Ulysses: Chapter 2 Nestor

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• Author: James Joyce

　

YOU, COCHRANE, WHAT CITY SENT FOR HIM?

-- Tarentum, sir.

-- Very good. Well?

-- There was a battle, sir.

-- Very good. Where?

The boy's blank face asked the blank window.

Fabled by the daughters of memory. And yet it was in some way if not as memory fabled
it. A phrase, then, of impatience, thud of Blake's wings of excess. I hear the ruin of all
space, shattered glass and toppling masonry, and time one livid final flame. What's left
us then?

-- I forgot the place, sir. 279 B.C.

-- Asculum, Stephen said, glancing at the name and date in the gorescarred book.

-- Yes, sir. And he said: Another victory like that and we are done for.

That phrase the world had remembered. A dull ease of the mind. From a hill above a
corpsestrewn plain a general speaking to his officers, leaned upon his spear. Any general
to any officers. They lend ear.

-- You, Armstrong, Stephen said. What was the end of Pyrrhus?

-- End of Pyrrhus, sir?

-- I know, sir. Ask me, sir, Comyn said.

-- Wait. You, Armstrong. Do you know anything about Pyrrhus?

A bag of figrolls lay snugly in Armstrong's satchel. He curled them between his palms
at whiles and swallowed them softly. Crumbs adhered to the tissues of his lips. A
sweetened boy's breath. Welloff people, proud that their eldest son was in the navy. Vico
Road, Dalkey.

-- Pyrrhus, sir? Pyrrhus, a pier.

All laughed. Mirthless high malicious laughter. Armstrong looked round at his
classmates, silly glee in profile. In a moment they will laugh more loudly, aware of my
lack of rule and of the fees their papas pay.

-- Tell me now, Stephen said, poking the boy's shoulder with the book, what is a pier.

-- A pier, sir, Armstrong said. A thing out in the waves. A kind of bridge. Kingstown
pier, sir.

Some laughed again: mirthless but with meaning. Two in the back bench whispered. Yes.
They knew: had never learned nor ever been innocent. All. With envy he watched their
faces. Edith, Ethel, Gerty, Lily. Their likes: their breaths, too, sweetened with tea and
jam, their bracelets tittering in the struggle.

-- Kingstown pier, Stephen said. Yes, a disappointed bridge. The words troubled their
gaze.

-- How, sir? Comyn asked. A bridge is across a river.

For Haines's chapbook. No-one here to hear. Tonight deftly amid wild drink and talk, to
pierce the polished mail of his mind. What then? A jester at the court of his master,
indulged and disesteemed, winning a clement master's praise. Why had they chosen all that
part? Not wholly for the smooth caress. For them too history was a tale like any other too
often heard, their land a pawnshop.

Had Pyrrhus not fallen by a beldam's hand in Argos or Julius Caesar not been knifed to
death? They are not to be thought away. Time has branded them and fettered they are lodged
in the room of the infinite possibilities they have ousted. But can those have been
possible seeing that they never were? Or was that only possible which came to pass? Weave,
weaver of the wind.

-- Tell us a story, sir.

-- Oh, do, sir, a ghoststory.

-- Where do you begin in this? Stephen asked, opening another book.

-- Weep no more, Comyn said.

-- Go on then, Talbot.

-- And the history, sir?

-- After, Stephen said. Go on, Talbot.

A swarthy boy opened a book and propped it nimbly under the breastwork of his satchel.
He recited jerks of verse with odd glances at the text:

-- Weep no more, woful shepherd, weep no more

For Lycidas, your sorrow, is not dead,

Sunk though he be beneath the watery floor...

It must be a movement then, an actuality of the possible as possible. Aristotle's phrase
formed itself within the gabbled verses and floated out into the studious silence of the
library of Saint Genevieve where he had read, sheltered from the sin of Paris, night by
night. By his elbow a delicate Siamese conned a handbook of strategy. Fed and feeding
brains about me: under glowlamps, impaled, with faintly beating feelers: and in my mind's
darkness a sloth of the underworld, reluctant, shy of brightness, shifting her dragon
scaly folds. Thought is the thought of thought. Tranquil brightness. The soul is in a
manner all that is: the soul is the form of forms. Tranquillity sudden, vast, candescent:
form of forms.

Talbot repeated:

-- Through the dear might of Him that walked the waves,

Through the dear might...

-- Turn over, Stephen said quietly. I don't see anything.

-- What, sir? Talbot asked simply, bending forward.

His hand turned the page over. He leaned back and went on again having just remembered.
Of him that walked the waves. Here also over these craven hearts his shadow lies and on
the scoffer's heart and lips and on mine. It lies upon their eager faces who offered him a
coin of the tribute. To Caesar what is Caesar's, to God what is God's. A long look from
dark eyes, a riddling sentence to be woven on the church's looms. Ay.

