by James Joyce
It was not thought nor vision though he knew vaguely that her figure was passing homeward through the city. Vaguely first and then more sharply he smelt her body. A conscious unrest seethed in his blood. Yes, it was her body he smelt, a wild and languid smell, the tepid limbs over which his music had flowed desirously and the secret soft linen upon which her flesh distilled odour and a dew.
A louse crawled over the nape of his neck and, putting his thumb and forefinger deftly beneath his loose collar, he caught it. He rolled its body, tender yet brittle as a grain of rice, between thumb and finger for an instant before he let it fall from him and wondered would it live or die. There came to his mind a curious phrase from Cornelius a Lapide which said that the lice born of human sweat were not created by God with the other animals on the sixth day. But the tickling of the skin of his neck made his mind raw and red. The life of his body, ill clad, ill fed, louse-eaten, made him close his eyelids in a sudden spasm of despair and in the darkness he saw the brittle bright bodies of lice falling from the air and turning often as they fell. Yes, and it was not darkness that fell from the air. It was brightness.
Brightness falls from the air.
He had not even remembered rightly Nash's line. All the images it had awakened were false. His mind bred vermin. His thoughts were lice born of the sweat of sloth.
He came back quickly along the colonnade towards the group of students. Well then, let her go and be damned to her! She could love some clean athlete who washed himself every morning to the waist and had black hair on his chest. Let her.
Cranly had taken another dried fig from the supply in his pocket and was eating it slowly and noisily. Temple sat on the pediment of a pillar, leaning back, his cap pulled down on his sleepy eyes. A squat young man came out of the porch, a leather portfolio tucked under his armpit. He marched towards the group, striking the flags with the heels of his boots and with the ferrule of his heavy umbrella. Then, raising the umbrella in salute, he said to all:
— Good evening, sirs.
He struck the flags again and tittered while his head trembled with a slight nervous movement. The tall consumptive student and Dixon and O'Keeffe were speaking in Irish and did not answer him. Then, turning to Cranly, he said:
— Good evening, particularly to you.
He moved the umbrella in indication and tittered again. Cranly, who was still chewing the fig, answered with loud movements of his jaws.
— Good? Yes. It is a good evening.
The squat student looked at him seriously and shook his umbrella gently and reprovingly.
— I can see, he said, that you are about to make obvious remarks.
— Um, Cranly answered, holding out what remained of the half chewed fig and jerking it towards the squat student's mouth in sign that he should eat.
The squat student did not eat it but, indulging his special humour, said gravely, still tittering and prodding his phrase with his umbrella:
— Do you intend that... ?
He broke off, pointed bluntly to the munched pulp of the fig, and said loudly:
— I allude to that.
— Um, Cranly said as before.
— Do you intend that now, the squat student said, as ipso facto or, let us say, as so to speak?
Dixon turned aside from his group, saying:
— Goggins was waiting for you, Glynn. He has gone round to the Adelphi to look for you and Moynihan. What have you there? he asked, tapping the portfolio under Glynn's arm.
— Examination papers, Glynn answered. I give them monthly examinations to see that they are profiting by my tuition.
He also tapped the portfolio and coughed gently and smiled.
— Tuition! said Cranly rudely. I suppose you mean the barefooted children that are taught by a bloody ape like you. God help them!
He bit off the rest of the fig and flung away the butt.
— I suffer little children to come unto me, Glynn said amiably.
— A bloody ape, Cranly repeated with emphasis, and a blasphemous bloody ape!
Temple stood up and, pushing past Cranly, addressed Glynn:
— That phrase you said now, he said, is from the new testament about suffer the children to come to me.
— Go to sleep again, Temple, said O'Keeffe.
— Very well, then, Temple continued, still addressing Glynn, and if Jesus suffered the children to come why does the church send them all to hell if they die unbaptized? Why is that?
— Were you baptized yourself, Temple? the consumptive student asked.
— But why are they sent to hell if Jesus said they were all to come? Temple said, his eyes searching Glynn's eyes.
Glynn coughed and said gently, holding back with difficulty the nervous titter in his voice and moving his umbrella at every word:
— And, as you remark, if it is thus, I ask emphatically whence comes this thusness.
— Because the church is cruel like all old sinners, Temple said.
— Are you quite orthodox on that point, Temple? Dixon said suavely.
— Saint Augustine says that about unbaptized children going to hell, Temple answered, because he was a cruel old sinner too.
— I bow to you, Dixon said, but I had the impression that limbo existed for such cases.
— Don't argue with him, Dixon, Cranly said brutally. Don't talk to him or look at him. Lead him home with a sugan the way you'd lead a bleating goat.
— Limbo! Temple cried. That's a fine invention too. Like hell.
— But with the unpleasantness left out, Dixon said.
He turned smiling to the others and said:
— I think I am voicing the opinions of all present in saying so much.
— You are, Glynn said in a firm tone. On that point Ireland is united.
He struck the ferrule of his umbrella on the stone floor of the colonnade.
— Hell, Temple said. I can respect that invention of the grey spouse of Satan. Hell is Roman, like the walls of the Romans, strong and ugly. But what is limbo?
