Ghoul! Chewer of corpses!
No, mother! Let me be and let me live.
– Kinch ahoy!
Buck Mulligan’s voice sang from within the tower. It came nearer up the staircase, calling again. Stephen, still trembling at his soul’s cry, heard warm running sunlight and in the air behind him friendly words.
– Dedalus, come down, like a good mosey. Breakfast is ready. Haines is apologising for waking us last night. It’s all right.
– I’m coming, Stephen said, turning.
– Do, for Jesus’ sake, Buck Mulligan said. For my sake and for all our sakes.
His head disappeared and reappeared.
– I told him your symbol of Irish art. He says it’s very clever. Touch him for a quid, will you? A guinea, I mean.
– I get paid this morning, Stephen said.
– The school kip? Buck Mulligan said. How much? Four quid? Lend us one.
– If you want it, Stephen said.
– Four shining sovereigns, Buck Mulligan cried with delight. We’ll have a glorious drunk to astonish the druidy druids. Four omnipotent sovereigns.
He flung up his hands and tramped down the stone stairs, singing out of tune with a Cockney accent:
– O, won’t we have a merry time,
Drinking whisky, beer and wine!
On coronation,
Coronation day!
O, won’t we have a merry time
On coronation day!
Warm sunshine merrying over the sea. The nickel shavingbowl shone, forgotten, on the parapet. Why should I bring it down? Or leave it there all day, forgotten friendship?
He went over to it, held it in his hands awhile, feeling its coolness, smelling the clammy slaver of the lather in which the brush was stuck. So I carried the boat of incense then at Clongowes. I am another now and yet the same. A servant too. A server of a servant.
In the gloomy domed livingroom of the tower Buck Mulligan’s gowned form moved briskly to and fro about the hearth, hiding and revealing its yellow glow. Two shafts of soft daylight fell across the flagged floor from the high barbacans: and at the meeting of their rays a cloud of coalsmoke and fumes of fried grease floated, turning.
– We’ll be choked, Buck Mulligan said. Haines, open that door, will you?
Stephen laid the shavingbowl on the locker. A tall figure rose from the hammock where it had been sitting, went to the doorway and pulled open the inner doors.
– Have you the key? a voice asked.
– Dedalus has it, Buck Mulligan said. Janey Mack, I’m choked!
He howled, without looking up from the fire:
– Kinch!
– It’s in the lock, Stephen said, coming forward.
The key scraped round harshly twice and, when the heavy door had been set ajar, welcome light and bright air entered. Haines stood at the doorway, looking out. Stephen haled his upended valise to the table and sat down to wait. Buck Mulligan tossed the fry on to the dish beside him. Then he carried the dish and a large teapot over to the table, set them down heavily and sighed with relief.
– I’m melting, he said, as the candle remarked when …. But, hush! Not a word more on that subject! Kinch, wake up! Bread, butter, honey. Haines, come in. The grub is ready. Bless us, O Lord, and these thy gifts. Where’s the sugar? O, jay, there’s no milk.
Stephen fetched the loaf and the pot of honey and the buttercooler from the locker. Buck Mulligan sat down in a sudden pet.
– What sort of a kip is this? he said. I told her to come after eight.
– We can drink it black, Stephen said thirstily. There’s a lemon in the locker.
– O, damn you and your Paris fads! Buck Mulligan said. I want Sandycove milk.
Haines came in from the doorway and said quietly:
– That woman is coming up with the milk.
– The blessings of God on you! Buck Mulligan cried, jumping up from his chair. Sit down. Pour out the tea there. The sugar is in the bag. Here, I can’t go fumbling at the damned eggs.
He hacked through the fry on the dish and slapped it out on three plates, saying:
– In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti.
Haines sat down to pour out the tea.
– I’m giving you two lumps each, he said. But, I say, Mulligan, you do make strong tea, don’t you?
Buck Mulligan, hewing thick slices from the loaf, said in an old woman’s wheedling voice:
– When I makes tea I makes tea, as old mother Grogan said. And when I makes water I makes water.
– By Jove, it is tea, Haines said.
