Chapter
8
In
which two washerwomen, washing clothes in the Liffey,
discuss the fall of HCE and the origins of Anna in a gossip-style narrative.
The story also incorporates a description the River Liffey
beginning in the mountains, its descent (or fall) down onto the plain and
then to Dublin, where it gives the gift of life (and presents from the past)
to the inhabitants. The chapter contains many references to other parts FW,
and also suggests that the two women in the Park were sent to HCE by Anna,
that she herself was first made love to by a cleric, the Father Michael of
others parts of the Wake, and explains the connection between the
older Anna and Kate. P.
196 O
tell me about Anna Livia Plurabelle [a junior washer woman speaking to an older –
it’s sometimes difficult to determine which is which…]. Older: Well you know
when HCE did ‘you know what’… Younger: Yes, go on,
start talking. Older: Or whatever
it was the three [soldiers] tried to say he did to the two girls in Younger: What was it
he did Holy Sunday? And how long was he under lock and key? Older: It was in the
news, the Crown vs Humphrey, for illicit distilling.
O, the rough old rope! Mixing marriage and making love. P.
197 The
court stewards were confused by him [?]. And the cut of his clothes! And his strutting! How he used to hold his head as high as Howth, the famous old duke, with a hump of grandeur much
like the arch of a weasel’s back. His accent was from Derry but his blather was
from Younger: And what did
they call him? Older: Huge Caput Earlyfouler [HCE, also refers to early kings] Younger: Where did he
come from? Older: Younger: Was he her
blacksmith or just filled her pail? Were their marriage bans not published in
Adam and Eve’s church, or were they married by a ship’s captain? Older: For my other
half I thee take, like a river and a mountain together
they lived, hoping for a happy Christmas. She has her license to play [in bed] and
if they don’t be merry, that you and I may. Pass me another [item of clothing]
and ask me another question! Younger: Was he insured
against burglars, two and three parties risk? [Two
girls and three soldiers] I heard he ransomed
Anna in Dublin, where he captured her, raped and kept her in a parakeet’s cage,
playing cat and mouse all along the river (if only a policeman had been there
to shoot him!). Older: Who told you
that tale? In a boat he set out across the Hibernian Ocean till he saw land
[like Tristan?] and let out two birds [like Noah], like a Phoenician sailor.
Guided by the smell of the kelp the birds found the Liffey
mouth [Pigeonhouse]. The merchant seaman followed
them, his cloak flying in the breeze, until his prow burst through the sand
bar. That’s when the whale began chasing his fish! Tune… P.
198 ..
your pipes and start humming [washing]! Younger: Well, tell me
soon and stop the frothing. Older: When they saw
him shooting up the Liffey, the bulls began roaring. He hard-earned his wife, this trader, with the sweat of his brow.
He was called a child of the sea, Waterbourne, the
water baby [Moses]. HCE has a codfish eye [Bloom, roaming eye]. She was nearly
as bad as him herself. Younger: Who? Anna Livia? Older: Anna Livia. Did you know she was calling water-girls to go to
him and tickle him, easy over? [two girls in Younger: She was?
Isn’t that just the limit! Tell me all, I want to hear how she was left to one
side. Older: In a rabbit’s
wink, after he fell [for the girls]. Letting on she didn’t care, that she was
absent and he a man with passions, she was like a ‘proxinette’. Younger: And what is
that? None of your Russian or Hindu jargon! Tell us in plain language. Older: Did they not
teach you at school? It is if I was to go by telekinesis and impersonate you
[proxy, approximate – sends the girls in her place]. Younger: Is that what
she is? I didn’t think she was that low. Older: Did you see
her in her window in her chair, pretending to play a fiddle? She can’t play a
fiddle. Younger: Tell me more! Older: Well old
Humphrey was as glum as a grandpa, with the weeds at the door, and plague, and
no-one daring to showing a lamp in a kitchen or a church, and holes appearing
in the street, and deadly mushrooms appearing on the hero’s tomb, and weeds
growing on the great tribune’s grave mound, sitting on his seat, dreaming away,
questioning himself, and checking for… P.
