Yes, the woods—he had thought of them many times while he sat caged off there behind the grating.
He had grown up in a village on a wooded slope half a mile south of Stockholm. After he had been confirmed, he had been set as prentice to a pious little tailor in South Stockholm. The tailor was a Baptist; Bloom also became a Baptist and submitted to total immersion. But when he went to another tailor, who belonged to the national church and constantly misused the name of the Devil, his new faith gradually waned. He made new acquaintances and became the betrothed of a middle-aged serving-maid who had a bankbook and gave him money. In that way he grew accustomed to amusements, not great, but nevertheless more than are good for poor folks. On fine summer evenings he often sat in Mosebacke’s café or on the river terrace drinking punch, sometimes with his intended, but sometimes with a little dark-haired dressmaker, whom he had got to know at Tekla’s one afternoon when she had given a tea in the maid’s room. She was called Edith; she had thick dark hair and very red lips. She went for long periods without work, but always knew how to provide for herself notwithstanding. Bloom often wished that Tekla’s faithful love for him, together with her bankbook, might by some magic means be transferred to Edith. But Edith’s heart was inconstant and never to be relied upon, and the bankbook still remained Tekla’s. So, as the case was, he at least got a little enjoyment from the money of the one and the red lips of the other.
But then came the end. The tailor with whom he worked went bankrupt, and he was out of work. Tekla promised to help him and took out money from the bank; he was to have the loan of thirty crowns till he found work. On the evening when he was to get the money she forced him to stay longer than he cared to, and when at last he was to go and only waited for the money, the crash came. She was all the more angry because she had to speak low for fear of waking the family. Edith had been up in her room that afternoon, they had fallen out about something, and Edith had talked about all manner of things with Bloom to spite and annoy her. But Tekla was not the kind to let anybody make fun of her. She called him a cur and many other names, waving the three tenners under his nose and declaring that he should never again get a farthing from her. Thereupon he snatched them with a sudden grab and went off. He knew that she dared not make any disturbance at night; the family might wake.
But next day in court she accused him of theft. He first denied it, but afterwards confessed and related the circumstances. The plaintiff’s version of the affair, however, was altogether different: the thirty crowns had lain on the table, he had taken them without her seeing it, and she had never promised them to him. The one thing that became wholly clear was that he had taken them.
That gave him his first trip.
Afterwards he had lived as best he could—had worked sometimes, and sometimes starved and begged, till one evening he got the idea of stealing a jacket on East Street so as to escape the poorhouse.
He had come down to Lilyholm Bridge. Milk-wagons rattled and shaggy peasant horses toiled painfully with their homemade carts up the steep abutment. From the hundred factory chimneys around the shore of Årstavik the smoke ascended quietly toward the welkin in straight columns, as from a sacrifice well-pleasing to the Lord. The Continental Express rushed southward along the railway embankment, its dining car full of breakfasting travelers with anchovies on their forks. But in the peaceful nook between the bridge and the shore a family of ducks swam to and fro; some white, some speckled with the suggestion of a wild duck’s plumage, while in the middle of the flock the drake stood on a floating plank on one foot with his head under his wing, asleep.
Bloom took a roll that he had brought with him from the restaurant on Brenchurch Street, crumbled it to pieces, and threw the pieces to the ducks. The flock at once grew more lively; even the drake lifted his head and opened one eye, but shut it again. He was quite white, and his shut eyelid was also white, so that Bloom had to think of the blank, uncanny marble eyes he had seen in the National Museum one Sunday many years ago. The others snapped among the bits of roll. One of them had got hold of a piece that was too big, so she dipped it into the water time after time in order to soften it and break it. Meanwhile another followed all her motions constantly with watchful eyes, and when at last the bit of roll slipped from the bill of the first, the other was instantly there and got it. There was no conflict; the first contented herself with following in turn and watching for a chance to recover the lost piece.
Bloom laughed aloud with delight.
Yes, that’s right, he thought; he who has got something must look out for what he has, or someone else will come and take it. He
