Section 59 of 74 - Table of Contents
Mr Bloom and Stephen entered the cabman's shelter, an unpretentious
wooden structure, where, prior to then, he had rarely if ever been
before, the former having previously whispered to the latter a few hints
anent the keeper of it said to be the once famous Skin-the-Goat
Fitzharris, the invincible, though he could not vouch for the actual
facts which quite possibly there was not one vestige of truth in. A few
moments later saw our two noctambules safely seated in a discreet corner
only to be greeted by stares from the decidedly miscellaneous collection
of waifs and strays and other nondescript specimens of the genus HOMO
already there engaged in eating and drinking diversified by conversation
for whom they seemingly formed an object of marked curiosity.
--Now touching a cup of coffee, Mr Bloom ventured to plausibly suggest to
break the ice, it occurs to me you ought to sample something in the shape
of solid food, say, a roll of some description.
Accordingly his first act was with characteristic SANGFROID to order
these commodities quietly. The HOI POLLOI of jarvies or stevedores or
whatever they were after a cursory examination turned their eyes
apparently dissatisfied, away though one redbearded bibulous individual
portion of whose hair was greyish, a sailor probably, still stared for
some appreciable time before transferring his rapt attention to the
floor. Mr Bloom, availing himself of the right of free speech, he having
just a bowing acquaintance with the language in dispute, though, to be
sure, rather in a quandary over VOGLIO, remarked to his PROTEGE in an
audible tone of voice A PROPOS of the battle royal in the street which
was still raging fast and furious:
--A beautiful language. I mean for singing purposes. Why do you not write
your poetry in that language? BELLA POETRIA! It is so melodious and full.
BELLADONNA. VOGLIO.
Stephen, who was trying his dead best to yawn if he could, suffering from
lassitude generally, replied:
--To fill the ear of a cow elephant. They were haggling over money.
--Is that so? Mr Bloom asked. Of course, he subjoined pensively, at the
inward reflection of there being more languages to start with than were
absolutely necessary, it may be only the southern glamour that surrounds
it.
The keeper of the shelter in the middle of this TETE-A-TETE put a boiling
swimming cup of a choice concoction labelled coffee on the table and a
rather antediluvian specimen of a bun, or so it seemed. After which he
beat a retreat to his counter, Mr Bloom determining to have a good square
look at him later on so as not to appear to. For which reason he
encouraged Stephen to proceed with his eyes while he did the honours by
surreptitiously pushing the cup of what was temporarily supposed to be
called coffee gradually nearer him.
--Sounds are impostures, Stephen said after a pause of some little time,
like names. Cicero, Podmore. Napoleon, Mr Goodbody. Jesus, Mr Doyle.
Shakespeares were as common as Murphies. What's in a name?
--Yes, to be sure, Mr Bloom unaffectedly concurred. Of course. Our name
was changed too, he added, pushing the socalled roll across.
The redbearded sailor who had his weather eye on the newcomers boarded
Stephen, whom he had singled out for attention in particular, squarely by
asking:
--And what might your name be?
Just in the nick of time Mr Bloom touched his companion's boot but
Stephen, apparently disregarding the warm pressure from an unexpected
quarter, answered:
--Dedalus.
The sailor stared at him heavily from a pair of drowsy baggy eyes, rather
bunged up from excessive use of boose, preferably good old Hollands and
water.
--You know Simon Dedalus? he asked at length.
--I've heard of him, Stephen said.
Mr Bloom was all at sea for a moment, seeing the others evidently
eavesdropping too.
--He's Irish, the seaman bold affirmed, staring still in much the same
way and nodding. All Irish.
--All too Irish, Stephen rejoined.
As for Mr Bloom he could neither make head or tail of the whole business
and he was just asking himself what possible connection when the sailor
of his own accord turned to the other occupants of the shelter with the
remark:
--I seen him shoot two eggs off two bottles at fifty yards over his
shoulder. The lefthand dead shot.
Though he was slightly hampered by an occasional stammer and his gestures
being also clumsy as it was still he did his best to explain.
--Bottles out there, say. Fifty yards measured. Eggs on the bottles.
Cocks his gun over his shoulder. Aims.
He turned his body half round, shut up his right eye completely. Then he
screwed his features up someway sideways and glared out into the night
with an unprepossessing cast of countenance.
--Pom! he then shouted once.
The entire audience waited, anticipating an additional detonation, there
being still a further egg.
--Pom! he shouted twice.
Egg two evidently demolished, he nodded and winked, adding
bloodthirstily:
--BUFFALO BILL SHOOTS TO KILL,
NEVER MISSED NOR HE NEVER WILL.
A silence ensued till Mr Bloom for agreeableness' sake just felt like
asking him whether it was for a marksmanship competition like the Bisley.
--Beg pardon, the sailor said.