199 …births
and deaths in the papers, not defending himself as the guttersnipes worked on
him, not eating, fearing his fate, dreaming into the night in his black
stockings and wide breeches and with the birds and pests [?] about him,
wondering whether Dublin was worth the bother. You would think he was extinct,
such was his trance. And there was Anna Livia, not
sleeping at all, prowling around like a child in a summer dress with her
damsel-fair cheeks, to say hello to him. With chips and salt
from his girlfriends. She would cook him fish and eggs and bacon on
toast, serve him a cup of tea or coffee, black with sugar, or a pewter of ale,
and rye bread with ham, and in pleasing him, her health began to fail, her
joints shook with gout, and as fast as she’d rush with her armload of victuals,
he’d cast them away with scorn, as much as to say ‘you so and so’, but the only
harm he could do her was if he let the plate drop on her toes. Then she’d
whistle a hymn. But she sounded like a hen on the Younger: Is that a
fact? Older: It is. Then writing
the right and royal romance [also a sense of ‘riding’ HCE after he’s
‘entranced’ – Osiris/III.4], it was Anna, born aristocrat, Livia,
daughter of Sense and Art, with her sparkling fan and frost-covered tresses
speckled with fireflies… P.
200 …in a jade gown that would cover two chairs. Younger: Blazes Kate!
These purple patches! Older: And lowing to
him down his feed pipe [coming out of his tomb?] ‘Please don’t die’! Do you
know what she started asking him? You’ll never guess. ‘Tell me, O tell me, as I loved you better than you could know.’ And he replied,
‘I do like those younger girls’, and so on, in a sonorous tone, so thin in his sandy cloak and deaf as a post. Younger: Go away! You
are only teasing! Anna Livia? Older: As god is my
judge! And didn’t she go and stand in her door, puffing a pipe, and every
servant or winsome farmer’s wife [seven rainbow girls] walking on the road she
made a sign to slip inside through the door? Younger: You don’t
say? Older: But I do! She
called them in one by one and showed them how to dance suggestively and what a
maid does with a man, offering them money. Younger: Lordy, did she do
that? Throwing all the whores in the world at him! Older: To have any
of the captured wenches he wanted, to have two inside his bed! Younger: And what was
the rhyme she made [the romance she wrote?]! Tell me while I’m lathering the
underwear. I dying on my feet until I learn Anna Livia’s rhyme… P.
201 …which was written by one and read by two and found by a hen in the
park! Older: I can see
that you are [dying on your feet]. Younger: How does it
turn out? Older: Are you
listening? Younger: Yes! I am! Older: This is it… “By earth’s
end I need a brand new backside, and a plumper one at that. For mine is
worn out waiting for my old Dane, my lifelong companion, the key to our larder,
with his camel’s hump hunched-back, for him to wake from his winter’s
hibernation and bear down upon me as he used to. Is there
another lord of the manor or knight who would slip me some cash for washing and
darning his socks now that we’ve run out of oatmeal and milk? If not for my
bed so snug I’d leap out and go visit the beach and taste the salt of the sea
wind in my mouth.” Younger: Go on, go on!
Tell me every tiny detail. Older: If the man of
the house heard me! It would be like gun-boy meets warrior-girl. Younger: How many
children did she have in tow? Older: I can’t
rightly say. Some say it was in the three figures [Shem, Shaun and Issy] and she had confined herself to 111, one by one by
one. Younger: We won’t have
enough room in the church-yard. Older: She can’t
remember half the names she gave them as she smacked them with her slipper.
They did well to call her ‘Plurabelle’. But it’s on
the cards she’ll have… P.
202 …
more, twins, triplets, even eight or nine to a litter.
Younger: She must have
got about in her day, more than most. Older: Sure she did.
She had a few men of her own, before a fall scared that lass! Younger: Tell me how
she went through the fellows, the tease that she was? Older: She cast
herself [pearls] before the lads from one town to another [i.e. as a river].
