Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Dubliners (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)

by James Joyce

  Athy, who had been silent, said quietly:

  —You are all wrong.

  All turned towards him eagerly.

  —Why?

  -Do you know?

  —Who told you?

  -Tell us, Athy.

  Athy pointed across the playground to where Simon Moonan was walking by himself kicking a stone before him.

  -Ask him, he said.

  The fellows looked there and then said:

  —Why him?

  -Is he in it?

  Athy lowered his voice and said:

  -Do you know why those fellows scut? I will tell you but you must not let on you know.

  —Tell us, Athy. Go on. You might if you know.

  He paused for a moment and then said mysteriously:

  -They were caught with Simon Moonan and Tusker Boyle in the squareck one night.

  The fellows looked at him and asked:

  -Caught?

  —What doing?

  Athy said:

  —Smugging.cl

  All the fellows were silent: and Athy said:

  -And that’s why?

  Stephen looked at the faces of the fellows but they were all looking across the playground. He wanted to ask somebody about it. What did that mean about the smugging in the square? Why did the five fellows out of the higher line run away for that? It was a joke, he thought. Simon Moonan had nice clothes and one night he had shown him a ball of creamy sweets that the fellows of the football fifteen had rolled down to him along the carpet in the middle of the refectory when he was at the door. It was the night of the match against the Bective Rangers and the ball was made just like a red and green apple only it opened and it was full of the creamy sweets. And one day Boyle had said that an elephant had two tuskers instead of two tusks and that was why he was called Tusker Boyle but some fellows called him Lady Boyle because he was always at his nails, paring them.

  Eileen had long thin cool white hands too because she was a girl. They were like ivory; only soft. That was the meaning of Tower of Ivory but protestants could not understand it and made fun of it. One day he had stood beside her looking into the hotel grounds. A waiter was running up a trail of bunting on the flagstaff and a fox terrier was scampering to and fro on the sunny lawn. She had put her hand into his pocket where his hand was and he had felt how cool and thin and soft her hand was. She had said that pockets were funny things to have: and then all of a sudden she had broken away and had run laughing down the sloping curve of the path. Her fair hair had streamed out behind her like gold in the sun. Tower of Ivory. House of Gold. By thinking of things you could understand them.

  But why in the square? You went there when you wanted to do something. It was all thick slabs of slate and water trickled all day out of tiny pinholes and there was a queer smell of stale water there. And behind the door of one of the closetscm there was a drawing in red pencil of a bearded man in a Roman dress with a brick in each hand and underneath was the name of the drawing:

  Balbuscn was building a wall.

  Some fellows had drawn it there for a cod. It had a funny face but it was very like a man with a beard. And on the wall of another closet there was written in backhand in beautiful writing:

  Julius Cæsar wrote The Calico Belly.

  Perhaps that was why they were there because it was a place where some fellows wrote things for cod. But all the same it was queer what Athy said and the way he said it. It was not a cod because they had run away. He looked with the others across the playground and began to feel afraid.

  At last Fleming said:

  -And we are all to be punished for what other fellows did?

  —I won’t come back, see if I do, Cecil Thunder said. Three days’ silence in the refectory and sending us up for six and eightco every minute.

  -Yes, said Wells. And old Barrett has a new way of twisting the note so that you can’t open it and fold it again to see how many ferulaecp you are to get. I won’t come back too.

  -Yes, said Cecil Thunder, and the prefect of studiescq was in second of grammar this morning.

  -Let us get up a rebellion, Fleming said. Will we?

  All the fellows were silent. The air was very silent and you could hear the cricket bats but more slowly than before: pick, pock.

  Wells asked:

  —What is going to be done to them?

  -Simon Moonan and Tusker are going to be flogged, Athy said, and the fellows in the higher line got their choice of flogging or being expelled.

  -And which are they taking? asked the fellow who had spoken first.