--Long ago? Mr Bloom pursued without flinching a hairsbreadth.
--Why, the sailor replied, relaxing to a certain extent under the magic
influence of diamond cut diamond, it might be a matter of ten years. He
toured the wide world with Hengler's Royal Circus. I seen him do that in
Stockholm.
--Curious coincidence, Mr Bloom confided to Stephen unobtrusively.
--Murphy's my name, the sailor continued. D. B. Murphy of Carrigaloe.
Know where that is?
--Queenstown harbour, Stephen replied.
--That's right, the sailor said. Fort Camden and Fort Carlisle. That's
where I hails from. I belongs there. That's where I hails from. My little
woman's down there. She's waiting for me, I know. FOR ENGLAND, HOME AND
BEAUTY. She's my own true wife I haven't seen for seven years now,
sailing about.
Mr Bloom could easily picture his advent on this scene, the homecoming to
the mariner's roadside shieling after having diddled Davy Jones, a rainy
night with a blind moon. Across the world for a wife. Quite a number of
stories there were on that particular Alice Ben Bolt topic, Enoch Arden
and Rip van Winkle and does anybody hereabouts remember Caoc O'Leary, a
favourite and most trying declamation piece by the way of poor John Casey
and a bit of perfect poetry in its own small way. Never about the runaway
wife coming back, however much devoted to the absentee. The face at the
window! Judge of his astonishment when he finally did breast the tape and
the awful truth dawned upon him anent his better half, wrecked in his
affections. You little expected me but I've come to stay and make a fresh
start. There she sits, a grasswidow, at the selfsame fireside. Believes
me dead, rocked in the cradle of the deep. And there sits uncle Chubb or
Tomkin, as the case might be, the publican of the Crown and Anchor, in
shirtsleeves, eating rumpsteak and onions. No chair for father. Broo! The
wind! Her brandnew arrival is on her knee, POST MORTEM child. With a high
ro! and a randy ro! and my galloping tearing tandy, O! Bow to the
inevitable. Grin and bear it. I remain with much love your brokenhearted
husband D B Murphy.
The sailor, who scarcely seemed to be a Dublin resident, turned to one of
the jarvies with the request:
--You don't happen to have such a thing as a spare chaw about you?
The jarvey addressed as it happened had not but the keeper took a die of
plug from his good jacket hanging on a nail and the desired object was
passed from hand to hand.
--Thank you, the sailor said.
He deposited the quid in his gob and, chewing and with some slow
stammers, proceeded:
--We come up this morning eleven o'clock. The threemaster ROSEVEAN from
Bridgwater with bricks. I shipped to get over. Paid off this afternoon.
There's my discharge. See? D. B. Murphy. A. B. S.
In confirmation of which statement he extricated from an inside pocket
and handed to his neighbour a not very cleanlooking folded document.
--You must have seen a fair share of the world, the keeper remarked,
leaning on the counter.
--Why, the sailor answered upon reflection upon it, I've circumnavigated
a bit since I first joined on. I was in the Red Sea. I was in China and
North America and South America. We was chased by pirates one voyage. I
seen icebergs plenty, growlers. I was in Stockholm and the Black Sea, the
Dardanelles under Captain Dalton, the best bloody man that ever scuttled
a ship. I seen Russia. GOSPODI POMILYOU. That's how the Russians prays.
--You seen queer sights, don't be talking, put in a jarvey.
--Why, the sailor said, shifting his partially chewed plug. I seen queer
things too, ups and downs. I seen a crocodile bite the fluke of an anchor
same as I chew that quid.
He took out of his mouth the pulpy quid and, lodging it between his
teeth, bit ferociously:
--Khaan! Like that. And I seen maneaters in Peru that eats corpses and
the livers of horses. Look here. Here they are. A friend of mine sent me.
He fumbled out a picture postcard from his inside pocket which seemed to
be in its way a species of repository and pushed it along the table. The
printed matter on it stated: CHOZA DE INDIOS. BENI, BOLIVIA.
All focussed their attention at the scene exhibited, a group of savage
women in striped loincloths, squatted, blinking, suckling, frowning,
sleeping amid a swarm of infants (there must have been quite a score of
them) outside some primitive shanties of osier.
--Chews coca all day, the communicative tarpaulin added. Stomachs like
breadgraters. Cuts off their diddies when they can't bear no more
children.
See them sitting there stark ballocknaked eating a dead horse's liver
raw.
His postcard proved a centre of attraction for Messrs the greenhorns for
several minutes if not more.
--Know how to keep them off? he inquired generally.
Nobody volunteering a statement he winked, saying:
--Glass. That boggles 'em. Glass.
Mr Bloom, without evincing surprise, unostentatiously turned over the
card to peruse the partially obliterated address and postmark. It ran as
follows: TARJETA POSTAL, SENOR A BOUDIN, GALERIA BECCHE, SANTIAGO, CHILE.
