Book I Part VII
Shem is as short for Shemus as Jem is joky for Jacob.
A few toughnecks are still getatable who pretend that aboriginally he
was of respectable stemming (he was an outlex between the lines of Ragonar
Blaubarb ant Horrild Hairwire and an inlaw to Capt. the Hon. and Rev.
Mr Bbyrdwood de Trop Blogg was among his most distant connections) but
every honest to goodness man in the land of the space of today knows that
his back life will not stand being written about in black and white. Putting
truth and untruth together a shot may be made at what this hybrid actually
was like to look at.
Shems bodily getup, it seems, included
an adze of a skull, an eight of a larkseye, the whoel of a nose, one numb
arm up a sleeve, fortytwo hairs off his uncrown, eighteen to his mock
lip, a trio of barbels from his megageg chin (sowmans son), the
wrong shoulder higher than the right, all ears, an artificial tongue with
a natural curl, not a foot to stand on, a handful of thumbs, a blind stomach,
a deaf heart, a loose liver, two fifths of two buttocks, one gleetsteen
avoirdupoider for him, a manroot of all evil, a salmonkelts thinskin,
eelsblood in his-cold toes, a bladder tristended, so much so that young
Master Shemmy on his very first debouch at the very dawn of protohistory
seeing himself such and such, when playing with thistlewords in their
garden nursery, Griefotrofio, at Phig Streat III Shuvlin, Old Hoeland,
(would we go back there now for sounds, pillings and [169] sense? would
we now for annas and annas? would we for fullscore eight and a liretta?
for twelve blocks one bob? for four testers one groat? not for a dinar!
not for jo!) dictited to of all his little brothron and sweestureens the
first riddle of the universe: asking, when is a man not a man?: telling
them take their time, yungfries, and wait till the tide stops (for from
the first his day was a fortnight) and offering the prize of a bittersweet
crab, a little present from the past, for their copper age was yet unminted,
to the winner. One said when the heavens are quakers, a second said when
Bohemeand lips, a third said when he, no, when hold hard a jiffy, when
he is a gnawstick and detarmined to, the next one said when the angel
of death kicks the bucket of life, still another said when the wines
at witsends, and still another when lovely wooman stoops to conk him,
one of the littliest said me, me, Sem, when pappa papared the harbour,
one of the wittiest said, when he yeat ye abblokooken and he zmear hezelf
zo zhooken, still one said when you are old Im grey fall full wi
sleep, and still another when wee deader walkner, and another when he
is just only after having being semisized, another when yea, he hath no
mananas, and one when dose pigs they begin now that they will flies up
intil the looft. All were wrong, so Shem himself, the doctator, took the
cake, the correct solution being - all give it up? - ; when he is a -
yours till the rending of the rocks, - Sham.
Shem was a sham and a low sham and his
lowness creeped out first via foodstuffs. So low was he that he preferred
Gibsens teatime salmon tinned, as inexpensive as pleasing, to the
plumpest roeheavy lax or the friskiest parr or smolt troutlet that ever
was gaffed between Leixlip and Island Bridge and many was the time he
repeated in his botulism that no junglegrown pineapple ever smacked like
the whoppers you shook out of Ananias cans, Findlater and Gladstones,
Corner House, Englend. None of your inchthick blueblooded Balaclava fried-at-belief-stakes
or juicejelly legs of the Grexs molten mutton or greasilygristly
grunters goupons or slice upon slab of luscious goosebosom with
lump after load of plumpudding stuffing all aswim in a [170] swamp of
bogoakgravy for that greekenhearted yude! Rosbif of Old Zealand! he could
not attouch it. See what happens when your somatophage merman takes his
fancy to our virgitarian swan? He even ran away with hunself and became
a farsoonerite, saying he would far sooner muddle through the hash of
lentils in Europe than meddle with Irrlands split little pea. Once
when among those rebels in a state of hopelessly helpless intoxication
the piscivore strove to lift a czitround peel to either nostril, hiccupping,
apparently impromptued by the hibat he had with his glottal stop, that
he kukkakould flowrish for ever by the smell, as the czitr, as the kcedron,
like a scedar, of the founts, on mountains, with limon on, of Lebanon.
O! the lowness of him was beneath all up to that sunk to! No likedbylike
firewater or firstserved firstshot or gulletburn gin or honest brewbarrett
beer either. O dear no! Instead the tragic jester sobbed himself wheywhingingly
sick of life on some sort of a rhubarbarous maundarin yellagreen funkleblue
windigut diodying applejack squeezed from sour grapefruice and, to hear
him twixt his sedimental cupslips when he had gulfed down mmmmuch too
mmmmany gourds of it retching off to almost as low withswillers, who always
knew notwithstanding when they had had enough and were rightly indignant
at the wretchs hospitality when they found to their horror they
could not carry another drop, it came straight from the noble white fat,
jo, openwide sat, jo, jo, her why hide that, jo jo jo, the winevat, of
the most serene magyansty az archdiochesse, if she is a duck, shes
a douches, and when she has a feherbour snot her fault, now is it? artstouchups,
funny youre grinning at, fancy youre in her yet, Fanny Urinia.
Aint that swell, hey? Peamengro! Talk about lowness! Any dogs quantity
of it visibly oozed out thickly from this dirty little blacking beetle
for the very fourth snap the Tulloch-Turnbull girl with her coldblood
kodak shotted the as yet unremuneranded national apostate, who was cowardly
gun and camera shy, taking what he fondly thought was a short cut to Caer
Fere, Soak Amerigas, vias the shipsteam Pridewin, after having
buried a hatchet not so long before, by the wrong goods exeunt, num-[171]mer
desh to tren, into Patatapapaveris, fruiterers and musical florists,
with his Ciaho, chavi! Sat shin, shillipen? she knew the vice out of bridewell
was a bad fast man by his walk on the spot.
[Johns is a different butchers. Next
place you are up town pay him a visit. Or better still, come tobuy. You
will enjoy cattlemens spring meat. Johns is now quite divorced from
baking. Fattens, kills, flays, hangs, draws, quarters and pieces. Feel
his lambs! Ex! Feel how sheap! Exex! His liver too is great value, a spatiality!
Exexexl COMMUNICATED.]
Around that time, moravar, one generally,
for luvvomony hoped or at any rate suspected among morticians that he
would early tum out badly, develop hereditary pulmonary T.B., and do for
himself one dandy time, nay, of a pelting night blanketed creditors, hearing
a coarse song and splash off Eden Quay sighed and rolled over, sure all
was up, but, though he fell heavily and locally into debit, not even then
could such an antinomian be true to type. He would not put fire to his
cerebrum; he would not throw himself in Liffey; he would not explaud himself
with pneumantics; he refused to saffrocake himself with a sod. With the
foreign devils leave the fraid bom fraud diddled even death. Anzi,
cabled (but shaking the worth out of his maulth: Guardacosta leporello?
