[A Lush Kiss Of Surrender Epub Fr
Laurice Whack
Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of latheron which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. A yellow dressinggown, ungirdled,was sustained gently behind him on the mild morning air. He held the bowl aloftand intoned:
Solemnly he came forward and mounted the round gunrest. He faced about andblessed gravely thrice the tower, the surrounding land and the awakingmountains. Then, catching sight of Stephen Dedalus, he bent towards him andmade rapid crosses in the air, gurgling in his throat and shaking his head.Stephen Dedalus, displeased and sleepy, leaned his arms on the top of thestaircase and looked coldly at the shaking gurgling face that blessed him,equine in its length, and at the light untonsured hair, grained and hued likepale oak.
He peered sideways up and gave a long slow whistle of call, then paused awhilein rapt attention, his even white teeth glistening here and there with goldpoints. Chrysostomos. Two strong shrill whistles answered through the calm.
He skipped off the gunrest and looked gravely at his watcher, gathering abouthis legs the loose folds of his gown. The plump shadowed face and sullen ovaljowl recalled a prelate, patron of arts in the middle ages. A pleasant smilebroke quietly over his lips.
He pointed his finger in friendly jest and went over to the parapet, laughingto himself. Stephen Dedalus stepped up, followed him wearily halfway and satdown on the edge of the gunrest, watching him still as he propped his mirror onthe parapet, dipped the brush in the bowl and lathered cheeks and neck.
Stephen, an elbow rested on the jagged granite, leaned his palm against hisbrow and gazed at the fraying edge of his shiny black coat-sleeve. Pain, thatwas not yet the pain of love, fretted his heart. Silently, in a dream she hadcome to him after her death, her wasted body within its loose browngraveclothes giving off an odour of wax and rosewood, her breath, that had bentupon him, mute, reproachful, a faint odour of wetted ashes. Across thethreadbare cuffedge he saw the sea hailed as a great sweet mother by thewellfed voice beside him. The ring of bay and skyline held a dull green mass ofliquid. A bowl of white china had stood beside her deathbed holding the greensluggish bile which she had torn up from her rotting liver by fits of loudgroaning vomiting.
He swept the mirror a half circle in the air to flash the tidings abroad insunlight now radiant on the sea. His curling shaven lips laughed and the edgesof his white glittering teeth. Laughter seized all his strong wellknit trunk.
Stephen bent forward and peered at the mirror held out to him, cleft by acrooked crack. Hair on end. As he and others see me. Who chose this face forme? This dogsbody to rid of vermin. It asks me too.
He walked off quickly round the parapet. Stephen stood at his post, gazing overthe calm sea towards the headland. Sea and headland now grew dim. Pulses werebeating in his eyes, veiling their sight, and he felt the fever of his cheeks.
Woodshadows floated silently by through the morning peace from the stairheadseaward where he gazed. Inshore and farther out the mirror of water whitened,spurned by lightshod hurrying feet. White breast of the dim sea. The twiningstresses, two by two. A hand plucking the harpstrings, merging their twiningchords. Wavewhite wedded words shimmering on the dim tide.
Her secrets: old featherfans, tasselled dancecards, powdered with musk, a gaudof amber beads in her locked drawer. A birdcage hung in the sunny window of herhouse when she was a girl. She heard old Royce sing in the pantomime of Turkothe Terrible and laughed with others when he sang:
In a dream, silently, she had come to him, her wasted body within its loosegraveclothes giving off an odour of wax and rosewood, her breath, bent over himwith mute secret words, a faint odour of wetted ashes.
Her glazing eyes, staring out of death, to shake and bend my soul. On me alone.The ghostcandle to light her agony. Ghostly light on the tortured face. Herhoarse loud breath rattling in horror, while all prayed on their knees. Hereyes on me to strike me down. Liliata rutilantium te confessorum turmacircumdet: iubilantium te virginum chorus excipiat.
He went over to it, held it in his hands awhile, feeling its coolness, smellingthe clammy slaver of the lather in which the brush was stuck. So I carried theboat of incense then at Clongowes. I am another now and yet the same. A servanttoo. A server of a servant.
The key scraped round harshly twice and, when the heavy door had been set ajar,welcome light and bright air entered. Haines stood at the doorway, looking out.Stephen haled his upended valise to the table and sat down to wait. BuckMulligan tossed the fry on to the dish beside him. Then he carried the dish anda large teapot over to the table, set them down heavily and sighed with relief.
