Complete Works of James Joyce (33 page)

Symbol of departure or of loneliness? The verses crooned in the ear of his memory composed slowly before his remembering eyes the scene of the hall on the night of the opening of the national theatre. He was alone at the side of the balcony, looking out of jaded eyes at the culture of Dublin in the stalls and at the tawdry scene-cloths and human dolls framed by the garish lamps of the stage. A burly policeman sweated behind him and seemed at every moment about to act. The catcalls and hisses and mocking cries ran in rude gusts round the hall from his scattered fellow students.

 
— A libel on Ireland!

 
— Made in Germany.

 
— Blasphemy!

 
— We never sold our faith!

 
— No Irish woman ever did it!

 
— We want no amateur atheists.

 
— We want no budding buddhists.

A sudden swift hiss fell from the windows above him and he knew that the electric lamps had been switched on in the reader’s room. He turned into the pillared hall, now calmly lit, went up the staircase and passed in through the clicking turnstile.

Cranly was sitting over near the dictionaries. A thick book, opened at the frontispiece, lay before him on the wooden rest. He leaned back in his chair, inclining his ear like that of a confessor to the face of the medical student who was reading to him a problem from the chess page of a journal. Stephen sat down at his right and the priest at the other side of the table closed his copy of THE TABLET with an angry snap and stood up.

Cranly gazed after him blandly and vaguely. The medical student went on in a softer voice:

 
— Pawn to king’s fourth.

 
— We had better go, Dixon, said Stephen in warning. He has gone to complain.

Dixon folded the journal and rose with dignity, saying:

 
— Our men retired in good order.

 
— With guns and cattle, added Stephen, pointing to the titlepage of Cranly’s book on which was printed DISEASES OF THE OX.

As they passed through a lane of the tables Stephen said:

 
— Cranly, I want to speak to you.

Cranly did not answer or turn. He laid his book on the counter and passed out, his well-shod feet sounding flatly on the floor. On the staircase he paused and gazing absently at Dixon repeated:

 
— Pawn to king’s bloody fourth.

 
— Put it that way if you like, Dixon said.

He had a quiet toneless voice and urbane manners and on a finger of his plump clean hand he displayed at moments a signet ring.

As they crossed the hall a man of dwarfish stature came towards them. Under the dome of his tiny hat his unshaven face began to smile with pleasure and he was heard to murmur. The eyes were melancholy as those of a monkey.

 
— Good evening, gentlemen, said the stubble-grown monkeyish face.

 
— Warm weather for March, said Cranly. They have the windows open upstairs.

Dixon smiled and turned his ring. The blackish, monkey-puckered face pursed its human mouth with gentle pleasure and its voice purred:

 
— Delightful weather for March. Simply delightful.

 
— There are two nice young ladies upstairs, captain, tired of waiting, Dixon said.

Cranly smiled and said kindly:

 
— The captain has only one love: sir Walter Scott. Isn’t that so, captain?

 
— What are you reading now, captain? Dixon asked. THE BRIDE OF LAMMERMOOR?

 
— I love old Scott, the flexible lips said, I think he writes something lovely. There is no writer can touch sir Walter Scott.

He moved a thin shrunken brown hand gently in the air in time to his praise and his thin quick eyelids beat often over his sad eyes.

Sadder to Stephen’s ear was his speech: a genteel accent, low and moist, marred by errors, and, listening to it, he wondered was the story true and was the thin blood that flowed in his shrunken frame noble and come of an incestuous love?

The park trees were heavy with rain; and rain fell still and ever in the lake, lying grey like a shield. A game of swans flew there and the water and the shore beneath were fouled with their green-white slime. They embraced softly, impelled by the grey rainy light, the wet silent trees, the shield-like witnessing lake, the swans. They embraced without joy or passion, his arm about his sister’s neck. A grey woollen cloak was wrapped athwart her from her shoulder to her waist and her fair head was bent in willing shame. He had loose red-brown hair and tender shapely strong freckled hands. Face? There was no face seen. The brother’s face was bent upon her fair rain-fragrant hair. The hand freckled and strong and shapely and caressing was Davin’s hand.

He frowned angrily upon his thought and on the shrivelled mannikin who had called it forth. His father’s jibes at the Bantry gang leaped out of his memory. He held them at a distance and brooded uneasily on his own thought again. Why were they not Cranly’s hands? Had Davin’s simplicity and innocence stung him more secretly?

He walked on across the hall with Dixon, leaving Cranly to take leave elaborately of the dwarf.

Under the colonnade Temple was standing in the midst of a little group of students. One of them cried:

 
— Dixon, come over till you hear. Temple is in grand form.

Temple turned on him his dark gipsy eyes.

 
— You’re a hypocrite, O’Keeffe, he said. And Dixon is a smiler. By hell, I think that’s a good literary expression.

He laughed slyly, looking in Stephen’s face, repeating:

 
— By hell, I’m delighted with that name. A smiler.

A stout student who stood below them on the steps said:

 
— Come back to the mistress, Temple. We want to hear about that.

 
— He had, faith, Temple said. And he was a married man too. And all the priests used to be dining there. By hell, I think they all had a touch.