Szasas Kraicz!) from his Nearapoblican asylum to his jonathan for a brother:
Here tokay, gone tomory, were spluched, do something, Fireless.
And had answer: Inconvenient, David.
You see, chaps, it will trickle out, freaksily
of course, but the tom and the shorty of it is: he was in his bardic memory
low. All the time he kept on treasuring with condign satisfaction each
and every crumb of trektalk, covetous of his neighbours word, and
if ever, during a Munda conversazione commoted in the nations interest,
delicate tippits were thrown out to him touching his evil courses by some
wellwishers, vainly pleading by scriptural arguments with the opprobrious
papist about trying to brace up for the kidos of the thing, Scally wag,
and be a men instead of a dem scrounger, dish it all, such as: Pray, what
is [172] the meaning, sousy, of that continental expression, if you ever
came acrux it, we think it is a word transpiciously like canaille?: or:
Did you anywhere, kennel, on your gullibles travels or during your
rural troubadouring, happen to stumble upon a certain gay young nobleman
whimpering to the name of Low Swine who always addresses women out of
the one corner of his mouth, lives on loans and is furtivefree yours of
age? without one sigh of haste like the supreme prig he was, and not a
bit sorry, he would pull a vacant landlubbers face, root with earwakers
pensile in the outer of his lauscher and then, lisping, the prattlepate
parnella, to kill time, and swatting his deadbest to think what under
the canopies of Jansens Chrest would any decent son of an Albiogenselman
who had bin to an university think, let a lent hit a hint and begin to
tell all the intelligentsia admitted to that tamileasy samtalaisy conclamazzione
(since, still and before physicians, lawyers merchant, belfry pollititians,
agricolous manufraudurers, sacrestanes of the Pure River Society, philanthropicks
lodging on as many boards round the panesthetic at the same time as possible)
the whole lifelong swrine story of his entire low cornaille existence,
abusing his deceased ancestors wherever the sods were and one moment tarabooming
great blunderguns (poh!) about his farfamed fine Poppamore, Mr Humhum,
whom history, climate and entertainment made the first of his sept and
always up to debt, though Eavens ears ow many fines he faces, and another
moment visanvrerssas,cruaching three jeers (pah!) for his rotten little
ghost of a Peppybeg, Mr Himmyshimmy, a blighty, a reeky, a lighty, a scrapy,
a babbly, a ninny, dirty seventh among thieves and always bottom sawyer,
till nowan knowed how howmely howme could be, giving unsolicited testimony
on behalf of the absent, as glib as eaveswater to those present (who meanwhile,
with increasing lack of interest in his semantics, allowed various subconscious
smickers to drivel slowly across their fichers), unconsciously explaining,
for inkstands, with a meticulosity bordering on the insane, the various
meanings of all the different foreign parts of speech he misused and cuttlefishing
every lie unshrinkable about all the [173] other people in the story,
leaving out, of course, foreconsciously, the simple worf and plague and
poison they had cornered him about until there was not a snoozer among
them but was utterly undeceived in the heel of the reel by the recital
of the rigmarole. He went without saying that the cull disliked anything
anyway approaching a plain straightforward standup or knockdown row and,
as often as he was called in to umpire any octagonal argument among slangwhangers,
the accomplished washout always used to rub shoulders with the last speaker
and clasp shakers (the handtouch which is speech without words) and agree
to every word as soon as half uttered, command me!, your servant, good,
I revere you, how, my seer? be drinking that! quite truth, gratias, Im
yoush, see wham hearing?, also goods, please it, me sure?, be filling
this!, quiso, you said it, apasafello, muchas grassyass, is there firing-on-me?,
is their girlic-on-you?, to your good self, your sulphur, and then at
once focuss his whole unbalanced attention upon the next octagonist who
managed to catch a listeners eye, asking and imploring him out of
his piteous onewinker, (hemoptysia diadumenos) whether there was anything
in the world he could do to please him and to overflow his tumbletantaliser
for him yet once more.
One hailcannon night (for his departure
was attended by a heavy downpour) as very recently as some thousand rains
ago he was therefore treated with what closely resembled parsonal violence,
being soggert all unsuspectingly through the deserted village of Tumblin-on-the
Leafy from Mr Vanhomrighs house at 81 bis Mabbots Mall as
far as Green Patch beyond the brickfields of Salmon Pool by rival teams
of slowspiers counter quicklimers who finally, as rahilly they had been
deteened out rawther laetich, thought, busnis hits busnis, they had better
be streaking for home after their Auborne-to-Auborne,with thanks for the
pleasant evening, one and all disgustedly, instead of ruggering him back,
and awake, reconciled (though they were as jealous as could be cullions
about all the truffles they had brought on him) to a friendship, fast
and furious, which merely arose out of the noxious perverts perfect
lowness. Again there was a hope that people, [174] looking on him with
the contemp of the contempibles, after first gaving him a roll in the
dirt, might pity and forgive him, if properly deloused, but the pleb was
born a Quicklow and sank alowing till he stank out of sight. All Saints
beat Belial! Mickil Goals to Nichil! Notpossible! Already?
In Nowhere has yet the Whole World taken
part of himself for his Wife;
By Nowhere have Poorparents been sentenced
to Worms, Blood and Thunder for
Life
Not yet has the Emp from Corpsica forced
the Arth out of Engleterre;
Not yet have the Sachsen and Judder
on the Mound of a Word made Warre;
Not yet Witchywithcy of Wench struck
Fire of his Heath from on Hoath;
Not yet his Arcobaleine forespoken Peacepeace
upon Oath;
Cleftfoot from Hempal must tumpel, Blamefool
Gardeners bound to fall;
Broken Eggs will poursuive bitten Apples
for where theirs is Will theres his
Wall;
But the Mountstill frowns on the Millstream
while their Madsons leap his
Bier
And her Rillstrill liffs to His Murkesty
all her daft Daughters laff in her
Ear.
Till the four Shores of deff Tory Island
let the douze dumm Eirewhiggs raille!
Hirp! Hirp! for their Missed Understandings!
chirps the Ballat of Perce-Oreille.
