Complete Works of James Joyce (268 page)

 
— By the way I hear dreadful things about you.

 
— How is that?

 
— Everyone says you have dreadful ideas, that you read dreadful books. You’re a mystic or something. Do you know what I heard a girl say?

 
— No. What?

 
— That you didn’t believe in God.

They were walking along the Green inside the chains and as she said this she gave more of her body’s warmth to him and her eyes looked at him with an expression of solicitude. Stephen looked into them steadfastly.

 
— Never mind God, Emma, he said. You interest me much more than that old gentleman does.

 
— What gentleman? said Emma frankly.

 
— The middle-aged gentleman with the aviary — Jehovah the Second.

 
— You must not say such things to me, I told you that before.

 
— Very good, Emma. I see you are afraid you will lose the faith. But you needn’t be afraid of my influence.

They walked from the Green as far as the South Circular Road without an attempt at further conversation. At every step that they took Stephen’s resolution to leave her and see no more of her became more deeply rooted. Even as a diversion her company was slightly degrading to his sense of dignity. As they passed under the tall trees of the Mall she slackened her pace and, when safe from the lights of the bridge, halted deliberately. Stephen was very much surprised as the hour and the place made their position equivocal and, though she had chosen the broad shadow of the trees to halt in, she had committed this audacity in sight of her own house. They listened for a moment to the quiet flowing of the water and saw the tram begin to crawl off the apex of the bridge.

 
— Do I interest you so much as that? she said, speaking at last in a rich significant voice.

 
— Of course you do, said Stephen trying to match her tone. I know that you are alive and human.

 
— But so many people are alive.

 
— You are a woman, Emma.

 
— Would you call me a woman now? Don’t you think I am still a girl?

Stephen’s gaze traversed the provoking territory for a few moments during which her half-closed eyes suffered the trespass without remonstrating.

 
— No, Emma, he said. You are not a girl any longer.

 
— But you are not a man, are you? she said quickly for pride and youth and desire were beginning to inflame her cheek even in the shadow.

 
— I am a hobbledehoy, said Stephen.

She leaned a little more towards him and the same expression of tender solicitude appeared in her eyes. The warmth of her body seemed to flow into his and without a moment’s hesitation he put his hand into his pocket and began to finger out his coins.

 
— I must be going in, she said.

 
— Good night, said Stephen smiling.

When she had gone in he went along by the canal bank, still in the shadow of the leafless trees, humming to himself the chant of the Good Friday Gospel. He thought of what he had said to Cranly that when people love they give and he said aloud “I will never speak to her again.” As he came near the lower bridge a woman emerged from the shadows and said “Good-night, love.” Stephen stood still and looked at her. She was an undersized woman and even in that chilly season her clothes gave off an odour of ancient sweats. A black straw hat was set rakishly [upon] above her glazed face. She asked him to come for a little walk. Stephen did not speak to her but, still humming the chant of the passion, transferred his coins to her hand and continued on his way He heard her benedictions at his back as he walked and he began to wonder which was better from the literary point of view: Renan’s account of the death of Jesus or the account given by the evangelists. He had once heard a preacher allude in horrified piety to the theory put forward by some literary agent of the devil that Jesus was a maniac. The woman in the black straw hat would never believe that Jesus was a maniac and Stephen shared her opinion. He is certainly a great exemplar for bachelors, he said to himself, but he is a little too careful of himself for a divine person. The woman in the black straw hat has never heard of the name of Buddha but Buddha’s character seems to have been superior to that of Jesus with respect to unaffected sanctity. I wonder how she would like that story of Yasodhara’s kissing Buddha after his illumination and penance. Renan’s Jesus is a trifle Buddhistic but the fierce eaters and drinkers of the western world would never worship such a figure. Blood will have blood. There are some people in this island who sing a hymn called “Washed in the blood of the Lamb” by way of easing the religious impulse. Perhaps it’s a question of l impulse] diet but I would prefer to wash in rice-water. Yeow! what a notion! A blood-bath to cleanse the spiritual body of all its sinful sweats . . . The sense of decorum makes that woman wear a black straw hat in midwinter. She said to me “Good night, love.” The greatest lover of all time could not say more than that. Think of it. “Good night, love.” Mustn’t the devil be annoyed to hear her described as an evil creature?

 
— I am not going to see her any more, said Stephen a few nights later to Lynch.

 
— That is a great mistake, said Lynch expanding his chest.

 
— It’s only waste of time. I’ll never get what I want from her.

 
— And what do you want from her?

 
— Love.

 
— Eh?

 
— Love.

Lynch halted abruptly, saying:

 
— Look here, I have fourpence . .

 
— You have?

 
— Let us go in somewhere. But if I give you a drink you must promise not to say that any more.

 
— Say what?

 
— That word.

—’Love’ is it?

 
— Let us go in here.

When they were sitting in the squalid gloom of a tavern Stephen began to rock his [chair] stool from leg to leg meditatively.

 
— I see I have educated you too much, my good Lynch?

 
— But that was an atrocity, said Lynch enjoying the luxury of entertaining and rebuking his companion.

 
— You do not believe me?

 
— Of course not.

