Ulysses - Gabler Edition [94]
His glance touched their faces lightly as he smiled, a blond ephebe. Tame essence of Wilde.
You’re darned witty. Three drams of usquebaugh you drank with Dan Deasy’s ducats.
How much did I spend? O, a few shillings.
For a plump of pressmen. Humour wet and dry.
Wit. You would give your five wits for youth’s proud livery he pranks in. Lineaments of gratified desire.
There be many mo. Take her for me. In pairing time. Jove, a cool ruttime send them. Yea, turtledove her.
Eve. Naked wheatbellied sin. A snake coils her, fang in’s kiss.
—Do you think it is only a paradox? the quaker librarian was asking. The mocker is never taken seriously when he is most serious.
They talked seriously of mocker’s seriousness. Buck Mulligan’s again heavy face eyed Stephen awhile. Then, his head wagging, he came near, drew a folded telegram from his pocket. His mobile lips read, smiling with new delight.
—Telegram! he said. Wonderful inspiration! Telegram! A papal bull!
He sat on a corner of the unlit desk, reading aloud joyfully:
—The sentimentalist is he who would enjoy without incurring the immense debtorship for a thing done. Signed: Dedalus. Where did you launch it from? The kips? No. College Green. Have you drunk the four quid? The aunt is going to call on your unsubstantial father. Telegram! Malachi Mulligan, The Ship, lower Abbey street. O, you peerless mummer! O, you priestified Kinchite!
Joyfully he thrust message and envelope into a pocket but keened in a querulous brogue:
—It’s what I’m telling you, mister honey, it’s queer and sick we were, Haines and myself, the time himself brought it in. ’Twas murmur we did for a gallus potion would rouse a friar, I’m thinking, and he limp with leching. And we one hour and two hours and three hours in Connery’s sitting civil waiting for pints apiece.
He wailed:
—And we to be there, mavrone, and you to be unbeknownst sending us your conglomerations the way we to have our tongues out a yard long like the drouthy clerics do be fainting for a pussful.
Stephen laughed.
Quickly, warningfully Buck Mulligan bent down.
—The tramper Synge is looking for you, he said, to murder you. He heard you pissed on his halldoor in Glasthule. He’s out in pampooties to murder you.
—Me! Stephen exclaimed. That was your contribution to literature.
Buck Mulligan gleefully bent back, laughing to the dark eavesdropping ceiling.
—Murder you! he laughed.
Harsh gargoyle face that warred against me over our mess of hash of lights in rue Saint Andre des Arts. In words of words for words, palabras. Oisin with Patrick. Faunman he met in Clamart woods, brandishing a winebottle. C’est vendredi saint! Murthering Irish. His image, wandering, he met. I mine. I met a fool i’the forest.
—Mr Lyster, an attendant said from the door ajar.
—..... in which everyone can find his own. So Mr Justice Madden in his Diary of Master William Silence has found the hunting terms .... Yes? What is it?
—There’s a gentleman here, sir, the attendant said, coming forward and offering a card. From the Freeman. He wants to see the files of the Kilkenny People for last year.
—Certainly, certainly, certainly. Is the gentleman ......?
He took the eager card, glanced, not saw, laid down unglanced, looked, asked, creaked, asked:
—Is he ......? O, there!
Brisk in a galliard he was off, out. In the daylit corridor he talked with voluble pains of zeal, in duty bound, most fair, most kind, most honest broadbrim.
—This gentleman? Freeman’s Journal? Kilkenny People? To be sure. Good day, sir. Kilkenny .... We have certainly ....
A patient silhouette waited, listening.
—All the leading provincial .... Northern Whig, Cork Examiner, Enniscorthy Guardian. Last year. 1903 .... Will you please ... Evans, conduct this gentleman ... If you just follow the atten .... Or, please allow me .... This way ... Please, sir ....
Voluble, dutiful, he led the way to all the provincial papers, a bowing dark figure following his hasty heels.
The door closed.