The Music of Memory and Desire — Ulysses

Bronze and gold, Miss Douce and Miss Kennedy, heard the viceroy's hoofs go by the Ormond and put their heads to the blind to see who looked back. They took their tea low behind the counter, out of sight, and laughed themselves sore over an old admirer with a goggle eye until the joke wore them out. Bloom went past the window with Sweets of Sin in his breast, the sentences about Raoul still in his head, working out where to eat and remembering that four o'clock had been named. He still had a letter to write. In the bar Simon Dedalus came in, ordered whisky and water, and teased Miss Douce about the sunburn she had got lying on the strand at Rostrevor. She trilled a line of Idolores. Lenehan wound himself round the sandwich bell and asked if Mr Boylan had been looking for him. Miss Kennedy, not lifting her eyes from the page, said he had not. Lenehan tried a fable on her and got nothing. He turned the talk to Stephen, the youthful bard, and told Simon he had drunk with him that day in both Mooney's, the elite of Erin hanging on the son's lips. Simon said he heard the boy was keeping select company, drank, and looked at the piano, which had been tuned that day by a blind young man for the smoking concert. A diner's bell brought bald Pat the waiter. Bloom, a street away, bought paper and envelopes in Daly's and saw, for the third time, a gay hat riding a jaunting car off Essex bridge towards the Ormond. He followed.

Boylan's tan shoes creaked on the bar floor. Lenehan hailed the conquering hero. Bloom, between car and window, was not hailed. He let Richie Goulding, with the legal bag held up like a salute, lead him into the dining room, a table near the door, where he could hear and not be seen. Boylan called a bitter and a sloegin, asked if the wire was in, and listened to Lenehan promise that Sceptre would win in a canter. He had plunged a bit, he said, not on his own, a fancy of a friend. Miss Douce reached for a bottle and Lenehan begged her to sound the bell. She looked to see that Miss Kennedy was out of earshot, nipped her skirt, and let the garter snap warm against her thigh. She told them they were the essence of vulgarity, and smiled at Boylan as she glided off. He finished the violet drops in the glass, took his change, and said he was off. Lenehan gulped and tried to keep him for a word about Tom Rochford. Boylan was already going. In the saloon Ben Dollard was telling Father Cowley that Alf Bergan would speak to the long fellow, and that they would put a barleystraw in a Judas's ear. They pulled Simon in to sing. Bloom ordered cider. Pat's corns argued against making him walk twice. Then a little jingling went down the quay. Bloom sighed on the blue flowers. He was gone. The singers fell to old times, the night Dollard had no wedding garment and Bloom had turned up handy with clothes from home, court dresses and opera cloaks, and would take no money. Simon put the moral in a line. Mrs Marion Bloom had left off clothes of all descriptions. They fitted the name to her. Marion Tweedy, daughter of the regiment, the old drum-major's girl, from the rock of Gibraltar all the way, his Irish Molly, and still alive and kicking.

Pat uncovered the dishes. Bloom ate liver and bacon and mashed the potatoes into the gravy. Goulding ate steak and kidney and drank Power, and praised the most beautiful tenor air he had ever heard, a night with Joe Maas, a night he would never forget. Boylan's car jogged along Bachelor's Walk, the mare's rump in the sun, Boylan sprawled and warm and in no mood to wait. Dollard roared Love and War until Simon told him he would burst an eardrum, and Cowley took the piano back to a softer touch. George Lidwell came in and held Miss Douce's hand. Simon was coaxed and bullied towards M'appari. He laid down his pipe, let Cowley take the keys, and at last the voice left the prelude. When first I saw that form endearing. Bloom signed to deaf Pat to set the door ajar. Sorrow seemed to depart. He unwound the elastic from his packet and wound it round his fingers until the four of them were bound. Tenors got women by the score. He thought of the first night at Mat Dillon's in Terenure, musical chairs, Molly in yellow and black lace, the two of them the last pair left, and of her singing while he turned the music. The song changed key into grief. Martha. Come, thou lost one. The high cry held Simon and Leopold in the one soar, and then it was consumed. They clapped. Bravo, Simon. Sound as a bell. Encore. Bloom sang dumb. Boylan's car, slower than he liked, was going up the hill by the Rotunda, and he joggled the mare.

The elastic snapped. Bloom told himself all the songs were on that theme, people lured on and then torn asunder, Dignam gone for the five shillings he had given, and one day she with them. He asked Pat for pen and ink and a pad, and held the Freeman open so Goulding would not read. What he wrote was from Henry Flower, who had got her letter and flower and found it utterly impossible to write that day, who enclosed his poor little present, who asked no answer and a long letter, who wanted to be called that other name, whose patience was exhausted, and who felt so sad, so lonely. He shaped the e's in the Greek way. He told Goulding it was an answer to an advertisement, a town traveller's enquiry, nothing doing. He blotted the pad so the words would not be lifted off it, and addressed Miss Martha Clifford at the post office in Dolphin's Barn Lane. A postal order for two and six would have to be bought lower down. He had promised to look in at Barney Kiernan's and disliked the job. Pat could not hear him call. At the bar Miss Douce held a shell to Lidwell's ear and then to her own, and Bloom, through the door, heard more faintly the roar each of them heard alone. Boylan had swayed in by Larry O'Rourke's. The tan shoe came light to earth. A rap sounded, a knock. Cowley started a dark chord, and the men begged Dollard for The Croppy Boy. Bloom paid, one and nine and twopence for Pat, and stayed because the voice had already entered the lonely hall. A false priest's servant welcomed the boy. Dollard beat his breast in the Latin. Bloom listened and thought of the last of a name and race, of Milly, of Rudy, of no son. Last of my race. He had looked enough. He got up before the blessing. The yeoman captain came out of the cassock and gave the boy an hour to live. Miss Douce's hand lay on the beerpull and slid, slowly, while she listened. Bloom passed deaf Pat in the doorway and went out soft and lonely, the letter in his pocket and the book still with him, while Dollard's bass asked the room to pray for the croppy boy. He was glad he had missed the backslapping. Inside they told Dollard he was as good as ever, better, a most trenchant rendition, upon Kernan's soul and honour. The blind stripling tapped along the quay and into the hall, and Miss Douce remembered the tuner who had left his fork. Bloom walked up past Barry's and Daly's mermaid, the cider gassy in him, thinking of instruments, of a drum, of Dignam, of a whore from the lane who knew Molly and might see him in the day. He let her pass. In an antique window he read the last words under a picture of Robert Emmet. True men like you men will lift your glass with us. Inside, Lidwell, Simon, Cowley, Kernan, and Dollard lifted theirs, and the glasses chimed. The unseeing stripling stood in the door and saw none of them. Bloom read on. When my country takes her place among the nations of the earth, then and not till then, let my epitaph be written, and the cider in him finished the line. The song held in the bar, the glasses stayed lifted, Boylan had gone on towards Molly, and Bloom remained.