 
— We shall call it riding a hack to spare the hunter, said Dixon.

 
— Tell us, Temple, O’Keeffe said, how many quarts of porter have you in you?

 
— All your intellectual soul is in that phrase, O’Keeffe, said Temple with open scorn.

He moved with a shambling gait round the group and spoke to Stephen.

 
— Did you know that the Forsters are the kings of Belgium? he asked.

Cranly came out through the door of the entrance hall, his hat thrust back on the nape of his neck and picking his teeth with care.

 
— And here’s the wiseacre, said Temple. Do you know that about the Forsters?

He paused for an answer. Cranly dislodged a figseed from his teeth on the point of his rude toothpick and gazed at it intently.

 
— The Forster family, Temple said, is descended from Baldwin the First, king of Flanders. He was called the Forester. Forester and Forster are the same name. A descendant of Baldwin the First, captain Francis Forster, settled in Ireland and married the daughter of the last chieftain of Clanbrassil. Then there are the Blake Forsters. That’s a different branch.

 
— From Baldhead, king of Flanders, Cranly repeated, rooting again deliberately at his gleaming uncovered teeth.

 
— Where did you pick up all that history? O’Keeffe asked.

 
— I know all the history of your family, too, Temple said, turning to Stephen. Do you know what Giraldus Cambrensis says about your family?

 
— Is he descended from Baldwin too? asked a tall consumptive student with dark eyes.

 
— Baldhead, Cranly repeated, sucking at a crevice in his teeth.

 
— PERNOBILIS ET PERVETUSTA FAMILIA, Temple said to Stephen.

The stout student who stood below them on the steps farted briefly. Dixon turned towards him, saying in a soft voice:

 
— Did an angel speak?

Cranly turned also and said vehemently but without anger:

 
— Goggins, you’re the flamingest dirty devil I ever met, do you know.

 
— I had it on my mind to say that, Goggins answered firmly. It did no one any harm, did it?

 
— We hope, Dixon said suavely, that it was not of the kind known to science as a PAULO POST FUTURUM.

 
— Didn’t I tell you he was a smiler? said Temple, turning right and left. Didn’t I give him that name?

 
— You did. We’re not deaf, said the tall consumptive.

Cranly still frowned at the stout student below him. Then, with a snort of disgust, he shoved him violently down the steps.

 
— Go away from here, he said rudely. Go away, you stinkpot. And you are a stinkpot.

Goggins skipped down on to the gravel and at once returned to his place with good humour. Temple turned back to Stephen and asked:

 
— Do you believe in the law of heredity?

 
— Are you drunk or what are you or what are you trying to say? asked Cranly, facing round on him with an expression of wonder.

 
— The most profound sentence ever written, Temple said with enthusiasm, is the sentence at the end of the zoology. Reproduction is the beginning of death.

He touched Stephen timidly at the elbow and said eagerly:

 
— Do you feel how profound that is because you are a poet?

Cranly pointed his long forefinger.

 
— Look at him! he said with scorn to the others. Look at Ireland’s hope!

They laughed at his words and gesture. Temple turned on him bravely, saying:

 
— Cranly, you’re always sneering at me. I can see that. But I am as good as you any day. Do you know what I think about you now as compared with myself?

 
— My dear man, said Cranly urbanely, you are incapable, do you know, absolutely incapable of thinking.

 
— But do you know, Temple went on, what I think of you and of myself compared together?

 
— Out with it, Temple! the stout student cried from the steps. Get it out in bits!

Temple turned right and left, making sudden feeble gestures as he spoke.

 
— I’m a ballocks, he said, shaking his head in despair. I am and I know I am. And I admit it that I am.

Dixon patted him lightly on the shoulder and said mildly:

 
— And it does you every credit, Temple.

 
— But he, Temple said, pointing to Cranly, he is a ballocks, too, like me. Only he doesn’t know it. And that’s the only difference I see.

A burst of laughter covered his words. But he turned again to Stephen and said with a sudden eagerness:

 
— That word is a most interesting word. That’s the only English dual number. Did you know?

 
— Is it? Stephen said vaguely.

He was watching Cranly’s firm-featured suffering face, lit up now by a smile of false patience. The gross name had passed over it like foul water poured over an old stone image, patient of injuries; and, as he watched him, he saw him raise his hat in salute and uncover the black hair that stood stiffly from his forehead like an iron crown.

She passed out from the porch of the library and bowed across Stephen in reply to Cranly’s greeting. He also? Was there not a slight flush on Cranly’s cheek? Or had it come forth at Temple’s words? The light had waned. He could not see.

Did that explain his friend’s listless silence, his harsh comments, the sudden intrusions of rude speech with which he had shattered so often Stephen’s ardent wayward confessions? Stephen had forgiven freely for he had found this rudeness also in himself. And he remembered an evening when he had dismounted from a borrowed creaking bicycle to pray to God in a wood near Malahide. He had lifted up his arms and spoken in ecstasy to the sombre nave of the trees, knowing that he stood on holy ground and in a holy hour. And when two constabulary men had come into sight round a bend in the gloomy road he had broken off his prayer to whistle loudly an air from the last pantomime.