Linking arms with one and knocking back the next, tapping a flank [dancing,
flowing] until she petered out. Younger: Who was her
first lover? Older: Someone,
whether by tactics or combat. Tinker, tailor, soldier,
sailor, pieman [Shem?] or policeman [Shaun?]. That what I ask myself. Work that laundry hard, push harder!
Younger: What are you
sighing for? Answer! Untie the knots in the clothes. Older: As to the
first, she can’t place him. Such a long way back to remember
[i.e. upstream]. She said herself she hardly knows who laid her first
upon the gravel [as rain?], or what he did or who it was gave her away. She was
just a slip of a thing then, and he was a lurching layabout, as tough as oak
trees, who used to wrestle in Kildare, who first fell for her. She nearly died
with shame when he gave her a tiger eye [stone]! Younger: Oh I wish it
was he, but you’re wrong! It was before then, in county… P.
203 …Wicklow,
the Garden of Eden, she worked for better or worse for all her life in
Humphrey’s Older: Are you
certain? Where then does Finn fit in the picture, or where does the Norse
[Ship’s captain?] come in. Or where does Shem [donkey?] divert the fairer sex,
or where was it she couldn’t make up her mind between Cullin
and Younger: Then where
was it in Ire? Was it east or west or where no man has been? Tell me where it
happened then, the very first time! Older: I will if you
will listen. Do you know Luggalaw? Well, there once
dwelt a hermit, Michael Arklow was this reverend’s
name (with many a sigh I’ve washed his lovely bibs), and on one Friday in June
or July, when she looked so sweet and limber, with curves you couldn’t stop
touching, he plunged his two anointed hands into the saffron-coloured strands
of her hair [either head or pubic] as dark and deep as a red bog. The heavenly
arches of a rainbow cast an orange light over her. [rain…]
Her beautiful blue eyes goading him on to the verge of
violation. Make a wish! He could not help himself, he had to forget that
he was a monk, rubbing her up and smoothing her down, and he kissed her over
and over (as he had warned her never to do), with Anna and her… P.
204 …freckled forehead. She rose in her own estimation and
stepped as though on stilts ever since. [Also a discussion of the source of the
Liffey…] Younger: Wasn’t he the
bold priest? And wasn’t she the naughty Livvy? Two
lads in scouts’ breeches went through her before that, Barefoot Burn and
William Wade, Wicklow’s noble warriors, before she had a hint of hair on her
fanny or a bosom to tempt anyone. And before that again, she was licked by a
hound while peeing, but first of all, when very small she slipped away while
nurse was asleep and wriggled in all the stagnant black pools of rain and
laughed in her innocence, while a row of pale, pink hawthorns looked askance at
her. Younger: Tell the name
of the first man’s name, surely somebody knows this. And tell me why was she
freckled? And how was her hair done, or was it a wig she wore? Did they drop
their gloves in their hurry? Are you in the know or not? O go
on, about what you know. Older: I know what
you mean. You like to wash the coifs and veils, and for me to clean old
Veronica’s greasy wiping rags. Younger: What am I
rinsing now? Is it a pinny or a surplice? Older: Where’s your
nose? Younger: And where’s
the starch? Older: That’s not
the smell of benediction. I can tell from here that’s the smell of Mrs Magrath [Anna Livia]. They must
have come straight off her. She has sinned! P.
205 She
freed them from her hips easily enough. She’s the only one with frills around
here. Younger: So they are,
I declare! Older: If tomorrow
is fine, guess who’ll come sightseeing? Younger: Who? Older: The college
boys, in their caps and rowing club colours. And here are [Mrs Magrath’s sewn] initials too. L and K [or
L and P, Livia Plurabelle] in
scarlet thread. And an X [or Anna] after it show they’re not Laura Keown’s. Oh the devil take this
safety pin [in the clothes]! You child of Mammon, Lilith
Kinsella! Now who would have torn the leg of her
drawers? Younger: Which leg is
it? Older: The one with
bells on it. Younger: Rinse them
out and hurry up! [with the story of ALP] Older: Where did I
stop? Younger: Never stop!
