No More Learning

Or gas about
our lovely land. Gammon and spinach. Dublin Bakery Company's tearoom.
Debating societies. That republicanism is the best form of government.
That the language question should take precedence of the economic
question. Have your daughters inveigling them to your house. Stuff them
up with meat and drink. Michaelmas goose. Here's a good lump of thyme
seasoning under the apron for you. Have another quart of goosegrease
before it gets too cold. Halffed enthusiasts. Penny roll and a walk with
the band. No grace for the carver. The thought that the other chap pays
best sauce in the world. Make themselves thoroughly at home. Show us
over those apricots, meaning peaches. The not far distant day. Homerule
sun rising up in the northwest.

His smile faded as he walked, a heavy cloud hiding the sun slowly,
shadowing Trinity's surly front. Trams passed one another, ingoing,
outgoing, clanging. Useless words. Things go on same, day after day:
squads of police marching out, back: trams in, out. Those two loonies
mooching about. Dignam carted off. Mina Purefoy swollen belly on a
bed groaning to have a child tugged out of her. One born every second
somewhere. Other dying every second. Since I fed the birds five minutes.
Three hundred kicked the bucket. Other three hundred born, washing the
blood off, all are washed in the blood of the lamb, bawling maaaaaa.

Cityful passing away, other cityful coming, passing away too: other
coming on, passing on. Houses, lines of houses, streets, miles of
pavements, piledup bricks, stones. Changing hands. This owner, that.
Landlord never dies they say. Other steps into his shoes when he gets
his notice to quit. They buy the place up with gold and still they have
all the gold. Swindle in it somewhere. Piled up in cities, worn away age
after age. Pyramids in sand. Built on bread and onions. Slaves Chinese
wall. Babylon. Big stones left. Round towers. Rest rubble, sprawling
suburbs, jerrybuilt. Kerwan's mushroom houses built of breeze. Shelter,
for the night.

No-one is anything.

This is the very worst hour of the day. Vitality. Dull, gloomy: hate
this hour. Feel as if I had been eaten and spewed.

Provost's house. The reverend Dr Salmon: tinned salmon. Well tinned in
there. Like a mortuary chapel. Wouldn't live in it if they paid me. Hope
they have liver and bacon today. Nature abhors a vacuum.

The sun freed itself slowly and lit glints of light among the silverware
opposite in Walter Sexton's window by which John Howard Parnell passed,
unseeing.

There he is: the brother. Image of him. Haunting face. Now that's a
coincidence. Course hundreds of times you think of a person and don't
meet him. Like a man walking in his sleep. No-one knows him. Must be a
corporation meeting today. They say he never put on the city marshal's
uniform since he got the job. Charley Kavanagh used to come out on
his high horse, cocked hat, puffed, powdered and shaved. Look at the
woebegone walk of him. Eaten a bad egg. Poached eyes on ghost. I have a
pain. Great man's brother: his brother's brother. He'd look nice on the
city charger. Drop into the D. B. C. probably for his coffee, play chess
there. His brother used men as pawns. Let them all go to pot. Afraid to
pass a remark on him. Freeze them up with that eye of his. That's the
fascination: the name. All a bit touched. Mad Fanny and his other sister
Mrs Dickinson driving about with scarlet harness. Bolt upright lik
surgeon M'Ardle. Still David Sheehy beat him for south Meath. Apply
for the Chiltern Hundreds and retire into public life. The patriot's
banquet. Eating orangepeels in the park. Simon Dedalus said when they
put him in parliament that Parnell would come back from the grave and
lead him out of the house of commons by the arm.

--Of the twoheaded octopus, one of whose heads is the head upon which
the ends of the world have forgotten to come while the other speaks with
a Scotch accent. The tentacles. . .

They passed from behind Mr Bloom along the curbstone. Beard and bicycle.
Young woman.

And there he is too. Now that's really a coincidence: second time.
Coming events cast their shadows before. With the approval of the
eminent poet, Mr Geo. Russell. That might be Lizzie Twigg with him. A.
E. : what does that mean? Initials perhaps. Albert Edward, Arthur Edmund,
Alphonsus Eb Ed El Esquire. What was he saying? The ends of the world
with a Scotch accent. Tentacles: octopus. Something occult: symbolism.
Holding forth. She's taking it all in. Not saying a word. To aid
gentleman in literary work.

His eyes followed the high figure in homespun, beard and bicycle,
a listening woman at his side. Coming from the vegetarian. Only
weggebobbles and fruit. Don't eat a beefsteak. If you do the eyes of
that cow will pursue you through all eternity. They say it's healthier.
Windandwatery though. Tried it. Keep you on the run all day. Bad as
a bloater. Dreams all night. Why do they call that thing they gave me
nutsteak? Nutarians. Fruitarians. To give you the idea you are eating
rumpsteak. Absurd. Salty too. They cook in soda. Keep you sitting by the
tap all night.