There was no message evidently, as he took particular notice. Though not
an implicit believer in the lurid story narrated (or the eggsniping
transaction for that matter despite William Tell and the Lazarillo-Don
Cesar de Bazan incident depicted in MARITANA on which occasion the
former's ball passed through the latter's hat) having detected a
discrepancy between his name (assuming he was the person he represented
himself to be and not sailing under false colours after having boxed the
compass on the strict q.t. somewhere) and the fictitious addressee of the
missive which made him nourish some suspicions of our friend's BONA FIDES
nevertheless it reminded him in a way of a longcherished plan he meant to
one day realise some Wednesday or Saturday of travelling to London via
long sea not to say that he had ever travelled extensively to any great
extent but he was at heart a born adventurer though by a trick of fate he
had consistently remained a landlubber except you call going to Holyhead
which was his longest. Martin Cunningham frequently said he would work a
pass through Egan but some deuced hitch or other eternally cropped up
with the net result that the scheme fell through. But even suppose it did
come to planking down the needful and breaking Boyd's heart it was not so
dear, purse permitting, a few guineas at the outside considering the fare
to Mullingar where he figured on going was five and six, there and back.
The trip would benefit health on account of the bracing ozone and be in
every way thoroughly pleasurable, especially for a chap whose liver was
out of order, seeing the different places along the route, Plymouth,
Falmouth, Southampton and so on culminating in an instructive tour of the
sights of the great metropolis, the spectacle of our modern Babylon where
doubtless he would see the greatest improvement, tower, abbey, wealth of
Park lane to renew acquaintance with. Another thing just struck him as a
by no means bad notion was he might have a gaze around on the spot to see
about trying to make arrangements about a concert tour of summer music
embracing the most prominent pleasure resorts, Margate with mixed bathing
and firstrate hydros and spas, Eastbourne, Scarborough, Margate and so
on, beautiful Bournemouth, the Channel islands and similar bijou spots,
which might prove highly remunerative. Not, of course, with a hole and
corner scratch company or local ladies on the job, witness Mrs C P M'Coy
type lend me your valise and I'll post you the ticket. No, something top
notch, an all star Irish caste, the Tweedy-Flower grand opera company
with his own legal consort as leading lady as a sort of counterblast to
the Elster Grimes and Moody-Manners, perfectly simple matter and he was
quite sanguine of success, providing puffs in the local papers could be
managed by some fellow with a bit of bounce who could pull the
indispensable wires and thus combine business with pleasure. But who?
That was the rub. Also, without being actually positive, it struck him a
great field was to be opened up in the line of opening up new routes to
keep pace with the times APROPOS of the Fishguard-Rosslare route which,
it was mooted, was once more on the TAPIS in the circumlocution
departments with the usual quantity of red tape and dillydallying of
effete fogeydom and dunderheads generally. A great opportunity there
certainly was for push and enterprise to meet the travelling needs of the
public at large, the average man, i.e. Brown, Robinson and Co.
It was a subject of regret and absurd as well on the face of it and no
small blame to our vaunted society that the man in the street, when the
system really needed toning up, for the matter of a couple of paltry
pounds was debarred from seeing more of the world they lived in instead
of being always and ever cooped up since my old stick-in-the-mud took me
for a wife. After all, hang it, they had their eleven and more humdrum
months of it and merited a radical change of VENUE after the grind of
city life in the summertime for choice when dame Nature is at her
spectacular best constituting nothing short of a new lease of life. There
were equally excellent opportunities for vacationists in the home island,
delightful sylvan spots for rejuvenation, offering a plethora of
attractions as well as a bracing tonic for the system in and around
Dublin and its picturesque environs even, Poulaphouca to which there was
a steamtram, but also farther away from the madding crowd in Wicklow,
rightly termed the garden of Ireland, an ideal neighbourhood for elderly
wheelmen so long as it didn't come down, and in the wilds of Donegal
where if report spoke true the COUP D'OEIL was exceedingly grand though
the lastnamed locality was not easily getatable so that the influx of
visitors was not as yet all that it might be considering the signal
benefits to be derived from it while Howth with its historic associations
and otherwise, Silken Thomas, Grace O'Malley, George IV, rhododendrons
several hundred feet above sealevel was a favourite haunt with all sorts
and conditions of men especially in the spring when young men's fancy,
though it had its own toll of deaths by falling off the cliffs by design
or accidentally, usually, by the way, on their left leg, it being only
about three quarters of an hour's run from the pillar. Because of course
uptodate tourist travelling was as yet merely in its infancy, so to
speak, and the accommodation left much to be desired. Interesting to
fathom it seemed to him from a motive of curiosity, pure and simple, was
whether it was the traffic that created the route or viceversa or the two
sides in fact. He turned back the other side of the card, picture, and
passed it along to Stephen.