Buck Mulligan went on hewing and wheedling:
– So I do, Mrs Cahill, says she. Begob, ma’am, says Mrs Cahill, God send you don’t make them in the one pot.
He lunged towards his messmates in turn a thick slice of bread, impaled on his knife.
– That’s folk, he said very earnestly, for your book, Haines. Five lines of text and ten pages of notes about the folk and the fishgods of Dundrum. Printed by the weird sisters in the year of the big wind.
He turned to Stephen and asked in a fine puzzled voice, lifting his brows:
– Can you recall, brother, is mother Grogan’s tea and water pot spoken of in the Mabinogion or is it in the Upanishads?
– I doubt it, said Stephen gravely.
– Do you now? Buck Mulligan said in the same tone. Your reasons, pray?
– I fancy, Stephen said as he ate, it did not exist in or out of the Mabinogion. Mother Grogan was, one imagines, a kinswoman of Mary Ann.
Buck Mulligan’s face smiled with delight.
– Charming! he said in a finical sweet voice, showing his white teeth and blinking his eyes pleasantly. Do you think she was? Quite charming!
Then, suddenly overclouding all his features, he growled in a hoarsened rasping voice as he hewed again vigorously at the loaf:
– For old Mary Ann
She doesn’t care a damn.
But, hising up her petticoats ….
He crammed his mouth with fry and munched and droned.
The doorway was darkened by an entering form.
– The milk, sir!
– Come in, ma’am, Mulligan said. Kinch, get the jug.
An old woman came forward and stood by Stephen’s elbow.
– That’s a lovely morning, sir, she said. Glory be to God.
– To whom? Mulligan said, glancing at her. Ah, to be sure!
Stephen reached back and took the milkjug from the locker.
– The islanders, Mulligan said to Haines casually, speak frequently of the collector of prepuces.
– How much, sir? asked the old woman.
– A quart, Stephen said.
He watched her pour into the measure and thence into the jug rich white milk, not hers. Old shrunken paps. She poured again a measureful and a tilly. Old and secret she had entered from a morning world, maybe a messenger. She praised the goodness of the milk, pouring it out. Crouching by a patient cow at daybreak in the lush field, a witch on her toadstool, her wrinkled fingers quick at the squirting dugs. They lowed about her whom they knew, dewsilky cattle. Silk of the kine and poor old woman, names given her in old times. A wandering crone, lowly form of an immortal serving her conqueror and her gay betrayer, their common cuckquean, a messenger from the secret morning. To serve or to upbraid, whether he could not telclass="underline" but scorned to beg her favour.
– It is indeed, ma’am, Buck Mulligan said, pouring milk into their cups.
– Taste it, sir, she said.
He drank at her bidding.
– If we could live on good food like that, he said to her somewhat loudly, we wouldn’t have the country full of rotten teeth and rotten guts. Living in a bogswamp, eating cheap food and the streets paved with dust, horsedung and consumptives’ spits.
– Are you a medical student, sir? the old woman asked.
– I am, ma’am, Buck Mulligan answered.
– Look at that now, she said.
Stephen listened in scornful silence. She bows her old head to a voice that speaks to her loudly, her bonesetter, her medicineman: me she slights. To the voice that will shrive and oil for the grave all there is of her but her woman’s unclean loins, of man’s flesh made not in God’s likeness, the serpent’s prey. And to the loud voice that now bids her be silent with wondering unsteady eyes.
– Do you understand what he says? Stephen asked her.
– Is it French you are talking, sir? the old woman said to Haines.
Haines spoke to her again a longer speech, confidently.
– Irish, Buck Mulligan said. Is there Gaelic on you?
– I thought it was Irish, she said, by the sound of it. Are you from the west, sir?
– I am an Englishman, Haines answered.
– He’s English, Buck Mulligan said, and he thinks we ought to speak Irish in Ireland.
– Sure we ought to, the old woman said, and I’m ashamed I don’t speak the language myself. I’m told it’s a grand language by them that knows.
– Grand is no name for it, said Buck Mulligan. Wonderful entirely. Fill us out some more tea, Kinch. Would you like a cup, ma’am?