O fortunous casualitas! Lefty takes the
cherubcake while Rights cloves his hoof Darkies never done tug that coon
out to play non-excretory, anti sexuous, misoxenetic, gaasy pure, flesh
and blood games, written and composed and sung and danced by Niscemus
Nemon, same as piccaninnies play all day, those old (none of your honeys
and rubbers!) games for fun and element we used to play with Dina and
old Joe kicking her behind and before and the yellow girl kicking him
behind old Joe, [175] games like Thom Thom the Thonderman, Put
the Wind up the Peeler, Hat in the Ring, Prisson your Pritchards
and Play Withers Team, Mikel on the Luckypig, Nickel in
the Slot, Sheila Harnett and her Cow, Adam and Ell,
Humble Bumble, Moggies on the Wall, Twos and Threes,
American Jump, Fox Come out of your Den, Broken Bottles,
Writing a Letter to Punch, Tiptop is a Sweetstore, Henressy
Crump Expolled, Postmans Knock, Are We Fairlys Represented?,
Solomon Silent reading, Appletree Bearstone, I know a Washerwoman,
Hospitals, As I was Walking, There is Oneyones House
in Dreamcolohour, Battle of Waterloo, Colours, Eggs
in the Bush, Habberdasherisher, Telling your Dreams,
Whats the Time, Nap, Ducking Mammy, Last Man
Standing, Heali Baboon and the Forky Theagues, Fickleyes
and Futilears, Handmarried but once in my Life and Ill never
commit such a Sin agin, Zip Cooney Candy, Turkey in the
Straw, This is the Way we sow the Seed of a long and lusty Morning,
Hops of Fun at Milikens Make, I seen the Toothbrush with
Pat Farrel, Heres the Fat to graze the Priests Boots,
When his Steam was like a Raimbrandt round Mac Garvey.
Now it is notoriously known how on that
surprisingly bludgeony Unity Sunday when the grand germogall allstar bout
was harrily the rage between our weltingtoms extraordinary and our pettythicks
the marshalaisy and Irish eyes of welcome were smiling daggers down their
backs, when the roth, vice and blause met the noyr blank and rogues and
the grim white and cold bet the black fighting tans, categorically unimperatived
by the maxims, a rank funk getting the better of him, the scut in a bad
fit of pyjamas fled like a leveret for his bare lives, to Talviland, ahone
ahaza, pursued by the scented curses of all the village belles and, without
having struck one blow, (pig stole on him was lust he lagging it was becaused
dust he shook) kuskykorked himself up tight in his inkbattle house, badly
the worse for boosegas, there to stay in afar for the life, where, as
there was not a moment to be lost, after he had boxed around with his
fortepiano till he was whole bach bamp him and bump him blues, he collapsed
carefully under a bedtick from Schwitzers, his face enveloped into
a dead warriors telemac, with a lullobaws somnbomnet and a
whotwater [176] wottle at his feet to stoke his energy of waiting, moaning
feebly, in monkmarian monotheme, but tarned long and then a nation louder,
while engaged in swallowing from a large ampullar, that his pawdrys
purgatory was more than a nigger bloke could bear, hemiparalysed by the
tong warfare and all the shemozzle, (Daily Maily, fullup Lace!
Holy Maly, Mothelup Joss!) his cheeks and trousers changing
colour every time a gat croaked.
How is that for low, laities and gentlenuns?
Why, dog of the Crostiguns, whole continents rang with this Kairokorran
lowness! Sheols of houris in chems upon divans, (revolted stellas vespertine
vesamong them) at a bare (O!) mention of the scaly rybald exclaimed: Poisse!
But would anyone, short of a madhouse,
believe it? Neither of those clean little cherubum, Nero or Nobookisonester
himself, ever nursed such a spoiled opinion of his monstrous marvellosity
as did this mental and moral defective (here perhaps at the vanessance
of his lownest) who was known to grognt rather than gunnard upon one occasion,
while drinking heavily of spirits to that interlocutor a latere and private
privysuckatary he used to pal around with, in the kavehazs, one Davy Browne-Nowlan,
his heavenlaid twin, (this hambone dogpoet pseudoed himself under the
hangname he gave himself of Bethgelert) in the porchway of a gipsys
bar (Shem always blaspheming, so holy writ, Billy, he would try, old Belly,
and pay this one manjack congregant of his four soups every lass of nexmouth,
Bolly, so sure as thairs a tail on a commet, as a taste for storiks
fortytooth, that is to stay, to listen out, ony twenny minnies moe, Bully,
his Ballade Imaginaire which was to be dubbed Wine, Woman and Waterclocks,
or How a Guy Finks and Fawkes When He Is Going Batty, by Maistre
Sheames de la Plume, some most dreadful stuff in a murderous mirrorhand)
that he was avoopf (parn me!) aware of no other shaggspick, other Shakhisbeard,
either prexactly unlike his polar andthisishis or procisely the seem as
woops (parn!) as what he fancied or guessed the sames as he was himself
and that, greet scoot, duckings and thuggery, though he was foxed fux
to fux like a bunnyboy rodger with all the teashop [177] lionses of Lumdrum
hivanhoesed up gagainst him, being a lapsis linquo with a ruvidubb shortartempa,
bad cad dad fad sad mad nad vanhaty bear, the consciquenchers of casuality
prepestered crusswords in postposition, scruff, scruffer, scrufferumurraimost
andallthatsortofthing, if reams stood to reason and his lankalivline lasted
he would wipe alley english spooker, multaphoniaksically spuking, off
the face of the erse.
After the thorough fright he got that bloody,
Swithuns day, though every doorpost in muchtried Lucalizod was smeared
with generous erstborn gore and every free for all cobbleway slippery
with the bloods of heroes, crying to Welkins for others, and noahs and
cul verts agush with tears of joy, our low waster never had the common
baalambs pluck to stir out and about the compound while everyone
else of the torchlit throng, slashers and sliced alike, mobbu on massa,
waaded and baaded around, yampyam pampyam, chanting the Gillooly chorus,
from the Monster Book of Paltryattic Puetrie, O pura e pia bella! in junk
et sampam or in secular sinkalarum, heads up, on his bonafide avocation
(the little folk creeping on all fours to their natural school treat but
childishly gleeful when a stray whizzer sang out intermediately) and happy
belongers to the fairer sex on their usual quest for higher things, but
vying with Lady Smythe to avenge MacJobber, went stonestepping with their
bickerrstaffs on educated feet, plinkity plonk, across the sevenspan ponte
dei colori set up over the slop after the war-to-end war by Messrs a charitable
government for the only once (dia dose Finnados!) he did take a tompip
peepestrella throug a threedraw eighteen hawkspower durdicky telescope,
luminous to larbourd only like the lamps in Nassaustrass, out of his westernmost
keyhole, spitting at the impenetrablum wetter, (and it was porcoghastly
that outumn) with an eachway hope in his shivering soul, as he prayed
to the cloud Incertitude, of finding out for himself, on akkount of all
the kules in Kroukaparka or oving to all the kodseoggs in Kalatavala,
whether true conciliation was forging ahead or falling back after the
celestious intemperance and, for Duvvelsache, why, with his see me see
and his my see a corves and his frokerfoskerfuskar [178] layen loves in
meeingseeing, he got the charm of his optical life when he found himself
(hic sunt lennones!) at pointblank range blinking down the barrel of an
irregular revolver of the bulldog with a purpose pattern, handled by an
unknown quarreler who, supposedly, had been told off to shade and shoot
shy Shem should the shit show his shiny shnout out awhile to look facts
in their face before being hosed and creased (uprip and jack him!) by
six or a dozen of the gayboys.
