No More Learning

A lump in my pocket: symbols soiled by greed and
misery.

--Don't carry it like that, Mr Deasy said. You'll pull it out somewhere
and lose it. You just buy one of these machines. You'll find them very
handy.

Answer something.

--Mine would be often empty, Stephen said.

The same room and hour, the same wisdom: and I the same. Three times
now. Three nooses round me here. Well? I can break them in this instant
if I will.

--Because you don't save, Mr Deasy said, pointing his finger. You don't
know yet what money is. Money is power. When you have lived as long as I
have. I know, I know. If youth but knew. But what does Shakespeare say?
_Put but money in thy purse. _

--Iago, Stephen murmured.

He lifted his gaze from the idle shells to the old man's stare.

--He knew what money was, Mr Deasy said. He made money. A poet, yes, but
an Englishman too. Do you know what is the pride of the English? Do you
know what is the proudest word you will ever hear from an Englishman's
mouth?

The seas' ruler. His seacold eyes looked on the empty bay: it seems
history is to blame: on me and on my words, unhating.

--That on his empire, Stephen said, the sun never sets.

--Ba! Mr Deasy cried. That's not English. A French Celt said that. He
tapped his savingsbox against his thumbnail.

--I will tell you, he said solemnly, what is his proudest boast. _I paid
my way. _

Good man, good man.

_--I paid my way. I never borrowed a shilling in my life. _ Can you feel
that? _I owe nothing. _ Can you?

Mulligan, nine pounds, three pairs of socks, one pair brogues, ties.
Curran, ten guineas. McCann, one guinea. Fred Ryan, two shillings.
Temple, two lunches. Russell, one guinea, Cousins, ten shillings, Bob
Reynolds, half a guinea, Koehler, three guineas, Mrs MacKernan, five
weeks' board. The lump I have is useless.

--For the moment, no, Stephen answered.

Mr Deasy laughed with rich delight, putting back his savingsbox.

--I knew you couldn't, he said joyously. But one day you must feel it.
We are a generous people but we must also be just.

--I fear those big words, Stephen said, which make us so unhappy.

Mr Deasy stared sternly for some moments over the mantelpiece at the
shapely bulk of a man in tartan filibegs: Albert Edward, prince of
Wales.

--You think me an old fogey and an old tory, his thoughtful voice said.
I saw three generations since O'Connell's time. I remember the famine in
'46. Do you know that the orange lodges agitated for repeal of the
union twenty years before O'Connell did or before the prelates of your
communion denounced him as a demagogue? You fenians forget some things.

Glorious, pious and immortal memory. The lodge of Diamond in Armagh the
splendid behung with corpses of papishes. Hoarse, masked and armed, the
planters' covenant. The black north and true blue bible. Croppies lie
down.

Stephen sketched a brief gesture.

--I have rebel blood in me too, Mr Deasy said. On the spindle side. But
I am descended from sir John Blackwood who voted for the union. We are
all Irish, all kings' sons.

--Alas, Stephen said.

--_Per vias rectas_, Mr Deasy said firmly, was his motto. He voted for
it and put on his topboots to ride to Dublin from the Ards of Down to do
so.

_Lal the ral the ra
The rocky road to Dublin. _


A gruff squire on horseback with shiny topboots. Soft day, sir John!
Soft day, your honour! . . . Day! . . . Day! . . . Two topboots jog dangling
on to Dublin. Lal the ral the ra. Lal the ral the raddy.

--That reminds me, Mr Deasy said. You can do me a favour, Mr Dedalus,
with some of your literary friends. I have a letter here for the press.
Sit down a moment. I have just to copy the end.

He went to the desk near the window, pulled in his chair twice and read
off some words from the sheet on the drum of his typewriter.

--Sit down. Excuse me, he said over his shoulder, _the dictates of
common sense. _ Just a moment.

He peered from under his shaggy brows at the manuscript by his elbow
and, muttering, began to prod the stiff buttons of the keyboard slowly,
sometimes blowing as he screwed up the drum to erase an error.

