Complete Works of James Joyce (234 page)

BOOK: Complete Works of James Joyce
5.25Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub

 
— No, he had his teeth in the hack of his head.

 
— Did Box then try to shine his puss?

 
— No but Cox did to shin the punman.

 
— The worsted crying that if never he looked on Leaverhol-ma’s again and the bester huing that he might ever save sunlife?

 
— Trulytruly Asbestos he ever. And sowasso I never.

 
— That forte carlysle touch breaking the campdens pianoback.

 
— Pansh!

 
— Are you of my meaning that would be going on to about half noon, click o’clock, pip emma, Grinwicker time, by your querqcut quadrant?

 
— You will be asking me and I wish to higgins you wouldn’t. Would it?

 
— Let it be twelve thirty after a somersautch of the tardest!

 
— And it was eleven thirstytoo befour in soandsuch, reloy on it!

 
— Tick up on time. Howday you doom? That rising day sinks rosing in a night of nine week’s wonder.

 
— Amties, marcy buckup! The uneven day of the unleventh month of the unevented year. At mart in mass.

 
— A triduum before Our Larry’s own day. By which of your chronos, my man of four watches, larboard, starboard, dog or dath?

 
— Dunsink, rugby, ballast and ball. You can imagine.

 
— Language this allsfare for the loathe of Marses ambiviolent about it. Will you swear all the same you saw their shadows a hundred foot later, struggling diabolically over this, that and the other, their virtues pro and his principality con, near the Ruins, Drogheda Street, and kicking up the devil’s own dust for the Milesian wind?

 
— I will. I did. They were. I swear. Like the heavenly militia. So wreek me Ghyllygully ! With my tongue through my toecap on the headlong stone of kismet if so ’tis the will of Whose B. Dunn.

 
— Weepin Lorcans! They must have put in some wonderful work, ecad, on the quiet like, during this arms’ parley, meatierities forces vegateareans. Dost thou not think so?

 
— Ay.

 
— The illegallooking range or fender, alias turfing iron, a product of Hostages and Co, Engineers, changed feet several times as briars revalvered during the weaponswap? Piff?

 
— Puff! Excuse yourself. It was an ersatz lottheringcan.

 
— They did not know the war was over and were only bere-belling or bereppelling one another by chance or necessity with sham bottles, mere and woiney, as betwinst Picturshirts and Scutticules, like their caractacurs in an Irish Ruman to sorowbrate the expeltsion of the Danos? What sayest thou, scusascmerul?

 
— That’s all. For he was heavily upright man, Limba romena in Bucclis tucsada. Farcing gutterish.

 
— I mean the Morgans and the Dorans, in finnish?

 
— I know you don’t, in Feeney’s.

 
— The mujic of the footure on the barbarihams of the bashed? Co Canniley?

 
— Da Donnuley.

 
— Yet this war has meed peace?
In voina viritas. Ab chaos lex, neat wehr?

 
— O bella!
O pia! O pura! Amem. Handwalled amokst us. Thanksbeer to Balbus!

 
— All the same you sound it twould clang houlish like Hull hopen for christmians?

 
— But twill cling hellish like engels opened to neuropeans, if you’ve sensed, whole the sum. So be vigil!

 
— And this pattern pootsch punnermine of concoon and proprey went on, hog and minne, a whole whake, your night after larry’s night, spittinspite on Dora O’Huggins, ormonde caught butler, the artillery of the O’Hefferns answering the cavalry of the MacClouds, fortey and more fortey, a thousand and one times, according to your cock and a biddy story? Lludillongi, for years and years perhaps?

 
— That’s ri. This is his largos life, this is me timtomtum and this is her two peekweeny ones. From the last finger on the second foot of the fourth man to the first one on the last one of the first. That’s right.

 
— Finny. Vary vary finny!

 
— It may look funny but fere it is.

 
— This is not guid enough, Mr Brasslattin. Finging and tonging and winging and ponging! And all your rally and ramp and rant! Didget think I was asleep at the wheel? D’yu mean to tall grand jurors of thathens of tharctic on your oath, me lad, and ask us to believe you, for all you’re enduring long terms, with yur last foot foremouthst, that yur moon was shining on the tors and on the cresties and winblowing night after night, for years and years perhaps, after you swearing to it a while back before your Corth examiner, Markwalther, that there was reen in planty all the teem?

 
— Perhaps so, as you grand duly affirm, Robman Calvinic. I never thought over it, faith. I most certainly think so about it. I hope. Unless it is actionable. It would be a charity for me to think about something which I must on no caste accounts omit, if you ask to me. It was told me as an inspired statement by a friend of myself, in reply to salute, Tarpey, after three o’clock mass, with forty ducks indulgent, that some rain was promised to Mrs Lyons, the invalid of Aunt Tarty Villa, with lots gulp and sousers and likewise he told me, the recusant, after telling mass, with two hundred genuflexions, at the split hour of blight when bars are keeping so sly, as was what’s follows. He is doing a walk, says she, in the feelmick’s park, says he, like a tarrable Turk, says she, letting loose on his nursery and, begalla, he meet himself with Mr Michael Clery of a Tuesday who said Father MacGregor was desperate to the bad place about thassbawls and ejaculating about all the stairrods and the cats-pew swashing his earwanker and thinconvenience being locked up for months, owing to being putrenised by stragglers abusing the apparatus, and for Tarpey to pull himself into his soup and fish and to push on his borrowsaloaner and to go to the tumple like greased lining and see Father MacGregor and, be Cad, sir, he was to pipe up and saluate that clergyman and to tell his holiness the whole goat’s throat about the three shillings in the confusional and to say how Mrs Lyons, the cuptosser, was the infidel who prophessised to pose three shielings Peter’s pelf off her tocher from paraguais and albs by the yard to Mr Martin Clery for Father Mathew to put up a midnight mask saints withins of a Thrushday for African man and to let Brown child do and to leave he Anlone and all the nuisances committed by soldats and non-behavers and missbelovers for N.D. de l’Ecluse to send more heehaw hell’s flutes, my prodder again! And I never brought my cads in togs blanket ! Foueh !

