Complete Works of James Joyce (168 page)

This in fact, just to show you, is Caseous, the brutherscutch or puir tyron: a hole or two, the highstinks aforefelt and anygo prigging wurms. Cheesugh! you complain. And Hi Hi High must say you are not Hoa Hoa Hoally in the wrong!

Thus we cannot escape our likes and mislikes, exiles or am-busheers, beggar and neighbour and — this is where the dime — show advertisers advance the temporal relief plea — let us be tolerant of antipathies. Nex quovis burro num fit mercaseus? I am not hereby giving my final endorsement to the learned ignorants of the Cusanus philosophism in which old Nicholas pegs it down that the smarter the spin of the top the sounder the span of the buttom (what the worthy old auberginiste ought to have meant was: the more stolidly immobile in space appears to me the bottom which is presented to use in time by the top primo-mobilisk &c.). And I shall be misunderstord if understood to give an unconditional sinequam to the heroicised furibouts of the Nolanus theory, or, at any rate, of that substrate of apart from hissheory where the Theophil swoors that on principial he was the pointing start of his odiose by comparison and that whiles eggs will fall cheapened all over the walled the Bure will be dear on the Brie.

Now, while I am not out now to be taken up as unintention-ally recommending the Silkebjorg tyrondynamon machine for the more economical helixtrolysis of these amboadipates until I can find space to look into it myself a little more closely first I shall go on with my decisions after having shown to you in good time how both products of our social stomach (the excellent Dr Burroman, I noticed by the way from his emended food theory, has been carefully digesting the very wholesome criticism I helped him to in my princeps edition which is all so munch to the cud) are mutuearly polarised the incompatabilily of any delusional acting as ambivalent to the fixation of his pivotism. Positing, as above, too males pooles, the one the pictor of the other and the omber the Skotia of the one, and looking want-ingly around our undistributed middle between males we feel we must waistfully woent a female to focus and on this stage there pleasantly appears the cowrymaid M. whom we shall often meet below who introduces herself upon us at some precise hour which we shall again agree to call absolute zero or the babbling pumpt of platinism. And so like that former son of a kish who went up and out to found his farmer’s ashes we come down home gently on our own turnedabout asses to meet Margareen.

We now romp through a period of pure lyricism of shame-bred music (technologically, let me say, the appetising entry of this subject on a fool chest of vialds is plumply pudding the carp before doevre hors) evidenced by such words in distress as I cream for thee, Sweet Margareen, and the more hopeful O Mar-gareena! O Margareena! Still in the bowl is left a lump of gold! (Correspondents, by the way, will keep on asking me what is the correct garnish to serve drisheens with. Tansy Sauce. Enough). The pawnbreaking pathos of the first of these shoddy pieces reveals it as a Caseous effort. Burrus’s bit is often used for a toast. Criniculture can tell us very precisely indeed how and why this particular streak of yellow silver first appeared on (not in) the bowel, that is to see, the human head, bald, black, bronze, brown, brindled, betteraved or blanchemanged where it might be use-fully compared with an earwig on a fullbottom. I am offering this to Signorina Cuticura and I intend to take it up and bring it under the nosetice of Herr Harlene by way of diverting his attentions. Of course the unskilled singer continues to pervert our wiser ears by subordinating the space-element, that is to sing, the aria, to the time-factor, which ought to be killed, ill tempor. I should advise any unborn singer who may still be among my heeders to forget her temporal diaphragm at home (the best thing that could happen to it!) and attack the roulade with a swift colpo di glottide to the lug (though Maace I will insist was reclined from overdoing this, his recovery often being slow) and then, O ! on the third dead beat, O ! to cluse her eyes and aiopen her oath and see what spice I may send her. How? Cease thee, cantatrickee! I fain would be solo. Arouse thee, my valour! And save for e’er my true Bdur!