Stephen seated himself noiselessly before the princely presence. Framed
around the walls images of vanished horses stood in homage, their meek
heads poised in air: lord Hastings' Repulse, the duke of Westminster's
Shotover, the duke of Beaufort's Ceylon, _prix de Paris_, 1866. Elfin
riders sat them, watchful of a sign. He saw their speeds, backing king's
colours, and shouted with the shouts of vanished crowds.

--Full stop, Mr Deasy bade his keys. But prompt ventilation of this
allimportant question. . .

Where Cranly led me to get rich quick, hunting his winners among the
mudsplashed brakes, amid the bawls of bookies on their pitches and reek
of the canteen, over the motley slush. Fair Rebel! Fair Rebel! Even
money the favourite: ten to one the field. Dicers and thimbleriggers
we hurried by after the hoofs, the vying caps and jackets and past
the meatfaced woman, a butcher's dame, nuzzling thirstily her clove of
orange.

Shouts rang shrill from the boys' playfield and a whirring whistle.

Again: a goal. I am among them, among their battling bodies in a medley,
the joust of life. You mean that knockkneed mother's darling who seems
to be slightly crawsick? Jousts. Time shocked rebounds, shock by shock.
Jousts, slush and uproar of battles, the frozen deathspew of the slain,
a shout of spearspikes baited with men's bloodied guts.

--Now then, Mr Deasy said, rising.

He came to the table, pinning together his sheets. Stephen stood up.

--I have put the matter into a nutshell, Mr Deasy said. It's about
the foot and mouth disease. Just look through it. There can be no two
opinions on the matter.

May I trespass on your valuable space. That doctrine of _laissez faire_
which so often in our history. Our cattle trade. The way of all our old
industries. Liverpool ring which jockeyed the Galway harbour scheme.
European conflagration. Grain supplies through the narrow waters of
the channel. The pluterperfect imperturbability of the department of
agriculture. Pardoned a classical allusion. Cassandra. By a woman who
was no better than she should be. To come to the point at issue.

--I don't mince words, do I? Mr Deasy asked as Stephen read on.

Foot and mouth disease. Known as Koch's preparation. Serum and virus.
Percentage of salted horses. Rinderpest. Emperor's horses at Murzsteg,
lower Austria. Veterinary surgeons. Mr Henry Blackwood Price. Courteous
offer a fair trial. Dictates of common sense. Allimportant question. In
every sense of the word take the bull by the horns. Thanking you for the
hospitality of your columns.

--I want that to be printed and read, Mr Deasy said. You will see at the
next outbreak they will put an embargo on Irish cattle. And it can
be cured. It is cured. My cousin, Blackwood Price, writes to me it is
regularly treated and cured in Austria by cattledoctors there. They
offer to come over here. I am trying to work up influence with
the department. Now I'm going to try publicity. I am surrounded by
difficulties, by. . . intrigues by. . . backstairs influence by. . .

He raised his forefinger and beat the air oldly before his voice spoke.

--Mark my words, Mr Dedalus, he said. England is in the hands of the
jews. In all the highest places: her finance, her press. And they are
the signs of a nation's decay. Wherever they gather they eat up the
nation's vital strength. I have seen it coming these years. As sure
as we are standing here the jew merchants are already at their work of
destruction. Old England is dying.

He stepped swiftly off, his eyes coming to blue life as they passed a
broad sunbeam. He faced about and back again.

--Dying, he said again, if not dead by now.

_The harlot's cry from street to street
Shall weave old England's windingsheet. _


His eyes open wide in vision stared sternly across the sunbeam in which
he halted.

--A merchant, Stephen said, is one who buys cheap and sells dear, jew or
gentile, is he not?

--They sinned against the light, Mr Deasy said gravely. And you can see
the darkness in their eyes. And that is why they are wanderers on the
earth to this day.

On the steps of the Paris stock exchange the goldskinned men quoting
prices on their gemmed fingers. Gabble of geese. They swarmed loud,
uncouth about the temple, their heads thickplotting under maladroit silk
hats. Not theirs: these clothes, this speech, these gestures. Their full
slow eyes belied the words, the gestures eager and unoffending, but
knew the rancours massed about them and knew their zeal was vain. Vain
patience to heap and hoard. Time surely would scatter all. A hoard
heaped by the roadside: plundered and passing on.
Their eyes knew their
years of wandering and, patient, knew the dishonours of their flesh.

