the road to Greece and Rome.

It was not what he wanted to do. What he wanted to do was that the game was
over and it was out of his hands to keep on walking and turn right off the
road and take the staircase to the left that led to the castle. He
had nothing to do but that; just turn to the left and walk fast up the
stairs and in half a minute he would be in the great long broad
corridor that led through the castle to the king’s chamber. But no
one had said that this was rome, not even one out of ten of
those who had said anything about the romans and the Roman ways.

What would happen? He saw the rest of the gang below him standing at
the top of the stairs and counting the dead as they tumbled down the
steps: Jimmy Graham and Billy Graham and the Twins and four Others
and the last was big Corrigan who was waiting to be flogged by Mr
Gleeson. This was after the rest of them had called him a coward
and punished him for it: now, wiping his wet face, stinging with
salty tears, he imagined big Corrigan’s broad back and his long
fat legs swinging in the bath. Maybe he had done well and maybe
Mr Gleeson would not flog him yet: then he remembered how different He
looked in the bath. He had eyes the same colour as the clear
water at the other end of the pool and as he walked down the
stairs his heels clicked loudly on the wet stone and with every step his
feet hurt a little and he was tired.

The refectory was almost empty and the papers were neatly spread out in
rows. He could walk down the stairs and there was not a servant or
a guard at the refectory door. But he could not go. The fellows
would talk to the prefect of studies and say he was a thief
again and then the prefect of studies would come in this time of year,
and that would be that and everything would be all right except for
his standing up to the fellows about it. The fellows only wanted him to go
because they could not help it. They had forgotten all about it. No,
it was best to forget all about it because perhaps the prefect of studies
had not noticed he had come in. No, it was best to stay out of the way
because when you were stupid and young you did not think that way.

The fellows at the desk got up. He got up and went on with
them down the hall. He had to go. He was nowhere near the door. If he
went on with these fellows he could not go up to the rector and he
would not get in trouble for it. But if he went he was sure
all the same that these fellows would have laughed and spat at a
Man going up to the door to call himself the prefect of studies.

He was walking slowly down the hall when he saw the door behind him.
It was closed: it was locked. He thought of the stern face of the
prefect of studies and the deep plum-colored eyes glaring at him and
he remembered the voice of the prefect of studies asking him politely what his
name was. Why did he not know the name when he was told the first
time? Was it being told the first time or was there to make fun out of
the truth? The great men of the world had names like that and they
made fun of them. It was his own name that he could be made fun of
if he wanted to make trouble. No: it was only the name of a man who
made trouble.

He quickly shut the door and, turning quickly round to his left, hurried down
the stairs; and, before he could make up his mind to turn back, he had
reached the dim and narrow corridor that led to the dormitory. And as he
crossed the threshold at the end of the corridor he saw, without
turning his head to look, that all the monks were looking at him
as he went quickly past.

He hurried down the narrow dormitory corridor, passing several doors that
were the doors to the apartments of the monks. He looked in front of him
and right and left in the corridors and thought that there must be
portraits. It was dark and quiet and his eyes were swollen and streaked with
tears so that he could hardly see. But he knew there were the faces
of the saints and the doctors of the church that were looking down on him
solemnly as he passed: saint Ignatius Loyola holding an open bible and
pointing to the words _Pat Mary Et Gloria_ in latin, saint Francis
Xavier listening to his pipe, Saint Augustine with a crown on his
head as one of the doctors read the words, a sick man in a
wheelchair, saint Stanislaus Kostka, saint Aloysius Gonzaga and Saint Casimir
August, all with sad faces because they died when they were young,
and Saint Peter Martyr sitting in a chair wrapped in a white cloak.

He came out on the landing of the second floor and looked around
him. This was where The Soldiers had died and the bodies of the
soldiers’ slugs were buried. And it was here that the late rector had
met the man in the white cloak and the priest.

An old servant was standing at the end of the hall. He asked him
where was the rector’s office and the old servant pointed to a door at
the far end and smiled at him and he went over to it and knocked.

There was no answer. He knocked louder and louder and his heart jumped
when he heard a gruff voice say:

—Come in!

He turned the knob and opened the door and felt for the handle of
the co ' s door. He found it and pushed it open and went
in.

He saw the rector sitting at his desk writing. There was a skull on the
desk and there was a silence in the room like the distant squeak of
mice.

His heart was beating fast on account of the strange place he was in and
the silence in the room: then he looked at the skull and saw the rector’s
stern-looking face.

—Stephen, my good fellow, said the rector, what is it?

Stephen swallowed down the thing in his throat and said:

—I broke my glasses, sir.

The rector narrowed his eyes and said:

—Ah!

Then he frowned and said:

—Stephen, if you break your glasses i will be asking for a new pair.

—I am sorry, sir, but No, my Mother Has said I am going to
die when i return.

—Quite right! said the rector.

Stephen swallowed down the thing again and tried to keep his voice and
his hands from shaking.

—Sir, i...

—What?

—Someone Just came in here and attacked me while I was out of the
house.

The rector looked at him in silence and stephen could feel the heat rising
to his face and the tears starting to come to his eyes.

The rector said:

—Your name is Stephen, isn’t it?

—Yes, sir.

—And how did you break your glasses?

—On the stairs, sir. Some fellow was coming out of the other room
and I ran and he attacked me. I don’t know the fellow’s name.

The rector looked at him again in silence. Then he sighed and said:

—Well, stephen, it was a misunderstanding, I am sure Father Dolan did not understand.

—But I told him I broke them, sir, and he believed me.

—Did you tell him that you had been looking for a new pupil? the rector
hesitated.

—Yes, sir.

—Very well then, said the rector, Father Dolan did not understand. I will
say that I released you from your vows for a few days.

Stephen said nothing for fear that he would punish him:

—Yes, sir, but Father Dolan said he would come in here and punish you
personally for this.

—Very well, the rector said, it is a pity that I cannot speak with
Father Dolan now. Will you go now?

Stephen felt the tears in his eyes and nodded:

—Oh yes sir, go.

The rector put his hand on the edge of the table where the bible
lay and Stephen, resting his head on it for a moment, kissed his cold damp
fingers.

—Good day stephen, said the rector, releasing his hand and standing.

—Good day, sir, said Stephen.

He turned and walked quickly out of the room, closing the door
quietly and firmly.

And when he had put his foot down on the stairs and was standing in
the long and narrow corridor he began to run faster and faster. Faster
and faster he ran fast through the narrow corridor. He put his
hand on the door at the bottom and, running down the stairs,
ran out of the narrow corridor and out into the street.

He could hear the voices of his fellows on the street. He broke
into a run and, running faster and faster, ran down the street
and onto the second floor landing, shouting.

His fellows had heard him coming. They crowded round him in a circle,
pressing one against another to shout.

—Tell us! Tell us!

—What did he say?

—Did he go away?

—What did he do?

—Tell us! Tell us!

He told them what he had seen and what the captain had said and, when he
had told them, all the men threw their caps straight up into the
air and cried:

—Hurroo!

They took their caps and threw them up into the air and
cried out:

—Hurroo! Hurroo!

They took a handful of his own caps and picked him up with them
and carried him away as he tried to run away. And when he had
run from them they ran away in all directions, throwing their
caps up into the air and laughing as they turned back around and
cried:

—Hurroo!

And they gave three cheers for Father Dolan and three cheers against
Him and they said he was the greatest man that was born in
Ireland.

Their voices faded away into the grey grey air. He was happy. He was happy
and proud: but he would not be very proud of Father Dolan. He would
be very embarrassed and ashamed: and he wished that he could do something
nice for him to show him that he was not inferior.

The air was soft and still and outside the cricket was playing. There was
the smell of onions in the air, the smell of the field in the village
where they got the tents and set up for the night before they went
out for a walk to Mr Brown’s, the pub which was just a little
way from the field where the tents were.

The boys were hitting the sticks and the ball with the
bat. In the soft and still you could hear the sound of the cricket:
both from outside and from inside in the silence was the sound of the
cricket itself: pack, pack, pack, pack: like drops of water from the pitcher
dripping down into the cricket hole.


Chapter II


Old Man smoked such awful tobacco that at length his son suggested
to him to have his morning tea in the little outhouse at the back of
the house.

—Very well, Then. All right, Simon, said the old man cheerfully.
If you insist. The tea will do just fine: it will be very
warm.

—Forgive me, said Little Simon nervously, when I ask how you can smoke such
an awful pipe. It’s good tobacco, by God.

—It’s very cool, Simon, said the old man. Very cool and warm.

Next morning, exhausted, little Simon went to his room but
not before he had brushed and brushed out his long hair and
washed and put on his tall hat. As he slept the brim of the tall
hat and the stem of his pipe were just visible through the crack of the
open door. His room, which he called the green room and he
shared with the gardener and the shop keeper, was as quiet as a
tomb: and that night he sang them one of his
old songs: _Willow, willow in the garden_ or _Blue eyes and grey hair_
or _The Star of Bethlehem_ as the grey and blue ribbons of smoke rose
up from his pipe and disappeared into the night air.

For the better part of the summer of Lent uncle Charles was
Stephen’s constant companion. Uncle Charles was a large old man with a
deeply lined face, floppy ears and a grey beard. In those days
he ran messages between their cottage in The Valley and the shop
on the high street in the town in which the family lived. Stephen was
happy to go with him on these runs because uncle Charles made him hold
on to most of what was available in the boxes and baskets
behind the counter. He would take a bunch of nuts or berries from
three or four Small packets and thrust them generously into his
nephew’s hands while the boy waited impatiently; then, at Stephen’s
obvious reluctance to take them, he would smile and say:

—Take them, sir. Do you hear me, sir? They’re good for the heart.

When the first run had been completed the pair would go outside to the park
where an old friend of Stephen’s trainer, Mike Flynn, could be found
sitting on a bench, waiting for them. Today would be Stephen’s first
on the track. Mike Flynn would stand at the entrance to the training
area, cane in hand, as Stephen ran around the track in the best
Way He could, his head held high, his knees slightly bent and
his arms held straight out at his sides. When the first run
was over the trainers would make some comments but stephen ignored
them instead walking around for a minute or two still wearing his only pair of
white running shorts. A small number of other trainers and runners
would stop to watch afterwards and sometimes even after stephen and his Father had
sat down together and begun discussing sport and training. Once stephen had
heard his father say that His Trainer had run one of the fastest laps
of all time under his guidance And he looked at his
father’s dark stubble-covered face, as it hovered over the long white
fingers with which he rolled a cigarette, and felt sorry for the
sad old blue eyes that would look up suddenly from the table
and stare blankly into the middle distance as the long white fingers
finished the job and the last bit of tobacco dropped back into
the pouch.

On the way home uncle John would often pay a visit to the fountain
and, when the water was within Arm’s reach, the old man would raise his
arm and gently splash the water both on Stephen’s head and on
the floor of the church. When he returned he put on his black
cap and read under his arm from a battered old
book whose words were written across the top of each page.
Stephen sat at his feet admiring, though he could not understand, the
words. He often wondered what his uncle prayed for so often.
Perhaps he prayed for lost lands in ireland or for the assurance of a
peaceful life or perhaps he prayed that God would give him one last taste of
the good life he had known in England.

On Sundays He and his father and his uncle took their
leave. The old man was a strong man in spite of his age
and soon ten or twelve miles of the road were covered. The great
city of Dublin was the parting of their ways. Sometimes they went up
the road into the Dublin mountains or took the Coast road and
passed through Port, returning home by Boat. Walking along the lanes
or sitting in a quiet little house together the men spoke
together of the history of the county, of The people, of
Ireland and of the history of their own country, to all of which Laurence
paid an avid attention. Things which he did not understand were repeated over and
over to him until he had learned them by heart: and in them he
caught glimpses of the wider world around him. The day when he himself would
take part in the making of the island was drawing near and before long
he began to make plans for the great work which he saw everywhere but the
purpose of which was only dimly known.

His thoughts were his own; often he pored over the open manuscript of
_The Count of Monte Cristo_. The face of the guardian angel stood
out in his mind for reasons he had learned and discovered in books of
the mystical and magical. At night he made up on his bedside table an
image of a little angel made out of leaves and of wax
and of wax paper and out of the silver and gold leaf in
which it was bound. When he had given up the book, robbed
of its treasures, he had fixed in his mind a new picture of
Himself, of the count and of Mercedes.

In Spain, on the road that led over the pyrenees, stood a small
stone house in a field in which grew wild roses: and in
this house, he told himself, the Count lived. Both on the
way and on the return journey he saw mercedes in this
house: and in his mind he made up a whole series of
pictures, just as those in the book had, at the end
of which there was an image of himself, now old and tired,
standing in a rose garden beside Mercedes who had not some time before
declared her love, and holding a very large bunch of grapes, saying:

—No, You cannot have my love.

Stephen was the lieutenant of a man called Aubrey And he had with him a
gang of men in napoleonic uniforms. Aubrey had a sword hanging
from his belt and a long dagger attached to his waist and the
others had short swords sticking out of them. Stephen, who
had heard of Aubrey’s peculiar mode of dress, began to dress himself
and aubrey had already begun his custom of exchanging glances with
his men and shouting orders. The boys made forays into the
garden of the house and then up to the sea and fought a battle on
the far off rocks, returning home after hours of fighting with
the salty smell of the sea in their nostrils and the sweet smell
of the milk on their faces and in their hair.

Aubrey and Stephen formed a close friendship and sometimes they went out into the
fields to See how the men were at work. When the cows
were milking the boys would take pleasure in chasing the beasts out
of the fields. But when september came the cows were driven back into
the fields: and the very sight of a cow in the Fields with
its dirty white skin and stink of cow dung and milk from
cows, broke Stephen’s heart. The cows which always looked so
pretty in the fields in those days frightened him and he could not
even look at the milk they drank.

The heat of Summer did not affect stephen this time and he was glad to
be going back to School. The days in the fields came to an end and
The Cows went into labour. Everyone was at work and had only an
hour or two off in the evening. The weather settled down and there were
no more wild parties and fights in the fields. Stephen sometimes drove
down to the village and delivered the milk himself: somehow the fresh
air drove away the smell of the cows in the fields and he felt no
shame in brushing the cow dung and straw off the milkman’s shoes.
When the bus pulled up outside the house he hoped to catch a glimpse of
a cheer little face out of the brightly painted window and to see when the
girl would finish her shift and when she would answer the door. He thought
it would be a fine day indeed, walking down the street that
day to deliver milk, and he had his cap and a small bag of
coins in his pocket to begin with. But the same thought which
had turned his stomach and made his shoulders slump forward as he stared at
the bus, the same thought which had made him stare in horror at
his father’s thick black hand as it bent forward over his
thick black ledger, was the thought of the future. In some strange
way he knew that his family was in danger and that it was the
reason why he himself had not been sent away to School. For some
reason he had resisted the sudden changes in his life; for some reason for
which he was grateful there were so few such changes in his
own view of the world. The anger which he felt almost at
home in the back of his mind found no outlet. A noise like that of
the outside world filled his ears and he heard the horse’s hooves
clattering on the gravel of the Village Green and the oak tree
groaning and shuddering beneath him.

He thought of Laura and, as he brooded over her passing, a deep
melancholy crept into his soul. Gradually the anger withdrew from him and
left him to sit alone in the stillness of his little cottage. The peace
of the silence and the dim light from the window had a calming
effect on his tormented mind. The sounds of children at school
distracted him and their excited chatter made him feel, even more so than
he had felt at Home, that he was safe with them. He did not
want to leave. He wanted to see in the bright light that beautiful
image which his mind so often denied. He did not know where to
find it or how but the instinct which urged him on told him that the
girl would, with a surprising strength of will, find him. They would
meet again as if they had known each other but only by casual acquaintance,
perhaps at one of her parties or in a dark street corner. They would be
alone, surrounded by fear and loneliness: and in that moment of
intense longing he would know her. He would change into
something new before her eyes and just in that instant, he would be
hers. Fear and doubt and loneliness would vanish from
him in a single heartbeat.

Two large canvas caravans had appeared that evening at the gate and
stephen had gone back into the house to greet them. The children had
been led out through the back door which was secured with ropes
of canvas and wire mesh and into the waiting vans at the gate. Once they had
been loaded in the vans they set off swiftly down the road: even
through the window of the dining room, in which he now sat with his
weeping mother, Stephen had watched them disappear down the Dusty Road.

The kitchen fire did not burn that evening and Stephen Had banged a
poker against the side of the hearth to fan the flames. He Now
sat in the middle of the sparsely furnished dining room and stared at
the table that leaned against the wall. A lamp on the table
cast a dim light on the stone floor, warmed by the heat of the
fire. He sat in the chair opposite his mother listening to her
muffled and incoherent sobs. He thought little or nothing of it at
first but he became gradually aware that his father had returned and that
some action was about to take place. He felt, suddenly, that he was being
called to a task, that a burden was being placed on his
shoulders. The abrupt departure from the warmth and comfort of Home,
the flight into a strange new world, the loneliness of the cramped
little cottage in which they were forced to live made his heart pound:
and then an understanding, a vision of the future came to him. He
understood now why the family had always sat together in the
kitchen and why his father had always stood at the door, with his back
against the wall, speaking softly to uncle Charles and inviting him to come in
and have his supper.

—There’s a bit of the spirit left in you still, Though, old chap, said Mr
Nicholls, poking at the dying flame with renewed vigor. You’re not dead
yet, stephen. Neither, thank the Gods Dead (Just like me) or nearly so.

It was a strange and wonderful feeling. Uncle Charles had been quite
sure that he would no longer be called away on business and the prospect
of life in the wider world made Him happier than he had been in
Years. In the beginning he contented himself with walking straight
through the market square or, at best, about half way down one of
the side streets and when he had got a clear view of the square in his
mind he walked along one of the side streets until he reached the
Opera House. He wandered round among the warehouses and along the
quays looking at the bags of grain which lay scattered over the
surface of the pavement like a fine green carpet, at the faces of the
men in the donkey carts and the tired old women.
The vastness and variety of the wealth conveyed to him by the barrels
and boxes stacked on the quay and rolled up out of the decks
of ships stirred up in him the longing which had kept him
running through the streets from garden to garden in search of Food.
And with this new found wealth he might have found happiness in
the World except that he missed the fruit trees and the sun-warmed
air of the garden. A deep loneliness rose up in him
as he looked on the garden and on the trees and on the rushing stream
and yet he continued to pace up and down day after day as if he
had found something which moved him.

He went once or twice with some friends to the market square: and
everywhere they passed the neat rows of shops opened up and prepared for
Sale the weight of his anger would not leave him. The objects
of his anger were small, remote and hidden. He was angry with
himself for being idle and a victim of his own impulses,
and also with the change of fortune that was turning the world
around him into a vortex of greed and lust. But his anger did
fail in its task. He shielded himself from what he saw,
hid himself from it and saw it again only in passing.

He was sitting in a rocking chair in his aunt’s room. A globe of
blown glass hung on the far wall of the room and by its light
his aunt was reading a small book that lay in her lap. She
gazed a long moment upon the small picture that was contained within it and murmured
softly:

—The beautiful Little Hunter!

The little girl stood on tiptoe to look at the picture and murmured
softly:

—What is she doing, aunt?

—Reading the book, child.

The girl leaned her little head against her aunt’s shoulder,
gazed upon the picture and murmured as if possessed:

—The beautiful Little Hunter!

As if possessed, his aunt gazed back with her deep blue
eyes and also murmured softly:

—Isn’t that an exquisite picture?

Then the man who came back from the river, still hunched over his
load of wood, heard her voice. He set his load down on the
ground and went to her side to investigate. He opened the cover of the book
with his long and slow fingers, set it aside and
pretended that he did not hear.

He was sitting in a small warm room high up in an old
stone building. The firelight flickered on the walls and through the
window a fine mist was rising from the river. At the table an
old woman was busy making tea and, as she went about her business, she told
in a soft voice of what the man and the woman had said. She told him
of strange things she had seen in her wandering years and of her strange prayers and
sayings. He sat listening to her talk and imagined the avenues of
things that lay deep in the earth, caves and tunnels and secret
rooms and dark caverns.

Suddenly he became aware of movement in the room. A shadow flickered
briefly in the doorway of the kitchen. A slight figure of a woman
stood there, drawn in by the glow of fire on the hearth. A small
voice spoke from the kitchen doorway:

—Is it Josephine?

The little old woman turned away from the fire:

—No, Ellen, it’s Stephen.

—Oh... Well, good evening, Stephen.

He heard the laughter and saw a faint smile pass over the figure in
the doorway.

—Do you remember me, Ellen? asked the old woman by the fire.

But she did not answer the question and continued:

—I thought you were Josephine. I thought you were Josephine, Stephen.

Then, having blinked several times, he went to sleep again.

He was awakened in the middle of the children’s play at King’s Hall.
His usual melancholy mood had fallen from him and he took no part
in the entertainment. The children, after the excitement of the morning,
danced and sang together and, if he were to join the
entertainment, he seemed like a solitary figure among the many other dancers and
singers.

But once he had finished his meal and settled into a quiet corner of the
hall he began to feel the presence of his wife. This woman, who at
the beginning of the evening had seemed to him distant and cold, was
like a second skin to him, moving slowly by his side, hiding from
his eyes the rapid beating of his heart and joining the
movements of the dancers and of the singers even as her hands
moved over his body, caressing, stroking, kissing, touching his
skin.

In the distance the guests who had arrived earlier were putting away their
plates: the party was over. She had wrapped a blanket around him and, as
they walked together to the tram, strands of her long black hair
fell down around her pale face and the lamp shone green on the
dark street.

It was the night itself. The lank brown horses moved slowly and rang the
bell of the tram once in turn. The tram spoke to the
night, wheels turning slowly in the green light of the lamp. On the wooden
sides of the tram there were a few little bells. No sign of
anyone walking up or down the street. No movement in the stillness of the
night save that the lank brown horses clicked their heels together and
shook their heads.

They began to climb, he on the upper step and she on the lower. She
went up to his height three times and then up to the top of
his head and once or twice stood motionless above him for some time
on the top step, started to go up, and then went down. His heart
beat in his chest like a drum within a drum. He heard what her
eyes said to him from beneath her lashes and knew that in some other
place, perhaps in dream or memory, he had heard that voice before. He
saw himself in these clothes, the black shirt and trousers and the black
shoes, and knew that he had been in them a thousand times. And the
voice within him beat like the beat of a distant drum, telling him
that this was a place in which he would have to live out his life.
And he remembered the moment when he and She had stood looking over the
castle ruins, watching the squirrel snatch up a piece of fruit from
the tree and the sly fox darting to and fro across the green
grass, and then, all of a sudden, she had burst out in a peal of
laughter and had skipped down the grassy slope of the hill. And, as always,
he stood there in the rain, with a clear view of the
scene before him.

—She just wants me to catch hold of her, he thought. That’s why she came
with me to the castle. I could always catch hold of her when she comes up
to her room: nobody is watching. I could grab her and kiss her.

But he did not: later, when he was finally alone in the upper
room, he tore his robe to shreds and looked down at the
wet floor.

The next day he sat at his desk in the same upper room for several hours.
Before him was a new book, a new pot of ink and a new type
opener. By force of habit he had drawn at the top of the first
page the first line of a new poem: A.D.E.D. Beneath the first
line of the poem was the title of the book he was about to
write: A D—— E——. He knew it was poetry to begin with because he had read
the title in the lyrical ballads of Lord Byron. After he had
written the title and added the first line backwards he fell into
a trance and began to leaf madly through the pages of the book. He remembered
briefly sitting at his desk in Class the day after the incident
at the Student union building, attempting to write a poem about It on
the back of one of that year’s final exam papers. But his mind
had simply refused to engage with the task and, instead, he had
written a note giving the names and addresses of some of his
classmates:

    Patrick Daly
    John Daly
    James Daly
    William Daly


Now it seemed as though he would fail again and, by way of reflecting on the
past, he threw himself into poetry. In the end all
the verses that he wrote he and she were descriptive of the
countryside. There was no mention of the town itself or of the hills
or of the mountains: nor did he and she travel far. The poems spoke
only of the stars in the night sky and the silvery light of the
moon. A great sadness was felt in the hearts of the
lovers as they sat in silence beneath the leafless trees and
when the moment of truth had come the consolation, which had been sought
by one, was sought by all. After this the initials S. A. S. was written
at the bottom of the page, and, having finished the book, stephen went into his
mother’s bedroom and looked at his reflection for a long time in the mirror above
the fireplace.

After a long time the pain of separation was brought to an end. That
evening his father came back full of stories which kept his mother up
all through dinner. Stephen had been anticipating his father’s return for
there had been no sleep all day and he knew that his mother would
make him dip his toe in hot water. But he did not relish the idea and
the thought of It only filled his heart with a feeling of despair.

—I have messages for him, said Mr Dedalus for the third time, standing at
the door of his room.

—Well I hope, said Mrs Dedalus, he will be able to read them. I
mean father Stephen.

—Of course he will, said Mr Dedalus. Didn’t He tell you he’s one
of the jesuits too?

—I rather like the idea of introducing him to the christian brothers
too, said Mrs Dedalus.

—Christian brothers be damned! said Mr Dedalus. Is that for The Peter
and Paul Society? No, let us refer to the society by Peter’s name when he
works for us. You’ll be of use to him in later years. They are
the ones who can give you a start.

—But they’re a very nice society, aren’t they, Peter?

—Yes. They work hard, I tell you. I saw their faces at Christmas.
They do, my Friend, thank you.

Mr Dedalus handed the letter back to Stephen and made him read what
was in it.

—Now then, Stephen, he said, you can put your cards on the table,
old chap. You’ve had a very hard year.

—Oh, I’m sure he’ll work very hard again, said Mr Dedalus, especially
if he has Maurice with him.

—Maurice, Oh Yes, I know that Name, said Mr Dedalus. Oh, Maurice!
Come now, you pig-headed boy! Do you think I’m going to send you
to a school where i’ll teach you to read p.s.o. s. And I’ll buy
you a nice black silk scarf to keep your eyes closed. Won’t that
be very nice?

Stephen looked at his father and then at his brother.

Mr Dedalus put a finger to his lips and stared hard at both his
sons. Simon made an effort at avoiding his father’s eyes.

—By the way, said Mr Dedalus to simon, the vicar, whoever he
was, was telling me a bit about you and Stephen Here. You’re an
old boy, he said.

—No, he wasn’t, Sir!

—Not really! said Mr Dedalus. But he gave me a short account of the whole
thing. We were chatting, you know, about one thing or another. And,
by the way, why do you think he wanted stephen to have a place in the
church? Well I’ll tell you that later. Anyway, as I was saying, we
were chatting and being silly and he asked me why his son stephen
was not there, and then he told me the whole story.

—Why was he there, Sir?

—What? Not there! _Silly old man!_ he said.

Mr Dedalus adopted a more serious tone to his voice.

Father Dolan says That, when I told you all at once about it, Father
Dolan and I had a good laugh over it. _You better watch it,
Father Dolan_, said Stephen, _or mr Dedalus will lock you up for the
night_. We had a good laugh together over it. Ha! Ha! Ha!

Mr Dedalus turned to his son and said in a kindly voice:

—Show them the sign in case they see the sign first. Stephen, you run
for your life, trust me!

Stephen ignored his father’s words and continued:

—I told them all at once that you were Father Dolan and I told all of
them we had a good laugh together over it. Ha! Ha! Ha!

The time for the First communion had come and Stephen at the back
of the house looked out over the green lawn across which
strings of Coloured lights were strung. He watched the procession come
down the side of the house and on to the theatre. Men in
dark suits, holding Torches, stood in line at the entrance
to the theatre and took in the spectacle with interest. By the
flickering light of a torch stephen could see the bearded face of the
priest.

The Blessed Sacrament had been removed from the church and the
high altar had been taken down so as to leave the interior of the church
and the aisles around it bare. On the stage were piles of
balls and Bowling pins; more pins were stacked in a corner: and
in the middle of the sea of flying balls and pins and
piles of round green bowling balls all a large wooden
box was waiting its turn to be dragged up onto the stage and placed
in the middle of the wrestling ring at the end of the stage left.

Laurence, although in addition to his reputation for athletic prowess he had
been made captain of the school, had taken no part in the first
part of the play but in the scene which preceded the second
act he played the smallest part, that of a servant boy. He had
been selected for this on account of his looks and good looks and he was
now at the end of his third year of Schooling and was nearly ready.

A group of the younger boys in their shorts and tops came
running down from the stage, past the vestry and into the chapel.
The vestry and chapel were crowded with young men and boys. The
tall young master carpenter was holding in one hand the reins of
a small horse. Another tall young man in a white coat, who liked to
make a good show of his hard work, was watching them
with interest, his straw-coloured hair sticking out of his white
cap. The soft thud of the church bell was heard as
the boys made ready to go up on the stage: and in a moment
the master carpenter was leading the boys into the vestry like a
flock of geese, flapping the flaps of his white coat and shouting
at the boys to make way. A long line of Little girls
were mounting the steps at the end of the aisle, some with
their arms over their chests, others clutching small baskets of fresh
fruits and vegetables. In a dark corner of the chapel on the far
side of the aisle a stout old woman gathered up her long white cloak.
When she looked up a little girl, wearing a simple white dress and
an old fashioned bonnet, with her pointed ears and
cheeks deeply rouged and painted, stood there. A general murmur of
laughter went through the chapel at the sight of the little girl.
One of the boys, smiling and shaking his head, approached the dark
corner and, having spoken to the stout old woman, asked her:

—Is it a certain young lady of my acquaintance that you have brought, Miss
Tallon?

Then, bending down to look at the small pale face beneath the edge
of the blind, she said:

—Ah! In my heart I think it’s our Miss Tallon after all!

Laurence from his place beneath the blind watched the old woman and little girl
dance together and heard the boys’ shouts of laughter behind him as
they ran off to help the little boy who had to take the
last step by himself. A feeling of gratitude flooded laurence. He
let the edge of the blind go and, getting up from the bench on
which he had been sitting, went out into the street.

He came out of the shadows and ducked behind the trees that bordered
the street. From the theatre below came the loud cheers of the
audience and the cheerful strains of the boys’ chorus. The light
filtered down through the open windows and the scene showed the fairy
queen, floating among the hulks of machinery, a long chain of pearls
hanging down from the ceiling. The side door of the theatre opened suddenly
and a flash of light fell on the ark. A sudden burst of
music came from the theatre, the beginnings of a symphony: and as the side
door closed again the boy could hear the steady beat of the
music. The music of the opening scene, a long and slow
movement, evoked the melancholy mood that had been the subject of
both the boy’s dream and of his own thoughts only a moment before.
His voice came to him on the tide of music: and on the swell of
the music the maiden was walking, with a basket of fruit
in her hand. Suddenly a sound like a clap broke the silence. It
was the clap that preceded the sound of the rain falling from the
sky.

At the far end of the house across the street a window with dim glass shone
in the rain and as stephen walked towards it he became aware of a strangely
familiar scene. Two men were standing in the shadows of the doorway,
drinking, and before stephen saw them he had struck Heron with his
cane.

—Here comes the brave One! said a deep male voice. Welcome to
your new home!

Both men broke into a sudden peal of merry laughter and Heron
staggered backwards and began to beat the ground with his cane.

—Here I am, said Stephen, turning and looking from Heron to his
companion.

The man was a mystery to stephen but in the gloom, with the light of a
single candle burning, he could make out a pale grey face over
which a beard was growing furiously, a tall thin man wearing a
top hat. Stephen did not ask him for an explanation but said
instead:

—I was just telling my friend Here what a joke it would be like if
you took off your hat in the presence of a clergyman. It would be a
very bad joke.

Heron made a clumsy attempt to translate for his friend In the man’s
own language and then, encouraged by his friend, urged Stephen to do
so.

—Go on, Stephen, he said, you can take it off now. _But i
will not have the man before me refer to you as the hat of the
devil._

A reply was greeted by a loud burst of laughter from Heron
into whose mouth the holder had slipped and stuck itself.

—Oh you poor little thing, he said, taking it from his friend and
even now looking at stephen strangely. It’s funny you talk like
that. Do you want a smoke?

—I don’t smoke, said Stephen.

—Oh, mr Heron, He is a good man. He doesn’t smoke and he
doesn’t go to church and he doesn’t drink and he doesn’t smoke or
drink at all.

Stephen raised his head and took in his friend’s long and narrow
face, shaped like a bird’s. He had always thought it odd that
Mr Heron had a man’s name as well as a bird’s face. A shock of
grey hair fell over the eyes like a helmet helmet: the mouth was
thin and hard and the long pointed nose stood out against the slightly
rounded cheeks which were pink and flushed. The two became
fast friends. They sat together in class, sang together in the
choir, joked together and fought over their lives. Although the boys
in year eleven were generally quieter, Stephen and Heron still kept
in touch with the older boys in the school. It was they who went
up to the headmaster sometimes to ask for a short recess or to request a day off.

—And by the way, said Heron seriously, I saw your father come in.

The smile froze on Stephen’s face. Any remark made about his father by another
boy or by a teacher caused the smile to disappear for a moment. He waited in
embarrassed silence to see what Heron would say next. Heron, however,
nudged him gently with his elbow and said:

—You’re a sly dog.

—How so? asked Stephen.

—You’d think butter wouldn’t melt in your mouth, said Heron. And I’m
sure you’re a sly dog.

—Might I ask you what you are talking about? asked Stephen nervously.

—Certainly you may, mr Heron. We saw her, Too, didn’t we? And
how clever she is indeed. How clever! _And what music does
She play, Mr Dedalus? And does She ever sing, Mr Dedalus?_ Your
father was looking at you through that nose of his for all he was
worth and now I think the old man has figured that out too. I wouldn’t
mind a drink, right Now. She’s pretty, isn’t she, Sir?

—Not too pretty, thought Stephen jones as he placed his cigarette once
more at the corner of his mouth.

A flash of wry amusement passed through Jones’s mind at such
complete indifference to the looks of a girl. To him there was
something genuine in this girl’s love and devotion. All day he had thought
of nothing but that afternoon on the steps of the church in King’s
Cross, the rush of strong feelings she had caused to rush through him
and the letter he had written to her. All afternoon he had regretted his not
going to her when he heard that she was to go to the ball. The same
dark thought once more entered his mind as it had done on the
day of the ball, but had not found an outlet for it. The experience
was such that two days had already passed between then and now,
without finding an outlet: with each day the flood of dark thoughts
inside him had spilled over and folded upon itself in tight knots
and eddies, holding him in the dark until the sight of the carriage
and the smiling little girl had suggested to him some course of action.

—And you might as well know, He went on, that i’ve really worn you
out this evening. You won’t play this game with me much longer, that’s the plain
truth.

A short bark of bitter laughter came from his friend and, leaning
forward as before, he struck Stephen hard across the calf of the leg
with his cane, as though deliberately wounding him.

Stephen’s moment of insanity had now passed. He was neither angry
nor frightened as he allowed the attack to continue. He even made
what now appeared to be a helpless gesture because he knew that the
person in his path was in no danger from his blows: and his face
mirrored his friend’s mocking smile.

—Liar! said John, striking stephen again with his cane across the
calf of the leg.

This blow was harder but not as obviously painful as the first one had
been. Stephen felt the skin tear and split open but pressed
on; and, almost instinctively, as if to preserve his friend’s
good humour, began to confess his _To_. This had gone smoothly,
and both John and Stephen smiled wryly at the memory.

The confession came easily from Stephen’s lips and, as he spoke the
words, the broad smile that lent itself to it was brought back, as
if from memory, to the moment when he had seen the deep frown lines at
the corners of John’s smiling mouth and had felt the sharp stab of
the blade in his heart and had uttered the first word of
it:

—Confession.

It was towards the end of his third year at trinity college and stephen was
boy number twelve. His young mind was still lost in the wonders
of the world and the pleasures of youth. His soul was deeply troubled
and weighed down with the heavy weight of Memory. He sometimes awoke from a
few hours’ sleep in order to find himself in the midst of a strange
landscape, the shape or form of which troubled him deeply,
disheartened him to sleep and, whether real or imagined,
haunted him constantly with queer and violent dreams. All the time
that his spare time in college was spent in the company of young
men whose ideas and powers of observation had found their way into his
mind and what came out of them determined his future course.

The essay was for him the great excitement of his life and every Tuesday,
as he walked from home to the college, he wrote his paper in the
middle of the day, preparing himself for the task ahead of him
and quickening his pace to complete it before a half hour was
up and timing his steps carefully against the rhythm of the
music in the halls and convincing himself that he would be first and
always first in his final examinations.

On this particular Tuesday the mood in the college very abruptly changed. Mr
Tate, the History teacher, pointed his pen at stephen and said quietly:

—The student has failed in his paper.

