No More Learning

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! Sir. Yes, sir. No, sir.
Jesus wept: and no wonder, by Christ!

I pull the wheezy bell of their shuttered cottage: and wait. They take
me for a dun, peer out from a coign of vantage.

--It's Stephen, sir.

--Let him in. Let Stephen in.

A bolt drawn back and Walter welcomes me.

--We thought you were someone else.

In his broad bed nuncle Richie, pillowed and blanketed, extends over the
hillock of his knees a sturdy forearm. Cleanchested. He has washed the
upper moiety.

--Morrow, nephew.

He lays aside the lapboard whereon he drafts his bills of costs for
the eyes of master Goff and master Shapland Tandy, filing consents and
common searches and a writ of _Duces Tecum_. A bogoak frame over his
bald head: Wilde's _Requiescat_. The drone of his misleading whistle
brings Walter back.

--Yes, sir?

--Malt for Richie and Stephen, tell mother. Where is she?

--Bathing Crissie, sir.

Papa's little bedpal. Lump of love.

--No, uncle Richie. . .

--Call me Richie. Damn your lithia water. It lowers. Whusky!

--Uncle Richie, really. . .

--Sit down or by the law Harry I'll knock you down.

Walter squints vainly for a chair.

--He has nothing to sit down on, sir.

--He has nowhere to put it, you mug. Bring in our chippendale chair.
Would you like a bite of something? None of your damned lawdeedaw airs
here. The rich of a rasher fried with a herring? Sure? So much the
better. We have nothing in the house but backache pills.

_All'erta_!

He drones bars of Ferrando's _aria di sortita_. The grandest number,
Stephen, in the whole opera. Listen.

His tuneful whistle sounds again, finely shaded, with rushes of the air,
his fists bigdrumming on his padded knees.

This wind is sweeter.

Houses of decay, mine, his and all. You told the Clongowes gentry you
had an uncle a judge and an uncle a general in the army. Come out of
them, Stephen. Beauty is not there. Nor in the stagnant bay of Marsh's
library where you read the fading prophecies of Joachim Abbas. For whom?
The hundredheaded rabble of the cathedral close. A hater of his kind
ran from them to the wood of madness, his mane foaming in the moon,
his eyeballs stars. Houyhnhnm, horsenostrilled. The oval equine
faces, Temple, Buck Mulligan, Foxy Campbell, Lanternjaws. Abbas
father,--furious dean, what offence laid fire to their brains? Paff!
_Descende, calve, ut ne amplius decalveris_. A garland of grey hair
on his comminated head see him me clambering down to the footpace
(_descende_! ), clutching a monstrance, basiliskeyed. Get down, baldpoll!
A choir gives back menace and echo, assisting about the altar's horns,
the snorted Latin of jackpriests moving burly in their albs, tonsured
and oiled and gelded, fat with the fat of kidneys of wheat.

And at the same instant perhaps a priest round the corner is elevating
it. Dringdring! And two streets off another locking it into a pyx.
Dringadring! And in a ladychapel another taking housel all to his own
cheek. Dringdring! Down, up, forward, back. Dan Occam thought of that,
invincible doctor. A misty English morning the imp hypostasis tickled
his brain. Bringing his host down and kneeling he heard twine with his
second bell the first bell in the transept (he is lifting his) and,
rising, heard (now I am lifting) their two bells (he is kneeling) twang
in diphthong.

Cousin Stephen, you will never be a saint. Isle of saints. You were
awfully holy, weren't you? You prayed to the Blessed Virgin that you
might not have a red nose. You prayed to the devil in Serpentine avenue
that the fubsy widow in front might lift her clothes still more from the
wet street. _O si, certo_! Sell your soul for that, do, dyed rags pinned
round a squaw. More tell me, more still! ! On the top of the Howth tram
alone crying to the rain: Naked women! _naked women_! What about that,
eh?

What about what? What else were they invented for?

Reading two pages apiece of seven books every night, eh? I was young.
You bowed to yourself in the mirror, stepping forward to applause
earnestly, striking face. Hurray for the Goddamned idiot! Hray! No-one
saw: tell no-one. Books you were going to write with letters for titles.
Have you read his F? O yes, but I prefer Q. Yes, but W is wonderful. O
yes, W. Remember your epiphanies written on green oval leaves, deeply
deep, copies to be sent if you died to all the great libraries of the
world, including Alexandria? Someone was to read them there after a few
thousand years, a mahamanvantara. Pico della Mirandola like. Ay, very
like a whale. When one reads these strange pages of one long gone one
feels that one is at one with one who once. . .

