Complete Works of James Joyce

by Unknown

  That kind of Christianity which is called Catholicism seemed to him to stand in his way and forthwith he removed it. He had been brought up in the belief of the Roman supremacy and to cease to be a Catholic for him meant to cease to be a Christian. The idea that the power of an empire is weakest at its borders requires some modification for everyone knows that the Pope cannot govern Italy as he governs Ireland nor is the Tsar as terrible an engine to the tradesmen of S. Petersburg as he is to the little Russian of the Steppes. In fact in many cases the government of an empire is strongest at its borders and it is invariably strongest there in the case when its power at the centre is on the wane. The waves of the rise and fall of empires do not travel with the rapidity of waves of light and it will be perhaps a considerable time before Ireland will be able to understand that the Papacy is no longer going through a period of anabolism. The bands of pilgrims who are shepherded safely across the continent by their Irish pastors must shame the jaded reactionaries of the eternal city by their stupefied intensity of worship in much the same way as the staring provincial newly arrived from Spain or Africa may have piqued the loyalty of some smiling Roman for whom [the his past had but] the future of his race was becoming uncertain as its past had already become obvious. Though it is evident on the one hand that this persistence of Catholic power in Ireland must intensify very greatly the loneliness of the Irish Catholic who voluntarily outlaws himself yet on the other hand the force which he must generate to propel himself out of so strong and intricate a tyranny may often be sufficient to place him beyond the region of re-attraction. It was, in fact, the very fervour of Stephen’s former religious life which sharpened for him now the pains of his solitary position and at the same time hardened into a less pliable, a less appeasable enmity molten rages and glowing transports on which the emotions of helplessness and loneliness and despair had first acted as chilling influences.

  The tables in the Library were deserted during the summer months and whenever Stephen wandered in there he found few faces that he knew. Cranly’s friend [O’Neill] Glynn, the clerk from [the Custom House] Guinness’, was one of these familiar faces: he was very busy all the summer reading philosophical handbooks. Stephen had the misfortune to be captured one night by [O’Neill] Glynn, who at once attempted a conversation on the modern school of Irish writers — a subject of which Stephen knew nothing — and he had to listen to an inconstant stream of literary opinions. These opinions were not very interesting: Stephen, for instance, [was] grew rather weary of [O’Neill’s] Glynn’s telling him what beautiful poetry Byron and Shelley and Wordsworth and Coleridge and Keats and Tennyson wrote, and of hearing that Ruskin and Newman and Carlyle and Macaulay were the greatest modern English prose stylists. At last when [O’Neill] Glynn was about to begin an account of a literary paper which his sister had read to the Girls’ Debating Society in Loreto Convent Stephen thought he was justified in putting a closure on the conversation, somewhat in Cranly’s manner, by asking [O’Neill] Glynn very pointedly could he manage to get him a ‘pass’ to see the Brewery. The request was made in such a tone of subdued thirsty curiosity that [O’Neill] Glynn was too discouraged to continue his literary criticism and promised to do his best to get the ‘pass.’ Another reader in the Library who seemed to wish to be very friendly with Stephen was a young student named Moynihan who had been elected Auditor of the Literary and Historical Society for the following year. He had to read his inaugural address in November and he had chosen as his subject “Modern Unbelief and Modern Democracy.” He was an extremely [small] ugly young man with a wide mouth which gave the idea that it was under his chin until the face was seen at close quarters, eyes of an over-washed olive green colour set viciously close together, and large rigid ears standing far apart. He took a most agitated interest in the success of his paper as he was going to be a solicitor and he relied on this inaugural address to make his name known. He had not yet developed the astuteness of the legal mind in as much as he imagined that Stephen shared his agitated interest concerning the inaugural address. Stephen came upon him one night while he was busily ‘making-up’ his subject. He had some bulky volumes by Lecky at his side and he was reading and making notes upon an article in the under the heading of ‘Socialism.’ He desisted from his labours when he saw Stephen and began to explain the preparations which the committee were making. He showed the letters which had been received from various public men who had been written to by the committee to know if they would speak. He showed the patterns of the cards of invitation which they had decided to have printed and he showed a copy of the notice which was to be sent to all the papers. Stephen who did not know Moynihan very well was surprised at all these confidences. Moynihan said he was sure Stephen would be the auditor who would be elected after him and added how much he had admired the style of Stephen’s paper. After this he began to discuss his own and Stephen’s prospects for the degree. He said German was more useful than Italian (though, of course, Italian was more beautiful as a language) and that he had always studied it for that reason. When Stephen rose to go Moynihan said he might as well go too and put up his books. He came along Nassau St to catch his tram for Palmerston Park and on the way, the night being wet and the streets black and glistening with rain, he united himself still more intimately with his successor-designate by little ejaculations and glances in the wake of a hospital nurse who wore brown stockings and pink petticoats. Stephen was not at all displeased by the spectacle which he had been quietly observing for a long time before Moynihan had caught sight of it but Moynihan’s [ejaculatory desi] desirous ejaculations reminded him of the clicking of a type-writing machine. Moynihan who by this time was on famous terms with him said he would like to know Italian on account of Boccaccio and the other Italian writers. He told Stephen that if he wanted to read something ‘smutty’ [that] the took the biscuit for ‘smut.’