Stephen concerned himself with his pewter measure for a little time.

 
— Of course, he said at last, I would take something less if she would give it to me.

 
— O, I know you would.

 
— Would you like me to seduce her?

 
— Very much. It would be very interesting.

 
— Ah, it wouldn’t be possible!

Lynch laughed.

 
— The sorrow-stricken tone you say that in. I wish McCann could hear you.

 
— You know, Lynch, said Stephen, we may as well acknowledge openly and freely. We must have women.

 
— Yes: I agree. We must have women.

 
— Jesus said “Whoso looketh upon a woman to lust after her hath already committed adultery with her in his heart”: but he did not condemn “adultery.” Besides it is impossible not to commit “adultery.”

 
— Quite impossible.

 
— Consequently if I see a woman inclined for oracle I go to her: if she has no inclination I stay away.

 
— But that girl has an inclination for oracle.

 
— That’s the tantalising part of it: I know she has. It’s very unfair of her to tantalise me. I must go to where I am sure of my ground.

 
— But that costs money; and besides it is dangerous. You may get a dose that will last you your life. I wonder you have not got it before this.

 
— Ah, yes, isn’t it a nuisance. And yet I must go somewhere . . . She is a human being, you know. I can’t say I consider harlots as human beings. and are both neuter nouns.

 
— Of course a human being would be much better. But you could get her, if you liked.

 
— How?

 
— In marriage.

 
— I’m glad you reminded me of that, said Stephen. I was almost forgetting it.

 
— You may be sure she doesn’t forget it, said Lynch, or let anyone else forget it either.

Stephen sighed.

 
— You remember in —”When the immortals wish to overthrow the things that are today and to bring the things that were yesterday they have no-one to help them except one whom the things that are today have cast out.”

 
— Yes.

 
— Who have I to help me except the woman in the black straw hat? And yet I wish to bring to the world the spiritual renewal which the poet brings to it . . . No, I have decided. I will not see her any more.

 
— The woman in the black straw hat?

 
— No, the virgin.

 
— Still I think you are making a mistake, said Lynch, finishing his pint.

One raw misty morning after Christmas Stephen was reading in Father Artifoni’s bedroom. He asked questions mechanically and listened to answers mechanically. He devised the following question and answer for the pseudo-classical catechism:

— What great truth do we learn from the of Eschylus?

— We learn from the Libation-Pourers of Eschylus that in ancient Greece brothers and sisters took the same size in boots.

He looked wearily from the wretched Italian binding of his book towards the desolate gardens of S. Stephen’s Green. Above him and beneath him and around him in little dark dusty rooms the intellectual heart of Ireland was throbbing — young men were engaged in the pursuit of learning. Above and beneath and around him were posted Jesuits to guide the young men amid the perilous ways of knowledge. The hand of Jesuit authority was laid firmly upon that intellectual heart and if, at times, it bore too heavily thereon what a little cross was that! The young men were sensible that such severity had its reasons. They understood it as an evidence of watchful care and interest, assured that in their future lives this care would continue, this interest be maintained: the exercise of authority might be sometimes (rarely) questionable, its intention, never. Who, therefore, readier than these young men to acknowledge gratefully the sallies of some genial professor or the surliness of some door-porter? Who more solicitous to cherish in every way and to advance in person the honour of Alma Mater?

The mortifying atmosphere of the college crept about Stephen’s heart. For his part he was at the difficult age, dispossessed and necessitous, sensible of all that was ignoble in such manners, who in revery, at least, had been acquainted with nobility. As a remedy for so untoward a malady an earnest Jesuit [had some days before] was to prescribe a clerkship in Guinness’s: and doubtless the clerk-designate of a brewery would not have had scorn and pity only for an admirable community had it not been that he desired, in the language of the schoolmen, an arduous good. Impossible that he should find his soul’s sufficient good in societies for the encouragement of thought among laymen, or any other than bodily solace in the warm sodality, in the company of those foolish and grotesque virginities! Impossible that a temperament ever trembling towards its ecstasy should submit to acquiesce, that a soul should decree servitude for its portion over which the image of beauty had fallen as a mantle.

The deadly chill of the atmosphere of the college paralysed Stephen’s heart. In a stupor of powerlessness he reviewed the plague of Catholicism. He seemed to see the vermin begotten in the catacombs in an age of sickness and cruelty issuing forth upon the plains and mountains of Europe. Like the plague of locusts described in Callista they seemed to choke the rivers and fill the valleys up. They obscured the sun. Contempt of [the body] human nature, weakness, nervous tremblings, fear of day and joy, distrust of man and life, hemiplegia of the will, beset the body burdened and disaffected in its members by its black tyrannous lice. Exultation of the mind before joyful beauty, exultation of the body in free confederate labours, every natural impulse towards health and wisdom and happiness had been corroded by the pest of these vermin. The spectacle of the world in thrall filled him with the fire of courage. He, at least, though living at the farthest remove from the centre of European culture, marooned on an island in the ocean, though inheriting a will broken by doubt and a soul the steadfastness of whose hate became as weak as water in siren arms, would live his own life according to what he recognised as the voice of a new humanity, active, unafraid and unashamed.