Stately, plump Buck buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. A yellow dressinggown, ungirdled, was sustained sustain gently behind him on the mild morning air. He held kept the bowl aloft and intoned:
—Introibo ad altare Dei ; .
Halted, he peered down the dark winding stairs and called out coarsely : .
—Come up, Kinch! Come up, you fearful jesuit!
Solemnly he came forward and mounted the round gunrest. He faced about and blessed gravely thrice the tower, the surrounding wrapping land and the awaking mountains. Then, catching sight of Stephen Dedalus Dedalus Stephen , he bent towards him and made 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 the staircase and looked coldly at the shaking gurgling face that blessed him, equine in a its length, and at the light untonsured hair , grained and hued like pale oak .
Buck Mulligan peeped an instant under the mirror Under the mirror, Buck Mulligan peeped an instant and then covered the bowl smartly.
—Back to barracks! he said sternly.
He added in a preacher’s tone:
—For this , O dearly beloved, is the genuine Christine: body and soul and blood and ouns. Slow music, please , s . S hut your eyes, gents. One moment. A little trouble about those white corpuscles. Silence , all.
He peered sideways up and gave a long slow whistle of call, then paused pause awhile in rapt attention, his even white teeth glistening here and there there and here with gold points. Chrysostomos. Two strong shrill whistles yells answered through the calm.
—Thanks, old chap, he cried briskly. That will do nicely. —Thanks, old chap, he cried briskly. That will do nicely. Switch off the current, will you?
He skipped off the gunrest and looked gravely at his watcher, gathering about his legs the loose folds of his gown. the others. The plump shadowed face and sullen oval jowl recalled a prelate, patron of arts in the middle ages.A pleasant smile broke quietly over his lips.
—The mockery of it! he said gaily. Your absurd name, an ancient Greek!
—The mockery of it! he said gaily.
—An ancient Greek!
He pointed his finger in friendly jest and went over to the parapet, laughing to himself . , Stephen Dedalus stepped step up, followed him wearily halfway and sat down on the edge of the gunrest, watching him still as he propped his mirror on the parapet, the parapeth dipped the brush in the bowl and lathered cheeks and neck.
Buck buck Mulligan’s gay voice went on.
—My name is absurd too: Malachi Mulligan, two dactyls. But it has a Hellenic ring Hellenic ring ,hasn’t it? Tripping and sunny like the Buck buck himself. We must go to Athens. Will you come if I can get the aunt to fork out twenty quid ? .
He laid the brush aside and, laughing with delight, cried:
—Will he come? The jejune june jesuit!
Ceasing, he began started to shave with care.
—Tell me, Mulligan, Stephen said quietly. —Tell me, Mulligan, Stephen said quietly.
—Yes, my My love ? .
—How long is Haines him going to stay in this tower?
Buck buck Mulligan showed a shaven cheek over his right shoulder.
—God, isn’t he dreadful ? h ? H e said frankly. A ponderous Saxon. He thinks you’re not a gentleman. God, these bloody English! Bursting with money and indigestion. Because he comes from Oxford. You know, Dedalus, you have the real Oxford oxford manner. He can’t make you out. O, my name for you is the best: Kinch, the knife-blade Kinch, the knife-blade .
He shaved warily over his chin waited long time .
—He was raving all night about a black panther , Stephen said . Where is his guncase?
—A woful lunatic mad ! Mulligan said . W , w ere you in a funk?
—I was, Stephen said with energy and growing fear. Out here in the dark with a man I don’t know raving and moaning to himself about shooting a black panther. You saved men from drowning. I’m not a hero I’m not a hero , however. If he stays on here I am off.
Buck buck Mulligan frowned at the lather on his razorblade knife . He hopped down from his perch and began to there search his trouser pockets hastily.
—Scutter! He cried thickly.
He came over to the gunrest and, thrusting thrusing a hand into Stephen’s upper pocket, said:
—Lend us a loan lean of your noserag to wipe my razor.
Stephen suffered him to pull out and hold held up on show by its corner a dirty crumpled handkerchief . Buck buck Mulligan wiped the razorblade neatly. Then, gazing over the handkerchief, he said:
—The bard’s noserag! A new art colour for our Irish poets: snotgreen. You can almost taste it, can’t you ? .
He mounted to the parapet again and gazed out otu over Dublin bay, his fair oakpale hair stirring slightly.
—God! he said quietly. Isn’t the sea what Algy calls it: a great sweet mother? That is The snotgreen sea. The scrotumtightening sea. Epi oinopa ponton. Ah, Dedalus, the Greeks Greek ! I must teach learn you. You must read them in the original. Thalatta! Thalatta! She is our great sweet graceful mother. Come and look.