Her stockings are loose over her ankles. I detest that: so tasteless.
Those literary etherial people they are all. Dreamy, cloudy,
symbolistic. Esthetes they are. I wouldn't be surprised if it was that
kind of food you see produces the like waves of the brain the poetical.
For example one of those policemen sweating Irish stew into their shirts
you couldn't squeeze a line of poetry out of him. Don't know what poetry
is even. Must be in a certain mood.

_The dreamy cloudy gull
Waves o'er the waters dull. _

He crossed at Nassau street corner and stood before the window of Yeates
and Son, pricing the fieldglasses. Or will I drop into old Harris's and
have a chat with young Sinclair? Wellmannered fellow. Probably at his
lunch. Must get those old glasses of mine set right. Goerz lenses six
guineas. Germans making their way everywhere. Sell on easy terms to
capture trade. Undercutting. Might chance on a pair in the railway lost
property office. Astonishing the things people leave behind them in
trains and cloakrooms. What do they be thinking about? Women too.
Incredible. Last year travelling to Ennis had to pick up that farmer's
daughter's ba and hand it to her at Limerick junction. Unclaimed money
too. There's a little watch up there on the roof of the bank to test
those glasses by.


His lids came down on the lower rims of his irides. Can't see it. If you
imagine it's there you can almost see it. Can't see it.

He faced about and, standing between the awnings, held out his right
hand at arm's length towards the sun. Wanted to try that often. Yes:
completely. The tip of his little finger blotted out the sun's disk.
Must be the focus where the rays cross. If I had black glasses.
Interesting. There was a lot of talk about those sunspots when we
were in Lombard street west. Looking up from the back garden. Terrific
explosions they are. There will be a total eclipse this year: autumn
some time.

Now that I come to think of it that ball falls at Greenwich time. It's
the clock is worked by an electric wire from Dunsink. Must go out there
some first Saturday of the month. If I could get an introduction to
professor Joly or learn up something about his family. That would do to:
man always feels complimented. Flattery where least expected. Nobleman
proud to be descended from some king's mistress. His foremother. Lay it
on with a trowel. Cap in hand goes through the land. Not go in and blurt
out what you know you're not to: what's parallax? Show this gentleman
the door.

Ah.

His hand fell to his side again.

Never know anything about it. Waste of time. Gasballs spinning about,
crossing each other, passing. Same old dingdong always.
Gas: then solid:
then world: then cold: then dead shell drifting around, frozen rock,
like that pineapple rock. The moon. Must be a new moon out, she said. I
believe there is.

He went on by la maison Claire.

Wait. The full moon was the night we were Sunday fortnight exactly there
is a new moon. Walking down by the Tolka. Not bad for a Fairview moon.
She was humming. The young May moon she's beaming, love. He other side
of her. Elbow, arm. He. Glowworm's la-amp is gleaming, love. Touch.
Fingers. Asking. Answer. Yes.

Stop. Stop. If it was it was. Must.

Mr Bloom, quickbreathing, slowlier walking passed Adam court.

With a keep quiet relief his eyes took note this is the street here
middle of the day of Bob Doran's bottle shoulders. On his annual bend,
M Coy said. They drink in order to say or do something or _cherchez la
femme_. Up in the Coombe with chummies and streetwalkers and then the
rest of the year sober as a judge.

Yes. Thought so. Sloping into the Empire. Gone. Plain soda would do him
good. Where Pat Kinsella had his Harp theatre before Whitbred ran the
Queen's. Broth of a boy. Dion Boucicault business with his harvestmoon
face in a poky bonnet. Three Purty Maids from School. How time flies,
eh? Showing long red pantaloons under his skirts. Drinkers, drinking,
laughed spluttering, their drink against their breath. More power, Pat.
Coarse red: fun for drunkards: guffaw and smoke. Take off that white
hat. His parboiled eyes. Where is he now? Beggar somewhere. The harp
that once did starve us all.

I was happier then. Or was that I? Or am I now I? Twentyeight I was. She
twentythree. When we left Lombard street west something changed. Could
never like it again after Rudy. Can't bring back time. Like holding
water in your hand. Would you go back to then? Just beginning then.
Would you? Are you not happy in your home you poor little naughty boy?
Wants to sew on buttons for me. I must answer. Write it in the library.