I shall have a word to say in a few yards about the acoustic and orchidectural management of the tonehall but, as ours is a vivarious where one plant’s breaf is a lunger planner’s byscent and you may not care for argon, it will be very convenient for me for the emolument to pursue Burrus and Caseous for a rung or two up their isocelating biangle. Every admirer has seen my goulache of Marge (she is so like the sister, you don’t know, and they both dress A L I K E !) which I titled The Very Picture of a Needlesswoman which in the presence ornates our national cruetstand. This genre of portraiture of changes of mind in order to be truly torse should evoke the bush soul of females so I am leaving it to the experienced victim to complete the general suggestion by the mental addition of a wallopy bound or, should the zulugical zealot prefer it, a congorool teal. The hatboxes which composed Rhomba, lady Trabezond (Marge in her ex-celsis), also comprised the climactogram up which B and C may fondly be imagined ascending and are suggestive of gentlemen’s spring modes, these modes carrying us back to the superimposed claylayers of eocene and pleastoseen formation and the gradual morphological changes in our body politic which Professor Ebahi–Ahuri of Philadespoinis (Ill) — whose bluebutterbust I have just given his coupe de grass to — neatly names a boŒte … surprises. The boxes, if I may break the subject gently, are worth about fourpence pourbox but I am inventing a more patent pro-cess, foolproof and pryperfect (I should like to ask that Shedlock Homes person who is out for removing the roofs of our criminal classics by what deductio ad domunum he hopes de tacto to detect anything unless he happens of himself, movibile tectu, to have a slade off) after which they can be reduced to a fragment of their true crust by even the youngest of Margees if she will take plase to be seated and smile if I please.

Now there can be no question about it either that I having done as much, have quite got the size of that demilitery young female (we will continue to call her Marge) whose types may be met with in any public garden, wearing a very “dressy” affair, known as an “ethel” of instep length and with a real fur, reduced to 3/9, and muffin cap to tone (they are “angelskin” this fall), ostentatiously hemming apologetically over the shirtness of some “sweet” garment, when she is not sitting on all the free benches avidously reading about “it” but ovidently on the look out for “him” or so “thrilled” about the best dressed dolly pram and beautiful elbow competition or at the movies swallowing sobs and blowing bixed mixcuits over “childe” chaplain’s “latest” or on the verge of the gutter with some bobbedhair brieffrocked babyma’s toddler (the Smythe–Smythes now keep TWO domes-tics and aspire to THREE male ones, a shover, a butlegger and a sectary) held hostage at armslength, teaching His Infant Majesty how to make waters worse.

(I am closely watching Master Pules, as I have regions to sus-pect from my post that her “litde man” is a secondary school — teacher under the boards of education, a voted disciple of Infan — tulus who is being utilised thus publicly by the seducente infanta to conceal her own more mascular personality by flaunting frivolish finery over men’s inside clothes, for the femininny of that totamulier will always lack the musculink of a verumvirum. My solotions for the proper parturience of matres and the edu-cation of micturious mites must stand over from the moment till I tackle this tickler hussy for occupying my uttentions.)

Margareena she’s very fond of Burrus but, alick and alack! she velly fond of chee. (The important influence exercised on everything by this eastasian import has not been till now fully flavoured though we can comfortably taste it in this case. I shall come back for a little more say farther on.) A cleopatrician in her own right she at once complicates the position while Burrus and Caseous are contending for her misstery by implicating her- self with an elusive Antonius, a wop who would appear to hug a personal interest in refined chees of all chades at the same time as he wags an antomine art of being rude like the boor. This Antonius–Burrus-Caseous grouptriad may be said to equate the qualis equivalent with the older socalled talis on talis one just as quantly as in the hyperchemical economantarchy the tan-tum ergons irruminate the quantum urge so that eggs is to whey as whay is to zeed like your golfchild’s abe boob caddy. And this is why any simple philadolphus of a fool you like to dress, an athemisthued lowtownian, exlegged phatrisight, may be awfully green to one side of him and fruitfully blue on the other which will not screen him however from appealing to my gropesarching eyes, through the strongholes of my acropoll, as a boosted blasted bleating blatant bloaten blasphorus blesphorous idiot who kennot tail a bomb from a painapple when he steals one and wannot psing his psalmen with the cong in our gregational pompoms with the canting crew.