--I seen a Chinese one time, related the doughty narrator, that had
little pills like putty and he put them in the water and they opened and
every pill was something different. One was a ship, another was a house,
another was a flower. Cooks rats in your soup, he appetisingly added, the
chinks does.
Possibly perceiving an expression of dubiosity on their faces the
globetrotter went on, adhering to his adventures.
--And I seen a man killed in Trieste by an Italian chap. Knife in his
back. Knife like that.
Whilst speaking he produced a dangerouslooking claspknife quite in
keeping with his character and held it in the striking position.
--In a knockingshop it was count of a tryon between two smugglers. Fellow
hid behind a door, come up behind him. Like that. PREPARE TO MEET YOUR
GOD, says he. Chuk! It went into his back up to the butt.
His heavy glance drowsily roaming about kind of defied their further
questions even should they by any chance want to.
--That's a good bit of steel, repeated he, examining his formidable
STILETTO.
After which harrowing DENOUEMENT sufficient to appal the stoutest he
snapped the blade to and stowed the weapon in question away as before in
his chamber of horrors, otherwise pocket.
--They're great for the cold steel, somebody who was evidently quite in
the dark said for the benefit of them all. That was why they thought the
park murders of the invincibles was done by foreigners on account of them
using knives.
At this remark passed obviously in the spirit of WHERE IGNORANCE IS BLISS
Mr B. and Stephen, each in his own particular way, both instinctively
exchanged meaning glances, in a religious silence of the strictly ENTRE
NOUS variety however, towards where Skin-the-Goat, ALIAS the keeper, not
turning a hair, was drawing spurts of liquid from his boiler affair. His
inscrutable face which was really a work of art, a perfect study in
itself, beggaring description, conveyed the impression that he didn't
understand one jot of what was going on. Funny, very!
There ensued a somewhat lengthy pause. One man was reading in fits and
starts a stained by coffee evening journal, another the card with the
natives CHOZA DE, another the seaman's discharge. Mr Bloom, so far as he
was personally concerned, was just pondering in pensive mood. He vividly
recollected when the occurrence alluded to took place as well as
yesterday, roughly some score of years previously in the days of the land
troubles, when it took the civilised world by storm, figuratively
speaking, early in the eighties, eightyone to be correct, when he was
just turned fifteen.
--Ay, boss, the sailor broke in. Give us back them papers.
The request being complied with he clawed them up with a scrape.
--Have you seen the rock of Gibraltar? Mr Bloom inquired.
The sailor grimaced, chewing, in a way that might be read as yes, ay or
no.
--Ah, you've touched there too, Mr Bloom said, Europa point, thinking he
had, in the hope that the rover might possibly by some reminiscences but
he failed to do so, simply letting spirt a jet of spew into the sawdust,
and shook his head with a sort of lazy scorn.
--What year would that be about? Mr B interrogated. Can you recall the
boats?
Our SOI-DISANT sailor munched heavily awhile hungrily before answering:
--I'm tired of all them rocks in the sea, he said, and boats and ships.
Salt junk all the time.
Tired seemingly, he ceased. His questioner perceiving that he was not
likely to get a great deal of change out of such a wily old customer,
fell to woolgathering on the enormous dimensions of the water about the
globe, suffice it to say that, as a casual glance at the map revealed, it
covered fully three fourths of it and he fully realised accordingly what
it meant to rule the waves. On more than one occasion, a dozen at the
lowest, near the North Bull at Dollymount he had remarked a superannuated
old salt, evidently derelict, seated habitually near the not particularly
redolent sea on the wall, staring quite obliviously at it and it at him,
dreaming of fresh woods and pastures new as someone somewhere sings. And
it left him wondering why. Possibly he had tried to find out the secret
for himself, floundering up and down the antipodes and all that sort of
thing and over and under, well, not exactly under, tempting the fates.
And the odds were twenty to nil there was really no secret about it at
all. Nevertheless, without going into the MINUTIAE of the business, the
eloquent fact remained that the sea was there in all its glory and in the
natural course of things somebody or other had to sail on it and fly in
the face of providence though it merely went to show how people usually
contrived to load that sort of onus on to the other fellow like the hell
idea and the lottery and insurance which were run on identically the same
lines so that for that very reason if no other lifeboat Sunday was a
highly laudable institution to which the public at large, no matter where
living inland or seaside, as the case might be, having it brought home to
them like that should extend its gratitude also to the harbourmasters and
coastguard service who had to man the rigging and push off and out amid
the elements whatever the season when duty called IRELAND EXPECTS THAT
EVERY MAN and so on and sometimes had a terrible time of it in the
wintertime not forgetting the Irish lights, Kish and others, liable to
capsize at any moment, rounding which he once with his daughter had
experienced some remarkably choppy, not to say stormy, weather.
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