Stephen stood up and went over to the parapeth paraptr . Leaning on it he looked down on the water and on the mailboat clearing the harbourmouth of Kingstown.
—Our mighty mother ! . Buck buck Mulligan said.
He turned abruptly his grey searching investigating eyes from the sea to Stephen’s face.
—The aunt thinks you killed your mother , he said. That’s why she won’t let me have anything antingh to do with you.
—Someone killed murdered her, Stephen said gloomily.
—You could have knelt down, damn it, Kinch, when your dying mother asked you, Buck buck Mulligan said . I , ’m hyperborean as much as you. But to think of your mother begging you with her last breath to kneel kee down and pray for her. And you refused. There is something sinister mysterious in you .... ...
He broke off and lathered again lightly his farther cheek. A tolerant smile curled his lips.
—But a lovely mummer munner ! he murmured to himself. Kinch, the loveliest mummer of them all!
He shaved evenly and with care, in silence, in silcen seriously.
Stephen, an elbow rested on the jagged granite marble , leaned his palm against his brow and gazed at the fraying edge of his shiny black coat-sleeve. Pain pain , that was not yet the pain of love lov , fretted his heart. Silently, in a dream she had come to him after her death, her wasted body within its loose brown graveclothes with a different idea giving off an odour of wax and rosewood , h . H er breath, that had bent upon him , mute, reproachful, a faint odour of wetted with a smell of ashes. Across the threadbare cuffedge he saw the sea hailed as a great sweet sweat mother by the wellfed voice beside him. The ring of bay and skyline skylin held a dull green mass of liquid. A bowl of white withe china had stood beside her deathbed holding the green sluggish bile which she had torn up from her rotting liver by fits of loud groaning groan vomiting . !
Buck buck Mulligan wiped again his razorblade knife .
—Ah, poor dogsbody ! ... he said in a kind voice. I must give you a shirt and a few fev noserags. How are the secondhand breeks?
—They fit well enough, Stephen stephen answered.
Buck buck Mulligan attacked the hollow beneath his underlip.
—The mockery of it, he said contentedly. Secondleg they should be. God knows what poxy bowsy boswy left them off. I have a lovely pair with a hair stripe, grey. You’ll look spiffing in them. I’m not joking jonking , Kinch. You look damn well when you’re dressed.
—Thanks , Stephen said. I can’t wear them if they are grey.
—He can’t wear them, Buck buck Mulligan told his face in the mirror. Etiquette is etiquette . ! He kills his mother but he can’t wear grey trousers.
He folded his razor neatly and with stroking palps of fingers felt the smooth skin.
Stephen turned his gaze from the sea and to the plump face with its smokeblue mobile eyes.
—That fellow I was with in the Ship last night, said Buck buck Mulligan, says you have g. p. i. He’s up in Dottyville with Connolly Norman . G : g eneral paralysis of the insane!
He swept the mirror a half circle in the air to flash the tidings tidngs abroad in sunlight now radiant on the sea. His curling shaven lips laughed and the edges of his white withe glittering teeth. Laughter seized all alls his strong wellknit trunk.
—Look at yourself, he said, you dreadful bard ! .
Stephen bent forward and peered at the mirror glass held out to him, cleft by a crooked crack. Hair on end. As he and others see me. Who chose this face for me? This dogsbody to rid of vermin. It asks me too.
—I pinched it out of the skivvy’s room, Buck buck Mulligan said. It does her all right. The aunt always keeps plainlooking servants for Malachi. Lead him not into temptation. And her name is Ursula.
Laughing again, he brought the mirror
Laughing again,
he brought the mirror
away from Stephen’s peering eyes.
—The rage of Caliban Caliban at not seeing his face in a mirror, he said. If Wilde were only alive to see you!
Drawing back and pointing, Stephen said with bitterness : ...
—It is a symbol of Irish art. The cracked lookingglass of a servant.
Buck buck Mulligan suddenly linked his arm in Stephen’s and walked with him round the tower, his razor and mirror clacking in the pocket where he had thrust them.
—It’s not fair to tease taste you like that, Kinch, is it? he said kindly. God knows you have more spirit than any of them.
Parried again. He fears the lancet of my art as I fear that of his. The cold steel pen stylus .
—Cracked lookingglass of a servant! servant! Tell that to the oxy chap downstairs and touch him for a guinea. He’s stinking with money and thinks you’re not a gentleman. His old fellow made his tin by selling jalap to Zulus or some bloody swindle or other. God , Kinch, if you and I could only work together we might only work together we might do something for the island. Hellenise it.
Cranly’s arm . : His arm.