--Who has not? Stephen said.

--What do you mean? Mr Deasy asked.

He came forward a pace and stood by the table. His underjaw fell
sideways open uncertainly. Is this old wisdom? He waits to hear from me.

--History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.

From the playfield the boys raised a shout. A whirring whistle: goal.
What if that nightmare gave you a back kick?

--The ways of the Creator are not our ways, Mr Deasy said. All human
history moves towards one great goal, the manifestation of God.

Stephen jerked his thumb towards the window, saying:

--That is God.

Hooray! Ay! Whrrwhee!

--What? Mr Deasy asked.

--A shout in the street, Stephen answered, shrugging his shoulders.

Mr Deasy looked down and held for awhile the wings of his nose tweaked
between his fingers. Looking up again he set them free.

--I am happier than you are, he said. We have committed many errors and
many sins. A woman brought sin into the world. For a woman who was no
better than she should be, Helen, the runaway wife of Menelaus, ten
years the Greeks made war on Troy. A faithless wife first brought the
strangers to our shore here, MacMurrough's wife and her leman, O'Rourke,
prince of Breffni. A woman too brought Parnell low. Many errors, many
failures but not the one sin. I am a struggler now at the end of my
days. But I will fight for the right till the end.

_For Ulster will fight
And Ulster will be right. _


Stephen raised the sheets in his hand.

--Well, sir, he began. . .

--I foresee, Mr Deasy said, that you will not remain here very long
at this work. You were not born to be a teacher, I think. Perhaps I am
wrong.

--A learner rather, Stephen said.

And here what will you learn more?

Mr Deasy shook his head.

--Who knows? he said. To learn one must be humble. But life is the great
teacher.

Stephen rustled the sheets again.

--As regards these, he began.

--Yes, Mr Deasy said. You have two copies there. If you can have them
published at once.

_ Telegraph. Irish Homestead. _

--I will try, Stephen said, and let you know tomorrow. I know two
editors slightly.

--That will do, Mr Deasy said briskly. I wrote last night to Mr Field,
M. P. There is a meeting of the cattletraders' association today at the
City Arms hotel. I asked him to lay my letter before the meeting. You
see if you can get it into your two papers. What are they?

_--The Evening Telegraph. . . _

--That will do, Mr Deasy said. There is no time to lose. Now I have to
answer that letter from my cousin.

--Good morning, sir, Stephen said, putting the sheets in his pocket.
Thank you.

--Not at all, Mr Deasy said as he searched the papers on his desk. I
like to break a lance with you, old as I am.

--Good morning, sir, Stephen said again, bowing to his bent back.

He went out by the open porch and down the gravel path under the trees,
hearing the cries of voices and crack of sticks from the playfield.
The lions couchant on the pillars as he passed out through the gate:
toothless terrors. Still I will help him in his fight. Mulligan will dub
me a new name: the bullockbefriending bard.

--Mr Dedalus!

Running after me. No more letters, I hope.

--Just one moment.

--Yes, sir, Stephen said, turning back at the gate.

Mr Deasy halted, breathing hard and swallowing his breath.

--I just wanted to say, he said. Ireland, they say, has the honour of
being the only country which never persecuted the jews. Do you know
that? No. And do you know why?

He frowned sternly on the bright air.

--Why, sir? Stephen asked, beginning to smile.

--Because she never let them in, Mr Deasy said solemnly.

A coughball of laughter leaped from his throat dragging after it a
rattling chain of phlegm. He turned back quickly, coughing, laughing,
his lifted arms waving to the air.

--She never let them in, he cried again through his laughter as he
stamped on gaitered feet over the gravel of the path. That's why.

On his wise shoulders through the checkerwork of leaves the sun flung
spangles, dancing coins.


