No More Learning

Pretty thick that was certainly.

The pair parted company and Stephen rejoined Mr Bloom who, with his
practised eye, was not without perceiving that he had succumbed to the
blandiloquence of the other parasite. Alluding to the encounter he said,
laughingly, Stephen, that is:

--He is down on his luck. He asked me to ask you to ask somebody named
Boylan, a billsticker, to give him a job as a sandwichman.

At this intelligence, in which he seemingly evinced little interest, Mr
Bloom gazed abstractedly for the space of a half a second or so in the
direction of a bucketdredger, rejoicing in the farfamed name of Eblana,
moored alongside Customhouse quay and quite possibly out of repair,
whereupon he observed evasively:

--Everybody gets their own ration of luck, they say. Now you mention it
his face was familiar to me. But, leaving that for the moment, how much
did you part with, he queried, if I am not too inquisitive?

--Half a crown, Stephen responded. I daresay he needs it to sleep
somewhere.

--Needs! Mr Bloom ejaculated, professing not the least surprise at
the intelligence, I can quite credit the assertion and I guarantee he
invariably does. Everyone according to his needs or everyone according
to his deeds. But, talking about things in general, where, added he with
a smile, will you sleep yourself? Walking to Sandycove is out of
the question. And even supposing you did you won't get in after what
occurred at Westland Row station. Simply fag out there for nothing. I
don't mean to presume to dictate to you in the slightest degree but why
did you leave your father's house?

--To seek misfortune, was Stephen's answer.

--I met your respected father on a recent occasion, Mr Bloom
diplomatically returned, today in fact, or to be strictly accurate, on
yesterday. Where does he live at present? I gathered in the course of
conversation that he had moved.

--I believe he is in Dublin somewhere, Stephen answered unconcernedly.
Why?

--A gifted man, Mr Bloom said of Mr Dedalus senior, in more respects
than one and a born _raconteur_ if ever there was one. He takes great
pride, quite legitimate, out of you. You could go back perhaps, he
hasarded, still thinking of the very unpleasant scene at Westland Row
terminus when it was perfectly evident that the other two, Mulligan,
that is, and that English tourist friend of his, who eventually euchred
their third companion, were patently trying as if the whole bally
station belonged to them to give Stephen the slip in the confusion,
which they did.

There was no response forthcoming to the suggestion however, such as it
was, Stephen's mind's eye being too busily engaged in repicturing his
family hearth the last time he saw it with his sister Dilly sitting by
the ingle, her hair hanging down, waiting for some weak Trinidad shell
cocoa that was in the sootcoated kettle to be done so that she and he
could drink it with the oatmealwater for milk after the Friday herrings
they had eaten at two a penny with an egg apiece for Maggy, Boody and
Katey, the cat meanwhile under the mangle devouring a mess of eggshells
and charred fish heads and bones on a square of brown paper, in
accordance with the third precept of the church to fast and abstain
on the days commanded, it being quarter tense or if not, ember days or
something like that.

--No, Mr Bloom repeated again, I wouldn't personally repose much trust
in that boon companion of yours who contributes the humorous element, Dr
Mulligan, as a guide, philosopher and friend if I were in your shoes. He
knows which side his bread is buttered on though in all probability he
never realised what it is to be without regular meals. Of course you
didn't notice as much as I did. But it wouldn't occasion me the least
surprise to learn that a pinch of tobacco or some narcotic was put in
your drink for some ulterior object.

He understood however from all he heard that Dr Mulligan was a versatile
allround man, by no means confined to medicine only, who was rapidly
coming to the fore in his line and, if the report was verified, bade
fair to enjoy a flourishing practice in the not too distant future as
a tony medical practitioner drawing a handsome fee for his services
in addition to which professional status his rescue of that man from
certain drowning by artificial respiration and what they call first
aid at Skerries, or Malahide was it? , was, he was bound to admit, an
exceedingly plucky deed which he could not too highly praise, so that
frankly he was utterly at a loss to fathom what earthly reason could be
at the back of it except he put it down to sheer cussedness or jealousy,
pure and simple.

--Except it simply amounts to one thing and he is what they call picking
your brains, he ventured to throw out.

The guarded glance of half solicitude half curiosity augmented by
friendliness which he gave at Stephen's at present morose expression
of features did not throw a flood of light, none at all in fact on the
problem as to whether he had let himself be badly bamboozled to judge by
two or three lowspirited remarks he let drop or the other way about saw
through the affair and for some reason or other best known to himself
allowed matters to more or less. Grinding poverty did have that effect
and he more than conjectured that, high educational abilities though he
possessed, he experienced no little difficulty in making both ends meet.

