Ulysses | Page 8

out of Wilde and paradoxes. It's quite
simple. He proves by algebra that Hamlet's grandson is Shakespeare's grandfather and
that he himself is the ghost of his own father.
--What? Haines said, beginning to point at Stephen. He himself?
Buck Mulligan slung his towel stolewise round his neck and, bending in loose laughter,
said to Stephen's ear:
--O, shade of Kinch the elder! Japhet in search of a father!
--We're always tired in the morning, Stephen said to Haines. And it is rather long to tell.
Buck Mulligan, walking forward again, raised his hands.
--The sacred pint alone can unbind the tongue of Dedalus, he said.
--I mean to say, Haines explained to Stephen as they followed, this tower and these cliffs
here remind me somehow of Elsinore. THAT BEETLES O'ER HIS BASE INTO THE
SEA, ISN'T IT?
Buck Mulligan turned suddenly. for an instant towards Stephen but did not speak. In the
bright silent instant Stephen saw his own image in cheap dusty mourning between their
gay attires.
--It's a wonderful tale, Haines said, bringing them to halt again.
Eyes, pale as the sea the wind had freshened, paler, firm and prudent. The seas' ruler, he
gazed southward over the bay, empty save for the smokeplume of the mailboat vague on
the bright skyline and a sail tacking by the Muglins.
--I read a theological interpretation of it somewhere, he said bemused. The Father and the
Son idea. The Son striving to be atoned with the Father.
Buck Mulligan at once put on a blithe broadly smiling face. He looked at them, his

wellshaped mouth open happily, his eyes, from which he had suddenly withdrawn all
shrewd sense, blinking with mad gaiety. He moved a doll's head to and fro, the brims of
his Panama hat quivering, and began to chant in a quiet happy foolish voice:
--I'M THE QUEEREST YOUNG FELLOW THAT EVER YOU HEARD. MY
MOTHER'S A JEW, MY FATHER'S A BIRD. WITH JOSEPH THE JOINER I
CANNOT AGREE. SO HERE'S TO DISCIPLES AND CALVARY.
He held up a forefinger of warning.
--IF ANYONE THINKS THAT I AMN'T DIVINE HE'LL GET NO FREE DRINKS
WHEN I'M MAKING THE WINE BUT HAVE TO DRINK WATER AND WISH IT
WERE PLAIN THAT I MAKE WHEN THE WINE BECOMES WATER AGAIN.
He tugged swiftly at Stephen's ashplant in farewell and, running forward to a brow of the
cliff, fluttered his hands at his sides like fins or wings of one about to rise in the air, and
chanted:
--GOODBYE, NOW, GOODBYE! WRITE DOWN ALL I SAID AND TELL TOM,
DIEK AND HARRY I ROSE FROM THE DEAD. WHAT'S BRED IN THE BONE
CANNOT FAIL ME TO FLY AND OLIVET'S BREEZY ... GOODBYE, NOW,
GOODBYE!
He capered before them down towards the forty-foot hole, fluttering his winglike hands,
leaping nimbly, Mercury's hat quivering in the fresh wind that bore back to them his brief
birdsweet cries.
Haines, who had been laughing guardedly, walked on beside Stephen and said:
--We oughtn't to laugh, I suppose. He's rather blasphemous. I'm not a believer myself,
that is to say. Still his gaiety takes the harm out of it somehow, doesn't it? What did he
call it? Joseph the Joiner?
--The ballad of joking Jesus, Stephen answered.
--O, Haines said, you have heard it before?
--Three times a day, after meals, Stephen said drily.
--You're not a believer, are you? Haines asked. I mean, a believer in the narrow sense of
the word. Creation from nothing and miracles and a personal God.
--There's only one sense of the word, it seems to me, Stephen said.
Haines stopped to take out a smooth silver case in which twinkled a green stone. He
sprang it open with his thumb and offered it.
--Thank you, Stephen said, taking a cigarette.

Haines helped himself and snapped the case to. He put it back in his sidepocket and took
from his waistcoatpocket a nickel tinderbox, sprang it open too, and, having lit his
cigarette, held the flaming spunk towards Stephen in the shell of his hands.
--Yes, of course, he said, as they went on again. Either you believe or you don't, isn't it?
Personally I couldn't stomach that idea of a personal God. You don't stand for that, I
suppose?
--You behold in me, Stephen said with grim displeasure, a horrible example of free
thought.
He walked on, waiting to be spoken to, trailing his ashplant by his side. Its ferrule
followed lightly on the path, squealing at his heels. My familiar, after me, calling,
Steeeeeeeeeeeephen! A wavering line along the path. They will walk on it tonight,
coming here in the dark. He wants that key. It is mine. I paid the rent. Now I eat his salt
bread. Give him the key too. All. He will ask for it.