No! Topsman to your Tarpeia! This thing, Mister Abby, is nefand. (And, taking off soutstuffs and alkalike matters, I hope we can kill time to reach the salt because there’s some forceglass neutric assets bittering in the soldpewter for you to plump your pottage in). The thundering legion has stormed Olymp that it end. Twelve tabular times till now have I edicted it. Merus Genius to Careous Caseous! Moriture, te salutat! My phemous themis race is run, so let Demoncracy take the highmost! (Abra-ham Tripier. Those old diligences are quite out of date. Read next answer). I’ll beat you so lon. (Bigtempered. Why not take direct action. See previous reply). My unchanging Word is sacred. The word is my Wife, to exponse and expound, to vend and to velnerate, and may the curlews crown our nuptias! Till Breath us depart! Wamen. Beware would you change with my years. Be as young as your grandmother! The ring man in the rong shop but the rite words by the rote order! Ubi lingua nuncupassit, ibi fas! Adversus hostem semper sac! She that will not feel my ful-moon let her peel to thee as the hoyden and the impudent! That mon that hoth no moses in his sole nor is not awed by conquists of word’s law, who never with humself was fed and leaves his soil to lave his head, when his hope’s in his highlows from whisking his woe, if he came to my preach, a proud pursebroken ranger, when the heavens were welling the spite of their spout, to beg for a bite in our bark Noisdanger, would meself and Mac Jeffet, four-inhand, foot him out? — ay! — were he my own breastbrother, my doubled withd love and my singlebiassed hate, were we bread by the same fire and signed with the same salt, had we tapped from the same master and robbed the same till, were we tucked in the one bed and bit by the one flea, homo-gallant and hemycapnoise, bum and dingo, jack by churl, though it broke my heart to pray it, still I’d fear I’d hate to say!

12. Sacer esto?

Answer: Semus sumus!

CHAPTER SEV
EN

Shem is as short for Shemus as Jem is joky for Jacob. A few toughnecks are still getatable who pretend that aboriginally he was of respectable stemming (he was an outlex between the lines of Ragonar Blaubarb ant Horrild Hairwire and an inlaw to Capt. the Hon. and Rev. Mr Bbyrdwood de Trop Blogg was among his most distant connections) but every honest to goodness man in the land of the space of today knows that his back life will not stand being written about in black and white. Putting truth and untruth together a shot may be made at what this hybrid actually was like to look at.

Shem’s bodily getup, it seems, included an adze of a skull, an eight of a larkseye, the whoel of a nose, one numb arm up a sleeve, fortytwo hairs off his uncrown, eighteen to his mock lip, a trio of barbels from his megageg chin (sowman’s son), the wrong shoulder higher than the right, all ears, an artificial tongue with a natural curl, not a foot to stand on, a handful of thumbs, a blind stomach, a deaf heart, a loose liver, two fifths of two buttocks, one gleetsteen avoirdupoider for him, a manroot of all evil, a salmonkelt’s thinskin, eelsblood in his-cold toes, a bladder tristended, so much so that young Master Shemmy on his very first debouch at the very dawn of protohistory seeing himself such and such, when playing with thistlewords in their garden nursery, Griefotrofio, at Phig Streat III Shuvlin, Old Hoeland, (would we go back there now for sounds, pillings and sense? would we now for annas and annas? would we for full-score eight and a liretta? for twelve blocks one bob? for four tes — ters one groat? not for a dinar! not for jo!) dictited to of all his little brothron and sweestureens the first riddle of the universe: asking, when is a man not a man?: telling them take their time, yungfries, and wait till the tide stops (for from the first his day was a fortnight) and offering the prize of a bittersweet crab, a little present from the past, for their copper age was yet unminted, to the winner. One said when the heavens are quakers, a second said when Bohemeand lips, a third said when he, no, when hold hard a jiffy, when he is a gnawstick and detarmined to, the next one said when the angel of death kicks the bucket of life, still another said when the wine’s at witsends, and still another when lovely wooman stoops to conk him, one of the littliest said me, me, Sem, when pappa papared the harbour, one of the wittiest said, when he yeat ye abblokooken and he zmear hezelf zo zhooken, still one said when you are old I’m grey fall full wi sleep, and still another when wee deader walkner, and another when he is just only after having being semisized, an-other when yea, he hath no mananas, and one when dose pigs they begin now that they will flies up intil the looft. All were wrong, so Shem himself, the doctator, took the cake, the correct solution being — all give it up? — ; when he is a — yours till the rending of the rocks, — Sham.