Adjacent to the men's public urinal they perceived an icecream car round
which a group of presumably Italians in heated altercation were getting
rid of voluble expressions in their vivacious language in a particularly
animated way, there being some little differences between the parties.

--_Puttana madonna, che ci dia i quattrini! Ho ragione? Culo rotto! _

_--Intendiamoci. Mezzo sovrano piu. . . _

_--Dice lui, pero! _

_--Mezzo. _

_--Farabutto! Mortacci sui! _

_--Ma ascolta! Cinque la testa piu. . . _

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.

--There was a fellow sailed with me in the Rover, the old seadog,
himself a rover, proceeded, went ashore and took up a soft job as
gentleman's valet at six quid a month. Them are his trousers I've on
me and he gave me an oilskin and that jackknife. I'm game for that job,
shaving and brushup. I hate roaming about. There's my son now, Danny,
run off to sea and his mother got him took in a draper's in Cork where
he could be drawing easy money.

--What age is he? queried one hearer who, by the way, seen from the
side, bore a distant resemblance to Henry Campbell, the townclerk, away
from the carking cares of office, unwashed of course and in a seedy
getup and a strong suspicion of nosepaint about the nasal appendage.

--Why, the sailor answered with a slow puzzled utterance, my son, Danny?
He'd be about eighteen now, way I figure it.

The Skibbereen father hereupon tore open his grey or unclean anyhow
shirt with his two hands and scratched away at his chest on which was to
be seen an image tattooed in blue Chinese ink intended to represent an
anchor.

--There was lice in that bunk in Bridgwater, he remarked, sure as nuts.
I must get a wash tomorrow or next day. It's them black lads I objects
to. I hate those buggers. Suck your blood dry, they does.

Seeing they were all looking at his chest he accommodatingly dragged
his shirt more open so that on top of the timehonoured symbol of the
mariner's hope and rest they had a full view of the figure 16 and a
young man's sideface looking frowningly rather.

--Tattoo, the exhibitor explained. That was done when we were Iying
becalmed off Odessa in the Black Sea under Captain Dalton. Fellow, the
name of Antonio, done that. There he is himself, a Greek.

--Did it hurt much doing it? one asked the sailor.

That worthy, however, was busily engaged in collecting round the.
Someway in his. Squeezing or.

--See here, he said, showing Antonio. There he is cursing the mate. And
there he is now, he added, the same fellow, pulling the skin with his
fingers, some special knack evidently, and he laughing at a yarn.

And in point of fact the young man named Antonio's livid face did
actually look like forced smiling and the curious effect excited the
unreserved admiration of everybody including Skin-the-Goat, who this
time stretched over.

--Ay, ay, sighed the sailor, looking down on his manly chest. He's gone
too. Ate by sharks after. Ay, ay.

He let go of the skin so that the profile resumed the normal expression
of before.

--Neat bit of work, one longshoreman said.

--And what's the number for? loafer number two queried.

--Eaten alive? a third asked the sailor.

--Ay, ay, sighed again the latter personage, more cheerily this
time with some sort of a half smile for a brief duration only in the
direction of the questioner about the number. Ate. A Greek he was.

And then he added with rather gallowsbird humour considering his alleged
end:

_--As bad as old Antonio, For he left me on my ownio. _

The face of a streetwalker glazed and haggard under a black straw hat
peered askew round the door of the shelter palpably reconnoitring on
her own with the object of bringing more grist to her mill. Mr
Bloom, scarcely knowing which way to look, turned away on the moment
flusterfied but outwardly calm, and, picking up from the table the pink
sheet of the Abbey street organ which the jarvey, if such he was, had
laid aside, he picked it up and looked at the pink of the paper though
why pink. His reason for so doing was he recognised on the moment
round the door the same face he had caught a fleeting glimpse of that
afternoon on Ormond quay, the partially idiotic female, namely, of the
lane who knew the lady in the brown costume does be with you (Mrs B. )
and begged the chance of his washing. Also why washing which seemed
rather vague than not, your washing. Still candour compelled him to
admit he had washed his wife's undergarments when soiled in Holles
street and women would and did too a man's similar garments initialled
with Bewley and Draper's marking ink (hers were, that is) if they really
loved him, that is to say, love me, love my dirty shirt. Still just
then, being on tenterhooks, he desired the female's room more than her
company so it came as a genuine relief when the keeper made her a rude
sign to take herself off. Round the side of the Evening Telegraph he
just caught a fleeting glimpse of her face round the side of the door
with a kind of demented glassy grin showing that she was not exactly all
there, viewing with evident amusement the group of gazers round skipper
Murphy's nautical chest and then there was no more of her.