The grainy sand had gone from under his feet. His boots trod again
a damp crackling mast, razorshells, squeaking pebbles, that on the
unnumbered pebbles beats, wood sieved by the shipworm, lost Armada.
Unwholesome sandflats waited to suck his treading soles, breathing
upward sewage breath, a pocket of seaweed smouldered in seafire under a
midden of man's ashes. He coasted them, walking warily. A porterbottle
stood up, stogged to its waist, in the cakey sand dough. A sentinel:
isle of dreadful thirst. Broken hoops on the shore; at the land a maze
of dark cunning nets; farther away chalkscrawled backdoors and on the
higher beach a dryingline with two crucified shirts. Ringsend: wigwams
of brown steersmen and master mariners. Human shells.

He halted. I have passed the way to aunt Sara's. Am I not going there?
Seems not. No-one about. He turned northeast and crossed the firmer sand
towards the Pigeonhouse.

_--Qui vous a mis dans cette fichue position? _

_--c'est le pigeon, Joseph. _

Patrice, home on furlough, lapped warm milk with me in the bar MacMahon.
Son of the wild goose, Kevin Egan of Paris. My father's a bird, he
lapped the sweet _lait chaud_ with pink young tongue, plump bunny's
face. Lap, _lapin. _ He hopes to win in the _gros lots_. About the nature
of women he read in Michelet. But he must send me _La Vie de Jesus_ by
M. Leo Taxil. Lent it to his friend.

_--C'est tordant, vous savez. Moi, je suis socialiste. Je ne crois pas
en l'existence de Dieu. Faut pas le dire a mon p-re. _

_--Il croit? _

_--Mon pere, oui. _

_Schluss_. He laps.

My Latin quarter hat. God, we simply must dress the character. I want
puce gloves. You were a student, weren't you? Of what in the other
devil's name? Paysayenn. P. C. N. , you know: _physiques, chimiques et
naturelles_. Aha. Eating your groatsworth of _mou en civet_, fleshpots
of Egypt, elbowed by belching cabmen. Just say in the most natural
tone: when I was in Paris; _boul' Mich'_, I used to. Yes, used to
carry punched tickets to prove an alibi if they arrested you for murder
somewhere. Justice. On the night of the seventeenth of February 1904 the
prisoner was seen by two witnesses. Other fellow did it: other me.
Hat, tie, overcoat, nose. _Lui, c'est moi_. You seem to have enjoyed
yourself.

Proudly walking. Whom were you trying to walk like? Forget: a
dispossessed. With mother's money order, eight shillings, the banging
door of the post office slammed in your face by the usher. Hunger
toothache. _Encore deux minutes_. Look clock. Must get. _Ferme_. Hired
dog! Shoot him to bloody bits with a bang shotgun, bits man spattered
walls all brass buttons. Bits all khrrrrklak in place clack back. Not
hurt? O, that's all right. Shake hands. See what I meant, see? O, that's
all right. Shake a shake. O, that's all only all right.

You were going to do wonders, what? Missionary to Europe after fiery
Columbanus. Fiacre and Scotus on their creepystools in heaven spilt from
their pintpots, loudlatinlaughing: _Euge! Euge_! Pretending to speak
broken English as you dragged your valise, porter threepence, across
the slimy pier at Newhaven. _Comment? _ Rich booty you brought back; _Le
Tutu_, five tattered numbers of _Pantalon Blanc et Culotte Rouge_; a
blue French telegram, curiosity to show:

--Mother dying come home father.

The aunt thinks you killed your mother. That's why she won't.

_Then here's a health to Mulligan's aunt
And I'll tell you the reason why.
She always kept things decent in
The Hannigan famileye. _


His feet marched in sudden proud rhythm over the sand furrows, along by
the boulders of the south wall. He stared at them proudly, piled stone
mammoth skulls. Gold light on sea, on sand, on boulders. The sun is
there, the slender trees, the lemon houses.

Paris rawly waking, crude sunlight on her lemon streets. Moist pith of
farls of bread, the froggreen wormwood, her matin incense, court
the air. Belluomo rises from the bed of his wife's lover's wife, the
kerchiefed housewife is astir, a saucer of acetic acid in her hand. In
Rodot's Yvonne and Madeleine newmake their tumbled beauties, shattering
with gold teeth _chaussons_ of pastry, their mouths yellowed with the
_pus_ of _flan breton_. Faces of Paris men go by, their wellpleased
pleasers, curled conquistadores.