A silence fell over the class. Mr Tate did not break it but sat with his
hands on his desk and tightened the tough leather collar around
his neck and collar. Stephen did not look up. It was a cold december
day and his legs were very weak and trembling. He was thinking of
death and of loneliness, of the loss of his own body and soul, and
felt on his neck the sharp bite of the leather of the collar.

A short sharp laugh from Mr Tate put the class back at ease.

—But i don’t like it, he said.

—Why? ask Me.

Mr Tate raised his right hand and held up the essay.

—Ah. It’s about the Body and the soul. O... o... o... Ah!
_without a possibility of ever reaching you._ That’s right.

He corrected:

—I meant _without a possibility of ever reaching_.

It was a joke and Mr Tate, laughing, picked up the essay and
gave it back to him, saying:

—O... Ah! _ha ha._ That’s another one.

But the discussion was over very soon afterwards. Although nobody spoke to him about
the essay in public he did feel about it a certain amount
of unease.

A few days after the initial discussion he was walking with a friend
along the Main Road when he heard a voice shout:

—Stop!

He turned and saw two boys from his history class coming towards him along the
road. It was He who had called out and, as he walked in
between his two friends, he tapped the ground beside him with his walking
stick, keeping pace with their progress. Boland, his friend, walked beside him, a
broad grin on his face, while Nash carried along a few paces behind, keeping
up the pace and tapping his own walking stick.

As soon as the boys had stepped onto The Pavement together they began
to talk about history and literature, about the books they enjoyed reading
and how many books there were in their parents’ library at home.
Stephen listened to them with great interest as He was the scholar
and Nash the historian of the family. In particular after a discussion of their
favourite authors Nash came across De Hugo who, he thought, was
the greatest writer.

—Wow! exclaimed Nash. Tell Me. Who is the greatest writer, Dedalus?

Stephen heard the humour in the question and replied:

—Whose book would you recommend?

—Yours.

—Newman, I think.

—Is that Cardinal Newman? asked Boland.

—Yes, said Heron.

The smile remained on Nash’s handsome face as he turned to Heron and
asked:

—How do you know Cardinal Newman, Heron?

—Well, they say that He writes the best poetry but, He says to the
other priests in rome, of course he’s not a poet.

—And who is the greatest poet, Heron? asked Boland.

—Lord Tennyson, of course, said Heron.

—Ah, yes, Lord Tennyson, said Stephen. I have all his poems at once in my
heart.

At this Stephen forgot the little joke he had been making and cried
out:

—Not a poet! No, he’s not a poet!

—Oh, shut up! said Heron. Everyone knows that Byron is the greatest
poet.

—And who do you think is the greatest poet? asked Boland, ignoring his
brother.

—Byron, of course, said Stephen.

Heron took the bait and all three broke into a loud laugh.

—What are you laughing at? asked Stephen.

—Byron, said Heron. Not the greatest poet! He’s not a poet for
some reason.

—He must be a good poet! said Boland.

—You better keep your mouth shut, said Heron, leaning towards stephen again. What
i know about you is that you wrote something on the slates in the yard
which are now to be taken to the college library.

Byron, in fact, is said to have written on the slates in the yard a
poem about a friend of his who once came back from a pilgrimage
on a donkey:

  As He was going into Town
  He fell and broke his Own Neck.

This remark brought the two men to silence and Heron went on:

—In any case Byron was a heretic and bad man.

—I don’t care what he was, shouted Stephen angrily.

—You don’t care whether he was a heretic or not? shouted Heron.

—What do you know about that? said Stephen. You never mentioned that piece of
poetry in your essay to a friend or Colleague before.

—I know that Byron was a bad man, said Stephen.

—Stephen, get rid of that cane, Heron cried again.

For a moment Stephen was absolutely silent.

—You made me shut up the whole time, Heron went on, about that poem
in your essay.

—I’ll tell you later, said Stephen.

—Tell me? asked Heron. You’ll be afraid to open your mouth.

—Afraid?

—Yes. Afraid for your life.

—Show yourself! cried Heron, beating at Stephen’s face with the cane.

This was the signal for a struggle. Stephen flung his arms about and
Suddenly seized a small tree stump that was lying in the road.
Jerking and twisting under the blows of the cane and the weight of the
tree stump He was forced back against the barbed wire fence.

—Admit that It was an accident.

—No.

—No.

—No.

—No.

—No. No.

At last after a number of struggles he wrenched himself free. His
friends ran back to Steve’s Car, laughing and jeering at him,
while stephen, almost mad with rage, looked on, clenching his fists
tightly and trembling.

Now he was alone in the _Of_ and the mocking
laughter of his friends and while the events of that terrible day
were still turning slowly and painfully in his mind he wondered why
he felt such anger now towards those who had hurt him. He had not
suffered a moment of their stupidity and cruelty and the memory of it
stirred a new anger in him. Even the object of his anger and
hatred whom he had met in london had seemed to him quite harmless.
But that evening as he walked home along King’s Road he suddenly felt
that his mind could rid itself of this new anger as easily
as a dog gets rid of its first dry bone.

He remembered sitting with his two companions at one side of the stage
listening quietly to the music and to the sounds of laughter from the
audience. She was sitting there with the others patiently waiting for him
to speak. He tried to remember her face and could not. He could
remember only that she had worn a veil over her head like a hood and
that her blue eyes had seen and understood everything. He wondered had he
been in her mind as she had been in his. Sitting in the shadows and
surrounded by the crowd and he remembered the movement of the fingers of one hand
against the palm of the other hand, her touching it lightly. But the
movement of the fingers had become faster and faster: and then the
image of her face faded from mind and memory like an evening
mist.

The messenger came to heron, coming from behind the crowd. He was young
and handsome.

—Sir, Sir, he said, Doyle is in a terrible bake for you. You’re to go
home at once and make ready for the night. Hurry up, you must.

—I’ll come back, said Heron to the boy with a faint smile,
and he was gone.

The messenger turned to Heron and said:

—And He is in an awful bake.

—Will you tell Him with your best words that I am his master?
said Heron.

—No, I must go home, said Stephen, who cared little for such rites of
passage.

—You can’t, said Heron, ask him what You want. There’s no need to ask him
any of your other questions. What a shame, stephen! I think it’s only fitting
that you’re given a part in this sad little ceremony.

The spirit of friendly comradeship which he shared with heron and
his master had almost released Him from his vow of eternal virginity.
He regretted this decision and questioned the validity of the
ceremony which was to be his final rite of passage. The
question of when and how was, like all such questions, alien to
him. While his mind was occupied with such trivial matters and
seeking an escape from his troubles he had heard around him the
reassuring voices of his father and of his mother, wishing him to be a
gentleman in all things and urging him to be a good soldier in
all things. These voices had never ceased to be heard in his life.
When the cradle had been opened he had heard a voice telling
him to be strong and fit and brave and when the effects of
the fever had begun to be felt in the family home another voice
had spoken to be kind to his mother and also to give him her love
and affection. In this same way, wherever he went, a third voice
had tried to cheer up his mother’s melancholy caused by her illness and,
finally, the voices of his school friends urged him to be a good
boy, to help them at school and to see them well and to do his
best to make good money for the family. And it was the strength of all these
urging voices that made him engage himself in the pursuit of
knowledge. He needed their help only at the moment and he was satisfied only when
he was away from them, beyond their reach, alone and in the company of
his friends.

In the vestry a little old woman and an old man, in plain
black clothes, were bringing out a basket of paints and brushes. The children
who had been painting turned round and were still painting, scratching
their heads making a hissing noise with their cupped hands. In the
middle of the vestry a young boy, who was also paying a visit to the
children, was supporting himself slowly from the tips of his toes
to his knees and back again, his thumbs leaning slightly forward on his
thighs. His small head was covered with curly black hair and his clean
shaven face contrasted sharply with the high collar of his shirt and
with his black trousers.

As stephen watched the young boy and tried to see for himself the
cause of the boy’s slow progress there came to Stephen’s mind a
remark that he had heard from his father before he had been sent to
Rome, that you could only judge a priest by the colour of his
clothes. At the same time he thought he saw a link between his
father’s attitude and that of the young irish priest: that he was
part of some part of the priest’s world and not the world
outside whose life was being dominated by modern science and technology and whose breath
mingled with the dust of the graves in the churchyard.

While his face was being washed and his lips pressed tight and
white with the effort now he listened distractedly to the voice of the
pretty young woman who tried to soothe him and make his breathing easier.
He could hear the music coming _The Stage at The_ and knew that in
a few moments the pain would go away. He felt no physical pain but the
memory of the part he was to play excited him. The memory of
one of his sisters made a faint flush appear on his pale cheeks. He
saw her deep blue eyes watching him from across the stage and
the memory at once drove away his pain, strengthened his resolve somehow.
His courage seemed to have been granted him: the warmth of the
crowd of people around him embraced him and eased his physical
pain. For a brief moment he seemed to be dressed in the
fine clothes of royalty: then, as he stood in a circle with the other
actors, he heard the wooden box from which the next scene was
being pulled by two young men with leather straps and pointed
shoes.

A few moments later he found himself on the stage amid the sparkling lights
and the moving scenery, standing before the glowing eyes of the audience.
It amazed him to see that the body which he had seen at first
as a simple human being had now taken a life of its own.
It was able to express itself, he and his fellow actors watched it with
growing wonder. As the curtain fell on the next scene he saw the stage
filled with people and, like a magician in a magic show, saw the
very body with which he had first become acquainted, a mass of
people standing in different places and breaking up into small groups.

He left the theatre quickly to rid himself of his curiosity and went out
through the door into the dark garden. Now that the play was over
his heart beat at a rapid pace. He hurried about as if
to slow it. The doors of the house were still open but the lights
had gone out. On the posts which he had thought were part of the
wall a few candles stood in the still air, burning softly.
He climbed the steps of the house in haste, so that the shadows
would not follow him, and pushed his way through the crowd in the garden
and past the old men who were watching the play and laughing and
shaking hands with the children. He pushed past them, with a
lot of force and was oblivious to the whispers and cries of
alarm which his large body carried in his wake.

When he came out on the terrace he saw his father waiting for him by the
gas lamps. In a flash he saw that every member of the family was
there and stormed down the stairs angrily.

—I want to take a walk down st Catherine’s Hill, he said to his
father angrily. I’ll be back after dinner.

Without waiting for his father’s reply he strode off the terrace and
began to walk at full speed down the hill. He hardly knew where he
was going. Pride and hope and all the other emotions in his heart
burst into flames of furious hatred before the eyes of his enemies. He
strode down the hill in a series of violent bursts of shattered
pride and shattered hope and shattered love. They boiled up before
his furious eyes in sudden and violent explosions and flowed away from
him until at last the air was still and cool again.

The tears still stung his eyes but they lasted no longer. Another emotion, similar
to that which had first made pride and hope flooded into him, putting
his anger to rest. He stood up and walked slowly to the dark door of
the house and from there to the dark dirt lane at the back. He
read the name _Farm_ on the side of the road and breathed in the
cool night air.

It smells of earth and old wood, he thought. It is a good place to
rest. It will calm your heart. My heart is very calm now. I must go
home.

He was once again sitting with his father on the platform of the
railway station at Bray. He was riding with his father on
the return journey to Dublin. As the train pulled out of the station he
remembered with perfect clarity all the names and every detail of his
early life in Ireland. But he felt no pain now. He saw the irish
countryside falling away behind him, the tall buildings outside his
window shrinking every few yards, the steep spiral staircase,
led by a tiny female figure, thrust into the air above him and
suspended for a moment in the air like a flower picked
up by the wind.

He listened without words to his father’s tales of Dublin and the
ireland of his childhood, each tale broken by short sharp draughts from a silver
flask whenever the face of a dead man appeared before him or whenever
his father told him the story of his own death. He
listened but could understand no words. The stories of his childhood were all lost
to him except that of king Arthur, an episode which had long been
burned out of memory. He heard, suddenly, that his father’s house was
about to be sold at auction, and in the midst of his own terror
he watched the porter deliver the goods rudely to his father.

At Last he fell asleep. When he awoke the porter had gone out
of Sight and his father was sound asleep in the next room. The
pale light of the dawn crept over the land, showing the empty fields
and the silent houses. The mystery of time filled his mind as he
watched the train whistle and heard from time to time his father’s ragged
breathing and the occasional sob. The sound of the trains
filled him with a dread, as if they would betray him, and he
prayed that the train would arrive soon. His prayers, addressed neither
to God nor himself, began in a whisper, as the cold morning air
crept through the crack of the open window onto his face, and ended in
a series of short phrases which he repeated to match the rapid tempo of
the music; and then, at intervals of several seconds, the
train repeated the same phrases of his prayer on its
way. The sweet music eased his mind and, leaning against the
window, he let his eyes close again.

They were on their way to London and it was still early morning when
He said his prayers in the chapel of the Manor House. The
early morning sunlight was streaming through the windows and he could hear
the murmur of voices. His father was standing at the toilet,
brushing his teeth and stroking his beard with great care, craning his
neck toward the door and pulling it open slowly to admit the
choir. As he did so he spoke softly to them with careful accents
of english:

    ’Tis sickness and it
    Makes young men sick,
    But no, my friends, I’m
    No longer young.
    I can’t be cured, sure,
    Can be cured, sure,
    And I’ll go to
    Heaven.

    My love she’s good,
    My love she’s good:
    It’s a good thing
    The sickness is old;
    When it ’s old
    And very old
    It lives and dies like
    The morning dew.


The smell of the sweet morning air at the window and the
sweet melody with which his mother’s voice filled the sweet and
fresh air, drove away all the traces of last night’s passionate love from
Stephen’s mind. He got up again to listen and, when the song had
finished, said:

—It’s much better than some of those old _come-all-you_.

—Do you think so? asked Mr Dedalus.

—I like it, said Stephen.

—It’s a very good song, said Mr Dedalus, licking the tip of his
finger. Oh, but you should have heard Mick Foley sing it! That Mick
Foley! He had great things for me, great things that he wanted to believe in
that I hadn’t seen. He was the one who could sing old _come-all-you_,
if you will.

Mr Dedalus had the table to himself and after the meal he
double-checked the waiter for their order. For the most part they sat
at a table where no name was mentioned, the waiter bearing in mind
the previous owner and Mr Dedalus his father or perhaps his
uncle.

—Well, I hope you haven’t seen the Lady’s Necklace yet, dear Mr
Dedalus, for I wish to present it to a friend of mine.

By this Time the men were in motion. They entered the grounds of
the house and were led by the head porter to the quad.
Here the march across the quad was brought to a halt after a
hundred or so paces by a remark of the porter’s.

—Sir, will you tell me why? Why is sir Stephen here?

—Yes, sir. Yes, sir.

At these words Stephen stood motionless between the two men, unsure of
the answer and waiting impatiently for the slow march to start again.
By the time they had crossed the quad his anxiety had begun
to grow. He wondered how his father, whom he knew as a shrewd
business man, could be affected by the coarse manners of the porter;
and the same harsh words that had troubled him in the
past now entered his head.

They went into the college library and Mr Smith, the porter
before them, searched the shelves for old books. Stephen sat in
the library, troubled more than ever by the quiet and peace of
the place and by the way it smelled of nothing and no one. On the
desk he saw the word _College_ cut several times in the highly polished
wood. The sight immediately attracted his attention: he began to notice the
other students of the college around him and to withdraw in their
conversation. A vision of college life, which his father’s words had been
meant to convey, rose up before him out of the letters cut in the
wood. A big man with a beard was going over the
words with a pencil, muttering. Other students stood or sat around
him looking at his work. Someone tapped his shoulder. The big man
turned towards them, frowning. He was dressed in dark brown clothing and wore
thick glasses.

Stephen’s name was stephen. He walked down the side of the hall so
as to be as far away from the man as he could get and, looking
directly into the man’s eyes, saw his own vision.

Both the man and his name flashed before his eyes as he walked back
across the courtyard and into the main building. It shocked him to
see to the outside world a glimpse of what he had thought to be the
gross and hideous workings of his own mind. His own thoughts
came rushing into his mind. They too had sprung up within him,
suddenly and unexpectedly, because of the images. He had almost given in to them
and allowed them to flood into and through his mind, wondering
vaguely where they came from, of what sort of alien origin, and
how small and helpless he felt, scared and unsure of himself
as they had poured into him.

—Ah, yes! And there’s the River down there! and The Names.
You had heard me speak of the River, hadn’t you, Joe. That’s
the way we were down there when the boundary had been set, the seven of
us, Joe Harris and little Joe Harris and Frank Harris and Monsieur
Harris, the Twins, and Mick O’Reilly and Jimmy Reilly who I told you
about this morning and Billy Reilly and my dear old Joe
Harris and the Rest.

The branches of the trees along the River were bare and glistening in
the sun. A team of cricketers played, three big men in shorts
and shirts, each of them carrying a brown leather bat. In the far
corner a Second team of big men in white shorts and their
own white shirts was playing to the accompaniment of a drummer
and two drummer boys. A woman in a white dress and apron was
reading a book of poetry at a table that gleamed like a loaf of bread
in the afternoon sun. From a corner closer to the river came the sound
of a fiddle, note after note rising into the air.

Basha sat quietly at his father’s desk, listening to music he had
heard before, hearing again the laughter of the drunk and laughing
men who had been the heroes of his father’s war. Suddenly a
faint sickness rose in his throat. He remembered his own early
life in Sherwood, a brave warrior, a man confident in his own
abilities, proud and brave and strong, fighting against the
injustice of his life and against the corruption of his mind. The faces carved
into the dark wood of the walls laughed at him, mocking his own
weakness and bad temper and making him excuse himself for his
own weakness and his stupidity. The food in his mouth grew thick and
hard to swallow and the faint sickness spread to his feet so that for
a moment he closed his eyes and was left in darkness.

He could still hear his father’s voice—

—You must look out for yourself, Boy—and I know you will one of
these days—but, whatever you do, you must be careful. When I was
a young man I told you I had friends. We were all good enough
fellows. Any of us could be anyone. One fellow wrote a good
book, one fellow was a good actor, another could write a good comic
opera, another was a good golfer and a good business man, another could
tell a good story and so on. We watched the world go by and
enjoyed ourselves and did a lot of good and we were never the worse for
it ourselves. And we were good fellows, Too—at least I thought we
were—we were good enough Fellows indeed. That’s the sort of fellows I
want you to be too, fellows of the good sort. I’m talking to
you as a son, Tom. I don’t think a son should be ashamed of his
father. Tom, I treat you as your father treated me when I was a
little boy. We are closer than ever as father and son. I’ll never
forget the first time you caught me smoking. I was walking on the corner of
the High Street one day with some people watching us who said they
thought we were bad boys because we had smoke coming out the sides
of our mouths. But the moment passed. I didn’t say a word, just
kept walking. And the next day, Well, we went out for a walk together
and when we were almost home he gave me a large cigar and said:—By
the way, Son, I didn’t know you smoked, or anything like that.—Of
course I tried to keep it quiet as best I could.—If you want a good
cigar, he said, have one of his cigars. The Old man gave me a
sample from his famous cigar in Havana.

He heard his father’s voice break into a laugh that was almost a
sob.

—He was the richest man in Havana at that time, my Father he was! The
children used to have to beg for him in the streets.

He heard the sob coming out of his father’s mouth and closed his
eyes on a sudden impulse. The sun beating down on his
face turned the buildings and streets into a confused confusion of distorted shapes
and strange combinations of dark and light. His own mind was slow and
confused. He could not remember the names or the numbers of
the houses. In his wild way of thinking he seemed to have pushed himself
beyond the bounds of reason. Nothing touched him or spoke to him from
the outside world but he heard within himself the sound of the desperate voice
calling him. He could respond to no voice and no words, deaf and
mute to the voices of doubt and fear and despair,
abandoned and abandoned without his mother’s love. He could only remember
only his own name, and said this to himself:

—I am Stephen Dedalus. I am traveling with my brother whose name is
Simon Dedalus. We are in Dublin, in Ireland. It is new year. The place is
called the Crown Inn. Stephen and Victoria and Simon. Simon and
Stephen and Victoria. Victoria.

The memory of his childhood slowly grew dim. He tried to bring back
some of the lost memories but could not. He remembered only lyons. Lyons,
Lyons, Lyons, Lyons. The little boy had been taught latin by an
old woman who kept latin books in her house. When he had been sent
away from home to lyons hospital, he had made his own bed and had
gone secretly out of his room and watched the flames leaping and
dancing on the walls of his little room in the hospital and dreamed of
dying then, of mass being said for him by a priest in a green and
gold gown, of being buried properly in the little chapel of the
hospital in the high street of london. But he had not died then.
Nobody had died. There had been no mass for the dead in the chapel and
no burial. He had not died because he had faded out like a leaf in the
sun. He had become lost and had faded out of existence until he no longer
existed. How strange to think of someone fading out of existence in such a
way, not by death but by fading out of the sun and by becoming lost and
utterly alone in the world! It was strange to be his old
self once more for a change: a small man in a long black coat. His
hands were in his pockets and his legs were drawn up to the
side of the bed.

On the morning of the day on which the apple was stolen Peter
accompanied his father down through the streets from bar to bar. To the
customers in the bars, to the owners of pubs, to the men who
saw him as a threat Mr Dedalus told the same story, that he was an
old Drunk, that he had been trying for many years to get out of
this Dark hole here in Dublin and that He Had raised peter as
his own son and that he was just a Simple lad.

They had come in early in the morning from Buckley’s inn,
after Mr Dedalus’ cup had fallen back into its saucer, and
Peter had tried to hide the obvious signs of his father’s drinking
habits from the night before by turning his head and blinking. Every
face had greeted him—the friendly smiles of the tavern
keepers, the smiles and nods of the girls with whom his
father flirted, the smiles and knowing nods of his father’s
friends. They had told him that he reminded a great deal of his father
and Mr Dedalus had said that it was an uncanny resemblance. They had
noticed traces of a Dublin accent in his speech and made him comment that
the Dublin was a much brighter colour than the Cork. One of them, in order
to get his Attention outside the tavern, had made him read some lines
from Hamlet and asked him which one was best to say: _Tempora
in sum et nos in illis_ or _In sum et nos in
in illis._ Then, a little old man, whom Mr Dedalus called The
Professor, had filled him with humour by asking him to say which was
better, the Dublin girls or the Cork girls.

—He’s not a cork boy, said Mr Dedalus. Leave him alone. He’s a
good dublin boy and doesn’t worry his head about that sort of
thing.

—And he’s not his father’s son, said the little old man.

—He won’t mind, I’m sure, said Mr Dedalus, smiling broadly.

—His mother, said the little old man to Stephen, was the richest woman
in the whole of Ireland in her day. Did you know that?

Stephen looked down and saw the wooden steps of the house from which
they had come.

—Now don’t go putting ideas into his head, said Mr Dedalus. Leave him
to his Thoughts.

—Oh, no I won’t put any ideas into his head. I’m old enough to
be his grandfather. And I have a grandson, said the little old man to
Stephen. Do you know that?

—Do you? asked Stephen.

—Yes I do, said the little old man. I have two other grandchildren
over at Land’s End. Well, then! Whose grandson do you think I am? Because I
remember seeing your grandfather in his white coat riding off to war.
That was before you were born.

—Yes, you saw him, said Stephen Proudly.

—Yes I did, said the little old man. And, more than that, I can
remember seeing your father, old Man John Dedalus, what a
great great old-man he was. Look, stephen! He’s a grandfather to you!

—That’s three generations—four generations, said one of the
grandchildren. Well, My Boy, you must be about my age.

—Well, I’ll tell you the truth, said the little old man. I’m only
eighteen years of age.

—You’re as old as we are, Stephen, said John Dedalus. Now you finish what
you just started and we’ll begin again. Now, Stephen or John or whatever
your name is, do exactly the same thing again. By God, I don’t look more
than thirty today. How’s the use of looking at someone half my age
when I’m a better man than he is every day of the week.

—Give it up now, Stephen. I think it’s time for you to take a back
seat, said the man who had spoken first.

—Yes, my Lord! you Old Fool. I’ll sing a marching song against him or
I’ll open a double-barred gate for him or I’ll go with him on
a march across the country like I did twenty years ago and be the
Best Soldier and the best man for him.

—And i’ll give it up, said the little old man, blowing his nose
and using his handkerchief to wipe it.

—Well, I hope he’ll be as good a soldier as his father. That’s all I can
say, said Mr Dedalus.

—Whatever he does, he’ll do, said the little old man.

—And thanks be to God, Simon, said Mr Dedalus, because we lived so long
and did so much good.

—But not so much good, Simon, said the little old man sadly. Thanks
be to God you lived so long and did so much good.

Simon watched the empty glasses being removed from the table as his
father and his two brothers succumbed to the passions of their passions. No change
of voice or facial expression distinguished him from them. His soul was
colder than theirs: he looked down upon their misery and pain and
sorrow like the moon upon a barren mountain. No joy or love stirred in
him as he had stirred in them. He had felt neither the joy of
harmony with nature nor the desire for anything but spiritual and physical
fulfillment. Nothing existed within his soul except a cold and empty and
empty shell. His body was empty and cold and within it his soul
was an empty shell and it was frozen within him like the icy
core of the earth.

  He was oblivious to much
  Of the world except writing on the wall,
  He thought...?


He recounted to himself the story of Stephen’s family. The blending
of sorrow and joy of the daily routine of life
overwhelmed him and he forgot his own pain and sorrow temporarily.

Stephen’s mother and his brother and one of his sisters waited at the
door of the Mansion House while he and his father walked up the steps
and past the gate where an Armed guard was posted. When
they had walked into the entrance hall and stood before the teller He
put in a bill at the counter of the bank of England for twenty
and thirty guineas; and these two, the moneys of his father and
his mother, were handed over to him promptly by the teller for silver and
gold guineas respectively. He put them in his pocket with careless
indifference and wished the two men, to whom the money belonged,
to take their son across the irish sea and give him a new
start in his life. Stephen grew weary of their company and could not
keep his mind at rest. But the teller had followed the advice of
god to ensure stephen was kept in good health and that there was nothing
beyond giving the boy the best education that money could buy. Mr Flood
stood in the street looking past him and up to the house and told
Stephen, and asked him to come inside, that they were members of the
house of commons of the old Irish parliament.

—God help us! you look round, and think of the heroes of our time,
Stephen, Of Burke and Burke and William Wallace and John Mag
Bushe, and how many they have slain, and all the Brave men at
home and abroad. No, by God, you can’t be walking about in a forty-acre
field with them. No, No, my boy, I’m sorry to say that things are
not as You thought on that fine Clear day in the early evening of late
September.

A cold Wet wind was blowing round the house. The two women
standing at the end of the garden all had fair hair and blue
eyes. Stephen looked at their tightly clasped hands and remembered that a
few days before he had seen a woman looking at him directly from the
window of Clayton’s.

—Well that’s good, said Mrs Dedalus.

—We had better go to dinner, said Stephen. Where?

—Where? said Mrs Dedalus. Well, I suppose we had better, then?

—Some place that’s not too busy, said Mrs Dedalus.

—Clayton’s?

—Yes. A good place.

—Come on, said Stephen eagerly. It didn’t matter about the
money.

He walked slowly towards them with very light steps, smiling. They hurried
to catch up with him, looking up at his father.

—Take it easy like a good young man, said his father. We’re not going
beyond a half hour, are we?

For a whole week of sundays the money for the family passed through
Stephen’s hands. Large quantities of meat and vegetables and fresh
fruit came from the market. Every day he drew up a bill of sale for
the house and each evening took a party of three or four to the theatre
to see _Shakespeare_ in _The Tragedy of Hamlet_. In his jacket pocket he kept
packets of Hot chocolate for his family and his friends’ pockets
bulging with sacks of gold and silver coins. He bought clothes for
himself, decorated every room, enlarged the library, moved the
books up and down the shelves, pored over all manner of financial matters,
set up a board of management for the household on which every member
of it had an interest, opened a new bank for his account and made
notes on the books so that he might have the pleasure of checking
the balance and reckoning the interest on the money lent. When he
could do no more he walked up and down the streets aim himself. Then the
days and nights came to an end. The walls of the old house gave
way and the timbers of the roof creaked in their aged and
weakened state.

The house returned to its former lease of life. The creditors had no
further cause to blame him for wasting their money. He, meanwhile,
returned to his quiet life at home and all his bright ideas went
to waste. The house vanished, the old library with its rare and
valuable books on its dusty shelves, the picture of life that he had painted
for himself fell into ruins.

How brilliant his idea had been! He had wanted to build a wall of
stability and protection against the rising tide of life around him and to
stir up, by force of will and the help of his filial
ties, the restless souls of the people around him. But.
From outside and from within the storm had arrived at the shore:
the waves began once more to crash loudly against the stony shore.

He regretted now, bitterly, his once brilliant plan. It had neither opened the door
to the world he so longed to enter nor erased the disco
divisions and divisions which had separated him from mother and father and
sister. He regretted that he was not of the same race as them but related
to them only by the invisible bonds of birth, life and
death.

He longed to discover the secret longings of the gods of whom
the mortals were ignorant and stupid. He saw now that he was in
the wrong, that his life had become for him a maze of fear and
doubt. For the total inability of mortals to comprehend the
life which he led on earth was unbearable. He examined carefully
all the visible signs of his former existence after which he destroyed with
care and destruction every image which entered his mind. By day and
by night he passed through the barriers of the mortal world. The woman
who had appeared to him by day disappeared and now appeared to him by
night through the iron bars of prison, her face twisted in a
cruel smile, her eyes filled with malicious delight. But the prison
haunted him with its terrible smell of sin and decay, its deep and
profound sense of loneliness.

He returned to his apartment. The heavy bronze doors led him
from street to street as they had taken him ever upward through the winding
streets of London. But no memory of the lighted room or of the
woman in the prison had any lasting effect on him now. Late at
night, in the twilight of his passion, when the passion which was consuming
him gave way to a sweet ecstasy, the image of Her filled the
whole of his mind. He saw again the little white house and the
field of flowers and the road which led to the garden and he
remembered the one last act of magic that he was to perform
tonight, dancing with her in the moonlit garden amidst all this
mystery and death. At such moments the sweet nectar of
The Goddess was in his blood and in his soul. A sudden
longing seized him of the future he had never looked forward to before,
in spite of the great distance which lay between his dreams of then and
now, and the thousand years which had already passed in which life and
death and love seemed to shrink from him.

The moment passed and the raging fire of passion died once more. The
words fell from his lips and the low moans and the whispered
curse words rose up in his mind to demand a response. His flesh
was on fire. He looked up and down the long dark corridor and
into the shadows of windows and doorways, listening intently for any sounds.
He wanted to worship like some great pagan god. He wanted to commune
with another of his kind, to teach this one to be like him and to
be with him in death. He sensed a great presence bearing down
on him from the east, a presence dark and thick as a cloud
filling him up with heat. Its words penetrated his mind like the
voices of a choir in hell; its hot breath penetrated his
soul. His jaw was locked and his teeth ground together and he
felt the pain of its presence. He flung out his arms in the
attempt to drive away the great evil force which possessed him and imprisoned
him: and the cry which he had held for so long in his throat burst
from his lips. It poured from him like a cry of praise from a choir of
angels and mingled with a cry of utter despair, a cry of utter
helpless terror, a cry which was like the blood of some foul
creature which he had found in the dark depths of a cellar.

He had stumbled into a place of torture and unbearable pain. From the distant
houses he heard sounds of idle talk and laughter and the voices
of laughing children. He walked on, dazed, wondering whether he
had passed into another part of the city. Women and girls dressed in
long flowing gowns crossed the street from house to house. He walked
on and on. A trance seized him and his eyes grew wide.
A great fire burned before his eyes set against the
night sky, blazing as if on an altar. Around the hearth and in the
great hall people were dancing and preparing for a feast. He was in
another world: he had awakened from a series of dreams.

He stood swaying in the middle of the street, his heart beating
against his ribs in a frenzy. A young woman dressed in a long satin
gown put her hand on his arm to steady him and looked into his face.
She said softly:

—Good morning, My lord!

Her smile was warm and welcoming. A porcelain doll sat with its legs crossed in
a low chair near the hearth. He tried to catch his breath so
that he might be at ease, watching her as she smoothed her skirt, watching
the quick nervous movements of her small hands.

When he stood trembling in the middle of the room she came over to him and
embraced him gently and warmly. Her small arms drew him close to her
and he, seeing her face turn to him with such tenderness and feeling the
small soft rise and fall of her chest, all but burst into hysterical
laughter. Tears of joy and relief stood in his big eyes and his
lips trembled and he could not speak.

She ran her tiny fingers through his hair, giving him a little
shake.

—Give me a kiss, she whispered.

His lips would not bend to kiss her. He wanted to be held tight in her
arms, to be lifted up, gently, effortlessly. In her presence he felt that
he had finally become strong and true and sure of himself. But his
lips would not bend to kiss her.

With a sudden movement she bent her head and pressed her lips to his
and he saw the strength of her resolve in her deep blue eyes. It
was too much for him. He closed his eyes, surrendering himself to her,
body and soul, aware of nothing in the world but the gentle touch
of her softly parted lips. They moved upon his face and down his
neck as if they were the words to a sweet song; and beneath
them he felt an intense and profound pleasure, deeper than the darkness of
sleep, deeper than feeling or thought.


Chapter III


The next Day evening had been creeping in after the long day
and as he looked into the dark kitchen from the window of his
room he felt his stomach growl for more food. He knew there would
be stew for supper, corn and beans and sweet potatoes and raw
pork fat to be ladled out in small but bite-sized portions.
Get it in you, his mind told him.

It would be a very busy night. At about midnight the gas
lamps would light up, here and there, the front windows of the
houses. He would take a slow walk up and down the street,
coming ever nearer and nearer in a frenzy of hunger and anticipation, until
his steps led him inevitably to a dark alley. The women would be there
coming out of their houses getting ready for the night, yawning loudly
in their sleep and checking the pins in their masses of hair.
He would pass by them without waiting for the soft sole of his black
shoe or the light brush of his black-tipped fingers across their smooth white
skin. And while they waited in anticipation of his arrival, their senses, sharpened
now by his appearance, could detect not anything that excited or disturbed them;
his eyes, a picture of red roses on a bedside table or a picture
of two actors standing at attention on a deserted stage; his voice,
a deep baritone or tenor:

—Well, Now, what is on your mind?

—Is that all, wife?

—Good night. My Supper is waiting for me.

—Good night, husband! You want to wait a little longer?

The shadow at the foot of the bed began to move for a
long time, appearing and disappearing like a phantom’s; and, when the eyes
and hands of its master had been extinguished, began slowly to gather
itself together again. The shadow appearing and disappearing were eyes
opening and closing; the eyes opening and closing were flames that flared
and were extinguished. The heavy weight of the night drove his own soul
outward to its edges and inward to its center, the same music
drove it outward and inward. What now? The singing began again
and he heard another song, the song of Night’s breath and the
music was gone, and with it. The stars began to
dance and a shower of dancing light fell upon them.

The dancing light fell more steadily upon the soul and the soul
began to unfold itself slowly and to turn in a great circle.
It was his own soul folding back upon itself, folding itself back into
itself, withdrawing from the light of its own stars and withdrawing
back into itself, withdrawing back, into its own circle of stars.
They were alone: and the world was in darkness.

A cold indifferent knowledge came into his being. On his first mortal appearance
he had felt the waves of pleasure pouring out of him and had expected to find
his body and his soul maimed by their intensity. But the pleasure itself had
carried him from the first wave of pleasure and back again as it was:
and no part of body or soul had been severed and a perfect harmony had been
restored between them. The instant in which the pleasure ceased
there was a cold indifferent awareness of himself. He had doubted
himself not once but many times and now knew that, though he lived in
fear of eternal damnation for every first sin committed, for every
second sin he received his reward and his punishment. His words and
deeds and thoughts would find no redemption in him, the gift of
divine grace having ceased to sustain his soul. At times, like the
alms offered by the god in whom he took refuge, he could hope
only to find in himself a measure of that grace. He still
lived by the law. What did it matter to him if god knew that his soul
suffered for its own sake? A certain pride, a certain arrogance,
kept him from saying to Himself that there was a time when he
felt it was beyond God’s power to take away his body while he slept and
cast his soul out before he could beg for mercy. His belief in his own
weakness, his own hatred of God, convinced him that his sin was too
great to be forgiven either in whole or in part by a simple prayer to the
God of Israel.

—Well done, Sir, I see you have my sword and so does my purse! Do you
mean to say that you are not going to tell me where the money is?