--The gunboat, the keeper said.

--It beats me, Mr Bloom confided to Stephen, medically I am speaking,
how a wretched creature like that from the Lock hospital reeking with
disease can be barefaced enough to solicit or how any man in his sober
senses, if he values his health in the least. Unfortunate creature! Of
course I suppose some man is ultimately responsible for her condition.
Still no matter what the cause is from. . .

Stephen had not noticed her and shrugged his shoulders, merely
remarking:

--In this country people sell much more than she ever had and do a
roaring trade. Fear not them that sell the body but have not power to
buy the soul. She is a bad merchant. She buys dear and sells cheap.

The elder man, though not by any manner of means an old maid or a prude,
said it was nothing short of a crying scandal that ought to be put a
stop to _instanter_ to say that women of that stamp (quite apart from
any oldmaidish squeamishness on the subject), a necessary evil, w ere
not licensed and medically inspected by the proper authorities, a thing,
he could truthfully state, he, as a _paterfamilias_, was a stalwart
advocate of from the very first start. Whoever embarked on a policy of
the sort, he said, and ventilated the matter thoroughly would confer a
lasting boon on everybody concerned.

--You as a good catholic, he observed, talking of body and soul, believe
in the soul. Or do you mean the intelligence, the brainpower as such,
as distinct from any outside object, the table, let us say, that cup. I
believe in that myself because it has been explained by competent men as
the convolutions of the grey matter. Otherwise we would never have such
inventions as X rays, for instance. Do you?

Thus cornered, Stephen had to make a superhuman effort of memory to try
and concentrate and remember before he could say:

--They tell me on the best authority it is a simple substance and
therefore incorruptible. It would be immortal, I understand, but for the
possibility of its annihilation by its First Cause Who, from all I
can hear, is quite capable of adding that to the number of His other
practical jokes, _corruptio per se_ and _corruptio per accidens_ both
being excluded by court etiquette.

Mr Bloom thoroughly acquiesced in the general gist of this though the
mystical finesse involved was a bit out of his sublunary depth still
he felt bound to enter a demurrer on the head of simple, promptly
rejoining:

--Simple? I shouldn't think that is the proper word. Of course, I grant
you, to concede a point, you do knock across a simple soul once in a
blue moon. But what I am anxious to arrive at is it is one thing for
instance to invent those rays Rontgen did or the telescope like Edison,
though I believe it was before his time Galileo was the man, I mean,
and the same applies to the laws, for example, of a farreaching natural
phenomenon such as electricity but it's a horse of quite another colour
to say you believe in the existence of a supernatural God.

--O that, Stephen expostulated, has been proved conclusively by several
of the bestknown passages in Holy Writ, apart from circumstantial
evidence.

On this knotty point however the views of the pair, poles apart as they
were both in schooling and everything else with the marked difference in
their respective ages, clashed.

--Has been? the more experienced of the two objected, sticking to his
original point with a smile of unbelief. I'm not so sure about that.
That's a matter for everyman's opinion and, without dragging in the
sectarian side of the business, I beg to differ with you _in toto_
there. My belief is, to tell you the candid truth, that those bits were
genuine forgeries all of them put in by monks most probably or it's the
big question of our national poet over again, who precisely wrote them
like _Hamlet_ and Bacon, as, you who know your Shakespeare infinitely
better than I, of course I needn't tell you. Can't you drink that
coffee, by the way? Let me stir it. And take a piece of that bun. It's
like one of our skipper's bricks disguised. Still no-one can give what
he hasn't got. Try a bit.

--Couldn't, Stephen contrived to get out, his mental organs for the
moment refusing to dictate further.

Faultfinding being a proverbially bad hat Mr Bloom thought well to stir
or try to the clotted sugar from the bottom and reflected with something
approaching acrimony on the Coffee Palace and its temperance (and
lucrative) work. To be sure it was a legitimate object and beyond yea or
nay did a world of good, shelters such as the present one they were in
run on teetotal lines for vagrants at night, concerts, dramatic evenings
and useful lectures (admittance free) by qualified men for the lower
orders. On the other hand he had a distinct and painful recollection
they paid his wife, Madam Marion Tweedy who had been prominently
associated with it at one time, a very modest remuneration indeed for
her pianoplaying. The idea, he was strongly inclined to believe, was
to do good and net a profit, there being no competition to speak
of. Sulphate of copper poison SO4 or something in some dried peas he
remembered reading of in a cheap eatinghouse somewhere but he couldn't
remember when it was or where. Anyhow inspection, medical inspection,
of all eatables seemed to him more than ever necessary which possibly
accounted for the vogue of Dr Tibble's Vi-Cocoa on account of the
medical analysis involved.

