The Business of Naming Things (24 page)

In the bathroom, Gerry Mulligan, hometown boy. Baritone. Making it. Handsome fucking guy.

—Hey, Gerry, you say. Here to see Chet?

—Of course, fella, he says to you. The long urinal trough sings and smells. Just saw Brownie at Ellis Tollin's, you tell him.

—Gonna see him in California, Gerry says. He and Roach are recording out there, you know. Nice sound. They're shaking it up. Hard hop to it, but Max can do anything. And this kid. Wow.

—Smart cats, you say.

—Righto, says Mulligan. You see he's high as a kite, mishandling his own zipper. One thing at a time.

—Cool, you say, and leave him be.

You rub your hands, returning to the bar, where Jimmy guards your two glasses of beer. A good view from there, if you can hold it.

Jimmy leans in and tells you softly what's on his mind. He's having trouble. You have to ratchet back to where you might have been, always a problem, but then you understand he's
talking about Joyce. He's trying to understand, but he doesn't understand.

—What happened? you ask, knowing.

—Bob, it's the greatest book I've ever read, by a million miles—nothing like it, nothing near as good—for a while. Then I honestly don't know what's going on. Or what happens. Tell me: What happens?

—I told you to take it slow, you tell him.

There's a long lull. Sound checks, the crowd stirs. You turn your attention to the little bandstand along the back wall. Chet's got three horns standing there. But then the stage is emptied and it's back to the merry concert of ice clinking and throaty laughter and a cash register chunking open and closed and running water. Warm sounds you think are the height of civilization now in peace-time. That's all Ike needs, face it. Prosperity in the heartland and scenes like this in the cities. It's good. Good enough for people to think it's good anyway. Narcotic.

—I'll tell you what, you say to Jimmy. I'm gonna teach a course. I talked to my guy at Temple, big Joyce fan, old Gordo, a scholar, I've told you. I told him I had an idea; he said work it up. I could actually teach part-time, GI extension, like it would be a seminar or something. Little extra scratch for me and Marion.

—I'd sign up, Jimmy says.

—This is it, I'll tell you then. Course called “Finishing
Ulysses
.”

—That would help!

—No no no, you explain. It's like this: course description, student reads the title, “Finishing
Ulysses
,” says, That's for me, I'll finally finish that fucking book! But that's not what it is. Student reads on: the prerequisite is this—now dig this—you
have to have read the book at least twice already, class size is whatever Temple wants. But students don't get in if on the first day they can't answer five questions about the book. Get four outta five, you're out. Right there, slip of paper. Five-minute class. In or out.

Jimmy looks nervous. What to say, you know he's wondering. What kind of questions?

—Okay: One. What day of the week is Bloomsday? Two. What's the name of the priest who presides at Paddy Dignam's funeral?

—I know that one; it's a pun, Jimmy says. Conmee, he comes up with, Father Conmee?

—Nope. Close. Three: What odds did Throwaway pay?

Bored now you are.

—Et cetera, Jimmy. You'll get in, don't worry . . . if your mommy allows for your further corruption.

You feel odd for a moment as you realize you've not told this idea to anyone other than professor Gordo over a brief pint and you're telling it to a seventeen-year-old and so what if you convince him, but that's not the issue, why isn't your circle something else. You can tell this to Red Murray down at the
News
. Try this on Larry Merchant? But you carry on. The eagerness of a young son is more than enough. You go on.

—This is what we do and it addresses the very problem you are having right now, Jimmy. All we read in this class is the first
six chapters
. The three of Stephen's and the three of Bloom's, takes both of them from about eight till eleven on Bloomsday, breakfast to funeral. Dedalus goes and picks up his pay, walks the strand. They are beautiful; you are right. Nothing like it before or since. Ineluctable modality of the visible. Signatures of all things I am here to read.

—Yes, yes, says Jimmy. Wavewhite wedded words shimmering on the dim tide.

—He's got a bright light on. And he follows these guys around, this Odysseus, and this son, this, what, Telemachus. They are wandering and of course their paths must cross; they must find each other. Father and son. That's the odyssey, isn't it. Coming home, Odysseus home to Penelope and his boy. Stephen's lost his mother, hasn't he. He sees her at sea. His father is an earache. Did you see that Bloom has to share a carriage with the old man Dedalus to Glasnevin? Question four: Who's in the carriage with Bloom?