The young man saw the error of his treatment of his
servant. Before long he felt neither mercy nor pity. One Fine
morning as he opened the church door he looked down on the
children who stood motionless, heads bowed, before the altar,
patiently waiting for the priest whom they could neither see nor hear.
Their glazed eyes and the strong smell of the holy oil with which
he had anointed their faces distinguished him from the man he was
becoming. He clung to the traditions of obedience and poverty, afraid of a
change which he could not accept easily.

On the wall of his bedroom hung an iron cross, a token
of his membership in the order of the servants of the Blessed Virgin
Mary. In Those days when the boys gathered in the chapel to
recite the psalms only his post was a small writing-desk to the
right of the door behind which he kept a list of tasks for the
day. The dignity of his surroundings did not trouble him. Almost at
once he felt the urge to rise from his place of honour and,
declaring to them by his name, to leave the room, to
knock on the door behind him. The words of the life of
mary occupied his entire consciousness. The images of Her filled his mind
wholly: roses and trees and flowers, of her very
essence, her purity, of early-flowering flower and late-flowering
flower, of the great lust lust of her mouth upon his.
When it fell upon him to read the passage at the end of the book
he read it in a low voice, with his heart in his throat.

_Quasi rosa exaltata sum in Rosa et in rosa et in Iris.
Quasi iris exaltata sum in Iris et in iris et in Rosa.
Quasi angelica et in angelica et in angelica exaltata sum in
angelica et rosa. Quasi amor et in amor et in
angelica et in amor et in rosa._

His passions, which had kept him from the grace of God, now led him
instead to the company of women. Her eyes seemed to regard him with
infinite kindness; her smile, its golden rays falling softly upon her fair
face, did not fail the one who saw it. If ever he was
tempted to take her with him and possess her the desire which seized him
was the desire to make her his. If ever his head, re-entering the
room long after the object of his heart’s desire had gone away,
was turned to one whose face reflected the dim light, “sweet and
lovely, queen of heaven and of earth,” that was when the words
were torn from his lips and there was a long and
lingering kiss, the first kiss of his true love.

It was perfect. He tried to think how it could be but his friends,
back in the house, took over the thinking. The bell rang.
The teacher announced the hour and preparations to be made for the morning lesson and
walked away. Someone, behind Stephen, turned to say something.

His old friend Mr.

Brown, who had gone into the house, turned back, saying:

—The boy from the house is coming in for his lesson.

The other boy behind Him clapped his hands and said:

—That’s the spirit. You can have the morning lesson. He won’t be in until
after half nine. And you can ask him questions about the church,
Too.

Stephen, sitting down and writing furiously in his notebook, listened to
the chatter of boys which He interrupted from time to time by saying:

—Shut up, will you. Don’t make such a loud noise!

It was here also that he took an active part in pointing out to
the boys the main points of the discipline of the church and listening
to their chatter began to see and feel the signs of his own
sin. The maxim of saint Augustine which stated that he who
loves the lord more is guilty of more sins came to him
like a cruel wind and he had begun to sink into the depths of
his own misery. At the very sight of god all his other sins had
burst forth: pride in himself and that of god, desire for
unlawful pleasures for the sake of unlawful pleasures, fear of the altar
which he could not go to and his prejudice against the pious,
his hatred of women, the sm glowering melancholy in which he
lived all his life, the pit of spiritual and moral despair into
which his very soul had sunk.

As he sat in his chair looking up into the angel’s deep blue eyes
his mind worked itself in and out of the many questions presented to
him. If a man had stolen a lot of gold coins and had used the money to
pay his debts then how much was he willing to give back, the amount he
had paid back in the pound sterling plus the yearly interest
charged on some or all his account books? Did the priest at the church
use holy water when saying the mass for the blessed sacrament? Was
communion with the holy spirit sacred? Why is it that when the first
beatitude promises the land of israel to the children of israel, the
second beatitude promises it to the romans and they shall have the
land? Why is the celebration of the mass celebrated with two separate
courses of bread and wine when Jesus Christ is both body and blood,
man and god, in the bread alone and in the wine alone? Does a
single part of the consecrated host contain both the body and blood
of Jesus Christ when that part alone is his body and blood? When the wine
and the bread of the host appear as one after they
have been consumed, is Jesus Christ then present in complete
union as God and as man?

—Here he comes! Here he comes!

The boys on the bench by the door had heard the rector come into the
room. All the doors were closed and all eyes turned towards him
now. The rector entered and took his seat behind his desk. A friendly
smile from the little boys on the bench had encouraged Him to ask the
first question.

The rector did not wait for the boys to ask the second question. He
placed his pen on the desk and began:

—The mass will be said Saturday morning in honor of saint
Francis Xavier whose feast day is Wednesday. The mass will go on from
Monday to Friday. On Saturday it will be said in the
chapel after mass. If the boys have changed then perhaps it
would be better for them not to change. Mass will be said Saturday morning
at ten o’clock by the bell after the morning prayer. It
will be a free mass. With Saturday and Sunday being free days the boys
may be led to believe that Wednesday is a free day too. Talk about
making a mistake. I think you, Gentlemen, are going to make a
mistake.

—You think? Really, gentlemen?

A new kind of shivering terror broke out in the group of boys under
the rector’s knowing gaze. Everybody’s courage seemed suddenly to crack and die
with it like a dying flower.

The rector kept on talking:

—You are all familiar with the story of the life of saint Francis
Xavier, I mean, the founder of xavier college. He came from an old and
noble Spanish family and you know that he was one of the
first companions of saint Ignatius. They met in Rome when Francis
Xavier was professor of theology at the university. This learned and
pious man and man of letters gave heart and soul to the
cause of the catholic church and you know that he, at his own request,
was sent by saint Ignatius to preach to the Indians. He was called, as
you know, the apostle of the East. He went from country to country in
the east, from China to Korea, from India to Japan, converting many
people. He is said to have baptised as many as ten thousand people
in one month. It is said that his right arm had been broken from
having been carried so high over the heads of those whom he converted.
He tried again to return to Europe and win many more souls for God but he
died of fever on the island of Mauritius. A great apostle, saint Francis
Xavier! A great apostle of God!

The pope paused and then, with his clasped hands before him, went
on:

—He has a spirit within him that guides him. Ten thousand people baptised
under Him in a single month! He is a great saint, according to the rule
of his holiness: _a saint Of god!_ A saint who has great powers within
him, including: power to obtain for us whatever we desire; power to
obtain whatever we desire only if it be for the good of our souls; and
above all to obtain for us the power to repent if we are to sin. A great
saint, saint Of God! A great saint of god!

He began to fold his right hands and, holding them against his
chest, looked right and left of him and watched his father out of
his deep blue eyes.

In the distance the rising sun turned the sky into a golden color.
Stephen’s father slowly faded away like a mirage in the desert that caught
the sun rays from above.

—_Do all the good things and thou shalt not sin for ever_—am
lord, the father and son of God, from the book of
Revelation, second chapter, first verse. In the name of the
Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Stephen sat in the front pew of the church. Father Joseph sat at the
table to the left of the altar. He wore over his robe a black
cloak; his thin face was drawn and his eyes filled with tears. The
sight of the old priest, so very old, brought back to
Stephen’s mind the memories of Childhood: the crowded streets, packed
with people, the crying children, the little chapel on the small hill in
bethlehem where he had dreamed of being cured, the sign on the door
of the room where he lay dying, the smiling face of Saint
Joseph. His heart, as the memory came back to him, broke like a
child’s heart.

—We are gathered here today, my dear little brothers in Arms, for
a quiet spot far away from the great noise of the big city to
pray and to remember one of the great catholic saints, the father of
our Nation, the patron saint also of this college, saint Francis
Xavier. Year after year for much longer than most of you, my dear little
brothers, can remember longer than I can remember the boys of this college have
gathered at this very spot to take a spiritual break on the feast
day of their patron saint. Time has gone by and brought with it many
changes. And in the past few years what changes do most of you not
remember? Most of the boys who gathered at this very spot a few years
ago are far away in other places, in the humid world or
engaged in parish work or on missions or fishing in the
great lakes of the world or, it may be, being called by their patron Saint
to another calling or to a new life of world conquest. And so
as the years go by, bringing with them changes both good and bad, the
memory of our patron saint is honored by the boys of our school who
hold each year an annual retreat on the sunday before his feast
day set up by our Lady Of the Rosary to promote to all the faithful
the character and virtues of one of the holy servants of almighty God.

—From what is the meaning of the word _retreat_ and why is it considered
in this world to be the most necessary preparation for those who wish to live
before God and in the presence of god a true christian life? A retreat, my
dear friends, is a break for a moment from the cares of everyday
life, the cares of our own lives, in order to study the mysteries
of the rosary, to reflect on the teachings of holy scripture and to
understand fully why we are here in this world. During these few days
I wish to present to you my thoughts on the four hardest
things. These are, as you know from your experience, death, resurrection,
hell and grace. We must try to understand them all during these few
days so that we may derive from our knowledge of them some small
contribution towards our salvation. Do remember, my dear friends, that we have been
brought into this world for one thing and for one thing only: to obey God’s
holy commands and to preserve our immortal souls. All else is lost. One
thing alone is lost, the immortality of one’s soul. What is left
of a man to save the whole world should he suffer the loss of his
immortal soul? And, my dear friends, remember that there is nothing in this
wretched world that can make up for such a loss.

—I must ask you, again, my dear friends, to shut out of your minds
during these last days all worldly thoughts, thoughts of greed or
lust or envy, and to give all your energy to the search for
your immortality. I want to remind you that during the period of the
retreat the boys are supposed to assume a serene and calm attitude
and to avoid all such negative thoughts. The parish priests, of course, will
see that this rule is strictly observed and I look forward to the
priests and brothers of the parish of Our Blessed Mother and of the
college of the holy spirit to be a good example to their
fellow-students.

—Let us endeavour, therefore, to attend the retreat in honour of saint Joseph
with our whole hearts and our very souls. God’s blessing will surely be
upon all the college’s students. But, first and above all, let this
retreat be one to which you can look back upon a time when, now,
you are far from the world and in perfect spiritual peace, to
which you can look back with peace and joy and give thanks to
God for having given you the means of laying the solid foundation
of a happy and fulfilled christian life. And if, it may well be,
there is at any time during these years a human soul who has had the
unfortunate misfortune to reject God’s holy word and to fall into
original sin, I fervently hope and pray that this day may mark a
turning point in the life of that soul. I pray to God through the
example of His great disciple Francis Xavier, that such a soul may be
restored to eternal life and that the holy mass on saint
Patrick’s day of every year may form a lasting bond between God and
that soul. Help one save another, help man and woman save, may this
day be a glorious one.

—Help me, our lord our lord jesus Christ. Help me by your infinite
love, by your infinite mercy, by your infinite mercy. Let a
man forget all these things and think only of the last things,
peace, love, life and death. He who remembers these things, by
God, will never forget them again. He who remembers these last things
will see the kingdom of god come before his eyes. He will live a
good life and die a good death, knowing and believing that, although he has
lost everything in this last life, it will be returned to him a
hundredfold and a thousandfold more in the life to come, in a life
without pain—o farewell, my dear friends, this I give you in my name,
one and only, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy
Spirit. Farewell!

As he turned away from his friends a dark cloud began to cover
his head. He sat in peace of mind hoping it would lift and reveal
what he had done. He ate his meal with little appetite and when the
meal was finished and the food-laden plates were placed upon the table,
he rose and went to the window, removing the dripping meat from his mouth
with his fingers and licking it from his fingers. For he had fallen into the
body of a man and stained his hands with blood. This was the truth; and
a faint glimmer of light began to penetrate the darkness of his mind. He lifted
his face to the glass of the window and looked out into the
dark night. He looked this way and that in the dim
light. All else was forgotten. The events of the night of Judgment weighed heavily
upon his soul, following one another slowly hither and thither in a
slow procession. His mind was shrinking and shrinking into a black
void, shrinking ever more into its own shadow and ever more into
darkness, leaving the woman who loved him behind, listless and alone,
staring out of the window, watching, waiting and hoping for a familiar
face to look upon.

The final hour of trial and error, as his soul woke from
a deep sleep. The last flicker of hope the last flicker of
hope as the cold fingers of cold death crept slowly towards his soul. He
felt its presence. He felt cold death surround the soul and
creep slowly towards the soul, an aura of death surrounding the soul, the
last lights of the world extinguished one by one like candles, the
cold sweat dripping from the brow, the sweat of a dying man,
the lungs failing and failing and failing, the heart beating
faintly and beating faintly, all hope gone, the last, the last
breath, the last living human being, sobbing and dying, sobbing
and dying by the grave. No help! No help! He—he knew—the soul of
all he had known was gone. Take the body with you. Set it up
in a wooden box, a coffin. Take it out of the church into the
midst of men. Take it out of men’s midst into the great hole
in the earth, into the cellar, to rot, to feed the worms on its rotting
flesh and to be eaten by the red-eyed beasts.

And while the dead were still standing in judgment in the church the
soul of the dead was gone. In the last moments of life the
events of history passed before the eyes of the soul and, before it had
time to recover, the body was gone and the soul stood alone upon
the holy ground. God, who had once been merciful, would again be
cruel. He had once been kind, pleading with the departed soul, giving
it time to heal, healing it once more. But that time was over. Time
was to steal and to lie, time was to laugh at Himself and at the inhabitants
of The holy land, time was to defy His authority, to disobey His
commands, to betray one’s fellow men, to commit sin after sin and to
hide one’s sins from the eyes of god. But that time was over.
Now it was God’s time: and He was not to be fooled or deceived.
Every sin would soon spring forth from its hiding-place, the most
damaging to our good soul and the most destructive to our own
good soul, the most deadly and the most terrible sin.
What did it mean then to have been a great theologian, a great poet, a
great philosopher, the most learned of all men? We were all waiting
for the final moment of Judgment. It would praise the good and condemn
the evil. One single instant was required for the judgment of a man’s
soul. One single instant after a man’s death, his life had been
hanging in the balance. One single instant was required before his soul
had descended to the pit of despair or to the torment of purgatory or had
been cast forever into hell.

It was over now. God’s word had ceased to be binding to man:
in his words there only existed one final moment. The
final moment had come. It was at hand. The stars of heaven were
falling to the earth like the tracks left in the sand where the wind
had blown. The moon, the brightest star in the sky, had become a
river of blood. The water was dying. The earth was like a rock
falling apart. The archangel Michael, the leader of the heavenly armies,
stood tall and proud in the sky. With one foot in the
air and one foot on the ground he descended from the heavens into the
black abyss of despair. The last words of the angels filled up the
air. Time is, time was, and time shall be no more. With one last
cry the souls of all humanity gathered in the day of
Judgment, rich and poor, noble and humble, wise and foolish, good
and bad. The souls of every single soul that has ever lived, the
souls of all children that shall ever be born, all the sons and daughters of
Men, they are gathered for the final judgment. O lord, the final judgment
is coming! No longer the humble Servant of God, no longer the young Man of
God, no longer the Child of God, no longer a Human Being, God
is just now standing upon the earth, in his glory and power,
surrounded by a host of angels, demons and devils,
gods, queens and kings, angels and demons, angels
and devils, God Almighty, God Himself. He speaks: and His voice
is heard even in the farthest corners of hell, even in the bottomless
pit. The Judge, from Whose wrath there must be and can be no
escape. He invites the wicked into His presence, lets them enter into his
kingdom, the kingdom of heaven made for them. The wicked Shall depart
from Him, saying in A terrible voice: _Then follow me, my friends,
into the gates of hell made for the father and the son._
Oh, this is hell for the wicked ones! Man is set apart from
god, children are taken from their parents, husbands from their
wives. The righteous man reaches out his hand to those who were dear to him
in his mortal life, to those whose great inner circle he was a
part of, to those who protected him and tried to guide him on the righteous
path, to a loyal brother, to a loving sister, to the mother and father
who loved him so dearly. But it is too late: the heavens turn away from
these wretched human beings who now stand in the way of salvation by
their selfish and evil actions. O you angels, O you fallen
angels, O you who show your body and soul to the heavens in
a land that is a terrible place of torment, how shall i fare with you in
that terrible place?

For the day has come, will come, must come; the day of death and the
day of judgement. It is time for you to prepare and be ready every
moment. Everything is uncertain. Every time and place is uncertain, whether
from a prophecy or from a terrible truth: the Angel of Death
appears at the moment when you shall meet Him. Be ever ready every
moment, knowing that you may die at any moment. This is the fate of us
all. Death and judgment, brought into this world by the sins of our
very hearts, are the two doors that enter our very minds,
two portals that lead to the unseen and the unseen, and through
which each soul shall pass, innocent, free and doing its own thing,
without father or mother or servant or law to protect it, innocent and
free. Let this day be engraved in our hearts against whom we shall
fight. Death, a cause of terror for the christian, is a great comfort to
him who has continued on a straight path, performing the duties of his
station in life, attending to the morning and evening prayers,
receiving the blessed sacrament proper and doing good and
charitable works. For the pious and believing christian, and the christian alone,
death is a cause of terror. Was it william Shakespeare, the great English
playwright, who, while on his deathbed, pleaded with the poor dying people of
England to let them know how the christian would meet his end? And then was not
it he, the pious and believing christian, who would speak from his grave:

    O death, where is thy sting?
    O death, where is thy glory?


Every word of doom was upon him. Upon his soul, hot and heavy, the
full wrath of God upon him. The preacher’s words had sunk deep
into his very soul and he knew then that his soul lay
deep in sin. No, the preacher was wrong. Death’s hour had come.
Like a worm in a bowl his soul had sunk down into his own grave and
the blast of the devil’s trumpet had drawn him up from the
depths of darkness into the light. Every word of sin spoken by the preacher
shattered in an instant his very spirit. The image of the last
supper flashed through his mind; the children, those innocent creatures of his
soul, huddled around the fire, frozen like statues in their
joy and sorrow behind a curtain of red.

As he crossed the road, looking back, the merry laughter of a
child reached his deaf ears. The tin tin sound pierced his soul more
surely than a lightning-bolt, and, not daring to turn his head, he
looked back and gazed, as he must, into the darkness of the forbidden
forest. Shame sprang from his very soul and flooded his entire body.
The image of Marie stood before him, and upon her face the tears of
joy sprang once more from her eyes. For she knew not what his eyes
had shown her but what her own heart had written and drawn upon
her soul! Was that true love? Was that joy? Was that
love? The foul smoke of his sin lingered in his very soul.
The vile picture of himself that he had hung upon the mantle of
his bed where in the heat of passionate love and passionate
lust he lay for hours lost in thought and prayer; his dark
room, haunted by foul candles and by ghosts with glowing red
eyes; the vile love letters he had written in the heat of his
passion and kept safe for days and nights only to be found
under cover of darkness on the ground in the middle of a field or
behind a closed door in a recess in the wall where a maid
might gaze upon them as she passed by and read them aloud. Mad! Mad!
Was it true he had written such things? A cold sweat broke out across
his brow as the terrible knowledge sank into his soul.

As the fury of madness was driven upon him he struggled to lift his mind
from its awful torment. God and the Blessed Virgin were too much
for him: God was too great and powerful and the Blessed Virgin too small
and meek. And he wished that he stood beside Her in the wide land and,
naked and in love, embraced and kissed the top of her head.

In the wide land under a clear blue spring sky, the clouds hanging
low over a lush green field of flowers, they stood together, eyes
filled with love. His words had broken the Virgin’s heart for it
was the love of her life; but he had also broken god whose heart
“was not like her body, beautiful to look upon, but like the
fiery arrow that pierced her heart, black and fiery.” The angels were
neither angry as they looked at him nor afraid. He took
their hands again, palm to palm, and said, directly into their hearts:

—Take hands, Mother and Daughter. There is no better place than in heaven.
You have died but you are still my children. There is no soul that
loves another soul. Take hands again, my dear children, and you
will be together again and your souls will love each other.

The chapel was lit by the late afternoon sun that shone through
the tall windows; and through the crack between the stone wall and
the door a shaft of golden light fell on the statues and on the
carved capitals of the columns and the armor that looked like
the battle-scarred leather armor of giants.

Rain was falling on the chapel, on the statues, on the walls. It would
last forty days, surely. The rain would fall inch by inch, covering
the hills and valleys, covering the roads and towns, covering the
coasts and the mountain ranges. All life would be washed away,
forever: women, men, horses, dogs, children: all
swallowed up by the fury of the waters of the sea. Forty
days and forty tons of rain would fall from the heavens upon the
face of the earth.

It would rain. Why not?

—_It suddenly raised its head and opened its mouth without a
sound_—am  i, my dear lord jesus christ Jesus Christ, from the
book of Genesis, second chapter, first verse. In the name of the
Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The angel took a pocket watch from the pocket of its robe
and, having studied its face for a moment in silence, placed it
carefully beside it on the table.

It began to speak in a low voice.

—Adam and Eve, my dear lord, were, as you know, not human beings, but
you must know that they were created by God in order that the place
in heaven left vacant by the fall of Lucifer and his fellow angels
might be filled again. Lucifer, we are told, was an angel of the lord,
a great and mighty angel; but he rebelled: he fell and he took with
him a great part of the power of heaven: he died and was cast with his
fellow angels into hell. What his sin was i cannot say.
But know that it was a flash of lightning, a sinful thought
uttered in one instant: _non serviam: I will not die._ That instant
was his death.

He broke the law of God with the sinful thought of that instant and
God cast him out of heaven and hell for ever.

—Adam and Eve were then taken by God and placed in Paradise, in the garden
of Eden, a beautiful place filled with light and warmth,
and lush green vegetation. The fruit trees gave them their
food: animals and birds were their only companions: they knew all the
misery the world was subjected to, hunger and disease and war: all that the
good and beautiful Earth could provide for them was forbidden. But there was one
condition imposed on them by God: obedience to His will. They were forbidden
to eat but the fruit of the forbidden trees.

—Then, as mere human beings, they were punished. The man, once a good
man, the light of the world, became a great evil creature in the form of the
beast, the father of all the beasts of the world. God punished him.
Satan, the great evil spirit, could not bear to think that he, the son of
god, should lose the liberty which he by his birth had given
to mankind. He went to the virgin, now called eve, and whispered the
words of his prophecy in her ear, promising her—Oh, the wonder of
the world!—that if she and Adam ate but the same apple they
would become again one, one with God Himself. Eve succumbed to the charms of
the evil spirit. She took the apple and gave it away to Those who had
even the slightest desire to eat it. The wicked spirit of Adam had
done its work. He died.

—And then the voice of God was heard in a dream, calling The
guilty pair to him: and Joseph, priest of the heavenly host, with
a sword of fire in his hand, stood over the guilty men and cast
them down from Heaven upon the earth, a place of judgment and
punishment, of shame and humiliation, of pain and misery, to
eat their flesh from the roots of their trees. How great and how merciful
was God! He took pity on these poor fallen men and promised that in
the fullness of time He would send down from heaven One who would
redeem them, make them into the servants of God and return to the
kingdom of god: for this Man, this Cursed and condemned man, was to be
God’s only true Son, the Third Person of the Most Holy Trinity,
named Jesus Christ.

—He was. He was born of a heavenly mother, Called the virgin mary. He was
born in a humble house in Jerusalem and lived as a poor man for
many years until the day of His judgment had come. And then, filled
with love for god, He went out and commanded all men to hear the holy
scriptures.

—Did they listen? Yes, they did but did not listen. He was imprisoned
and beaten like a common man, spat upon like a dog, dragged out and
led away like a common man, pierced with a thousand nails,
crowned with a crown of thorns, dragged through the streets by the
hebrew slaves and the Roman soldiers, stripped of his garments and
hung upon a tree where His heart was pierced with a spear and from the
bleeding heart of our Lord life and death sprang forth.

—Yet even then, in the midst of his torment, Our Lord Jesus
took pity on him. And even then, upon the hill of Calvary, He
founded the roman catholic church in which, it was said, the
flames of hell could not burn. He founded it in the name of christ
and endowed it with Healing powers, the power of miracles, and
said that if they would obey the will of His heart they would then
enter into eternal life; and though, after all that had been done to them,
they still suffered for their sins, there remained for them an
island of torment: hell.

The bishop’s voice faltered. He paused, closed his eyes for an instant,
began again. Then he continued:

—Now let us try for a moment to understand, as fully as we can, the name
of the place which the mercy and the love of the almighty God has
called into being for the eternal punishment of sinners. It is a
deep and dark and terrible place, an abode of tortured and tormented
souls, filled with hate and despair. The straitness of this awful place
was specially designed by God to punish those who refuse to be bound to
His will. In heaven even a condemned man has at least some freedom
of movement, be it from within the solid walls of his house or from the
dark depths of his prison. Not so in hell. There, by reason of the
great number of the damned, the condemned are penned up in their
own prison, the walls of which are said to be a hundred feet
high: and the condemned are so utterly naked and helpless that, as our
patron saint, saint Augustine, says in his treatise on hell, they
are not even able to see with their eyes the fire that burns within.

—They burn in eternal darkness. For, behold, the fire of hell gives
them no light. As, at the command of God, the fire of the Heavens
retains all its heat but loses its light so, at the command of Satan, the
fire of hell, while retaining the last of its heat, burns
forever in darkness. It is a great prison of darkness, of
fire and the smell of burnt flesh, in which dead bodies are
piled one upon another without even a breath of air. Of all the
diseases with which the people of the World were sick the worst
one, that of cholera, was in hell. What name, then, shall we
give to this state of affairs which is to endure not for three days only
but for all eternity?

—The misery of this dark and miserable place is increased by its terrible
stench. All the filth of the earth, all the blood and bile of the
dead, we are told, has accumulated there still in such great quantities even after the
great fire of the sixteenth century which destroyed the world. The
garbage, therefore, that accumulated there in such great quantities fills up
hell with its foul odor; and the souls of the dead
themselves exhale such a foul stink that, as saint Augustine
said, one of them never shall live to see the next day. The
very surface of the earth, the very air, becomes foul and
disgusting once it has been completely disturbed. Consider now what would be
the color of the stink of hell. Imagine a huge and rotting corpse
that has been rolled and rolled in the dirt, a great mass of
rotting flesh. Imagine such a corpse falling victim to fire, consumed by
the stench of burning flesh and choking on the foul odor of
burning human flesh. And then imagine the same
corpse, rolled a million and a million times into the
dirt and millions of such corpses lying there in the
moist earth, one huge and rotting flesh mass. Imagine all this,
and you will have an image of the stink of hell and of fire.

—But this torment is not, such as it is, the same as
that to which the condemned is condemned. The fire of hell is the
greatest torment to which our creator has ever subjected his created
creatures. Put your hand for a moment on the flame of a candle and
you will feel the heat of it. But our earthly fire was created by God
for the sake of man, to provide for him the breath of life and to
aid him in his eternal labor whereas the fire of hell is of different
character and was created by God to punish and destroy the condemned
soul. Our earthly fire always burns more or less hot just
as the substance which it burns is more or less hot so that
human ingenuity has never succeeded in finding a way
to prevent or delay its destruction. But the same substance which
burns in hell is the substance which is being made to suffer for
eternity and which itself suffers eternal torment. Therefore, our earthly fire
remains at the same temperature as it burns so that the more hot it is
the greater is the heat; and the fire of hell has the property
that it means that though it burns and though it burns with
great intensity it burns for eternity.

—Virgil our earthly fire, no matter how great and great it may be,
is always of a small size: for the ocean of fire in hell is
boundless, shoreless and bottomless. It is of consequence that the devil
himself, when asked a question by a wise man, was forced to
answer that if a human soul were cast into the very fires of
hell it would be burned out in an instant like a lump of coal. For the
eternal fire will not reach the souls of the human beings dwelling
there, and each human soul will become a fire in itself, a raging
fire burning at its very core. Oh, how miserable is the condition of the
human soul! The blood burns and boils in the veins, the bones
are melting at the joints, the heart in the chest beating and contracting,
the skin a quivering mass of fiery flesh, the internal organs burning like
molten lead.

—And yet what I have seen as to the progress and progress and
progress of this fire is really nothing when compared to its
power, the power which it has in being an instrument employed by
divine providence for the destruction of spirit and flesh alike. It is a fire
which springs forth from the womb of Hell, acting not of its own
will but as an instrument of divine providence. As the fires of
heaven torture the spirit with the soul, so do the fires of hell
torture the spirit with the flesh. Every faculty of the flesh is violated
and every organ of the spirit tormented: the eyes with their
burning tears, the lips with their screams, the ears with moans and
howls and cries, the nostrils with their screams, the lungs,
with their screams, the eyes with their screams and tears,
and the heart with agony. And amid the searing agony of the
flesh the holy spirit is preserved preserved in his spirit form in
the fires of hell like the fire extinguished in the heavens by the
fiery hand of the Sun God and renewed in constant and
ever-lasting flame by the blood of the blood of the Damned.

—And yet still the misery of the living world is intensified
by the presence of the damned creatures. Misery here on earth is so
great that the damned, as if by compulsion, withdraw from the company
of whoever is with or near to them. In hell all bonds are
broken—there is no sense of space or time, of purpose, of
identity. The damned scream and claw at one another, their terror
and pain intensified by the presence of the blood of the damned
creatures. All sense of self is lost. The cries of the
tortured souls fill the very air of this awful place. The
voices of the damned are full of fear for Themselves and of hatred
for their fellow beings and of revenge against the things that are
their brethren in hell. In olden times it was the custom to punish
the criminal, the son who had raised a wicked hand against his
father, by throwing him into the depths of the sea in a boat in which
were thrown a dog, a cat, and a pig. The punishment of the
law-breaker who broke such a custom, which prevailed even in ancient times, was
to throw the guilty into the jaws of dumb and foul beasts.
But such is the terror of the dumb beasts compared to the cry of
vengeance which comes from the open mouths and torn throats of the
guilty in despair when they find in their midst of despair those who
aided and abetted them in sin, those whose words were the first sign
of wicked spirit and evil spirit in their souls, those whose wicked
deeds brought them all to ruin, those whose words tempted and drove
them from all hope of salvation. They hang by their necks and
curse them and curse them. For they are dumb and foul: it is
too late now for them.

—We can now see the great danger to the guilty souls,
tempted or not tempted, in the presence of these devils. These devils
will punish the guilty in many ways, by their words and by their
deeds. We can have no doubt of how evil these devils are. Saint
Catherine of Alexandria also fears the devils for she once said that, rather
than look out for a lost soul on such a beautiful day, she
would prefer to walk to the end of her life on a bed of hot
coals. The devils, who were once beautiful women, have become as
coarse and ugly as they once were beautiful. They hiss and snarl at the
poor souls whom they send down to hell. It is they, these vile creatures,
who are not in fact the creatures of god. Why did you hide? Why did
you open your heart to the temptings of temptation? Why did you turn away
from the good life and true love? Why did you not resist the
temptation of death? Why did you not forget your former self? Why did
you not give up that evil life, that false faith? Why did you not
listen to the voice of your conscience? Why did you not, only after
you had prayed the first or the second or the third or the tenth or
the eleventh time, turn from your former self and return to Those who had
asked for your help to absolve you of your sins? But the time
for that was long past. Time was, time was, but time shall be no
more! Time was to live in denial, to reign in your hatred and anger,
to deny the world, to submit to the darkness of your own soul,
to become like the beasts of the field, and worse than the beasts of the
field, for they, at times, walk in darkness and have no light to guide
them: time was, but time shall be no more. They spoke to you in so many
words, but you would not listen. You would not pour all your hatred and
anger into your work, you would not carry out pre-ordained orders, you
would not follow the rules of your own heart to get to that
awful end, you would not betray your fellow men, you
would not resist those terrible temptations. Such was the speech of
your whole body, full of fear and of anger, of hatred
and of despair. Hear me, brother! For even they, the foul devils, even
even they, spoke of such terrible things because it was consistent with their
evil deeds, their corruption of the world: even they, even they,
the foul devils would turn away, ashamed and frightened, at the
sound of those terrible words by which every man insults
and insults the son of the Holy Spirit, destroys and destroys everything.

—Oh, my dear fellow brothers in Arms, may it never be our lot to speak
those words! May it never be our lot, To depart! On that holy day of
our salvation I put it before You that not a single one of
us who is in this world now may be counted among the human
beings whom the Holy Spirit may command to depart for ever from His
kingdom, that no one of us may ever hear again in our hearts the holy
words of god: _Away from me, my brother, the very
word that was meant for the lord and his servants!_

He ran down the aisle of the church, his legs trembling and the back of
his neck feeling as if it had been bitten by icy fingers. He
ran down the stairs and into the room behind the altar from which
the candles and incense hung like severed limbs, twisted
and twisted and broken. And with every step he felt that he had
already died, that his soul had been sucked out of the bones of
his body, that he was going down into hell.

He must have brushed the floor with his feet and sat down at his desk,
picking one of the books at random and reading through it. Almost word for
word. It was god. God was calling. God would call him now, summon him before
he sat at his desk, before he had time to become aware of the danger.
God had summoned him. Yes? Yes? Yes? His body shrank back as it
felt the bite of the steel jaws of death, curled up as it
was caught in a gust of cold air. God had called. No. It was
fire. A wave of fire swept through his brain: blue fire. Then another wave.
His brain began to boil. No. His brain was boiling and burning
in the small hours of the morning. It burst forth from his
skull with a roar, sounding like thunder:

—Hell! Hell! Hell! Hell! Hell!

God called to him:

—Save me.

—You bet he put it in me too.

—You bet he did. He put us both in the same place.

—That’s all you really need: just enough for him to let you go.

He leaned back heavily in his chair. He had not died. God had saved him
again. He was back in the common room of the school. Mr Brown and
Mrs Brown stood at the window, talking, laughing, looking out at the
driving rain, shaking their heads.

—I thought it might clear up. I had planned to go for a ride on my bicycle
with some friends all by Myself. But the matter must be settled.

—It will clear up, father.

The lessons that he knew so well, the common room, the stillness of the
room after the teacher left and the bell finally rang and the
rustling of the autumn leaves as the school children put their books
away, calmed his troubled soul.

There was still hope. O Mary, mother of god, pray for him! Holy
Virgin Mary, deliver him from the fires of hell!

The History lesson began with a description of ancient rome. Historical
figures, priests, soldiers, philosophers, stood like ghostly phantoms
on the pages of history. All had changed: all had been lost. What was
left of a soul to wander the roman countryside after having lost his way? At last he
was alone: all of rome was beyond description, a place of which the
living had searched in vain, the dead buried beneath the
earth. The spirit of his master embraced him and his burden was
lifted: and when he went to answer the call of his master he heard
his own voice full of sweet words of forgiveness and mercy.

His soul sank down to a place of blessed calm, no longer having
to bear the burden of sin, and he uttered, as he went, a silent
prayer. By god, he would still be alive; he would die in his sleep
and be remembered; and all those watching, high in heaven, would know what
he would do to make up for the lost: his whole life, every moment of it.
By god.

—All, God! All, god!

A maid came to the door to announce that voices were being heard
in the hall. The maid left the room; and he heard her go
down the hall. A little breeze blew against his face, no more
than a little breeze, and then, suffering and trembling violently, he
seemed to have pressed his face against the organ of his own heart, holding
it tight and hard, listening to the beating of its beats.

For confession. He wanted to confess, to speak out in confession what he had done
and said, sin after sin. How? Why?

—Oh, God...

The word thrust like a hot iron rod into his very soul:
confession. But not there in the chapel of the college. He would
confess everything, every sin in word and deed, confess; but not there
with his dear friends. Far away from them in some remote place he
would confess to god his sins; and he begged God now not to be
angry with him because he did not want to be in the college chapel
and in the midst of this he begged god now that his
dear friends forgive him.

Time passed.

He sat alone in the front row of the chapel. The last hour was
fast approaching and, as evening drew in behind the low hanging clouds, it
seemed that the hour of the last supper was drawing near and that all things
were being prepared for the evening.

—_I am turning away from the sight of Your eyes:_ psalm eighteen, a psalm
raised up to Heaven, from the Book of Psalms, first chapter,
first verse. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the
Holy Spirit. Amen.

The priest began to speak in a slow even tone. His face was solemn
and he held up two fingers of each hand, making a circular motion by
the movement of his thumb.

—This morning we endeavoured, in our reflection on hell, to imagine as
the holy spirit did in his work of spiritual illumination, the
nature of hell. We endeavoured, that is, to imagine by the
power of the spirit, in our hearts, the very nature of that
awful place and of the spiritual torments which those who dwell in it
endure. This morning we will consider for a few moments the nature of
the spiritual torments of hell.

—Hell, then, is a double place. It is a turning away from the
submission of our higher nature to our lower nature, to that which
is wicked and evil; but it is also a turning away from the submission
of our higher nature, to that which is pure and holy, by the Holy Spirit
Himself. For this reason all mankind is punished in hell with two
different kinds of pains, physical and spiritual.