What, para Saom Plaom, in the names of
Deucalion and Pyrrha, and the incensed privy and the licensed pantry gods
and Stator and Victor and Kutt and Runn and the whole mesa redonda of
Lorencao Otulass in convocacaon, was this disinterestingly low human type,
this Calumnious Column of Cloaxity, this Bengalese Beacon of Biloxity,
this Annamite Aper of Atroxity, really at, it will be precise to quarify,
for he seems in a badbad case?
The answer, to do all the diddies in one
dedal, would sound: from pulling himself on his most flavoured canal the
huge chesthouse of his elders (the Popapreta, and some navico,
navvies!) he had flickered up and flinnered down into a drug and drunkery
addict, growing megalomane of a loose past. This explains the litany of
septuncial lettertrumpets honorific, highpitched, erudite, neoclassical,which
he so loved as patricianly to manuscribe after his name. It would have
diverted,if ever seen,the shuddersome spectacle of this semidemented zany
amid the inspissated grime of his glaucous den making believe to read
his usylessly unreadable Blue Book of Eccles, édition de ténèbres,
(even yet sighs the Most Different, Dr. Poindejenk, authorised bowdler
and censor, it cant be repeated!) turning over three sheets at a
wind, telling himself delightedly, no espellor mor so, that every splurge
on the vellum he blundered over was an aisling vision more gorgeous than
the one before t.i.t.s., a roseschelle cottage by the sea for nothing
for ever, a ladies tryon hosiery raffle at liberty, a sewerful of guineagold
wine with brancomongepadenopie and sickcylinder oysters worth a billion
a bite, an entire operahouse (there was to be stamping room only in the
prompters box an [179] everthemore his queque kept swelling) of
enthusiastic noblewomen flinging every coronetcrimsoned stitch they had
off at his probscenium,one after the others, inamagoaded into ajustilloosing
themselves, in their gaiety pantheomime, when, egad, sir, acordant to
all acountstrick, he squealed the topsquall im Deal Lil Shemlockup
Yellin (geewhiz, jew ear that far! soap ewer! loutgout of sabaous!
juice like a boyd!) for fully five minutes,infinitely better than Baraton
Mc Gluckin with a scrumptious cocked hat and three green, cheese and tangerine
trinity plumes on the right handle side of his amarellous head, a coat
macfarlane (the kerssest cut, you understand?) a sponiards digger
at his ribs, (Alfaiate punxit) an azulblu blowsheet for his blousebosom
blossom and a deans crozier that he won from Cardinal Lindundarri
and Cardinal Carchingarri and Cardinal Loriotuli and Cardinal Occidentaccia
(ah ho!) in the dearby darby doubled for falling first over the hurdles,
madam, in the odder hand, a.a.t.s.o.t., but what with the murky light,
the botchy print, the tattered cover, the jigjagged page, the fumbling
fingers, the foxtrotting fleas, the lieabed lice, the scum on his tongue,
the drop in his eye, the lump in his throat, the drink in his pottle,
the itch in his palm, the wail of his wind, the grief from his breath,
the fog of his mindfag, the buzz in his braintree, the tic of his conscience,
the height up his rage, the gush down his fundament, the fire in his gorge,
the tickle of his tail, the bane in his bullugs, the squince in his suil,
the rot in his eater, the ycho in his earer, the totters of his toes,
the tetters on his tumtytum, the rats in his garret, the bats in his belfry,
the budgerigars and bumbosolom beaubirds, the hullabaloo and the dust
in his ears since it took him a month to steal a march he was hardset
to mumorise more than a word a week. Hakes haulin! Hooks fisk!
Can you beat it? Whawe! I say, can you bait it? Was there ever heard of
such lowdown blackguardism? Positively it woolies one to think over it.
Yet the bumpersprinkler used to boast aloud
alone to himself with a haccent on it when Mynfadher was a boer constructor
and Hoy was a lexical student, parole, and corrected with the black [180]
board (trying to copy the stage Englesemen he broughts their house down
on, shouting: Bravure, surr Chorles! Letter purfect! Culossal, Loose Wallor!
Spache!) how he had been toed out of all the schicker families of the
klondykers from Pioupioureich, Swabspays, the land of Nod, Shruggers
Country, Pension Danubierhome and Barbaropolis, who had settled and stratified
in the capital city after its hebdomodary metropoliarchialisation as sunblistered,
moonplastered, gory, wheedling, joviale, litcherous and full, ordered
off the gorgeous premises in most cases on account of his smell which
all cookmaids eminently objected to as ressembling the bombinubble puzzo
that welled out of the pozzo. Instead of chuthoring those model households
plain wholesome pothooks (a thing he never possessed of his Nigerian own)
what do you think Vulgariano did but study with stolen fruit how cutely
to copy all their various styles of signature so as one day to utter an
epical forged cheque on the public for his own private profit until, as
just related, the Dustbins United Scullerymaids and Househelps
Sorority, better known as Slutterys Mowlted Futt, turned him down
and assisted nature by unitedly shoeing the source of annoyance out of
the place altogether and taytotally on the heat of the moment, holding
one anothers gonk (for no-one, hound or scrublady, not even the
Turk, ungreekable in purscent of the armenable, dared whiff the polecat
at close range) and making some pointopointing remarks as they done so
at the perfects of the Sniffey, your honour, aboon the lyow why a stunk,
mister.
[Jymes wishes to hear from wearers of abandoned
female costumes, gratefully received, wadmel jumper, rather full pair
of culottes and onthergarmenteries, to start city life together. His jymes
is out of job, would sit and write. He has lately commited one of the
then commandments but she will now assist. Superior built, domestic, regular
layer. Also got the boot. He appreciates it. Copies. ABORTISEMENT.]
One cannot even begin to post figure out
a statuesquo ante as to how slow in reality the excommunicated Drumcondriac,
nate Hamis, really was. Who can say how many pseudostylic [181] shamiana,
how few or how many of the most venerated public impostures, how very
many piously forged palimpsests slipped in the first place by this morbid
process from his pelagiarist pen?
