Ulysses by James Joyce (good books to read for adults TXT) 📖

mobbed him with delight.

—He knows which side his bread is buttered, says Alf. I hear he’s running a concert tour now up in the north.

—He is, says Joe. Isn’t he?

—Who? says Bloom. Ah, yes. That’s quite true. Yes, a kind of summer tour, you see. Just a holiday.

—Mrs B. is the bright particular star, isn’t she? says Joe.

—My wife? says Bloom. She’s singing, yes. I think it will be a success too. He’s an excellent man to organise. Excellent.

Hoho begob says I to myself says I. That explains the milk in the cocoanut and absence of hair on the animal’s chest. Blazes doing the tootle on the flute. Concert tour. Dirty Dan the dodger’s son off Island bridge that sold the same horses twice over to the government to fight the Boers. Old Whatwhat. I called about the poor and water rate, Mr Boylan. You what? The water rate, Mr Boylan. You whatwhat? That’s the bucko that’ll organise her, take my tip. ’Twixt me and you Caddareesh.

Pride of Calpe’s rocky mount, the ravenhaired daughter of Tweedy. There grew she to peerless beauty where loquat and almond scent the air. The gardens of Alameda knew her step: the garths of olives knew and bowed. The chaste spouse of Leopold is she: Marion of the bountiful bosoms.

And lo, there entered one of the clan of the O’Molloy’s, a comely hero of white face yet withal somewhat ruddy, his majesty’s counsel learned in the law, and with him the prince and heir of the noble line of Lambert.

—Hello, Ned.

—Hello, Alf.

—Hello, Jack.

—Hello, Joe.

—God save you, says the citizen.

—Save you kindly, says J. J. What’ll it be, Ned?

—Half one, says Ned.

So J. J. ordered the drinks.

—Were you round at the court? says Joe.

—Yes, says J. J. He’ll square that, Ned, says he.

—Hope so, says Ned.

Now what were those two at? J. J. getting him off the grand jury list and the other give him a leg over the stile. With his name in Stubbs’s. Playing cards, hobnobbing with flash toffs with a swank glass in their eye, adrinking fizz and he half smothered in writs and garnishee orders. Pawning his gold watch in Cummins of Francis street where no-one would know him in the private office when I was there with Pisser releasing his boots out of the pop. What’s your name, sir? Dunne, says he. Ay, and done says I. Gob, he’ll come home by weeping cross one of those days, I’m thinking.

—Did you see that bloody lunatic Breen round there? says Alf. U. p: up.

—Yes, says J. J. Looking for a private detective.

—Ay, says Ned. And he wanted right go wrong to address the court only Corny Kelleher got round him telling him to get the handwriting examined first.

—Ten thousand pounds, says Alf, laughing. God, I’d give anything to hear him before a judge and jury.

—Was it you did it, Alf? says Joe. The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help you Jimmy Johnson.

—Me? says Alf. Don’t cast your nasturtiums on my character.

—Whatever statement you make, says Joe, will be taken down in evidence against you.

—Of course an action would lie, says J. J. It implies that he is not compos mentis. U. p: up.

—Compos your eye! says Alf, laughing. Do you know that he’s balmy? Look at his head. Do you know that some mornings he has to get his hat on with a shoehorn.

—Yes, says J. J., but the truth of a libel is no defence to an indictment for publishing it in the eyes of the law.

—Ha ha, Alf, says Joe.

—Still, says Bloom, on account of the poor woman, I mean his wife.

—Pity about her, says the citizen. Or any other woman marries a half and half.

—How half and half? says Bloom. Do you mean he...

—Half and half I mean, says the citizen. A fellow that’s neither fish nor flesh.

—Nor good red herring, says Joe.

—That what’s I mean, says the citizen. A pishogue, if you know what that is.

Begob I saw there was trouble coming. And Bloom explaining he meant on account of it being cruel for the wife having to go round after the old stuttering fool. Cruelty to animals so it is to let that bloody povertystricken Breen out on grass with his beard out tripping him, bringing down the rain. And she with her nose cockahoop after she married him because a cousin of his old fellow’s was pewopener to the pope. Picture of him on the wall with his Smashall Sweeney’s moustaches, the signior Brini from Summerhill, the eyetallyano, papal Zouave to the Holy Father, has left the quay and gone to Moss street. And who was he, tell us? A nobody, two pair back and passages, at seven shillings a week, and he covered with all kinds of breastplates bidding defiance to the world.

—And moreover, says J. J., a postcard is publication. It was held to be sufficient evidence of malice in the testcase Sadgrove v. Hole. In my opinion an action might lie.

Six and eightpence, please. Who wants your opinion? Let us drink our pints in peace. Gob, we won’t be let even do that much itself.

—Well, good health, Jack, says Ned.

—Good health, Ned, says J. J.

—-There he is again, says Joe.

—Where? says Alf.

And begob there he was passing the door with his books under his oxter and the wife beside him and Corny Kelleher with his wall eye looking in as they went past, talking to him like a father, trying to sell him a secondhand coffin.

—How did that Canada swindle case go off? says Joe.

—Remanded, says J. J.

One of the bottlenosed fraternity it was went by the name of James Wought alias Saphiro alias Spark and Spiro, put an ad in the papers saying he’d give a passage to Canada for twenty bob. What? Do you see any green in the white of my eye? Course it was a bloody barney. What? Swindled them all, skivvies and badhachs from the county Meath, ay, and his own kidney too. J. J. was telling us there was an ancient Hebrew Zaretsky or something weeping in the witnessbox with his hat on him, swearing by the holy Moses he was stuck for two quid.