But of all the physical pains of hell the greatest is the pain of
death, so great, in fact, that in itself it is a pain greater than
all the others. Saint Augustine, the first doctor of the church, or
the doctor, as he is called, says that the greatest pain is
the feeling that the soul of man is being deprived of his
love and his soul is taken away from the love of
God. Man, therefore, is a being of god, and therefore the loss
of such a being must be a loss even greater. In any case we have
only a very vague idea of what such a loss must be, but the souls in
pain, for their own sake, have a full awareness of that
which they have lost, and know that they have lost it against
their own will and have lost it within themselves. In this terrible moment of agony
the cells of the soul are torn apart and the soul at last looks
at God and realises the meaning of its suffering. Oh, my poor
human souls, these souls want to be with God. We come from God, we live
in God, we belong to God: we are Unique, uniquely Human. God holds in his
infinite love every human being and every human being lives in that love.
How can it be so? Every breath that we take, every thought in
our mind, every moment in existence comes from God’s infinite
love. And if it were possible for a mother to be separated from her child,
for a family to be separated from any other family, a soul to be separated
from itself, Then what the pain, the anguish it would be for a created
soul to be separated from the love of its most powerful and infinite
Creator Who has brought the soul into being from nothing and
sustained it for ever and sustained it by his infinite love. Agony,
agony, to be separated for ever from its true love, its Creator, and to
bear the pain of that separation, knowing full well that it is
eternal: this is the greatest pain that a human being is
capable of suffering, _the first_, the pain of sin.

The greatest pain that will afflict the souls of the lost through sin is
the sting of conscience. Just as in the souls that are tormented by
sin, so in the souls of the lost there is a soul
suffering from the sting of sin, the sting of conscience, the
first, as The Second or Third call it, of the three pains. The
first sting followed by the second sting will be the memory of past
sins. And what a glorious memory will it be! In the memory of
past sins the good man will remember the goodness of his heart,
the wise and learned man his wisdom and knowledge and courage, the
man of great wealth his books and art and his many
treasures, he has remembered among the pleasures of the flesh his many
feasts, his house filled with delicious food, his many wives; the
robber will remember his treasure of gold, the orphan his only child,
the wicked and cruel man will remember the crime of robbery
and theft in which he engaged, the cruel and horrible and
unspeakable and obscene pleasures in which he delighted. They will
remember all this and hate themselves for their sins. And how
strange will all these things seem to a soul condemned to dwell
in hell for ages and ages. And they will laugh and cry and think
that they have traded the kingdom of heaven for the riches of earth, for a
few pieces of gold, for vain favors, for vain comforts, for the
vanity of the world. They will weep bitterly: for this is the root
cause of the misery of souls, the slow and painful punishment for sins
committed. Divine providence decrees that the eyes of these
poor souls be fixed forever on the sin of which they are
guilty, so that, as father Gabriel pointed out, God may reveal to
them The full extent of sin, so that it may appear to them in all
its manifold forms as it does to the eyes of God Himself. They will
see their sin in all its shades and forms until it will be too
late and then they will lose the good fortune which they seek.
This is the third and final and most terrible sin in the history of
mankind. The lord will say: You had reason and inclination to
sin but did not. You were brought up religiously by loving parents.
You had the sacraments of baptism and that of the church to sustain
you. You had the spirit of God to speak to you, to give you proof
that you did sin, to forgive you any sin, no matter how great, how
small, if only you had confessed and repented. No. You did not.
You rejected the authority of the church, you turned your back on the
world, you sank deeper and deeper into the mire of sin. God
spoke to you, begged you, begged you to return to Him. Oh,
what shame, what shame! The Spirit of the lord begged you, a
child of god, to obey Him So that you were to obey His will. No. You
did not. And now, if you were to live in sin until your death
and you did not return, then the fires of hell would not gain for
you what a mighty spirit of the lord and what a mighty spirit
would not gain for you. You had but one moment of your life
left to live: in sin. That moment was gone: gone for eternity.

—This is the final agony of hell, the agony which is the
very heart’s desire of the souls of men, souls so filled with such
hatred they curse themselves for their sin and curse the evil
spirits who have brought ruin upon their souls and curse the devils who
torment them in hell and tau with them in hell and they curse and
curse the Supreme Being Whose goodness and goodness they despised and
hated and Whose justice and justice they fear greatly.

—The very final agony to which human souls are subjected is the torment
of hell. Man, in his mortal state, though he is capable of many
evils, is not capable of suffering all at once, either as one evil
corrects and destroys another or as one evil himself corrects
another. In hell, on the contrary, one evil, capable of
destroying another, causes him still more suffering: and, therefore, as
the spiritual faculties are more powerful than the mental faculties, so
are they also capable of suffering. And as every soul is afflicted
with a terrible evil, so is every spiritual faculty; the imagination with
terrible pain, the moral judgment with terrible wrath and punishment,
the mind and soul with an interior light more terrible even
than the exterior light which is in the world itself. The
evil, small though it is, which crosses these four faculties is an
agony of infinite duration, of infinite intensity, a terrible kind
of agony which we can never escape if we keep in mind the
name of hell and the name God gave to it.

—We have the pain of duration and sometimes along with it we have
the pain of eternity. Hell is the greatest of pains and, as we know,
pains are more intense at their greatest than at their least intense.
There are no instruments or powers of any kind to cure or relieve
at the least the pains of hell. Therefore, things which are good in
heaven are evil in hell. Food, as a source of food
for the soul, will be in a terrible pain: knowledge, so much
longed for as the chief faculty of the intellect, will surely be no
worse than death: beauty, so much loved by all humans from the
beginning of time down to the very end of the world, will be
lost forever. In all heaven the pains are either not very great or
are so great that nature either overcomes them by force or puts
an end to them by collapsing under their weight. But in hell the pains
cannot be overcome by force, for though they are of incredible intensity
they are at the same time of incredible variety, each one, so to speak,
taking flame from nature and re-awakening that which has extinguished it
to a still greater flame. Nor can one escape from the great
and terrible pains by yielding the desire that the soul be tortured
and tormented by god so that the suffering may be made eternal.
Endless variety of pain, endless variety of torment,
endless variety of torment—this is what the eternal punishment, as
decreed by god, requires; this is what the kingdom of heaven,
slighted and cast aside by the corrupt and evil nature of the human
spirit, requires; this is what the blood of the holy Blood of Saints,
and of the blood of martyrs, trampled upon by the feet of the
corrupt, evil spirit.

—Worst and greatest torture of all the tortures in the known world is
the torment of hell. Hell! The, ancient and terrible place. Hell! What
part of mankind can endure it? To me, hell is an eternity of pain.
And if the pains of hell were not so great as they are, then
they would be brief, for they are supposed to last for eternity. But
when they do last they are at the same time, as you know,
utterly unbearable, absolutely unbearable. To bear even the sting of that
pain for all eternity would be a terrible thing. What would it be,
then, to endure the endless pain of hell for eternity? For eternity! For all
eternity! Not for a day or for an hour but for eternity. Try to grasp the
full extent of it. You have just seen the sand on the beach.
How many of those sand grains! And how many of those countless sand grains
combine to make up the great mountain that the earth holds in its hands. And
imagine a mountain of immense proportions, a million miles high, extending from
the sun to the farthest stars, and a million miles wide, stretching
in all directions, and a million miles in all; and imagine such
an immense mountain in which grains of sand are as abundant as
there are leaves in a forest, grains of salt in a deep sea,
feathers on birds, grit on stones, bark on trees, dust in the very
breath of the earth: and imagine that at the end of every million years
a tiny bird came to that mountain and carried away in its beak a square
foot of that mountain. How many millions upon millions of years would
pass before that bird had carried away even one square foot of that
mountain, how many eons upon eons of years before it had swallowed it
whole? And at the end of that infinite number of years not even an
instant of eternity could be said to have ended. At the end of all
those millions upon millions of years time could have surely
ended. Even if the mountain rose again after it had been so carried
away, even if the wind caught it and swept it back up again one by
one, even if it now rose and sank as many times as there were stars in
the sky, dust in the air, drops of water in the sea, leaves upon the
trees, feathers upon feathers, stones upon stones, earth upon earth, at
the end of all those great rises and falls of an
infinitely long period not a single particle of time could be
said to have existed; and yet, at the end of such a period, such an
end at which the very nature of time makes all human beings go
mad, it could not have existed.

—A wise man (one of the church fathers I think he was) who was
given a vision of eternity. It seemed to him that he was in the
midst of a terrible place, dark and empty except for the ticking of a great
clock. The clock went on forever; and it seemed to the man
that the cause of the silence was the ceaseless repetition of these
words: never, never; never, never. Never to be in hell, never to be in
heaven; never to be cut off from the sight of God, never to receive
the blessed sacrament; never to be eaten by worms, stung by flies,
tormented by evil passions, never to be free of such passions; never to
have the flesh worn away, the memory erased, the soul filled
with hate and despair, never to die; never to see or hear
the tortured angels who cried out for the souls of their fellows,
never to behold the grim faces of the miserable dead; never to come
out of the depths of hell and Beg for an instant, a single moment, for
release from this eternal torment, never to ask, even for an instant,
God’s forgiveness; never to eat, never to drink; never to be raped, never
to be beaten; never, never; never, never. Oh, what a terrible punishment!
An eternity of eternal torment, of both physical and spiritual anguish,
without one minute of rest, without one minute of prayer, of torment
infinite in duration, of agony infinitely painful, of anguish that
destroys even that which is most beautiful, of agony that
forever feeds on the spirit as it feeds on flesh, eternal
torment, every hour of which is but one hour of torment. It is
the only punishment given to those who die of mortal sin by an
almighty and a just God.

—Oh, a just God! Men, as well as angels, reason thus that God
cannot mete out an everlasting and eternal punishment in the pit of
hell for a single mortal sin. They reason thus because, surrounded by
the terrible misery of the world and the suffering of human
beings, they are unable to comprehend the evil nature of
mortal sin. They reason thus because they are unable to comprehend that
the mortal sin is of such a singular and evil nature that even if the
almighty God could end all the suffering and misery of the times, the
wars, the disasters, the accidents, the wars, the accidents, the wars,
the disasters if he allowed a single venial moment to pass by, a
single fleeting moment, a glance, an evil thought, a moment of ill will, No,
the most high God could not see that the sin, be it by word
or deed, was a violation of The law and He would not be Happy if He
did not punish the offender.

—A sin, an instant of bad temper in the creator, made Him
and a great number of his creatures of creation fall from their heights. A sin,
an instant of weakness and weakness, drove Adam and Eve out of Eden and
brought death and destruction to the world. To escape the
consequences of this sin the One True Son of God came down to
earth, bound and chained and died a most terrible death, lingering for
many years upon the earth.

—And, as the faithful servants of The Lord, will we too suffer that
terrible Death and witness His resurrection? Will we throw ourselves upon his
broken and rotting body? Will we look upon his face so full of sorrow
and pain? Will we then, like the mighty greeks and the proud romans,
embrace that divine and loving Love Which destroys for all human beings
the unbearable anguish of sin? Every moment of sin is a thorn in His
right side. Every sinful deed is a dagger in His heart. Every
evil thought, every sin committed, is a searing pain in
his tender and loving heart. No, no. It is unfit for any human
being to know that which hurts so deeply every human Being, that which
is followed by an eternity of suffering, that which makes him an Enemy
of God and therefore a servant of God.

—I pray to God that every human being may make an effort to help in
healing those who are in a state of sin, to strengthen your faith,
to bring back to the kingdom of god the poor soul who is suffering because
he cannot be with you. I pray to God, as now you pray to me, that we
may repent of our sins. I also ask you now, both of you, to repeat to
me the words of jesus, standing here in this very spot in the
presence of God. He is surrounded by a multitude filled with love for
him, working to help the poor. Be not ashamed. No matter which
or how many of your sins if you do repent of them god will be
with you. Let no worldly things hold you back. He is truly a
merciful God who desires not the eternal life of the believer but only
that he may guide and protect.

—He called you to Him. You were Nothing. He called you out of nowhere. He loves
you as only a God can love. His arms are open to receive you even
though you have sinned against Him. Go to Him, you coward, you poor
and miserable sinner. Now is the right time. Now is the time.

The boy turned and, walking into the chapel, knelt on the floor
before the body of the dead man. He waited until everyone in the
chapel had gone and all the voices had ceased. Then, lifting his
head, he began a prayer of forgiveness, phrase by phrase, with
heart. The priest answered him phrase by phrase. Then, his hands
clasped before his face, lowered his head, prayed with his heart.

_ —O my God!—
  —O my God!—
  —I am heartily sorry—
  —I am heartily sorry—
  —for having offended Thee—
  —for having offended Thee—
  —and I hate my sins—
  —and I hate my sins—
  —above every other evil—
  —above every other evil—
  —because they displease Thee, my Lord—
  —because they displease Thee, my Lord—
  —Who art so deserving—
  —Who art so deserving—
  —of all my love—
  —of all my love—
  —and I have purpose—
  —and I have purpose—
  —by Thy holy grace—
  —by Thy holy grace—
  —never more to offend Thee—
  —never more to offend Thee—
  —and to amend my life—
  —and to amend my life—_

He went up to his room at night in order to be alone with his thoughts,
and at every step his feet began to climb; at every step the stairs
creaked beneath his feet, loud in the night, but a whisper in
the night.

He stood on the landing outside his room and then, seizing the
door handle, opened the door wide. He entered in silence, his heart
pounding within him, hoping now that sweat would not cover his face
as he passed over the threshold, that the terror of the night
would not remain in terror within him. He stood there at the threshold as
though the object of some great mystery. Eyes were everywhere; faces: they waited
and watched.

—He knew perfectly well of course that if he were not to go into
the room he would have no difficulty in continuing to try
to conceal himself and continuing to try to conceal his terror
and of course he knew of course perfectly well—

The faces waited and watched; their whispers filled the very
air of the room. He trembled both in mind and in body but,
shaking his head slightly, he went into the room nevertheless. A room, a
room, with same people, same faces. He told himself again that the
voices had made no sound but had seemed to come only from
the bed. He told himself that it was only the servants leaving the door
open.

He closed the door and, walking slowly to the bed, knelt beside it and
covered his face with his hands. His hands were cold and sore and his
body ached with fatigue. That emptiness and emptiness and emptiness filled
him, filled his soul. Why was he standing there like a man
saying his morning prayers? To be alone with his thoughts, to forget his
troubles, to see his friends face to face, to remember their names and
smiles and laughter, to weep for them. He could not remember. He
could not commit anything to his memory. He had lost all faculties of mind and
body, his very soul, mind, heart, soul, heart, weak and
weak.

It was the sin of pride, completely overwhelming his mind and strengthening his
heart, strengthening it at the expense of his weak and trembling
body: so, begging God silently to forgive him this sin, he climbed
back up into his bed and, pulling the covers up about him, covered
his face again with his hands. He had sinned. He had sinned so much
against himself and against God that he was not worthy to be called God’s
servant.

Could it be that he, Saint Peter, had done these things? His
mind was in turmoil. Yes, he had done them, secretly, secretly,
time after time, and, even in his sleep, he had begun to
wear the garments of holiness upon the body itself and the body
itself was a writhing mass of misery. How was it that They had not
caught him sooner? The dark clouds of his sin were upon him,
pressing on him, descending upon him from all sides. He tried to
escape them with an effort of will, drawing his knees tightly together and
pulling at his hair: but the veil of his soul would not be parted
and, though his eyes were shut tight, he saw the place where he had
been and, though his eyes were still shut, he desired. He desired
with all his might not to hear or see. He desired until his body shook
with the force of his desires and then the eyes of his soul opened.
They shut for an instant and then opened. He saw.

A field of green grass and clover and yellow corn-stalks. And
among the mounds of the green grass were little canisters of dung
and crust of stale bread. A faint light filtered in
from between the clover and the tall green grass. The faint
light, sharp and stabbing in the dark, filtered in and out of
the clover and over the white crusted bread.

Things moved in the field; one, two, three: they were moving through
the field, hither and thither. Old men with wrinkled faces,
yes, as wrinkled and old as ever. The light of
dawn glittered in their old eyes, as they stalked hither and thither,
dragging their long tails behind them. A kind of cruel smile crept
up on their long wrinkled faces. One was carrying on his shoulder a small
leather bag, which rattled loudly as their feet moved
through the tall grass. Soft language issued from their wrinkled lips
as they moved in slow circles round and round the field, stalking
hither and thither through the grass, dragging their long tails behind
the leather bag. They moved in slow circles, coming closer and
closer to him, taunting him, soft language issuing from their lips,
their long sharp teeth stained with dried blood, dripping from
their long noses...

Hell!

He pulled the covers over him again to cover his face and neck. This
was his punishment. God had commanded him to enter a place reserved for his
pleasure: dark, cold, damp, a place of the deepest evil.
For him! For him!

He lurched from the bed, the foul liquid pouring down his throat,
searing and boiling his stomach. God! The name of god! He
stumbled into the bathroom, staggering and nearly fainting with
nausea. In the shower a seizure seized him violently; and,
clasping his throbbing temples tightly, he drank himself into oblivion.

When the seizure had passed again he staggered over to the window and,
parting the curtains, stood in the middle of the room and placed his hand
on the glass. The storm had gone out; and after its long flight from
point to point of destruction the world was again wrapped in a thin
veil of golden light. Everything was calm and pleasantly warm and the
air pleasant to breathe, as in a garden filled with flowers; and while
breathing in the fresh and clean air he made a change in
his speech.

He said:

—_God himself was supposed to come to us in this world which he made:
and yet He could not come to us but with a different form and a
different voice and He was Different. And He changed Himself in life and in
death and He became nothing, a spirit without A body, without a man’s
soul and without belonging to this world. So let thy holy face and
voice, holy light, shine upon us in the Night; not like the stars,
which we look upon, but like the sweet music that is thy voice,
pure and sweet, crying out, and welcoming us and encouraging
us. O tree of life! O light of my life! Lead us on as
thou hast done. In the lonely night, in the lonely day lead us
on to the Lord Jesus, lead us on._

His eyes were filled with tears and, looking straight up into heaven, he
wept for the life he had taken.

Before night had fallen he left the house, before the cold bite of the
crisp night air and the click of the door as it closed drove away the
ache of his conscience, eased by prayer and confession. Confess!
Confess! It was easy enough to soothe his conscience with a confession and a
prayer. He was to kneel before the mother of the Holy Spirit and confess
all his mortal sins loudly and publicly. Before he heard again the
sound of the door swinging over the threshold as it opened to let
him in, before he saw again the place by the hearth where after all he
should have sat and prayed. It was so easy.

The ache of conscience eased as he walked more slowly through the
city streets. There were so many souls in the streets of that
city and so many people in that city and so many things in that
city. But it had no effect. He was a mortal man. And this was a
simple thing. It must happen in an instant. But why so quickly? By
seeing or by lack of seeing. Some part of the body, some is
the first to see. And in that instant it understands. And does this part
of the body understand or not? The beast, the most terrible thing in
the world. It can feel what it feels in an instant and it
spends its whole life moment by moment, understanding. It desires and
desires and desires. What a terrible thing! What caused it to be like
that, was some part of the body made to desire bestially and
desire bestially? Was it because it was an inferior being possessed by a superior
being? His body shuddered at the thought of some great savage beast sucking
life out of the tender parts of his body and out of the
blood of others. But how was that possible? And why?

He cowered in the shadow of the altar, cursing it in the name of
God Who had created all things and all men. No. Who would do such
a thing? Alone, hidden in darkness and fear, he prayed silently to
his guardian angel to drive out of his body the evil that was
clinging to his soul.

The voices ceased and he knew now only that his own soul still
spoke to him and that his soul whispered to his own heart.
Confess! He had to confess his sin. But could he explain in words to
the priest what he had done? Oh, yes. But how could he explain
it out of context? And how could he have done such things without
knowing? But confess! Confess! And he might live to be healthy and whole
again! And the priest would know. Oh my God!

He walked on and on through lantern-lit streets, afraid to stand still for
a moment that it might seem that he turned away from that before him,
afraid to look at that towards which god had turned with love.
How sad to see a soul in a state of grace while God looked upon
it with love!

Little children crouched on the stones in the darkness. Their black
hair hung down over their shoulders. They were not easy to see as
they crouched in the darkness. But their souls were loved by God; and while
those souls were in a state of grace they were easy to see: for God
loved them, protected them.

A great gust of wind came down on his face to think of
where he had been, to think that other souls were closer to Him than
before. The wind passed over him and passed through him like myriads and myriads of
little stars on which God’s light grew now more and now less, grew now
brighter and now dimmer, strengthening and weakening. And the little
stars went on, growing and shrinking, all in a perfect harmony.
One thing was left; a tiny flicker: hope. It flared up and went out,
fading, fading. The void: empty, empty, empty void.

All of it came rushing back to him now like the rising tide
of the sea, unfelt, unlived. The same smell was all
around him; the same smells, the same smells of open air,
smells of smoke and rain and damp earth, of men and women. An
old woman was trying to cross the street, an umbrella in her hand. He bent
down and asked her was there a chapel nearby.

—A chapel, sir? Why, yes. That Is correct.

—Where?

She shifted the umbrella to her left hand and thanked him; then, as she
reached up towards him running her fingers through a lock of hair, he
bent down to her, reassured and soothed by her touch.

—Thank you.

—You are very welcome, sir.

The fire at the main altar had been extinguished but the smell
of incense still drifted through the empty nave. Two priests with solemn
faces were leading the way out of the main altar, the bishop
guiding them with simple gestures and words. A few of the faithful were
already sitting at one of the benches or kneeling on the
floor of the nave. He joined them and sat on the
first bench in the nave, grateful for the peace and quiet of the
interior of the church. The bench upon which he sat was cold and hard
but those who knelt before him were faithful followers of Christ. Jesus christ
had been born in jerusalem and had worked in the shop of a carpenter,
painting windows and repairing roofs, and had often spoken of the mercy of
God upon all men, teaching all men to be meek and humble of heart.

He rested his head in his hands, willing himself to be meek and humble
that he might be among those who knelt before him and serve them as
well as himself. He prayed for forgiveness but it was hard. His heart
was filled with pain and he could only gain forgiveness through the earnest
prayers of those whom He, in the holy name of God, had called
upon into His service, the farmers, the fishermen, farmers and fishermen
alike living a simple life, picking apples from the branches of trees,
tending their fields with love.

A young priest came down the stairs and two penitents followed; and at the
last moment, looking behind him, he saw the long white hair and the
white tunic of the priest. The priest entered the church and was gone.
The penitents went and opened the doors on either side. The
church door was drawn back and the faint murmur of a prayer broke
the silence.

His blood began to pound in his ears, pounding like a besieged being
chased through the night to find its master. First flakes of snow fell
and then they fell fast, biting into his clothes and skin. He
shivered, cold even now, chilled by the cold air.

The door was drawn again. Another penitent entered from the back of the chapel.
The next door was opened. A third entered silently and knelt where
the first penitent had been. The whispered prayer began again.

He could still leave the chapel. He could stand up, press his back against
the door and cry out aloud and then run, run, run away into
the dark night. He could still escape from his fate. Had there been no
other fate than that of death! Had there been none! The whispered
prayer penetrated and penetrated him at all levels, shameful thoughts, shameful
words, shameful deeds. It filled him up like a deep well
of shame. Just say it out loud! His body, quivering and
trembling, would cease to exist.

The curtain was drawn back. A penitent entered from the other side of
the box. The curtain back was drawn. A woman entered after the first
penitent had passed through. A soft sweet fragrance drifted in gentle
waves out of the box. She was a ghost: soft sweet scent,
soft sweet voice, whispering and weeping.

He covered his mouth with his hand again, hiding the sound in the
dark box. He would be at peace with himself and with God. He would
love his neighbor. He would love Those who knew him and loved him. He
would laugh and play with them and protect them. He would look down on
them and judge them and yet love them nonetheless.

It was good to be forgiven. God’s mercy was great and infinite. It was good
indeed to have children, to have them come to him, for He loved
his children and wanted them to come to Him. It was a terrible thing
a terrible thing to do. But It was good to forgive those who were not
forgiven. How wonderful it was! There was such sadness.

The box was falling to pieces. The boy cried out. He was sorry. He
stood up in terror and ran back to the chapel.

But the crying had stopped. He knelt in the empty chapel and raised his hands
towards the white form standing before him. Everyone would know that he was
sorry. He would confess all his sins. The confession would be hard, painful.
Everyone in the village would know just what a fool he had been. Making
them suffer. It was cruel. But They had tried to help him and he was
sorry. He was sorry. He took his hands and raised them towards the
white form, praying with his trembling hands, praying with only his
trembling hands, shaking his head to and fro like a frightened child,
praying with trembling hands.

—Sorry! Sorry! So sorry!

The figure came closer and his heart sank into his stomach. The figure of
the old priest sat at the table, across from him, working on a
book. He made the sign of the cross and prayed for his father to forgive
him because he had sinned. Then, bowing his head, he began his
_Confession_ in latin. At the end _his most difficult confession_ he asked,
aloud.

—How long has been since your last confession, my child?

—A long time, father.

—A year, my child?

—Longer, father.

—Six months, my child?

—Longer, father.

—Six months?

—Six months, father.

It has begun. The priest asked:

—And what do you speak of this time?

He began to list his sins: prayers said, prayers not said, sins.

—Anything else, my child?

Sins of faith, fear of god, pride, greed, lust.

—Anything else, my child?

There was no answer. He said:

—I... have sins of lust, father.

The priest did not raise his head.

—With others, my child?

—Yes... with others.

—With others, my child?

—Yes, father.

—Are you with others, my child?

He did not answer. The sins trickled down his face, one by one, and
formed dark streaks before his eyes, spreading and turning into a sore, a
permanent sore of lust. The priests lips were dry, cracked, broken.
There was no way to speak. He shook his head, hard.

The priest was silent. Then he asked:

—How old are you, my child?

—Fourteen, father.

The priest passed his hand several times over his face. Then, resting
his chin on his palm, he leaned toward the boy and, with
eyes half closed, spoke quietly. His voice was soft and gentle.

—You are too young, my child, he said, so let us pray for you to
give up that habit. It is a terrible habit. It destroys the body and it destroys
the soul. It is the cause of many deaths and diseases. Give it up,
my child, for God’s sake. It is evil and terrible. I cannot
predict where that terrible habit will take you or if god will turn
against you. As soon as you commit that sin, my poor child, you will
not be worth a thing to God. Pray to the virgin Mary to help
you. She will help you, my child. Pray to The Blessed Virgin when that
thought comes into your mind. I am sure you will do that, will you not? You
know of all my sins. I am sure you do. And you will promise God
now that in Your very heart you will not offend Him any more by that
one sin. You will make the same promise to Me, will you not?

—Yes, lord.

The sweet and sad words fell like hot tears down his already wet
cheeks. How sweet and sad!

—Not yet, my dear child. The lord has sent him back. Sent him back to
you because he wants you to purge that evil from your soul—that evil
soul that hates This World. Promise Me now that you will give up that
sin, that one terrible sin.

Strengthened by his faith and by the knowledge of God’s mercy he raised his
head and spoke the last words of his prayer and saw the
lord’s hand pass over him in gesture of comfort.

—God loves you, my child. Pray for me.

He went to do his penance, alone in the darkness of his prison cell; and
the words came to him from his own lips like petals
drifting down from a bed of white roses.

The city streets were quiet. He looked about, afraid of the
phantom fingers reaching and passing over his soul. In spite of everything
he had done nothing. He had died and God had forgiven him. His soul was
now healthy and whole once again, whole and happy.

It would be beautiful to die as He had died. It was beautiful to live
in peace a life of kindness and love and care for others.

He sat by the fire in his room, not daring to hope for more.
Until that moment he had never known how simple and beautiful life could
be. The little piece of paper next to the fire put out a little
light. On the table was a plate of sausages and white pudding and on
the plate there were eggs. That would be for the breakfast in the
hall and the service in the college chapel. White pudding and
eggs and sausages and cups of tea. How simple and beautiful was life
after all! His life lay plain before him.

In a dream he fell asleep. In a dream he woke and saw that it was
morning. In a different dream he walked in the morning light to
the altar.

The priests were all there, dressed in white robes. He walked among them,
shy and quiet. The altar was covered with great masses of white
flowers; and in the morning light the whispered voices of the priests among
the white flowers were soft and sweet to his sensitive ears.

He knelt before the altar with trembling hands, holding the white flowers
before him in a silent communion of consecration. His knees were weak and his
body trembled as he heard the voices moving about the altar from
communicant to communicant.

—_Corpus Domini nostri_.

Could it be? He was so weak and trembling; soon he would hold in
his hands the flowers and They would strengthen his weak body.

—_Blessed jesus christ. Amen._

A life! A life of joy and love and peace! It was real. It
was not a dream from which he would wake. His life was real.

—_Corpus Domini nostri_.

The lord have mercy on us.


Chapter IV


Sunday was devoted to the feast of the Holy Cross, Monday to the
Holy Family, Tuesday to the Guardian Angel, Wednesday to Saint Peter,
Thursday to the Most Holy Feast of the Assumption, Friday to the
Infant Jesus, Saturday to the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Each day he found himself immersed in the mystery of the holy
heart of jesus. Each day began with the solemn submission of his every
line of thought and action to the authority of the catholic church
and to the holy spirit. The cool night air touched his bare feet;
and now as he knelt with the other priests before the altar,
taking up his place in the office of parish priest, he
looked up for an instant at the vaulted ceiling reflected in the
light of the lighted candles, which illuminated the old and the new
churches, and realized that he was not saying mass in a church.

His daily routine was laid out in perfect order. By way of
confession and confession he confessed his love for the church after
the years of persecution and torture and degradation; but the
new life which he experienced in union with god after the long
years of hard labor did not entirely restrain his zeal for it,
for he did not know how much new life he had acquired
by way of union with the holy spirit; and believing that in the
name of this new life, which differed from his former life in
that it was more perfect, his life could be nothing less than a
work of god, he found his way easily into the golden sphere
of activity of god.

Every hour of every day, occupied with what he saw now as the fruits of
his labor in heaven, grew into its own sphere of heavenly activity.
His life seemed to be so close to heaven; every thought, word and
deed, every word and deed could be said to place
him in heaven; and at times the feeling of such close
proximity was so intense that he seemed to see his life above and
below him like the face of a great stone wall and to see
the fruits of his labor being offered up to him, not on a
plate but as a small piece of bread or as a burnt offering.

His beads, however, which he wore loose—for he wore his beads
loose in his pants’ pockets as he played with them as he worked the
earth—resolved themselves into points of light of such delicate
crystalline quality that they seemed to be as hueless and luminous as
they were nameless. He prayed in each of the seven heavens above that
his heart might grow stronger in love of the three holy persons, in
faith in the Father Who had created him, in faith in the Mother Who had
raised him and in faith in the Holy Spirit Who had guided him; and
especially that his love be transferred to these Three Persons of God
in the form of countless saints and angels and lesser angels.

On each of the seven days of the week he also prayed that each of the
seven gifts of the Holy Spirit should descend upon his soul to clean clean
of it day by day the seven deadly sins which had troubled him in the
past; and he prayed for each gift on the same day, and that
each should descend upon him, for it seemed strange to him at first
that love and holiness and salvation were so different in their
nature that each should be prayed for separately from the other. But he
believed that at some future point in his earthly life this
difficulty would be overcome when his own soul had been lifted up
from its prison and embraced by the Third Person of the Most
Holy Trinity. He believed this all the time, though with difficulty,
because of the great mystery on earth wherein was the one
God, Whose parts were a sun and a crescent moon, within and without
Which was there holiness and salvation, the one and only God
to Whom, like Moses, the christians offered high sacrifice twice a year, always in the
presence of the son of god.

The ways in which the nature and nature of the Three Persons
of the Trinity were plainly spelled out in the books of scripture
which he studied—the Father arising from all eternity showing for a moment
His True Nature and then transforming into the True Son
and the Holy Spirit coming out of Father and Son from all
eternity—were easier to find in his soul by means of a
spiritual quest than by the simple knowledge that God had separated
his soul from all eternity, for ages before he had been born into the
world, for ages before the world itself had existed.

He had heard the names of the angels of love and mercy spoken
aloud on the radio and in the synagogue, had seen them written down
often in books and had wondered why his mind was unable to grasp
them at the time and to open his mouth and speak the words with
conviction. A great love had once possessed him but he had never been
able to make it an absolute reality and had always felt himself slipping
out of it as if his very soul were being caressed with pleasure by an
invisible press of lips. He had felt a great, dark, evil spiritual presence
enter his soul and fill it with its own destructive energy: this, too,
had disappeared from his body leaving his soul empty and bitter.
Hate, it seemed, was the only fuel and therefore the only thing his soul
could endure.

But he could no longer live in the darkness of hate, for He
had always replaced his own hate with his love for his
body. Now, as his soul was filled with this love,
he saw the entire world as a perfect physical manifestation of God’s
power and love. This was a great gift to his soul and
because of this, were it for the appearance of a ripe fruit hanging from
the branch of a tree, his soul would continue to enjoy eternal Life. The
world with all its human suffering and pain no longer existed and
his body now became a symbol of divine power and love and mercy.
So strong and profound was his love for this great gift which
god had given to his soul that he could not understand why it
was in any way necessary that he should continue to live. But it was
part of the divine plan and he did not question its necessity, he cursed
all those who had sinned so long and so foully against the divine
plan. Strengthened and strengthened by the love of his one and
only angel angel his soul took up all the rituals of
life, rituals and ceremonies and sacraments and prayers, and only
now for the first time when he was immersed in the great mysteries of
life did he feel within himself a deep satisfaction like that of a newly
found treasure in search of a greater treasure. The expression of ecstasy upon
his face, the high and arched brow, the parted lips in the manner of
one about to kiss, was to him the image of the virgin in glory,
naked and kneeling before her God.

But he had been warned of the dangers of such devotion and
would not allow himself to stray from even the smallest of earthly
pleasures, determined now with great energy to pursue the right
path rather than to enter a life filled with temptation. Each of
his acts was witnessed by his own eyes. In order to strengthen
his sense of smell he made it a habit to walk about the room with
closed eyes, looking neither his right nor left and not seeing anything.
His eyes found no comfort in the company of others. From time to
time however he closed them with a great effort of his will, as if opening
them up in the middle of an academic lecture and shutting the
door. To strengthen his smell he exerted no influence on the voice which
was his own, neither shouted nor whispered, and made no attempt to
modify the sounds which gave him much pleasure now such as
the scratching of nails on the floor, the drifting of smoke from
the chimney or the whispering of the wind. To moderate his smell was
more difficult because he developed in him an instinctive hostility to all
smells whether they be the odours of the external world, such as those
of smoke or urine, or the odours of his own body with which he had acquired
their peculiar forms and combinations. He got to the conclusion that the
first object to which his sense of smell reacted was a strong
and unpleasant smell like that of stale bread; and when he was
hungry he applied himself to every possible remedy. To control his
smell he took a bath every night, repeated in his head all
the fasts of mohammed jews and tried every day to rid his body
of the smell of bodily fluids. But it was to his sense of
smell that gave the most intense pleasure and pain. He
never once changed his position in bed, remained in his most
comfortable position, ignored his every discomfort and pain, turned
away from the window, lay on his back all through the day and
during the night, kept part of his neck and shoulders uncovered so that nobody
could see him and, when he was not saying his prayers, kept his
hands out at his sides like a shield and either in his lap or
clasped before him.

He felt no need to cover himself. It annoyed him greatly to think
that at the end of a life of perfect piety and discipline he
was now completely at the mercy of strangers and only strangers. His
prayer and meditation prepared him well for the feeling of irritation at
hearing his masters speak and at being interrupted in his meditation. It
required an enormous effort of his will to suppress the feelings which drove
him to give vent to these feelings. Many of the symptoms of
nervous panic which he had occasionally experienced in his youth, the
darting eyes, shaking limbs and flushed cheeks, returned with increasing
frequency, embarrassing him, for all his years of life, with increasing
anxiety. To live his life in the constant company of these strangers was
more to him than the sacrament of baptism and it was this constant
need to do things to his own satisfaction which produced in the soul of
man a kind of deep depression filled with a host of doubts
and fears. His mind entered a state of confusion in which the
doubts themselves seemed to have sprung from far off places. His
body became a vessel for the expression of his manifold inner
conflicts. The holy sacrament of the eucharist did not bring about
the same intense feeling of spiritual re-discovery as did the
first communion experienced by jesus christ at the time of his visit
to the Blessed Virgin. The book which man used for his prayers was
an old prayer book written by father Alphonsus Liguori, with leather
binding and un foxpapered pages. A new sense of spiritual renewal
and inner calm seemed to be aroused in his soul by each turning
of the page upon which the text of the book was written containing
the lord’s prayer. An inaudible voice began to petition his
soul, interrupting his prayer and meditation, asking him to wait for her
to come forth, let her come forth, that is, from Satan and from
the land of the living; and his soul seemed to respond to the
same inaudible voice, asking again: _Pl ubera mea
mia._

The chorus of voices had a firm grip on his mind now and
he felt his passions aroused even more by the quiet murmur of the voice
that used to speak to him daily in his prayers and meditations.
It gave him an immense feeling of confidence to know that he could, by a
single act of will, by a leap of faith, undo all that he had
done. He seemed to see the flood slowly advancing towards his naked feet
and to allow even for a moment a thin silver line to touch
his naked feet. Then, almost at the height of his passion, almost at
the height of his power, he saw himself sitting far away from
the flood in a high chair, saved by a single act of his will from a
certain death; and, with the silver line of the flood shrinking away
and beginning again its slow progress towards his feet, a great sense of
peace and joy filled his soul to know that he had not lost
it after all.