Be that as it may, but for that light phantastic
of his gnoses glow as it slid lucifericiously within an inch of
its page (he would touch at its from time to other, the red eye of his
fear in saddishness, to ensign the colours by the beerlitz in his mathness
and his educandees to outhue to themselves in the cries of girlglee: gember!
inkware! chonchambre! cinsero! zinnzabar! tincture and gin!) Nibs never
would have quilled a seriph to sheepskin. By that rosy lampoons
effluvious burning and with help of the simulchronic flush in his pann
(a ghinee a ghirk he ghets there!) he scrabbled and scratched and scriobbled
and skrevened nameless shamelessness about everybody ever he met, even
sharing a precipitation under the idlish tarriers umbrella of a
showerproof wall, while all over up and down the four margins of this
rancid Shem stuff the evilsmeller (who was devoted to Uldfadar Sardanapalus)
used to stipple endlessly inartistic portraits of himself in the act of
reciting old Nichiabellis monolook interyerear Hanno, o Nonanno,
accel brubblemmas, ser Autore, q.e.d., a heartbreakingly
handsome young paolo with love lyrics for the goyls in his eyols, a plaintiffs
tanner vuice, a jucal inkome of one hundred and thirtytwo dranchmas per
yard from Broken Hill stranded estate, Camebreech mannings, cutting a
great dash in a brandnew two guinea dress suit and a burled hogsford hired
for a Fursday evenin merry pawty, anna loavely long pair of inky Italian
moostarshes glistering with boric vaseline and frangipani. Puh! How unwhisperably
so!
The house OShea or OShame,
Quivapieno, known as the Haunted Inkbottle, no number Brimstone Walk,
Asia in Ireland, as it was infested with the raps, with his penname SHUT
sepiascraped on the doorplate and a blind of black sailcloth over its
wan phwinshogue, in which the soulcontracted son of the secret cell groped
through life at the expense of the taxpayers, dejected into day and night
with jesuit bark and bitter bite, calico-[182]hydrants of zolfor and scoppialamina
by full and forty Queasisanos, every day in everyones way more exceeding
in violent abuse of self and others, was the worst, it is hoped, even
in our western playboyish world for pure mousefarm filth. You brag of
your brass castle or your tyled house in ballyfermont? Niggs, niggs and
niggs again. For this was a stinksome inkenstink, quite puzzonal to the
wrottel. Smatterafact, Angles aftanon browsing there thought not Edam
reeked more rare. My wud! The warped flooring of the lair and soundconducting
walls thereof, to say nothing of the uprights and imposts, were persianly
literatured with burst loveletters, telltale stories, stickyback snaps,
doubtful eggshells, bouchers, flints, borers, puffers, amygdaloid almonds,
rindless raisins, alphybettyformed verbage, vivlical viasses, ompiter
dictas, visus umbique, ahems and ahahs, imeffible tries at speech unasyllabled,
you owe mes, eyoldhyms, fluefoul smut, fallen lucifers, vestas which had
served, showered ornaments, borrowed brogues, reversibles jackets, blackeye
lenses, family jars, falsehair shirts, Godforsaken scapulars, neverworn
breeches, cutthroat ties, counterfeit franks, best intentions, curried
notes, upset latten tintacks, unused mill and stumpling stones, twisted
quills, painful digests, magnifying wineglasses, solid objects cast at
goblins, once current puns, quashed quotatoes, messes of mottage, unquestionable
issue papers, seedy ejaculations, limerick damns, crocodile tears, spilt
ink, blasphematory spits, stale shestnuts, schoolgirls, young ladies,
milkmaids, washerwomens, shopkeepers wives, merry widows,
ex nuns, vice abbesss, pro virgins, super whores,
silent sisters, Charleys aunts, grandmothers,
mothers-in-laws,fostermothers, godmothers garters, tress
clippings from right, lift and cintrum, worms of snot, toothsome pickings,
cans of Swiss condensed bilk, highbrow lotions, kisses from the antipodes,
presents from pickpockets, borrowed plumes, relaxable handgrips, princess
promises, lees of whine, deoxodised carbons, convertible collars, diviliouker
doffers, broken wafers, unloosed shoe latchets, crooked strait waistcoats,
fresh horrors from Hades, globules of mercury, undeleted glete, glass
eyes for an eye, gloss teeth for a tooth, [183] war moans, special sighs,
longsufferings of longstanding, ahs ohs ouis sis jas jos gias neys thaws
sos, yeses and yeses and yeses, to which, if one has the stomach to add
the breakages, upheavals distortions, inversions of all this chambermade
music one stands, given a grain of goodwill, a fair chance of actually
seeing the whirling dervish, Tumult, son of Thunder, self exiled in upon
his ego,a nightlong a shaking betwixtween white or reddr hawrors, noondayterrorised
to skin and bone by an ineluctable phantom (may the Shaper have mercery
on him!) writing the mystery of himsel in furniture.
Of course our low hero was a self valeter
by choice of need so up he got up whatever is meant by a stourbridge clay
kitchenette and lithargogalenu fowlhouse for the sake of akes (the umpple
does not fall very far from the dumpertree) which the moromelodious jigsmith,
in defiance of the Uncontrollable Birth Preservativation (Game and Poultry)
Act, playing lallaryrook cookerynook, by the dodginess of his lentern,
brooled and cocked and potched in an athanor, whites and yolks and yilks
and whotes to the frulling fredonnance of Mas blanca que la blanca
hermana and Amarilla, muy bien, with cinnamon and locusts
and wild beeswax and liquorice and Carrageen moss and blaster of Barrys
and Asthers mess and Husters micture and Yellownans
embrocation and Pinkingtones patty and stardust and sinners
tears, acuredent to Sharadans Art of Panning, chanting, for
all regale to the like of the legs he left behind with Litty fun Letty
fan Leven, his cantraps of fermented words, abracadabra calubra culorum,
(his oewfs à la Madame Gabrielle de lEglise, his avgs à
la Mistress B. de B. Meinfelde, his eiers Usquadmala à la pomme
de ciel, his uoves, oves and uves à la Sulphate de Soude, his ochiuri
sowtay sowmmonay a la Monseigneur, his soufflosion of oogs with somekat
on toyast à la Mère Puard, his Poggadovies alla Fenella,
his Frideggs à la Tricarême) in what was meant for a closet
(Ah ho! If only he had listened better to the four masters that infanted
him Father Mathew and Le Père Noble and Pastor Lucas and Padre
Aguilar - not forgetting Layteacher Baudwin! Ah ho!) His costive Satans
antimonian manganese limolitmious [184] nature never needed such an alcove
so, when Robber and Mumsell, the pulpic dictators,on the nudgment of their
legal advisers, Messrs Codex and Podex, and under his own benefiction
of their pastor Father Flammeus Falconer, boycotted him of all muttonsuet
candles and romeruled stationery for any purpose, he winged away on a
wildgoups chase across the kathartic ocean and made synthetic ink
and sensitive paper for his own end out of his wits waste. You ask,
in Sam Hill, how? Let manner and matter of this for these our sporting
times be cloaked up in the language of blushfed porporates that an Anglican
ordinal, not reading his own rude dunsky tunga, may ever behold the brand
of scarlet on the brow of her of Babylon and feel not the pink one in
his own damned cheek.
