A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man | Page 8

feel his head very big. He turned
over the flyleaf and looked wearily at the green round earth in the middle of the maroon
clouds. He wondered which was right, to be for the green or for the maroon, because
Dante had ripped the green velvet back off the brush that was for Parnell one day with
her scissors and had told him that Parnell was a bad man. He wondered if they were
arguing at home about that. That was called politics. There were two sides in it: Dante
was on one side and his father and Mr Casey were on the other side but his mother and
uncle Charles were on no side. Every day there was something in the paper about it.
It pained him that he did not know well what politics meant and that he did not know
where the universe ended. He felt small and weak. When would he be like the fellows in
poetry and rhetoric? They had big voices and big boots and they studied trigonometry.
That was very far away. First came the vacation and then the next term and then vacation
again and then again another term and then again the vacation. It was like a train going in
and out of tunnels and that was like the noise of the boys eating in the refectory when you
opened and closed the flaps of the ears. Term, vacation; tunnel, out; noise, stop. How far
away it was! It was better to go to bed to sleep. Only prayers in the chapel and then bed.
He shivered and yawned. It would be lovely in bed after the sheets got a bit hot. First they
were so cold to get into. He shivered to think how cold they were first. But then they got
hot and then he could sleep. It was lovely to be tired. He yawned again. Night prayers and
then bed: he shivered and wanted to yawn. It would be lovely in a few minutes. He felt a
warm glow creeping up from the cold shivering sheets, warmer and warmer till he felt
warm all over, ever so warm and yet he shivered a little and still wanted to yawn.
The bell rang for night prayers and he filed out of the study hall after the others and down
the staircase and along the corridors to the chapel. The corridors were darkly lit and the
chapel was darkly lit. Soon all would be dark and sleeping. There was cold night air in
the chapel and the marbles were the colour the sea was at night. The sea was cold day and
night: but it was colder at night. It was cold and dark under the seawall beside his father's
house. But the kettle would be on the hob to make punch.
The prefect of the chapel prayed above his head and his memory knew the responses:
O Lord open our lips And our mouths shall announce Thy praise. Incline unto our aid, O
God! O Lord make haste to help us!
There was a cold night smell in the chapel. But it was a holy smell. It was not like the
smell of the old peasants who knelt at the back of the chapel at Sunday mass. That was a
smell of air and rain and turf and corduroy. But they were very holy peasants. They
breathed behind him On his neck and sighed as they prayed. They lived in Clane, a fellow
said: there were little cottages there and he had seen a woman standing at the half-door of
a cottage with a child in her arms as the cars had come past from Sallins. It would be
lovely to sleep for one night in that cottage before the fire of smoking turf, in the dark lit
by the fire, in the warm dark, breathing the smell of the peasants, air and rain and turf and
corduroy. But O, the road there between the trees was dark! You would be lost in the
dark. It made him afraid to think of how it was.
He heard the voice of the prefect of the chapel saying the last prayers. He prayed it too
against the dark outside under the trees.

VISIT, WE BESEECH THEE, O LORD, THIS HABITATION AND DRIVE AWAY
FROM IT ALL THE SNARES OF THE ENEMY. MAY THY HOLY ANGELS
DWELL HEREIN TO PRESERVE US IN PEACE AND MAY THY BLESSINGS BE
ALWAYS UPON US THROUGH CHRIST OUR LORD. AMEN.
His fingers trembled as he undressed himself in the dormitory. He told his fingers to
hurry up. He had to undress and then kneel and say his own prayers and be in bed before
the gas was lowered so that he might not go to hell when