The Annotated "Ulysses"/Page 010

by James Joyce

Her secrets : old feather fans, tassled dancecards, powdered with musk, a
gaud of amber beads in her locked drawer. A birdcage hung in the sunny
window of her house when she was a girl. She heard old Royce sing in the
pantomine of Turko the terrible and laughed with others when he sang:

I am the boy

That can enjoy

Invisibility.

Phantasmal mirth, folded away : muskperfumed.

And no more turn aside and brood.

Folded away in the memory of nature with her toys. Memories beset
his brooding brain. Her glass of water from the kitchen tap when she had
approached the sacrament. A cored apple, filled with brown sugar, roasting
for her at the hob on a dark autumn evening. Her shapely fingernails reddened
by the blood of squashed lice from the children’s shirts.

In a dream, silently, she had come to him, her wasted body within its
loose graveclothes giving off an odour of wax and rosewood, her breath bent
over him with 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. Her hoarse loud breath rattling in horror, while all prayed on their knees.
Her eyes on me to strike me down. Liliata rutilantium te confessorum turma
circumdet : iubilantium te virginum chorus excipiat.

Ghoul! Chewer of corpses!

No, mother. Let me be and let me live.

— Kinch ahoy!

Buck Mulligan’s voice sang from within the tower. It came nearer up the
staircase, calling again. Stephen, still trembling at his soul’s cry, heard warm
running sunlight and in the air behind him friendly words.

— Dedalus, come down, like a good mosey. Breakfast is ready. Haines is
apologising for waking us last night. It’s all right.

— I’m coming, Stephen said, turning.

— Do, for Jesus’ sake, Buck Mulligan said. For my sake and for all our
sakes.

Annotations

"Liliata rutilantium te confessorum turma circumdet: iubilantium te virginum chorus excipiat." "May the crowd of joyful confessors encompass thee; may the choir of blessed virgins go before thee." Phrase spoken during the Recommendation of a Soul Departing.