书城外语Ulysses
16075200000110

第110章

-- Their syphilisation, you mean, says the citizen. To hell with them! The curse of a goodfornothing God light sideways on the bloody thicklugged sons of whores' gets! No music and no art and no literature worthy of the name. Any civilisation they have they stole from us. Tonguetied sons of bastards' ghosts.

-- The European family, says J. J...

-- They're not European, says the citizen. I was in Europe with Kevin Egan of Paris. You wouldn't see a trace of them or their language anywhere in Europe except in a cabinet d'aisance.

And says John Wyse:

-- Full many a flower is born to blush unseen.

And says Lenehan that knows a bit of the lingo:

-- Conspuez les Anglais! Perde Albion!

He said and then lifted he in his rude great brawny strengthy hands the medher of dark strong foamy ale and, uttering his tribal slogan Lamh Dearg Abu, he drank to the undoing of his foes, a race of mighty valorous heroes, rulers of the waves, who sit on thrones of alabaster silent as the deathless gods.

-- What's up with you, says I to Lenehan. You look like a fellow that had lost a bob and found a tanner.

-- Gold cup, says he.

-- Who won, Mr Lenehan? says Terry.

-- Throwaway, says he, at twenty to one. A rank outsider. And the rest nowhere.

-- And Bass's mare? says Terry.

-- Still running, says he. We're all in a cart. Boylan plunged two quid on my tip Sceptre for himself and a lady friend.

-- I had half a crown myself, says Terry, on Zinfandel that Mr Flynn gave me. Lord Howard de Walden's.

-- Twenty to one, says Lenehan. Such is life in an outhouse. Throwaway, says he. Takes the biscuit and talking about bunions. Frailty, thy name is Sceptre.

So he went over to the biscuit tin Bob Doran left to see if there was anything he could lift on the nod, the old cur after him backing his luck with his mangy snout up. Old mother Hubbard went to the cupboard.

-- Not there, my child, says he.

-- Keep your pecker up, says Joe. She'd have won the money only for the other dog.

And J. J. and the citizen arguing about law and history with Bloom sticking in an odd word. -- Some people, says Bloom, can see the mote in others' eyes but they can't see the beam in their own.

-- Raimeis, says the citizen. There's no-one as blind as the fellow that won't see, if you know what that means. Where are our missing twenty millions of Irish should be here today instead of four, our lost tribes? And our potteries and textiles, the finest in the whole world! And our wool that was sold in Rome in the time of Juvenal and our flax and our damask from the looms of Antrim and our Limerick lace, our tanneries and our white flint glass down there by Ballybough and our Huguenot poplin that we have since Jacquard de Lyon and our woven silk and our Foxford tweeds and ivory raised point from the Carmelite convent in New Ross, nothing like it in the whole wide world! Where are the Greek merchants that came through the pillars of Hercules, the Gibraltar now grabbed by the foe of mankind, with gold and Tyrian purple to sell in Wexford at the fair of Carmen? Read Tacitus and Ptolemy, even Giraldus Cambrensis. Wine, peltries, Connemara marble, silver from Tipperary, second to none, our far-famed horses even today, the Irish hobbies, with king Philip of Spain offering to pay customs duties for the right to fish in our waters. What do the yellowjohns of Anglia owe us for our ruined trade and our ruined hearths? And the beds of the Barrow and Shannon they won't deepen with millions of acres of marsh and bog to make us all die of consumption.

-- As treeless as Portugal we'll be soon, says John Wyse, or Heligoland with its one tree if something is not done to reafforest the land. Larches, firs, all the trees of the conifer family are going fast. I was reading a report of lord Castletown's...

-- Save them, says the citizen, the giant ash of Galway and the chieftain elm of Kildare with a fortyfoot bole and an acre of foliage. Save the trees of Ireland for the future men of Ireland on the fair hills of Eire, O.

-- Europe has its eyes on you, says Lenehan.