--Have a shot at it now, he ventured to say of the coffee after being
stirred.

Thus prevailed on to at any rate taste it Stephen lifted the heavy mug
from the brown puddle it clopped out of when taken up by the handle and
took a sip of the offending beverage.

--Still it's solid food, his good genius urged, I'm a stickler for solid
food, his one and only reason being not gormandising in the least but
regular meals as the _sine qua non_ for any kind of proper work, mental
or manual. You ought to eat more solid food. You would feel a different
man.

--Liquids I can eat, Stephen said. But O, oblige me by taking away that
knife. I can't look at the point of it. It reminds me of Roman history.

Mr Bloom promptly did as suggested and removed the incriminated article,
a blunt hornhandled ordinary knife with nothing particularly Roman or
antique about it to the lay eye, observing that the point was the least
conspicuous point about it.

--Our mutual friend's stories are like himself, Mr Bloom _apropos_ of
knives remarked to his _confidante sotto voce_. Do you think they are
genuine? He could spin those yarns for hours on end all night long and
lie like old boots. Look at him.

Yet still though his eyes were thick with sleep and sea air life was
full of a host of things and coincidences of a terrible nature and it
was quite within the bounds of possibility that it was not an
entire fabrication though at first blush there was not much inherent
probability in all the spoof he got off his chest being strictly
accurate gospel.

He had been meantime taking stock of the individual in front of him and
Sherlockholmesing him up ever since he clapped eyes on him. Though a
wellpreserved man of no little stamina, if a trifle prone to baldness,
there was something spurious in the cut of his jib that suggested a jail
delivery and it required no violent stretch of imagination to associate
such a weirdlooking specimen with the oakum and treadmill fraternity. He
might even have done for his man supposing it was his own case he told,
as people often did about others, namely, that he killed him himself
and had served his four or five goodlooking years in durance vile to say
nothing of the Antonio personage (no relation to the dramatic personage
of identical name who sprang from the pen of our national poet) who
expiated his crimes in the melodramatic manner above described. On the
other hand he might be only bluffing, a pardonable weakness because
meeting unmistakable mugs, Dublin residents, like those jarvies waiting
news from abroad would tempt any ancient mariner who sailed the ocean
seas to draw the long bow about the schooner _Hesperus_ and etcetera.
And when all was said and done the lies a fellow told about himself
couldn't probably hold a proverbial candle to the wholesale whoppers
other fellows coined about him.

--Mind you, I'm not saying that it's all a pure invention, he resumed.
Analogous scenes are occasionally, if not often, met with. Giants,
though that is rather a far cry, you see once in a way, Marcella the
midget queen. In those waxworks in Henry street I myself saw some
Aztecs, as they are called, sitting bowlegged, they couldn't straighten
their legs if you paid them because the muscles here, you see, he
proceeded, indicating on his companion the brief outline of the sinews
or whatever you like to call them behind the right knee, were utterly
powerless from sitting that way so long cramped up, being adored as
gods. There's an example again of simple souls.

However reverting to friend Sinbad and his horrifying adventures (who
reminded him a bit of Ludwig, _alias_ Ledwidge, when he occupied
the boards of the Gaiety when Michael Gunn was identified with the
management in the _Flying Dutchman_, a stupendous success, and his host
of admirers came in large numbers, everyone simply flocking to hear him
though ships of any sort, phantom or the reverse, on the stage usually
fell a bit flat as also did trains) there was nothing intrinsically
incompatible about it, he conceded. On the contrary that stab in the
back touch was quite in keeping with those italianos though candidly he
was none the less free to admit those icecreamers and friers in the fish
way not to mention the chip potato variety and so forth over in little
Italy there near the Coombe were sober thrifty hardworking fellows
except perhaps a bit too given to pothunting the harmless necessary
animal of the feline persuasion of others at night so as to have a good
old succulent tuckin with garlic _de rigueur_ off him or her next day on
the quiet and, he added, on the cheap.

--Spaniards, for instance, he continued, passionate temperaments like
that, impetuous as Old Nick, are given to taking the law into their own
hands and give you your quietus doublequick with those poignards they
carry in the abdomen. It comes from the great heat, climate generally.
My wife is, so to speak, Spanish, half that is. Point of fact she could
actually claim Spanish nationality if she wanted, having been born in
(technically) Spain, i. e. Gibraltar. She has the Spanish type. Quite
dark, regular brunette, black. I for one certainly believe climate
accounts for character.