Ineluctable modality of the visible: at least that if no more, thought
through my eyes. Signatures of all things I am here to read, seaspawn
and seawrack, the nearing tide, that rusty boot. Snotgreen, bluesilver,
rust: coloured signs. Limits of the diaphane. But he adds: in bodies.
Then he was aware of them bodies before of them coloured. How? By
knocking his sconce against them, sure. Go easy. Bald he was and a
millionaire, _maestro di color che sanno_. Limit of the diaphane in. Why
in? Diaphane, adiaphane. If you can put your five fingers through it it
is a gate, if not a door. Shut your eyes and see.


Stephen closed his eyes to hear his boots crush crackling wrack and
shells. You are walking through it howsomever. I am, a stride at a time.
A very short space of time through very short times of space. Five, six:
the _nacheinander_. Exactly: and that is the ineluctable modality of the
audible. Open your eyes. No. Jesus! If I fell over a cliff that beetles
o'er his base, fell through the _nebeneinander_ ineluctably! I am
getting on nicely in the dark. My ash sword hangs at my side. Tap with
it: they do. My two feet in his boots are at the ends of his legs,
_nebeneinander_. Sounds solid: made by the mallet of _Los Demiurgos_.
Am I walking into eternity along Sandymount strand? Crush, crack, crick,
crick. Wild sea money. Dominie Deasy kens them a'. Won't you come to
Sandymount, Madeline the mare?


Rhythm begins, you see. I hear. Acatalectic tetrameter of iambs
marching. No, agallop: _deline the mare_.

Open your eyes now. I will. One moment. Has all vanished since? If I
open and am for ever in the black adiaphane. _Basta_! I will see if I
can see.

See now. There all the time without you: and ever shall be, world
without end.

They came down the steps from Leahy's terrace prudently, _Frauenzimmer_:
and down the shelving shore flabbily, their splayed feet sinking in
the silted sand. Like me, like Algy, coming down to our mighty mother.
Number one swung lourdily her midwife's bag, the other's gamp poked in
the beach. From the liberties, out for the day. Mrs Florence MacCabe,
relict of the late Patk MacCabe, deeply lamented, of Bride Street. One
of her sisterhood lugged me squealing into life. Creation from nothing.
What has she in the bag? A misbirth with a trailing navelcord, hushed
in ruddy wool. The cords of all link back, strandentwining cable of
all flesh. That is why mystic monks. Will you be as gods? Gaze in your
omphalos. Hello! Kinch here. Put me on to Edenville. Aleph, alpha:
nought, nought, one.

Spouse and helpmate of Adam Kadmon: Heva, naked Eve. She had no navel.
Gaze. Belly without blemish, bulging big, a buckler of taut vellum,
no, whiteheaped corn, orient and immortal, standing from everlasting to
everlasting. Womb of sin.

Wombed in sin darkness I was too, made not begotten. By them, the man
with my voice and my eyes and a ghostwoman with ashes on her breath.
They clasped and sundered, did the coupler's will. From before the ages
He willed me and now may not will me away or ever. A _lex eterna_ stays
about Him. Is that then the divine substance wherein Father and Son are
consubstantial? Where is poor dear Arius to try conclusions? Warring
his life long upon the contransmagnificandjewbangtantiality. Illstarred
heresiarch' In a Greek watercloset he breathed his last: euthanasia.
With beaded mitre and with crozier, stalled upon his throne, widower of
a widowed see, with upstiffed omophorion, with clotted hinderparts.

Airs romped round him, nipping and eager airs. They are coming, waves.
The whitemaned seahorses, champing, brightwindbridled, the steeds of
Mananaan.

I mustn't forget his letter for the press. And after? The Ship, half
twelve. By the way go easy with that money like a good young imbecile.

Yes, I must.

His pace slackened. Here. Am I going to aunt Sara's or not? My
consubstantial father's voice. Did you see anything of your artist
brother Stephen lately? No? Sure he's not down in Strasburg terrace with
his aunt Sally? Couldn't he fly a bit higher than that, eh? And and and
and tell us, Stephen, how is uncle Si? O, weeping God, the things I
married into! De boys up in de hayloft. The drunken little costdrawer
and his brother, the cornet player. Highly respectable gondoliers! And
skeweyed Walter sirring his father, no less!