Shem was a sham and a low sham and his lowness creeped out first via foodstuffs. So low was he that he preferred Gibsen’s tea-time salmon tinned, as inexpensive as pleasing, to the plumpest roeheavy lax or the friskiest parr or smolt troutlet that ever was gaffed between Leixlip and Island Bridge and many was the time he repeated in his botulism that no junglegrown pineapple ever smacked like the whoppers you shook out of Ananias’ cans, Findlater and Gladstone’s, Corner House, Englend. None of your inchthick blueblooded Balaclava fried-at-belief-stakes or juicejelly legs of the Grex’s molten mutton or greasilygristly grunters’ goupons or slice upon slab of luscious goosebosom with lump after load of plumpudding stuffing all aswim in a swamp of bogoakgravy for that greekenhearted yude! Rosbif of Old Zealand! he could not attouch it. See what happens when your somatophage merman takes his fancy to our virgitarian swan? He even ran away with hunself and became a farsoonerite, saying he would far sooner muddle through the hash of lentils in Europe than meddle with Irrland’s split little pea. Once when among those rebels in a state of hopelessly helpless intoxication the piscivore strove to lift a czitround peel to either nostril, hic-cupping, apparently impromptued by the hibat he had with his glottal stop, that he kukkakould flowrish for ever by the smell, as the czitr, as the kcedron, like a scedar, of the founts, on moun-tains, with limon on, of Lebanon. O! the lowness of him was beneath all up to that sunk to! No likedbylike firewater or first-served firstshot or gulletburn gin or honest brewbarrett beer either. O dear no! Instead the tragic jester sobbed himself wheywhing-ingly sick of life on some sort of a rhubarbarous maundarin yella — green funkleblue windigut diodying applejack squeezed from sour grapefruice and, to hear him twixt his sedimental cupslips when he had gulfed down mmmmuch too mmmmany gourds of it retching off to almost as low withswillers, who always knew notwithstanding when they had had enough and were rightly indignant at the wretch’s hospitality when they found to their horror they could not carry another drop, it came straight from the noble white fat, jo, openwide sat, jo, jo, her why hide that, jo jo jo, the winevat, of the most serene magyansty az archdio-chesse, if she is a duck, she’s a douches, and when she has a feherbour snot her fault, now is it? artstouchups, funny you’re grinning at, fancy you’re in her yet, Fanny Urinia.

Aint that swell, hey? Peamengro! Talk about lowness! Any dog’s quantity of it visibly oozed out thickly from this dirty little blacking beetle for the very fourth snap the Tulloch–Turn-bull girl with her coldblood kodak shotted the as yet unre — muneranded national apostate, who was cowardly gun and camera shy, taking what he fondly thought was a short cut to Caer Fere, Soak Amerigas, vias the shipsteam Pridewin, after having buried a hatchet not so long before, by the wrong goods exeunt, num- mer desh to tren, into Patatapapaveri’s, fruiterers and musical florists, with his Ciaho, chavi! Sat shin, shillipen? she knew the vice out of bridewell was a bad fast man by his walk on the spot.

[Johns is a different butcher’s. Next place you are up town pay him a visit. Or better still, come tobuy. You will enjoy cattlemen’s spring meat. Johns is now quite divorced from baking. Fattens, kills, flays, hangs, draws, quarters and pieces. Feel his lambs ! Ex ! Feel how sheap! Exex! His liver too is great value, a spatiality! Exexexl COMMUNICATED.]