Riddle me, riddle me, randy ro.

My father gave me seeds to sow.

Talbot slid his closed book into his satchel.

-- Have I heard all? Stephen asked.

-- Yes, sir. Hockey at ten, sir.

-- Half day, sir. Thursday.

-- Who can answer a riddle? Stephen asked.

They bundled their books away, pencils clacking, pages rustling. Crowding together they
strapped and buckled their satchels, all gabbling gaily:

-- A riddle, sir? Ask me, sir.

-- O, ask me, sir.

-- A hard one, sir.

-- This is the riddle, Stephen said.

The cock crew

The sky was blue:

The bells in heaven

Were striking eleven.

Tis time for this poor soul

To go to heaven.

-- What is that?

-- What, sir?

-- Again, sir. We didn't hear.

Their eyes grew bigger as the lines were repeated. After a silence Cochrane said:

-- What is it, sir? We give it up.

Stephen, his throat itching, answered:

-- The fox burying his grandmother under a hollybush.

He stood up and gave a shout of nervous laughter to which their cries echoed dismay.

A stick struck the door and a voice in the corridor called:

-- Hockey!

They broke asunder, sidling out of their benches, leaping them. Quickly they were gone
and from the lumberroom came the rattle of sticks and clamour of their boots and tongues.

Sargent who alone had lingered came forward slowly, showing an open copybook. His
tangled hair and scraggy neck gave witness of unreadiness and through his misty glasses
weak eyes looked up pleading. On his cheek, dull and bloodless, a soft stain of ink lay,
dateshaped, recent and damp as a snail's bed.

He held out his copybook. The word Sums was written on the headline. Beneath were
sloping figures and at the foot a crooked signature with blind loops and a blot. Cyril
Sargent: his name and seal.

-- Mr Deasy told me to write them out all again, he said, and show them to you, sir.

Stephen touched the edges of the book. Futility.

-- Do you understand how to do them now? he asked.

-- Numbers eleven to fifteen, Sargent answered. Mr Deasy said I was to copy them off
the board, sir.

-- Can you do them yourself? Stephen asked.

-- No, sir.

Ugly and futile: lean neck and tangled hair and a stain of ink, a snail's bed. Yet
someone had loved him, borne him in her arms and in her heart. But for her the race of the
world would have trampled him under foot, a squashed boneless snail. She had loved his
weak watery blood drained from her own. Was that then real? The only true thing in life?
His mother's prostrate body the fiery Columbanus in holy zeal bestrode. She was no more:
the trembling skeleton of a twig burnt in the fire, an odour of rosewood and wetted ashes.
She had saved him from being trampled under foot and had gone, scarcely having been. A
poor soul gone to heaven: and on a heath beneath winking stars a fox, red reek of rapine
in his fur, with merciless bright eyes scraped in the earth, listened, scraped up the
earth, listened, scraped and scraped.

Sitting at his side Stephen solved out the problem. He proves by algebra that
Shakespeare's ghost is Hamlet's grandfather. Sargent peered askance through his slanted
glasses. Hockeysticks rattled in the lumberroom: the hollow knock of a ball and calls from
the field.

Across the page the symbols moved in grave morrice, in the mummery of their letters,
wearing quaint caps of squares and cubes. Give hands, traverse, bow to partner: so: imps
of fancy of the Moors. Gone too from the world, Averroes and Moses Maimonides, dark men in
mien and movement, flashing in their mocking mirrors the obscure soul of the world, a
darkness shining in brightness which brightness could not comprehend.

-- Do you understand now? Can you work the second for yourself?

-- Yes, sir.

In long shady strokes Sargent copied the data. Waiting always for a word of help his
hand moved faithfully the unsteady symbols, a faint hue of shame flickering behind his
dull skin. Amor matris: subjective and objective genitive. With her weak blood and
wheysour milk she had fed him and hid from sight of others his swaddling bands.

Like him was I, these sloping shoulders, this gracelessness. My childhood bends beside
me. Too far for me to lay a hand there once or lightly. Mine is far and his secret as our
eyes. Secrets, silent, stony sit in the dark palaces of both our hearts: secrets weary of
their tyranny: tyrants willing to be dethroned.

The sum was done.

-- It is very simple, Stephen said as he stood up.

-- Yes, sir. Thanks, Sargent answered.

He dried the page with a sheet of thin blottingpaper and carried his copybook back to
his desk.

-- You had better get your stick and go out to the others, Stephen said as he followed
towards the door the boy's graceless form.

-- Yes, sir.