Primum opifex, altus prosator, ad terram
viviparam et cunctipotentem sine ullo pudore nec venia, suscepto pluviali
atque discinctis perizomatis, natibus nudis uti nati fuissent, sese adpropinquans,
flens et gemens, in manum suam evacuavit (highly prosy, crap in his
hand, sorry!), postea, animale nigro exoneratus, classicum pulsans,
stercus proprium, quod appellavit deiectiones suas, in vas olim honorabile
tristitiae posuit, eodem sub invocatione fratrorum geminorum Medardi et
Godardi laete ac melliflue minxit,psalmum qui incipit: Lingua mea calamus
scribae velociter scribentis: magna voce cantitans (did a piss, says
he was dejected, asks to be exonerated), demum ex stercore turpi cum
divi Orionis iucunditate mixto, cocto, frigorique exposito, encaustum
sibi fecit indelibile (faked ORyans, the indelible ink).
Then, pious Eneas, conformant to thc fulminant
firman which enjoins on the tremylose terrian that, when the call comes,
he shall produce nichthemerically from his unheavenly body a no uncertain
quantity of obscene matter not protected by copriright in the United Stars
of Ourania or bedeed and bedood and bedang and bedung to him, with this
double dye, brought to blood heat, gallic acid on iron ore, through the
bowels of his misery, flashly, faithly, nastily, appropriately, this Esuan
Menschavik and the first till last alshemist wrote over every square inch
of the only foolscap available, his own body, till by its corrosive sublimation
on [185] continuous present tense integument slowly unfolded all marryvoising
moodmoulded cyclewheeling history (thereby, he said, reflecting from his
own individual person life unlivable, transaccidentated through the slow
fires of consciousness into a dividual chaos, perilous, potent, common
to allflesh, human only, mortal) but with each word that would not pass
away the squidself which he had squirtscreened from the crystalline world
waned chagreenold and doriangrayer in its dudhud. This exists that isits
after having been said we know. And dabal take dabnal! And the dal dabal
dab aldanabal! So perhaps, agglaggagglomeratively asaspenking, after all
and arklast fore arklyst on his last public misappearance, circling the
square, for the deathfte of Saint Ignaceous Poisonivy, of the Fickle
Crowd (hopon the sexth day of Hogsober, killim our king, layum low!) and
brandishing his bellbearing stylo, the shining keyman of the wilds of
change, if what is sauce for the zassy is souse for the zazimas,the blond
cop who thought it was ink was out of his depth but bright in the main.
Petty constable Sistersen of the Kruis-Kroon-Kraal
it was, the parochial watch, big the dog the dig the bog the bagger the
dugger the begadag degabug, who had been detailed from pollute stoties
to save him, this the quemquem, that the quum, from the ligatureliablous
effects of foul clay in little clots and mobmauling on looks, that wrongcountered
the tenderfoot an eveling near the livingsmeansuniumgetherum, Knockmaree,
Comty Mea, reeling more to the right than he lurched to the left, on his
way from a protoprostitute (he would always have a (stp!) little pigeoness
somewhure with his arch girl, Arcoiris, smockname of Mergyt) just as he
was butting in rand the coyner of bad times under a hideful between the
rival doors of warm bethels of worship through his boardelhouse fongster,
greeting for grazious oras as usual: Where ladies have they that a dog
meansort herring? Sergo, search me, the incapable reparteed with a selfevitant
subtlety so obviously spurious and, raising his hair, after the grace,
with the christmas under his clutcharm, for Portsymasser and Purtsymessus
and Pertsymiss and Partsymasters, like a prance [186] of findingos, with
a shillto shallto slipny stripny, in he skittled. Swikey! The allwhite
poors guardiant, pulpably of balltossic stummung, was literally astundished
over the painful sake, how he burstteself, which he was gone to, where
he intent to did he, whether you think will, wherend the whole current
of the afternoon whats the souch of a surch hads of hits of hims, urged
and staggered thereto in his countryports at the caledosian capacity for
Lieutuvisky of the caftans wineskin and even more so, during, looking
his bigmost astonishments, it was said him, aschu, fun the concerned outgift
of the dead med dirt, how that, arrahbejibbers, conspuent to the dominical
order and exking noblish permish, he was namely coon at bringer at home
two gallonts,as per royal,full poultry till his murder. Nip up and nab
it!
Polthergeistkotzdondherhoploits! Kick?
What mother? Whose porter? Which pair? Why namely coon? But our undilligence
has been plutherotested so enough of such porterblack lowneess, too base
for printink! Perpending that Putterick OPurcell pulls the coald
stoane out of Winterwaters and Silder Seas sing for Harreng our
Keng,sept okt nov dez John Phibbs march! We cannot,in mercy or justice
nor on the lovom for labaryntos,stay here for the residence of our existings,discussing
Tamstar Ham of Tenmans thirst.
JUSTIUS (to himother): Brawn is my name
and broad is my nature and Ive breit on my brow and alls right
with every feature and Ill brune this bird or Brown Besss
bungs gone bandy. Im the boy to bruise and braise. Baus!
Stand forth, Nayman of Noland (for no longer
will I follow you obliquelike through the inspired form of the third person
singular and the moods and hesitensies of the deponent but address myself
to you, with the empirative of my vendettative, provocative and out direct),
stand forth, come boldly, jolly me,move me, zwilling though I am, to laughter
in your true colours ere you be back for ever till I give you your talkingto!
Shem Macadamson, you know me and I know you and all your shemeries. Where
have you been in the uterim, enjoying yoursel [187] all the morning since
your last wetbed confession? I advise you to conceal yourself, my little
friend, as I have said a moment ago and put your hands in my hands and
have a nightslong homely little confiteor about things. Let me see. It
is looking pretty black against you, we suggest, Sheem avick. You will
need all the elements in the river to clean you over it all and a fortifine
popespriestpower bull of attender to booth.
Let us pry. We thought, would and did.