Around that time, moravar, one generally, for luvvomony hoped or at any rate suspected among morticians that he would early tum out badly, develop hereditary pulmonary T.B., and do for himself one dandy time, nay, of a pelting night blanketed creditors, hearing a coarse song and splash off Eden Quay sighed and rolled over, sure all was up, but, though he fell heavily and locally into debit, not even then could such an antinomian be true to type. He would not put fire to his cerebrum; he would not throw himself in Liffey; he would not explaud himself with pneumantics; he refused to saffrocake himself with a sod. With the foreign devil’s leave the fraid bom fraud diddled even death. Anzi, cabled (but shaking the worth out of his maulth: Guarda-costa leporello? Szasas Kraicz!) from his Nearapoblican asylum to his jonathan for a brother: Here tokay, gone tomory, we’re spluched, do something, Fireless. And had answer: Inconvenient, David.

You see, chaps, it will trickle out, freaksily of course, but the tom and the shorty of it is: he was in his bardic memory low. All the time he kept on treasuring with condign satisfaction each and every crumb of trektalk, covetous of his neighbour’s word, and if ever, during a Munda conversazione commoted in the nation’s interest, delicate tippits were thrown out to him touching his evil courses by some wellwishers, vainly pleading by scriptural arguments with the opprobrious papist about trying to brace up for the kidos of the thing, Scally wag, and be a men instead of a dem scrounger, dish it all, such as: Pray, what is the meaning, sousy, of that continental expression, if you ever came acrux it, we think it is a word transpiciously like canaille?: or: Did you anywhere, kennel, on your gullible’s travels or during your rural troubadouring, happen to stumble upon a certain gay young nobleman whimpering to the name of Low Swine who always addresses women out of the one comer of his mouth, lives on loans and is furtivefree yours of age? with-out one sigh of haste like the supreme prig he was, and not a bit sorry, he would pull a vacant landlubber’s face, root with ear-waker’s pensile in the outer of his lauscher and then, lisping, the prattlepate parnella, to kill time, and swatting his deadbest to think what under the canopies of Jansens Chrest would any decent son of an Albiogenselman who had bin to an university think, let a lent hit a hint and begin to tell all the intelligentsia admitted to that tamileasy samtalaisy conclamazzione (since, still and before physicians, lawyers merchant, belfry pollititians, agri-colous manufraudurers, sacrestanes of the Pure River Society, philanthropicks lodging on as many boards round the panesthetic at the same time as possible) the whole lifelong swrine story of his entire low cornaille existence, abusing his deceased ancestors wherever the sods were and one moment tarabooming great blunderguns (poh!) about his farfamed fine Poppamore, Mr Humhum, whom history, climate and entertainment made the first of his sept and always up to debt, though Eavens ears ow many fines he faces, and another moment visanvrerssas, cruaching three jeers (pah!) for his rotten little ghost of a Peppybeg, Mr Himmyshimmy, a blighty, a reeky, a lighty, a scrapy, a bab-bly, a ninny, dirty seventh among thieves and always bottom sawyer, till nowan knowed how howmely howme could be, giving unsolicited testimony on behalf of the absent, as glib as eaves — water to those present (who meanwhile, with increasing lack of interest in his semantics, allowed various subconscious smickers to drivel slowly across their fichers), unconsciously explaining, for inkstands, with a meticulosity bordering on the insane, the various meanings of all the different foreign parts of speech he misused and cuttlefishing every lie unshrinkable about all the other people in the story, leaving out, of course, foreconsciously, the simple worf and plague and poison they had cornered him about until there was not a snoozer among them but was utterly undeceived in the heel of the reel by the recital of the rigmarole.

He went without saying that the cull disliked anything anyway approaching a plain straightforward standup or knockdown row and, as often as he was called in to umpire any octagonal argu-ment among slangwhangers, the accomplished washout always used to rub shoulders with the last speaker and clasp shakers (the handtouch which is speech without words) and agree to every word as soon as half uttered, command me!, your servant, good, I revere you, how, my seer? be drinking that! quite truth, grati-as, I’m yoush, see wha’m hearing?, also goods, please it, me sure?, be filling this!, quiso, you said it, apasafello, muchas grassyass, is there firing-on-me?, is their girlic-on-you?, to your good self, your sulphur, and then at once focuss his whole unbalanced attention upon the next octagonist who managed to catch a listener’s eye, asking and imploring him out of his piteous onewinker, (hemoptysia diadumenos) whether there was anything in the world he could do to please him and to overflow his tumbletantaliser for him yet once more.