Grafton street gay with housed awnings lured his senses. Muslin prints,
silkdames and dowagers, jingle of harnesses, hoofthuds lowringing in the
baking causeway. Thick feet that woman has in the white stockings. Hope
the rain mucks them up on her. Countrybred chawbacon. All the beef to
the heels were in. Always gives a woman clumsy feet. Molly looks out of
plumb.

He passed, dallying, the windows of Brown Thomas, silk mercers. Cascades
of ribbons. Flimsy China silks. A tilted urn poured from its mouth a
flood of bloodhued poplin: lustrous blood. The huguenots brought that
here. _La causa e santa_! Tara tara. Great chorus that. Taree tara. Must
be washed in rainwater. Meyerbeer. Tara: bom bom bom.

Pincushions. I'm a long time threatening to buy one. Sticking them all
over the place. Needles in window curtains.

He bared slightly his left forearm. Scrape: nearly gone. Not today
anyhow. Must go back for that lotion. For her birthday perhaps.
Junejulyaugseptember eighth. Nearly three months off. Then she mightn't
like it. Women won't pick up pins. Say it cuts lo.

Gleaming silks, petticoats on slim brass rails, rays of flat silk
stockings.

Useless to go back. Had to be. Tell me all.

High voices. Sunwarm silk. Jingling harnesses. All for a woman, home and
houses, silkwebs, silver, rich fruits spicy from Jaffa. Agendath Netaim.
Wealth of the world.

A warm human plumpness settled down on his brain. His brain yielded.
Perfume of embraces all him assailed. With hungered flesh obscurely, he
mutely craved to adore.

Duke street. Here we are. Must eat. The Burton. Feel better then.

He turned Combridge's corner, still pursued. Jingling, hoofthuds.
Perfumed bodies, warm, full. All kissed, yielded: in deep summer fields,
tangled pressed grass, in trickling hallways of tenements, along sofas,
creaking beds.

--Jack, love!

--Darling!

--Kiss me, Reggy!

--My boy!

--Love!

His heart astir he pushed in the door of the Burton restaurant. Stink
gripped his trembling breath: pungent meatjuice, slush of greens. See
the animals feed.

Men, men, men.

Perched on high stools by the bar, hats shoved back, at the tables
calling for more bread no charge, swilling, wolfing gobfuls of sloppy
food, their eyes bulging, wiping wetted moustaches. A pallid suetfaced
young man polished his tumbler knife fork and spoon with his napkin. New
set of microbes. A man with an infant's saucestained napkin tucked round
him shovelled gurgling soup down his gullet. A man spitting back on his
plate: halfmasticated gristle: gums: no teeth to chewchewchew it. Chump
chop from the grill. Bolting to get it over. Sad booser's eyes. Bitten
off more than he can chew. Am I like that? See ourselves as others see
us. Hungry man is an angry man. Working tooth and jaw. Don't! O! A bone!
That last pagan king of Ireland Cormac in the schoolpoem choked himself
at Sletty southward of the Boyne. Wonder what he was eating. Something
galoptious. Saint Patrick converted him to Christianity. Couldn't
swallow it all however.

--Roast beef and cabbage.

--One stew.

Smells of men. His gorge rose. Spaton sawdust, sweetish warmish
cigarette smoke, reek of plug, spilt beer, men's beery piss, the stale
of ferment.

Couldn't eat a morsel here. Fellow sharpening knife and fork to eat all
before him, old chap picking his tootles. Slight spasm, full, chewing
the cud. Before and after. Grace after meals. Look on this picture then
on that. Scoffing up stewgravy with sopping sippets of bread. Lick it
off the plate, man! Get out of this.

He gazed round the stooled and tabled eaters, tightening the wings of
his nose.

--Two stouts here.

--One corned and cabbage.

That fellow ramming a knifeful of cabbage down as if his life depended
on it. Good stroke. Give me the fidgets to look. Safer to eat from his
three hands. Tear it limb from limb. Second nature to him. Born with a
silver knife in his mouth. That's witty, I think. Or no. Silver means
born rich. Born with a knife. But then the allusion is lost.

An illgirt server gathered sticky clattering plates. Rock, the head
bailiff, standing at the bar blew the foamy crown from his tankard. Well
up: it splashed yellow near his boot. A diner, knife and fork upright,
elbows on table, ready for a second helping stared towards the foodlift
across his stained square of newspaper. Other chap telling him something
with his mouth full. Sympathetic listener. Table talk. I munched hum un
thu Unchster Bunk un Munchday. Ha? Did you, faith?

Mr Bloom raised two fingers doubtfully to his lips. His eyes said:

--Not here. Don't see him.

Out. I hate dirty eaters.

He backed towards the door. Get a light snack in Davy Byrne's. Stopgap.
Keep me going. Had a good breakfast.

--Roast and mashed here.