  — I wish I was like you, he said, it must be ten times as bad in the original. I can’t tell you now because here’s my tram . . . but it takes the biscuit for downright . . . you know? . . . well, Tooraloo!

  Mr Daedalus had not an acute sense of the rights of private property: he paid rent very rarely. To demand money for eatables seemed to him just but to expect people to pay for shelter the exorbitant sums which are demanded annually by house-owners in Dublin seemed to him unjust. He had now been a year in his house in Clontarf and for that year he had paid a quarter’s rent. The writ which had been first served on him had contained a legal flaw and this fact enabled him to prolong his term of occupancy. Just now matters were drawing to a head and he was scouring the city for another house. A private message from a friend in the Sheriff’s office gave him exactly five days of grace and every morning he brushed his silk hat very diligently and polished his eyeglass and went forth humming derisively to offer himself as a bait to landlords. The halldoor was often banged loudly on these occasions as the only possible close of an altercation. The results of the examination had awarded Stephen a mere pass and his father told him very confidentially that he had better look out for some kind of a doss because in a week’s time they would all be out on the street. The funds in the house were very low for the new furniture had fetched very little after its transport piece-meal to a pawn-office. Tradesmen who had seen it depart had begun a game of knocking and ringing which was very often followed by the curious eyes of street-urchins. Isabel was lying upstairs in the backroom, day by day growing more wasted and querulous. The doctor came twice a week now and ordered her delicacies. Mrs Daedalus had to set her wits to work to provide even one substantial meal every day and she certainly had no time to spare between accomplishing this feat, appeasing the clamour at the halldoor, parrying her husband’s ill-humour and attending on her dying daughter. As for her sons, one was a freethinker, the other surly. Maurice ate dry bread, muttered maledictions against his father and his father’s creditors, practised pushing a heavy flat stone in the garden and raising and lowering a broken dumb-bel
l, and trudged to the Bull every day that the tide served. In the evening he wrote his diary or went out for a walk by himself. Stephen wandered about morning, noon and night. The two brothers were not often together [until after]. One dusky summer evening [when] they walked into each other very gravely at a corner and both burst out laughing: and after that they sometimes went for walks together in the evening and discussed the art of literature.

  Stephen had lent his essay to Lynch as he had promised to do and this loan had led to a certain intimacy. Lynch had almost taken the final vows in the order of the discontented but Stephen’s unapologetic egoism, his remorseless lack of sentiment for himself no less than for others, gave him pause. His taste for fine arts, which had always seemed to him a taste which should be carefully hidden away, now began to encourage itself timidly. He was also very much relieved to find Stephen’s estheticism united with a sane and conscienceless acceptance of the animal needs of young men for, being a shrewd animal himself, he had begun to suspect from Stephen’s zeal and loftiness of discourse at least an assertion of that incorrigible virginity which the Irish race demands alike from any John who would baptise it or from any Joan who would set it free as the first heavenly proof of fitness for such high offices. Daniel’s household had become so wearisome to Stephen that he had discontinued his Sunday visits there and had substituted rambles with Lynch through the city. They made their way with difficulty along the crowded streets where underpaid young men and flaunting girls were promenading in bands. After a few of these rambles Lynch had absorbed the new terms which expressed the new point of view and he began to feel that he was justifying the contempt to which the spectacle of Dublin manners had always moved him. Many times they stopped to confer in scrupulous slang with the foolish virgins of the city, whose souls were almost terrified out of their naughty intentions by the profundity of the tones of the elder of the young men, and Lynch, sunning himself in a companionship which was so alert and liberal, so free from a taint of secret competition or patronage, began to wonder how he could ever have thought Stephen an affected young man. Everyone, he thought now, who has a character to preserve must have a manner to preserve it with.

  One evening as Stephen was coming down the Library staircase after idling away a half-hour at [a dictionary of music] a medical treatise on singing, he heard a dress brushing the steps behind him. The dress belonged to Emma Clery who, of course, was very much surprised at seeing Stephen. She had just been working at some old Irish and now she was going home: her father didn’t like her to stay in the Library until ten o’clock as she had no escort. The night was so fine that she thought she would not take the tram. Stephen asked her might he not see her home. They stood under the porch for a few minutes, talking. Stephen took out a cigarette and lit it but at once knocked off the lighted end [very] meditatively and put the cigarette back into his case: her eyes were very bright.

  They went up Kildare St and when they came to the corner of the Green she crossed the road and they continued to walk, but not quite so quickly, along the gravel path beside the chains. The chains bore their nightly burden of amorousness. He offered her his arm which she took, leaning appreciably upon it. They talked gossip. She discussed the likelihood of McCann’s marrying the eldest of Mr Daniel’s daughters. She seemed to think it very amusing that McCann should have a desire for matrimony but she added quite seriously that Annie Daniel was certainly a nice girl. A feminine voice called out from the dusky region of the couples “Don’t!”