Continue! Go on! Older: Well, after
it [the sin] was put in the newspaper, the Merry Friendly Mendicant’s Weekly
(which everyone read for once, soiling their white gloves, saying ‘show us it
here’ and asking when others would be finished), even the snow that fell on HCE’s white hair hated him. Everywhere you went, every pub
and tavern, in city and suburb, you found his icon drawn [or turned] upside
down, or boys on the corner hitting his effigy, and a pantomime figure of Turko the Terrible [middle eastern
god?] (Adam come this way, P.
206 …
the rabble around him made a great fracas. Saying, ‘Think of your father! Think of your mother! [Stephen in U?]
Hang him!’ Anna swore she’d get even with them all. Younger: By the
pregnant Virgin Mary! So,
she made a plan, the mischief maker, the like of which never has been heard. Younger: What plan?
Tell me quick! Older: Well, she
borrowed a sack, a mailbag, and borrowed a lamp from one of sons, Shaun the
Post, then went and consulted her books on history, geometry and fashion, and
made herself up to join the masquerade. I can’t begin to tell you, it’s such a
laugh! Younger: But you must!
Make me laugh! I swear I’d pledge my chance of getting to heaven to hear it
all, every word! Older: O leave me my senses for a while! Younger: If you don’t
like storytelling [you shouldn’t be telling one…] Older: Have it your
own way. Younger: Now sit here
and do as you’re told. Take your time now. Breathe deep. That’s the way. Lend
me your ashes while I scrub the canon’s underpants. Now let it flow. Older: First she let
her hair down and let its winding coils fall to her feet. Naked, she shampooed
herself. Then greased herself with butterscotch and turpentine and serpent
thyme, and with leaf mould drew around her eyes, her sides and body. She put
golden wax on her belly [?] and… P.
207 …incense.
She wove a garland into her hair. She pleated and plaited it from meadow grass
and water iris, bulrushes and water plants and weeping willow. She made
bracelets, anklet and armlets, with an amulet for a necklace of cobbles and
pebbles of Irish runestones, and made shell bangles.
That done, with a dab of something to her eyes, she became ‘Annushka
Lutetiavitch Pufflovah’, and
after applying lipstick and painting her cheeks with strawberry reds and
violets, she sent her boudoir maids, two cousins named the Grand Cherry and the
Real Kirsch, to see His Affluence [HCE], where they passed on her respects and
a request that she might leave him for a few minutes. She said she was going to
light a taper in a church and would be back in a moment. The clock struck nine
and she said somebody would be waiting for her. Then as soon as HCE’s hunch back was turned, she left with her bag slung
over her shoulder. Younger: Describe her!
Hurry, why can’t you? Spit on the iron while it’s hot! I must hear! Her
calamity electrifies me. Older: No
electricity at all, but old Mother Necessity, the mother of engines. Will you
sit still and listen to what I’m going to say? It was about 20 to one o’clock
on the ninth [?] of April when the door of her house opened and out stepped a
bushman woman, the dearest momma you ever saw, nodding and smiling, like a Punch
and Judy queen, barely up to your… P.
208 …elbow.
Picture her and seize her quick for the longer she lives the more slippery she
becomes. Younger: No more? [to tell] Older: I’m apt to
forget. She wore a ploughboy’s nail-studded clogs, with a sugarloaf hat that
has a band of gorse for an ornament and a hundred streamers and a gilded pin;
she wore thick glasses; and a fishnet veil shaded her from the sun; earrings
were buckled to her ears; her skin-toned stockings were spotted; [etc] ; a four
penny bit [horse bit?] in each side pocket made sure her coat didn’t blow open
in the wind; she had a clothes peg on her nose, and she was chewing something
[gum?] and the tail of her drab skirt trailed fifty Irish miles behind her
[i.e. as a river]. Younger: Hell’s bells,
I’m sorry I missed her! But in which of her mouths?