Cur, quicquid, ubi, quando, quomodo, quoties, quibus auxiliis? You
were bred, fed, fostered and fattened from holy childhood up in this two
easter island on the piejaw of hilarious heaven and roaring the other
place (plunders to night of you, blunders whats left of you, flash
as flash can!) and now, forsooth, a nogger among the blankards of this
dastard century, you have become of twosome twiminds forenenst gods, hidden
and discovered, nay, condemned fool, anarch, egoarch, hiresiarch, you
have reared your disunited kingdom on the vacuum of your own most intensely
doubtful soul. Do you hold yourself then for some god in the manger, Shehohem,
that you will neither serve not let serve, pray nor let pray? And here,
pay the piety, must I too nerve myself to pray for the loss of selfrespect
to equip me for the horrible necessity of scandalisang (my dear sisters,
are you ready?) by sloughing off my hope and tremors while we all swin
together in the pool of Sodom? I shall shiver for my purity while they
will weepbig for your sins. Away with covered words, new Solemonities
for old Badsheetbaths! That inharmonious detail, did you name it? Cold
caldor! Gee! Victory! Now, opprobro of underslung pipes, johnjacobs, while
yet an adolescent (what do I say?), while still puerile in your tubsuit
with buttonlegs,you got a handsome present of a selfraising syringe and
twin feeders (you know, Monsieur Abgott, in your art of arts, to your
cost as well as I do (and dont try to hide it) the penals lots I
am now poking at) and the wheeze sort of was you should (if you were as
bould a stroke now as the curate that christened you, sonny douth-the-candle!)
repopulate the land of your birth and count up your progeny by the hungered
head and the angered thousand but you thwarted [188] the wious pish of
your cogodparents, soph, among countless occasions of failing (for, said
you, I will elenchate), adding to the malice of your transgression, yes,
and changing its nature, (you see I have read your theology for you) alternating
the morosity of my delectations - a philtred love, trysting by tantrums,
small peace in ppenmark - with sensibility, sponsibility, passibility
and prostability, your lubbocks other fear pleasures of a butlers
life, even extruding your strabismal apologia, when legibly depressed,
upon defenceless paper and thereby adding to the already unhappiness of
this our popeyed world, scribblative! - all that too with cantreds of
countless catchaleens, the mannish as many as the minneful, congested
around and about you for acres and roods and poles or perches, thick as
the fluctuant sands of Chalwador, accomplished women, indeed fully educanded,
far from being old and rich behind their dream of arrivisme, if they have
only their honour left, and not deterred by bad weather when consumed
by amorous passion, struggling to possess themselves of your boosh, one
son of Sorge for all daughters of Anguish, solus cum sola sive cuncties
cum omnibobs (Id have been the best man for you, myself), mutely
aying for hat natural knot, debituary vases or vessels preposterous, for
what would not have cost you ten bolivars of collarwork or the price of
one ping pang, just a lilt, let us trillt, of the oldest song in the wooed
woodworld, (two-we! to-one!), accompanied by a plain gold band! Hail!
Hail! Highbosomheaving Missmisstress Morna of the allsweetheartening bridemuredemeanour!
Her eyes so gladsome well all take shares in the --groom!
Sniffer of carrion, premature gravedigger,
seeker of the nest of evil in the bosom of a good word, you, who sleep
at our vigil and fast for our feast, you with your dislocated reason,
have cutely foretold, a jophet in your own absence, by blind poring upon
your many scalds and burns and blisters, impetiginous sore and pustules,
by the auspices of that raven cloud, your shade, and by the auguries of
rooks in parlament, death with every disaster, the dynamitisation of colleagues,
the reducing of records to ashes, the levelling of all customs by blazes,
the return of a lot [189] of sweetempered gunpowdered didst unto dudst
but it never stphruck your mudheads obtundity (O hell, here comes
our funeral! O pest, Ill miss the post!) that the more carrots you
chop, the more turnips you slit, the more murphies you peel, the more
onions you cry over, the more bullbeef you butch, the more mutton you
crackerhack, the more potherbs you pound, the fiercer the fire and the
longer your spoon and the harder you gruel with more grease to your elbow
the merrier fumes your new Irish stew.
O, by the way, yes,another thing occurs
to me. You let me tell you, with the utmost politeness, were very ordinarily
designed, your birthwrong was, to fall in with Plan, as our nationals
should, as all nationists must, and do a certain office (what, I will
not tell you) in a certain holy office (nor will I say where) during certain
agonising office hours (a clerical party all to yourself) from such a
year to such an hour on such and such a date at so and so much a week
pro anno (Guinnesss, may I remind, were just agulp for you,
failing in which you might have taken the scales off boilers like any
boskop of Yorek) and do your little thruppenny bit and thus earn from
the nation true thanks, right here in our place of burden, your bourne
of travail and ville of tares, where after a divines prodigence
you drew the first watergasp in your life, from the crib where you once
was bit to the crypt youll be twice as shy of, same as we, long
of us, alone with the colt in the curner, where you were as popular as
an armenial with the faithful, and you set fire to my tailcoat when I
hold the paraffin smoker under yours (I hope that chimneys clear)
but, slackly shirking both your bullet and your billet, you beat it backwards
like Boulanger from Galway (but he combed the grass against his stride)
to sing us a song of alibi, (the cuthone call over the greybounding slowrolling
amplyheaving metamorphoseous that oozy rocks parapangle their preposters
with) nomad, mooner by lamplight, antinos, shemming amid everyones
repressed laughter to conceal your scatchophily by mating, like a thoroughpaste
prosodite, masculine monosyllables of the same numerical mus, an Irish
emigrant the wrong way out, sitting on your crooke [190] sixpenny stile,
an unfrillfrocked quackfriar, you (will you for the laugh of Scheekspair
just help mine with the epithet?) semisemitic serendipitist, you (thanks,
I think that describes you) Europasianised Afferyank!
Shall we follow each others a steplonger,
drowner of daggers, whiles our liege, tilyet a stranger in the frontyard
of his happiness, is taking, (heal helper! one gob, one gap, one gulp
and gorger of all!) his refreshment?
There grew up beside you,amid our orisons
of the speediest. in Novena Lodge, Novara Avenue, in Patripodium-am-Bummel,
oaf, outofwork, one remove from an unwashed savage, on his keeping and
in yours, (I pose you know why possum hides is cause he haint the nogumtreeumption)
that other, Immaculatus, from head to foot, sir, that pure one, Altrues
of other times, he who was well known to celestine circles before he sped
aloft, our handsome young spiritual physician that was to be, seducing
every sense to selfwilling celebesty, the most winning counterfeuille
on our incomeshare lotetree, a chum of the angelets, a youth those reporters
so pettitily wanted as gamefellow that they asked his mother for ittle
earps brupper to let him tome to Tindertarten? pease, and bing his scooter
long and tend they were all real brothers in the big justright
home where Dodd lives, just to teddyfy the life out of him and pat and
pass him one with other like musk from hand to hand, that mothersmothered
model, that goodlooker with not a flaw whose spiritual toilettes were
the talk of half the town, for sunset wear and nightfallen use and daybroken
donning and nooncheon showing and the very thing for teasetime, but him
you laid low with one hand one fine May morning in the Meddle of your
Might, your bosom foe, because he mussed your speller on you or because
he cut a pretty figure in the focus of your frontispecs (not one did you
slay, no, but a continent!) to find out how his innards worked!
