y the shipworm, lost Armada.
Unwholesome sandflats waited to suck his treading soles, breathing
upward sewage breath, a pocket of seaweed smouldered in seafire under a
midden of man's ashes. He coasted them, walking warily. A porterbottle
stood up, stogged to its waist, in the cakey sand dough. A sentinel:
isle of dreadful thirst. Broken hoops on the shore; at the land a maze
of dark cunning nets; farther away chalkscrawled backdoors and on the
higher beach a dryingline with two crucified shirts. Ringsend: wigwams
of brown steersmen and master mariners. Human shells.
He halted. I have passed the way to aunt Sara's. Am I not going there?
Seems not. No-one about. He turned northeast and crossed the firmer sand
towards the Pigeonhouse.
_--Qui vous a mis dans cette fichue position?_
_--c'est le pigeon, Joseph._
Patrice, home on furlough, lapped warm milk with me in the bar MacMahon.
Son of the wild goose, Kevin Egan of Paris. My father's a bird, he
lapped the sweet _lait chaud_ with pink young tongue, plump bunny's
face. Lap, _lapin._ He hopes to win in the _gros lots_. About the nature
of women he read in Michelet. But he must send me _La Vie de Jesus_ by
M. Leo Taxil. Lent it to his friend.
_--C'est tordant, vous savez. Moi, je suis socialiste. Je ne crois pas
en l'existence de Dieu. Faut pas le dire a mon p-re._
_--Il croit?_
_--Mon pere, oui._
_Schluss_. He laps.
My Latin quarter hat. God, we simply must dress the character. I want
puce gloves. You were a student, weren't you? Of what in the other
devil's name? Paysayenn. P. C. N., you know: _physiques, chimiques et
naturelles_. Aha. Eating your groatsworth of _mou en civet_, fleshpots
of Egypt, elbowed by belching cabmen. Just say in the most natural
tone: when I was in Paris; _boul' Mich'_, I used to. Yes, used to
carry punched tickets to prove an alibi if they arrested you for murder
somewhere. Justice. On the night of the seventeenth of February 1904 the
prisoner was seen by two witnesses. Other fellow did it: other me.
Hat, tie, overcoat, nose. _Lui, c'est moi_. You seem to have enjoyed
yourself.
Proudly walking. Whom were you trying to walk like? Forget: a
dispossessed. With mother's money order, eight shillings, the banging
door of the post office slammed in your face by the usher. Hunger
toothache. _Encore deux minutes_. Look clock. Must get. _Ferme_. Hired
dog! Shoot him to bloody bits with a bang shotgun, bits man spattered
walls all br
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