Was her nose alright? Older: Everyone who
saw her thought she looked a bit queer. They told her to ‘mind out for that
puddle’ and ‘missus, don’t fall into the sea!’ A funny poor witch she must have
seemed. Making fish eyes at her boy’s Younger: Queen of the
May? Older: Just as well
she couldn’t see herself. I reckon she lost her mirror. Younger: She did?
Mercy! Older: There was a
group of … P.
209 …men
contemplating the river [ALP], lolling on a wall, and as soon as they saw her
meander by in her widows’ weeds and recognised who was under her bonnet, one
said to another: either she has had a facelift or Anna is high on dope! Younger: But what saw
she doing with her mail bag? Was it just for the pepper in her pepper pot? Older: Time and teas
and special spices. Younger: Where did she
plunder them from? Was it in the battle or after the ball? I want it from the
source. I promise I’ll make it worth your while. Older: In a wavy
line she walked and sidled, dragging her boulder bag through the narrow passes,
amongst the seaweed and weeds, not knowing which way to go, like Santa Claus
but pale and puny looking for her children, and her arms encircled Issy and running to the reconciled twins Shaun and Shem,
with a Christmas present for each of her children, the birthday gifts they
dreamt of, the spoiled presents [spoils] she laid at out door! On doormats, by the porch and in cellars. Everyone ran out
to see. All about her, girls and boys, from their slums and
artisan dwellings. Long live Anna! Thanks Anna for the high life! We cheered… P.
210 …
or jeered every time she dived into her mail sack and held out the merchandise,
some souvenir or keepsake and for reminding us [of times past], wishing all of
her children, tinkers and healers, her sons and daughters good luck all 1001 of
them. A barrow for Gipsy Lee, a can of soup for Tommy the soldier, some
peppermint drops for Pender’s nephew, [a long list of presents from a rubbish
heap continues]… P.
211 … for Shaun, thought
of as little, a crown he considers big; a wooden cross on the back for Sunny
Jim [Joyce]… a letter to last a lifetime for the two Maggies
by the ashpit [wash pit]…a sunless map of the month
with a sword and stamps for Shem and Shaun the Post [stamp of Irish Free State]…
whatever you like to swill… P.
212 …
Guinness or Hennessey, for Festy King, Roaring Peter,
Frisky Shorty, Treacle Tom, Behan,
Sully the Thug, Master Magrath, Peter Cloran, Delawarr Rossa and whoever else you meet knocking around… But what
did she give to Pruda Brosna…Flora
Ferns, Fauna Fox-Goodman… Lezba Licking… [27 girls + Issy = 28] She gave each a moonflower and bloodstone. So
when Anna looked on Issy, love shone in her tears, as
with Shem, the penman, whose past life had befouled him in his prime. Younger: My word, what
a sackfull of things! A baker’s dozen and more. A
Hibernian market! All that and more in one envelope, if you
dare break the seal [because the gifts are not always good?] No wonder
they run from her poison plague [river water?]. Throw me your soap and I’ll
give it back in the morning. You have all the eddies
on your side of the river. Older: Well, am I to
blame? Younger: You’re on the
sharp side. I’m on the wide. Only snuff wrappers drift my way, emptied out of
the mad priest’s cassock [Michael arklow?]. Strips of
his foreign bible, dead disgusting but with funny titles drawn on the title
page… the P.
213 ..poet, Older: My hands are
blue from the cold, like that piece of patterned china lying below. Younger: Oh, where is
it? Older: Lying beside
the edge I saw it. Uh oh, I’ve lost it! Younger: In the
turbulent water who could see it? But I could listen to more and more. This is
the life for me. Older: Well, do you
know that every tale has its way of telling. The dusk
is falling! My branches are taking root. Younger: And my skin
has turned ash grey. What time is it? Older: It’s getting
late. Younger: It’s a long
time since anyone has seen see the Waterhouse clock. Older: They took it
asunder I heard them say…Wring out the clothes! Bring them in from the dew! God
above avert the showers! Younger: Will we
spread the clothes here? Older: Ay, we will.