Noon slumbers. Kevin Egan rolls gunpowder cigarettes through fingers
smeared with printer's ink, sipping his green fairy as Patrice his
white. About us gobblers fork spiced beans down their gullets. _Un demi
setier! _ A jet of coffee steam from the burnished caldron. She serves me
at his beck. _Il est irlandais. Hollandais? Non fromage. Deux irlandais,
nous, Irlande, vous savez ah, oui! _ She thought you wanted a cheese
_hollandais_. Your postprandial, do you know that word? Postprandial.
There was a fellow I knew once in Barcelona, queer fellow, used to call
it his postprandial. Well: _slainte_! Around the slabbed tables the
tangle of wined breaths and grumbling gorges. His breath hangs over our
saucestained plates, the green fairy's fang thrusting between his lips.
Of Ireland, the Dalcassians, of hopes, conspiracies, of Arthur Griffith
now, A E, pimander, good shepherd of men. To yoke me as his yokefellow,
our crimes our common cause. You're your father's son. I know the voice.
His fustian shirt, sanguineflowered, trembles its Spanish tassels at
his secrets. M. Drumont, famous journalist, Drumont, know what he called
queen Victoria? Old hag with the yellow teeth. _Vieille ogresse_
with the _dents jaunes_. Maud Gonne, beautiful woman, _La Patrie_, M.
Millevoye, Felix Faure, know how he died? Licentious men. The froeken,
_bonne a tout faire_, who rubs male nakedness in the bath at Upsala.
_Moi faire_, she said, _Tous les messieurs_. Not this _Monsieur_, I
said. Most licentious custom. Bath a most private thing. I wouldn't let
my brother, not even my own brother, most lascivious thing. Green eyes,
I see you. Fang, I feel. Lascivious people.

The blue fuse burns deadly between hands and burns clear. Loose
tobaccoshreds catch fire: a flame and acrid smoke light our corner. Raw
facebones under his peep of day boy's hat. How the head centre got away,
authentic version. Got up as a young bride, man, veil, orangeblossoms,
drove out the road to Malahide. Did, faith. Of lost leaders, the
betrayed, wild escapes. Disguises, clutched at, gone, not here.

Spurned lover. I was a strapping young gossoon at that time, I tell you.
I'll show you my likeness one day. I was, faith. Lover, for her love he
prowled with colonel Richard Burke, tanist of his sept, under the walls
of Clerkenwell and, crouching, saw a flame of vengeance hurl them upward
in the fog. Shattered glass and toppling masonry. In gay Paree he hides,
Egan of Paris, unsought by any save by me. Making his day's stations,
the dingy printingcase, his three taverns, the Montmartre lair he sleeps
short night in, rue de la Goutte-d'Or, damascened with flyblown faces of
the gone. Loveless, landless, wifeless. She is quite nicey comfy
without her outcast man, madame in rue Git-le-Coeur, canary and two
buck lodgers. Peachy cheeks, a zebra skirt, frisky as a young thing's.
Spurned and undespairing. Tell Pat you saw me, won't you? I wanted to
get poor Pat a job one time. _Mon fils_, soldier of France. I taught him
to sing _The boys of Kilkenny are stout roaring blades_. Know that old
lay? I taught Patrice that. Old Kilkenny: saint Canice, Strongbow's
castle on the Nore. Goes like this. O, O. He takes me, Napper Tandy, by
the hand.

_O, O THE BOYS OF
KILKENNY. . . _


Weak wasting hand on mine. They have forgotten Kevin Egan, not he them.
Remembering thee, O Sion.

He had come nearer the edge of the sea and wet sand slapped his boots.
The new air greeted him, harping in wild nerves, wind of wild air of
seeds of brightness. Here, I am not walking out to the Kish lightship,
am I? He stood suddenly, his feet beginning to sink slowly in the
quaking soil. Turn back.

Turning, he scanned the shore south, his feet sinking again slowly
in new sockets. The cold domed room of the tower waits. Through the
barbacans the shafts of light are moving ever, slowly ever as my
feet are sinking, creeping duskward over the dial floor. Blue dusk,
nightfall, deep blue night. In the darkness of the dome they wait,
their pushedback chairs, my obelisk valise, around a board of abandoned
platters. Who to clear it? He has the key. I will not sleep there when
this night comes. A shut door of a silent tower, entombing their--blind
bodies, the panthersahib and his pointer. Call: no answer. He lifted his
feet up from the suck and turned back by the mole of boulders. Take
all, keep all. My soul walks with me, form of forms. So in the moon's
midwatches I pace the path above the rocks, in sable silvered, hearing
Elsinore's tempting flood.