—Who tried the case? says Joe.

—Recorder, says Ned.

—Poor old sir Frederick, says Alf, you can cod him up to the two eyes.

—Heart as big as a lion, says Ned. Tell him a tale of woe about arrears of rent and a sick wife and a squad of kids and, faith, he’ll dissolve in tears on the bench.

—Ay, says Alf. Reuben J was bloody lucky he didn’t clap him in the dock the other day for suing poor little Gumley that’s minding stones, for the corporation there near Butt bridge.

And he starts taking off the old recorder letting on to cry:

—A most scandalous thing! This poor hardworking man! How many children? Ten, did you say?

—Yes, your worship. And my wife has the typhoid.

—And the wife with typhoid fever! Scandalous! Leave the court immediately, sir. No, sir, I’ll make no order for payment. How dare you, sir, come up before me and ask me to make an order! A poor hardworking industrious man! I dismiss the case.

And whereas on the sixteenth day of the month of the oxeyed goddess and in the third week after the feastday of the Holy and Undivided Trinity, the daughter of the skies, the virgin moon being then in her first quarter, it came to pass that those learned judges repaired them to the halls of law. There master Courtenay, sitting in his own chamber, gave his rede and master Justice Andrews, sitting without a jury in the probate court, weighed well and pondered the claim of the first chargeant upon the property in the matter of the will propounded and final testamentary disposition in re the real and personal estate of the late lamented Jacob Halliday, vintner, deceased, versus Livingstone, an infant, of unsound mind, and another. And to the solemn court of Green street there came sir Frederick the Falconer. And he sat him there about the hour of five o’clock to administer the law of the brehons at the commission for all that and those parts to be holden in and for the county of the city of Dublin. And there sat with him the high sinhedrim of the twelve tribes of Iar, for every tribe one man, of the tribe of Patrick and of the tribe of Hugh and of the tribe of Owen and of the tribe of Conn and of the tribe of Oscar and of the tribe of Fergus and of the tribe of Finn and of the tribe of Dermot and of the tribe of Cormac and of the tribe of Kevin and of the tribe of Caolte and of the tribe of Ossian, there being in all twelve good men and true. And he conjured them by Him who died on rood that they should well and truly try and true deliverance make in the issue joined between their sovereign lord the king and the prisoner at the bar and true verdict give according to the evidence so help them God and kiss the book. And they rose in their seats, those twelve of Iar, and they swore by the name of Him Who is from everlasting that they would do His rightwiseness. And straightway the minions of the law led forth from their donjon keep one whom the sleuthhounds of justice had apprehended in consequence of information received. And they shackled him hand and foot and would take of him ne bail ne mainprise but preferred a charge against him for he was a malefactor.

—Those are nice things, says the citizen, coming over here to Ireland filling the country with bugs.

So Bloom lets on he heard nothing and he starts talking with Joe, telling him he needn’t trouble about that little matter till the first but if he would just say a word to Mr Crawford. And so Joe swore high and holy by this and by that he’d do the devil and all.

—Because, you see, says Bloom, for an advertisement you must have repetition. That’s the whole secret.

—Rely on me, says Joe.

—Swindling the peasants, says the citizen, and the poor of Ireland. We want no more strangers in our house.

—O, I’m sure that will be all right, Hynes, says Bloom. It’s just that Keyes, you see.

—Consider that done, says Joe.

—Very kind of you, says Bloom.

—The strangers, says the citizen. Our own fault. We let them come in. We brought them in. The adulteress and her paramour brought the Saxon robbers here.

—Decree nisi, says J. J.

And Bloom letting on to be awfully deeply interested in nothing, a spider’s web in the corner behind the barrel, and the citizen scowling after him and the old dog at his feet looking up to know who to bite and when.

—A dishonoured wife, says the citizen, that’s what’s the cause of all our misfortunes.

—And here she is, says Alf, that was giggling over the Police Gazette with Terry on the counter, in all her warpaint.

—Give us a squint at her, says I.

And what was it only one of the smutty yankee pictures Terry borrows off of Corny Kelleher. Secrets for enlarging your private parts. Misconduct of society belle. Norman W. Tupper, wealthy Chicago contractor, finds pretty but faithless wife in lap of officer Taylor. Belle in her bloomers misconducting herself, and her fancyman feeling for her tickles and Norman W. Tupper bouncing in with his peashooter just in time to be late after she doing the trick of the loop with officer Taylor.

—O jakers, Jenny, says Joe, how short your shirt is!

—There’s hair, Joe, says I. Get a queer old tailend of corned beef off of that one, what?

So anyhow in came John Wyse Nolan and Lenehan with him with a face on him as long as a late breakfast.

—Well, says the citizen, what’s the latest from the scene of action? What did those tinkers in the city hall at their caucus meeting decide about the Irish language?

O’Nolan, clad in shining armour, low bending made obeisance to the puissant and high and mighty chief of all Erin and did him to wit of that which had befallen, how that the grave elders of the most obedient city, second of the realm, had met them in the tholsel, and there, after due prayers to the gods who dwell in ether supernal, had taken solemn counsel whereby they might, if so be it might be, bring once more into honour among mortal men the winged speech of the seadivided Gael.

—It’s on the march, says the citizen. To hell with the bloody brutal Sassenachs and their patois.

So J. J. puts in