—But I tell you what I think—why the whole book changes. Episode seven, Aeolus. Something breaks there and it gets more broken—he goes further and further from writing a novel. He's writing about something else. He's writing about the novel or writing itself, not these guys' stories. He's interested in how bad the novel is as a form. An English invention and he's a good Irishman. He hates the English and their ways. Hated Dublin, too, but it was in his blood. So what's he do? I think he couldn't stomach carrying out the plot where, you know, A meets B. Stephen meets Bloom; then what? A contrivance. Or worse. I really think Joyce saw the conventional novel like a form of imperialism. Abuses circumstance, abuses mystery, in favor of . . . imposing a story. Rewriting maps, borders. Eliminates. I mean, people fart in
Ulysses
.

—So what does Joyce do, that's the point. He looks for a resolution, what Gordo called a formal resolution. Aesthetic. He leaves off any pretense to having this turn out to be a story with an ending that has a beginning. It is a novel that had a beginning and a novel that finds an ending as a novel, not as a story. As a collection of words. He's got these people looking for people and they're not going to find them. Bloom—his
dead son; his lost father. Stephen—his lost mother; a real father. His father's dead to him. At the end, what? Stephen walks off into the night. Where's he go? Bloom crawls into bed, where old Blazes Boylan had been not too goddamned long ago. Maybe he gets breakfast in bed tomorrow. Fat chance. Thing is, Joyce doesn't give a fuck about the narrative development after's he's set up a big map. Happy endings are not his business. He wants to get everything in instead. Circumstance, like I said. Mystery. The whole world of a day.

The mike shrieks with feedback and some guy in a suit announces to boos that Chet Baker can't make it tonight and you see that Mulligan has already split from his table and taken the dame with him. And some other musicians are stirring in and will set up, but the dissent lasts only a moment and back to the tinkling set and the barkeep, Al Parker, says to you, Bob, this round's on the house. But not the shots. Good luck.

—So this is it, you go on, blowing through your own stop sign. If you make the class and get your five right then you have to finish writing
Ulysses
. Finish
Ulysses
, and turn it in at the end of term; I don't want to see you till then. Your first
six chapters
are written for you. You find a resolution on whatever level, and you decide, and argue in a short paper, how you resolved it and how you think Joyce resolved it or didn't resolve it. That's it. What do you think?

—There's Jim Doyle. Right there. Near the Yuengling sign. Ask him, Bob.

—Doyle knows, you say. Get him over here.

Your other Jimmy friend. At Temple now after the merchant marines. Wants to be a playwright.

—Doyle, you say. You love this guy, got a twinkle like Spencer Tracy.

—Just telling Jimmy here about my theory—yeah, Chet Baker's canceled; let's just visit, eh. Seeing Doyle's heavy coat. Is it, starting to rain? All the more reason. You call Al over for another round and settle Jim Doyle in. On his own. Reading Ibsen, you see, in his CPO coat pocket.

—Doyle here doesn't buy it, right, Jim? Too much the playwright, but it's an interesting point. Tell him, you say.

Doyle's a reticent friend, and the way you can talk, that's a particular disadvantage. But he's careful and knows what he thinks and what he thinks he is not afraid to tell you.

—Joyce aspired to the theater, he tells you. Wrote one play but was headed there again, maybe didn't know it. But
Ulysses
ends in performance, a verbal performance—an orgasm, of course—but it is a monologue, a great one, Molly coming to yes. A fifth of the book is a play, with stage directions. Nighttown. An impossible piece to stage, for obvious reasons—and never in Dublin! And it's the perfect ending, the only ending, brings it all full circle. The book finds home, the omphalos, even if Bloom and Dedalus don't. That's my view. Believe me, Bob, he tells you, those students of yours will do no better.

—You see, you say to Jimmy Curran. It will make for great debate. And Doyle here—he's made my class. If he wants to . . . I'll feed you the answers, my two Jameses, you say.

You wink at him and you all toast.

—Maybe that's right, Jimmy Curran says, looking at Doyle but talking to you. This book is done, let's study it, not finish it. Happened what, fifty years ago. Before the wars, before the Republic even.