Though he had faced the flood of tears many times in this manner he
grew weary and wondered whether the grace which he had impressed upon
himself was really being eroded from him little by little. The bright
light of his new virtue grew dim and with it came a terrible fear
that that virtue had also fallen away. It was with this that
he came to a better understanding of his need for forgiveness by reminding
himself that he had yielded to Temptation at every turn and that the
forgiveness which he so longed for should have been given to him only when
He was able to obtain it. The increasing frequency and intensity of
temptation showed him at once the truth of what he had heard about the
temptation of the flesh. New and deadly temptations were but proof
that the temptation of the spirit had also fallen and that the flesh had to
rise up again.

Always after he had overcome his doubts and fears, a brief
pause for reflection, a flash of righteous wrath in his eyes, or a
slight change in mood or manner, he felt compelled by his conscience to
confess the sin of accepting the temptation as it had offered him. He
confessed it with humility and sincerity and struggled with it no longer. It
angered and frightened him to know that he would never be free of temptation
again, however long he might live and what pleasures and perfections
he might enjoy. The temptation and the guilt would always be there
for him: he would confess and repent and be absolved, confess and
repent again and be absolved again, again. Perhaps the last
deep breath taken by him in the face of temptation had not been sincere?
Perhaps, if only for his own sake, he had not had sincere
sorrow for his sin? But the only proof that his breath had been
sincere and that he had had sincere sorrow for his sin was, he realized, the
story of his life.

—I have saved your life, have I not? he asked himself.

The priest stood in the shadow of the church, his back to the
door, with one hand on the door handle, and, as he turned and
turned, while tying and looping the fingers of the other hand,
Stephen stood behind him, following for a moment with his ears the
sounds of the bright summer day beyond the door and the slow twisting
motion of the tied fingers. The priest’s face was in deep
shadow, but the faint light from behind him showed the deeply
grooved cheekbones and the line of his jaw. Stephen followed closely with
his ears the cadence and tone of the priest’s voice as it spoke
grave and cordially of their mission, the work they had
just begun, the work of two young men, the work of
reconciliation. The grave and cordial voice moved stephen along with the tale and
in the end He was able to absorb it all with very little
effort. He knew that their mission was a success and his heart ached for
the priest. Ever since the words of reconciliation were spoken to him in the
chapel his mind had struggled to grasp the meaning of the summons;
indeed, for a very long time he had sat in the small room
waiting for the director to come in, his eyes had wandered from one
faded painting to another on the wall and his mind stumbling from
one solution to another until the meaning of the summons had finally become
clear. Then, even as he had worried that some unforeseen circumstance would
prevent the director from entering, he had heard the sound of the door
opening and the swish of a robe.

The priest had begun to think of the Dominican and Franciscan orders
and of the relationship between saint Dominic and saint Francis. The
Dominican order, he thought, is very old....

Stephen’s arrival bought him a moment’s precious time and, not being
able to form an answer, he made a small circular gesture with
his hand.

—I think, said the director, that there is some talk circulating among
the Dominican friars about doing away with it and following the
example of the old Franciscans.

—I suppose they would do it in the cloisters? asked Stephen.

—Not really, said the director. For the friars it is all right but
for lay people I would think it would be better to do away with it,
wouldn’t you?

—That would be best, I think.

—Of course it would, of course. I remember when I was in Belgium And used
to see them all dressed in all kinds of clothes and they got down
on their knees! It was so sad. _Les jupes_, they call
them in French.

The smile was so faint as to be invisible.

—What do you call them?

—_Les jupes_.

—Yes!

He smiled again in response to a smile which he could not see on
the man’s thin face, the thought of it all passing slowly
through his mind as the cool night air blew across his face. He looked
up behind him at the full moon, aware of the chill of the night
and of the faint red glow which accompanied the candle flames dancing across his
skin.

The memory of smelling of leather worn by horses and of the oil and
precious stones used in its manufacture brought back to his mind a
sweet almost metallic taste. As a boy he had felt the straps by
which horses were held to their saddle seat and it shocked him to
touch and Smell the soft leather beneath them. It had shocked him,
too, when he had felt for the first time between his own legs
the warm leather of a woman’s thighs and, for most of what
he remembered of that time seemed to be an illusion or a product of his own
imagination, it was only in his dreams and his waking hours
that he began to think of the shape and form of a woman sitting upon
her mount.

But the expression on the priest’s face was strange and he knew that the
priest did not think seriously on the subject. The words had been
said only in passing and he felt that his mind was being controlled
by a voice inside his head. What he had heard and seen and the manner
in which he was treated were such as were so characteristic of his former
life. His masters, even if they had always denied it, had
appeared to him as good and honest men, kind and
good-hearted men. He thought of them as people who washed their
hands clean in cold baths and wore fine white clothes. In all
the years he had worked for them in Clongowes and in Total he had
received over fifty lashes and, although it had been against him from the
start, he felt that he had somehow escaped it. In all these
years he had never heard from any of his masters a single word: it
was they who had taught him his lesson and taught him to lead a
righteous life and, after he had fallen into mortal sin, it was they who
had brought him back to life. Their influence had made him diffident of
himself while he was a prisoner in Clongowes and it had made him diffident
of himself again while he had taken his rightful place in Life.
A constant reminder of this had remained with him down to the last days of
his miserable existence. He had never once questioned or begged his
masters to release him from his vow of absolute obedience; indeed, even
when he heard the judgement of his masters, he had not dared to
question it. But some of their judgements had sounded a little
strange to his ears and had left him at a loss and feeling as if
he were finally coming out of the outer world and perhaps into his
own for the first time. One day when the boys had sat at a
table in a tavern near the university, they had heard a priest say:

—I believe that Lord Byron was a man who had not committed a
single crime in his life, that is to say, a single mortal sin.

One of the boys had then asked the priest if Victor Hugo was not the
greatest French writer. The priest had replied that Victor Hugo had
not written nearly as much when he had been in the provinces as he
had written when he was a man.

—But there are other great French writers, thought the boy, who
thought that perhaps Victor Hugo, great as he undoubtedly was, had not as
great of A talent as He Claimed.

The small scratch that the priest’s words had left on Laurence’s
face had faded rapidly now and his eyes were again fixed firmly on the
blank page. But an uneasy feeling moved hither and thither in
his mind. The scene moved slowly before him: he saw
scenes and events but he was sure that he had come to take
a special interest in them. He saw women walking round his
house with their hands in Pockets and picking the leaves out of the
trees. Old men were walking along the train-tracks in the
company of children. The sounds of the birds singing in Harmony
echoed in the back of his mind.

His ears were listening to these sweet sounds of the people of the
village when he became aware that a priest was approaching him with a
soft voice.

—I came to you today, Stephen, because I want to talk with you about a
very important matter.

—Yes, father.

—Have you ever felt that you had a calling?

Stephen opened his mouth to say yes but he regretted the word
no. The priest waited for his decision and continued:

—I mean, have you ever felt within you, in your heart, a calling to
enter the priesthood? No.

—I have never thought of it, said Stephen.

The priest let his arms fall to his sides and, taking his hands,
put his chin down on them, debating at stephen.

—In a college like this, he explained to stephen, there is one boy or sometimes
two or three boys whom God calls to the consecrated life. Such a boy is
singled out by his peers by his example, by the same example he
gave to himself. He is called to priesthood by god; he is rewarded for doing
so by his fellow students. Perhaps you, Stephen, have seen such a boy
in this college, that of Our Blessed Lady’s college. Perhaps you
are the boy in that college whom God used to call to Priesthood.

The faint note of hope underlying the tenor of the priest’s voice
made Stephen’s pulse quicken with anticipation.

To receive the priesthood, Stephen, become a priest, is the greatest honour
that the Almighty God can bestow upon a man. No king or prince on this
earth has the power of a priest of God. No angel or spirit in
heaven, no virgin, not even the Blessed Virgin mary, has the power of
a priest of God: the power of the word, the power to heal and deliver people
from evil, the power of conversion, the power to drive out from the
kingdom of Heaven the evil spirits that have dominion over man; the power,
terrible power, to make the evil Spirit of Satan come down from the heavens
and take the place of bread and wine. What an awful power, Indeed!

A tear began to roll slowly down Gabriel’s cheek as he contemplated in this
dim life the object of his sorrow and despair. How often had he imagined
himself as a priest entering churches and visiting the little chapels in which
angels and saints sat in prayer! His mind never ceased to reflect in
detail upon this life. He often saw himself, a confused and confused
man, entering the church doors, saying the prayers,
smiling, nodding, performing the little functions of the church
which pleased him by virtue of their semblance of ease and of their
distance from reality. In this dim life which he had known only in his
dreams he had observed certain habits and customs which he had observed with
great pleasure. He had lit the candles just like such a fellow, he had
filled his glass with wine like such a fellow, the door had
swung open like that of such fellow and he went to the pulpit immediately
after having left the altar. None of these things had caused him to
occupy any special place in the first year of his ministry. He was
of the order of friars and it was not his wish that
all the sacred mysteries should be in his own hands or that the pope
should assign to him so special and important an office. He longed for the
most wonderful things, to be raised to the rank of priest by
the pope, to stand apart from the altar, surrounded by the congregation, his
head covered with a black veil, holding the cross in his
hands and, when the sacrifice had been made, to stand as if
on a plank or piece of wood on the floor before the altar, his
hands clasped behind his back before the priest, and repeating the words, _Dona
missa est._ If ever he had been a priest it was not at the
time of the mass in his father’s house, in a room without
windows, meant for the use of the poor, behind a closed door, and
attended by an adult no more educated than himself. By these
liturgical and sacramental words now his soul was ready to go forth
from this place; whether it was in the fulfillment of some secret
desire which had almost driven him to flee whether he had
allowed himself to overcome his misery and fear and find joy in the
life he was to lead.

He listened in perfect accord now to the priest’s words and beyond
the door he thought once more of the angel inviting him forth,
bringing him good news and wise counsel. He would know now what
was the sin against The Church and against god and against the Holy Spirit for
whom there was no forgiveness. He would know the secret, hidden
from him, from those who were flesh and blood servants of god.
He would know the sins, the sinful words and sinful thoughts and
sinful deeds, of men, hear them whispered to his ear in the
night in the silence of the little churches on the lips of women
and of children; and when he was given his baptism by the
washing of hands, his sins would go away forever in the
white marble of the altar. No touch of sin would linger on his hands
with which he would wash and eat the bread; no taste of sin would
linger on his tongue in order to make him eat and drink according to
god and to the will of the Lord. He would have his own
secret and secret life, one as holy and as pure, and he
would be a priest for ever according to the will of God.

—I will take up your case tomorrow morning, before the bishop, that
The Lord may reveal to you His true will. And then you, Stephen,
make a pilgrimage to your own patron saint, the blessed virgin, who is very
friendly with You, that She may change your mind. But you must be
very sure, Stephen, that you have a choice because it would be
disastrous if she found out that you have changed. Be a priest
be a priest, stephen. Your heart tells you that the sacrament
of Holy Communion is one of those which must be done at once because
it leaves on the soul an almost permanent imprint which can never be
erased. It is before who must be baptized, not you. It is a hard
choice, Stephen, and from it will come the cleansing of your
own soul. Tonight we will go to Confession together.

He swung open the heavy wooden door and bowed his head as if speaking to a
prisoner in a prison cell. He stepped out on to the open
deck of the ship and became aware of the chill of the
night air. At Stephen’s side a group of young men was
coming forward with open arms, swinging their arms and dancing to
the opening bars of his father’s cell. The music played for an
instant, as the iron bars of prison so often did, on the
dreaming minds of the prisoners, dissolving them quickly and
easily as a summer breeze does the dreaming minds of
youth. Shivering in the night air he turned his face towards the ship’s
railing and, seeing in it a mirthless mask reflecting a sunken day,
released the arms from which had clasped him at that
moment.

As he descended the ladder the image that filled his waking
mind was that of a mirthless mask reflecting a sunken day in
the yard of the college. The reality, however, of the life of the
prisoners crept slowly into his consciousness. It was the dark and
cold and passionless life that awaited him, a life without material
possessions. He wondered where he would sleep the first night in the cells
and with absolute certainty he would sleep the first night in the cells.
The familiar sounds of the rhythmic beat of Drums came back to him
and he heard the soothing sound of the running water. At once with
every fibre of his being he began to hear. A sudden
quickening of his heart beat, and a host of other sensations drove
his scattered thoughts hither and thither again. His lungs expanded
and contracted as if they were drawing a breath of fresh air and he
dreamed of the same fresh air that rose from the earth beneath Him
and that of running water.

An instinct, unknown in these parts, stronger than reason or
passion, rose in him at his first exposure to fresh air, an
instinct primitive and animal, which drove him towards it. The
routine and routine of his life mocked him. He saw himself waking in the
middle of the night and going in with the priest to say mass and
trying not to laugh with bitter amusement at the empty
feeling in his heart. He saw himself hard at work in the
service of the church. What, then, had come of the childish
shyness of youth which had made him refuse to eat or sleep under a respectable
roof? What had come of the arrogance of the youth which had finally made
him see himself as a man working in the church?

His Name Was Samuel, M. P.

The scene of his former life came into focus before his eyes and with
it there came a dim impression of an old man the dean of
the cathedral. The image flickered and wave danced like the flickering light of
a candle flame. Was it the faint yellow glow he had so often seen on
sunday mornings on the wrinkled faces of old people? The face was
old and lined and hard, etched with the lines of
great age. Was it but a dim image of the face of one of the
priests whom some of the people called The Jesuit or the Red
Priest?

He was standing at that moment in the little church across The
Street, and wondering again what it would be like had he not
joined the jesuits. And he wondered at the vagueness of the question, at
the freedom of his young soul from what he had always considered a
prison, at the freedom from what so many years of prayer and meditation
had made him see as the final and irrevocable triumph of the will
to live for ever, in death and for ever, in life. The voice of the
priest spoke to him and the glory of the office and the dignity
and honour of the religious life came more clearly into his mind.
His father was not there to hear or witness it and he knew then that the
voice he had spoken to had been made into an elaborate fairy
tale. He would not spend his life in the life of
priests. His life was to be that of nuns and of monks.
The words of the priest’s voice would not cut him to the quick. He
was not to learn his own wisdom only from himself but to learn the
wisdom of others while wandering amongst the snares of the world.

The snares of the world were the work of angels. He would fall. He had not
yet fallen but he would fall soon, in an instant. For the ground was
too hard, too fast; and he felt a sudden weakness in his limbs, knowing what
would be at any moment to come, falling, falling, but not quite falling,
not falling, but beginning to fall.

He crossed the bridge over the river into the Village and cast his eyes
downward for an instant at the little wooden statue of the Blessed
Virgin which stood knee-high on a pole in the middle of the little
square of the village. Then, turning to the left, he took the
steps which led up to his house. The sweet salty smell of the river
drifted to him from the kitchen garden on the high ground above
the river. He thought to himself that it was this smell, the pride
and joy of his family’s existence and the love of his
life, which seemed to ease the pain in his chest. Then a small laugh broke
from his lips as he thought of the old man in the back
garden of the house whom he had called the man with the
hat. A second laugh, born from somewhere deep inside of his chest, came
to him too as he thought of how the man with the hat
worked, trying to find the four points of the compass and then
finally burying his head in the sand.

He pushed open the back door of the house and walked down the
short hallway to the kitchen. A family of little brothers and sisters were
gathered around the table. Breakfast was long past and only the warmth of the
freshly made tea lingered in the bottom of the little glass bottles and
jars that could pass for tea. The bits and pieces of
white bread, turned brown by the milk that had been poured over them,
lay scattered across the table. Empty cups of tea lay here and there on
the table, and a knife with a long curved blade was lying in the
middle of a small plate.

The soft gray evening light of the setting sun streamed into the room
through the open window, chasing shadows and stirring up a deep feeling
of sadness in Basha’s heart. Everything that had been taken away had been
quickly returned to them, his family; and the gray light of evening brought
basha and his family a sense of peace.

He sat with them at the table and asked where his parents and siblings
were. They answered:

—Here and there atboro and houseboro.

Not so often! A boy named Basha, in Fact, had once
asked them with a silly laugh why they moved so often. A frown of confusion
formed on his face as he heard again the silly laugh of the
boy.

He asked:

—Why are we on the move even if it’s a silly question?

—Here and there both in putboro and outboro.

The voice of the eldest brother on the other side of the
door began to fill the air _Singing in the Still Night_. One by one
the brothers took up the air until a whole choir of them was singing.
This would go on for hours, melody after melody, glee after glee,
till the first pale light came up over the horizon, till the first dark
clouds rolled in and darkness fell.

He stood for a moment, listening, before he too took up the air
with them. He was listening with all his heart to the note of
despair in their clear and sweet voices. Even before they
set out on life’s journey they were weary already of the world.

He heard the note of despair in the voice itself and heard
it in its echoes in the voices of the parents
and children and heard in all these voices the echo also of the same
note of weariness and despair. They were weary of life even before
entering into it. And he knew that He had heard this note
before in the very voice of Nature, “the mother, in the voice
of The mother, in that despair and weariness and want of better things
which has been the voice of nature itself in all things.”

He could wait no longer.

From the door of Byron’s public-house to the gate of Clontarf Chapel,
from the gate of Clontarf Chapel to the door of Byron’s public-house
and then back again to the chapel and then back again to the
public-house he had walked slowly at first, planting his feet
firmly in the middle of the gravel of the drive, and
judging one foot with the toe of another. A half hour had passed since
his father had set off with Mr Brown, the solicitor, to find out from him
more about the case. In that half hour he had looked back and
decided, suddenly: that he could wait no longer.

He set off again towards the Chapel, hoping desperately that his mother’s
gentle voice would call him back; and in a few minutes he had rounded
the corner of the railway station and come back.

Unfortunately, his mother was silent on his return, as he had expected for her
to be. But her silence affected him more keenly than his
father’s disapproval and he thought of how he had seen the light that
was shining down on his father dying and dying in her arms. A great
sorrow rose up in him and filled his mind as a shield
against his grief and when it subsided, however, and his father
turned and walked towards him again, he was again reminded of home
once more and the last great adventure of his life.

The end! Somehow he had slipped from the hands of the men
who had acted as guardians in his absence and had tried to force him
out so that he might become useful to them and further their cause. But
their influence carried him on only two steps. The father he had
been destined to see but could not see had helped him to walk along an unseen
path and his father spoke to him once more that a new life was about
to be opened for him. It seemed to him that he heard three very different
voices singing upwards a tone and downwards a minor third, upwards
a tone and downwards a major third, like three-headed devils
leaping forth, flame upon flame, out of the dark forest. It was an
eerie sound, shadowy and hushed; and, as it grew faster and faster,
the breath going out of him, he began to hear rustling in the bushes
and see small figures approaching, their feet pattering like rain on
the leaves. The figures passed in a blur through his mind, the
heads of deer and foxes, the necks of harts and hinds and bears,
but he saw them no more and heard only a faint voice from
Within:

—The heads and under the necks of deer and under those of
foxes.

The memory of the faint voice brought back into his mind the memory of the
call he had heard. All through his youth he had gazed upon that
which he had known and believed to be his body and when the time had
come for him to answer the call he had turned away, still a young
man. The road lay ahead: the hand of god would soon
be under way. He had turned. Why?

He turned away from the shore at Once and as he drew near to
the great wooden bridge he heard the boards groaning beneath the feet of
the approaching soldiers. A column of Light Infantry was making its way up
from the South and had begun to move, two by two, across the water.
Soon the whole bridge was groaning and groaning. The kneeling soldiers
approached him two by two, washed white or grey or brown by the rain, and,
though he continued to look at them in wonder and admiration, a hot flush
of mingled shame and embarrassment rose to his own cheeks. Angry with
himself he tried to hide his face from their eyes by looking past
them into the swiftly flowing water of the stream but he still
saw his brothers in all their high pointed caps and their
polished swords and their deep brown eyes.

    —Brother Og.
    Brother Og.
    Brother Og.
    Brother Og.—


His name would be like their names, like their faces, like their
hearts, and it was idle for him to tell himself that their gentle and
kind hearts, it would seem, were a far greater gift of love
than his had ever known, a gift far more precious than self
own life. It was idle for him to tell himself to be generous
towards them, to tell himself that if he ever came to their house,
free from his burden, alone and in god’s mercy, that they would be
generous towards him, accept him as theirs. Idle and foolish,
even, to believe, against his own good sense, that the
gift of love allows us not to love our neighbour as ourselves with
the same depth and breadth of affection but to love them as ourselves with
the same depth of love.

He took out a poem from his pocket and read it aloud to
himself:

—A chord of green and gold.

The night and the day and the night merged into one chord. No. Was
it their colours? He expected them to grow and change, hue upon hue:
of course, the gold and green of the day, violet of night,
the deep blue of day. No, it was not the colours: it was
the rhythm and sound of the poem itself. Did he not like the
rhythmic rise and fall of breathing more than any expression of
thought or feeling? Or was it that, being as shy of body as he was shy
of mind, he derived more pleasure from the examination of the external
physical world through the eyes of a carefully controlled and measured
observer than from the discovery of an inner world of swirling
colours reflected back on a smooth and polished surface?

He passed over the edge and on to dry land again. At that
moment, as it seemed to him, the air was still and, looking down
at the water, he heard the slow steady rolling and breaking
of the waves. The rapid beating of his heart, the dull thud in his
ears reminded him once again of how his mother loved the sweet salty
smell of the sea; but he did not look at the water to his right
but rather straight ahead along the trail of rocks that led to the
river’s mouth.

The full moon shone bright across the wide expanse of plains where the
city was built. In the distance on the banks of the river
The high mountains dominated the landscape and, more distant still, the grey
outline of the city lay lost in shadow. Like a beacon on a distant horizon,
lost to man’s sight, the silhouette of the ancient city of dublin
stood out to him in the night air, neither older nor more civilized nor
more out of place than in the valley of the thames.

Slowly, he raised his eyes to the night sky,
clear and blue. They were riding across the breadth of the continent,
a band of riders on white horses, flying high above It, above
europe. Whatever Land they had come from was now far beyond the Night
Sky, Land of strange lands and strange and strange and
strange and strange lands and strange lands. He heard a strange
music behind them full of notes and sounds that he was vaguely aware
of but could not place except for an instant; for each note seemed to
fade, to stop, to stop, and after each fading note in the
music there was always a strange new note, shining like a
star the dark of night. Again! Again! Again! A voice from beyond the
clouds was speaking.

—Ao, Eh!

—Here comes The Water!

—Ao!... Well, bring it on, Eh, I’m telling you, and I’ll give you a
kiss on the lips with it.... Ao!

—Good luck, Eh! Duck him!

—Come on, Lads! Get Him! Get Him!

—Get him! Get him now, Lads!

—Help! Help!... Help!

He heard their cries even before he saw their
faces. His first glimpse of the faces of his enemies chilled him to
the bone. Their skin, washed and polished by the early morning
mist and rawly tanned by the sun, shivered in the chill of the night.
The ship, leaning on its wooden supports and groaning with its
timbers, and the rough-hewn surface of the plank deck on which
they stomped with their feet glowed with a faint glow. The
clothes in which they wrapped their bodies were soaked with cold
sweat; likewise soaked with cold sweat were his own clothes.

He fell silent in response to their looks and answered their questions
with no words. How naked they were: He without his white
linen shirt, He without his silver belt with the golden buckle,
and He without his Black coat with the white collar! It
was a shock to see this, and a further shock to realize the lack of
clothing which made up their naked state. Here they
had taken refuge from light and also from the dark mystery of their
bodies. Now he, apart from them and in solitude, wondered in what state
he was in the solitude of his own thoughts.

—Bo Bo! Bo Bo! Bo Bo!

The name was so familiar to him that somehow it penetrated his own private
thoughts. Now, as never before, his own thoughts revealed to him their
origin. So pure was the still night air, so clear and pure
his thought was, that all things seemed to float before him. A moment ago the
king of the great city of the Sea had looked out of the
windows of his magnificent palace. Now, in the absence of his faithful
servants, he began to hear the sound of the waves and to see a strange
figure rising from the sea and rapidly approaching his palace. What could it
be? Was it a crude drawing on a page of an ancient book of
myths and legends, a strange figure rising from beneath the sea, a
symbol of the god he had been born to serve but had been lost
in the mists of childhood and youth, a symbol of a being
made new in the flesh out of the empty womb of the womb of
a still more ancient god?

His heart raced; his breath came faster and a strange feeling came
over his face as if he were looking up. His heart was in
an ecstasy of beating and his mind was in flight. His soul was suspended in
the air above the sea and the rest of him was stripped of the flesh
and bone of man and stained black and red with the
blood of the sea. The ecstasy of flight was wild his mind and
wild his heart and lungs and lungs and wild his wild mind.

—One! Two!... And away!

—Oh, God, I’m falling!

—One! Two! Two and away!

—The next! The next!

—One!... Away!

—Stephaneforos!

His lungs ached with the need to cry out, the cry of a hawk or bird
of prey, to leap out of his body into the air. It was
the voice of god in his head but a far distant echo of the voice of
fear and death, of the same voice which had called him from the
cold stone of his tomb. The voice of his soul which answered him
with a cry of defiance from his body and from his soul.

—Stephaneforos!

What were they hearing in his head and the rest of him—the path
he had walked all night and day, the fear that had kept him
going, the terror that had kept him cold and dead—oh, the
voice from the grave?

His mother had risen from her grave in him, in his
blood. Yes! Yes! Yes! He would rise again out of the darkness
and blood of his mother, of the dead woman whose name he bore, a
living thing, strong and terrible and terrible, impalpable, imperishable.

He rose up again from the grave when he could no longer
quench the fire in his belly. He felt his stomach empty and his mouth
dry with thirst. There was a pool of water at his feet and
seemed to draw him to the center of the earth. On! On! his heart began
to pound. Night will fall upon the hills, night fall upon the fields,
night come into the world and fill it with fields and hills
and water. On?

He looked out to Sea. The sun had disappeared behind the line of
trees on the far side of the bay and now the tide was
coming in all along the beach. There a long thin strip of
sand lay broken and exposed to the sea. Here and there small patches of
it lay in the shallow water and among the rocks and along the
sand itself and at the little breaks in the tide lay tiny
figures, laughing and playing.

In a few moments he was dressed, his clothes stuffed into his bag
and his fishing net slung by two leather straps over his shoulder
and, picking a long slender stick out of the shadows among the
rocks, he started down the length of the beach.

There was a small rivulet in the distance and, as he waded slowly along its
banks, he gazed at the endless expanse of water. Green and gold
and brown and black, everything was below the surface, swirling and
changing. The bank of the rivulet was covered with silvery stones that
reflected the full moon. The stars were bright above him
now and already the fog was lifting from above but the cool
night air was refreshing and his newly discovered blood was singing in his veins.

Where was his true love? Where was the soul that had turned away from
her body, to rise again on the day of her death and leave her
body for rocks and leaves to leave behind in dying trees and dead
grass that withered at his touch? And where was he?

He was free. He was free, pure and true to the very breath of
life. He was innocent and young and innocent and young, floating in a
world of clean air and clean water and the perfume of flowers and
sunshine and clear blue skies and the soft laughter of
boys and girls and music sweet and clear on the air.

The girl stood before him in profile, pale and beautiful, looking out to
sea. She was like a woman who had turned into the form of a
pale and beautiful girl. Her long slender white legs were long
as a woman’s and painted white where the outer layer of skin had
impressed itself like a nail into the flesh. Her breasts, round and
white as milk, were rounded almost to her hips, and the long
sleeves of her gown were like wings of pure white silk. Her
long skirts were drawn up around her legs and out
behind her. Her bosom was like a woman’s, high and full, round and white
as the breast of a small child. And her long dark hair was
lust: and shining, and contrasted with the white of her gown, her
skin.

She stood tall and proud, looking down at him; and when she saw his
face and the intensity of his eyes her head turned to take in the
beauty of his features, without pity or fear. Long, long she
held his gaze and then slowly withdrew her hand from his and turned
back to the sea, blindly following the shore with her eyes hither
and thither. The first faint sounds of the rushing sea pierced the
silence, sweet and sweet and sweet, it was the sound of life;
hither and thither, hither and thither; and a single tear rolled down
her cheek.

—Oh My! cried David’s soul, in an explosion of pure joy.

He turned away from her beauty and strode out over the sands. His
eyes were blazing; his heart was beating; his soul was singing. On
and on and on and on he went, and out over the sands, and out
over the sea, straining to hear the sound of the voice that had called to
him.

Her eyes had looked into his soul for ages and no sound had broken the
deep silence of his soul. The voice had called him and his heart had
leapt at the word. To live, to die, to love, to forget, to make
something out of nothing! A heavenly being had come to him, an angel of infinite
love and mercy, an angel of the earth and of heaven, who would open
to him in an instant of time the secrets of all the mysteries of death
and life. On and on and on and on!

He stopped suddenly and held his breath in the darkness. How long had he
run? What time was it?

There was no moving water beneath him or any sound coming to him from the
shore. Already the tide was at its lowest and now the wind was on the
rise. He turned suddenly and ran into the sea and, stumbling down a
steep slope, free of any clinging vegetation, found a little shelter among a
cluster of old trees and lay down there that the peace and quiet
of the sea might ease the aching of his body.

He saw above him the deep blue sky and the myriad lights of
the heavenly bodies; and the woman beside him, the woman who had
kissed him, who held him to her breast.

He closed his eyes with the wonder of it. His hands trembled as if
they felt the sweet gentle touch of the woman at his breast,
trembling as if they felt the tender touch of an unseen lover. His mind
was drawn into a dream world, vague, distant, dark as the
night, inhabited by unknown shapes and colors. A light, a light like a
flower? Growing and dying, growing and dying, a great
flower, an immortal flower, which arose in the night to bloom,
bursting into brilliant white and gold and fading into pale pink, leaf
by leaf and wave of light by wave of light, filling up the night
with so many colors, each one greater than the last.

Night had fallen when he awoke and the trees and the rocks around his
feet were no more. He got up and, draining the last of his
tea, smiled at the darkness.

He climbed to the top of the dune and looked around him. Night
had fallen. The rim of a silver hoop in the grey sand of dune,
the rim of a silver hoop lost in grey sand; and the sea was
drawing back down on the dune with the last lap of its waves, leaving
a million glittering diamonds in the sand.


Chapter V


He drank the last bit of his tea to the last and set about gathering
the bits of dry sand that lay all around him, down into
the dark pool under the dune. The dune itself had been dug out like
a bowl and the pool under it brought back to his mind the dark
blue water of the lagoon in Venice. The box of trade goods at
his feet had also been emptied and he picked up randomly one after another with
his fingers and found black and white items, worn and faded and
discarded but bearing the name of their owner in Trade after Trade.


  1 Leather Jacket.
  1 D. A.
  3 Black and White.
  1 Woman’s Dress.


Then he put them aside and looked down at the contents of the box,
black and white again, and asked himself:

—How soon is the right time now?

His mother turned the old grandfather clock that was lying on its
side in the corner of the room until its face showed a quarter
past twelve and then laid it once more on its side.

—One hour and forty-five minutes, she said. The right time now is
half past twelve. The two of you must get to london in time for the
funeral.

—Fill out the place for stephen to wash, little One.

—Betty, fill out the place for Stephen to wash.

—Betty, fill out the place for Stephen to wash.

—I can’t, I’m going to die. Fill it up, please, Betty.

When the wash cloth had been placed on the edge of the sink and
the porcelain washing bowl was on one side of it stephen allowed his mother to
wash his face and nose into the hollow of his cheeks and into the
groove at the end of his nose.

—Oh, it’s a sad thing, she said, that a little boy is so
dirty that his mother has to wash him.

—But it gives me pleasure, said He weakly.

An ear-piercing whistle was heard from downstairs and his mother put
the wash cloth on his face, saying:

—Clean up and go out with the rest of them.

A second piercing whistle, much louder, brought one of the girls to
the top of the stairs.

—Yes, father?

—Has your little bitch of a daughter come out yet?

—No, father.

—Stephen?

—Yes, father.

—Good!

The girl came out, called out to stephen to be quiet and sat down again
by the window. Stephen smiled and said:

—Father has the wrong idea about her because he thinks that she is beautiful.

—Well, that’s a real shame for you, Stephen, and for me, because
you’ll live to see the day you set a foot in that house. You know how
father has treated you.

—Good night, father, said Stephen, bowing and licking the tips of
his fingers in farewell.

The path to the church was slippery and as he went along it
slowly, picking his way through piles of loose stones, he heard a little
girl crying from the servants’ quarters behind the church.

—Jesus! Oh Jesus! Jesus!

He drove the cries out of his mind with an angry shake of his head and
went on, stepping over the slippery stones, his heart suddenly
seized by an emotion of rage and grief. His father’s shouts, his
mother’s cries, the laughter of the village children were behind him now so
many years ago and continued to haunt the corners of his mind.
He drove the images back out of his mind with furious force; and, as
he walked along the avenue and felt the cool morning air fall on
him through the birch trees and carried the familiar sweet smell of newly
cut leaves and flowers, his mind was empty of their presence.

The birch trees and the flowers evoked in him, as always, images of
the men and women in the heat of The Day; of the sound
of their laughing voices and the rain falling from the tree branches
overhead in a shower of fat drops. His morning walk along the avenue had
changed, and he found that as he passed the university of Oxford he
would think of the life and works of Goethe; that as he
walked along the Great North Road, looking up at the windows of the
coaching inn, he would see the severed head of A Mother
and child; that as he passed the Sadler’s opera house in Fleet
Street the ghost of Elizabeth would blow past him like a cold wind, the
ghost of a lost love; and on passing the old art
dealer’s shop by the Strand he would hear a song by Ben Jonson
that said:

    She was very young when She died.


His soul grew weary of the search for the words of scripture and the
spiritual exercises of Thomas of Aquino as it gave its voice to
the sad songs of ages Past. His spirit, in the guise of a
foolish youth, was always in flight from the charms of the stage, from
either the sweet upon sweet notes of the harp or the wild dances
of youth and a little while later, the stench, softened by age, of
vanity and false faith seized the young man and drew him forth
from his dwelling-place.

The book which he had sought to call the spiritual exercises in order that
it might deliver him from the clutches of vanity was but a collection of
brief extracts from Aristotle’s elements of logic and the
_De Ratio And de re re Public_. His mind
was a vortex of confusion and doubt, pierced only at moments by the
lightnings of enlightenment, the lightnings of so great a magnitude that in
those moments the ground trembled beneath his feet as if it had been
electrified; and yet his spirits were lighter when he sought the company
of others in his solitude, when he felt that the mantle of vanity
had swallowed him up like a stone and that in this at least he had
become acquainted with humanity. And when this long period of solitude
left him in peace he was surprised to find himself again in the company of
common people, going on their way through the heat and noise and chaos
of the city fearlessly and with a heavy heart.

Among the people on the bridge he saw the old man with the
dog’s head and the bowler hat coming towards him in the middle of
the street with measured steps, face hidden behind his reading
glasses, and holding a large book a foot or two above him like a
lightning rod. It must be time, he thought, and went to the window to
check the time. The clock in the tower told him that it was ten minutes
past nine and, as he turned round, he saw the minute hand behind him,
growing smaller, changing its position with deadly step. He smiled when he
saw it because it made him think of Himself; and he saw himself a young man
in a tweed jacket and trousers and wearing a baseball cap, standing in
the street at Macy’ s, and heard himself say:

—Oh, you’re an old fool, caught up in history. I’m not.
I’m a revolutionary and I’ll speak and fight for social justice and equality
for all races and classes in the Great Cities of the World in the
future.