Ever read of that greatgrand landfather
of our visionbuilders, Baaboo, the bourgeoismeister, who thought to touch
both himmels at the punt of his risen stiffstaff and how wishywashy sank
[191] the waters of his thought? Ever thought of that hereticalist Marcon
and the two scissymaidies and how bulkily he shat the Ructions gunorrhal?
Ever hear of that foxy, that lupo and that monkax and the virgin heir
of the Morrisons, eh, blethering ape?
Malingerer in luxury, collector general,
what has Your Lowness done in the mealtime with all the hamilkcars of
cooked vegetables, the hatfuls of stewed fruit, the suitcases of coddled
ales, the Parish funds, me schamer, man, that you kittycoaxed so flexibly
out of charitable butteries by yowling heavy with a hollow voice drop
of your horrible awful poverty of mind so as you couldnt even pledge
a crown of Thornes to pawn a coat off Trevis and as how you
was bad no end, so you was, so whelp you Sinner Pitre and Sinner Poule,
with the chickens gape and pas mal de sicle, which, by the
by, Reynaldo, is the ordinary emetic French for grenadiers drip.
To let you have your plank and your bonewash (O the hastroubles you lost!),
to give you your pound of platinum and a thousand thongs a year (O, you
were excruciated, in honour bound to the cross of your own cruelfiction!)
to let you have your Sarday spree and holinight sleep (fame would come
to you twixt a sleep and a wake) and leave to lie till Paraskivee and
the cockcock crows for Danmark. (O Jonathan, your estomach!) The simian
has no sentiment secretions but weep cataracts for all me, Pain the Shamman!
Oft in the smelly night will they wallow for a clutch of the famished
hand, I say, them bearded jezabelles you hired to rob you, while on your
sodden straw impolitely you encored (Airish and nawboggaleesh!) those
hornmade ivory dreams you reved of the Ruth you called your companionate,
a beauty from the bible, of the flushpots of Euston and the hanging garments
of Marylebone. But the dormer moonshee smiled selene and the lightthrowers
knickered: whos whinging we? Comport yourself, you inconsistency!
Where is that little alimony nestegg against our predictable rainy day?
Is it not the fact (gainsay me, cakeeater!) that, while whistlewhirling
your crazy elegies around Templetombmount joyntstone, (let him pass, pleasegoodjesusalem,
in a bundle of straw, he was balbettised after hay [192] making) you squandered
among underlings the overload of your extravagance and made a hottentot
of dulpeners crawsick with your crumbs? Am I not right? Yes? Yes? Yes?
Holy wax and holifer! Dont tell me, Leon of the fold, that you are
not a loanshark! Look up, old sooty, be advised by mux and take your medicine.
The Good Doctor mulled it. Mix it twice before repastures and powder three
times a day. It does marvels for your gripins and its fine for the
solitary worm.
Let me finish! Just a little judas tonic,
my ghem of all jokes, to make you go green in the gazer. Do you hear what
Im seeing, hammet? And remember that golden silence gives consent,
Mr Anklegazer! Cease to be civil, learn to say nay! Whisht! Come here,
Herr Studiosus, till I tell you a wig in your ear. Well do a whisper
drive, for if the barishnyas got a twitter of it theyd tell the
housetops and then all Cadbury would go crackers. Look! Do you see your
dial in the rockingglass? Look well! Bend down a stigmy till I! Its
secret! Iggri, I say, the booseleers! I had it from Lamppost Shawe. And
he had it from the Mullah. And Mull took it from a Bluecoat schooler.
And Gay Socks jot it from Potapheus wife. And Rantipoll tipped the
wink from old Mrs Tinbullet. And as for she was confussed by pro-Brother
Thacolicus. And the good brother feels he would need to defecate you.
And the Flimsy Follettes are simply beside each other. And Kelly, Kenny
and Keogh are up up and in arms. That a cross may crush me if I refuse
to believe in it. That I may rock anchor through the ages if I hope its
not true. That the host may choke me if I beneighbour you without my charity!
Sh! Shem, you are. Sh! You are mad!
He points the deathbone and the quick are
still. Insomnia, somnia somniorum. Awmawm.
MERCIUS (of hisself): Domine vopiscus!
My fault, his fault, a kingship through a fault! Pariah, cannibal Cain,
I who oathily forswore the womb that bore you and the paps I sometimes
sucked, you who ever since have been one black mass of jigs and jimjams,
haunted by a convulsionary sense of not having been or being all that
I might have been or you meant to becoming, [193] bewailing like a man
that innocence which I could not defend like a woman, lo,you there, Cathmon-Carbery,
and thank Movies from the innermost depths of my still attrite heart,Wherein
the days of youyouth are evermixed mimine, now ere the compline hour of
being alone athands itself and a puff or so before we yield our spiritus
to the wind, for (though that royal one has not yet drunk a gouttelette
from his consummation and the flowerpot on the pole, the spaniel pack
and their quarry, retainers and the public house proprietor have not budged
a millimetre and all that has been done has yet to be done and done again,
whens days woe, and lo, youre doomed, joyday dawns and,
la, you dominate) it is to you, firstborn and firstfruit of woe, to me,
branded sheep, pick of the wasterpaperbaskel, by the tremours of Thundery
and Ulerins dogstar, you alone, windblasted tree of the knowledge
of beautiful andevil, ay, clothed upon with the metuor and shimmering
like the horescens, astroglodynamonologos, the child of Nilfits
father, blzb, to me unseen blusher in an obscene coalhole, the cubilibum
of your secret sigh, dweller in the downandoutermost where voice only
of the dead may come, because ye left from me, because ye laughed on me,
because, O me lonly son, ye are forgetting me!, that our turfbrown mummy
is acoming, alpilla, beltilla, ciltilla, deltilla, running with her tidings,
old the news of the great big world, sonnies had a scrap, woewoewoe! babs
baby walks at seven months, waywayway! bride leaves her raid at Punchestime,
stud stoned before a racecourseful, two belles that make the one appeal,
dry yanks will visit old sod, and fourtiered skirts are up, mesdames,
while Parimiknie wears popular short legs, and twelve hows to mix a tipsy
wake, did ye hear, colt Cooney? did ye ever, filly Fortescue? with a beck,
with a spring, all her rillringlets shaking, rocks drops in her tachie,
tramtokens in her hair, all waived to a point and then all inuendation,
little oldfashioned mummy, little wonderful mummy, ducking under bridges,
bellhopping the weirs, dodging by a bit of bog, rapidshooting round the
bends, by Tallaghts green hills and the pools of the phooka and
a place they call it Blessington and [194] slipping sly by Sallynoggin,
as happy as the day is wet, babbling, bubbling, chattering to herself,
deloothering the fields on their elbows leaning with the sloothering slide
of her, giddygaddy, grannyma, gossipaceous Anna Livia.
He lifts the lifewand and the dumb speak.
- Quoiquoiquoiquoiquoiquoiquoiq![195]
|