There's another round from Al Parker, the beer, the whiskey. That kind of night. If fucking Chet Baker had kept his nose clean, it'd be different. You recognize what's happening—getting a little surly—but you can control it.

Jimmy Curran speaks up. I just don't know that it works, he tells you. It's not a novel is all I'm saying.

—Curran, you're a little young for this, don't you think? Bedtime. He's immediately hurt. You punch his shoulder and smile. You can kid a kid, you say. He relaxes, but he looks at his watch. Doyle shifts closer, moving into the space you've just contested a little. A Jim Doyle move. Last thing you want is a fight at sea. Peacekeeper.

—Let me say this, you say—as if you ever have had to claim the floor, your gift, to be the youngest and everybody doted on what you had to say, those still around anyway. Hey now. Look at
Dubliners
. Every story tight as a fucking drum. Sight, see it right, the right voice, you say—poof: epiphany. Every one of 'em. A secret formula taken from the Bible. Joyce probably puked his fucking guts out when he realized that.

—Bob, Bob, says Jim. Now slow down.

Slow down, boys, huh? You say, It's fucking raining, it's a fucking Monday night, the blues, and we are in Philadelphia and I got a house I owe on and a new kid and a job selling ads, so I'm firing through this right now. C'mon, this is interesting. If not, fuck off.

You excuse yourself with some courtesies and go to the jakes, leak and one to take the edge off the whiskey, which has made you ugly, you know, and you are sorry for it. Pissing, you remember standing next to Dylan Thomas in the White Horse and you look there like you could conjure him here in Pep's and you can't and you remember Ginny and Cassie making fun of you: Be a poet; don't chase one. Thanks a lot. Hoofers.

You wrote for Hallmark, six months. Okay.

They were something. Not hoofers, sirens, yours. In the white tile in front of you, you see Ginny Brogan's face in that
geisha routine she did. Cabaret. In the Village. Rubber-band eyes. What'd she. . . . Adorable.

Back to the bar and you hate to tell Jimmy it's time to go, but he's reloaded his question. Beer to his head. It doesn't work, he says. The book. I don't know what it is.

—Look, you say. A book about identity is entitled to have some identity problems of its own: it should. I think Joyce resolved it. As much as a book with a ghost in it can be resolved.

—Let's go.

It's raining hard now, but it feels good after a long hot June. The streets are sloshing; your feet are wet. Jimmy's in Keds. Doyle, you say to Doyle, well shod. You look at his bruised rib-soled deck shoes from the good ship
Lollipop
. You think, Grossbooted drayman.

—Let's down to the Z Bar, you say. Mulligan said Prez might show up. You lie, but it's strategic—keep these pals moving; it's too early. Life is good; there's air to breathe.

Your smoke is wet in the rain and you have to piss again, but the Zanzibar is closed—some Mondays, that's right. Doyle knows Mulligan told you no such thing and you don't hide behind the lie—there's enough of that ahead—and Doyle steers you and Jimmy back down the street and across to a small shop surrounded by
News
trucks: delivery guys, bringing the paper up, early edition. What the hell time is it—2:00
A.M.
by the Bulova. How can that be? You grab a copy from the back and put it back—there's a stack inside the shop and a coffee would be good right now and you can take the paper home to Marion, businesslike; she'll be worried. Tuesday's coupons.

You try to catch up with where you are in the little mop closet you have to take a piss in—micturition, of course. You're
a nation after all, unto yourself. And it is always thus. You can hear the two Jims out there lightly conversing and you know that is not a part of you; you are always your own consuming fire, one big hearth aflame, and sometimes people gather and sometimes people don't and you can't see out anyway; mighty Casey has struck out—like you're in the klieg lights themselves, blind to the audience, you can only talk and talk as you hear things. You sit down in there. You sit down in a mop closet in Bud's diner in the middle of Philadelphia USA and the rest of the world could dissolve, imagine it—the last closet standing, you exit to a ruined world. Then: mop up. You decide to smoke and think, and you can hear Ginny, or is it Cassie—really no matter—saying, What's wrong, Bobby? Settle down. Look at yourself. What do you want. Drive you fucking crazy. You toss the butt. What are you doing? Sweet Marion's face.