  —All are taking expulsion except Corrigan, Athy answered. He’s going to be flogged by Mr Gleeson.

  —I know why, Cecil Thunder said. He is right and the other fellows are wrong because a flogging wears off after a bit but a fellow that has been expelled from college is known all his life on account of it. Besides Gleeson won’t flog him hard.

  -It’s best of his playcr not to, Fleming said.

  —I wouldn’t like to be Simon Moonan and Tusker, Cecil Thunder said. But I don’t believe they will be flogged. Perhaps they will be sent up for twice nine.cs

  -No, no, said Athy. They’ll both get it on the vital spot.

  Wells rubbed himself and said in a crying voice:

  -Please, sir, let me off!

  Athy grinned and turned up the sleeves of his jacket, saying:It can’t be helped;

  It must be done.

  So down with your breeches

  And out with your bum.

  The fellows laughed; but he felt that they were a little afraid. In the silence of the soft grey air he heard the cricket bats from here and from there: pock. That was a sound to hear but if you were hit then you would feel a pain. The pandybat made a sound too but not like that. The fellows said it was made of whalebone and leather with lead inside: and he wondered what was the pain like. There were different kinds of sounds. A long thin cane would have a high whistling sound and he wondered what was that pain like. It made him shivery to think of it and cold: and what Athy said too. But what was there to laugh at in it? It made him shivery: but that was because you always felt like a shiver when you let down your trousers. It was the same in the bath when you undressed yourself He wondered who had to let them down, the master or the boy himself. 0 how could they laugh about it that way?

  He looked at Athy’s rolled-up sleeves and knuckly inky hands. He had rolled up his sleeves to show how Mr Gleeson would roll up his sleeves. But Mr Gleeson had round shiny cuffs and clean white wrists and fattish white hands and the nails of them were long and pointed. Perhaps he pared them too like Lady Boyle. But they were terribly long and pointed nails. So long and cruel they were though the white fattish hands were not cruel but gentle. And though he trembled with cold and fright to think of the cruel long nails and of the high whistling sound of the cane and of the chill you felt at the end of your shirt when you undressed yourself yet he felt a feeling of queer quiet pleasure inside him to think of the white fattish hands, clean and strong and gentle. And he thought of what Cecil Thunder had said; that Mr Gleeson would not flog Corrigan hard. And Fleming had said he would not because it was best of his play not to. But that was not why.

  A voice from far out on the playground cried:

  —All in!

  And other voices cried:

  —All in! All in!

  During the writing lesson he sat with his arms folded, listening to the slow scraping of the pens. Mr Harford went to and fro making little signs in red pencil and sometimes sitting beside the boy to show him how to hold his pen. He had tried to spell out the headline for himself though he knew already what it was for it was the last of the book. Zeal without prudence is like a ship adrift. But the lines of the letters were like fine invisible threads and it was only by closing his right eye tight tight and staring out of the left eye that he could make out the full curves of the capital.

  But Mr Harford was very decent and never got into a wax. All the other masters got into dreadf
ul waxes. But why were they to suffer for what fellows in the higher line did? Wells had said that they had drunk some of the altar wine out of the press in the sacristy and that it had been found out who had done it by the smell. Perhaps they had stolen a monstrancect to run away with it and sell it somewhere. That must have been a terrible sin, to go in there quietly at night, to open the dark press and steal the flashing gold thing into which God was put on the altar in the middle of flowers and candles at benedictioncu while the incense went up in clouds at both sides as the fellow swung the censer and Dominic Kelly sang the first part by himself in the choir. But God was not in it of course when they stole it. But still it was a strange and a great sin even to touch it. He thought of it with deep awe; a terrible and strange sin: it thrilled him to think of it in the silence when the pens scraped lightly. But to drink the altar wine out of the press and be found out by the smell was a sin too: but it was not terrible and strange. It only made you feel a little sickish on account of the smell of the wine. Because on the day when he had made his first holy communion in the chapel he had shut his eyes and opened his mouth and put out his tongue a little: and when the rector had stooped down to give him the holy communion he had smelt a faint winy smell off the rector’s breath after the wine of the mass. The word was beautiful: wine. It made you think of dark purple because the grapes were dark purple that grew in Greece outside houses like white temples. But the faint smell off the rector’s breath had made him feel a sick feeling on the morning of his first communion. The day of your first communion was the happiest day of your life. And once a lot of generals had asked Napoleon what was the happiest day of his life. They thought he would say the day he won some great battle or the day he was made an emperor. But he said:

  -Gentlemen, the happiest day of my life was the day on which I made my first holy communion.cv

  Father Arnall came in and the Latin lesson began and he remained still leaning on the desk with his arms folded. Father Arnall gave out the theme-books and he said that they were scandalous and that they were all to be written out again with the corrections at once. But the worst of all was Fleming’s theme because the pages were stuck together by a blot: and Father Arnall held it up by a corner and said it was an insult to any master to send him up such a theme. Then he asked Jack Lawton to decline the noun marecw and Jack Lawton stopped at the ablative singular and could not go on with the plural.

  —You should be ashamed of yourself, said Father Arnall sternly. You, the leader of the class!

  Then he asked the next boy and the next and the next. Nobody knew. Father Arnall became very quiet, more and more quiet as each boy tried to answer it and could not. But his face was black looking and his eyes were staring though his voice was so quiet. Then he asked Fleming and Fleming said that that word had no plural. Father Arnall suddenly shut the book and shouted at him:

  -Kneel out there in the middle of the class. You are one of the idlest boys I ever met. Copy out your themes again the rest of you.

  Fleming moved heavily out of his place and knelt between the two last benches. The other boys bent over their theme-books and began to write. A silence filled the classroom and Stephen, glancing timidly at Father Arnall’s dark face, saw that it was a little red from the wax he was in.

  Was that a sin for Father Arnall to be in a wax or was he allowed to get into a wax when the boys were idle because that made them study better or was he only letting on to be in a wax? It was because he was allowed because a priest would know what a sin was and would not do it. But if he did it one time by mistake what would he do to go to confession ? Perhaps he would go to confession to the minister. And if the minister did it he would go to the rector: and the rector to the provincial : and the provincial to the generalcx of the jesuits. That was called the order: and he had heard his father say that they were all clever men. They could all have become high-up people in the world if they had not become jesuits. And he wondered what Father Arnall and Paddy Barrett would have become and what Mr McGlade and Mr Gleeson would have become if they had not become jesuits.cyIt was hard to think what because you would have to think of them in a different way with different coloured coats and trousers and with beards and moustaches and different kinds of hats.

  The door opened quietly and closed. A quick whisper ran through the class: the prefect of studies. There was an instant of dead silence and then the loud crack of a pandybat on the last desk. Stephen’s heart leapt up in fear.

  -Any boys want flogging here, Father Arnall? cried the prefect of studies. Any lazy idle loafers that want flogging in this class?

  He came to the middle of the class and saw Fleming on his knees.

  -Hoho! he cried. Who is this boy? Why is he on his knees? What is your name, boy?

  -Fleming, sir.

  —Hoho, Fleming! An idler of course. I can see it in your eye. Why is he on his knees, Father Arnall?

  -He wrote a bad Latin theme, Father Arnall said, and he missed all the questions in grammar.

  -Of course he did! cried the prefect of studies, of course he did! A born idler! I can see it in the corner of his eye.

  He banged his pandybat down on the desk and cried:

  -Up, Fleming! Up, my boy!

  Fleming stood up slowly.

  -Hold out!cz cried the prefect of studies.

  Fleming held out his hand. The pandybat came down on it with a loud smacking sound: one, two, three, four, five, six.

  -Other hand!

  The pandybat came down again in six loud quick smacks.

  -Kneel down! cried the prefect of studies.