— Put him back into the perambulator, Cranly, O'Keeffe called out.
Cranly made a swift step towards Temple, halted, stamping his foot, crying as if to a fowl:
— Hoosh!
Temple moved away nimbly.
— Do you know what limbo is? he cried. Do you know what we call a notion like that in Roscommon?
— Hoosh! Blast you! Cranly cried, clapping his hands.
— Neither my arse nor my elbow! Temple cried out scornfully. And that's what I call limbo.
— Give us that stick here, Cranly said.
He snatched the ashplant roughly from Stephen's hand and sprang down the steps: but Temple, hearing him move in pursuit, fled through the dusk like a wild creature, nimble and fleet-footed. Cranly's heavy boots were heard loudly charging across the quadrangle and then returning heavily, foiled and spurning the gravel at each step.
His step was angry and with an angry abrupt gesture he thrust the stick back into Stephen's hand. Stephen felt that his anger had another cause but, feigning patience, touched his arm slightly and said quietly:
— Cranly, I told you I wanted to speak to you. Come away.
Cranly looked at him for a few moments and asked:
— Now?
— Yes, now, Stephen said. We can't speak here. Come away.
They crossed the quadrangle together without speaking. The bird call from Sigfried whistled softly followed them from the steps of the porch. Cranly turned, and Dixon, who had whistled, called out:
— Where are you fellows off to? What about that game, Cranly?
They parleyed in shouts across the still air about a game of billiards to be played in the Adelphi hotel. Stephen walked on alone and out into the quiet of Kildare Street opposite Maple's hotel he stood to wait, patient again. The name of the hotel, a colourless polished wood, and its colourless front stung him like a glance of polite disdain. He stared angrily back at the softly lit drawing-room of the hotel in which h
e imagined the sleek lives of the patricians of Ireland housed in calm. They thought of army commissions and land agents: peasants greeted them along the roads in the country; they knew the names of certain French dishes and gave orders to jarvies in high-pitched provincial voices which pierced through their skin-tight accents.
How could he hit their conscience or how cast his shadow over the imaginations of their daughters, before their squires begat upon them, that they might breed a race less ignoble than their own? And under the deepened dusk he felt the thoughts and desires of the race to which he belonged flitting like bats across the dark country lanes, under trees by the edges of streams and near the pool-mottled bogs. A woman had waited in the doorway as Davin had passed by at night and, offering him a cup of milk, had all but wooed him to her bed; for Davin had the mild eyes of one who could be secret. But him no woman's eyes had wooed.
His arm was taken in a strong grip and Cranly's voice said:
— Let us eke go.
They walked southward in silence. Then Cranly said:
— That blithering idiot, Temple! I swear to Moses, do you know, that I'll be the death of that fellow one time.
But his voice was no longer angry and Stephen wondered was he thinking of her greeting to him under the porch.
They turned to the left and walked on as before. When they had gone on so for some time Stephen said:
— Cranly, I had an unpleasant quarrel this evening.
— With your people? Cranly asked.
— With my mother.
— About religion?
— Yes, Stephen answered.
After a pause Cranly asked:
— What age is your mother?
— Not old, Stephen said. She wishes me to make my easter duty.
— And will you?
— I will not, Stephen said.
— Why not? Cranly said.
— I will not serve, answered Stephen.
— That remark was made before, Cranly said calmly.
— It is made behind now, said Stephen hotly.
Cranly pressed Stephen's arm, saying:
— Go easy, my dear man. You're an excitable bloody man, do you know.
He laughed nervously as he spoke and, looking up into Stephen's face with moved and friendly eyes, said:
— Do you know that you are an excitable man?
— I daresay I am, said Stephen, laughing also.
Their minds, lately estranged, seemed suddenly to have been drawn closer, one to the other.
— Do you believe in the eucharist? Cranly asked.
— I do not, Stephen said.
— Do you disbelieve then?
— I neither believe in it nor disbelieve in it, Stephen answered.
— Many persons have doubts, even religious persons, yet they overcome them or put them aside, Cranly said. Are your doubts on that point too strong?
— I do not wish to overcome them, Stephen answered.
Cranly, embarrassed for a moment, took another fig from his pocket and was about to eat it when Stephen said:
— Don't, please. You cannot discuss this question with your mouth full of chewed fig.
Cranly examined the fig by the light of a lamp under which he halted. Then he smelt it with both nostrils, bit a tiny piece, spat it out and threw the fig rudely into the gutter.
Addressing it as it lay, he said:
— Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire!
Taking Stephen's arms, he went on again and said:
— Do you not fear that those words may be spoken to you on the day of Judgement?
— What is offered me on the other hand? Stephen asked. An eternity of bliss in the company of the dean of studies?
— Remember, Cranly said, that he would be glorified.
— Ay, Stephen said somewhat bitterly, bright, agile, impassible and, above all, subtle.
— It is a curious thing, do you know, Cranly said dispassionately, how your mind is supersaturated with the religion in which you say you disbelieve. Did you believe in it when you were at school? I bet you did.