In the corridor his name was heard, called from the playfield.

-- Sargent!

-- Run on, Stephen said. Mr Deasy is calling you.

He stood in the porch and watched the laggard hurry towards the scrappy field where
sharp voices were in strife. They were sorted in teams and Mr Deasy came stepping over
wisps of grass with gaitered feet. When he had reached the schoolhouse voices again
contending called to him. He turned his angry white moustache.

-- What is it now? he cried continually without listening.

-- Cochrane and Halliday are on the same side, sir, Stephen cried.

-- Will you wait in my study for a moment, Mr Deasy said, till I restore order here.

And as he stepped fussily back across the field his old man's voice cried sternly:

-- What is the matter? What is it now?

Their sharp voices cried about him on all sides: their many forms closed round him, the
garish sunshine bleaching the honey of his illdyed head.

Stale smoky air hung in the study with the smell of drab abraded leather of its chairs.
As on the first day he bargained with me here. As it was in the beginning, is now. On the
sideboard the tray of Stuart coins, base treasure of a bog: and ever shall be. And snug in
their spooncase of purple plush, faded, the twelve apostles having preached to all the
gentiles: world without end.

A hasty step over the stone porch and in the corridor. Blowing out his rare moustache
Mr Deasy halted at the table.

-- First, our little financial settlement, he said.

He brought out of his coat a pocketbook bound by a leather thong. It slapped open and
he took from it two notes, one of joined halves, and laid them carefully on the table.

-- Two, he said, strapping and stowing his pocketbook away.

And now his strongroom for the gold. Stephen's embarrassed hand moved over the shells
heaped in the cold stone mortar: whelks and money, cowries and leopard shells: and this,
whorled as an emir's turban, and this, the scallop of Saint James. An old pilgrim's hoard,
dead treasure, hollow shells.

A sovereign fell, bright and new, on the soft pile of the tablecloth.

-- Three, Mr Deasy said, turning his little savingsbox about in his hand. These are
handy things to have. See. This is for sovereigns. This is for shillings, sixpences,
halfcrowns. And here crowns. See.

He shot from it two crowns and two shillings.

-- Three twelve, he said. I think you'll find that's right.

-- Thank you, sir, Stephen said, gathering the money together with shy haste and
putting it all in a pocket of his trousers.

-- No thanks at all, Mr Deasy said. You have earned it.

Stephen's hand, free again, went back to the hollow shells. Symbols too of beauty and
of power. A lump in my pocket. Symbols soiled by greed and misery.

-- Don't carry it like that, Mr Deasy said. You'll pull it out somewhere and lose it.
You just buy one of these machines. You'll find them very handy.

Answer something.

-- Mine would be often empty, Stephen said.

The same room and hour, the same wisdom: and I the same. Three times now. Three nooses
round me here. Well. I can break them in this instant if I will.

-- Because you don't save, Mr Deasy said, pointing his finger. You don't know yet what
money is. Money is power, when you have lived as long as I have. I know, I know. If youth
but knew. But what does Shakespeare say? Put but money in thy purse.

-- Iago, Stephen murmured.

He lifted his gaze from the idle shells to the old man's stare.

-- He knew what money was, Mr Deasy said. He made money. A poet but an Englishman too.
Do you know what is the pride of the English? Do you know what is the proudest word you
will ever hear from an Englishman's mouth?

The seas' ruler. His seacold eyes looked on the empty bay: history is to blame: on me
and on my words, unhating.

-- That on his empire, Stephen said, the sun never sets.

-- Ba! Mr Deasy cried. That's not English. A French Celt said that. He tapped his
savingsbox against his thumbnail.

-- I will tell you, he said solemnly, what is his proudest boast. I paid my way.

Good man, good man.

-- I paid my way. I never borrowed a shilling in my life. Can you feel that? I owe
nothing. Can you?

Mulligan, nine pounds, three pairs of socks, one pair brogues, ties. Curran, ten
guineas. McCann, one guinea. Fred Ryan, two shillings. Temple, two lunches. Russell, one
guinea, Cousins, ten shillings, Bob Reynolds, half a guinea, Kohler, three guineas, Mrs
McKernan, five weeks' board. The lump I have is useless.

-- For the moment, no, Stephen answered.

Mr Deasy laughed with rich delight, putting back his savingsbox.

-- I knew you couldn't, he said joyously. But one day you must feel it. We are a
generous people but we must also be just.

-- I fear those big words, Stephen said, which make us so unhappy.

Mr Deasy stared sternly for some moments over the mantelpiece at the shapely bulk of a
man in tartan fillibegs: Albert Edward, Prince of Wales.

