Complete Works of James Joyce (302 page)

 
....... Tie

My girdle for me and bind up this hair

In any simple knot.

The housemaid tells me that they had to take her away at once to the hospital,
poveretta
, that she suffered so much, so much,
poveretta
, that it is very grave...... I walk away from her empty house. I feel that I am about to cry. Ah, no! It will not be like that, in a moment, without a word, without a look. No, no! Surely hell’s luck will not fail me!

Operated. The surgeon’s knife has probed in her entrails and withdrawn, leaving the raw jagged gash of its passage on her belly. I see her full dark suffering eyes, beautiful as the eyes of an antelope. O cruel wound! Libidinous God!

Once more in her chair by the window, happy words on her tongue, happy laughter. A bird twittering after storm, happy that its little foolish life has fluttered out of the clutching fingers of an epileptic lord and giver of life, twittering happily, twittering and chirping happily.

She says that, had
The portrait of the Artist
been frank only for frankness’ sake, she would have asked shy I had given it to her to read. O you would, would you? A lady of letters.

She stands black-robed at the telephone. Little timid laughs, little cries, timid runs of speech suddenly broken....
Parlerò colla mamma....
Come! choock, choock! come! The black pullet is frightened: little runs suddenly broken, little timid cries: it is crying for its mamma, the portly hen.

Loggione. The sodden walls ooze a steamy damp. A symphony of smells fuses the mass of huddled human forms: sour reek of armpits, nozzled oranges, melting breast ointments, mastick water, the breath of suppers of sulphurous garlic, foul phosphorescent farts, opoponax, the frank sweat of marriageable and married womankind, the soapy stink of men...... All night I have watched her, all night I shall see her: braided and pinnacled hair and olive oval face and calm soft eyes. A green fillet upon her hair and about her body a green-broidered gown: the hue of the illusion of the vegetable glass of nature and of lush grass, the hair of graves.

My words in her mind: cold polished stones sinking through a quagmire.

Those quiet cold fingers have touched the pages, foul and fair, on which my shame shall glow for ever. Quiet and cold and pure fingers, have they never erred?

Her body has no smell: an odourless flower.

On the stairs. A cold frail hand: shyness, silence: dark langour-flooded eyes: weariness.

Whirling wreaths of grey vapour upon the heath. Her face, how grey and grave! Dank matted hair. Her lips press softly, her sighing breath comes through. Kissed.

My voice, dying in the echoes of its words, dies like the wisdom-wearied voice of the Eternal calling on Abraham through echoing hills. She leans back against the pillowed wall: odalisque-featured in the luxurious obscurity. Her eyes have drunk my thoughts: and into the moist warm yielding welcoming darkness of her womanhood my soul, itself disssolving, has streamed and poured and flooded a liquid and abundant seed...... Take her now who will!....

As I come out of Ralli’s house I come upon her suddenly as we both are giving alms to a blind beggar. She answers my sudden greeting by turning and averting her black basilisk eyes.
E col suo vedere attosca l’uomo quando lo vede.
I thank you for the word, messer brunetto.

They spread under my feet carpets for the son of man. They await my passing. She stands in the yellow shadow of the hall, a plaid cloak shielding from chills her sinking shoulders: and as I halt in wonder and look about me she greets me wintrily and passes up the staircase darting at me for an instant out of her sluggish sidelong eyes a jet of liquorish venom.

A soft crumpled peagreen cover drapes the lounge. A narrow Parisian room. The hairdresser lay here but now. I kissed her stocking and the hem of her rustblack dusty skirt. It is the other. She. Gogarty came yesterday to be introduced.
Ulysses
is the reason. Symbol of the intellectual conscience.... Ireland then? And the husband? Pacing the corridor in list shoes or playing chess against himself. Why are we left here? The hairdresser lay here but now, clutching my head between her knobby knees.... Intellectual symbol of my race. Listen? The plunging gloom has fallen. Listen!

- I am not convinced that such activities of the mind or body can be called unhealthy -

 
She speaks. A weak voice from beyond the cold stars. Voice of wisdom. Say on! O, say again, making me wise! This voice I never heard.

 
She coils towards me along the crumpled lounge. I cannot move or speak. Coiling approach of starborn flesh. Adultery of wisdom. No. I will go. I will.

 
- Jim, love! -

 
Soft sucking lips kiss my left armpit: a coiling kiss on myriad veins. I burn! I crumple like a burning leaf! From my right armpit a fang of flame leaps out. A starry snake has kissed me: a cold nightsnake. I am lost!

 
- Nora! -

Jan Pieters Sweelink. The quaint name of the old Dutch musician makes all beauty seem quaint and far. I hear his variations for the clavichord on an old air:
Youth has an end
. In the vague mist of old sounds a faint point of light appears: the speech of the soul is about to be heard. Youth has an end: the end is here. It will never be. You know that well. What then? Write it, damn you, write it! What else are you good for?

‘Why?’

‘Because otherwise I could not see you.’

Sliding-space-ages-foliage of stars-and waning heaven-stilness-and stilness deeper-stilness of annihilation-and her voice.

Non hunc sed Barabbam!

Unreadiness. A bare apartment. Torbid daylight. A long black piano: coffin of music. Poised on its edge a woman’s hat, red-flowered, and umbrella, furled. Her arms: casque, gules, and blunt spear on a field, sable.

Envoy: Love me, love my umbrella.

Joyce in Dublin, 1904

This 1918 play draws on the
Dubliners
short
story
The Dead
.
 
The play was rejected by W. B. Yeats for production at the Abbey Theatre and it was not until 1970 when Harold Pinter directed its first major performance in London.

Joyce and Nora on their wedding day, 1931