— I did, Stephen answered.
— And were you happier then? Cranly asked softly, happier than you are now, for instance?
— Often happy, Stephen said, and often unhappy. I was someone else then.
— How someone else? What do you mean by that statement?
— I mean, said Stephen, that I was not myself as I am now, as I had to become.
— Not as you are now, not as you had to become, Cranly repeated. Let me ask you a question. Do you love your mother?
Stephen shook his head slowly.
— I don't know what your words mean, he said simply.
— Have you never loved anyone? Cranly asked.
— Do you mean women?
— I am not speaking of that, Cranly said in a colder tone. I ask you if you ever felt love towards anyone or anything?
Stephen walked on beside his friend, staring gloomily at the footpath.
— I tried to love God, he said at length. It seems now I failed. It is very difficult. I tried to unite my will with the will of God instant by instant. In that I did not always fail. I could perhaps do that still—
Cranly cut him short by asking:
— Has your mother had a happy life?
— How do I know? Stephen said.
— How many children had she?
— Nine or ten, Stephen answered. Some died.
— Was your father... Cranly interrupted himself for an instant, and then said: I don't want to pry into your family affairs. But was your father what is called well-to-do? I mean, when you were growing up?
— Yes, Stephen said.
— What was he? Cranly asked after a pause.
Stephen began to enumerate glibly his father's attributes.
— A medical student, an oarsman, a tenor, an amateur actor, a shouting politician, a small landlord, a small investor, a drinker, a good fellow, a story-teller, somebody's secretary, something in a distillery, a tax-gatherer, a bankrupt and at present a praiser of his own past.
Cranly laughed, tightening his grip on Stephen's arm, and said:
— The distillery is damn good.
— Is there anything else you want to know? Stephen asked.
— Are you in good circumstances at present?
— Do, look it? Stephen asked bluntly.
— So then, Cranly went on musingly, you were born in the lap of luxury.
He used the phrase broadly and loudly as he often used technical expressions, as if he wished his hearer to understand that they were used by him without conviction.
— Your mother must have gone through a good deal of suffering, he said then. Would you not try to save her from suffering more even if... or would you?
— If I could, Stephen said, that would cost me very little.
— Then do so, Cranly said. Do as she wishes you to do. What is it for you? You disbelieve in it. It is a form: nothing else. And you will set her mind at rest.
He ceased and, as Stephen did not reply, remained silent. Then, as if giving utterance to the process of his own thought, he said:
— Whatever else is unsure in this stinking dunghill of a world a mother's love is not. Your mother brings you into the world, carries you first in her body. What do we know about what she feels? But whatever she feels, it, at least, must be real. It must be. What are our ideas or ambitions? Play. Ideas! Why, that bloody bleating goat Temple has ideas. MacCann has ideas too. Every jackass going the roads thinks he has ideas.
Stephen, who had been listening to the unspoken speech behind the words, said with assumed carelessness:
— Pascal, if I remember rightly, would not suffer his mother to kiss him as he feared the contact of her sex.
— Pascal was a pig, said Cranly.
— Aloysius Gonzaga, I think, was of the same mind, Stephen said.
— And he was another pig then, said Cranly.
— The churc
h calls him a saint, Stephen objected.
— I don't care a flaming damn what anyone calls him, Cranly said rudely and flatly. I call him a pig.
Stephen, preparing the words neatly in his mind, continued:
— Jesus, too, seems to have treated his mother with scant courtesy in public but Suarez, a jesuit theologian and Spanish gentleman, has apologized for him.
— Did the idea ever occur to you, Cranly asked, that Jesus was not what he pretended to be?
— The first person to whom that idea occurred, Stephen answered, was Jesus himself.
— I mean, Cranly said, hardening in his speech, did the idea ever occur to you that he was himself a conscious hypocrite, what he called the jews of his time, a whited sepulchre? Or, to put it more plainly, that he was a blackguard?
— That idea never occurred to me, Stephen answered. But I am curious to know are you trying to make a convert of me or a pervert of yourself?
He turned towards his friend's face and saw there a raw smile which some force of will strove to make finely significant.
Cranly asked suddenly in a plain sensible tone:
— Tell me the truth. Were you at all shocked by what I said?
— Somewhat, Stephen said.
— And why were you shocked, Cranly pressed on in the same tone, if you feel sure that our religion is false and that Jesus was not the son of God?
— I am not at all sure of it, Stephen said. He is more like a son of God than a son of Mary.
— And is that why you will not communicate, Cranly asked, because you are not sure of that too, because you feel that the host, too, may be the body and blood of the son of God and not a wafer of bread? And because you fear that it may be?
— Yes, Stephen said quietly, I feel that and I also fear it.
— I see, Cranly said.
Stephen, struck by his tone of closure, reopened the discussion at once by saying:
— I fear many things: dogs, horses, fire-arms, the sea, thunder-storms, machinery, the country roads at night.
— But why do you fear a bit of bread?
— I imagine, Stephen said, that there is a malevolent reality behind those things I say I fear.