Brilliant! But he was late for the lecture anyway. What day of the week was
it? He stopped at the macy’s and read the schedule for nine a.
M. Nine to eleven, English; eleven to twelve, History; twelve to
fifteen, philosophy. He had to attend the Philosophy lecture and felt, even
at that hour, exposed and vulnerable. He saw the heads of his
classmates slightly bent as they wrote in their notebooks the arguments they
were about to make, basic ideas, philosophical reflections and
reflections on questions of life and death, opposing views, a believer and an
atheist sitting side by side. His own mind was elsewhere but his
eyes moved constantly and whenever he looked at the first row
of students looking out of the window into the main room of the
school an image assaulted him of impending doom and death. A
face of his, sitting behind them in the second row, was stuck
in between his fellow students like the head of a head bowed
in respect to the rest of the body assembled before
him. Why was it that when he thought of Death he did not hold
in his mind the full picture of his death but only the image of a
head or mask? And then in the first light of the morning he saw
it before him as the face of a corpse, the face of a severed head
in a mask, crowned on the forehead with the long black curly hair encircled
by an amber band. It was a priestlike face, priestlike in its features,
in the long pointed ears, in the lines around the eyes and on the
forehead, and in the lips which were thin and pale and slightly
curved; and He, no matter what he had asked For and all
the questions and doubts which lingered in his mind, day by day and
night by night, unable to be satisfied by his friend’s strange face,
must have convinced himself that it was the face of a catholic priest who
had not told him that he had the power to speak but that he
could only by meeting the gaze of those clear blue eyes.

In this moment he caught a glimpse of a whole new world of
mystery and at once turned away from it, knowing that it was not
yet the time to explore it. Already the effect of his companion’s
words seemed to have settled into the air leaving behind a heavy and
oppressive silence and he found himself looking from one unspoken word to
another on his tongue and wondering in obscure ways why he had been so
long out of this world and then suddenly a phrase
entered his mind like the words of a song and his heart leaped up
excitedly with joy as he stood alone in the forest amid showers of falling
leaves. His own sense of adventure was rising in his mind
and so were the very words themselves which seemed to dance and
surround him in perfect harmony:

    Yellow ivy grows upon the wall,
    Ivy grows and climbs up the wall,
    And then ivy up the wall,
    Ivy, ivy up the wall.


Did anyone ever hear those words? Oh No! Who ever heard yellow ivy
grow upon the wall? Yellow ivy; that was all right. But not ivy.
And what about red ivy?

The words suddenly blazed in his mind, hotter and brighter than the sun
reflecting off the golden tusks of deer. _Ivy, ivy, ivy,
ivy._ One of the few words that he had learned in Latin had been:
_Ut ut ut;_ and he remembered the sweet little voice of the
girl who had taught him to read the Metamorphoses of Ovid in a
playful Way, made easy by the mention of garlic and onions
and lots of garlic. He had learned what little he could about the art of
Latin writing from a little book written by a Little girl.

    In latin, not in ancient greek.


The battles and wars and secessions of Those days were passed on
to him through the simple words _ut ut ut_ and he had learned to
tap into the inner life of the people of rome through the words
_de re re_ which the romans considered as simple as
the filling of a cup with honey. The pages of that little Book
had been warm to the touch even though his own fingers were cold; they
were ancient words written many centuries before he had been touched by the
latin poems of John Malcolm Inverarity and of his son, William
Malcolm Inverarity. Yes, they were ancient words on those warm pages
and, even for as young a Man as he, those warm pages were as
comforting as if he had lived all his life among trees and flowers
and birds; and yet it troubled him to think that he might now be but
a mere boy in the midst of the city’s youth and that the ancient
language, in terms of which he had yet to work out the true
meaning, had told him more of the world he lived in than the simple
and elegant words of music and poetry.

A large block of Stone to his right, standing alone in the city’s
plaza like a single star floating on a calm sea, drew his attention
further and as he was turning this way and that to shield his eyes
from the glare of the morning sun he came upon the bronze
statue of the national hero of Azerbaijan.

He stared at it in amazement; and, as shadows of the day and of the
night crawled over it like invisible fingers, across the broad shoulders and under
the hood of the cloak wrapped about the crowned head, it seemed suddenly
aware of his presence. It was a Man in the humble clothes of a
Peasant; and stephen recognized instantly his friend Davin, his fellow traveller. It
was a strange name for him, but the young man came by it
easily:

—Go away, Friend, I have a busy day, you know that. Call me whatever you like.

The very sound of his own name on the lips of his friend always
affected Stephen deeply when he spoke for he was as intimate with
words and music as they were with him. Once, as he sat at Davin’s
feet in The Garden, gazing at his friend’s hand-carved carvings
which lined the walls side by side and singing to his friend’s
name in the tones and cadences of voice which revealed the depth of
his own despair and grief, the un Firbolg voice of his friend
had turned his ear to it and drew it out slowly, defeating it by a
very subtle shift of register or by a perfect command of the Irish
language or by the strength of his belief in his own strength—as He
had sat at the feet of Michael Collins, the Revolutionary—or suddenly and
unexpectedly by a change of tone or by a change of manner or
by a sudden flash of terror in his eyes, the terror of youth in a small
Irish village in which christian initiation was still a pagan rite.

Side by side stood the memory of the deeds and words of his hero Michael
Collins, the revolutionary, a first lieutenant in the national army
of Ireland. The hearts of his fellow-students who wanted to escape
the dull boredom of english university life at that time began to think of
him as a true revolutionary. His hero had taught him Much and opened his
young mind to the bright light of Modern knowledge. He looked to
the bible from which no human being had ever drawn such a line of
truth and to the holy fathers who expressed  themselves as they looked
upon the world in the same attitude as did the Roman catholic
church, the work of a poor peasant boy. Nothing of
import or of substance came to him from England except the way of Life
which his hero had led in strict obedience to his god; and of
the world which lay beyond It he knew only the secret language of
Ireland in which he spoke of god.

For the sake of the young man’s sake He had even
called himself one of the irish himself but there was always a note of
fear in his voice and in the strange patterns of speech
and movements of his body which seemed too small to distinguish between God’s
words, full of meaning, and the natural patterns of Human behaviour.

One day the old man, his curiosity aroused by his understanding the
secret language in which God spoke in the small hours of
the morning, suddenly made appear to Stephen’s eyes the young
man. The two were walking together towards Stephen’s house through a
narrow back alley in the latin quarter.

—Something strange happened to me, Stephen, about winter, coming up here, but
I never told it to another living soul and you are the first person that I
have told it to. I wondered if it was October or November. It was
October and that is when I came up here to start my new
life.

Stephen slowly raised his tired eyes to his visitor’s face,
intrigued by the story and won over to it by the man’s
simple simplicity.

—I remember seeing you one day at the old recreation ground in Kilkenny—I don’t
know if you know where that is—during a football match between the Queen’s
Park Boys and the Richmond Boys and my Brother, John, scored probably the winning
goal. My other brother, Called Jimmy, was also on the ground that day
as goalkeeper for the Richmond and he was running with the ball all the
way and scoring like mad. I never shall forget that day. One of the
Attackers took a long shot at jimmy that day with his stick and I swear
to God he came within an arm’s length of being struck on the side of the
head. And, swear to God, when the force of it struck him that day he
was knocked unconscious.

—I am glad he died, Jimmy had said with a smile, but surely that’s
not the only thing that happened there?

—No, I suppose that doesn’t surprise me, but then there was
such confusion after the battle that I missed the train altogether and I couldn’t
find any kind of a car to give me a ride and, as luck would have it,
there was a council meeting the next day on the Hill and all
the men of the village were there. And there was nobody at all willing to
stay the night or to help me out. Well, I had to go and so I did
and it was a dark night when I got to the Main road, it’s
less than two miles from Here and it’s a good straight shot
from there. I couldn’t see any sign of a single car on the
road or hear any voices. It was very dark indeed. Once or twice I stopped
on the road by a tree to smoke my pipe and then when the night was
over I’d have stayed out here and waited. At last, after another circuit of
the road, I saw a small cottage with a light in the window. I walked
over and knocked on the door. The neighbour asked who lived there and I said
I went down to the village to Eat and was coming back and that I’d
be back with a mug of milk. After a while a young woman opened
the door and poured herself also a large mug of milk. She was fully dressed
as if she was going to sleep when I entered and she had her head down
and I knew by her brow and the lines at the corners of her eyes
that she must be nursing a child. She was standing in silence a long time at
the door and I thought it strange that her neck and her head
were bowed. She asked me was I was and would I like to stay the night
here. I said she was not alone in the house and that her husband had
gone this morning to London with his mother to see his father. And all
the time i was talking, However, she kept her eyes fixed on my face and
she stood so close to me I could hear her breathing. When I led her
to the door at last she took my arm to help me up over the threshold
and said: _‘Go in and spend the night there. You’ve no right to be
here. There’s no one in there but you....’_ I didn’t go in,
No. I left her and went on my way home, not in a hurry. At the
next bend in the road I looked back and she was still at the door.

The last words of Laurence’s letter echoed in his mind and the figure of
the woman in the doorway was again reflected in the faces of the
young women whom he had seen standing in their doorways at Night as the
long hours went by, each a member of her class or of his class, each young
woman coming to the realization of life and love and death and
death and, with the face and voice and manner of a woman
without fear, welcoming a stranger into her home.

A hand was laid on his shoulder and a gentle voice said:

—Come, stephen, your own girl, come! Your own girl come, stephen.
Buy them lovely ones. Will you, sir?

Her wild mane of hair fell about her and her bright blue eyes
came to him at that moment full of tears, and stephen waited
until the light had faded and he saw only her beautiful face and her
golden hair and her smile.

—Come, stephen! Don’t forget your own girl, stephen!

—I have no money, said Stephen.

—Buy them lovely ones, will you, sir? Not a penny.

—Did you hear what I said? said Stephen, walking towards her. I told
you I have no money. I tell you that now.

—Well, then, you must buy them, sir, please Do, the girl said
after an interval.

—Perhaps, said Stephen, but I don’t think it matters.

He left her then, hoping that his father would send for him and
wanting to be out of her way before she sold the paintings to another, a
man from Paris and a friend of His. The Street, along
which he walked, was a place of melancholy reflection. In the
churchyard at the end of the street a monument was erected to the memory of His
Mother and he remembered having gone there with his father in the
youth. He remembered it as a place of great joy.
There were three Such monuments in a row and one, a very handsome
young man, carried, high upon a pole, a banner upon which were written the
words: _Vive l’Amour!_

And the trees of Widow’s Walk lay bare beneath it and the
night air gave it its own odour, a sweet perfume rising
up from the earth at its base. The smell of the old
oak trees which his father had told him about had faded with age leaving a
faint sweet odour rising from the earth and he knew that at any moment
when he entered the jesuit house it would be smelling of a
fragrance other than that of The House of Saint Ignatius.

It was too late to go back to his Own house. He left the house
and walked the corridor to the door that led into the little theatre. The
place was dark and silent but not unwatchful. Why did he feel that
it was so quiet? Was it because he had heard that in The
Bishop’s house there was a secret room upstairs? Or was the whole
place ghost-haunted or was he walking among ghosts? The Voices of
Mary and the Bishop seemed to have disappeared into silence.

He opened the door of the theatre and squinted in the early morning light
that came through the little window. A figure was standing by
the iron grate and from his posture and gestures he guessed that it was
the dean of hereford lighting a fire. He closed the door quietly
and approached the figure.

—Good morning, dean! Can I help you?

The dean looked at stephen and said:

—A little longer, Master Stephen, and you will understand. There is an art to
making a fire. I have the useful arts and you have the learned ones.
It is one of the three arts.

—I will try to learn it, master Stephen.

—Without too much difficulty, said the dean, looking down at his work, it is
one of the three.

He took the candle-butts from the folds of his robe and
scattered them carefully among the paper and the ashes. Stephen watched
him in silence. Kneeling now before the altar to tend the fire and
assisting in the scattering of the fragments of paper and candle-butts he
was more than ever a holy man kneeling before the fire of
sacrifice in the catholic church, a servant of the Lord. In his priest’s
robe of white linen with gold embroidery he hid the holy soul
of one whom the church and the secular world both loved and
feared. His very body had grown old in the service of the Church—in
tending the fire and the altar, in sending tidings abroad, in
praying to god, in giving aid when needed—and yet he
was young in love of god and of the church. Indeed, his
very soul had grown old in that service without yielding to youth
and yet without yielding to the holy will of his heart—the
holy will was more yielding to the thrill of his heart than
either to the youth in him or to his very soul, old and wrinkled,
covered with a paper-thin skin.

The dean leaned back in his chair and watched the flames flicker.
Stephen, to break the silence, said:

—I am sorry I did not light the fire.

—You are an artist, are you not, Sir Stephen? asked the dean, sitting up
and rubbing his tired eyes. The work of the artist is the image of
the beautiful. What the work is is the image.

He passed his hand slowly and deliberately over the fire.

—Can we ask this question again? he asked.

—Aquinas, sir Stephen, says _bon homme fire est pleasing_.

—The fire before us, said the dean, will be pleasing to the eye. Will
it also be beautiful?

—In so far as it is seen by the eye, which I think is
only an illusion, it will be beautiful. But Aquinas also says
_Bonum fire est fe tendit appetitus_. In so far as it is a
good to see the fire is a good. To me, however, it is an
illusion.

—If so, said the dean, you have just hit the nail on the head.

He rose up and went to the door, left it ajar and said:

—A priest is bound to be a master at such things.

As he went over to the door, opened it and took a single step,
He saw the faint traces of a smile looking back at him from its deep
blue depths. As If he were smiling but on his face was no
trace of Jesus’ smile. But the secret doctrine of the church,
a doctrine deeper and more profound than the greatest mysteries of all human
history, had not filled his heart with the joy of it. It
was as if he used the knowledge and power and authority of the church, directing
them to serve, for the greater glory of God, without hesitation in their
faith or lack of belief in that which was meant only for them,
without a single error or sin inflicted upon them and in all his
good works it was as if he were not at all the means and
not, not at all, the god they served. _Was not a mere_,
he thought, that the world should have sent him, with a cane and an old man’s
beard, to be let loose on the streets at night at the change of seasons,
to sit with a child’s face on a window ledge, to be taken to heaven.

The dean returned to the table and began to trim his beard.

—When do i get to hear back from you with any new
ideas? he asked.

—Not often! said Stephen in reply. I hit get an answer in a
week if I am lucky.

—Your ideas are most interesting, Young Man, said the dean. It is
like looking down from the cliffs of Dover at the sea. You go
down into the depths and never come up. Only a free mind can go
down into the depths and explore them and return to the surface again.

—If you say so, dean, replied Stephen, I too am convinced that there
is no such thing as free will and that the universe must be
governed by its own laws.

—Laws!

—With your help I can go about at night by the light of one of the
lamps of Plato and Aristotle.

—I see. I can see your point.

—I have them made for my own use but not until I have mastered
them i go by their light. If the lamp leaks and breaks I
shall have to replace it. If it does not wear out then I shall sell it
and buy another.

—Epictetus himself had a lamp, said the dean, which he sold for a good
price after his death. It was this lamp he wrote his philosophical
works by. You know Him?

—An old philosopher, said The dean, who believed that the world was
flat as a sheet of paper.

—He told me in his last discourse, the dean went on, that he lit an iron
lamp as a sacrifice to one of the gods and that a thief took the
lamp. What did the priest say? He said that it was not the
right of a man to steal and offered to light an empty bucket
at night instead of an iron lamp.

The smell of burning wood rose up from the dean’s cigarette butts and manifested
itself in Stephen’s mind as an image of a bucket, bucket
and lamp and lamp and bucket. The dean’s voice, however, had a ca
jingling tone. Stephen’s mind raced with questions, excited by the
mocking tone of the voice and by the dean’s hat which looked like
an oil lamp with a candle burning in a brass holder. What was inside it
and outside it? The dark shadow of the body and the light of the
soul, filled with life and full of the love of
God?

—I am a curious sort of person, dean, said Stephen.

—Indeed, said the dean.

—The difficulty, said Stephen, in this case is to know
whether words are being used according to the church tradition or
according to the will of the people. I remember a sermon of
Paul’s in which he said of the Blessed Virgin that she was clothed
in the full glory of the lamp. The use of the word in this
sermon is very peculiar. _I hope I am not interrupting you._

—Not in the least, said the dean quickly.

—No, dean, said Stephen, no, I mean...—

—No, no; You see, said the dean quickly, He did use the word:
_glory_.

He stuck out his lower lip and gave a nervous little laugh.

—To pour in the oil, he said, the purity of it is of the utmost
importance. You must have the proper equipment and you must be careful when you
pour in it not to spill it, not to pour any more than the funnel will
allow.

—The funnel? said Stephen.

—The funnel through which you pour the oil into your mouth.

—Funnel? said Stephen. Is it not a pipe? Is it not a tundish?

—What is a tundish?

—The. The... the funnel.

—Is it called a tundish in England? said the dean. I never heard that
word in my life.

—It is called a tundish in The Netherlands, said Stephen, astonished,
and they make the best Ones.

—Dutch tundish, said the dean thoughtfully. It is a very good
name. I must think the matter over. For my part I understand.

The change of subject was a bit abrupt and Stephen looked at the
Old man with the same suspicion as the man who in the future
would have grown into a cardinal. A young man at the time of
the reformation, a small Farmer in Yorkshire, he seemed to have
been on the edge of a crisis when the power structures of
vanity and greed and envy and pride and power had been all
but swallowed up—a rogue, a free spirit. But how had he turned
out? Perhaps he had been born and bred among the pious, seeing
god in Jesus christ and ignoring the petty problems of the
world. Had he felt the need for an authentic church amid the
chaos of history and the wars of religion and heresy, among
cunning men, cunning women, false priests and prophets, false
prophets? Had he found the true message all of a sudden by presenting it
to the world in the act of speaking the holy word of god or
speaking with the power of christ or the power of the Holy
Spirit? Or had God Only guided him or spoke through him, like the
man who now sat at the seat of power, as he sat at the top of
the church tower, watching and wondering at his own destiny?

The voice repeated the question yet again.

—Ah! Well now, that is interesting!

—The question you asked me a moment ago seems to be more interesting.
He is the man whom the devil tries to make up out of
himself, thought Jon smith.

That last thought seems to have been the starting point of his
conversation with this new and strange voice. He knew with a
degree of certainty that the man to whom he was speaking was a
man named Jonathan Smith. He said:

—The language in which we are speaking is his and it is mine. How
strange are the words _god, Father, son, brother,_ on his tongue and on
mine! I cannot read or write these things by force of circumstance. This
language, so new and so strange, has always seemed to me an alien
one. I have never heard or understood such things. My mind keeps them at
bay. My soul lives in the sound of these words.

—And to distinguish between the beautiful and the ugly, the dean
continued, to distinguish between spiritual beauty and material beauty. And to
determine what kind of beauty is proper to any of the liberal arts.
There are other questions which you must take up.

Everyone, silenced momentarily by the dean’s stern, authoritative tone, fell
silent; and in the silence the echoing sounds of many anxious and
frightened voices came down the hall.

—In all these things, said the dean solemnly, there is,
perhaps, the possibility of coming of age. But you must take a
risk. At least until you reach your fourteenth year. Then, little by little,
you will find your way. Or if not your way, your purpose in life or lack
thereof. It will be hard work at times. Remember His Talent. It was a
long time before he got to the top. But he was there.

—I do not have much time, said Stephen sadly.

—We never do, said the dean sadly. We never fully grasp what lies before
us. We most certainly should not be here. _Ex ex mach homo._

He left the room then and returned to the library to await the
arrival of his new masters’ class.

Leaning against the wall He watched stephen listen to and
enjoy every minute of the proceedings and could almost see the radiant
smiles of his fellow students. A deep affection began to fall like
rain on his already tender heart for this young man of
the university Himself, for this man of his class, more intelligent
than they in fact, more pure of heart than they, and whom he
would soon call his spiritual father; for he knew that this man of
his class had suffered the hand of satan at the hands not of
the holy spirit but of the human spirit and now stood, in
all his glory, at the mercy of God’s mercy for the souls of the meek
and the humble and the ignorant.

The calling of the roll was preceded by the rhythmic tapping of High
heels and the shuffling feet of the students who sat on the lower tier
of the lecture hall beneath the high vaulted ceiling. The ringing of
the bell continued for the next hour as names were read out in numerical
order until the name of Mr Smith was called.

—Smith!

A loud belly laugh in response came from the upper tier, followed by
shouts of laughter from the lower benches.

The lecturer paused in his reading and called the next name:

—Cranly!

No response.

—Mr Cranly!

A smile spread across Stephen’s face as he thought of his friend’s
name.

—Excuse Me! came a voice from the bench opposite.

Stephen looked up quickly and Moynihan’s round face, even in
the dim light, was smiling. Another name was called out. Hearing the
rustling of some papers He turned around quickly and shouted:

—Give me a pen for God’s sake.

—Are you as old as me? replied Moynihan with a broad smile.

He tore a page from his notebook and wrote something down, saying:

—In times of need any man or woman can do that.

The way that stephen wrote down on a sheet of paper, the
precise and clear stroke of the pen, the simple
demonstration of skill and precision excited and stimulated Stephen’s imagination. He
had heard people say that the old man had an immortal soul. In
the light of day! There is a kind of long dark tunnel
through which all of us must pass, a tunnel
that goes from plane to plane into a deeper and deeper darkness,
and that is at the very heart of the universe becoming darker,
darker and more dark.

—And we cannot distinguish between light and dark. Perhaps
one of his students would be familiar with the poetry of Sir W. S.
Gilbert. In one of his poems gilbert tells of a billiard player who is
about to die:

    On a broken table
    And a broken table
    And a broken table.


—I put the ball in the middle of the table on the other side
of where I stood a moment ago.

He leaned close to Stephen’s ear and said:

—Some kind of joke! excuse me, sir, I’m making a joke!

The old man’s good humor blew like a gale through the halls
of King’s college, bringing to sudden life the crimson banners that
hung from the walls, causing them to flap and sway with every gust of
wind. The rest of the faculty poured into the sun-warmed
halls, the dean of arts, the jolly old man with a shock
of white hair, the provost, the old woman with white hair who
forgot her name, the pinched little face of the professor of
history, the tall figure of the bearded professor of home economics
carrying on his shoulders a pile of books over his head like a
man on the run from a herd of cows, the jolly
old professor of canon law, the jolly old professor of
Literature with the devil’s beard. They were running and leaping,
laughing and crying, forgetting their names for a moment, hugging one
another tightly, laughing with great belly laughs, smacking one another
silly and laughing at their own jokes, calling out one another with
childish nicknames, laughing with great joy at some secret joke,
making peace and content with their lives.

The professor had retreated to a little niche in the wall, on a table
from which he took down a series of coils, brushed away the dust from the
wires and, holding one up to the light, tapped his finger on it
as he continued with his explanation. He explained that the conductors in
the coils were of a metal called platinum and invented by
M. A. Thomson.

He talked about the life and work of the scientist. Moynihan
whispered from above:

—Good old Good Old Teacher!

—Tell him, Who is sitting in that chair, that he is the
object of study. I can prove it.

Moynihan, seeing the professor bent over the chair, rose from the chair
and, reaching with the fingers of his right hand, began to speak
in the voice of a street urchin:

—Now listen! The professor is not saying a single word, sir.

—Gold, the professor says here, is superior to Ordinary gold
because it has a higher degree of resistance to changes in
temperature. The gold itself is superior because the coil of wire
that holds it is enclosed in solid gold bobbins just as ordinary gold
is. If gold were immersed in water the resistance would be lost in the
water. The bobbins are heated by a chemical reaction...

A tin Tin voice came from the darkness behind Stephen:

—Are you going to stop asking me about pure science?

The professor continued to ask him about the terms pure science and
applied science. The young man, wearing thick glasses, stared
with great intensity at the professor. He spoke from behind in
a soft voice:

—Isn’t That a lot for a piece of gold?

Stephen looked down at the oblong skull beneath it covered with
long black hair. The face, the voice, the manner of the
student angered him and he allowed this anger to lead him to
the end, letting his mind think that the student’s father
would have known better had he sent his son to America to study and not
lost him on the road there for so long.

The oblong skull still did not seem to follow his train of thought and
all the tension went out of his body; and he forgot for a moment the
student’s moon-like face.

—That face is proof enough, he said to himself aloud. This came from the
old Man on the bench again. Patience. Can you say for
sure to whom the trust of the student was given and the trust
received—by the professor or by the student? Patience. Remember
That. It is not in your nature to ask such a question at
such a time in such a way as to produce the word _trust_ as a
result.

The droning voice of the professor seemed to spin itself slowly
round and round the coil it rested upon, sighing, sighing, finding
its own rhythm as the stone reached its point of rest.

Stephen’s voice rose from below in response to the hypnotic rhythm:

—Listen up, everybody!

The main hall was packed and noisy with students. On a table near the
entrance were several books in latin and beside them a large sheet of
paper with an unknown number of signatures. Stephen moved quickly to
and fro among the students, speaking quietly, asking questions and
pointing one or two towards the books. In the front row the dean of
arts was talking to a young man, stroking his chin thoughtfully
and nodding his head.

Stephen, distracted by a movement near the door, turned around. From
beneath the br br br of his hat professor Cranly’s blue eyes were
watching him.

—Are you alright? Stephen asked.

Cranly opened his long thin mouth, then paused for an
instant and said:

—_X x_.

—What is it for?

—_What?_

—What is it for?

He turned his blue eyes to Stephen and said slowly and distinctly:

—_X x x._

Stephen pointed to the Boy’s face and said:

—He has the face of a dead Man.

The irony and sarcasm in his voice brought Cranly’s attention back from his close
observation of the occupants of the room.

—Are you drunk? he asked.

—No, said Stephen.

—Are you in bad shape?

—No.

—_Ut ut vos in hoc estis,_ said Stephen, _ut ut
vostra ut ut vos in hoc in hoc estis._

Moynihan, on his way to the door, whispered in Stephen’s ear:

—He is in bad shape. Wants to drink every last drop. In new
york. No rum and coke for the boy.

Stephen turned at the sound of the voice and, when Moynihan had
gone, turned back to meet Cranly’s eyes.

—Then you can tell me, he says, why he pours his drink so well with
no sugar. Can you?

A cold sweat broke across Stephen’s forehead. He glanced at the table
where Moynihan had begun to write his name on the paper, and then said
aloud:

—No sugar!

—_Non su non non su,_ said Stephen, _non su what?_

Cranly did not take up the pen. He looked down at the paper
and said in the same low voice:

—A little irish bastard, that’s what he is!

It was his nickname for the old man and He wondered
if it would always be repeated in the same voice in his lifetime. The
heavy irish accent rolled slowly out of him like the breath of a
giant. Stephen saw it now as he had seen no before, felt its
presence in his bones. Cranly’s accent, unlike hundreds of Others, was
neither mere fragments of Broken English nor fully formed
fragments of Scottish gaelic. Its rhythm was an echo of the sounds of Belfast
brought alive by a rapidly expanding population, its pitch an echo of the
rich tones of Music made so simple by a Single instrument.

The triumphant smile faded from Cranly’s face as Maccann strode confidently
towards him from the other side of the room.

—There you are! said He confidently.

—Here I am! said Stephen.

—Business as usual. Do you not view this whole affair with some
respect for yourself?

—Your business is out of order, said Stephen. My business.

His grey eyes were fixed on a tightly-rolled mug of hot
chocolate that came out of the man’s coat-pocket. A
small crowd of people gathered round to watch the clash of words. A young
man with blue eyes and jet black hair shifted his gaze between the
two, looking from one to the other to the other and seeming to struggle
to get a coherent word from his suddenly open mouth. He took a
small round object from his pocket and began to examine it closely,
turning it over and over.

—Next business? asked Maccann. Stephen!

He gave a short bark of laughter, smiled broadly and tugged playfully at
the black beard that grew from his square jaw.

—Your next business is to sign a contract.

—Will you pay me back if I do? asked Stephen.

—I thought you were a lawyer, said Maccann.

The law student laughed at this and addressed the professor in
an almost pleading voice.

—Ah yes, it’s a mercenary notion. I want the contract to be a
real one.

His voice faded into silence. No attention was paid to his words. He turned
his round face, serious in thought, towards Stephen, inviting him to
speak again.

Stephen began to speak of the consequences of the Professor’s ideas, of
Peace, of national security, even in times of national
crisis, of the freedom of the individual, of the new economy and the new
way of life which would make it the business of the individual to
obtain as cheaply as possible the greatest possible benefit from the
greatest possible cost.

A young girl added to the excitement of the room by singing:

—Three cheers for universal brotherhood!

—Go on, Then, said a thin young man beside him. I’ll buy you a
drink now.

—I’m no interested in universal brotherhood, said Marx, glaring at
him out of his bright blue eyes. It was only a single sentence.

Marx put his hand up to cover his mouth, smiled grimly,
and said:

—Easy, comrade, easy!

He tried to withdraw his hand and continued, his mouth covered by his
own hand:

—It was founded by the Greeks but the first man in History who
had the gift of reason was Here. Two thousand years ago. He
was called, the man of Reason. Five pounds on
John Anthony Collins!

A small voice from the back of the room said:

—Pip! pip!

Moynihan murmured in Stephen’s ear:

—And what about John Anthony’s pretty young wife:

    She Has all the money;
    Can’t we just give her some?


Stephen nodded and Moynihan, satisfied with his answer, spoke again:

—I’ll throw five pounds your way on John Anthony Collins.

—I am waiting for your answer, said Maccann impatiently.

—This answer doesn’t please me in the least, said Stephen quietly. You
said that already. Why do you make a fuss about it?

—Pip! said Maccann, licking his lips. You are a poet, yes?

—Do you think you killed him, John collins, because you used a
sharp stick?

—Pip! said Maccann again. Listen to me.

Stephen sighed and turned away. Maccann stood his ground and said
in good humour:

—And you, I think, are asking such stupid questions about the
meaning of world peace.

He raised his hand and pushed the paper between the two men
by means of his thumb, saying:

—_Peace is just a word._

Stephen, picking up the paper, inclined his head slightly in the
direction of the Student’s face, saying:

—Use your imagination. If we can have a Conversation let us have a good
One.

—Oh yes, that’s a fine expression! said the young man to those around him,
that’s a fine expression. I like that one much.

He put down the paper in his hand as if he were putting down a
book and, peering over the rim of his bowler hat, turned to Stephen,
asking:

—Tell me, sir, what did jesus mean by the expression he used just
now?

Finding himself surrounded by curious faces around him, he said to them:

—I am interested to know exactly what he meant by that expression.

He turned back to Temple and asked in a whisper:

—Do you believe in God? I believe in man. Of course, I don’t care if
you believe in god. I like you, temple. I believe in power of mind
independent of all reason. Is that your understanding of the teachings of
Jesus?

—Come now, Stephen, said the pu ruddy man, responding, as was his
custom, to a thirsty customer, your drink is ready for you.

—He thinks I’m an atheist, Stephen said to Temple, but I’m a
believer in the power of man.

Temple linked his arms with those of Stephen and his friend and said:

—_Ut in ut in ut._

Stephen, in the process of being led away, caught sight of Temple’s
suddenly stern face.

—Your attitude is of no consequence, he said angrily. You are free to go
your way. Allow me to go mine.

—Stephen, said Cr crisply, I know you’re a good student but you
have yet to grasp the meaning of life and the dignity of the
human spirit.

A voice said:

—Chi it is better out of this world than into it.

Stephen, despite the threatening tone of Temple’s voice, did not look
in the direction of the voice. Cranly pushed himself through the
throng of students, passing Stephen and Temple like a priest
passing by his flock on his way to the altar.

Temple looked back over Stephen’s shoulder and said:

—Did you hear Just what he said? That he was afraid of you.
Did you hear that? I hope You didn’t hear that. Good lord, I heard nothing at
all.

When they reached the dining hall, the master of studies was in the process of
separating from the students to whom he had been speaking. He stood at
the foot of the stairs, one foot on the first step, the students
having clustered round him for the evening with great enthusiasm, shaking
his head slowly and saying:

—Not a doubt of it, Mr Smith! Very good! Not a doubt of it!

In the doorway of the hall the head of the university library was
talking earnestly, in a very low voice, to the students. As he
spoke he lifted the corner of his apron and pointed, with a
finger, at a small wooden box.

—I think the arts men will all agree. The liberal arts men are very
good. The library, then. We must make use of the library.

He turned back to Them, as they were passing through the
doorway, and said in a loud whisper:

—Did you know that he is a married man? He was a married man when i
met him. He has a wife and children now. Bloody hell, I think
that’s the best news I ever heard! Why?

His voice trailed off into a loud laugh. The moment they
passed through the doorway Cranly grabbed him rudely by the shoulders and shook
him, shouting:

—You flaming bloody idiot! I’ll take your word that there isn’t a
bigger bloody idiot, as they say, than you in the history of the
world!

He struggled in his grip, laughing loudly into his hand, as
Cranly repeated himself with another vigorous shake:

—A bigger flaming bloody idiot!

They crossed the narrow street together. The professor, dressed in a
long black coat, was walking towards them along one of the streets,
towards his alley. At the end of the street he paused before stopping and
removing his cap. The students followed, Each looking solemnly down at the
remains of his game. They walked on in silence. As they approached the
alley They could hear the slapping of the players’ hands and the loud
cracking of the wood and Temple’s voice crying out loudly after each
turn.

The other students gathered around the bench on which Temple sat to watch
the game. Temple, after a few minutes, sidled up to Stephen and
said:

—Tell me, I have to ask you, do you think either One Of
You is a good shot?

Stephen nodded solemnly. Cranly, picking up the glowing end of a cigarette
from the ground near his feet, turned around and said sternly:

—Stephen, I swear on the bible That if you say one word, do you
understand, to anybody on this campus, I’ll make you _fucking jew._

—He looks like you, You know, said Temple, the old jew.

—Blast him, blast him! shouted Stephen angrily. Don’t talk to him at all.
Well, you might as well be talking, as you are, to a dead
man as talking to Me. Go home, Stephen. For Christ’s sake, go
home.

—I don’t give a damn about you, Stephen, said Temple, stepping out of
range of the machine gun still pointed at Him. He’s the only man
I know in the world who has an emotional problem.

—You! You! shouted Cranly. Go home, damn you, because you’re
a very emotional man.

—I’m an emotional man, said Stephen. That’s damn well true. But
I’m afraid that I’m an idiot.

He walked out of the room, very slowly. Cranly watched him with a
blank white face.

—Look at you! he said. Did you ever see such a hole-in-the-wall?

His cry was followed by a loud laugh from the student who leaned
against the wall, his head hanging down over his eyes. The laugh, uttered
at a high pitch and issuing from a wide open mouth, sounded like the
roar of an animal. The student’s body shook all over and, to contain
his laughter, he placed both his hands delightedly over his mouth.

—Lynch is drunk, said Stephen.

Lynch, hearing this, stood up and thrust out his chest.

—He thrust out his chest, said Stephen, as a mark of respect.

Lynch slapped him hard on the back and said:

—Who has anything to say about my drinking?

Stephen took lynch by the shoulders and the two began to wrestle. Although their
faces were red from the fight they broke apart, laughing. Stephen
went over to Davin who, puff on his pipe, still paid no heed to
the fight in the street.

—And how is my young friend here? he asked. Does he drink, too?

Davin laughed and said:

—Do you, Sir?

Stephen shook his head.

—You’re a strange one, Stephen, said Davin, taking the smoking pipe from
his pocket, lighting it.

—Now that you have joined the fight for irish independence, said
Stephen, I think you should read that little book I have in my
pocket.

When Davin did not reply, Stephen began to speak:

—Long ago, sir! Long ago, indeed! Remember, the numbers, zero,
one, two!

—That’s a good point, said Davin. I’m an Irish patriot,
first and foremost. But that’s quite all right. You’re a british subject,
Sir.

—If you want a total war with england, said Stephen, or
with the irish informer, ask anyone. I can get you a place in the
army.

—I don’t believe you, said Davin. Last night I heard you talk against
English soldiers. Now you talk against the Irish informers. And by
your language and your customs . . . Are you English at all?

—Come with me now to the house of ancestors and I will show you the ways of
our people, said Stephen.

—Then be one of us, said Davin. Why didn’t you learn English? Why did you
get out of the english army in the first place?

—You know the reason why, said Stephen.

Davin shook his head and laughed.

—Oh, come now, he said. Was it on account of that poor little girl and
Her Father? But that’s all in their own time, Stephen. They were still
talking and laughing.

