The Annotated "Ulysses"/Page 011
His head disappeared and reappeared.
— I told him your symbol of Irish art. He says it’s very clever. Touch
him for a quid, will you? A guinea, I mean.
— I get paid this morning, Stephen said.
— The school kip? Buck Mulligan said. How much? Four quid? Lend
us one.
— If you want it, Stephen said.
— Four shining sovereigns, Buck Mulligan cried with delight. We’ll have
a glorious drunk to astonish the druidy druids. Four omnipotent sovereigns.
He flung up his hands and tramped down the stone stairs, singing out of
tune with a Cockney accent:
- O, won’t we have a merry time,
- Drinking whisky, beer and wine,
- On coronation
- Coronation day?
- O, won’t we have a merry time
- On coronation day?
Warm sunshine merrying over the sea. The nickel shavingbowl shone,
forgotten, on the parapet. Why should I bring it down? Or leave it there all
day, forgotten friendship?
He went over to it, held it in his hands awhile, feeling its coolness,
smelling the clammy slaver of the lather in which the brush was stuck. So I
carried the boat of incense then at Clongowes. I am another now and yet the
same. A servant too. A server of a servant.
In the gloomy domed livingroom of the tower Buck Mulligan’s gowned
form moved briskly about the hearth to and fro, hiding and revealing its yellow
glow. Two shafts of soft daylight fell across the flagged floor from the high
barbacans : and at the meeting of their rays a cloud of coalsmoke and fumes of
fried grease floated, turning.
— We’ll be choked, Buck Mulligan said. Haines, open that door, will you?
Stephen laid the shavingbowl on the locker. A tall figure rose from the
hammock where it had been sitting, went to the doorway and pulled open the
inner doors.
— Have you the key? a voice asked.
— Dedalus has it, Buck Mulligan said. Janey Mack, I’m choked.