The flood is following me. I can watch it flow past from here. Get back
then by the Poolbeg road to the strand there. He climbed over the sedge
and eely oarweeds and sat on a stool of rock, resting his ashplant in a
grike.

A bloated carcass of a dog lay lolled on bladderwrack. Before him the
gunwale of a boat, sunk in sand. _Un coche ensable_ Louis Veuillot
called Gautier's prose. These heavy sands are language tide and wind
have silted here. And these, the stoneheaps of dead builders, a warren
of weasel rats. Hide gold there. Try it. You have some. Sands and
stones. Heavy of the past. Sir Lout's toys. Mind you don't get one
bang on the ear. I'm the bloody well gigant rolls all them bloody well
boulders, bones for my steppingstones. Feefawfum. I zmellz de bloodz odz
an Iridzman.

A point, live dog, grew into sight running across the sweep of sand.
Lord, is he going to attack me? Respect his liberty. You will not
be master of others or their slave. I have my stick. Sit tight. From
farther away, walking shoreward across from the crested tide, figures,
two. The two maries. They have tucked it safe mong the bulrushes.
Peekaboo. I see you. No, the dog. He is running back to them. Who?

Galleys of the Lochlanns ran here to beach, in quest of prey, their
bloodbeaked prows riding low on a molten pewter surf. Dane vikings,
torcs of tomahawks aglitter on their breasts when Malachi wore the
collar of gold. A school of turlehide whales stranded in hot noon,
spouting, hobbling in the shallows. Then from the starving cagework city
a horde of jerkined dwarfs, my people, with flayers' knives, running,
scaling, hacking in green blubbery whalemeat. Famine, plague and
slaughters. Their blood is in me, their lusts my waves. I moved among
them on the frozen Liffey, that I, a changeling, among the spluttering
resin fires. I spoke to no-one: none to me.

The dog's bark ran towards him, stopped, ran back. Dog of my enemy. I
just simply stood pale, silent, bayed about. _Terribilia meditans_. A
primrose doublet, fortune's knave, smiled on my fear. For that are you
pining, the bark of their applause? Pretenders: live their lives. The
Bruce's brother, Thomas Fitzgerald, silken knight, Perkin Warbeck,
York's false scion, in breeches of silk of whiterose ivory, wonder of
a day, and Lambert Simnel, with a tail of nans and sutlers, a scullion
crowned. All kings' sons. Paradise of pretenders then and now. He saved
men from drowning and you shake at a cur's yelping. But the courtiers
who mocked Guido in Or san Michele were in their own house. House of. . .
We don't want any of your medieval abstrusiosities. Would you do what he
did? A boat would be near, a lifebuoy. _Naturlich_, put there for you.
Would you or would you not? The man that was drowned nine days ago off
Maiden's rock. They are waiting for him now. The truth, spit it out. I
would want to. I would try. I am not a strong swimmer. Water cold soft.
When I put my face into it in the basin at Clongowes. Can't see! Who's
behind me? Out quickly, quickly! Do you see the tide flowing quickly in
on all sides, sheeting the lows of sand quickly, shellcocoacoloured? If
I had land under my feet. I want his life still to be his, mine to be
mine. A drowning man. His human eyes scream to me out of horror of his
death. I. . . With him together down. . . I could not save her. Waters:
bitter death: lost.

A woman and a man. I see her skirties. Pinned up, I bet.

Their dog ambled about a bank of dwindling sand, trotting, sniffing on
all sides. Looking for something lost in a past life. Suddenly he made
off like a bounding hare, ears flung back, chasing the shadow of a
lowskimming gull. The man's shrieked whistle struck his limp ears. He
turned, bounded back, came nearer, trotted on twinkling shanks. On a
field tenney a buck, trippant, proper, unattired. At the lacefringe of
the tide he halted with stiff forehoofs, seawardpointed ears. His
snout lifted barked at the wavenoise, herds of seamorse. They serpented
towards his feet, curling, unfurling many crests, every ninth, breaking,
plashing, from far, from farther out, waves and waves.

Cocklepickers.