You spread on your bank and I’ll do the same on mine… Younger: Where are all
Anna’s children now? Older: Here and
there, some no more, or left to become strangers. Some ended up in Amercia [Vinland] and some in P.
214 …beads
[her presents from 210.29] went bobbing away and ended up in a side drain off a
public toilet. All that’s left of the Meaghers’ is
one kneebuckle and the hooks [of his breeches present
211.11]. Younger: Do you tell
me that only now? Older: I do. Younger: We’re just
shadows! Older: Haven’t you
heard [the story] over and over, many times? You did! Younger: I need to
hear it again. It’s all the wadding I’ve put in my ears. It’s cut out the
sound. Older: What’s your
problem? Younger: Is that there
the great Finnegan himself in his kimono [Giacomo
Joyce], riding high on his statue? It that him there on the
Common? Older: Clear your
eyes of cobwebs and spread your washing! [flapping of
washing] Younger: I thought so!
Were you lifting your elbow [drinking] in Older: Was I what, hobbledy hips? Am I not up in the damp dawn, by the saints,
with my poor pulse and varicose veins, my daughter [Issy]
in decline and my one-eyed mongrel run over twice now, up soaking, bleaching
and boiling rags, a widow like me, all to fund my tennis champion son. Younger: You got your
limp from the hussahs [three solders theme] on their
visit to Dublin with Duke ‘Collars and Cuffs’, and your behaviour gave a smell
to Carlow. Holy Salamader [?]
I saw the statue of Humphrey again. Near the Golden Falls. See there! Older: Keep quiet,
you humble creature! It’s a blackberry bush, or the grey ass those four codgers
own [i.e. four historians and ass]. Younger: You mean Tarpey, Lyons and Gregory? [Matthew, Mark, Luke - new
testament] Older: I mean all
four of them, that wander in the mist, and old Johnny MacDougal [John, new testament] along with… P.
215 …them. Younger: Is that the Poolbeg lighthouse, or my Garry coming back from the Older: Wait until
the moon changes my love. We’ll meet again, we’ll part
once more [like witches in Macbeth] Younger: The spot I’ll
find, if you say the hour. Older: Forgive me, I
am fading. Bye bye! Younger: I go home
slowly now by my own way. Older: I too. Older: Ah Anna Livia was a dear old friend. Dear Dirty Dublin, a
foster-father of Finns and daughter ghillies. Younger: Where are all
their descendents? Hadn’t he seven women as wives? Older: And every
one had a clutch of seven. And every one of those had it’s seven too [seven
hues: rainbow of humanity]. He married his Maggies,
cheap and foul [or cheek by jowl], with their pinks and lemons, cream, yellow
and turquoise, indigo and mauve [i.e. rainbow colours]. Younger: But just who
was their spouse? Older: You may as
well ask about fairyland! But time and time over he
returns. The same anew [& happy returns – Christmas presents]. Anna was, is
and will be. Northmen came and took the southerners
place, and how many met each plurabelle in person? [?
Invaders intermingle?]. But HCE has two nipples, and has a soft place for
orphans. His boys, and Issy, and
all men. Younger: I can’t hear
you with these waters chattering, and the flittering of the bats and field
mice. Have you not gone home? Older: What? Thom
Malone? Younger: Can’t hear
you, with all the bats, and the noise of the Liffey.
[Washer women are on opposite sides of Liffey] Older: My foot won’t
move.I feel as old as yonder elm. Younger: A tale told
of Shaun or Shem? Older: All Anna Livia’s daughters and sons. Younger: I feel… P.
216 …
as heavy as yonder stone. Older: Tell me of
John or Shaun? Younger: Tell me, elm! Older: Night, night! Younger: Tell me of
Tree [Shem] and Stone [Shaun] beside the waters of [the Liffey] Older: Goodnight!