  Fleming knelt down squeezing his hands under his armpits, his face contorted with pain, but Stephen knew how hard his hands were because Fleming was always rubbing rosin into them. But perhaps he was in great pain for the noise of the pandybat was terrible. Stephen’s heart was beating and fluttering.

  -At your work, all of you! shouted the prefect of studies. We want no lazy idle loafers here, lazy idle little schemers. At your work, I tell you. Father Dolan will be in to see you every day. Father Dolan will be in tomorrow.

  He poked one of the boys in the side with the pandybat, saying:

  —You, boy! When will Father Dolan be in again?

  —Tomorrow, sir, said Tom Furlong’s voice.

  —Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow,dasaid the prefect of studies. Make up your minds for that. Every day Father Dolan. Write away. You, boy, who are you?

  Stephen’s heart jumped suddenly.

  -Dedalus, sir.

  -Why are you not writing like the others?

  -I... my...

  He could not speak with fright.

  —Why is he not writing, Father Arnall?

  -He broke his glasses, said Father Arnall, and I exempted him from work.

  -Broke? What is this I hear? What is this? Your name is? said the prefect of studies.

  -Dedalus, sir.

  -Out here, Dedalus. Lazy little schemer. I see schemer in your face. Where did you break your glasses?

  Stephen stumbled into the middle of the class, blinded by fear and haste.

  —Where did you break your glasses? repeated the prefect of studies.

  —The cinderpath, sir.

  -Hoho! The cinderpath! cried the prefect of studies. I know that trick.

  Stephen lifted his eyes in wonder and saw for a moment Father Dolan’s whitegrey not young face, his baldy whitegrey head with fluff at the sides of it, the steel rims of his spectacles and his no-coloured eyes looking through the glasses. Why did he say he knew that trick?

  -Lazy idle little loafer! cried the prefect of studies. Broke my glasses! An old schoolboy trick! Out with your hand this moment!

  Stephen closed his eyes and held out in the air his trembling hand with the palm upwards. He felt the prefect of studies touch it for a moment at the fingers to straighten it and then the swish of the sleeve of the soutane as the pandybat was lifted to strike. A hot burning stinging tingling blow like the loud crack of a broken stick ma
de his trembling hand crumple together like a leaf in the fire: and at the sound and the pain scalding tears were driven into his eyes. His whole body was shaking with fright, his arm was shaking and his crumpled burning livid hand shook like a loose leaf in the air. A cry sprang to his lips, a prayer to be let off: But though the tears scalded his eyes and his limbs quivered with pain and fright he held back the hot tears and the cry that scalded his throat.

  —Other hand! shouted the prefect of studies.

  Stephen drew back his maimed and quivering right arm and held out his left hand. The soutane sleeve swished again as the pandybat was lifted and a loud crashing sound and a fierce maddening tingling burning pain made his hand shrink together with the palms and fingers in a livid quivering mass. The scalding water burst forth from his eyes and, burning with shame and agony and fear, he drew back his shaking arm in terror and burst out into a whine of pain. His body shook with a palsy of fright and in shame and rage he felt the scalding cry come from his throat and the scalding tears falling out of his eyes and down his flaming cheeks.

  —Kneel down! cried the prefect of studies.

  Stephen knelt down quickly pressing his beaten hands to his sides. To think of them beaten and swollen with pain all in a moment made him feel so sorry for them as if they were not his own but someone else’s that he felt sorry for. And as he knelt, calming the last sobs in his throat and feeling the burning tingling pain pressed into his sides, he thought of the hands which he had held out in the air with the palms up and of the firm touch of the prefect of studies when he had steadied the shaking fingers and of the beaten swollen reddened mass of palm and fingers that shook helplessly in the air.

  -Get at your work, all of you, cried the prefect of studies from the door. Father Dolan will be in every day to see if any boy, any lazy idle little loafer wants flogging. Every day. Every day.