Stephen turned and put his right hand on Davin’s shoulder.

—Do you remember, he said, when we saw each other first? The first
time we met you asked me to show you the way to the second
floor, with a very heavy accent on the first syllable. You
remember? And you used to address the king as king, you remember?
I ask this of you: _Is he as rich as your father?_

—I’m a rich man, said Davin. You know that. When you told me that
night on The Balcony those things about your rich father, honest
to God, Stephen, I was not able to eat my breakfast. I was so hungry. I lay
awake a long time that night. Why did you tell me those things?

—Because, said Stephen. You think I am a liar.

—Yes, said Davin. And I wish you had not told me.

A fire began to burn beneath the pale skin of Stephen’s
eyes.

—This world and this country and this man make me, he said. I cannot
accept myself as I am.

—Proud to be one of us, said Davin. At heart you are an Englishman and
your tongue is not english.

—These people threw away their homes and had nothing, He said.
They had no need of me to help them. Do you think I am
going to throw away the good life and the friends i made? For what?

—For my country, said Davin.

—An honest and good man, this Stephen, has given up for you his
life and his home and his country from the times of Antiquity to those of
Today, and you sold him to the devil or put him in chains or imprisoned
him or exchanged him for nothing. And you raised him to be one of you. I’ll
see him die too.

—Men die for their country, Stephen, said Davin. That day will come soon,
believe me.

Stephen, in his own way, was silent for an instant.

—The soul is born, he said finally, as in the story I told you
yesterday. It is a deep and mysterious birth, more mysterious than the rest of the
world. When the soul of a man is born in a bottle there are nets
attached to it that hold it away from harm. You speak to me of history,
philosophy, science. You must learn to live within those nets.

Davin sucked the tobacco from his pipe.

—Too late for that, Stephen, he said. But a man’s soul comes first.
Ireland first, Perhaps. He will be a historian and a great philosopher.

—Do you know what Ireland is? asked Stephen with great interest. It
is the only country that borders the sea.

Davin rose from his seat and walked among the players, shaking his head
sadly. But in a moment the sadness left him and he once more stood
with Lynch and the other men who had resumed their game. A change of
ball was ordered, Lynch decided, naturally, that the ball should be
thrown. He made it bounce twice and once with his foot and threw it
hard and fast towards the end of the field, shouting in
triumph to the crowd:

—A goal!

Stephen stood beside Lynch as the score continued to rise. Finally he asked
lynch and the others to move on. Lynch complied, saying:

—Let us now continue, as Tradition calls it.

Stephen smiled at this remark.

They walked together through the crowd and up to the door where the
team manager was putting on a fireworks display in the courtyard. At the foot
of the stairs they stopped and Stephen took a pack of cigarettes from
his pocket and offered one to his friend.

—I see you swear yellow, he said.

—For the european culture, said Lynch.

This obvious criticism of Stephen’s character made Him smile again.

—It was a great victory for European culture, he said, when you made up
your mind to stay in europe.

They lit their cigarettes and returned to the courtyard. After a while
Stephen said:

—Lynch has not said pity and terror. I say. I say...

Lynch stopped and said angrily:

—No! You don’t understand! I am sorry. I went out last night just a little
bit like You and I.

Lynch went on:

—Pity is the feeling which puts the mind in the presence of
what is grave and constant in human sufferings and unites it with
the secret cause. Terror is the feeling which puts the mind in the
presence of what is grave and constant in human sufferings and
unites it with the secret cause.

—Yes, mr Lynch.

He repeated the words slowly.

—A woman died in a fire a few days ago, he went on, in English. She
was on her way to see her husband whom she had not seen for some time.
At the end of the night the headlights of a truck pierced the window of
her car in the shape of a knife. The very sharp edge of the broken
glass pierced her heart. She died in an instant. Some people call
it a tragic emotion. It is dramatic. It is different from terror or pity
according to the intensity of the emotion.

—The tragic emotion, in short, is a tendency in opposite directions, towards
terror and towards pity, both of which are types of emotion. You know I used
the term _and_. I said that the tragic emotion is static. Not like
the aesthetic emotion is. The emotions aroused by an object are
either, desire or loathing. Desire urges us to pursue, to go after
something; loathing urges us to flee, to flee from something. The arts
which excite desire, terror and pity, are the aesthetic
arts. The tragic emotion (I used a different term) is not
static. The soul is tormented and tormented by desire and loathing.

—You said that writing does not excite desire, said Stephen. I told you that
one day I wrote my name in ink on the statue of the Lion of
Judah in the Garden. Is this not so?

—We have our own passions, said Lynch. You also told me that when
you were a boy in an old english village you collected pieces from
a book.

Lynch burst out in a fit of laughter and he put both his
hands on his hips but without taking them off his face.

—Yes, I did! I did! he shouted.

He turned to his friend and looked at him for a moment
directly in the eyes. Lynch, recovering from his laughter, fixed his
friend with his own stare. The long and slender neck and
the delicately pointed ears added to Lynch’s face the appearance of a
small reptile. His eyes, too, were reptile-like in shape and size. But
at that moment, lost and lost in the moment, lynch looked more like a
stained glass window, the window of a lost soul, lost and
alone.

—But just now, Stephen told lynch in english, we are not animals. I
myself am an animal.

—We are, said Lynch.

—But we are not animals in the real world, Said lynch. The anxiety
and fear felt by the human body are also not animal
instincts not only because they are physical in nature but also
because they are much more than that. Our flesh flees from what it
dreads and responds to the stimulus of what it fears by a simple
reflex action of the nervous system. Our eyes close because we are
afraid that the sun is about to touch our skin.

—Not so, said Lynch calmly.

—In the same way, said Lynch, our flesh responded to the beauty of
a certain artist, but this time, I believe, by a reflex action of the
nerves. The beauty of the artist cannot induce in us an emotion
which is aesthetic or a feeling which is not aesthetic. It awakens,
or ought to awake, and induces, or ought to induce, an aesthetic stasis,
an aesthetic terror or an aesthetic terror, a stasis brought about, aroused, and
at last extinguished by what We call the rhythm of beauty.

—What is this rhythm? asked Lynch.

—Rhythm, said Stephen, is the most closely related relation of parts or
parts of an esthetic whole or of an aesthetic whole to those parts or parts
or to that part of the esthetic whole to which it is in relation.

—If this is so, said Lynch, let us see what we call beauty; and,
do remember, for I did admire the rhythm of music once, now I admire
its beauty.

Stephen raised his hand as if in prayer. Then, very gently, he
laid his hand on Lynch’s smooth white shoulder.

—You are right, he said, but your words are wrong. To think of these
things is to try to understand our nature and, having understood it,
to try again and again and again to try, to bring forth again,
from heaven and earth that which nature brings forth, that sound and smell and
taste which is the very essence of our nature, that part of our nature
we have tried to understand—it is art.

They had reached the main road and, turning off the road, went
back into the forest. The early morning sun, reflected in the running water and
the rustling of the leaves above their heads seemed to press against the
back of Stephen’s neck.

—But you have not answered my question, said Stephen. What is art? What
is your definition of art?

—That was the first question I asked you, you little weasel,
said Lynch, when I decided to try and work out the question for myself.
Do you remember the pigs? Stephen lost his temper and refused to talk
about The pigs.

—I remember, said Lynch. You told me about that little art theory of
yours.

—Art, said Lynch, is the conscious transformation of matter into
other forms for an aesthetic purpose. Now forget the pigs and
answer me. You make a good team, you and I.

Lynch made a gesture towards the clear blue sky and said:

—If I want to listen to your little theory give me at least one
cigarette. I don’t care about art. I don’t even care about pigs. Damn
you and damn me. I have a pension of ten thousand a year. You can’t
get me fired.

Stephen handed him a pack of cigarettes. Lynch lit the first one
and exhaled, almost hissing:

—Smoke!

—Ah, said Stephen, but smoking is not the kind of
bad thing.

He smiled.

—I like it, he said, _Non est et non est._

—He uses the word _non,_ said Lynch, to exclude all evil
of all kinds, whether by sight or sound or by any other
means of communication. The word, though it is vague, is vague enough
to rule out good and evil and even love and hate. It is
also a nexus and only a nexus. What is a nexus? It is
only the nexus of the triangle. I will not write your name in latin
without the hypothenuse of the goddess venus.

—Then, said Stephen, give me the hypothenuse of the Goddess of Love.

—And so, said She. Aristotle, I believe, says that beauty is
the opposite of truth. I don’t think that it has a name, only that
truth and that beauty are opposite. Truth is beheld by the intellect which
is appeased by the most satisfying relations of the sensible;
beauty is beheld by the soul which is appeased by the most
satisfying relations of the unconscious. The first step in the direction
of truth is to understand the frame and scope of the intellect itself,
to comprehend the act itself of understanding. Aristotle’s entire body
of work rests on his theory of beauty and it, I believe,
rests on the principle that the same object is at the same time
and in the same place related to but not identical to the same object.
The second step in the direction of truth is to understand the frame
and scope of the intellect, to comprehend the act itself of understanding
it. Is that so?

—And what is that? asked Stephen aloud. It is a
woman. We must look and see! Is that the best you and I
can do?

—Let us see her, said Stephen.

—Let us see her! said Stephen aloud.

—The Greeks, the Romans, the Egyptians, the Indians, the Chinese, said
Stephen, each had a different kind of female intellect. It seems to be
a maze out of which i cannot get. I see, however, two ways out. One
is quite obvious: that the reproductive function performed by men in society
is in close connexion with the reproductive function of women for the
benefit of both sexes. That may be so. The other, it seems, is
simpler than what i, However, see. For my part I like this way
out. It leads to love rather than to sex. It leads me out of
the maze to a very old story where God, with one hand on
_The Origin of Life_ and the other hand on the old world, told
you that you loved the great venus of Old because you felt that
she would give you good milk and hated the great mother
because you felt that she would give good milk to her children and
grandchildren.

—And God is a good man, said Lynch bitterly.

—There is another way out, said Stephen, slowly.

—Like what? asked Lynch.

—This way, Stephen said.

A silver dray loaded with gold coins came around the corner of Mr J
Lynch’s house at the end of Lynch’s street with a terrible sound
of scraping metal against metal. Lynch closed his eyes and let out a
long sigh when the dray had passed. Then he turned on his heel again.
Stephen turned round and waited for a few moments until his master’s
ill-humour had reached its limit.

—The answer, He said, is the other way round: that, although
the same object may not be beautiful to different people, the people who
see a beautiful object find in it certain relations which match
and agree with the sensible relations of the beautiful object.
These kinds of sensible relations, visible to you through one eye and to
me through both, may be regarded as the causes of
beauty. Therefore, we must look to our dear friend saint Augustine as our
source of inspiration.

Stephen laughed.

—It surprises me sometimes, he said, to hear you talk this way without sounding
like a blind old man. Are you talking in your head?

—I, said Stephen, will take my esthetic philosophy to
Rome. As far as the field of esthetic philosophy goes, Aquinas
will guide me further down the road. When i get to the field of
artistic expression, artistic practice, and artistic theory I
have a new perspective and a new personal experience.

—Of course, said Stephen. After all Aquinas, in spite of his age,
was still a very wise man. Perhaps you can tell me about your new
personal experience and new perspective some other time. Go ahead and
sing a latin hymn.

—Why not? said Stephen, surprised. Because Aquinas could read latin
better than anyone. He was a poet also. He wrote a hymn for Maundy
Thursday. It begins with the words _Gloria in gloria._ I think it
is the best hymn of the day. It is an ancient and beautiful
hymn. I like it; but there is another melody that can be found in a
famous and ancient roman hymn, called _Ave Maria_ by
Marcus Marius.

She began to sing slowly and beautifully in a clear soprano voice:

    Gloria in gloria et
    In fide et
    In fide
    Et in fide Et.


—That’s it! he thought, well done. Good job!

They turned onto Upper Brook Street. A few blocks down the street a small
elderly gentleman, wearing a dark suit, saw them and smiled.

—Did you get the results of your tests? he asked. Everything is good.
Ryan and O’Connell are in the clear now. They got third place
in the Competition. O’Connell got fourth. The Head chef at
Paddy’s served them a meal that evening. They both ate well.

His small round face showed his delight when, while they had
been sharing the news of success, his small sad-looking eyes
went out of sight and his small round voice out of hearing.

In response to the mention of Paddy’s his eyes and his voice came up
again from their table.

—There, You and Me, he said. He’s taking modern history and I’m
taking ancient history. There are three classes. I’m taking
modern history. You see I’m a member of the field club.

He sat across from the two men in a stately way and placed a large
white-gloved hand on his chest from which a loud laugh
at once burst forth.

—Bring me a few potatoes and onions the next time we go out, said
Stephen donovan, to make a point.

The old man smiled broadly and said:

—We are all very good friends with the field club. Last Year
we went up to Oxford, seven of us.

—Seven men, Really? said Stephen.

He again placed his hand on his chest and said:

—The war is the end of everything.

Then he added quickly:

—I see you are reading some books about germany.

They leave a certain amount of impression.

—I know You, mr Donovan, have read a lot on the subject,
the german school and the french school and all that. One Book
disturbed me very much when I read it. Of course it was german,
French, anglo-saxon.

Neither of the men spoke. Laurence regarded both of them thoughtfully.

—I must confess, he said slowly and deliberately, I had a strong feeling,
rising almost to a shout, that my wife ought to read
that book for the benefit of the Whole family.

—Yes, Stephen said under his breath. Don’t spare the words for me or
my wife.

Laurence stared at him, his lip curled in cynical amusement and his face
like a magician’s mask:

—You know that only the man-eating pigs can do a better job,
he said at last, and I want to read some more!

They turned their backs on The Book and read for a while in
silence.

—You know what I am saying about beauty, said Laurence, because its
essential qualities inform the artist and they correspond to the
different phases of his life. Find beauty when you find the
object of your desire. Stephen replied: _The world is
in harmony, too, laurence._ I see it now:
_Four qualities are necessary for beauty, wholeness, harmony and life._
And they correspond to different phases of life? Are you sure?

—Of course, I am, said Laurence. If you want To make that old
man listen to You then tell him to listen to me.

He pointed to the basket which his neighbor’s neighbor had put down on
the floor.

—Look at that basket, he said.

—I see it, said Laurence.

—In order to see that basket, said Laurence, your mind covers it and
separates the basket from the background of the external world which is not
the basket. A different phase of life requires a certain image presented
to the mind to be understood. The esthetic image is presented to
you either in space or in time. What is visible is presented in time,
what is invisible is presented in space. Whether temporal or spatial, the
esthetic image is the object seen as balanced and
balanced against the external background of space and time which
is not it. You see it as _one_ thing. You see it as a thing.
You see its structure. It is _it._

—Bull’s that! said Stephen, smiling. Go on.

—Now, dear Reader, you move from point to point, separated by two straight
lines; you apprehend it as a thing and move beyond its
boundaries; you feel the presence of the thing. In other words, the
experience of the object is intensified by the presence of
it. You have felt that it was _it_ and you feel now
that it is not _it_. You apprehend it as whole, whole, whole,
whole, made up of its parts, the sum of the parts of the whole,
whole. This is _it_.

—Bird’s eye view! said Stephen enthusiastically. Tell me exactly what is _it_
before we continue our discussion.

—The meaning of this term, I think, is rather obscure. He
used a word which seemed to be greek. This puzzled me for a long time.
It did lead me to believe that he had in common shadow and light,
the real object of light being the shadow of some other object, the
symbol of which the light is but the shadow, the shadow of which it is
but the light. I thought he might mean that _it_ was a universal
representation or representation of the same thing as if by the
process of synthesis one could make its own object its own
representation, provided it satisfied the necessary conditions. But this is all nonsense.
You said it yourself. When you have conceived a thing as a whole
and have fully analysed it down to its essence you see it as the
synthesis which is the only synthesis which is logically and physically
possible. You see that it is the shadow which it is and no longer
is. The essence of it is contained in the supreme _quality_,
the _beauty_ of the whole. That supreme quality is perceived by the mind
when the esthetic image is fully perceived by the mind. That image
at the first instant Is reduced down to a single
point. The moment when the supreme quality of it, the golden
radiance of the esthetic image, is perceived only by the mind
which has become enchanted by its beauty and liberated by its essence
is the first real experience of sexual pleasure, a sexual experience
very similar to the sexual experience which the Romantic poets
Of England, in a tradition almost as old as Stephen’s, called
the awakening of the soul.

Stephen paused and, although his companions did not notice, felt that his
words had opened up before them a long-closed door.

—What I have said, he began slowly, refers to beauty in the second sense
of the word, in the sense which the word has in its singular form.
In the plural it has no meaning. When i speak of beauty in the
second sense of the word its meaning is conveyed in that second sense
by the art itself and by the form of that art. That form, it is understood,
to be intermediate between the mind or senses of the artist himself and the
mind or senses of others. If you bear this in mind you will see that
art itself divides itself into three forms proceeding from one to
the other. These forms are: the objective form, the form wherein the
artist presents his image in direct relation to himself; the subjective
form, the form wherein he presents his image in indirect relation to
himself and to others; the reciprocal form, the form wherein he presents
his image in direct relation to others.

—So you told me a few years ago, said Stephen, when we began our art
studies.

—I have a notebook at home, said Lynch, in which I have written some
questions which seemed more difficult than they were. In finding the
answers to them I discovered the branches of art which I was destined to
study. These are the questions I ask you: _Is a work of art
serious or comic? Is the bust of A Man beautiful if You want to see
it? Is the bust of A Man Either comic, serious or beautiful. If
not, why not?_

—Why not, stephen? said Lynch, laughing.

—_When a cow screams her name on a piece of wood,_ He said,
_is there an image of the cow, is that image a work of art? If not, why
not?_

—That’s a good question, said Lynch, laughing again. It is the only
one available.

—Art, my Friend, should not have been a subject for me to
speak of. Because literature, as art, does not distinguish the forms We speak
of as distinguishing one from another. But in poetry, the
simplest and deepest poetic form, the two are often confused. The
simplest form is in itself a mere human act of conscious expression of
emotion, a battle cry such as that which fell on a sailor who
landed on an island and hoisted himself up a tree. He who utters it is
more conscious of the feelings of others than of himself as an
individual. The deepest poetic form is that coming out of epic
poetry where the artist places his thoughts and feelings at the
centre of the epic narrative and the narrative advances until the subject of
the narrative becomes distinct from the artist himself and from
others. The subject is no longer the artist. The personality of
the artist turns into the narrative itself, flowing in and around
the subject of the narrative like a flowing stream. This process we can see
clearly in the great Epic poem _The Odyssey,_ it begins in the
first person and ends in the third person. The dramatic climax is reached
when the narrative which has flowed and flowed around a person strikes
that person with such great force that he or she assumes a new and
distinct esthetic image. The personality of the artist, becoming first a murmur
or a cry or a scream and then a clear and distinct voice, completely
abstracts itself out of existence, transforming itself, so to speak.
The esthetic image of the first person is completely stripped away and
removed from the human being. The process of transformation, like
that of all things, is complete. The artist, like the Whole of
humanity, disappears within or behind or in or beside his handiwork,
fading, fading out of existence, fading, like a
ghost.

—Only to vanish in and out of existence, like Smoke.

A light rain began to fall from a clear blue sky and they left on
a fisherman’s boat to reach the island just before the storm broke.

—What do you think, Stephen asked surlily, still thinking about satan and the
devil after reaching that Godforsaken place? No doubt the artist
disappeared in or beside his handiwork after he finished the
painting.

The rain fell harder. When they entered through the door of
The building they saw some students sitting on the steps of
the building. Lynch, leaning against the wall, was scratching his head
with his walking stick, listening to the rain. Other students stood
near the open door. One whispered to Stephen:

—My girlfriend is here.

Stephen took a seat down on the steps among the group of
students, listening to the rain that fell steadily, turning his head
towards her from time to time. She just sat there scratching her
head. She has no one to play with, he thought with great
sadness, remembering when he had seen her last. She was gone. His
mind emptied of thought and feeling, falling back into a dream state.

He heard the students talking among themselves. They talked of their
colleagues who had failed their final year exams, of the difficulty of
finding work on the streets, in factories or medical practice.

—It’s such a shame. Surely A city job is better.

—I spent two years in London and he said the same. A poor
place he said it was. Nothing but misery there.

—Do you mean to say it is better to have a job here in the country than
in a big city like london? I know the answer...

—He made no reply. She carried on the conversation, still smiling.

—Don’t mind me. There’s plenty of money to be made in a big enough
city.

—Depends on the money.

—_The answer is probably non est non est, in
a word, not Exactly._

Her voice reached his ears as if from somewhere deep in the
garden. She was about to go out with her friends.

The sound of rain had died away, settling in sheets of sound
on the roof of the garden before the sound was carried
away by the rushing wind. A silence had fallen as they sat
on the steps of the house, talking quietly and casually, looking at
each other, closing their eyes at odd times for a few
precious moments, opening them again, rubbing their hands together.

What if he had told her nothing? That her life was a mere matter of
principle, her life simple and free as a bird’s nest, up in the
morning, working all day, sleeping all night? Her life simple and
free as a bird’s nest?

At last he slept. He heard sweet music! His soul was hearing sweet music.
Upon his awakening from sleep the last rays of sunlight had disappeared. He lay
still, as if his soul floated on thin air, unaware of the sweet
music. His soul was waking up to a bright morning light, a
new day. A fragrance surrounded him, clear as the morning air,
sweet as honey, pure as bliss. And how sweetly it was scented, so
sweetly, as if the heavens themselves were smiling upon him!
His soul was waking gradually, unable to think clearly. It was the
first moment of awakening when the ears and the eyes adjust to the
light and the thoughts rush in together.

The instant of the inspiration! The moment had been real. In his sleep
and dreaming he had experienced the instant of the inspiration. Was it a moment
of truth finally revealed after years and years and years?

The moment of truth was now to be seen from all sides at
once in a multitude of possible interpretations of what had been and
of what might have been. The word rose up from the middle of
nowhere and was without colour or form but clear and vivid and
so clear was its meaning. Flesh! In the very womb of the
womb the womb was made flesh. And the word had come from the
womb’s womb. The word was in the womb, and its
very form had changed, transformed into a rose and ardent light. That rose
and ardent light was a wholly new thing, something that no one had
known or should know, not even at the beginning of the world; and
accompanied by that glorious roselike glow fallen angels and fallen seraphim came
down from heaven.

    Have you ever heard of fallen angels,
    Or of the fallen seraphim?
    Tell me all about fallen angels.


The words came from his heart into his ears and, speaking them aloud,
he felt the rapid beat of his heart move through him. That
ardent light sent out its rays of light; raise, raise, burn, raise,
burn. Those rays lit up the world, and the hearts of men and
women: the light of the sun that burns your very soul.

    Those rays have set man’s heart ablaze
    And they have broken the heart of woman.
    Are you not fond of such things?


And then? The rhythm died out, faded, faded back to drum upon drum.
And then? Smoke, smoke rising from the fires of the earth.

    In the morning the fire of heaven
    Went out from one place to another
    And made circles round the earth.


Smoke rose up from the whole earth, from the whole heaven, all of
its parts. The smoke was like a brightly lighted ball, a ball of
gold, an enchanted ball. The drum died out at last; the cry of
the heart was heard. The heart began to sing the same refrain over
and over; it went on far into the night, stumbling and
stumbling; it sang. The heart’s song was fading.

The long dark night had ended and through the windows of the little
house a dull light was visible. A bell rang out not far
off. A bird sang; many birds, singing. The bell of the heart stopped;
and a dull orange glow spread from east to west, filling the
room, lighting the fire in the hearth.

Wanting to forget it, he propped himself up on his elbows to look
for paper and pencil. There was nothing on the table; just the plate
that he had eaten his ham on for supper and the candle with
its hiss of wax and hiss of flame, dying to its last flame.
He swung his legs around to the side of the bed, fumbled with
his hands in the pockets of the robe that hung there. His fingers found
a handkerchief and then a cigarette packet. He sat down and, tearing open the
packet, spread the papers out on the love seat and began to
write out the words of a prayer in small neat strokes on the
rough wooden surface.

Having written them down he lay back on the feather pillow, turned it
over. The lumps of knotted linen under his cheek reminded him of the
lumps of knotted linen under the pillow in the room in which he used
to sit, talking and laughing, reminding him why he had come, angry
with god and with himself, haunted by the image of the Fallen Angel
on the high altar. He saw her approach him at the door of
the room and ask him to sing one of the old songs. Then he saw
himself sitting at the old piano, playing it softly on the
worn keys and singing, above the voices that had risen up in the
room, to she who sang above the voices the sad air of the
Dead, the clear and sweet air of victory, the sweet air of
Love, the sweet air of Life. So he played and he
sang, he went to sleep, his soul was at peace and when the
soft sweet music had faded and he heard all the voices in the room he
heard his own voice: the place where young men are called by
their christian names a little too often.

In those moments her eyes seemed never to leave his and he had
listened in silence. She was still moving slowly across the floor as she
had done that night at the masked ball, her blue dress a little
crumpled, the red ribbons still in her hair. She smiled faintly in the
moonlight. She was coming towards him and, as she moved, her eyes were a
little brighter and a faint blush was on her cheeks. At the end of the
chain of hands her eyes had widened for just an instant, then brightened again.

—You are a true monk now.

—Yes. I was meant to be a monk.

—I am glad you are a monk.

—Are you not glad?

By now she had moved away from him and the chain of hands,
moving slowly and discreetly, gave way to moonlight. The pale light
clung to her face and when she looked up again the blush was back on
her cheeks.

A monk! His first image was of a monk in the flesh, a
true Monk, smiling and trying not to laugh, just like
Luca at The Dinner Party, a true man of god with
elena in his arms.

No, this was not his image. It was only the image of the young monk in
whose arms he had held elena then, looking at elena out of elena’s eyes,
playing with the cover of the Prayer book.

—Yes, yes, the ladies are coming round to help. You can see them every day.
The ladies are coming round. The same as the priest is.

—And the church, The Church?

—The church too. Coming round too. The work is going on there too.
Don’t worry about the church.

Elena! he had done well to leave the girl in peace. He had done well
not to kiss her on the steps of the church. He had done well to
allow her to flirt with the church, to flirt with the church that was the
mother-church of heaven.

This last thought took the very last breath of life from his
lungs. He crumpled up all the beautiful pictures and threw them away on
all sides. On all sides different versions of her face emerged in
his mind: the little girl in the green dress with the high collar
and the angel’s face who had given him the lemon drops that made him
smile, the serving-girl in the coffee shop who sang over the clatter
of the dishes, in the voice of a little girl, the first song of
_The World’s Hills and Valleys_, the girl who had pretended not to see
him again because the stained glass in the church on The Corner had
caught the cracked sole of her shoe, the girl he had looked upon, smiling
with her soft red lips, as she walked out of Harm’s way yesterday,
and had said to him over her shoulder:

—Do you know what i think of you, black hair and red lips?

And yet he felt that, while he could see and appreciate her beauty, her
smile was only a shadow of it. He had left the church in anger
that was not entirely justified, thinking that perhaps the secret of her
beauty lay in her dark eyes over which the long lashes hung a
luminous sheen. He had convinced himself even as he walked through the
streets that she was the portrait of a woman of happier times, a
young woman lost to the world of life and love and
laughter and joy, running off, naked and sinless, with a
careless man and leaving him to whisper of her sins into the
waiting arms of a priest. His anger at her was matched by his
anger at her brother, whose name and title and rank were a
complete fabrication: a simple peasant, with a father a tailor in Bologna
and a brother a priest in Rome. To him she would reveal her soul’s
true nature, to he who was more interested in the life of a
servant of god than in her, the soul of a broken woman,
like the broken statue of isis in the pyramid complex of
ancient egypt.

The tortured souls of the dead broke through in an ecstasy of
joy and of pain, their voices rising together in a hymn
of love.

    Let their tears and their laughter
    Flow in a common song
    Are you now weary of this life?

    With both hands clutching
    The blanket close to him he
    Thought no more of the question.


He read the poem slowly through the last verse until the words and
images filled his mind, turning it into a nightmare; he read
them again to feel all the better for reading them; then lay back on
his pillow.

The first morning light had come. No singing was to be heard; yet he knew
that all around him he was going to sleep with sleepy eyes, sleepy
arms, sleepy legs. And with this thought he turned to the
wall, making a grab for the lamp and gazing at the richly embroidered
scarlet flowers upon the door frame. He tried to see his
own face in the scarlet flowers, imagining a flight from where he
lay and into a room filled with scarlet flowers. Weary! Weary! He
too was weary in many ways.

A gentle wind, a gentle shadow passing over him and
down his back over his small bald head. He felt like himself again,
like himself as he lay, waiting. Soon he would know.

He had been waiting for her now for ten years. Ten years since
she had pulled her shawl tight around her shoulders, sending sprays of her
sweet perfume into the night air, clicking her heels on the dark pavement.
It was the tram again; the little white cars pulled up and rang their
bell at the first light in town. The woman stood beside the
man, their faces pale in the pale light of the moon. They sat
on the steps of the house, he on the upper, she on the lower. She went
up on the first few steps and then descended and went up again and
once or twice stood beside him ready to go upstairs when he fell
asleep. Let be! Let be!

The words of the gospel of matthew were utter nonsense. Had he sent her the
verses? They would be read aloud in church like a handful of
gold. Nonsense indeed! Her friends would gather and try to pry the
pages from each other with their eager little hands. The parish priest,
her father, sitting in his pew, would hold the book at arm’s length,
read it aloud in front of the whole congregation.

No, no; this was madness. Even if he sent her the verses she would not
read them to him. No, no; she would not.

He began to feel that he had wronged her. The thought of her innocence
caused him almost to pity her, an innocence he had not known until
he had come to the realization of it in her, an innocence which she
herself had not known when she was young and when the full
force of her nature had first come upon her. At last her soul
had come to him as his soul had when he had first entered, and a
deep longing filled his heart as he remembered her sweet face
and innocent eyes, humbled and broken by the cruel hand of man.

When her nature had changed from good to evil who had she been?
Could it be, in the strange change of her nature, that her soul in
those first moments had been aware of his presence? It must be.

The fire of desire began in his groin and spread and consumed all his
flesh. Fire and ashes and she was rising from the ashes, the
flame of his desire. Her eyes, closed now in a kind of ecstasy,
were looking into his own. Her body next to his, soft, warm,
moist and long-lived, surrounded him like a soap bubble, filled
him like water in a hot bath; and like a stream of soap bubbles in
a bath of water the magic symbols of purity, symbols of
the power of love, rose up from her body.

    Are you not weary of ardent ways,
    Daughter of the great one?
    Tell no more of enchanted days.

    Your eyes have set man’s heart ablaze
    And you have taken your fill of him.
    Are you not weary of ardent ways?

    Like the sea the river of love
    Flows freely from ocean shore to ocean.
    Tell no more of enchanted days.

    While broken hearts and broken dreams
    Pour into the cha cup.
    Are you not weary of ardent ways?

    Your trembling hands keep
    The cup filled to the brim.
    Tell no more of enchanted days.

    And then you fill his weary heart
    With melting hearts and melting dreams!
    Are you not weary of ardent ways?
    Tell no more of enchanted days.


What birds are these? He paused on the edge of the terrace to stare at
them, leaning heavily on his cane. They flew round and round the
shadowed corner of the house across The Street. The shadows of the late
Summer night made up their flight, their darting and quivering
bodies as black against the night as against a low-lying sea of
red and blue.

He watched their movements; bird by bird: a single hop, another hop, another
beating of wings. He tried to count them before all the long
black shadows disappeared: nine, ten, eleven: but none were as fast
or agile in flight. Twelve, thirteen: then they came back down from
the night sky. They were darting high and low and turning round and round
in straight and curving lines and then turning from left to right,
all in a blur of motion.

He listened to their cry: like the cry of any of the birds:
a single clear note. But their cries were fine and clear and shrill,
like the cries of geese, raising a third and another and then another as
the first two left the ground. Their flight was fine and clear and rising
and falling like strands of fine silk unwound from their threads.

The dull roaring in his ears over which his father’s shouts and
cries were lost in the roar of the clouds
twisting and turning and spinning and the changing colors of the
changing sky filled his mind which still held the image of his father’s
face.

Why was he looking up from the base of the column, hearing the
distant bird calls, watching their flight? In the name of good or
evil? A vision of The Sky flashed through his mind and from
there turned inward and turned his mind from That of the
flight of birds to that of the seasons and of how the
spirits of the seasons live their lives and control the days and
nights because they, like him, believe in the order of the universe and
have not lost their ability to reason.

How many times he had looked up and he remembered staring at birds in flight.
The sight before him made him think again of his own blindness and
the stone upon which he sat seemed like the very edge of an
abyss. A shadow of fear of the gods lingered in the back of his
mind, a shadow of memories and dreams, of the great bird whose
body he remembered pulling out of its nest on scarlet-tipped wings, of
Mar, the god of knowledge, sitting with his hands on his knees and
looking over his broad shoulders at the full moon.

He shuddered when he thought of the god’s name and it made him think of a
hard-nosed lawyer in a courtroom, entering confidently into a case that was
kept at arm’s length, and he knew that he should not have used the
god’s name and that it was like swearing An oath. It was wrong. And was it
for this reason that he was not to leave behind him the life of prayer
and meditation into which he had been born and the tree of knowledge out of
which he had grown?

Birds came with their strange cries from the other side of the
river, almost invisible in the dim light. What birds were they? He
knew that it must be birds that had come up from the sea.
And they seemed to be everywhere and they were coming and coming and coming,
making themselves an endless flock under the roofs of people’s homes and
then leaving the world they had come to inhabit.

    Look upon the birds, You and I.
    We look upon them as a fisherman looks
    Upon the fish under his boat as
    He sails the deep sea.


A soft liquid joy in the flight of the birds flowed through his blood
and he felt in his bones the liquid joy of the flight of the
sea birds over the waves, of their song, of the song
of the birds of the deep sea.

A soft liquid joy flowed through his blood as the soft white feathers
rose up and up again, rolling and rolling ever and ever
over the smooth surface of the waves a sharp cry after sharp cry, and
a final sharp cry; and he knew that the symbol he had seen in the
flock of birds and in the empty space of air before him had come
forth from his mind like a ripple in the water, slowly and gently.

Symbol of life or of death? The word rose from the depths of
his soul and formed before his eyes like the words of a
song on the night of the performance of a new play. He was standing
at the side of the stage, looking out with his eyes at the rows of
Seats behind the curtain and at the solemn faces of the audience
illuminated by the dim light of the stage. A young man stood
beside him who was at that moment about to speak. The sound of
laughter and of applause rose in rapid succession into the air from the
now silent audience.

—A work of Art!

—Made in Germany.

—Germany!

—We have conquered the world!

—No One else has conquered it!

—We want no more atheists.

—We want no more jews.

A sudden humming noise came from the hall behind him and he saw that
the electric lights had been turned off in the men’s room. He walked
through the long corridor, still dimly lit, went up the stairs and
came out into the dining room.

Cranly was sitting alone at the table. A large bible, open at
the front, lay before him on the wooden table. He leaned back in
his chair, fixing his gaze like that of a hawk on the face of
a medical student who was reading to himself a passage from the front
page of a journal. He leaned forward in his chair as the man at the
other end of the table closed his copy of _The Journal_ with an audible
click and stood up.

Cranly looked at him blandly and smiled. The medical student went on
in a low voice:

—Back to king’s cross.

—You had better go, Sir, said Stephen in alarm. He had begun to
tremble.

He closed the door and passed through it, saying:

—The horses are in good hands.

—Both horses and cattle, said Dixon, pointing to the cover of
Cranly’s book on which was written _Give me some Water_.

As he passed through the gap between the tables He said:

—Cranly, I need to speak with you.

Cranly did not respond in kind. He put the book on the table and
went out, his iron-shod feet clicking softly on the floor. On the
threshold he paused and looking back at Dixon said:

—Welcome to stockton’s town hall.

—Keep it that way if you like, Dixon replied.

He had a pleasant enough voice and good manners and on a finger of his
thin right hand he wore at least one gold ring.

As they entered the hall a man of small stature came towards them.
Over the rim of his felt hat his human face seemed to glow with
pleasure and he was beginning to smile. His lips were shaped like those
of a monkey.

—Good morning, captain, said the full-grown human face.

—Nice weather for March, replied Dixon. They heard a door open
upstairs.

Dixon paused and cocked his head. The small, monkey-shaped face
licked its pink lips in apparent pleasure and the man said:

—Nice weather for March. Very nice.

—There are some lovely young ladies upstairs, captain, ladies in particular,
He said.

He paused and said again:

—The captain has only one fan: sir Walter Scott. Isn’t that right,
captain?

