Ulysses | Page 3

you dreadful bard!
Stephen bent forward and peered at the mirror held out to him, cleft by a crooked crack.
Hair on end. As he and others see me. Who chose this face for me? This dogsbody to rid
of vermin. It asks me too.
--I pinched it out of the skivvy's room, Buck Mulligan said. It does her all right. The aunt
always keeps plainlooking servants for Malachi. Lead him not into temptation. And her
name is Ursula.
Laughing again, he brought the mirror away from Stephen's peering eyes.
--The rage of Caliban at not seeing his face in a mirror, he said. If Wilde were only alive
to see you!
Drawing back and pointing, Stephen said with bitterness:

--It is a symbol of Irish art. The cracked looking-glass of a servant.
Buck Mulligan suddenly linked his arm in Stephen's and walked with him round the
tower, his razor and mirror clacking in the pocket where he had thrust them.
--It's not fair to tease you like that, Kinch, is it? he said kindly. God knows you have
more spirit than any of them.
Parried again. He fears the lancet of my art as I fear that of his. The cold steelpen.
--Cracked lookingglass of a servant! Tell that to the oxy chap downstairs and touch him
for a guinea. He's stinking with money and thinks you're not a gentleman. His old fellow
made his tin by selling jalap to Zulus or some bloody swindle or other. God, Kinch, if
you and I could only work together we might do something for the island. Hellenise it.
Cranly's arm. His arm.
--And to think of your having to beg from these swine. I'm the only one that knows what
you are. Why don't you trust me more? What have you up your nose against me? Is it
Haines? If he makes any noise here I'll bring down Seymour and we'll give him a ragging
worse than they gave Clive Kempthorpe.
Young shouts of moneyed voices in Clive Kempthorpe's rooms. Palefaces: they hold their
ribs with laughter, one clasping another. O, I shall expire! Break the news to her gently,
Aubrey! I shall die! With slit ribbons of his shirt whipping the air he hops and hobbles
round the table, with trousers down at heels, chased by Ades of Magdalen with the tailor's
shears. A scared calf's face gilded with marmalade. I don't want to be debagged! Don't
you play the giddy ox with me!
Shouts from the open window startling evening in the quadrangle. A deaf gardener,
aproned, masked with Matthew Arnold's face, pushes his mower on the sombre lawn
watching narrowly the dancing motes of grasshalms.
To ourselves ... new paganism ... omphalos.
--Let him stay, Stephen said. There's nothing wrong with him except at night.
--Then what is it? Buck Mulligan asked impatiently. Cough it up. I'm quite frank with
you. What have you against me now?
They halted, looking towards the blunt cape of Bray Head that lay on the water like the
snout of a sleeping whale. Stephen freed his arm quietly.
--Do you wish me to tell you? he asked.
--Yes, what is it? Buck Mulligan answered. I don't remember anything.
He looked in Stephen's face as he spoke. A light wind passed his brow, fanning softly his

fair uncombed hair and stirring silver points of anxiety in his eyes.
Stephen, depressed by his own voice, said:
--Do you remember the first day I went to your house after my mother's death?
Buck Mulligan frowned quickly and said:
--What? Where? I can't remember anything. I remember only ideas and sensations. Why?
What happened in the name of God?
--You were making tea, Stephen said, and went across the landing to get more hot water.
Your mother and some visitor came out of the drawingroom. She asked you who was in
your room.
--Yes? Buck Mulligan said. What did I say? I forget.
--You said, Stephen answered, O, IT'S ONLY DEDALUS WHOSE MOTHER IS
BEASTLY DEAD.
A flush which made him seem younger and more engaging rose to Buck Mulligan's
cheek.
--Did I say that? he asked. Well? What harm is that?
He shook his constraint from him nervously.
--And what is death, he asked, your mother's or yours or my own? You saw only your
mother die. I see them pop off every day in the Mater and Richmond and cut up into
tripes in the dissectingroom. It's a beastly thing and nothing else. It simply doesn't matter.
You wouldn't kneel down to pray for your mother on her deathbed when she asked you.
Why? Because you have the cursed jesuit strain in you, only it's injected the wrong way.
To me it's all a mockery and beastly. Her cerebral lobes are not functioning. She calls the