  —’Don’t,’ said Emma. Isn’t that Mr Punch’s advice to young men who are about to marry . . . I hear you are quite a woman-hater now, Stephen.

  — Wouldn’t that be a change?

  — And I heard you read a dreadful paper in the college — all kinds of ideas in it. Isn’t that so?

  — Please don’t mention that paper.

  — But I’m sure you’re a woman-hater. You’ve got so standoffish, you know, so reserved. Perhaps you don’t like ladies’ company?

  Stephen pressed her arm a little by way of a disclaimer.

  — Are you a believer in the emancipation of women too? she asked.

  — To be sure! said Stephen.

  — Well, I’m glad to hear you say that, at any rate. I didn’t think you were in favour of women.

  — O, I am very liberal — like Father Dillon — he is very liberal-minded.

  — Yes? Isn’t he? she said in a puzzled manner . . . Why do you never go to Daniel’s now?

  — I . . . don’t know.

  — What do you do with yourself on Sunday evenings?

  — I . . . stay at home, said Stephen.

  — You must be morose when you’re at home.

  — Not I. I’m as happy as if the divil had me.

  — I want to hear you sing again.

  — O, thanks . . . Some time, perhaps . . .

  — Why don’t you study music? Have Your voice trained?

  — Strange to say I was reading a book on singing tonight. It is called . . .

  — I am sure you would make a success with your voice, she said quickly, evidently afraid to allow him control of the conversation . . . Have you ever heard Father Moran sing?

  — No. Has he a good voice?

  — O, very nice: he sings with such taste. He’s an awfully nice man, don’t you think?

  — Very nice indeed. Do you go to confession to him?

  She leaned a little more appreciably on his arm and said:

  — Now, don’t be bold, Stephen.

  — I wish you would go to confession to me, Emma, said Stephen from his heart.

  — That’s a dreadful thing to say . . . Why would you like that?

  — To hear your sins.

  — Stephen!

  — To hear you murmur them into my ear and say you were sorry and would never [do] commit them again and ask me to forgive you. And I would forgive you and make you promise to commit them every time you liked and say “God bless you, my dear child.”

  — O, for shame, Stephen! Such a way to talk of the sacraments!

  Stephen had expected that she would blush but her cheek maintained its innocence and her eyes grew brighter and brighter.

  — You’d get tired of that too.

  — Do you think so? said Stephen making an effort not to be surprised at such an intelligent remark.

  — You’d be a dreadful flirt, I’m sure. You get tired of everything so quickly — just the way you did in the Gaelic League.

  — People should not think of the end in the beginning of flirtations, should they?

  — Perhaps not.

  When they came to the corner of her terrace she stopped and said:

  — Thanks ever so much.

  — Thank you.

  — Well, you must reform, won’t you, and come next Sunday to Daniel’s.

  — If you expressly .

  — Yes, I insist.

  — Very good, Emma. ln that case, I’ll go.

  — Mind. I expect you to obey me.

  — Very good.

  — Thanks again for your kindness coming across with me.

  — Good night.

  He waited till he had seen her enter the fourth garden of the terrace. She did not turn her head to see if he was watching but he was not cast down because he knew she had a trick of seeing things without using her eyes frankly.

  Of course when Lynch heard of this incident he rubbed his hands together and prophesied. By his advice Stephen went to Daniel’s on the following Sunday. The old horsehair sofa was there, the picture of the Sacred Heart was there, she was there. The prodigal was welcomed. She spoke to him very little during the evening and seemed to be in deep conversation with Hughes, who had lately been honoured by an invitation. She was dressed in cream colour and the great mass of her hair lay heavily upon her cream-coloured neck. She asked him to sing and when he had sung a song of Dowland’s she asked him would he not sing them an Irish song. Stephen glanced from her eyes to Hughes’s face and sat
down again at the piano. He sang her one of the few Irish melodies which he knew “My love she was born in the North Countree.” When his song was over she applauded loudly and so did Hughes.

  — I love the Irish music, she said a few minutes afterwards, inclining herself towards him with an air of oblivion, it is so soul-stirring.

  Stephen said nothing. He remembered almost every word she had said from the first time he had met her and he strove to recall any word which revealed the presence of a spiritual principle in her worthy of so significant a name as soul. He submitted himself to the perfumes of her body and strove to locate a spiritual principle in it: but he could not. She seemed to conform to the Catholic belief, to obey the commandments and the precepts. By all outward signs he was compelled to esteem her holy. But he could not so stultify himself as to misread the gleam in her eyes as holy or to interpret the [motions] rise and fall of her bosom as a movement of a sacred intention. He thought of his own [fervid religiousness] spendthrift religiousness and airs of the cloister, he remembered having astonished a labourer in a wood near Malahide by an ecstasy of oriental posture and no more than half-conscious under the influence of her charm he wondered whether the God of the Roman Catholics would put him into hell because he had failed to understand that most marketable goodness which makes it possible to give comfortable assent to propositions without in the least ordering one’s life in accordance with them and had failed to appreciate the digestive value of the sacraments.