 
— Angly as arrows, but you have right, my celtslinger! Nils, Mugn and Cannut. Should brothers be for awe then?

 
— So let use off be octo while oil bike the bil and wheel whang till wabblin befoul you but mere and mire trullopes will knaver mate a game on the bibby bobby burns of.

 
— Quatsch! What hill ar yu fluking about, ye lamelookond fyats! I’ll discipline ye! Will you swear or affirm the day to yur second sight noo and recant that all yu affirmed to profetised at first sight for his southerly accent was all paddyflaherty? Will ye, ay or nay?

 
— Ay say aye. I affirmly swear to it that it rooly and cooly boolyhooly was with my holyhagionous lips continuously poised upon the rubricated annuals of saint ulstar.

 
— That’s very guid of ye, R.C.! Maybe yu wouldn’t mind talling us, my labrose lad, how very much bright cabbage or paperming comfirts d’yu draw for all yur swearin? The spanglers, kiddy?

 
— Rootha prootha. There you have me! Vurry nothing, O potators, I call it for I might as well tell yous Essexelcy, and I am not swallowing my air, the Golden Bridge’s truth. It amounts to nada in pounds or pence. Not a glass of Lucan nor as much as the cost price of a highlandman’s trousertree or the three crowns round your draphole (isn’t it dram disgusting?) for the whole dumb plodding thing!

 
— Come now, Johnny! We weren’t bom yesterday. Pro tanto quid retribuamus? I ask you to say on your scotty pictail you were promised fines times with some staggerjuice or deadhorse, on strip or in larges, at the Raven and Sugarloaf, either Jones’s lame or Jamesy’s gait, anyhow?

 
— Bushmillah ! Do you think for a moment? Yes, by the way. How very necessarily true! Give me fair play. When?

 
— At the Dove and Raven tavern, no, ah? To wit your wiz-zend?

 
— Water, water, darty water! Up Jubilee sod! Beet peat wheat treat!

 
— What harm wants but demands it! How would you like to hear yur right name now, Ghazi Power, my tristy minstrel, if yur not freckened of frank comment?

 
— Not afrightened of Frank Annybody’s gaspower or ill-conditioned ulcers neither.

 
— Your uncles!

 
— Your gullet !

 
— Will you repeat that to me outside, leinconnmuns?

 
— After you’ve shouted a few? I will when it suits me, hulstler.

 
— Guid! We make fight! Three to one! Raddy?

 
— But no, from exemple, Emania Raffaroo! What do you have? What mean you, august one? Fairplay for Finnians! I will have my humours. Sure, you would not do the cowardly thing and moll me roon? Tell Queen’s road I am seilling. Farewell, but whenever! Buy!

 
— Ef I chuse to put a bullet like yu through the grill for heckling what business is that of yours, yu bullock?

 
— I don’t know, sir. Don’t ask me, your honour!

 
— Gently, gently Northern Ire! Love that red hand! Let me once more. There are sordidly tales within tales, you clearly understand that? Now my other point. Did you know, whether by melanodactylism or purely libationally, that one of these two Crimeans with the fender, the taller man, was accused of a cer-tain offence or of a choice of two serious charges, as skirts were divided on the subject, if you like it better that way? You did, you rogue, you?

 
— You hear things. Besides (and serially now) bushes have eyes, don’t forget. Hah!

 
— Which moral turpitude would you select of the two, for choice, if you had your way? Playing bull before shebears or the hindlegs off a clotheshorse? Did any orangepeelers or green-goaters appear periodically up your sylvan family tree?

 
— Buggered if I know! It all depends on how much family silver you want for a nass-and-pair. Hah!

 
— What do you mean, sir, behind your hah! You don’t hah to do thah, you know, snapograph.

 
— Nothing, sir. Only a bone moving into place. Blotogaff. Hahah !

 
— Whahat?

 
— Are you to have all the pleasure quizzing on me? I didn’t say it aloud, sir. I have something inside of me talking to myself.

 
— You’re a nice third degree witness, faith! But this is no laughing matter. Do you think we are tonedeafs in our noses to boot? Can you not distinguish the sense, prain, from the sound, bray? You have homosexual catheis of empathy between narcis-sism of the expert and steatopygic invertedness. Get yourself psychoanolised !

 
— O, begor, I want no expert nursis symaphy from yours broons quadroons and I can psoakoonaloose myself any time I want (the fog follow you all !) without your interferences or any other pigeonstealer.

 
— Sample! Sample!

 
— Have you ever weflected, wepowtew, that the evil what though it was willed might nevewtheless lead somehow on to good towawd the genewality?

 
— A pwopwo of haster meets waster and talking of plebiscites by a show of hands, whether declaratory or effective, in all seriousness, has it become to dawn in you yet that the deponent, the man from Saint Yves, may have been (one is reluctant to use the passive voiced) may be been as much sinned against as sin-ning, for if we look at it verbally perhaps there is no true noun in active nature where every bally being — please read this mufto — is becoming in its owntown eyeballs. Now the long form and the strong form and reform alltogether!

Other books

The Unquiet by Garsee, Jeannine
Some Kind of Perfect (Calloway Sisters #4.5) by Krista Ritchie, Becca Ritchie
Lion's Honey by David Grossman