He watched her pour into the measure and thence into the jug rich white milk,not hers. Old shrunken paps. She poured again a measureful and a tilly. Old andsecret she had entered from a morning world, maybe a messenger. She praised thegoodness of the milk, pouring it out. Crouching by a patient cow at daybreak inthe lush field, a witch on her toadstool, her wrinkled fingers quick at thesquirting dugs. They lowed about her whom they knew, dewsilky cattle. Silk ofthe kine and poor old woman, names given her in old times. A wandering crone,lowly form of an immortal serving her conqueror and her gay betrayer, theircommon cuckquean, a messenger from the secret morning. To serve or to upbraid,whether he could not tell: but scorned to beg her favour.
Haines helped himself and snapped the case to. He put it back in his sidepocketand took from his waistcoatpocket a nickel tinderbox, sprang it open too, and,having lit his cigarette, held the flaming spunk towards Stephen in the shellof his hands.
He walked on, waiting to be spoken to, trailing his ashplant by his side. Itsferrule followed lightly on the path, squealing at his heels. My familiar,after me, calling, Steeeeeeeeeeeephen! A wavering line along the path. Theywill walk on it tonight, coming here in the dark. He wants that key. It ismine. I paid the rent. Now I eat his salt bread. Give him the key too. All. Hewill ask for it. That was in his eyes.
They followed the winding path down to the creek. Buck Mulligan stood on astone, in shirtsleeves, his unclipped tie rippling over his shoulder. A youngman clinging to a spur of rock near him, moved slowly frogwise his green legsin the deep jelly of the water.
Buck Mulligan sat down to unlace his boots. An elderly man shot up near thespur of rock a blowing red face. He scrambled up by the stones, waterglistening on his pate and on its garland of grey hair, water rilling over hischest and paunch and spilling jets out of his black sagging loincloth.
That phrase the world had remembered. A dull ease of the mind. From a hillabove a corpsestrewn plain a general speaking to his officers, leaned upon hisspear. Any general to any officers. They lend ear.
All laughed. Mirthless high malicious laughter. Armstrong looked round at hisclassmates, silly glee in profile. In a moment they will laugh more loudly,aware of my lack of rule and of the fees their papas pay.
Some laughed again: mirthless but with meaning. Two in the back benchwhispered. Yes. They knew: had never learned nor ever been innocent. All. Withenvy he watched their faces: Edith, Ethel, Gerty, Lily. Their likes: theirbreaths, too, sweetened with tea and jam, their bracelets tittering in thestruggle.
He held out his copybook. The word Sums was written on the headline.Beneath were sloping figures and at the foot a crooked signature with blindloops and a blot. Cyril Sargent: his name and seal.
Across the page the symbols moved in grave morrice, in the mummery of theirletters, wearing quaint caps of squares and cubes. Give hands, traverse, bow topartner: so: imps of fancy of the Moors. Gone too from the world, Averroes andMoses Maimonides, dark men in mien and movement, flashing in their mockingmirrors the obscure soul of the world, a darkness shining in brightness whichbrightness could not comprehend.
In long shaky strokes Sargent copied the data. Waiting always for a word ofhelp his hand moved faithfully the unsteady symbols, a faint hue of shameflickering behind his dull skin. Amor matris: subjective and objectivegenitive. With her weak blood and wheysour milk she had fed him and hid fromsight of others his swaddling bands.
Like him was I, these sloping shoulders, this gracelessness. My childhood bendsbeside me. Too far for me to lay a hand there once or lightly. Mine is far andhis secret as our eyes. Secrets, silent, stony sit in the dark palaces of bothour hearts: secrets weary of their tyranny: tyrants, willing to be dethroned.
He stood in the porch and watched the laggard hurry towards the scrappy fieldwhere sharp voices were in strife. They were sorted in teams and Mr Deasy cameaway stepping over wisps of grass with gaitered feet. When he had reached theschoolhouse voices again contending called to him. He turned his angry whitemoustache.
Stale smoky air hung in the study with the smell of drab abraded leather of itschairs. As on the first day he bargained with me here. As it was in thebeginning, is now. On the sideboard the tray of Stuart coins, base treasure ofa bog: and ever shall be. And snug in their spooncase of purple plush, faded,the twelve apostles having preached to all the gentiles: world without end.
He peered from under his shaggy brows at the manuscript by his elbow and,muttering, began to prod the stiff buttons of the keyboard slowly, sometimesblowing as he screwed up the drum to erase an error.
May I trespass on your valuable space. That doctrine of laissez fairewhich so often in our history. Our cattle trade. The way of all our oldindustries. Liverpool ring which jockeyed the Galway harbour scheme. Europeanconflagration. Grain supplies through the narrow waters of the channel. Thepluterperfect imperturbability of the department of agriculture. Pardoned aclassical allusion. Cassandra. By a woman who was no better than she should be.To come to the point at issue.
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