-- You think me an old fogey and an old tory, his thoughtful voice said. I saw three
generations since O'Connell's time. I remember the famine. Do you know that the orange
lodges agitated for repeal of the union twenty years before O'Connell did or before the
prelates of your communion denounced him as a demagogue? You fenians forget some things.

Glorious, pious and immortal memory. The lodge of Diamond in Armagh the splendid behung
with corpses of papishes. Hoarse, masked and armed, the planters' covenant. The black
north and true blue bible. Croppies lie down.

Stephen sketched a brief gesture.

-- I have rebel blood in me too, Mr Deasy said. On the spindle side. But I am descended
from sir John Blackwood who voted for the union. We are all Irish, all kings' sons.

-- Alas, Stephen said.

-- Per vias rectas, Mr Deasy said firmly, was his motto. He voted for it and put on his
topboots to ride to Dublin from the Ards of Down to do so.

Lal the ral the ra

The rocky road to Dublin.

A gruff squire on horseback with shiny topboots. Soft day, sir John. Soft day, your
honour... Day... Day... Two topboots jog dangling on to Dublin. Lal the ral the ra, lal
the ral the raddy.

-- That reminds me, Mr Deasy said. You can do me a favour, Mr Dedalus, with some of your
literary friends: I have a letter here for the press. Sit down a moment. I have just to
copy the end.

He went to the desk near the window, pulled in his chair twice and read off some words
from the sheet on the drum of his typewriter.

-- Sit down. Excuse me, he said over his shoulder, the dictates of common sense. Just a
moment.

He peered from under his shaggy brows at the manuscript by his elbow and, muttering,
began to prod the stiff buttons of the keyboard slowly, some times blowing as he screwed
up the drum to erase an error.

Stephen seated himself noiselessly before the princely presence. Framed around the
walls images of vanished horses stood in homage, their meek heads poised in air: lord
Hastings' Repulse, the duke of Westminster's Shotover, the duke of Beaufort's Ceylon, prix
de Paris, 1866. Elfin riders sat them, watchful of a sign. He saw their speeds, backing
King's colours, and shouted with the shouts of vanished crowds.

-- Full stop, Mr Deasy bade his keys. But prompt ventilation of this important
question...

Where Cranly led me to get rich quick, hunting his winners among the mudsplashed
brakes, amid the bawls of bookies on their pitches and reek of the canteen, over the
motley slush. Even money Fair Rebel: ten to one the field. Dicers and thimbleriggers we
hurried by after the hoofs, the vying caps and jackets and past the meatfaced woman, a
butcher's dame, nuzzling thirstily her clove of orange.

Shouts rang shrill from the boys' playfield and a whirring whistle.

Again: a goal. I am among them, among their battling bodies in a medley, the joust of
life. You mean that knockkneed mother's darling who seems to be slightly crawsick? Jousts.
Time shocked rebounds, shock by shock. Jousts, slush and uproar of battles, the frozen
deathspew of the slain, a shout of spear spikes baited with men's bloodied guts.

-- Now then, Mr Deasy said, rising.

He came to the table, pinning together his sheets. Stephen stood up.

-- I have put the matter into a nutshell, Mr Deasy said. It's about the foot and mouth
disease. Just look through it. There can be no two opinions on the matter.

May I trespass on your valuable space. That doctrine of laissez faire which so often in
our history. Our cattle trade. The way of all our old industries. Liverpool ring which
jockeyed the Galway harbour scheme. European conflagration. Grain supplies through the
narrow waters of the channel. The pluterperfect imperturbability of the department of
agriculture. Pardoned a classical allusion. Cassandra. By a woman who was no better than
she should be. To come to the point at issue.

-- I don't mince words, do I? Mr Deasy asked as Stephen read on.

Foot and mouth disease. Known as Koch's preparation. Serum and virus. Percentage of
salted horses. Rinderpest. Emperor's horses at M

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1. Ebooks list page : 86
2. Ulysses: Chapter 13 Nausicca
3. Ulysses: Chapter 8 Lestrygonians
4. Ulysses: Chapter 14 Oxen of the Sun
5. Ulysses: Chapter 11 Sirens
6. Ulysses: Chapter 17 Ithaca
7. Ulysses: Chapter 12 Cyclops
8. Ulysses: Chapter 15 Circe
9. Ulysses: Chapter 18 Penelope
10. Ulysses: Chapter 16 Eumaeus
11. Ulysses: Chapter 1 Telemachus
12. Ulysses: Chapter 3 Proteus
13. Ulysses: Chapter 4 Calypso
14. Ulysses: Chapter 7 Aeolus
15. Ulysses: Chapter 6 Hades
16. Ulysses: Chapter 9 Scylla and Charybdis