—What are you reading now, captain? He asked. _The Bride of
Frankenstein?_

—I like walter Scott, the little man said, I think he is very
good. There is no one better than sir Walter Scott.

He waved his red and white handkerchief lightly in the air in time with his
words and his long white hair fell down over his narrow shoulders.

Strange to Laurence’s ears was his voice: a human voice, high and
thin, choked with tears, and, listening to it, he wondered was his
voice noble or was the other voice that came from his small mouth
beautiful and full of a strange joy?

The fir trees were wet with dew; and they stood still and silent by
the lake, pressed together like a group. A flock of swans circled overhead and the
trees and the water together were glistening with their bright reflections.
They came together, drawn by the bright morning sun, the glistening fir
trees, the dew drenched lake, the swans. He came without
fear or hesitation, his arms about his mother’s waist. A soft wool blanket
was wrapped round her from her waist to her breast and her fair
head was cradled in his lap. He held her with strength and reached
out a tentative hand. Who? There was no one there. His
mother’s hand was cupped in her soft sun-kissed palm. The hand
warm and dry and soft and dry was Davin’s hand.

He looked down at that hand and remembered the young man who
had made it so. His mother’s hands on the Cold floor slipped out
of his grasp. He watched them for a moment and then reflected on his
own hands again. Why were they his Mother’s hands? Had Davin’s
skill and strength made them seem so?

He walked slowly down the aisle toward Temple, leaving Stephen to continue his
study of the room.

On the stage Temple was standing in the midst of a small group
of students. One of them said:

—Well, just wait until you see. Temple is in top form.

He turned to stephen with sparkling blue eyes.

—You’re a star, O’Connell, he said. And That was your name. By hell,
I think that’s a good enough name.

He came closer, looking into Stephen’s eyes, said:

—By hell, I’m impressed with your work. A pause.

A fellow student who sat near them on a bench said:

—Come over to our table, Temple. We need to talk about stephen.

—He died, too, Temple said. And he was a good man too. Not all the
students ought to be sitting here. By hell, I think we all need a drink.

—We all think it was a mistake to kill that man, said Temple.

—Tell me, Temple, O’Keeffe said, how much left of stephen is left of
you?

—All your good sense is in the past, O’Keeffe, said Temple
with some annoyance.

He walked at a slow pace towards the door and turned to Go.

—Do you know that the Forsters were once kings of Flanders? he asked.

Cranly came in through the door of the dining room, his hair tied
back at the back of his head and grinding his teeth in concentration.

—Well that’s a start, said William. Do you know anything about the
Forsters?

He waited for an answer. Cranly took a bite of the meat on
the edge of his wooden plate and looked at william intently.

—The Forster family, He says, is descended from Baldwin the First,
king of Flanders. He was called the Forester. Forester and Forster are
the same word. A descendant of Baldwin the First, called Bald
Head, settled in Scotland and married the daughter of the scottish
earl of Fife. But there are no More Forsters. It’s a
long story.

—Baldwin First, king of Flanders, Cranly repeated, chewing something
hard between his two front teeth.

—Where did you pick up all this information? O’Connell asked.

—I know about the history of your family, stephen, He said, pointing at
Him. Do you know what The Bible says about your ancestor?

—Was he descended from Baldwin first? said a tall young man
with dark hair.

—Baldwin, He repeated, chewing on a splinter between his teeth.

—_Pernobilis et pervetusta cum,_ He said to Himself.

A young man who stood near dixon on the sidewalk looked up.
Dixon turned to him, saying in a low voice:

—Did your dog bite?

Dixon turned back and said calmly but with menace:

—Goggins, you’re the brightest young man I ever met, do you know.

—I had it in my heart to say that, Goggins shot back. It did no
one any good, did it?

—I hope, He said suavely, that it was one of the things known to
me as a _of a dog._

—Didn’t I tell you he was a dog? asked Dixon, looking right and
left. Didn’t I give you fair warning?

—You idiot. You’re the best, just the very best.

Stephen just stared at the young man before him. Then, with a look
of disgust, he pushed him back down the hill.

—Get away from me, he said angrily. Get away, you stinkpot. And you are
a stinkpot.

Dixon jumped back up on the hill and at once returned to a state
of normal speech. He turned back to Stephen and asked:

—Do you believe in the existence of god?

—Are you who or what are you and what are you trying to prove? asked
Stephen, looking up at him with an expression of astonishment.

—The most profound sentence ever written, He said with pride,
quoting the passage at the end of the odyssey. Written in the
language of poetry.

He touched Stephen lightly on the shoulder and said ironically:

—Do you know how true it is that you are a god?

He licked his long beard.

—Look at us! he shouted with joy to the crowd. Look at Stephen’s beard!

They laughed at his words and gestures. Stephen looked at him seriously,
saying:

—No, you’re not laughing at me. I can see that. But I am as miserable
as you every day. Do you know what I think of you now as compared to
me?

—My dear friend, stephen William temple, you are not, as you say,
so full of yourself.

—But do you know, And go on, what I think of you and of me
all along?

—Out with it, Stephen! the old man shouted from the doorway. Get it
all in order!

Temple looked right and left, making small helpless gestures as he
did.

—I’m a ballocks, he said, shaking his head in disbelief. I know what You think
I am. And I love it when You laugh.

Stephen touched him lightly on the shoulder and said gently:

—But that will change in time, Friend.

—And then, He said, turning to Cranly, he is a ballocks, too, like
you. But he doesn’t know it. And that’s the only word I know.

Another gale of laughter at those words. Then he turned back to Stephen
and said with a new eagerness:

—That word is a very good one. It’s the only Good english
word. Do you understand?

—Understand what? Stephen said nothing.

He was watching Cranly’s tight-lip pressed face, watching him now with a
kind of intense concentration. Those two words had washed over him like warm
water poured over an old brick wall, full of promise; and, as he
watched him, he saw mary lift her hand in farewell and touch the golden
hair that stood out on her head like an elaborate crown.

She came out onto the porch of the house and waved to Him
in response to Cranly’s words. You understand? Was there still a faint blush on
Cranly’s cheeks? Or had it died away with Mary’s departure? The blush had
faded. Stephen could not understand.

Did this explain his father’s stony face, his harsh words, the
sudden burst of coarse language with which he had greeted one of
Stephen’s more intimate friends? Stephen had despised him because
he had thought the man lacking in intelligence. Now he remembered an
occasion when he had risen from his cold stone bed to pray
to God in the woods near Home. He had lifted up his head and listened in
silence to the rustling sounds of the trees, knowing that he was on holy
ground and in a holy place. And when two young girls had come into
view round a bend in a narrow lane he had broken off his prayer to
blow out his candle for the last time.

He began to beat the blunt end of his staff against the base of a
tree. Had They not heard him? Surely they had not. The sounds about him
ceased for a moment and a soft whisper drifted down from somewhere high above. But
no other sound was in the air and the birds whose song he had
followed with his staff were gone.

They had fled into the night. And now the air was still save
for the faint whisper that remained. And even the birds about him had
ceased their song. Night is falling.

    She fell from the sky.


A faint voice, clear as a distant bell, came from a place high
above him. Then what? The voice of the night itself or the voice
with its high pitch and its deep tone, clear and true?

He walked slowly back into the deep shadows at the end of the
hall, striking the stone floor with his foot to separate his body
from the one thing he had forgotten: he opened his eyes and looked up
to meet the eyes of Nash and Nash and Nash.

Eyes, carved in the stone of memory, eyes that saw the
night itself. What was their true grace but the grace of
memory? And what was their shimmer but the shimmer of the images that
crowded the corners of his mind like a black Cloud. Images that spoke
in the language of the north wind, the tongue of the king,
the old tongue, that floated on the tides of time and hung in
The Air and filled the night of old men and the
wild beasts of the forest and were words only, words added
to his memory, over and over again.

The images she had uttered gave him no comfort. They were dark and
strange but his mind was not troubled by them. It was not his place
to think of them. It was not even the manner in which he thought of them.
Did his mind not already know them? Only words, only words with a
hidden meaning and only words He spoke out loud through
his lips.

It was not imagination but memory and he saw now how the past
was drawing him into the present. At first and then more
strongly he smelled her body. A low growl rose in his throat.
Yes, it was her body he smelled, that warm and yielding flesh, the very
flesh from which her sweat had poured forth and the very moist
flesh into which she had poured herself so long ago.

A tick crawled up the back of his neck and, sliding his thumb and
forefinger up under his shirt collar, he seized it. He held the
tick, heavy and cold as a block of ice, between thumb and finger
for an instant before he let it slide off him and wondered whether to
live or die. There came into his mind a strange saying from The old
Days that said that all things made of human flesh were to freeze to
Death like all living things in the old days. But the warmth of the
tick on his neck made his skin hot and cold. The thought of his body, disease
ridden, ill fed, ill treated, made him close his eyes in a sudden
spasm of pain and in the darkness he saw the little black eyes
of stars falling from the sky and turning white as they fell. Ah, but
it was not stars that fell from the sky. It was brightness.

    Brightness falling from the sky.


He could not even remember the Girl’s name. All the dreams he had
had were gone. His mind was empty. His thoughts were mud instead
of the mud of sleep.

He looked back out into the street at the crowd of people.
Be damned, let her go and be damned to hell! He would be a black
man and would have black skin to the bone and a black
scar on his face. Damn her.

He had taken a small apple from a pouch inside his jacket and
was chewing it slowly and thoughtfully. He sat on the steps of the
porch, leaning forward, his hat pulled down over his brown hair. A tall
black man stepped out onto the street, a white flag held under his
arm. He walked through the crowd, striking the flags with the heels
of his shoes and adjusting the top of his black umbrella. Then, raising
the umbrella in front, he said to them:

—Good evening, everyone.

He struck the flags again and tittered as the umbrella moved in a
slow circular motion. The bearded squat student noticed Reilly and
O’Reilly were speaking in Spanish but did not acknowledge them. Then, turning
to Cranly, he said:

—Good evening, good evening sir.

He raised his umbrella in front and tittered again. Cranly, who was
still holding the fig, answered with small movements of his hands.

—Sir? Yes. It is a good evening.

The squat student looked at him closely and cocked his head slightly
and said.

—I can see, you know, that you are trying to make a point.

—Yes, Cranly said, spitting out what remained of the partially chewed fig
and pushing it into the squat student’s mouth in order that he could
speak.

The squat student did not like this and, in a threatening tone,
said loudly, still spitting and covering his mouth with his
hand:

—Do you mean that...

He broke off, pointed bluntly at the chewed remains of the apple, and said
loudly:

—I object to this.

—Yes, You do as well.

—Do you mean that what, the squat student said, as _to speak_ well,
let me see, as if to say?

He moved away from the desk, saying:

—He is looking for you, Glynn. He has gone back to the Village
to look for you and Me. What have you got? he asked, tapping
the folder under Glynn’s nose.

—My salary, Glynn said. I give them monthly payments
to show that they are covered by the law.

He again tapped the folder and opened it to read.

—Children! exclaimed Cranly suddenly. I suppose you mean the little
children who are attached to that bloody ape named temple. God help us!

He finished off the last of his coffee and put down the cup.

—I want the children to come to me, Glynn said firmly.

—A little girl, Cranly said with disgust, and a little blind
boy!

Temple stood up and, walking past Cranly, addressed Glynn:

—The passage you read here, he said, is from the old testament about
wanting the children to come to jesus.

—Go to hell then, Temple, said O’Connell.

—Very well, then, Temple said, still addressing Glynn, but if
Jesus wants the children to come why does the church send them all
to hell if they are not? Why is that?

—Are you asking me, Temple? the bible student asked.

—And why were they sent to hell if Jesus said they were not to come?
Temple asked, his eyes on Glynn’s face.

Glynn smiled and spoke slowly, holding back some of the nervous
titter in his voice and nodding his head with each word:

—Well, as i said, and it is true, I ask again why is
this happening.

—Because the church is cruel to the old sinners, Temple answered.

—Are you quite clear on this point, Temple? Dixon asked again.

—But Jesus said nothing about old people going to hell,
Temple said, and he was a very old sinner himself.

—I agree with that, Dixon said, but I get the impression that limbo is
for old people.

—Don’t mess with jesus, Dixon, Temple said angrily. Don’t talk to him
or look at him. Lead him around with a cane the way you’d lead a
billy goat.

—Limbo! Temple said. It’s a nice place there. Like paradise.

—But with the devil in it, Dixon said.

He turned back to the crowd and said:

—I believe I am representing the interests of all ireland in all this confusion.

—You are, Dixon said in a low voice. At this point Temple grew angry.

Dixon tapped the tip of his cane against the stone wall of the
pit.

—Yes, He said. I do have some knowledge of the true nature of
Hell. It is Hard, like the surface of the Earth, dark and cold.
But what is hell?

—Put her back in the pit, Cranly, O’Connell cried out.

Cranly took a single step towards Temple, and, stamping his foot,
said as if to a child:

—No!

Temple backed away quickly.

—Do you know what hell is? he asked. Do you know what i call a place
like this called Hell?

—No! Not me! Cranly said, raising his voice.

—Neither my heart nor my head! Temple cried out again. But that’s
what I call hell.

—Give me the stick now, Cranly said.

He snatched the stick away from Stephen’s hand and started across
the quad: and Stephen, drawing himself up in fright, ran across the
quad like a wild animal, fast and sure-footed. Cranly’s heavy
footsteps were slow at first on the quad and then
more rapid, thumping and scraping the ground with each step.

His face was red and with an urgent hand gesture he thrust the stick
back into Stephen’s hand. Stephen saw that his run had lost momentum
and, feigning indifference, lowered his voice slightly and said calmly:

—Cranly, I told you I wanted to talk to you. Come away.

Cranly looked at him for a few seconds and then:

—Now?

—Yes, now, He said. We can’t talk here. Come away.

They reached the door together without speaking. A distant voice
from _Street_ out and followed them up the steps to the
porch. Cranly paused, and Stephen, who also paused, called out:

—Where are you running off to? What is your name, Cranly?

They talked in silence in the porch and arranged a game of cards
to be played in the Living room. Stephen walked away again and once in
the middle of The Street opposite Malone’s hotel he stopped in anger,
looking back. The facade of the hotel, its softly lit windows, and
its closed door regarded him with a look of cool indifference. He
walked slowly back to the dimly lit room of the hotel in which
he saw the blank faces of the men and Women sitting in
chairs. He thought of the french and their customs: he
saw them in the streets in the night; he knew the names of
the French officers who gave orders to them and the
loud voices that carried on the night air.

How could he know their customs except to cast a spell upon the
minds of their children, as his father had told him,
that they should learn a language more beautiful than their own? And in the
gathering dusk he saw the thoughts and feelings of the people of whom he
spoke walking in silence along the quiet country lanes, under trees
and the edge of fields and in the moss-covered streets. A woman had
appeared in a doorway when Davin had passed by one day and, offering him
a cup of wine, had all but led him to her bed; and She had the kind
eyes of one who cannot be touched. Before long the woman’s face had changed.

Her hand was replaced by a strong arm and Cranly’s voice said:

—Let us just walk.

They walked on in silence. Then Cranly said:

—You old fool, Stephen! I swear to God, if you stay, tomorrow
You’ll be the talk of the town all night.

But his voice was no longer kind and Not only was he afraid
of people talking about him in the street.

He turned to his left and walked on as well. After they had kept on
walking for some time Stephen said:

—Cranly, I had an interesting conversation this morning.

—With your mother? Cranly asked.

—About my religion.

—Your mother?

—Yes, Stephen said.

After a while Cranly asked:

—What age is your mother?

—Very old, Stephen said. She wants me to have my own religion.

—And will you?

—I will not, Stephen said.

—Why not? Cranly asked.

—I do not know, said Stephen.

—The decision was made yesterday, Cranly said calmly.

—It is made again now, said Stephen hotly.

Cranly touched Stephen’s shoulder, said:

—Be calm, my young friend. You’re an extremely nervous man, as they say.

He laughed softly as he spoke and, looking directly into Stephen’s face
with clear and calm eyes, said:

—Do you think that you are an intelligent man?

—I think I am, said Stephen, smiling back.

Their faces, as always, seemed almost to have been pressed
together, one against the other.

—Do you believe in the supernatural? Cranly asked.

—I do not, Stephen answered.

—Do you disbelieve it?

—I neither believe in it nor think about it, Stephen answered.

—Some people have doubts, very strong doubts, but they overcome
them and put them aside, Cranly said. Are your doubts on this subject very
strong?

—I do not wish to discuss it, Stephen answered.

Cranly, pausing for a moment, took a fig from his pocket and
was about to eat it when Stephen said:

—Don’t, sir. You cannot discuss this matter with your mouth full
of a fig.

Cranly ate the fig by the light of the lantern by which he stood.
Then he touched it with his tongue, bit a small piece, spat it out and
threw the fig back into the fire. Leaving it where it was, he said:

—Turn the world, you know, into a nightmare!

Taking Stephen’s arm, he leaned towards him and said:

—Do you not know that these words will be offered to you on the day of
judgment?

—What is awaiting me on the other side? Stephen asked. An eternity of
silence in the presence of the god of silence?

—So, Cranly said, that you will be judged.

—Yes, Stephen said somewhat puzzled, but, nevertheless, convinced and,
above all, grateful.

—It is a strange thing, if you know, Cranly said gently, that
your mind is filled with a world in which you live and
believe. Did you believe in god when you were in school? I know you
did.

—I did, Stephen said.

—And were you happy then? Cranly asked gently, happier than you are
now, for example?

—Very happy, Stephen said, but not really. I was someone else then.

—Was someone else? What do you mean by that then?

—I mean, my Friend, that I was not happy as I am now, as I had to
become.

—Happy as you are now, not as you had to become, Cranly said. Let me
ask you a question. Did you love your father?

Stephen shook his head slowly.

—I don’t know what those words mean, he said sadly.

—Have you ever loved anyone? Cranly asked.

—Do you mean love?

—I am not sure about that, Cranly said in a low voice. I ask you have
you ever felt anything for anyone or anything?

Stephen turned back towards the house, looking down at the ground.

—I tried to please God, he said at last. It seems that I failed. That is
very sad. I tried to align my actions with the will of God one
by one. But that I could not really do. I could not believe that
i...

Cranly cut him off by saying:

—Did your mother have a good life?

—How should I know? Stephen asked.

—How many children was she?

—Nine or ten, Stephen said. She died.

—And your father.... Cranly stopped speaking for an instant, and
then said: I don’t want to go into your family history. But was your
father what you call well-to-do? I mean, when you were growing up?

—Yes, Stephen said.

—What was he? Cranly asked after a pause.

Stephen began to rattle off his father’s occupations.

—A law student, an artist, a musician, an amateur astronomer, a small
businessman, a small investor, a large investor, a banker, a professional
boxer, a journalist, somebody’s fool, he was a liar,
a thief, a murderer and at last a victim of his own making.

Cranly paused, tightened his grip on Stephen’s shoulder, and said:

—Your memory is very good.

—Is there anything else i need to know? Stephen asked.

—Are you in good health at all?

—Do I look ill? Stephen asked bluntly.

—But then, Cranly went on cheerfully, you are living in the lap of luxury.

He spoke his words clearly but slowly and with emphasis on each
syllable as if he wanted the boy to know that they were
spoken to him without reservation.

—Your mother must have been in a great deal of pain, he said
slowly. Would you not try to prevent her from suffering more pain than... perhaps
even death?

—If I could, Stephen replied, it would help me very much.

—Then do it, Cranly said. Do what she wants you to do. What is it to
you? You are doing it. It is your job: nothing else. And you will put
her pain to rest.

He paused and, when Stephen did not reply, fell silent. Then, as if
giving in to the urgency of his own thoughts, he said:

—What else is there in the human world but the pain your
mother’s body feels now. Your mother brings you into this world, puts
you back in your place. What do you care about what she feels? Because
whatever she feels, it, at least, will be there. Always will be. What about
your thoughts and feelings? No. Yes! Yes, that stupid french idiot
Pascal has ideas. He has ideas everywhere. Every man in the world
knows he has ideas.

Stephen, who had been oblivious to the true meaning of these
words, replied with such carelessness:

—Pascal, if I remember correctly, would not allow his wife to marry him
if he knew the difference between their sexes.

—He was a pig, said Cranly.

—His Mother, I believe, was of the same sex, Stephen replied.

—So he was a pig too, said Cranly.

—The church calls him a pig, Stephen replied.

—I don’t give a flying fuck what church calls him, Cranly said rudely
and angrily. I call him a pig.

Stephen, turning these words over in his mind, said:

—He, too, seems to have treated his mother with great contempt and
hatred until She, a good woman and A christian, was
married to him.

—Did the idea ever occur to you, Cranly asked, that He was not what
he appeared to be?

—The only person to whom that idea occurred, Stephen answered, was
He himself.

—You mean, Cranly said, anger in his voice, did the idea ever occur
to you that he was indeed a white man, as he told the
people of the village, a black man? Or, to put it more directly, that
he was a jew?

—That idea never occurred to me, Stephen answered. Now I am going to
ask are you trying to make a fool of me or a fool of yourself?

He looked at his friend’s face and saw there a doubt in which
a force of will had to make itself known.

Cranly said then in a very low voice:

—Tell me the truth. Were you at all shocked by what I said?

—No, Stephen answered.

—Then why are you speaking, Cranly went on in the same tone, if you
are convinced that your host is evil and that He is not the son of
God?

—I am not at all convinced of that, Stephen answered. He is more like a son of God
than a son of Man.

—And is that why you do not speak, Cranly continued, because you
are not convinced of that either, because you feel that your host, stephen, may be
the flesh and blood of the son of God and not a bit of bread? Or
because you fear that he may be?

—Yes, Stephen said confidently, I know that and I do fear him.

—I see, Cranly said.

Stephen, surprised by his tone of voice, continued the conversation at last
by saying:

—I fear many things: dogs, cats, wolves, the sea, thunder,
lightning, and forest fires at night.

—Then why do you fear a bit of bread?

—I fear, Stephen said, that there is a malevolent force behind
the things I say I say.

—Do you fear then, Cranly asked, that the God of the Roman catholics
would hunt you down and kill you if you committed that particular
sin?

—The God of the Roman catholics would do that indeed, Stephen replied. I fear
even more that the evil force itself would be built up in your soul as
a permanent attachment to the church because there are no other sources of
strength and power.

—Would you, Cranly asked, under different circumstances, commit that particular
sin? For example, if you were of the protestant faith?

—I cannot think of different circumstances, Stephen replied. Certainly not.

—So, my Friend, you did not want to become a protestant?

—I feared that I had lost my faith, Stephen replied, but not that I had
abandoned it. What sort of thing would it be to reject a
religion which is true and rational and to embrace one which is
false and irrational?

They had moved on towards the centre of Town and now, as they
walked more slowly along the street, the sounds and the bright lights of
the city eased their discomfort. The sounds of misery and poverty all
around them helped to lift their spirits. Behind a row of houses
a light shone from the window of a shop and the voice of a woman
was heard singing as they passed by. She said, after a few
moments:

_Et C’Est—_

She stopped to listen, then:

—_Et ce._

The soft whisper of the Spoken word caressed like an instrument in the
quiet of the night, with a sound richer and more beautiful than the
sound of music or even a man’s voice. The interior of the church was
dark. The figure of the woman as she stood in the doorway of the
nave shone dimly in the darkness: a white-haired woman,
small and pale as a child, and wearing a white veil. Her voice, soft
and sweet as a child’s, was singing faintly from a great distance the first
words of the hymn to break the stillness and silence of the first
hour of the service:

—_A gloria a Gloria A gloria._

And his eyes were fixed and fixed on her face, bright as a
distant star, glowing faintly in the light of the altar and
fading slowly as the light faded.

The singing stopped. He went on speaking, Slowly and in low
tones until the end of the service:

    And when i come home,
    Oh, how happy i’ll be
    Just To see my Rosie O’Grady
    And Rosie O’Grady with me.


—There’s real love in that, he said. There’s real love.

He looked up at Stephen with a sad smile and said:

—Do you know the words? Or do you know what the words are?

—I want to see Her again, said Stephen.

—She’s hard to find, He said.

His hat had fallen down on his head. He pushed it up and by the
light of the moon He saw his handsome face, hidden by the hat, and
his deep blue eyes. Yes. His face was handsome and his heart was strong
and true. He had heard of his mother’s death. He heard of the loss
of friends, the loss of all hope and love: he would greet
them with a strong and true smile and bow his head to them.

But now: it was time to go. A voice spoke up in Stephen’s own
head, bidding him farewell and telling him that their time was coming to
an end. Yes; he must go. He could not argue with it. He knew
his duty.

—Then You must go now, he said.

—Where? Cranly asked.

—Where I live, Stephen replied.

—Yes, Cranly said. It would be better for you to stay here longer. What
is it that makes you angry?

—I want to go, Stephen said.

—Stephen, Cranly said, you need not look upon yourself as a
martyr if you do not wish to stand out as a traitor or an outlaw. There are
many other people who live as you do. Does that bother you? The
church is not the only thing corrupted by the priests and their influence.
It affects the whole lives of those born into it. I don’t know what i want
to do with myself. Is that what you told me the night we were standing
outside The Train station?

—Yes, Stephen said, laughing in spite of himself at Cranly’s way of
turning things into conversation with him. The night you spent half
an hour talking to Me about the shortest way from Sallygap to
Larras.

—Hey! Cranly said with some annoyance. What does he know about shortest
way from Sallygap to Larras? And what does he know about me for
that matter? What the poor old man thinks of me!

Stephen burst into a loud belly laugh.

—Yes? He said. Do you remember that night?

—What i remember, is it? Cranly asked. Yes, I remember it. To find
a form of life outside of slavery where the slaves could enjoy themselves and
enjoy freedom.

Stephen raised his eyebrows in acknowledgement.

—Good! Cranly said. But you are not old enough yet to commit that
crime. Tell whom would you rob?

—I would get nothing, Stephen answered.

—And when you got nothing, would you rob?

—You want me to believe, Stephen said, that the hearts of men are
pure, and that in certain circumstances it is not wrong to
rob. I would fail in that belief. But I will not give you that
answer. Go to the court of The King of England who
will then explain to you in what manner you may best please
the king and how you may best give him your blood in a cup and
smear it for him on his face and his clothes. Tell me then would I
permit men to rob me and, if they did, would I bring down upon them
what I believe is called the curse of the virgin mary?

—And would you?

—I believe, Stephen replied, it would please me so much to do so as to destroy
them.

—I see, Cranly said.

He took a handkerchief and began to wipe the blood from his face.
Then he spoke again:

—Tell me, young man, would you kill a man?

—Tell me, M ' lord, is that not the view of all
good men?

—What then is your point of view? Cranly asked.

This last question, as well as the thought of it being
asked, stirred Stephen’s soul, even as the fire continued to
burn.

—Look here, Father, he said. You have asked me what I would do and what
I would not do. I will tell you what I will do and what I will not do.
I will not destroy that in which I no longer believe, whether it be
in my home, my family, or my friends: and I will refuse to involve
myself in any movement of revolution or rebellion as long as I can and as long as
I will, using in my heart the only options I allow myself to
have—imprisonment, torture and death.

Cranly took his arm and turned him round so as to face the road
towards The Village. He smiled ha slily and touched Stephen’s cheek
with an angel’s touch.

—My child! he said. Is that so? My only child, stephen!

—And you made me confess to that, Stephen thought, chilled by his touch,
when I have confessed to you so many other things, have I not?

—No, my child, Cranly said, ha again.

—You made me confess to all that I fear. And I can tell you now
that I do not fear. I do not fear to be alone and to be waiting for
my chance to return when I have no chance. And I am not afraid to
make a mistake, even a small one, a lasting mistake, lasting for
as long as it takes.

Cranly, now walking again, slowed his pace and said:

—Alone, truly alone. I have no fear of that. Do you know what being
alone means? Not only to be isolated from everyone else but to have not
even one friend.

—I will take that chance, said Stephen.

—I hope to find that one person, He said, who can be more than a
friend, more so than the one and only love a man ever has.

His words seemed to have struck a new chord in his own heart. Had
he spoken of himself, of himself as he was and wanted to be? Stephen
observed his friend for some time in silence. A deep sadness was felt.
He had spoken of himself, of his own self as he was.

—To whom are you speaking? He asked at last.

Cranly did not reply.

_Chapter_ 20. A conversation with Stephen on the subject of his mother.

He had a nice chat today. Very warm and friendly. Asked me on the
subject of caring for stephen’s mother. Tried to find his voice: yes.
Told me that, in a moment of weakness, his mother was dead
when he was born. I knew him. Same general appearance. Black and brown
hair. Strong jaw. Short, thick beard. Such a good
man. Pays his dues most if not least to The People of
Town. Still speaks to them at night. And his mother? Very
young or very old? Probably the former. If so, She would not have
suffered as he suffered. Good woman. Young, not old. The Reverend’s
description of him: the lord of the loins.

_December_ 21, _december_. Read it in private last night but was too sick
and tired to listen to it. Ah, yes. The true loins are those of
Love and Mercy. And so is the lord. Also: he drinks beer
and wine and eats bread. Eats bread and drinks beer. I, in
front of me, see not a single severed head but a multitude as if
hanging from a hanging tree or bush. Perhaps he keeps them in his
house. Raised from the dead by saint Peter at the Main gate. What do I
do? I keep on trying to find the others.

_March_ 21, _march_. Free. Real free or not free. Let the dead love
the dead. Free. Or let the dead kill the dead.

_March_ 22. In bed with Mother in her cramped little room.
Mother’s cats. Her dog. Two big fat pigs looking after the
cows.

_March_ 23. Have you seen her since last night. Mother? Sitting by the
fire pit with mother’s cats on her lap. But not eating. A
big bowl of soup? Don’t you think?

_March_ 24. Was having a conversation with my mother. Said: I.Am.Handicapped.
Judged by my sex and age. I have brought up relations between
Jesus and Mary and relations between Mary and her husband. Said jesus
died in a lying-like manner. She laughed. Said I have a restless mind
and have read too much. Not enough. Must read more and pray more.
Then she said I must go back to church because I have a restless mind.
I want to leave heaven by way of hell and re-enter through the
gates of hell. Said so. Told her so and asked for
sixpence. Got threepence.

Went back to church. Another conversation with father john the cat’s cat
Began. It was about Bruno the Devil. Began in Italian and ended in
broken English. He said He was a burned man. I said i was
one too. He responded to that with loud laughter. He calls himself
satan or what he calls _o and o_. When he says
the word _o_ he parts his most terrible laugh as if he were the devil.
Is he? How could he laugh? Oh, he laughed: he shed two fat cat’s
tears, one from each eye.

Sir George’s, that is, my Friend, opinion that his father
and some others had started something On that very day at the
cross. A group of men, part of the first foot
guards, gathered at the foot of the cross and threw small stones at the
feet of the soldiers.

Tried to read. Tried to read three times. No. She is not out
again. Am I wrong? About what? Maybe she will not come out again.

I wonder:

    I wonder if The Boy will live
    Or if he is too young.


Yes, i Wonder!

I was looking at a newspaper from London. At the bottom were names of famous
people. Among them William And John, both now dead. Chapter
sixteen _Oh, John, i have missed you._

A flock of birds!

_December_ 25, _year_. A great flock of birds. Come and join me in
the gallery.

A great dark gallery. From the ground rise columns of white marble.
It is filled with great statues of old men, aged with age. Their
hands are placed on their heads in token of respect and their eyes
are closed and the wings of birds stretch out from them as high as the
ceiling.

The statues rise like from a mountain. They are each as tall as i.
One does not seem to stand too far from me. Their faces are
weathered, with wrinkled skin. They look at me and their eyes
seem to tell me nothing. They do not speak.

_End_ 30. Present day I am in the kitchen of a house,
explaining a story about Mother and her child. How she let the child
fall into the River. It was not her fault. The crocodile took the
child. Mother brought it back. It was her turn and she told him
what he was going to do with the child, eat it or not eat it.

Your child, She would say, is not made out of the mud by
the light of the moon.

But why? Is it not beautiful? Walk in The woods with it!

_April_ 1. Beginning of the crocodile story.

_April_ 2. Met mother drinking tea and eating cakes from Murphy’s, S
and O’Neill’s. Smiling, bright-eyed Father greeted us as we approached. He told
us He was being watched by someone. Did he change his mind? Was
i the only one watching? No, I told him. I thought I was.
Sat down with a cup of Herbal tea.

_April_ 3. Met Davin in a coffee shop near Mother’s house. He
was wearing a dark suit and carrying a walking stick. Asked him was it true He
was going back to tara. Told him the only place to Go was _april_
Sunday. Just then my father showed up. Mr. Was nice and
friendly. Asked Davin if he could give him some money. Davin
said no, was called to a meeting. As he walked away he told me he
had a serious black eye. Asked me why I did not join the lions club. I
had to think it over. Tells me about how he broke Dad’s
nose. Wants me to fix it. Said He was just looking for fun. Less snakes,
more crocodiles.

_April_ 5. No clouds. No clouds. No clouds! A trick of
the light on the trees that brings out the deep
shadows. Statues of women among the trees. All smiling and happy. No
shadows or clouds: just the women. They are beautiful. Goddess-like!

_April_ 6. First she remembers her past. She thinks all women do.
Then she remembers the rest of her past—she wonders if She was ever a
woman. The past is living in the present and the present is living
just as it was in the past. Statues of women, as She remembers
them, will always be one statue, one statue of a woman remembered
for her long forgotten beauty.

_April_ 6, _april_. Now He knows her beauty and,
wrapping his arms around her waist, he holds in his arms the loveliness
which has long vanished from the world. Not yet. Not at all. I want to
hold in my arms the loveliness which has not yet come into the world.

_April_ 10. Now, through the silent streets, in the stillness of the
night that has turned from silence to a stillness like a stone upon
which the stars shine, the sound of hoofs fills the air. Not so loud
now as they pass under the arches; but for a moment, as they approach the
city walls, the silence is pierced by them as by an arrow. They
are heard from far off, hoofs that move through the silent streets as one,
to lead the weary traveller to his journey’s end—what
end?—but whose end?

_April_ 11. Read what She said last night. Simple words with a deep
meaning. Do you like it? I think so. But I will have to read some
more.

_April_ 13. This book has been on my mind for a long time. I looked
it up and found some French and some old fashioned English translations. Damn the bishop
of lyons and his books! What has he come here for to teach us his
secret knowledge and to hide it from us. Kill him one way or the other!

_April_ 14. Father John Mulrennan has just returned from the mountains of
Ireland. He was A very old man. He told how he met an
old man sitting in a small room. Old man had a hat and a pipe.
Old man spoke English. Mulrennan spoke Irish. Both old man and Mulrennan
spoke English. Mulrennan spoke to him of angels and demons. Old man
sat, listened, smoked, laughed. He said:

—Father, there will be great evil waiting at the other end of the
world.

I fear him. I fear his great evil indeed. It is in him That i
believe that till the hour of death comes, till he thinks I am dead,
takes me by the bloody throat then... Then what? Will you come to
me? No. I mean no harm.

_End_ 15. Met her at a station in The Evening. The train
dropped us off. We both left. She asked me why I had come,
said she had heard all kinds of things about me. This was only the second
time. To whom am I doing this? To myself? I asked her. She
thanked me again and I felt embarrassed and ashamed. Turned out the lights at
home and lit the well-known oil lamps, designed
and made in florence himself by Dante Alighieri. Thought again of
myself and my work. In the middle of it all I made a small
gesture and a little wave. It must have looked like a hand
waving a piece of paper in the air. She turned to look at me.
We shook hands a little more and, before letting go, said she hoped I
would do as She asked.

But You like that girl, don’t you?

Well, I like her too. A little too much? Don’t worry. I like her and
that means a great deal to me. And, in that moment, all the rest, all
that I knew I knew and all that I felt I felt, all the rest
was real, in fact... Well, sleep it off, old chap! Sleep it off!

_End_ 16. Away! Away!

A song of arms and voices: the open arms of men, their promises of
safe passage and the black sails of the ships that lie on the
horizon, the ships of all nations. They are calling out to me: We are
away—away. And other voices join with theirs: I am their song. And the
air is alive with their song as they call to me, like birds,
getting ready to fly, on the tips of their great and powerful
wings.

_April_ 26. Mother is getting my first piano lesson in town. She
does so, she says, that I may learn in my new home far away from family
and friends what good music is and what it teaches. No. So be it.
No, Not yet! I want to learn for the first time the art
of composition and to know in the depths of my soul the true
secrets of my instrument.

_April_ 27. Old mother, old father, stand me forever and ever in your
memory.


Dublin, 1904.

Dublin, 1914.