One hailcannon night (for his departure was attended by a heavy downpour) as very recently as some thousand rains ago he was therefore treated with what closely resembled parsonal viol-ence, being soggert all unsuspectingly through the deserted village of Tumblin-on-the-Leafy from Mr Vanhomrigh’s house at 81 bis Mabbot’s Mall as far as Green Patch beyond the brickfields of Salmon Pool by rival teams of slowspiers counter quicklimers who finally, as rahilly they had been deteened out rawther lae-tich, thought, busnis hits busnis, they had better be streaking for home after their Auborne-to-Auborne, with thanks for the pleasant evening, one and all disgustedly, instead of ruggering him back, and awake, reconciled (though they were as jealous as could be cullions about all the truffles they had brought on him) to a friendship, fast and furious, which merely arose out of the noxious pervert’s perfect lowness. Again there was a hope that people, looking on him with the contemp of the contempibles, after first gaving him a roll in the dirt, might pity and forgive him, if properly deloused, but the pleb was born a Quicklow and sank alowing till he stank out of sight.

All Saints beat Belial! Mickil Goals to Nichil! Notpossible! Already? In Nowhere has yet the Whole World taken part of himself for his

Wife; By Nowhere have Poorparents been sentenced to Worms, Blood and

Thunder for Life Not yet has the Emp from Corpsica forced the Arth out of Engleterre; Not yet have the Sachsen and Judder on the Mound of a Word made

Warre; Not yet Witchywithcy of Wench struck Fire of his Heath from on

Hoath; Not yet his Arcobaleine forespoken Peacepeace upon Oath; Cleftfoot from Hempal must tumpel, Blamefool Gardener’s bound to

fall; Broken Eggs will poursuive bitten Apples for where theirs is Will

there’s his Wall; But the Mountstill frowns on the Millstream while their Madsons

leap his Bier And her Rillstrill liffs to His Murkesty all her daft Daughters laff

in her Ear. Till the four Shores of deff Tory Island let the douze dumm Eire-whiggs raille! Hirp! Hirp! for their Missed Understandings! chirps the Ballat of

Perce–Oreille.

O fortunous casualitas! Lefty takes the cherubcake while Rights cloves his hoof Darkies never done tug that coon out to play non-excretory, anti-sexuous, misoxenetic, gaasy pure, flesh and blood games, written and composed and sung and danced by Niscemus Nemon, same as piccaninnies play all day, those old (none of your honeys and rubbers !) games for fun and ele-ment we used to play with Dina and old Joe kicking her behind and before and the yellow girl kicking him behind old Joe, games like Thom Thom the Thonderman, Put the Wind up the Peeler, Hat in the Ring, Prisson your Pritchards and Play Withers Team, Mikel on the Luckypig, Nickel in the Slot, Sheila Harnett and her Cow, Adam and Ell, Humble Bumble, Moggie’s on the Wall, Twos and Threes, American Jump, Fox Come out of your Den, Broken Bottles, Writing a Letter to Punch, Tiptop is a Sweetstore, Henressy Crump Expolled, Postman’s Knock, Are We Fairlys Represented?, Solomon Silent reading, Appletree Bearstone, I know a Washer-woman, Hospitals, As I was Walking, There is Oneyone’s House in Dreamcolohour, Battle of Waterloo, Colours, Eggs in the Bush, Habberdasherisher, Telling your Dreams, What’s the Time, Nap, Ducking Mammy, Last Man Standing, Heali Baboon and the Forky Theagues, Fickleyes and Futilears, Handmarried but once in my Life and I’ll never commit such a Sin agin, Zip Cooney Candy, Turkey in the Straw, This is the Way we sow the Seed of a long and lusty Morning, Hops of Fun at Miliken’s Make, I seen the Tooth-brush with Pat Farrel, Here’s the Fat to graze the Priest’s Boots, When his Steam was like a Raimbrandt round Mac Garvey.