Dublinesque (26 page)

— What way is he taking us? Mr Power asked through both windows.

— Irishtown, Martin Cunningham said. Ringsend. Brunswick street.

Mr Dedalus nodded, looking out.

— That’s a fine old custom, he said. I am glad to see it has not died out.

All watched awhile through their windows caps and hats lifted by passers. Respect. The carriage swerved from the tramtrack to the smoother road past Watery Lane.

“It’s really a requiem for my profession and above all for me, as I’m all washed up,” Riba says to Javier as he glances anxiously at Bev, as if wanting to point out to his friend that he’s saying all this because she reminds him that he’s old now, after all he’s nearly sixty and seducing her would not be the easy task it might have once been for him.

They’re standing on one side of the square, by the first row of seats of the ever-increasing audience.

“You don’t have to convince me of anything anymore,” Javier says. “And even less when we’re on the sixth chapter already and I’m feeling imbued with your idea for the requiem. I’ve even thought about writing a story about someone who holds funerals all over the world, funerals in the form of works of art. What do you think? It’s someone trying to learn to say goodbye to everything. Saying goodbye to Joyce and the age of print is not enough for him, and he starts to turn into a collector of funerals.”

Reba responds, “He could have this slogan printed on his hat: ‘Full devotion to funerals!’ It’s what Nietzky said just now.”

Javier can’t hear these last few words properly because an unnecessarily loud voice booms out from the stage.

“How awful! I don’t think the visit to the terrible Hades needs so much shouting,” Javier comments.

The sun comes out and obviously no one was expecting it, although everyone has immediately noticed it with great cheer. Riba goes back to his commonplace book and writes that, due to the sun’s recent appearance, people at the tables outside the café are now sitting open-mouthed, “as if they were already home and it was evening and they were watching television.”

The sun’s come out, but up there the reading continues on an ever gloomier stage: “A raindrop spat on his hat. He drew back and saw an instant of shower spray dots over the gray flags.”

Bev and Walter Dew come over, slightly enigmatically, across these same gray flagstones. It looks as if the South African ambassador’s son is about to say something, but in the end he lives up to his incurable curtness — Nietzky has already warned them that his friend is president of the elitist Dublin Laconic Society, and doesn’t tend to open his mouth much.

Bev smiles and asks, in her near-perfect Spanish, how they’re going to manage today without the Chrysler to get around on this wonderful Bloomsday. Not even she and her brother have the car today, because their father’s using it. There can be no doubt that hidden in the laconic man’s sister’s voice there’s real charm. It’s a sensual voice, with light, life, heat, he even hears sweat. A radiant, sparkling voice, although this sparkling contrasts at times with the girl’s opaque intelligence.

“Trains and taxis,” Javier replies, “it’s not a problem. We came here in a taxi today. Otherwise we’ll walk, it’s fine.”

Riba doesn’t even move, he’s rooted to the spot looking at Bev, hoping that maybe she’ll say something else.

“Isn’t that right?” Javier asks him. “Well, look at this, our beloved editor has joined the laconic circle.”

“Oh, yes,” Riba reacts. “There are taxis everywhere. All you’ve got to do is raise your arm when you’re out on the road, in front of the hotel, for example, and one soon stops.”

When he’s finished saying this, he feels, he’s almost certain, that he’s said too much. And he remembers there was a time when he felt genuine panic at turning into a chatterbox.

Some distance away from Riba stands Ricardo, slightly cautious, a Pall Mall in hand as ever, talking to Nietzky.

“Listen up. To me the worst thing is that Riba’s been imagining me all this time as some sort of Romantic artist type. It’s madness. I can’t understand why he’s incapable of seeing me as a normal person, a family man, an office worker, a busy husband who goes to the supermarket on the weekends and takes the garbage out every night. I mean, I’m nothing more, nothing less than that.”

“I didn’t know you were so normal,” says Nietzky.

On the stage, the relentless reading of the novel continues:

White horses with white frontlet plumes came round the Rotunda corner, galloping. A tiny coffin flashed by. In a hurry to bury. A mourning coach. Unmarried. Black for the married. Piebald for bachelors. Dun for a nun.

— Sad, Martin Cunningham said. A child.

State of the sky
: Very bright, getting more and more sunny.

Action
: In his corner, Riba thinks about the child he was. A strange moment. He imagines the coffin he would have had if he’d died young. And he also imagines the shadow of his spirit — the guardian angel lost at such a young age — accompanying the coffin in silence. Then the voice of his childhood playmate. Time flies like an arrow and fruit flies fly too.

Not far off, Ricardo and Nietzky continue their now lengthy conversation.

“What can the Rotunda corner be?” Ricardo asks.

“The Rotunda corner? The corner of Death. At least that’s what it seems like, doesn’t it?”

“But also like Gothic Rotunda, that font invented in I don’t know which century. But it’s true, it would be normal for the Rotunda to be Death. About being normal. Didn’t you know I was?”

Short silence.

“What? Normal? Well, no.” Another brief silence. “I associate you with art and as far as I know, art is never normal. It’s labyrinthine, fantastically deceitful and complex, my friend. Look at Walter, for instance.”

“Is Walter an artist?”

“In his own way he is. He’s not normal, even when he’s taking out the garbage.”

In another corner of the square, Bev has just noticed Riba’s notebook.

“What are you writing in there?” she asks.

Riba reckons that maybe, if she’s addressed him so familiarly, it’s because she doesn’t see him as that old or decrepit. He cheers up suddenly, actually he cheers up a lot, enormously so. It was worth taking the Irish leap for something like this alone. The girl’s question has given him an opportunity to shine, and given that he’s already taken the much desired English leap, he understands that now he can even reconcile himself with his French past — he’s already quite keen to do so — and become an echo of the Parisian Perec, his eternal idol, and a superb expert in questioning the everyday, the commonplace.

“Oh, nothing,” he replies. “I’m taking notes on what seems not to be important, what isn’t spectacular, what happens every day, what comes back every day. The trivial, the everyday, the obvious, the common, the ordinary, background noise, the usual, what happens when nothing is happening . . .”

“What did you say? Don’t you think Bloomsday is spectacular? But that’s awful, baby, that’s awful you don’t think it’s spectacular!”

Did she say “baby’? It’s not the most important thing, but her tone of voice didn’t sound nearly as wonderful as before, this is true. And although everything can be improved on, the bad first impression he’s doubtless managed to have of the girl is beyond repair. He thought ingenuously that the South African ambassador’s daughter’s intelligence was equal to her beauty and all he’s achieved is to come across like a fool, as someone incapable of valuing the spectacular qualities of Bloomsday. Good heavens, this is hopeless now. And it won’t do any good to think this “baby” of hers was vulgar and unnecessary as well, nor will it do any good to think the girl looks like or is a total idiot. Even if she is or looks that way, he was the one not to rise to the occasion and everything is beyond hope now. And so is his age, and what’s worse: his blatant decrepitude. It’s better to take a few steps and move away, to help the famous fruit fly to fly.

When, after walking in a slow zigzag across the square, Amalia gets to where Nietzky and Ricardo are, they finally discover, thanks to her, that the Rotunda isn’t Death, or a typeface, nor can it be associated in any way — everything would fit too neatly if it could — with the death of the age of print. No. It’s simply the old maternity hospital of Dublin, the first one in Europe.

Birth and Death. And Amalia’s laughter.

At the same time, Bev has returned to her attack on Riba. She looks at him, laughs. What can she want now? Will she go on about how spectacular the day is? She’s very beautiful. Despite his recent letdown, he’d give anything to hear her voice again. He’s bewitched, he admits it, but she makes him feel like he’s in the States. Will she call him “baby” again?

“My favorite writer is Ragú Candor,” Bev says in her attractive voice, just as sensual as before although now she has a French accent. “And yours?”

Riba, much taken aback, understands that whatever happens he’s now faced with a second chance and starts to think carefully about his answer. In the end, he chooses not to make mistakes and opts for this Candor as well, a man he’s never heard of. What a coincidence, Riba says, he’s my favorite too. Bev looks at him in surprise and asks him to repeat that. Ragú is my favorite, Riba says, I like his stylistic restraint and the way he deals with silence. I thought you were more intelligent, Bev says. Ragú Candor is for silly girls like me and now you seem silly too.

She’s won the game. And what’s more, Riba was wrong again and the worst of it is that — the idea of getting along with Bev now ruled out forever — he feels he’s aged ten years. He’s incapable now of seducing young girls. He’s made a fool of himself, he’s finished. Without drink he lacks the humor that at least made him more daring and funny. His face darkens, and gradually acquires a slow, mournful look.

Up there, on the stage — as if it were a parallel story — the reading of the novel goes on and the funeral cortège continues slowly on its way at the height of a sunny morning: “Dunphy’s corner. Mourning coaches drawn up drowning their grief. A pause by the wayside. Tiptop position for a pub. Expect we’ll pull up here on the way back to drink his health. Pass round the consolation. Elixir of life.”

The Rotunda was always a good excuse to take to drink.

Time
: A quarter to four.

Date
: Bloomsday.

Place
: Martello tower, in the village of Sandycove, a circular tower on the outskirts of the city of Dublin, the place where
Ulysses
begins: “Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead. . . . Solemnly he came forward and mounted the round gunrest.”

Characters
: Riba, Nietzky, Javier, and Ricardo.

Action
: They have climbed up the narrow spiral staircase to the round gunrest, and are now contemplating the Irish Sea from up there. The day is still calm and the sky is a surprisingly uniform white. The tide is high, and the surface of the sea, taut and burnished like rippling silk, looks higher than the land. Riba is hypnotized for a few moments. Strange sea of an intense blue, dangerous like love. He imagines that the sea, in reality, is only a pale gold gleam that extends out to the impossible horizon.

As time is getting on, because they’ve arranged to meet the Dew siblings and Amalia and Julia Piera at the gates of Glasnevin Cemetery, Nietzky decides to found the Order of Knights right here, high up in the tower. What’s more, he considers the setting a nobler one. They went to Finnegan’s pub yesterday and when they pass it again going to Dalkey to get the train home, they’ll have too little time to stop and found the Order there.

They’re alone on the gunrest, but Riba has the feeling that the wind is carrying broken words and that, what’s more, there’s a ghost hidden on the spiral staircase. Javier, who hates
Ulysses
, is pretending he’s Buck Mulligan and shaving his chin. Nietzky reads the rules he drew up yesterday: “The Order of Finnegans has as its sole purpose the veneration of James Joyce’s novel
Ulysses
. The members of this society are obliged to honor the work and to honor Bloomsday every year, and when possible, go to the Martello tower in Sandycove and to feel there that they are part of a now ancient race that began like the sea, without name or horizon, and which today is in danger of dying out. . . .”

In quite a hurry and after the symbolic inauguration of the Knights, it’s decided that every year one new member can be admitted, “only if and when three-quarters of the Knights of the Order agree to it.” And then, with no time left to lose, they go to catch the train. They walk for half an hour along the road to Dalkey and from there, without stopping at Finnegans, take the train back to Dublin singing a song about Milly, the fifteen-year-old daughter of the Blooms who left Dublin to study photography and who only appears obliquely in
Ulysses
:

O, Milly Bloom, you are my darling.

You are my looking glass from night till morning.

I’d rather have you without a farthing